Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/330

316 upon his game. There may be a dozen partridges resting in the snow within a square mile, and his work is simply to find them with the end of his nose. Compared with the dog he affects me as high-bred, unmixed. There is nothing of the mongrel in him. He belongs to a noble family which has seen its best days, a younger son. Now and then he starts, and turns, and doubles on his track, as if he heard or scented danger. (I watch him through my glass.) He does not mind us at the distance of only sixty rods. I have myself seen to-day one place where a mouse came to the surface in the snow. Probably he has smelled out many such galleries. Perhaps he seizes them through the snow.—I had a transient vision of one mouse this winter, and that the first for a number of years.

Feb. 3, 1841. The present seems never to get its due. It is the least obvious, neither before nor behind, but within us. All the past plays into this moment, and we are what we are. My aspiration is one thing, my reflection, another; but, over all, myself and condition—is and does. To men and nature I am each moment a finished tool,—a spade, a barrow, a pickaxe. This immense promise is no efficient quality. For all practical purposes I am done.

We are constantly invited to be what we are,