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302 as water that seeks its level, and shall I complain if the gods make it meander? This staying to buy me a farm is as if the Mississippi should stop to chaffer with a clam-shell.

April 7, 1853. 10 Down the river in boat to Bedford How handsome the river from those hills, southwest over the Great Meadows, a sheet of sparkling, molten silver, with broad lagoons parted from it by curving lines of low bushes, to the right or northward now at 2 or 3, a dark blue, with small, smooth, light edgings, firm plating, under the lee of the shore As we stand on Nawshawtuck at 5 , looking over the meadows, I doubt if there is a town more adorned by its river than ours. Now, while the sun is low in the west, the northeasterly water is of a peculiarly ethereal, light blue, more beautiful than the sky, and this broad water, with innumerable bays and inlets running up into the land on either side, and often divided by bridges and causeways, as if it were the very essence and