And now that there is an interregnum in the blossoming of the flowers, so is there in the singing of the birds. The golden robin is rarely heard, and the bobolink, etc. I rejoice when in a dream I have loved virtue and nobleness. Where is Grecian history? It is when in the morning I recall the intimations of the night. * * * * * The moon is now more than half full. When I come through the village at 10 o’clock this cold night, cold as in May, the heavy shadows of the elms covering the ground with their rich tracery impress me as if men had got so much more than they had bargained for, not only trees to stand in the air, but to checker the ground with their shadows. At night they lie along the earth. They tower, they arch, they droop over the streets like chandeliers of darkness. In my walk the other afternoon, I saw the sun shining into the depths of a thick pine wood, checkering the ground like moonlight and illuminating the lichen-covered bark of a large white pine, from which it was reflected through the surrounding thicket as from another sun. This was so deep in the woods that you would have said no sun could penetrate thither. I have been to-night with Anthony Wright to look through Perez Blood’s telescope a second time. A dozen of Blood’s neighbors were swept along in the stream of our curiosity. One who lived half a mile this side said that Blood had been down that way within a day or two with his terrestrial, or day, glass, looking into the eastern horizon [at] the hills of Billerica, Burlington, and Woburn. I was amused to see what sort of respect this man with a telescope had obtained from his neighbors, something akin to that which savages award to civilized men, though in this case the interval between the parties was very slight. Mr. Blood, with his skull-cap on, his short figure, his north European figure, made me think of Tycho Brahe. He did not invite us into his house this cool evening,—men nor women,—nor did he ever before to my knowledge. I am still contented to see the stars with my naked eye. Mr. Wright asked him what his instrument cost. He answered, “Well, that is something I don’t like to tell.” (Stuttering or hesitating in his speech a little as usual.) “It is a very proper question, however.” “Yes,” said I, “and you think that you have given a very proper answer.” Returning, my companion, Wright, the sexton, told me how dusty he found it digging a grave that afternoon,—for one who had been a pupil of mine. For two feet, he said, notwithstanding the rain, he found the soil as dry as ashes.