It is somewhat of a lichen day. The bright-yellow sulphur lichens on the walls of the Walden road look novel, as if I had not seen them for a long time. Do they not require cold as much as moisture to enliven them? What surprising forms and colors! Designed on every natural surface of rock or tree . . .

  Returning up the railroad, I see the great tufts of sedge in Heywood’s meadow curving over like locks of the meadow’s hair, above the snow . . . The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, goes almost unobserved . . .