Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/107

93 for their baskets. This is what they set about to ascertain as soon as they arrive in any strange neighborhood.

March 9, 1852. A warm spring rain in the night. 3 Down the railroad. Cloudy, but spring-like. When the frost comes out of the ground there is a corresponding thawing of the man. The earth is now half bare. These March winds, which make the woods roar and fill the world with life and bustle, appear to wake up the trees out of their winter sleep and excite the sap to flow. I have no doubt they serve some such use, as well as to hasten the evaporation of the snow and water. The railroad men have now their hands full. I hear and see bluebirds come with the warm wind. The sand is flowing in the deep cut. I am affected by the sight of the moist red sand or subsoil under the edge of the sandy bank under the pitch pines. The railroad is perhaps our pleasantest and wildest road. It only makes deep cuts into and through the hills. On it are no houses nor foot-travelers. The travel on it does not disturb me. The woods are left to hang over it. Though straight, it is wild in its accompaniments, keeping all its raw edges. Even the laborers on it are not like other laborers. Its houses, if any, are shanties, and its ruins the ruins of shanties, shells where the race that