fashion nova choker
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chapter 12brute neighbors sometimes i had a companion in my fishing,who came through the village to my house from the other side of the town, and thecatching of the dinner was as much a social exercise as the eating of it. hermit.i wonder what the world is doing now. i have not heard so much as a locust overthe sweet-fern these three hours. the pigeons are all asleep upon theirroosts--no flutter from them. was that a farmer's noon horn which soundedfrom beyond the woods just now? the hands are coming in to boiled salt beefand cider and indian bread.
why will men worry themselves so?he that does not eat need not work. i wonder how much they have reaped. who would live there where a body can neverthink for the barking of bose? and oh, the housekeeping! to keep brightthe devil's door-knobs, and scour his tubs this bright day! better not keep a house.say, some hollow tree; and then for morning calls and dinner-parties!only a woodpecker tapping. oh, they swarm; the sun is too warm there;they are born too far into life for me. i have water from the spring, and a loaf ofbrown bread on the shelf.--hark!
i hear a rustling of the leaves. is it some ill-fed village hound yieldingto the instinct of the chase? or the lost pig which is said to be in these woods,whose tracks i saw after the rain? it comes on apace; my sumachs andsweetbriers tremble.--eh, mr. poet, is it you?how do you like the world to-day? poet. see those clouds; how they hang!that's the greatest thing i have seen to- day. there's nothing like it in old paintings,nothing like it in foreign lands--unless
when we were off the coast of spain.that's a true mediterranean sky. i thought, as i have my living to get, andhave not eaten to-day, that i might go a- fishing.that's the true industry for poets. it is the only trade i have learned. come, let's along.hermit. i cannot resist.my brown bread will soon be gone. i will go with you gladly soon, but i amjust concluding a serious meditation. i think that i am near the end of it.leave me alone, then, for a while. but that we may not be delayed, you shallbe digging the bait meanwhile.
angleworms are rarely to be met with inthese parts, where the soil was never fattened with manure; the race is nearlyextinct. the sport of digging the bait is nearlyequal to that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen; and thisyou may have all to yourself today. i would advise you to set in the spade downyonder among the ground-nuts, where you see the johnswort waving. i think that i may warrant you one worm toevery three sods you turn up, if you look well in among the roots of the grass, as ifyou were weeding. or, if you choose to go farther, it willnot be unwise, for i have found the
increase of fair bait to be very nearly asthe squares of the distances. hermit alone. let me see; where was i?methinks i was nearly in this frame of mind; the world lay about at this angle.shall i go to heaven or a-fishing? if i should soon bring this meditation toan end, would another so sweet occasion be likely to offer?i was as near being resolved into the essence of things as ever i was in my life. i fear my thoughts will not come back tome. if it would do any good, i would whistlefor them.
when they make us an offer, is it wise tosay, we will think of it? my thoughts have left no track, and icannot find the path again. what was it that i was thinking of? it was a very hazy day.i will just try these three sentences of confut-see; they may fetch that state aboutagain. i know not whether it was the dumps or abudding ecstasy. mem.there never is but one opportunity of a kind. poet.how now, hermit, is it too soon?
i have got just thirteen whole ones, besideseveral which are imperfect or undersized; but they will do for the smaller fry; theydo not cover up the hook so much. those village worms are quite too large; ashiner may make a meal off one without finding the skewer.hermit. well, then, let's be off. shall we to the concord?there's good sport there if the water be not too high.why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world? why has man just these species of animalsfor his neighbors; as if nothing but a
mouse could have filled this crevice? i suspect that pilpay & co. have putanimals to their best use, for they are all beasts of burden, in a sense, made to carrysome portion of our thoughts. the mice which haunted my house were notthe common ones, which are said to have been introduced into the country, but awild native kind not found in the village. i sent one to a distinguished naturalist,and it interested him much. when i was building, one of these had itsnest underneath the house, and before i had laid the second floor, and swept out theshavings, would come out regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet.
