_March 8_.--I write this down in the country again, but in a new spot, seated on a log in the woods, warm, sunny, midday. Have been loafing here deep among the trees, shafts of tall pines, oak, hickory, with a thick undergrowth of laurels and grapevines--the ground cover'd everywhere by debris, dead leaves, breakage, moss--everything solitary, ancient, grim. Paths (such as they are) leading hither and yon--(how made I know not, for nobody seems to come here, nor man nor cattle-kind.) Temperature to-day about 60, the wind through the pine-tops; I sit and listen to its hoarse sighing above (and to the _stillness_) long and long, varied by aimless rambles in the old roads and paths, and by exercise-pulls at the young saplings, to keep my joints from getting stiff. Blue-birds, robins, meadow-larks begin to appear. _Next day, 9th_.--A snowstorm in the morning, and continuing most of the day. But I took a walk over two hours, the same woods and paths, amid the falling flakes. No wind, yet the musical low murmur through the pines, quite pronounced, curious, like waterfalls, now still'd, now pouring again. All the senses, sight, sound, smell, delicately gratified. Every snowflake lay where it fell on the evergreens, holly-trees, laurels, &c., the multitudinous leaves and branches piled, bulging-white, defined by edge-lines of emerald--the tall straight columns of the plentiful bronze-topt pines--a slight resinous odor blending with that of the snow. (For there is a scent to everything, even the snow, if you can only detect it--no two places, hardly any two hours, anywhere, exactly alike. How different the odor of noon from midnight, or winter from summer, or a windy spell from a still one.) A CONTRALTO VOICE _May 9, Sunday_.--Visit this evening to my friends the J.'s--good supper, to which I did justice--lively chat with Mrs. J. and I. and J. As I sat out front on the walk afterward, in the evening air, the church-choir and organ on the corner opposite gave Luther's hymn, _Ein feste berg_, very finely. The air was borne by a rich contralto. For nearly half an hour there in the dark (there was a good string of English stanzas,) came the music, firm and unhurried, with long pauses. The full silver star-beams of Lyra rose silently over the church's dim roof-ridge. Vari-color'd lights from the stain'd glass windows broke through the tree-shadows. And under all--under the Northern Crown up there, and in the fresh breeze below, and the _chiaroscuro_ of the night, that liquid-full contralto. SEEING NIAGARA TO ADVANTAGE