Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/429

Rh the snow, not over them, had apparently slid down all banks and declivities, making a uniform, broad, hollow trail there, without any marks of its feet. On reaching the river, it had come along under the bank, from time to time looking into the crevices, where it might get under the ice, sometimes ascending the bank and sliding back. On level ground its trail had this appearance

tracks of feet twenty to twenty-four inches apart, but sometimes there was no track of the feet for twenty-five feet, frequently for six. In the last case there was a swelling in the outline as above. It entered a hole under the ice at Assabet spring, from which it has not issued.

Feb. 20, 1857. What is the relation between a bird and the ear that appreciates its melody, to whom, perchance, it is more charming and significant than to any one else? Certainly they are intimately related, and the one was made for the other. It is a natural fact. If I were to discover that a certain kind of stone by the pond shore was affected, say partially disintegrated, by a particular natural sound, as of a bird or insect, I see that one could not be completely described without describing the other. I am that stone by the pond side.

What is hope, what is expectation, but a