When Sophia told R. Rice that Dr. B. said that Foster was an infidel and was injuring the young men, etc., “Did he?” he observed. “Well, he is a great man. He swims in pretty deep water, but it isn’t very extensive.” When she added, “Mr. Frost says that Garrison had to apologize for printing Foster’s sermon,” he said, “Did he? Well, they may set as many back fires as they please; they won’t be of any use; they’ll soon go out.” She said the selectmen were going to ask seven dollars instead of five for the hall. But he said that he would build them a hall, if they would engage to give him five dollars steadily. To be sure, it would riot be quite so handsome as the present, but it should have the same kind of seats.

  The clay in the Deep Cut is melting and streaming down, glistening in the sun. It is I that melts, while the harp sounds on high, and the snow-drifts on the west side look like clouds.

  We turned down the brook at Heywood’s meadow . . .

  The sun reflected from the sandy, gravelly bottom sometimes a bright sunny streak no bigger than your finger, reflected from a ripple as from a prism, and the sunlight, reflected from a hundred points of the surface of the rippling brook, enabled me to realize summer. But the dog partly spoiled the transparency of the water by running in the brook . . .

  Having gone a quarter of a mile beyond the bridge, where C. calls this his Spanish Brook, I looked back from the top of the hill on the south into this deep dell . . .

  Now we are on Fair Haven, still but a snow plain . . .

  We returned down the brook at Heywood’s meadow.