Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/25

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EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS.
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to her army. This Russian war is popular. What is the influence of men of principle? or how numerous are they? How many moral teachers has society? Of course so many as she has will resist her. How many resist her? How many have I heard speak with warning voice? The preacher's standard of morality is no higher than that of his audience. He studies to conciliate his hearers, and never to offend them. Does the threatened war between France and England evince any more enlightenment than a war between two savage tribes, the Iroquois and Hurons? Is it founded in better reason?

February 26, 1855. Directly off Clam-shell Hill, within four rods of it, where the water is three or four feet deep, I see where the musquash dived and brought up clams before the last freezing. Their open shells are strewn along close to the edge of the ice, and close together for about three rods in one place, and the bottom under the edge of the older ice, as seen through the new black ice, is perfectly white with those which sank. They may have been blown in or the ice may have melted. The nacre of these freshly-opened shells is very fair, azure, or else a delicate salmon pink (?), or rosaceous, or violet. I find one not opened, but frozen, and several have one valve quite broken