THE BROOK IN WINTER 



Jantjaky 12, 1855. Perhaps what most moves us 

 in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. 

 How we leap by the side of the open brooks! What 

 beauty in the running brooks! What hfe! What 

 society! The cold is merely superficial; it is summer 

 still at the core, far, far within. 



Journal, vii, 112. 



January 31, 1852. I observed this afternoon, on 

 the Turnpike, that where it drifts over the edge of a 

 brook or a ditch, the snow being damp as it falls, 

 what does not adhere to the sharp edge of the drift 

 falls on the dead weeds and shrubs and forms a 

 drapery like a napkin or a white tablecloth hanging 

 down with folds and tassels or fringed border. Or 

 perhaps the fresh snow merely rounds and whitens 

 thus the old cores. 



Journal, iii, 260. 



THE RIVER AS A WINTER HIGHWAY 



January 20, 1856. It is now good walking on the 

 river, for, though there has been no thaw since the 

 snow came, a great part of it has been converted into 

 snow ice by sinking the old ice beneath the water, 

 and the crust of the rest is stronger than in the fields, 

 because the snow is so shallow and has been so moist. 



