Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/207

Rh, about six inches long and nearly as broad. It faced me and actually compelled me to retreat before it for five minutes. Perhaps I was be tween it and its hole. Its broad black tail, tipped with white, was erect like a kitten's. It had what looked like a broad white band drawn tight across its forehead or top-head, from which two lines of white ran down one on each side of its back, and there was a narrow white line down its snout. It raised its back, sometimes ran a few feet forward, sometimes backward, and repeatedly turned its tail to me, prepared to discharge its fluid, like the old ones. Such was its instinct, and all the while it kept up a fine grunting like a little pig or a squirrel. It reminded me that the red squirrel, the woodchuck, and the skunk all make a similar sound.

The leafy columned elms planted by the river at foot of P's field are exceedingly beautiful, the moon being behind them. Their trunks look like columns of a portico wreathed with evergreens on the evening of an illumination for some great festival. They are the more rich because in this creamy light you cannot distinguish the trunk from the verdure that drapes it.

June 21, 1840. A man is never inspired unless his body is also. It, too, spurns a tame and commonplace life. They are fatally mistaken who think while they strive with their minds