Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/75

Rh any warmer than elsewhere? There is considerable heat reflected from a sandy bottom where the water is shallow, and at these places it is always sandy and shallow, but I doubt if this actually makes the water warmer, though it may melt the more opaque ice which absorbs it. The fact that Holt bend, which is deep, is late to freeze, being narrow, seems to prove it to be the swiftness of the water, and not reflected heat that prevents freezing. The water is apparently kept warm under the ice and down next to the unfrozen earth, and by a myriad springs from within the bowels of the earth.

Dec. 30, 1840. Our Golden Age must after all be a pastoral one; we would be simple men in ignorance, and not accomplished in wisdom. We want great peasants more than great heroes. The sun would shine along the highway to some purpose, if we would unlearn our wisdom and practice illiterate truth henceforth. Let us grow to the full stature of our humbleness ere we aspire to be greater.—It is great praise in the poet [Virgil] to have made husbandry famous.