Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/330

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EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS.

to bis house he substituted a bare ugly wall for an interesting grove.

April 10, 1851. April rain. How sure a rain is to bring the tree-sparrows into the yard, to sing sweetly, canary-like.

I bought me a spy-glass some weeks since. I buy but few things, and those not till long after I begin to want them, so that when I do get them I am prepared to make a perfect use of them and extract their whole sweetness.

April 11, 1841. A greater baldness my life seeks, as the crest of some bare hill, which towns and cities do not afford. I want a directer relation with the sun.

April 11, 1852. . . . . The sight of Nut Meadow Brook in Brown's land reminds me that the attractiveness of a brook depends much on the character of its bottom. I love just now to see one flowing through soft sand like this where it wears a deep but irregular channel, now wider and shallower with distinct ripple marks, now shelving off suddenly to indistinct depths, meandering as well up and down as from side to side, deepest where narrowest, and even gullying under this bank or that, its bottom lifted up to one side or the other, the current inclining to one side. I stop to look at the circular shadows of the dimples, over the yellow sand, and the dark brown clams on their edges