Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/46

32 greenness and signs of growth, as the green and white shoots of grass and weeds pulled, or floating on the water, and also by color, as the cock-spur lichens, crimson birds, etc.

4 Up railroad. Since the sun has risen higher and fairly triumphed over the clouds, the ice has glistened with all the prismatic hues. The whole top of the pine forest, as seen miles off in the horizon, is of sharp points, the leading shoots with a few plumes.

In a true history or biography, of how little consequence those events of which so much is commonly made. I find in my journal that the most important events in my life, if recorded at all, are not dated.

Dec. 26, 1858. To Jenny Dugan's.  Call at a farmer's this Sunday, where I surprise the well-to-do masters of the house, lounging in very ragged clothes, for which they think it necessary to apologize, and one of them is busy laying the supper table (at which he invites me to sit down at last), bringing up cold meat from the cellar and a lump of butter on the end of his knife, and making the tea by the time his mother gets home from church. Thus sincere and homely, as I am glad to know, is the actual life of these New England men, wearing rags indoors there which would disgrace a beggar (and are not beggars and paupers they who