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EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS.

old horizontal mill-wheel in position to receive a jet on its buckets, transferred the motion to a horizontal shaft and saw, by a few cog-wheels and simple gearing, and throwing a roof of slabs over all, at the outlet of the pond, you have a mill. . . . . A weight of water stored upon a meadow, applied to move a saw, which scratches its way through the trees placed before it, so simple is a saw-mill.

February 28, 1857. It is a singular infatuation that leads men to become clergymen in regular or even irregular standing. I pray to be introduced to new men at whom I may stop short and taste their peculiar sweetness. But in the clergyman of the most liberal sort I see no perfectly independent human nucleus, but I seem to see some indistinct scheme hovering about, to which he has lent himself, to which he belongs. It is a very fine cobweb in the lower stratum of the air, which stronger wings do not even discover. Whatever he may say, he does not know that one day is as good as another. Whatever he may say, he does not know that a man's creed can never be written, that there are no particular expressions of worship that deserve to be prominent. He dreams of a certain sphere to be filled by him something less in diameter than a great circle, may be not greater than a hogshead. All the staves