Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/60

46 things. The least partialness is your own defect of sight, and cheapens the experience fatally. Unless the humming of a gnat is as the music of the spheres, and the music of the spheres is as the humming of a gnat, they are naught to me. It is not communications to serve for a history (which are science), but the great story itself, that cheers and satisfies us.

Dec. 28, 1853. I hear and see tree sparrows about the weeds in the garden. They seem to visit the gardens with the earliest snow, or is it that they are more obvious against the white ground. By their sharp, silvery chip, perchance, they inform each other of their whereabouts and keep together.

Dec. 28, 1854. [Nantucket.] A misty rain as yesterday. Captain Gardiner carried me to Siasconset in his carriage. He is extensively engaged in raising pines on the island. There is not a tree to be seen except such as are set out about houses. He showed me several lots of his of different sizes, one tract of three hundred acres sown in rows with a planter, where the young trees, two years old, were just beginning to green the ground, and I saw one of Norway pine and our pitch, mixed, eight years old, which looked quite like a forest at a distance. The Norway pines had grown the faster, with a longer shoot, and had a bluer look