it probably had never seen a man before;and it soon became quite familiar, and would run over my shoes and up my clothes. it could readily ascend the sides of theroom by short impulses, like a squirrel, which it resembled in its motions. at length, as i leaned with my elbow on thebench one day, it ran up my clothes, and along my sleeve, and round and round thepaper which held my dinner, while i kept the latter close, and dodged and played at bopeep with it; and when at last i heldstill a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it came and nibbled it, sittingin my hand, and afterward cleaned its face
and paws, like a fly, and walked away. a phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robinfor protection in a pine which grew against the house. in june the partridge (tetrao umbellus),which is so shy a bird, led her brood past my windows, from the woods in the rear tothe front of my house, clucking and calling to them like a hen, and in all her behaviorproving herself the hen of the woods. the young suddenly disperse on yourapproach, at a signal from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them away, andthey so exactly resemble the dried leaves and twigs that many a traveler has placed
his foot in the midst of a brood, and heardthe whir of the old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls and mewing, or seenher trail her wings to attract his attention, without suspecting theirneighborhood. the parent will sometimes roll and spinround before you in such a dishabille, that you cannot, for a few moments, detect whatkind of creature it is. the young squat still and flat, oftenrunning their heads under a leaf, and mind only their mother's directions given from adistance, nor will your approach make them run again and betray themselves. you may even tread on them, or have youreyes on them for a minute, without
discovering them. i have held them in my open hand at such atime, and still their only care, obedient to their mother and their instinct, was tosquat there without fear or trembling. so perfect is this instinct, that once,when i had laid them on the leaves again, and one accidentally fell on its side, itwas found with the rest in exactly the same position ten minutes afterward. they are not callow like the young of mostbirds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. the remarkably adult yet innocentexpression of their open and serene eyes is
very memorable.all intelligence seems reflected in them. they suggest not merely the purity ofinfancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience.such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects. the woods do not yield another such a gem.the traveller does not often look into such a limpid well. the ignorant or reckless sportsman oftenshoots the parent at such a time, and leaves these innocents to fall a prey tosome prowling beast or bird, or gradually mingle with the decaying leaves which theyso much resemble.
it is said that when hatched by a hen theywill directly disperse on some alarm, and so are lost, for they never hear themother's call which gathers them again. these were my hens and chickens. it is remarkable how many creatures livewild and free though secret in the woods, and still sustain themselves in theneighborhood of towns, suspected by hunters only. how retired the otter manages to live here!he grows to be four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps without any human beinggetting a glimpse of him. i formerly saw the raccoon in the woodsbehind where my house is built, and
probably still heard their whinnering atnight. commonly i rested an hour or two in theshade at noon, after planting, and ate my lunch, and read a little by a spring whichwas the source of a swamp and of a brook, oozing from under brister's hill, half amile from my field. the approach to this was through asuccession of descending grassy hollows, full of young pitch pines, into a largerwood about the swamp. there, in a very secluded and shaded spot,under a spreading white pine, there was yet a clean, firm sward to sit on. i had dug out the spring and made a well ofclear gray water, where i could dip up a
pailful without roiling it, and thither iwent for this purpose almost every day in midsummer, when the pond was warmest. thither, too, the woodcock led her brood,to probe the mud for worms, flying but a foot above them down the bank, while theyran in a troop beneath; but at last, spying me, she would leave her young and circle round and round me, nearer and nearer tillwithin four or five feet, pretending broken wings and legs, to attract my attention,and get off her young, who would already have taken up their march, with faint, wiry peep, single file through the swamp, as shedirected.
