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  Certain meadows, as Heywood’s, contain warmer water than others and are slow to freeze . . .

  This night I heard Mrs. S— [Elizabeth Oakes Smith] lecture on womanhood. The most important fact about the lecture was that a woman said it, and in that respect it was suggestive. Went to see her afterward, but the interview added nothing to the previous impression, rather subtracted . . . I carried her lecture for her in my pocket wrapped in her handkerchief; my pocket exhales cologne to this moment . . .

  Through the drizzling fog, now just before nightfall, I see from the Cliffs the dark cones of pine trees that rise above the level of the tree-tops, and can trace a few elm tree tops where a farmhouse hides beneath.

  It is a sort of frozen rain this afternoon, which does not wet one, but makes the still bare ground slippery with a coating of ice . . .

  I would be glad to visit Plymouth again, but at present I have nothing to read which is not severely heathenish, or at least secular,—which the dictionary defines as “relating to affairs of the present world, not holy,”—though not necessarily unholy,” nor have I any leisure to prepare it. My writing at present is profane, yet in a good sense, and, as it were, sacredly, I may say; for, finding the air of the temple too close, I sat outside. Don’t think I say this to get off; no, no! It will not do to read such things to hungry ears. “If they ask for bread, will you give them a stone?” When I have something of the right kind, depend upon it I will let you know.

  P.M.—Down railroad to Walden and circle round to right, through Wheeler’s woods out to railroad again.

  It is a remarkable sight, this snow-clad landscape, with the fences and bushes half buried and the warm sun on it. The snow lies not quite level in the fields, but in low waves with an abrupt edge on the north or wind side, as it lodges on ice.

  The town and country are now so still, there being no rattle of wagons nor even jingle of sleigh-bells, every tread being as with woolen feet, I hear very distinctly from the railroad causeway the whistle of the locomotive on the Lowell road . . .

  A beautiful, clear, not very cold day. The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue. The pines look very dark. The white oak leaves are a cinnamon-color, the black and red (?) oak leaves a reddish brown or leather-color . . .

  9 A.M.—To Partridge Glade . . .

  At ten the frost leaves are nearly all melted . . .

  I think it will not be worth the while for me to come to Worcester to lecture at all this year. It will be better to wait till I am—perhaps unfortunately—more in that line. My writing has not taken the shape of lectures, and therefore I should be obliged to read one of three or four old lectures, the best of which I have read to some of your auditors before. I carried that one which I call “Walking, or the Wild,” to Amherst, N.H., the evening of that cold Thursday, and I am to read another at Fitchburg, February 3. I am simply their hired man. This will probably be the extent of my lecturing hereabouts.

  I must depend on meeting Mr. [David A.] Wasson some other time.

  Perhaps it always costs me more than it comes to to lecture before a promiscuous audience. It is an irreparable injury done to my modesty even,—I become so indurated.

  O solitude! obscurity! meanness! I never triumph so as when I have the least success in my neighbor’s eyes. The lecturer gets fifty dollars a night; but what becomes of his winter? What consolation will it be hereafter to have fifty thousand dollars for living in the world? I should like not to exchange any of my life for money.

  These, you may think, are reasons for not lecturing, when you have no great opportunity. It is even so, perhaps. I could lecture on dry oak leaves; I could, but who could hear me? If I were to try it on any large audience, I fear it would be no gain to them, and a positive loss to me. I should have behaved rudely toward my rustling friends.

  I am surveying instead of lecturing, at present. Let me have a skimming from your “pan of unwrinkled cream.”

H. D. T.

  After some rain yesterday and in the night, there was a little more snow, and the ground is still covered. I am surprised to find Walden still closed since Sunday night, notwithstanding the warm weather since it skimmed over, and that Goose Pond bears, though covered with slosh; but ice under water is slow to thaw. it does not break up so soon as you would expect. Walking over it, I thought I saw an old glove on the ice or slosh, but, approaching, found it to be a bull-frog, flat on its belly with its legs stretched out…I found it to be alive, though it could only partially open its eyes…It was evidently nearly chilled to death and could not jump, though there was then no freezing. I looked round a good while and finally found a hole to put it into, squeezing it through . . .

  At 10 A.M., thermometer 18º . . .

  P.M.—To the sweet-gale meadow or swamp up Assabet . . .

  A man may be old and infirm. What, then, are the thoughts he thinks? what the life he lives? They and it are, like himself, infirm. But a man may be young, athletic, active, beautiful. Then, too, his thoughts will be like his person. They will wander in a living and beautiful world. If you are well, then how brave you are! How you hope! You are conversant with joy! A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as his brain . . .