818 
WALDEN. 
lows about this pond will, sometimes, in the winter, 
be filled with a greenish water somewhat like its own, 
but the next day will have frozen blue. Perhaps the 
blue color of water and ice is due to the light and air 
they contain, and the most transparent is the bluest. 
Ice is an interesting subject for contemplation. They 
told me that they had some in the ice-houses at Fresh 
Pond five years old which was as good as ever. Why 
is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but 
frozen remains sweet forever? It is commonly said 
that this is the difference between the affections and the 
intellect. 
Thus for sixteen days I saw from my window a hun¬ 
dred men at work like busy husbandmen, with teams 
and horses and apparently all the implements of farm¬ 
ing, such a picture as we see on the first page of the 
almanac; and as often as I looked out I was reminded 
of the fable of the lark and the reapers, or the parable 
of the sower, and the like; and now they are all gone, 
and in thirty days more, probably, I shall look from the 
same window on the pure sea-green Walden water 
there, reflecting the clouds and the trees, and sending 
up its evaporations in solitude, and no traces will appear 
that a man has ever stood there. Perhaps I shall hear a 
solitary loon laugh as he dives and plumes himself, or 
shall see a lonely fisher in his boat, like a floating leaf, 
beholding his form reflected in the waves, where lately 
a hundred men securely labored. 
Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of 
Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay 
and Calcutta, drink at my well. In the morning I bathe 
my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philoso¬ 
phy of the Bhagvat Geeta, since whose composition 