or i heard the peep of the young when icould not see the parent bird. there too the turtle doves sat over thespring, or fluttered from bough to bough of the soft white pines over my head; or thered squirrel, coursing down the nearest bough, was particularly familiar andinquisitive. you only need sit still long enough in someattractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to youby turns. i was witness to events of a less peacefulcharacter. one day when i went out to my wood-pile, orrather my pile of stumps, i observed two large ants, the one red, the other muchlarger, nearly half an inch long, and
black, fiercely contending with oneanother. having once got hold they never let go, butstruggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. looking farther, i was surprised to findthat the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, buta bellum, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black,and frequently two red ones to one black. the legions of these myrmidons covered allthe hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with the deadand dying, both red and black. it was the only battle which i have everwitnessed, the only battle-field i ever
trod while the battle was raging;internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on theother. on every side they were engaged in deadlycombat, yet without any noise that i could hear, and human soldiers never fought soresolutely. i watched a couple that were fast locked ineach other's embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noondayprepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. the smaller red champion had fastenedhimself like a vice to his adversary's front, and through all the tumblings onthat field never for an instant ceased to
gnaw at one of his feelers near the root, having already caused the other to go bythe board; while the stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, as i sawon looking nearer, had already divested him of several of his members. they fought with more pertinacity thanbulldogs. neither manifested the least disposition toretreat. it was evident that their battle-cry was"conquer or die." in the meanwhile there came along a singlered ant on the hillside of this valley, evidently full of excitement, who eitherhad despatched his foe, or had not yet
taken part in the battle; probably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs;whose mother had charged him to return with his shield or upon it. or perchance he was some achilles, who hadnourished his wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his patroclus. he saw this unequal combat from afar--forthe blacks were nearly twice the size of the red--he drew near with rapid pace tillhe stood on his guard within half an inch of the combatants; then, watching his opportunity, he sprang upon the blackwarrior, and commenced his operations near
the root of his right fore leg, leaving thefoe to select among his own members; and so there were three united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been inventedwhich put all other locks and cements to shame. i should not have wondered by this time tofind that they had their respective musical bands stationed on some eminent chip, andplaying their national airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer the dyingcombatants. i was myself excited somewhat even as ifthey had been men. the more you think of it, the less thedifference.
and certainly there is not the fightrecorded in concord history, at least, if in the history of america, that will bear amoment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for thepatriotism and heroism displayed. for numbers and for carnage it was anausterlitz or dresden. concord fight! two killed on the patriots' side, andluther blanchard wounded! why here every ant was a buttrick--"fire!for god's sake fire!"--and thousands shared the fate of davis and hosmer. there was not one hireling there.
i have no doubt that it was a principlethey fought for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on theirtea; and the results of this battle will be as important and memorable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of bunkerhill, at least. i took up the chip on which the three ihave particularly described were struggling, carried it into my house, andplaced it under a tumbler on my window- sill, in order to see the issue. holding a microscope to the first-mentionedred ant, i saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the near fore leg ofhis enemy, having severed his remaining
feeler, his own breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to thejaws of the black warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too thick forhim to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes shone with ferocitysuch as war only could excite. they struggled half an hour longer underthe tumbler, and when i looked again the black soldier had severed the heads of hisfoes from their bodies, and the still living heads were hanging on either side of him like ghastly trophies at his saddle-bow, still apparently as firmly fastened as ever, and he was endeavoring with feeblestruggles, being without feelers and with
only the remnant of a leg, and i know not how many other wounds, to divest himself ofthem; which at length, after half an hour more, he accomplished.i raised the glass, and he went off over the window-sill in that crippled state. whether he finally survived that combat,and spent the remainder of his days in some hotel des invalides, i do not know; but ithought that his industry would not be worth much thereafter. i never learned which party was victorious,nor the cause of the war; but i felt for the rest of that day as if i had had myfeelings excited and harrowed by witnessing
