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  P.M.—To epigaea . . .

  When I meet one of my neighbors these days who is ridiculously stately, being offended, I say in my mind: “Farewell! I will wait till you get your manners off. Why make politeness of so much consequence, when you are ready to assassinate with a word? I do not like any better to be assassinated with a rapier than to be knocked down with a bludgeon. You are so grand that I cannot get within ten feet of you.” Why will men so try to impose on one another? Why not be simple, and pass for what they are worth only? O such thin skins, such crockery, as I have to deal with! Do they not know that I can laugh? Some who have so much dignity that they cannot be contradicted! . . .

  Clear and cool. A frost whitens the ground; yet a mist hangs over the village. There is a thin ice, reaching a foot from the water’s edge, which the earliest rays will melt. I scare up several snipes feeding on the meadow’s edge. It is remarkable how they conceal themselves when they alight on a bare spit of the meadow. I look with my glass to where one alighted four rods off . . .

  P.M.—To Flint’s Pond . . .

  When we reached Britton’s clearing on our return this afternoon, at sunset, the mountains, after this our warmest day as yet, had got a peculiar soft mantle of blue haze, pale blue as a blue heron, ushering in the long series of summer sunsets, and we were glad that we had stayed out so late and felt no need to go home now in a hurry.

  5.30 A.M.—To Pinxter Swamp over Hill.

  A little sunshine at the rising. I, standing by the river, see it first reflected from E. Wood’s windows before I can see the sun. Standing there, I hear that same stertorous note of a frog or two as was heard the 13th, apparently from quite across all this flood, and which I have so often observed before. What kind is it? It seems to come from the edge of the meadow . . .

  P.M.—Round Walden.

  The Stellaria media is abundantly out. I did not look for it early, it was so snowy. It evidently blossomed as soon after the 2d of April—when I may say the [snow] began to go off in earnest as possible. The shepherd’s-purse, too, is well out . . .

  I send to you by the same mail with this copy of me “Week.” I was away from home when you arrived, and have but just returned; otherwise you would have received by book earlier.

  Henry D. Thoreau