high wind takes off the oak leaves. I see them scrambling up the slopes of the Deep Cat, hurry scurry like a flock of squirrels. . . . . For the past month there has been more sea-room in the day, without so great danger of running aground on one of those two promontories that make it so arduous to navigate the winter day, the morning or the evening. It is a narrow pass, and you must go through with the tide. Might not some of my pages be called the short days of winter.
From Pine Hill looking westward I see the snow-crust shine in the sun as far as the eye can reach,—snow which fell yesterday morning. Then before night came the rain, then in the night the freezing northwest wind, and where day before yesterday half the ground was bare, is this sheeny snow-crust to-day.
March 1, 1838. Spring. March fans it, April christens it, and May puts on its jacket and trousers. It never grows up, but, Alexandrine-like, "drags its slow length along,"—ever springing, bud following close upon leaf,—and when winter comes it is not annihilated, but creeps on mole-like under the snow, showing its face, nevertheless, occasionally by fuming springs and watercourses. So let our manhood be a more advanced and still advancing youth, bud following hard upon leaf. By the side of
