C 28 ] ■ 



LORING'S POND 



May 17, 1852. To Loring's Pond. The different 

 color of the water at different times would be worth 

 observing. To-day it is full of light and life, the breeze 

 presenting many surfaces to the sun. There is a 

 sparkling shimmer on it. It is a deep, dark blue, as 

 the sky is clear. The air everywhere is, as it were, 

 full of the rippling of waves. This pond is the more 

 interesting for the islands in it. The water is seen 

 running behind them, and it is pleasant to know that 

 it penetrates quite behind and isolates the land you 

 see, or to see it apparently flowing out from behind 

 an island with shining ripples. 



Journal, iv, 6Q. 



A LILAC BUSH — THE LAST REMNANT 

 OF A HOMEi 



Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after 

 the door and lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding 

 its sweet-scented flowers each spring, to be plucked 

 by the musing traveller; planted and tended once 

 by children's hands, in front-yard plots, — now 

 standing by wallsides in retired pastures, and giving 



' Thoreau's reference in this description is to the lilac bushes (some of 

 which still exist) marking the former residences on Brister's Hill of some 

 colored families. The bush in the photograph is more interesting as be- 

 ing the sole relic of the old homestead on Conantum to which Thoreau 

 refers several times. (See Journal, vol. x, p. 364.) H. W. G. 



