JANUARY 



The crow may not have the sweet voice wine 1 ! 

 the fox in his flattery attributed to him, but he 

 has a good, strong, native speech nevertheless. 

 How much character there is in it ! How much 

 thrift and independence 1 ... Alert, social, repub- 

 lican, always able to look out for himself, not 

 afraid of the cold and the snow, fishing when flesh 

 is scarce, and stealing when other resources fail, 

 the crow is a character I would not willingly miss 

 from the landscape. I love to see his track in the 

 snow or the mud, and his graceful pedestrianism 

 about the brown fields. 



BURROUGHS: Winter Sunshine. 



Ah, the pickerel of Walden ! When I see them 

 lying on the ice, or in the well which the fisher- 

 man cuts in the ice, making a little hole to admit 

 the water, I am always surprised by their rare 

 beauty, as if they were fabulous fishes, they are so 

 foreign to the streets, even to the woods, foreign 

 as Arabia to our Concord life. . . . They are not 

 green like the pines, nor gray like the stones, nor 

 blue like the sky; but they have, to my eyes, if 

 possible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and precious 

 stones, as if they were the pearls, the animalized 

 nuclei or crystals of the Walden water. 



THOREAU: Walden. 



