ISO 
WALDEN. 
chilled breath, which announces that the cars are com¬ 
ing, without long delay, notwithstanding the veto of a 
New England north-east snow storm, and I behold the 
ploughmen covered with snow and rime, their heads 
peering above the mould-board which is turning down 
other than daisies and the nests of field-mice, like bowl¬ 
ders of the Sierra Nevada, that occupy an outside place 
in the universe. 
Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert, 
adventurous, and unwearied. It is very natural in its 
methods withal, far more so than many fantastic enter¬ 
prises and sentimental experiments, and hence its sin¬ 
gular success. I am refreshed and expanded when the 
freight train rattles past me, and I smell the stores 
which go dispensing their odors all the way from Long 
"Wharf to Lake Champlain, reminding me of foreign 
parts, of coral reefs, and Indian oceans, and tropical 
climes, and the extent of the globe. I feel more like a 
citizen of the world at the sight of the palm-leaf which 
will cover so many flaxen New England heads the next 
summer, the Manilla hemp and cocoa-nut husks, the 
old junk, gunny bags, scrap iron, and rusty nails. This 
car-load of torn sails is more legible and interesting now 
than if they should be wrought into paper and printed 
books. Who can write so graphically the history of the 
storms they have weathered as these rents have done ? 
They are proof-sheets which need no correction. Here 
goes lumber from the Maine woods, which did not go out 
to sea in the last freshet, risen four dollars on the thou¬ 
sand because of what did go out or was split up; pine, 
spruce, cedar, — first, second, third and fourth qualities, 
so lately all of one quality, to wave over the bear, and 
moose, and caribou. Next rolls Thomaston lime, a 
