he dares to live, and take his "reward of merit," perchance (without relaxing his face into a smile), that overlooks his unseen and unregardable merits. Little Johnny Riorden, who faces cold and routs it like a Persian army. While the charitable waddle about cased in furs, he, lively as a cricket, passes them on his way to school.
Dec. 22, 1853. Surveying the Hunt farm. A rambling, rocky, wild, moorish pasture this of Hunt's, with two or three great white oaks to shade the cattle, which the farmer would not take fifty dollars apiece for, though the ship builder wanted them.
It is pleasant, as you are cutting a path through a swamp, to see the color of the different woods, the yellowish dogwood, the green prinos (?), and on the upland, the splendid yellow barberry. . . . You cannot go out so early but you will find the track of some wild creature.
Returning home just after the sun had sunk below the horizon, I saw from N. Barrett's a fire made by boys on the ice near the Red bridge which looked like the bright reflection of the setting sun from the water under the bridge, so clear, so little lurid in this winter evening.
Dec. 22, 1858. p. m. To Walden. I see in
