a merely heathenish sense...Thoreau's Journal: 08-Jan-1852

I notice that almost every track which I made yesterday in the snow—perhaps ten inches deep—has got a dead leaf in it, though none is to be seen on the snow around.

Even as early as 3 o’clock these winter afternoons the axes in the woods sound like nightfall, like the sound of a twilight labor.

Reading from my manuscripts to Miss Emerson this evening and using the word “god” in one instance, in perchance a merely heathenish sense, she inquired hastily in a tone of dignified anxiety, “Is that god spelt with a little g?” Fortunately it was. (I had brought in the word “god” without any solemnity of voice or connection.) So I went on as if nothing had happened.

I perceive that the livid lettuce-leaved lichen which I gathered the other day has dried almost an ash or satin, with no green about it,—has bleached.