292 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
days there now begins to be added to the rust¬ 
ling or washing water-fall like sound of the 
wind, this faintest imaginable prelude of the 
toad. I often draw my companion’s attention 
to it, and he fails to hear it at all, it is so slight 
a departure from the previous monotony of 
March. This morning you walked in the warm 
sproutland, the strong but warm southwest 
wind blowing, and you heard no sound but the 
dry and mechanical susurrus of the wood ; now 
there is mingled with or added to it, to be de¬ 
tected only by the sharpest ears, this first and 
faintest imaginable voice. I heard this under 
Mount Misery. Probably the toads come forth 
earlier under the warm slopes of that hill. . . . 
At evening I hear the first real robin’s song. 
April 5, 1841. This long series of desultory 
mornings does not tarnish the brightness of the 
prospective days. Surely faith is not dead. 
Wood, water, earth, air are essentially what 
they are. Only society has degenerated. This 
lament for a golden age is only a lament for 
golden men. 
April 5, 1854. This morning heard a famil¬ 
iar twittering over the house, looked up and saw 
white-bellied swallows. Another saw them 
yesterday. Surveying all day. In Carlisle. 
I have taken off my outside coat, perhaps for 
the first time, and hung it on a tree. The 
