Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/183

Rh was to be seen before, not enough to stain a glass, or polished steel blade. It grows more light and porous, the blue deeps are seen through it here and there, only a few flocks are left, and now these, too, have disappeared, and no one knows whither it is gone. You are compelled to look at the sky, for the earth is in visible.

Why can't I go to his office and talk with, and learn his facts? But I should impose a certain restraint on him. We are strictly confined to our men, to whom we give liberty.

We forget to strive and aspire, to do better even than is expected of us. I cannot stay to be congratulated. I would leave the world behind me. We must withdraw from our flatterers, even from our friends. They drag us down. It is rare that we use our thinking faculty as resolutely as an Irishman his spade. To please our friends and relatives we turn out our silver ore in cart-loads, while we neglect to work our mines of gold known only to ourselves, far up in the Sierras, where we pulled up a bush in our mountain walk, and saw the glittering treasure. Let us return thither. Let it be the price of our freedom to make that known.

Jan. 13, 1854. In the deep hollow this side of Brittan's Camp, I heard a singular buzzing sound from the ground exactly like that of a large