hole in the snow not larger than my thumb by the side of a weed, and a yard farther reappeared, and so on alternately above and beneath. A snug life it lives.—The crows come nearer to the houses, alight on trees by the roadside, apparently being put to it for food. . . .
It is a true winter sunset, almost cloudless, clear, cold, indigo-like, along the horizon. The evening (?) star is seen shining brightly before the twilight has begun. A rosy tint suffuses the eastern horizon. The outline of the mountains is wonderfully distinct and hard. They are a dark blue and very near. Wachusett looks like a right-whale over our bow, plowing the continent, with his flukes well down. He has a vicious look, as if he had a harpoon in him.
I wish I could buy at the shops some kind of India rubber that would rub out at once all that in my writing which it costs me so many perusals, so many months, if not years, and so much reluctance, to erase.
Dec. 27, 1857. . . . Walden is almost entirely skimmed over. It will probably be completely frozen over to-night.
I frequently hear a dog bark at some distance in the night, which, strange as it may seem, reminds me of the cooing or crowing of a ringdove which I heard every night a year ago at Perth Amboy. It was sure to coo on the slightest
