2 and 3 P. M. — Thermometer 41°.
I have seen three or four pieces
of coral in the fields of Concord, and Mr. Pratt has found three or four on his
farm. How shall they be accounted for? Who brought them here? and when?
These barns shelter more beasts
than oxen and horses. If you stand awhile in one of them now, especially where
grain is piled, you will hear ever and anon a rustling in it made by the mice,
which take the barn to be their home, as much as the house is yours.
As I recall it, February began
cold, with some dry and fine driving snow, making those shell-shaped drifts
behind walls, and some days after were some wild but low drifts on the meadow
ice. I walked admiring the winter sky and clouds.
After the first week, methinks,
it was much milder, and I noticed that some sounds, like the tinkling of rail
road rails, etc., were springlike. Indeed, the rest of the month was earine,
river breaking up a part and closing again, and but little snow.
About 8th and 12th, the beauty of
the ice on the meadows, partly or slightly rotted, was noticeable, with the
curious figures in it, and, in the coolest evenings, the green ice and rosy
isles of flat drifts.
About
the 9th, noticed the very black water of some open reaches, in a high wind and
cold.
About the middle of the month was
a moist, lodging snow, and the 18th a fine granular one, making about a foot, —
the last.
Then sudden warm weather and rain
come and dissolve it all at once, and the ruts, flowing with melted snow, shone
in the sun, and the little sleighing was all gone. And from the 25th to 27th
the river generally broke up.
March began warm, and I admired
the ripples made by the gusts on the dark-blue meadow flood, and the light-tawny
color of the earth, and was on the alert for several days to hear the first birds.
For a few days past it has been
generally colder and rawer, and the ground has been whitened with snow two or
three times, but it has all been windy.
You incline to walk now along the
south side of hills which will shelter you from the blustering northwest and
north winds.
The sidewalks are wet in the morning
from the frost coming out.
The blustering northwest and north winds. See March 9, 1852 ("These March winds, which make the woods roar and fill the world with life and bustle, appear to wake up the trees out of their winter sleep"); March 9, 1859 ("It is worthwhile to hear the wind roar in the woods to-day."). See also note to March 8, 1860 ("Nowadays we separate the warmth of the sun from the cold of the wind and observe that the cold does not pervade all places, but being due to strong northwest winds, if we get into some sunny and sheltered nook where they do not penetrate, we quite forget how cold it is elsewhere. ")
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