Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/170

156 handsome form, but look like great wooden images of birds, bluish slate, and white. But when they fly they are quite another creature.

March 17, 1842. I have been making pencils all day, and then at evening walked to see an old schoolmate who is going to help make the Welland canal navigable for ships round Niagara. He cannot see any such motives and modes of living as I, professes not to look beyond the securing of certain "creature comforts." And so we go silently different ways with all serenity, I, in the still moonlight through the village this fair evening to write these thoughts in my journal, and he, forsooth, to mature his schemes to ends as good, may be, but different. So are we two made, while the same stars shine quietly over us. If I or he be wrong, nature yet consents placidly. She bites her lip and smiles to see how her children will agree. So does the Welland canal get built and other conveniences, while I live. Well and good, I must confess. Fast-sailing ships are hence not detained.

What means this changing sky, that now I freeze and contract and go within myself to warm me, and now I say it is a south wind and go all soft and warm along the way? I sometimes wonder if I do not breathe the south wind.