Thoreau writes in his journal:
The boys have been skating for a week, but I have had no time to skate for surveying . . . McKean tells me of hardy horses left to multiply on the Isle of Sable . . . There is a beautifully pure greenish-blue sky under the clouds now in the southwest just before sunset . . . I come from contact with certain acquaintances, whom even I am disposed to look toward as possible friends. It oftenest happens that I come from them wounded. Only they can wound me seriously, and that perhaps without their knowing it.
