162 SPRING JOTTINGS 



Thermometer 42° in the shade. A perfect sap 

 day. A perfect sap day is a crystalline day; 

 the night must have a keen edge of frost, and 

 the day a keen edge of air and sun, with wind 

 north or northwest. The least film, the least 

 breath from the south, the least suggestion of 

 growth, and the day is marred as a sap day. 

 Maple sap is maple frost melted by the sun. 

 (9 p. M.) A soft, large-starred night ; the moon 

 in her second quarter; perfectly still and freez- 

 ing ; Venus throbbing low in the west. A crys- 

 talline night. 



March 21, 1884. The top of a high barom- 

 etric wave, a day like a crest, lifted up, sightly, 

 sparkling. A cold snap without storm issuing 

 in this clear, dazzling, sharp, northern day. 

 How light, as if illuminated by more than the 

 sun; the sky is full of light; light seems to be 

 streaming up all around the horizon. The 

 leafless trees make no shadows; the woods are 

 flooded with light; everything shines; a day 

 large and imposing, breathing strong masculine 

 breaths out of the north ; a day without a speck 

 or film, winnowed through and through, all the 

 windows and doors of the sky open. Day of 

 crumpled rivers and lakes, of crested waves, of 

 bellying sails, high-domed and lustrous day. 

 The only typical March day of the bright heroic 

 sort we have yet had. 



March 24, 1884. Damp, still morning, 

 much fog on the river. All the branches and 

 twigs of the trees strung with drops of water. 

 The grass and weeds beaded with fog drops. 



