Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/307

Rh zephyr is positively agreeable on my cheek. I am thinking what an elysian day it is, and how I seem always to be keeping the flocks of Admetus such days, that is my luck, when I hear a single short stertorous croak from some pool half-filled with dry leaves. You may see anything now, the buff-edged butterfly and many hawks along the meadow, and hark! while I was writing down that field note, the shrill peep of the hy lodes was borne to me from afar through the woods.

I rode with my employer a dozen miles to-day, keeping a profound silence almost all the way, as the most simple and natural course. I treated him simply as if he had bronchitis and could not speak, just as I would a sick man, a crazy man, or an idiot. The disease was only an unconquerable stiffness in a well-meaning and sensible man.

Begin to look off the hills and see the landscape again through a slight haze, with warm wind on the cheek.

April 5, 1855. 9 To Sudbury line by boat It is a smooth April morning water, and many sportsmen are out in their boats. I see a pleasure boat on the smooth surface away by the Rock, resting lightly as a feather in the air. Scare up a snipe close to the water's edge, and soon after a hen-hawk from the Clam-shell