The warmth of the fire is carried off by the draught,

March 5.

P. M. — To Hill. 

See the tracks of a woodchuck in the sand-heap about the mouth of his hole, where he has cleared out his entry. 

The red ground under a large pitch pine is strewn with scales of the ashy-brown bark over a diameter of ten or twelve feet, where some woodpecker has searched and hammered about the stem. 

I scare up six male sheldrakes, with their black heads, in the Assabet,—the first ducks I have seen. Methought I heard a slight frog-like croak from them before.

The sap of the buttonwood flows; how long? 

The lilac buds cannot have swollen any since the 25th of February, on account of the cold. On examining, they look as if they had felt the influence of the previous heat a little. There are narrow light-green spaces laid bare along the edges of the brown scales, as if they had expanded so much. 

This and the last four or five days very gusty. Most of the warmth of the fire is carried off by the draught, which consumes the wood very fast, faster than a much colder but still day in winter. My kindlings spend very fast now, for I do not commonly keep fire at night.

Thomas Morton in his “New English Canaan” has this epitaph on an infant that died apparently as soon as born, without being baptized: — 

“Underneath this heap of stones Lieth a parcel of small bones, What hope at last can such imps have, That from the womb go to the grave?” 

Winckelmann in his “History of Ancient Art,” vol. ii, page 27, says of Beauty, “I have meditated long upon it, but my meditations commenced too late, and in the brightest glow of mature life its essential has remained dark to me; I can speak of it, therefore, only feebly and spiritlessly.” —Lodge’s translation.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 5, 1857

Most of the warmth of the fire is carried off by the draught, which consumes the wood very fast . . . See February 3, 1856 ("It is a cold and windy Sunday. . . .Such a day makes a great hole in the wood-pile.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; I begin to think that my wood will last

Winckelmann says of Beauty '. . . my meditations commenced too late, and in the brightest glow of mature life its essential has remained dark to me . . .’  See February 6, 1857 ("Winckelmann says . . . 'I am now past forty, and . . . perceive, also, that a certain delicate spirit begins to evaporate, with which I raised myself, by powerful soarings, to the contemplation of the beautiful.')