Thoreau writes in his journal:
To the woods by the Deep Cut at 9 o’clock . . . As I sat looking out the window the other evening just after dark, I saw the lamp of a freight-train, and, near by, just over the train, a bright star, which looked exactly like the former, as if it belonged to a different part of the same train . . . As I walk the railroad causeway I am, as the last two months, disturbed by the sound of my steps on the frozen ground . . . In this stillness and at this distance, I hear the nine-o’clock bell in Bedford five miles off, which I might never hear in the village, but here its music surmounts the village din and has something very sweet and noble and inspiring in it, associated, in fact, with the hooting of owls. Returning, I thought I heard the creaking of a wagon just starting from Hubbard’s door, and rarely musical it sounded.
