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  Any simple, unquestioned mode of life is alluring to men. The man who picks peas steadily for a living is more than respectable. He is to be envied by his neighbors.

  Rain, rain, rain, all day, carrying off the snow. It appears, then, that if you go out at this season and walk in the sun in a clear, warm day like ,yesterday while the earth is covered with snow, you may have your face burnt in a few moments. The rays glance off from the snowy crystals and scorch the skin . . .

  P.M.—This cold, moist, snowy day it is easier to see the birds and get near them . . .

  No sun till setting. Another still, moist, overcast day, without sun, but all day a crescent of light, as if breaking away in the north. The waters smooth and full of reflections. A still cloudy day like this is perhaps the best to be on the water. To the clouds, perhaps, we owe both the stillness and the reflections, for the light is in great measure reflected from the water . . .

  It is warmer and quite still; somewhat cloudy in the cast. The water quite smooth,—April smooth waters. I hear very distinctly Barrett’s sawmill at my landing. The purple finch is singing on the elms about the house, together with the robins . . .

  By 9 A.M. the wind has risen, the water is ruffled, the sun seems more permanently obscured, and the character of the day is changed . . . Ed. Emerson saw a toad in his garden to-day, and, coming home from his house at 11 P.M., a still and rather warm night, I am surprised to hear the first loud, clear, prolonged ring of a toad, when I am near Charles Davis’s house . . .

  I had been surprised to find the season more backward, i.e. the vegetation, in New Bedford than in Concord. I could find no alder and willow and hazel catkins and no caltha and saxifrage so forward as in Concord. The ground was a uniform russet when I left, but when I had come twenty miles it was visibly greener, and the greenness steadily increased all the way to Boston. Coming to Boston, and also to Concord, was like coming from early spring to early summer. It was as if a fortnight at least had elapsed. Yet NeNv Bedford is much warmer in the winter. Why is it more backward than Concord? . . .

  I go to find hylodes spawn. I hear some now peeping at mid-afternoon in Potter’s meadow, just north of his swamp . . .(Journal, 10:368-370).