Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/143

Rh warm an hour after sunrise. Though so fair, a whitish vapor fills the lower stratum of the air concealing the mountains. The smokes go up from the village, you hear the cocks with immortal vigor, the children shout on their way to school, and the sound made by the railroad men hammering a rail is uncommonly musical. This promises a perfect winter day. In the heavens, except the altitude of the sun, you have, as it were, the conditions of summer, perfect serenity and clarity, and sonorousness in the earth. All nature is but braced by the cold. It gives tension to both body and mind.

About ten minutes before 10 I heard a very loud sound, and felt a violent jar which made the house rock and the loose articles on my table rattle. I knew it must be either a powder mill blown up or an earthquake. Not knowing but another and more violent shock might take place, I immediately ran down-stairs. I saw from the door a vast expanding column of whitish smoke rising in the west directly over the powder mills four miles distant. It was unfolding its volumes above, which made it wider there. In three or four minutes it had all risen and spread itself into a lengthening, somewhat copper-colored cloud, parallel with the horizon from N. to S., and in about ten minutes after the explosion, it passed over my head,