THICK ICE 



IN the winter the pond finds a voice. 

 The great sheet of foot-thick, white ice 

 is like a gigantic disk in a telephone, re- 

 ceiver and transmitter in one, sending 

 and receiving messages between the earth 

 and space. Probably these messages pass 

 equally in summer, only the instruments 

 are so tuned then that our finite ears may 

 not perceive them; for the surface of the 

 pond has its water disk in the summer 

 no less than in winter, but an exquisitely 

 thinner and finer one. 



Taking to-day my first canoe trip of the 

 year about the edges where the impera- 

 tive orders of the coming spring have 

 opened clear water for a half-hundred feet, 

 I could not help noticing this thinner disk. 

 237 



