Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/444

430 winged insects in the air, or hawks receding and approaching.

I first hear and then see eight or ten bluebirds going over.

Feb. 23, 1860. 3 Thermometer 58° and snow almost gone, river rising. We have not had so warm a day since the beginning of December, which was unusually warm. I walk over the moist Nawshawtuck hillside, and see the green radical leaves of the buttercup, shepherd's purse, sorrel, chickweed, cerastium, etc., revealed.

A fact must be the vehicle of some humanity in order to interest us. Otherwise it is like giving a man a stone when he asks for bread. Ultimately the moral is all in all, and we do not mind it if inferior truth is sacrificed to superior, as when the annalist fables, and makes animals speak and act like men. It must be warm, moist, incarnated, have been breathed on at least. A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it.