EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 39 
Where the last year’s shoots or tops of the 
young white maples are brought together, as I 
walk toward a mass of them, one quarter of a 
mile off, with the sun on them, they present a 
fine dull scarlet streak. Young twigs are thus 
more fluid than the old wood, as if from their 
nearness to the flower, or like the complexion 
of children. You see thus a fine dash of red 
or scarlet against the distant hills which near 
at hand, or in the midst, is wholly unobservable. 
I go listening, but in vain, for the warble of 
the bluebird from the old orchard across the 
river. I love to look now at the fine-grained 
russet hillsides in the sun, ready to relieve and 
contract with, the azure of the bluebirds. I 
made a burning glass of ice which produced a 
slight sensation of warmth on the back of my 
hand, but was so irregular that it did not con¬ 
centrate the rays to a sufficiently small focus. 
Returning over Great Fields found half a dozen 
arrow-heads, one with three scollops in the 
base.Heard two hawks scream. There 
was something truly March-like in it, like a 
prolonged blast or whistling of the wind through 
a crevice in the sky, which, like a cracked blue 
saucer, overlaps the woods. Such are the first 
rude notes which prelude the summer’s choir, 
learned of the whistling March wind. 
March 2, 1856. Walking up the river by 
