Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/18

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EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS.

a hole in the base of a walnut, and torn open the fungi, etc., exploring for grubs or insects. They are very busy these nights.

If I should make the least concession my friend would spurn me. I am obeying his law as well as my own.

Where is the actual friend you love? Ask from what hill the rainbow's arch springs! It adorns and crowns the earth. Our friends are our kindred, of our species. There are but few of our species on the globe. Between me and my friend what unfathomable distance! All mankind, like water and insects, are between us. If my friend says in his mind, I will never see you again, I translate it, of necessity, into ever. That is its definition in Love's lexicon. Those we can love we can hate. To others we are indifferent.

p. m. To Walden. The railroad in the Deep Cut is dry as in spring, almost dusty. The best of the sand foliage is already gone. I walk without a great coat. A chickadee, with its winter lisp, flits over. I think it is time to hear its phebe note, and that instant it pipes it forth. Walden is still covered with thick ice, though melted a foot from the shore. The French (in the Jesuit Relation) say "fil de l'eau" for that part of the current of a river in which any floating thing would be carried, gen-