(at the base of the legs) is five inches and a half. I suspect that I have seen near one hundred of these birds this spring, but I never got so near one before. . . . . Yarrell says it is the largest of the British mergansers, is a winter visitor, though a few breed in the north of Britain; are rare in the southern counties.
April 7, 1839. The tediousness and detail of execution never occur to the genius projecting; it always antedates the completion of its work. It condescends to give time a few hours to do its bidding in.
Most have sufficient contempt for what is mean to resolve that they will abstain from it, and a few, virtue enough to abide by their resolution, but not, often does one attain to such lofty contempt as to require no resolution to be made.
April 7, 1841. My life will wait for nobody, but is being matured still irresistibly while I go about the streets, and chaffer with this man and that to secure it a living. It will cut its own channel, like the mountain stream, which, by the longest ridges and by level prairies, is not kept from the sea finally. So flows a man's life, and will reach the sea water, if not by an earthly channel, yet in dew and rain, overleaping all barriers, with rainbows to announce its victory. It can wind as cunningly and uner-
