Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/377

Rh let me say that I could tell a pitiful story respecting myself as well as them, if my spirits held out to do it. I could encourage them with a sufficient list of failures, and could flow as humbly as the very gutters themselves. I think worse of myself than they can possibly think of me, being better acquainted with the man. I put the best face on the matter. I will tell them this secret, if they will not tell it to anybody else.

Write while the heat is in you. When the farmer burns a hole in his yoke, he carries the iron quickly from the fire to the wood, for every moment it is less effectual to penetrate it. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts, uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

I saw yesterday in the snow on the ice on the S. side of Fair Haven Pond some hundreds of honey bees dead and sunk half an inch below the crust. They had evidently come forth from their hive, perhaps in a large hemlock on the bank close by, and had fallen on the snow, chilled to death. Their bodies extended about three rods from the tree toward the pond.

Feb. 10, 1854. I observe the great, well-protected buds of the balm of Gilead, spear head-like. There is no shine upon them now,