230 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
gave any one the whole advantage of myself. 
I never afforded him the culture of my love. 
How can I talk of charity wdio at last withhold 
the kindness which alone makes charity desira¬ 
ble. The poor want nothing less than me my¬ 
self, and I shirk charity by giving rags and 
meat. What can I give or what deny to another 
but myself? 
That person who alone can understand you 
you cannot get out of your mind. 
The artist must work with indifferency. Too 
great interest vitiates his work. 
March 25, 1858. P. M. I see many fox- 
colored sparrows flitting past in a straggling 
manner into the birch and pine woods on the 
left, and hear a sweet warble there from time 
to time. They are busily scratching like hens 
amid the dry leaves of that wood (not swampy), 
from time to time the rearmost moving forward 
one or two at a time, while a few are perched 
here and there on the lower branches of a birch 
or other tree, and I hear a very low and sweet 
whistling strain, commonly half-finished, from 
one every two or three minutes. 
You might frequently say of a poet away 
from home that he was as mute as a bird of 
passage, uttering a mere chip from time to,time, 
but follow him to his true habitat, and you shall 
not know him, he will sing so melodiously. 