the struggle, the ferocity and carnage, ofa human battle before my door. kirby and spence tell us that the battlesof ants have long been celebrated and the date of them recorded, though they say thathuber is the only modern author who appears to have witnessed them. "aeneas sylvius," say they, "after giving avery circumstantial account of one contested with great obstinacy by a greatand small species on the trunk of a pear tree," adds that "this action was fought in the pontificate of eugenius the fourth, inthe presence of nicholas pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who related the wholehistory of the battle with the greatest
fidelity." a similar engagement between great andsmall ants is recorded by olaus magnus, in which the small ones, being victorious, aresaid to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of their giantenemies a prey to the birds. this event happened previous to theexpulsion of the tyrant christiern the second from sweden. the battle which i witnessed took place inthe presidency of polk, five years before the passage of webster's fugitive-slavebill. many a village bose, fit only to course amud-turtle in a victualling cellar, sported
his heavy quarters in the woods, withoutthe knowledge of his master, and ineffectually smelled at old fox burrows and woodchucks' holes; led perchance bysome slight cur which nimbly threaded the wood, and might still inspire a naturalterror in its denizens;--now far behind his guide, barking like a canine bull toward some small squirrel which had treed itselffor scrutiny, then, cantering off, bending the bushes with his weight, imagining thathe is on the track of some stray member of the jerbilla family. once i was surprised to see a cat walkingalong the stony shore of the pond, for they
rarely wander so far from home.the surprise was mutual. nevertheless the most domestic cat, whichhas lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at home in the woods, and, by her slyand stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there than the regular inhabitants. once, when berrying, i met with a cat withyoung kittens in the woods, quite wild, and they all, like their mother, had theirbacks up and were fiercely spitting at me. a few years before i lived in the woodsthere was what was called a "winged cat" in one of the farm-houses in lincoln nearestthe pond, mr. gilian baker's. when i called to see her in june, 1842, shewas gone a-hunting in the woods, as was her
wont (i am not sure whether it was a maleor female, and so use the more common pronoun), but her mistress told me that she came into the neighborhood a little morethan a year before, in april, and was finally taken into their house; that shewas of a dark brownish-gray color, with a white spot on her throat, and white feet, and had a large bushy tail like a fox; thatin the winter the fur grew thick and flatted out along her sides, formingstripes ten or twelve inches long by two and a half wide, and under her chin like a muff, the upper side loose, the undermatted like felt, and in the spring these
appendages dropped off.they gave me a pair of her "wings," which i keep still. there is no appearance of a membrane aboutthem. some thought it was part flying squirrel orsome other wild animal, which is not impossible, for, according to naturalists,prolific hybrids have been produced by the union of the marten and domestic cat. this would have been the right kind of catfor me to keep, if i had kept any; for why should not a poet's cat be winged as wellas his horse? in the fall the loon (colymbus glacialis)came, as usual, to moult and bathe in the
pond, making the woods ring with his wildlaughter before i had risen. at rumor of his arrival all the mill-damsportsmen are on the alert, in gigs and on foot, two by two and three by three, withpatent rifles and conical balls and spy- glasses. they come rustling through the woods likeautumn leaves, at least ten men to one loon. some station themselves on this side of thepond, some on that, for the poor bird cannot be omnipresent; if he dive here hemust come up there. but now the kind october wind rises,rustling the leaves and rippling the
surface of the water, so that no loon canbe heard or seen, though his foes sweep the pond with spy-glasses, and make the woodsresound with their discharges. the waves generously rise and dash angrily,taking sides with all water-fowl, and our sportsmen must beat a retreat to town andshop and unfinished jobs. but they were too often successful. when i went to get a pail of water early inthe morning i frequently saw this stately bird sailing out of my cove within a fewrods. if i endeavored to overtake him in a boat,in order to see how he would manoeuvre, he would dive and be completely lost, so thati did not discover him again, sometimes,
till the latter part of the day. but i was more than a match for him on thesurface. he commonly went off in a rain. as i was paddling along the north shore onevery calm october afternoon, for such days especially they settle on to the lakes,like the milkweed down, having looked in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly one, sailing out from the shore toward themiddle a few rods in front of me, set up his wild laugh and betrayed himself.i pursued with a paddle and he dived, but when he came up i was nearer than before.
