Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/81

Rh such a sense of justice. These savages are equal to us civilized men in their treaties, and I fear not essentially worse in their wars.

Dec. 30, 1859.  Going by D's I see a shrike perched on the tip top of the topmost, upright twig of an English cherry-tree before his house, standing square on the topmost bud, balancing himself by a slight motion of his tail from time to time. I have noticed this habit of the bird before. You would suppose it inconvenient for so large a bird to maintain its footing there. Scared by my passing in the road he flew off, and I thought I would see if he alighted in a similar place. He flew toward a young elm, whose higher twigs were much more slender, though not quite so upright as those of the cherry, and I thought he might be excused if he alighted on the side of one; but no, to my surprise, he alighted without any trouble upon the very top of one of the highest of all, and looked around as before.

What a different phenomenon a muskrat now from what it is in summer. Now, if one floats or swims, its whole back out, or crawls out upon the ice at one of those narrow oval water spaces, some twenty rods long (in calm weather, smooth mirrors), in a broad frame of white ice or yet whiter snow, it is seen at once, as conspicuous (or more so) as a fly on a window-pane or a