Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/71

Rh now. You began at the butt of the pole to curve it, you gradually bent it round according to rule, and planted the other end in the ground, and already in imagination saw the vine curling round this segment of an arbor, under which a new generation was to recreate itself, but when you had done, it sprang back to its former stubborn and unhandsome position like a bit of whalebone.

10 Up river on ice to Fairhaven Pond We have this morning the clear, cold, continent sky of January. The river is frozen solidly and I do not have to look out for openings. Now I can take that walk along the river highway and the meadow which leads me under the boughs of the maples and the swamp white oaks, etc., which in summer overhang the water. I can now stand at my ease and study their phenomena amid the sweet gale and button bushes projecting above the snow and ice. I see the shore from the water side; a liberal walk, so level, wide, and smooth, without underbrush. In some places where the ice is exposed I see a kind of crystallized chaffy snow like little bundles of asbestos on its surface. I seek some sunny nook on the south side of a wood which keeps off the cold wind, among the maples and the swamp white oaks, and there sit and anticipate the spring and hear the