Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/258

244 brook. This is something new to me. What must they think of this winter? It is like a child waked up and set to playing at midnight. They seem more ready than usual to dive to the bottom when disturbed. At night, of course, they dive to the bottom and bury themselves, and if in the morning they perceive no curtain of ice drawn over their sky and the pleasant weather continues, they gladly rise again and resume their gyrations in some sunny bay amid the alders and the stubble. I think I never noticed them more numerous, but I never looked for them so particularly. The sun falling thus warmly, for so long, on the open surface of the brook tempts them upward gradually. What a funny way they have of going to bed. They do not take a light and retire up-stairs, they go below. Suddenly it is heels up and heads down, and they go down to their muddy bed, and let the unresting stream flow over them in their dreams. They go to bed in another element. What a deep slumber must be theirs, and what dreams down in the mud there! So the insect life is not withdrawn far off, but a warm sun would soon entice it forth. Sometimes they seem to have a little difficulty in making the plunge. May be they are too dry to slip under. I saw one floating on its back, and it struggled a little while before it righted