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164 over my head in the woods, a dozen large and compact birds flying with great force and rapidity, spying out the land, eyeing every traveler. Now you hear the whistling of their wings, and in a moment they are lost in the horizon. What health and vigor they suggest! The life of man seems slow and puny in comparison, reptilian.

How handsome a flock of red-wings, ever changing its oval form as it advances, from the rear birds pursuing the others.

March 18, 1842. Whatever book or sentence will bear to be read twice, we may be sure was thought twice. I say this thinking of, who writes pictures or first impressions merely, which consequently will only bear a first reading. As if any transient, any new, mood of the best man deserved to detain the world long. I should call his writing essentially dramatic, excellent acting, entertaining especially to those who see rather than those who hear, not to be repeated, more than a joke. If he did not think who made the joke, how shall he think who hears it. He never consults the oracle, but thinks to utter, oracles himself. There is nothing in his book for which he is not and does not feel responsible. He does not retire behind the truth he utters, but stands in the fore-ground. I wish he would just think, and tell me what he