he dived again, but i miscalculated thedirection he would take, and we were fifty rods apart when he came to the surface thistime, for i had helped to widen the interval; and again he laughed long andloud, and with more reason than before. he manoeuvred so cunningly that i could notget within half a dozen rods of him. each time, when he came to the surface,turning his head this way and that, he cooly surveyed the water and the land, andapparently chose his course so that he might come up where there was the widest expanse of water and at the greatestdistance from the boat. it was surprising how quickly he made uphis mind and put his resolve into
execution. he led me at once to the widest part of thepond, and could not be driven from it. while he was thinking one thing in hisbrain, i was endeavoring to divine his thought in mine. it was a pretty game, played on the smoothsurface of the pond, a man against a loon. suddenly your adversary's checkerdisappears beneath the board, and the problem is to place yours nearest to wherehis will appear again. sometimes he would come up unexpectedly onthe opposite side of me, having apparently passed directly under the boat.
so long-winded was he and so unweariable,that when he had swum farthest he would immediately plunge again, nevertheless; andthen no wit could divine where in the deep pond, beneath the smooth surface, he might be speeding his way like a fish, for he hadtime and ability to visit the bottom of the pond in its deepest part. it is said that loons have been caught inthe new york lakes eighty feet beneath the surface, with hooks set for trout--thoughwalden is deeper than that. how surprised must the fishes be to seethis ungainly visitor from another sphere speeding his way amid their schools!
yet he appeared to know his course assurely under water as on the surface, and swam much faster there. once or twice i saw a ripple where heapproached the surface, just put his head out to reconnoitre, and instantly divedagain. i found that it was as well for me to reston my oars and wait his reappearing as to endeavor to calculate where he would rise;for again and again, when i was straining my eyes over the surface one way, i would suddenly be startled by his unearthly laughbehind me. but why, after displaying so much cunning,did he invariably betray himself the moment
he came up by that loud laugh? did not his white breast enough betray him?he was indeed a silly loon, i thought. i could commonly hear the splash of thewater when he came up, and so also detected him. but after an hour he seemed as fresh asever, dived as willingly, and swam yet farther than at first. it was surprising to see how serenely hesailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the surface, doing all the workwith his webbed feet beneath. his usual note was this demoniac laughter,yet somewhat like that of a water-fowl; but
occasionally, when he had balked me mostsuccessfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than anybird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberately howls. this was his looning--perhaps the wildestsound that is ever heard here, making the woods ring far and wide.i concluded that he laughed in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources. though the sky was by this time overcast,the pond was so smooth that i could see where he broke the surface when i did nothear him.
his white breast, the stillness of the air,and the smoothness of the water were all against him. at length having come up fifty rods off, heuttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, andimmediately there came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, and i wasimpressed as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his god was angry withme; and so i left him disappearing far away on the tumultuous surface. for hours, in fall days, i watched theducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the
middle of the pond, far from the sportsman;tricks which they will have less need to practise in louisiana bayous. when compelled to rise they would sometimescircle round and round and over the pond at a considerable height, from which theycould easily see to other ponds and the river, like black motes in the sky; and, when i thought they had gone off thitherlong since, they would settle down by a slanting flight of a quarter of a mile onto a distant part which was left free; but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of walden i do not know, unlessthey love its water for the same reason
that i do. > chapter 13house-warming in october i went a-graping to the rivermeadows, and loaded myself with clusters more precious for their beauty andfragrance than for food. there, too, i admired, though i did notgather, the cranberries, small waxen gems, pendants of the meadow grass, pearly andred, which the farmer plucks with an ugly rake, leaving the smooth meadow in a snarl, heedlessly measuring them by the bushel andthe dollar only, and sells the spoils of
the meads to boston and new york; destinedto be jammed, to satisfy the tastes of lovers of nature there. so butchers rake the tongues of bison outof the prairie grass, regardless of the torn and drooping plant. the barberry's brilliant fruit was likewisefood for my eyes merely; but i collected a small store of wild apples for coddling,which the proprietor and travellers had overlooked. when chestnuts were ripe i laid up half abushel for winter. it was very exciting at that season to roamthe then boundless chestnut woods of
lincoln--they now sleep their long sleepunder the railroad--with a bag on my shoulder, and a stick to open burs with in my hand, for i did not always wait for thefrost, amid the rustling of leaves and the loud reproofs of the red squirrels and thejays, whose half-consumed nuts i sometimes stole, for the burs which they had selectedwere sure to contain sound ones. occasionally i climbed and shook the trees. they grew also behind my house, and onelarge tree, which almost overshadowed it, was, when in flower, a bouquet whichscented the whole neighborhood, but the squirrels and the jays got most of its
fruit; the last coming in flocks early inthe morning and picking the nuts out of the burs before they fell, i relinquished thesetrees to them and visited the more distant woods composed wholly of chestnut. these nuts, as far as they went, were agood substitute for bread. many other substitutes might, perhaps, befound. digging one day for fishworms, i discoveredthe ground-nut (apios tuberosa) on its string, the potato of the aborigines, asort of fabulous fruit, which i had begun to doubt if i had ever dug and eaten in childhood, as i had told, and had notdreamed it.
