The other day, behind Simon Brown's house I heard a remarkable echo.

February 11. 

Friday. 

While surveying for J. Moore to day, saw a large wood tortoise stirring in the Mill Brook, and several bodies of frogs  without their hind legs. But Sunday it snowed about a foot deep, — our second, only, important snow this winter, — and now the brook is not only frozen over, but almost completely concealed under drifts, and that reminiscence or prophecy of spring is also buried up. 

While surveying on the Hunt farm the other day, behind Simon Brown's house I heard a remarkable echo. In the course of surveying, being obliged to call aloud to my assistant from every side and almost every part of a farm in succession, and at various hours of a day, I am pretty sure to discover an echo if any exists, and the other day it was encouraging and soothing to hear it. After so many days of comparatively insignificant drudgery with stupid companions, this leisure, this sportiveness, this generosity in nature, sympathizing with the better part of me; somebody I could talk with, — one degree, at least, better than talking with one's self. 

Ah! Simon Brown's premises harbor a hired man and a hired maid he wots not of. Some voice of somebody I pined to hear, with whom I could form a community. I did wish, rather, to linger there and call all day to the air and hear my words repeated, but a vulgar necessity dragged me along round the bounds of the farm, to hear only the stale answers of my chain-man shouted back to me. I am surprised that we make no more ado about echoes. 

They are almost the only kindred voices that I hear. I wonder that the traveller does not oftener remark upon a remarkable echo, — he who observes so many things. There needs some actual doubleness like this in nature, for if the voices which we commonly hear were all that we ever heard, what then? Has it to do with the season of the year?

 I have since heard an echo on Moore's farm. It was the memorable event of the day, that echo I heard, not anything my companions said, or the travelers whom I met, or my thoughts, for they were all mere repetitions or echoes in the worst sense of what I had heard and thought before many times; but this echo was accompanied with novelty, and by its repetition of my voice it did more than double that. 

It was a profounder Socratic method of suggesting thoughts unutterable to me the speaker. There was one I heartily loved to talk with. Under such favorable auspices I could converse with myself, could reflect; the hour, the atmosphere, and the conformation of the ground permitted it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 11, 1853

Saw a large wood tortoise stirring in the Mill Brook. See  March 27. 1855 ("See a wood tortoise in the brook. ")

Sunday it snowed about a foot deep, — our second, only, important snow this winter. See January 14, 1853 ("Snows all day.”)

While surveying on the Hunt farm the other day. See February 1, 1853 (“Surveying the Hunt farm. ”)

That reminiscence or prophecy of spring is also buried up. See February 9, 1854 ("February [belongs] to the spring; it is a snowy March.")

I am pretty sure to discover an echo if any exists. See October 6, 1851 ("In the middle of the pond we tried the echo again.")

There needs some actual doubleness like this in nature, for under such favorable auspices I could converse with myself, See August 8, 1852 ("[I]am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another.")