Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/96

86 worth, when it is in the service of the Devil? While the whole military force of the State, if need be, is at the service of a slaveholder, to enable him to carry back a slave, not a soldier is offered to save a citizen of Massachusetts from being kidnapped. Is this what all these arms, all this &quot;training&quot; has been for, these seventy-eight years past? The marines and the militia, whose bodies were used lately, were not men of sense nor of principle; in a high moral sense, they were not men at all.

June 9, 1856. To Corner Spring. Without an umbrella, thinking the weather settled at last. There are some large cumuli with glowing, downy cheeks, floating about. Now I notice where an elm is in the shadow of a cloud, the black elm tops and shadows of June. It is a dark eyelash, which suggests a flashing eye beneath. It suggests houses that lie under the shade, the repose and siesta of summer noons, the thunder cloud, bathing, and all that belongs to summer. These veils are now spread here and there over the village. They suggest also the creak of crickets, a June sound now fairly begun, inducing contemplation and philosophic thought.

June 9, 1857. To Violet, Sorrel, and Calla Swamp. In the sproutland beyond the red huckleberry, an indigo bird, which chirps