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  Before supper Mr John had made a fire in our room and we boiled a “monkey” full of clams leaving them to cool while we eat supper.

  After supper we went and eat them and they were delicious. Then we put some more clams into the broth to boil and Mr John went down and got the boys and they all came up into the room.

  When they were done and cool we eat them broth and all and then put on another lot which we eat also. We had been rendered cautious by our last nights misfortune and had a box for a table when eating and a seat when waiting for them to be done. We also set the monkey into a tin pan so that if it did upset it might be saved if possible from going on the carpet. We met with no accident however saving that a single clam dropped out of the window where they were put to cool which was afterwards brought in and eaten by Charles [Henry Cummings].

  We then went to the Lyceum expecting that a Phrenologist would lecture. His apparatus was there but the lecturer had not arrived. A man there set out his casts and several real skulls on the desk but immediately put them back again. One of the skulls was that of a British soldier who fell in the Battle of Concord. It was dug up in Lincoln. It was only the upper half of the head. There was the bullet hole through which the ball which killed him had passed. A Mr. [David Greene] Haskins lectured on Roger Williams the founder of Rhode Island—a description of his life. Bought 2 cents worth of burnt almonds going home. I forgot to say while speaking of the lecture that he said that the Pilgrims were so poor that when a man had invited his neighbor to a dish of clams (very apropos to our clam feast) he returned thanks that they were permitted “such of the abundance of the seas and of treasures hid in the sand.”

  Walden is all white ice, but little melted about the shores . . .

  There is an early willow on sand-bank of the railroad, against the pond, by the fence, grayish below and yellowish above. The railroad men have dug around the sleepers that the sun my thaw the ground and let them down. It is not yet out. Cut across near Baker’s barn . . .

  Is that the red osier (cornel or viburnum) near the grape-vine on the Bare Hill road? . . .

  Sat awhile before sunset on the rocks in Saw Mill Brook . . .

  Saw the freshly (?) broken shells of a tortoise’s eggs—or were they a snake’s?—in Hosmer’s field. I hear a robin singing in the woods south of Hosmer’s, just before sunset . . .

  As I come over the Turnpike, the song sparrow’s jingle comes up from every part of the meadow, as native as the tinkling rills or the blossoms of the spirca, the meadow-sweet, soon to spring . . .

  Saw ten black ducks at Clamshell . . . The gooseberry in Brown’s pasture shows no green yet, though ours in the garden does . . . Starlight by river up Assabet . . . Ascend Nawshawtuct. See a fire in horizon toward Boston.

  P. M.—Up Assabet to Dodge’s Brook; thence to Farmer’s . . .

  When I look out the window I see that the grass on the bank on the south side of the house is already much greener than it was yesterday. As it cannot have grown so suddenly, how shall I account for it? I suspect that the reason is that the few green blades are not merely washed bright by the rain, but erect themselves to imbibe its influence, and so are more prominent, while the withered blades are beaten down and flattened by it. It is remarkable how much more fatal to all superficial vegetation or greenness is a morning frost in March than a covering of snow or ice. In hollows where the ice is still melting I see the grass considerably green about its edges . . .