Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/201

Rh conversation. He never says anything, hardly answers a question, but keeps at work, never exaggerates, nor uses an exclamation, and does as he agrees to. He appears to have got his shoulder to the wheel of the universe. But the other day he went greater lengths with me, as he and Barry were sawing down a pine, both kneeling of necessity. I said it was wet work for the knees in the snow. He observed, looking up at me, &quot;We pray without ceasing.&quot;

But to return to Bill. I would have liked to know what view he took of life.—A month or two after this, as I heard, he was found dead among the brush over back of the hill, so far decomposed that his coffin was carried to his body, which was put into it with pitch-forks.—I have my misgivings still that he may have died a Brahmin's death, dwelling at the roots of trees at last, though I have since been assured that he suffered from disappointed love (was what is called love-cracked), than which can there be any nobler suffering, any fairer death for a human creature? That this made him drink, froze his feet, and did all the rest for him. Why have not the world the benefit of his long trial?

Jan. 16, 1853. Trench says that &quot;Rivals, in the primary sense of the word, are those who dwell on the banks of the same stream,&quot; or &quot;on opposite banks,&quot; but (as he says in the case of