136 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
Ice dissolved is the next moment as perfect 
water as if it had been melted a million years. 
To see that which was lately so hard and im¬ 
movable now so soft and impressible. What 
if our moods could dissolve thus completely? 
It is like a flush of life on a cheek that was 
dead. It seems as if it must rejoice in its own 
newly acquired fluidity, as it affects the be¬ 
holder with joy. Often the March winds have 
no chance to ripple its face at all. 
March 16, 1841. When I have access to a 
man’s barrel of sermons, which were written 
from week to week as his life lapsed, though I 
now know him to live cheerfully and bravely 
enough, still I cannot conceive what interval 
there was for laughter and smiles in the midst 
of so much sadness. Almost in proportion to 
the sincerity and earnestness of the life will be 
the sadness of the record. When I reflect that 
twice a week for so many years he pondered 
and preached such a sermon, I think he must 
have been a splenetic and melancholy man, 
and wonder if his food digested well. It seems 
as if the fruit of virtue was never a careless 
happiness. A great cheerfulness have all great 
wits possessed, almost a profane levity to such 
as understand them not, but their religion had 
the broader basis in proportion as it was less 
prominent. The religion I love is very laic. 
