EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 23 
storm, we must be out a long time and travel 
far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our 
skin, and we be, as it were, turned inside out to 
it, and there be no part in us but is wet or 
weather-beaten, so that we become storm-men, 
instead of fair-weather men. Some men speak 
of having been wet to the skin once as a mem¬ 
orable event in their lives which, notwithstand¬ 
ing the croakers, they survived. 
February 28, 1855. I observed how a new ra¬ 
vine was formed in that last thaw at Clam¬ 
shell Hill. Much melted snow and rain being 
collected on the top of the hill, some apparently 
found its way through the ground frozen a foot 
thick, a few feet from the edge of the bank, and 
began with a small rill washing down the slope 
the unfrozen sand beneath. As the water con¬ 
tinued to .flow, the sand on each side continued 
to slide into it and be carried off, leaving the 
frozen crust above quite firm, making a bridge 
five or six feet wide over this cavern. Now 
since the thaw, this bridge, I see, has melted 
and fallen in, leaving a ravine some ten feet 
wide and much longer, which now may go on 
increasing from year to year without limit. I 
was there just after it began. 
February 28, 1856. How simple the machin¬ 
ery of a saw-mill. M-has dammed a stream, 
raised a pond or head of water, and placed an 
