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One day, when my axe had
come off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with
a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond-hole in order to
swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay
on the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as I stayed
there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had not
yet fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared to me that for
a like reason men remain in their present low and primitive
condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of
springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and
more ethereal life. I had previously seen the snakes in frosty
mornings in my path with portions of their bodies still numb and
inflexible, waiting for the sun to thaw them. On the 1st of April
it rained and melted the ice, and in the early part of the day,
which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose groping about over the
pond and cackling as if lost, or like the spirit of the fog.


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