Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/122

112 of the days. The river is shrunk to summer width, on the sides smooth, whitish water, or rather it is the light from the pads; in the middle, dark blue or slate, rippled. The color of the earth at a distance where a wood has been cut off is a reddish brown

It is day, and we have more of that same light that the moon sent us, not reflected now, but shining directly. The sun is a fuller moon. Who knows how much lighter day there may be!

June 12, 1853. To Bear Hill The laurel probably by day after to-morrow.

The note of the wood-thrush answers to some cool, unexhausted morning vigor in the hearer. The leaf of the rattlesnake plantain now surprises the walker amid the dry leaves on cool hill-sides in the woods; of very simple form, but richly veined with longitudinal and transverse white veins. It looks like art.

Going up Pine Hill, disturbed a partridge and her brood. She ran in dishabille directly to me, within four feet, while her young, not larger than chickens just hatched, dispersed, flying along a foot or two from the ground, just over the bushes, for a rod or more. The mother kept close at hand to attract my attention, and mewed and clucked, and made a noise as when a hawk is in sight. She stepped about and held her head above the bushes, and clucked just like a