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  Both for bodily and mental health, court the present. Embrace health wherever you find her . . .

  It is worth the while to apply what wisdom one has to the conduct of his life, surely. I find myself oftenest wise in little things and foolish in great ones. That I may accomplish some particular petty affair well, I live my whole life coarsely. A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars. What are threescore years and ten hurriedly and coarsely lived to moments of divine leisure in which your life is coincident with the life of the universe? We live too fast and coarsely, just as we eat too fast, and do not know the true savor of our food. We consult our will and understanding and the expectation of men, not our genius . . .

  Joe Brown owned those pigs I saw to root up the old pasture behind Paul Adams’s. N. Stow tells me this morning that he has sold and brought to the butcher’s three loads of pork containing twenty-five hundred pounds each, the least; at eight cents per pound amounting to more than $600 . . .

  The nearest approach to woods that I saw was the swamps, where the blueberries, maples, etc., are higher than one’s head. I saw, as I rode, high blueberry bushes and maple in the swamps, huckleberries, shrub oaks, uva-ursi (which he called mealy plum), gaultheria, beach plum, clethra, mayflower (well budded). Also withered poverty-grass, goldenrods, asters. In the swamps are cranberries, and I saw one carting the vines home to set out, which also many are doing. G. described what he made out to be “star-grass” as common . . .

  Visited the museum at the Athenaeum. Various South Sea implements etc., etc., brought home by whalers.

  The last Indian, not of pure blood, died this very month, and I saw his picture with a basket of huckleberries in his hand.

  To-day and yesterday the boys have been skating on the crust in the streets,—it is so hard, the show being very shallow. Considerable ice still clings to the rails and trees . . . What do the birds do when the seeds and bark are thus encased in ice?

  Walden completely frozen over again last night. Goodwin & Co. are fishing there to-day. Ice about four inches thick, occasionally sunk by the snow beneath the water . . .

  I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a companion only one clay in a week, unless it were one or two I could name, I find that the value of the week to one has been seriously affected. It dissipates my days, and often it takes me another week to get over it . . .

  Aunt Jane says that she was born on Christmas Day, and they called her a Christmas gift, and she remembers hearing that her Aunt Hannah Orrock was so disconcerted by the event that she threw all the spoons outdoors, when she had washed them, or with the dishwater. Father says that he and his sisters (except Elizabeth) were born in Richmond Street, Boston, between Salem and Hanover Streets, on the spot where a bethel now stands, on the left hand going from Hanover Street . . .

  The places where the river was certainly (i.e. except 4th) open yesterday were all only five feet or less in depth, according to my map, and all except 8th at bends or else below the mouth of a brook . . .

  Hence, I should say, if you wish to ascertain where the river is five feet, or less than five feet, deep in Concord, wait till it is open for not more than half a dozen rods below Nut Meadow . . .