d not to keep so well as was expected, containing more air
than usual, or for some other reason, it never got to market. This heap,
made in the winter of '46-7 and estimated to contain ten thousand tons,
was finally covered with hay and boards; and though it was unroofed the
following July, and a part of it carried off, the rest remaining exposed
to the sun, it stood over that summer and the next winter, and was not
quite melted till September, 1848. Thus the pond recovered the greater
part.

Like the water, the Walden ice, seen near at hand, has a green tint, but
at a distance is beautifully blue, and you can easily tell it from the
white ice of the river, or the merely greenish ice of some ponds, a
quarter of a mile off. Sometimes one of those great cakes slips from the
ice-man's sled into the village street, and lies there for a week like a
great emerald, an object of interest to all passers. I have noticed that
a portion of Walden which in the state of water was green will often,
when frozen, appear from the same point of view blue. So the hollows
about this pond will, sometimes, in the winter, be filled with a
greenish water somewhat like its own, but the next day will have frozen
blue. Perhaps the blue color of water and ice is due to the light and
air they contain, and the most transparent is the bluest. Ice is an
interesting subject for contemplation. They told me that they had some
in the ice-houses at Fresh Pond five years old which was as good as
ever. Why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen
remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that this is the difference
between the affections and the intellect.

Thus for sixteen days I saw from my window a hundred men at work like
busy husbandmen, with teams and horses and apparently all the implements
of farming, such a picture as we see on the first page of the almanac;
and as often as I looked out I was reminded of the fable of the lark and
the reapers, or the parable of the sower, and the like; and now they are
all gone, and in thirty days more, probably, I shall look from the same
window on the pure sea-green Walden water there, reflecting the clouds
and the trees, and sending up its evaporations in solitude, and no
traces will appear that a man has ever stood there. Perhaps I shall hear
a solitary loon laugh as he dives and plumes himself, or shall see a
lonely fisher in his boat, like a floating leaf, beholding his form
reflected in th