EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 301 
(at the base of the legs) is five inches and a 
half. I suspect that I have seen near one hun¬ 
dred of these birds this spring, but I never got 
so near one before.Yarrell says it is the 
largest of the British mergansers, is a winter 
visitor, though a few breed in the north of Brit¬ 
ain ; are rare in the southern counties. 
April 7, 1839. The tediousness and detail 
of execution never occur to the genius project¬ 
ing; it always antedates the completion of its 
work. It condescends to give time a few hours 
to do its bidding in. 
Most have sufficient contempt for what is 
mean to resolve that they will abstain from it, 
and a few, virtue enough to abide by their res¬ 
olution, but not often does one attain to such 
lofty contempt as to require no resolution to be 
made. 
April 7, 1841. My life will wait for nobody, 
but is being matured still irresistibly while I go 
about the streets, and chaffer with this man 
and that to secure it a living. It will cut its 
own channel, like the mountain stream, which, 
by the longest ridges and by level prairies, is 
not kept from the sea finally. So flows a man’s 
life, and will reach the sea water, if not by an 
earthly channel, yet in dew and rain, overleap¬ 
ing all barriers, with rainbows to announce its 
victory. It can wind as cunningly and uner- 
