Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/443

Rh cut through, unless sea meets sea at exactly the same level, unless a perfect understanding and equilibrium has been established from the beginning around Cape Horn and that unnamed northern cape, what a tumult! It is Atlantic and Atlantic, or Atlantic and Pacific.

I have seen signs of the spring. I have seen a frog swiftly sinking in a pool, or where he dimpled the surface as he leapt in, I have seen the brilliant spotted tortoise stirring at the bottom of ditches, I have seen the clear sap trickling from the red maple.

Feb. 23, 1859. [Worcester.] Walk to Quinsigamond Pond, where was very good skating yesterday, but this very pleasant and warm day it is suddenly quite too soft. I was just saying to B that I should look for hard ice in the shade or on the N. side of some hill close to the shore, though skating was out of the question elsewhere, when looking up I saw a gentleman and lady very gracefully gyrating, and, as it were, courtesyingcurtseying [sic] to each other, in a small bay under such a hill on the opposite shore of the pond. Intervening bushes and shore concealed the ice, so that their swift and graceful motions, their bodies inclined at various angles, as they gyrated forward and backward about a small space, looking as if they would hit each other, reminded me of the circling of two