Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/177

Rh and phenomenon, and how you come out of it. A blind man who possesses inward truth and consistency will see more than one who has faultless eyes, but no serious and laborious, or strenuous soul to look through them. As if the eyes were the only part of the man that traveled. Men convert their property into cash, ministers fall sick to obtain the assistance of their parishes, all chaffer with sea-captains, etc., as if the whole object were to get conveyed to some part of the world, a pair of eyes merely. A telescope conveyed to and set up at the Cape of Good Hope at great expense, and only a Bushman to look through it. Nothing like a little activity, called life, if it were only walking much in a day, to keep the eye in good order, no such collyrium.

Jan. 12, 1855. To Flint's Pond via Minott's meadow. After a spitting of snow in the forenoon, I see the blue sky here and there. The sun is coming out. It is still and warm. The earth is two thirds bare. I walk along the Mill Brook below Emerson's, looking into it for some life. Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. What beauty in the running brooks! what life! what society! The cold is merely superficial. It is summer still at the core. Far, far within, it is in the cawing of the crow, the