street of a city.

* * * * *

_February 16, 1850._--The sunbeam that comes through a round hole in the
shutter of a darkened room, where a dead man sits in solitude.

* * * * *

The hoary periwig of a dandelion gone to seed.

* * * * *

_Lenox, July 14, 1850._--Language,--human language,--after all, is but
little better than the croak and cackle of fowls, and other utterances
of brute nature, sometimes not so adequate.

* * * * *

The queer gestures and sounds of a hen looking about for a place to
deposit her egg, her self-important gait, the sideway turn of her head
and cock of her eye, as she pries into one and another nook, croaking
all the while, evidently with the idea that the egg in question is the
most important thing that has been brought to pass since the world
began. A speckled black and white and tufted hen of ours does it to most
ludicrous perfection.

* * * * *

_July 25._--As I sit in my study, with the windows open, the occasional