with half-shut eye like some friendly distant taper when we are benighted.—I do not talk to any intellect in nature, but am presuming an infinite heart somewhere into which I play.
Dec. 24, 1841. I want to go soon and live away by the pond where I shall hear only the wind whispering among the reeds. It will be success if I shall have left myself behind. But my friends ask what I will do when I get there! Will it not be employment enough to watch the progress of the seasons?
Dec. 24, 1850. Saw a shrike pecking to pieces a small bird, apparently a snowbird. At length he took him up in his bill, almost half as big as himself, and flew slowly off with his prey dangling from his beak. I find that I had not associated such actions with my idea of birds. It was not bird-like.
It is never so cold but it melts somewhere. Our mason well remarked that he had some times known it to be melting and freezing at the same time on a particular side of a house; while it was melting on the roof, icicles were forming under the eaves. It is always melting and freezing at the same time where icicles are formed.
Our thoughts are with those among the dead into whose sphere we are rising, or who are now rising into our own. Others we inevitably forget, though they be brothers and sisters. Thus
