Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/125

Rh Jan. 4, 1841. I know a woman who is as true to me, and as incessant with her mild rebuke as the blue sky. When I stand under her cope, instantly all pretension drops off, and I am swept by an influence as by a wind and rain which remove all taint, I am fortunate that I can pass and repass before her each day, and prove my strength in her glances. She is far truer to me than to herself. Her eyes are like the windows of nature, through which I catch glimpses of the native land of the soul. From them comes a light which is not of the sun. His rays are in eclipse when they shine on me.

Jan. 4, 1850. The longest silence is the most pertinent question most pertinently put. Emphatically silent. The most important questions, whose answers concern us more than any others, are never put in any other way.

It is difficult for two strangers, mutually well disposed, so truly to bear themselves toward each other that a feeling of falseness and hollowness shall not soon spring up between them. The least anxiety to behave truly, vitiates the relation.

Jan. 4, 1853. To what I will call Yellow Birch Swamp, E. Hubbard's, in the north part of the town, west of the Hunt pasture. There are more of these trees in it than anywhere else in the town that I know. How