Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/350

336 motion. They are the tell-tales. Now they are (the white pine) a cadaverous, misty blue, anon a lively light plays on them, and they seem to erect themselves unusually, while the pitch pines are a brighter yellowish green than usual. The sun loves to nestle in the boughs of the pine and pass rays through them.—The scent of bruised pine leaves where a sled has passed is a little exciting to me now.

I saw this afternoon such lively, blood-red colors on a white pine stump recently cut, that at first I thought the chopper had cut himself. The heart of the tree was partly decayed, and here and there the sounder parts were of this vermilion (?) color alternating with the ordinary white of the wood where it was apparently in the earlier stages of decay. The color was livelier for being wet with the melting snow.

Feb. 4, 1854. We have not much that is poetic in the accompaniments of the farmer's life. Varro speaks of the swineherd as accustoming the swine or boars to come at the sound of a horn when he fed them with acorns. I remember that my grandmother used to call her cow home at evening from a near pasture to be milked by thumping on the mortar which held her salt. The tinkling cow-bell cannot be spared. Even what most attracts us in the farmer's life is not its profitableness. We love to go after the