It is good to break and smell the black birch twigs now. The lichens look rather bright to-day, near the town line, in Heywood’s wood by the pond . . .

  The woodpecker’s work in Emerson’s wood on the Cliff-top, the trees being partly killed by the top, and the grubs having hatched under the bark . . .

  About 2 o’clock, P. M. these days, after a fair forenoon, there is wont to blow up from the northwest a squally cloud, spanning the heavens, but before it reaches the southeast horizon it has lifted above the northwest, and so it leaves the sky clear there for sunset, while it has sunk low and dark in the southeast.

  The men on the freight-train, who go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often and I think they take me for an “employé;” and am I not?