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  I cut my initials on the bee tree. Now, at 11.30 perhaps, the sky begins to be slightly overcast . . .

  It is pleasant to see the reddish-green leaves of the lambkill still hanging with fruit above the snow, for I am now crossing the shrub oak plain to the Cliffs . . .

  P. M.—To Walden via Hubbard’s Wood and foot of Cliff Hill.

  The snow has melted very rapidly the past week. There is much bare ground. The checkerberries are revealed,—somewhat shrivelled many of them. I look. along the ditches and brooks for tortoises and frogs, but the ditches are still full of dirty ice . . .

  I had two friends. The one offered me friendship on such terms that I could not accept it, without a sense of degradation. He would not meet me on equal terms, but only be to some extent my patron. He would not come to see me, but was hurt if I did not visit him. He would not readily accept a favor, but would gladly confer one. He treated me with ceremony occasionally, though he could be simple and downright sometimes; and from time to time acted a part, treating me as if I were a distinguished stranger; was on stilts, using made words. Our relation was one long tragedy . . .

  The snow balls particularly when, as now, colder weather comes after a damp snow has fallen on muddy ground, and it is soft beneath while just freezing above . . .

  P.M.—To E. Hosmcr Spring. Down Turnpike and back by E. Hubbard’s Close.

  We stood still a few moments on the Turnpike below Wright’s (the Turnpike, which had no wheel-track beyond Tuttle’s and no track at all beyond Wright’s), and listened to hear a spring bird. We heard only the jay screaming in the distance and the cawing of a crow. What a perfectly New England sound is this voice of the crow! . . .

  C. [William Ellery Channing] thinks this is called a sap snow, because it comes after the sap begins to flow . . .

  The earth is never lighter-colored than now,—the hillsides reflecting the sun when first dried after the winter,especially, methinks, where the sheep’s fescue grows (?). It contrasts finely with the rich blue of the water . . .