Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/404

390 them. I did not appreciate them before. But I get no farther than this. How adapted these forms and colors to our eyes, a meadow and its islands. What are these things? Yet the hawks and the ducks keep so aloof, and nature is so reserved. We are made to love the river and the meadow, as the wind to ripple the water.

Feb. 14, 1852. I hate that my motive for visiting a friend should be that I want society, that it should lie in my poverty and weakness, and not in his and my riches and strength. His friendship should make me strong enough to do without him.

Feb. 14, 1854. Down railroad. A moist, thawing, cloudy afternoon, preparing to rain. The telegraph resounds at every post. The finest strain from the American lyre. In Stow's wood by the deep Cut, hear the quah quah of the white-breasted, black-capped nuthatch. I went up the bank and stood by the, fence. A little family of titmice gathered about me searching for their food both on the ground and on the trees with great industry and intentness, now and then pursuing each other. There were two nuthatches at least talking to each other. One hung with his head down on a large pitch pine pecking the bark for a long time, leaden blue above, with a black cap and white breast. It uttered almost constantly a faint but sharp