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  Going across A. Clark’s field behind Garfield’s, I see many fox-colored sparrows flitting past in a straggling manner into the birch and pitch pine woods on the left, and hear a sweet warble there from time to time . . .

  There are so many sportsmen out that the ducks have no rest on the Great Meadows, which are not half covered with water . . .

  I heard the what what what what of the nuthatch this forenoon. Do I ever hear it in the afternoon? It is much like the cackle of the pigeon woodpecker and suggests a relation to that bird.

  Again I walk in the rain and see the rich yellowish browns of the moist banks. These Clamshell hills and neighboring promontories, though it is a dark and rainy day, reflect a certain yellowish light from the wet withered grass which is very grateful to my eyes . . .

  At Well Meadow I notice, as usual, that the common cress has been eaten down close, and the uncertain coarse sedge there, etc. The skunk-cabbage leaf-buds have just begun to appear, but not yet any hellebore. The senecio is considerably grown, and I see many little purplish rosettes of Viola pedata leaves . . .

  To speak of the general phenomena of March: When March arrives, a tolerably calm, clear, sunny, springlike day, the snow is so far gone that sleighing ends and our compassion is excited by the sight of horses laboriously dragging wheeled vehicles through mud and water and slosh . . .

  To proceed with March: Frost comes out of warm sand-banks exposed to the sun, and the sand flows down in the form of foliage . . .

  Write me something shorter and when the spirit moves (never write a line otherwise, for the hack writer is a slaveish beast, I know), and I will sell it for you soon. I want one shorter article from your pen that will be quoted, as these long articles cannot be, and let the public know something of following out your thought in an essay “The Literary Life?” You need not make a personal allusion but I know you can write an article worth reading on that theme when you are in the vein.

  The Rhodora Canadensis is not yet out of blossom, and its leaves are not expanded. It is important for its contrast with the surrounding green,—so much high-colored blossom. The Pyrus arbutifolia now. The ferns are grown up large, and some are in fruit, a dark or blackish fruit part way down the stem, with a strong scent,—quite a rich-looking fruit . . .

  Heard the popping of guns last night and this morning, nevertheless . . . Two young men who had borrowed my boat the other day returned from the riverside through Channing’s yard, quietly. It was almost the only way for them. But as they passed out his gate, C. boorishly walked out his house behind them in his shirt-sleeves, and shut his gate behind them as if to shut them out. It was just that sort of behavior which, if he had met with it in Italy, or France, he would have complained of, whose meanness he would have condemned.

  Smilax. Heard and saw by the sassafras shore the rose-breasted grosbeak, a handsome bird with a loud and very rich song, in character between that of a robin and a red-eye. It sang steadily like a robin. Rose breast, white beneath, black head and above, white on shoulder and wings. The flowering ferns just begin, to light up the meadow with their yellowish green . . .