i had often since seen its crumpled redvelvety blossom supported by the stems of other plants without knowing it to be thesame. cultivation has well-nigh exterminated it. it has a sweetish taste, much like that ofa frost-bitten potato, and i found it better boiled than roasted. this tuber seemed like a faint promise ofnature to rear her own children and feed them simply here at some future period. in these days of fatted cattle and wavinggrain-fields this humble root, which was once the totem of an indian tribe, is quiteforgotten, or known only by its flowering
vine; but let wild nature reign here once more, and the tender and luxurious englishgrains will probably disappear before a myriad of foes, and without the care of manthe crow may carry back even the last seed of corn to the great cornfield of the indian's god in the southwest, whence he issaid to have brought it; but the now almost exterminated ground-nut will perhaps reviveand flourish in spite of frosts and wildness, prove itself indigenous, and resume its ancient importance and dignityas the diet of the hunter tribe. some indian ceres or minerva must have beenthe inventor and bestower of it; and when
the reign of poetry commences here, itsleaves and string of nuts may be represented on our works of art. already, by the first of september, i hadseen two or three small maples turned scarlet across the pond, beneath where thewhite stems of three aspens diverged, at the point of a promontory, next the water. ah, many a tale their color told!and gradually from week to week the character of each tree came out, and itadmired itself reflected in the smooth mirror of the lake. each morning the manager of this gallerysubstituted some new picture, distinguished
by more brilliant or harmonious coloring,for the old upon the walls. the wasps came by thousands to my lodge inoctober, as to winter quarters, and settled on my windows within and on the wallsoverhead, sometimes deterring visitors from entering. each morning, when they were numbed withcold, i swept some of them out, but i did not trouble myself much to get rid of them;i even felt complimented by their regarding my house as a desirable shelter. they never molested me seriously, thoughthey bedded with me; and they gradually disappeared, into what crevices i do notknow, avoiding winter and unspeakable cold.
like the wasps, before i finally went intowinter quarters in november, i used to resort to the northeast side of walden,which the sun, reflected from the pitch pine woods and the stony shore, made the fireside of the pond; it is so muchpleasanter and wholesomer to be warmed by the sun while you can be, than by anartificial fire. i thus warmed myself by the still glowingembers which the summer, like a departed hunter, had left.when i came to build my chimney i studied masonry. my bricks, being second-hand ones, requiredto be cleaned with a trowel, so that i
learned more than usual of the qualities ofbricks and trowels. the mortar on them was fifty years old, andwas said to be still growing harder; but this is one of those sayings which men loveto repeat whether they are true or not. such sayings themselves grow harder andadhere more firmly with age, and it would take many blows with a trowel to clean anold wiseacre of them. many of the villages of mesopotamia arebuilt of second-hand bricks of a very good quality, obtained from the ruins ofbabylon, and the cement on them is older and probably harder still. however that may be, i was struck by thepeculiar toughness of the steel which bore
so many violent blows without being wornout. as my bricks had been in a chimney before,though i did not read the name of nebuchadnezzar on them, i picked out asmany fireplace bricks as i could find, to save work and waste, and i filled the spaces between the bricks about thefireplace with stones from the pond shore, and also made my mortar with the white sandfrom the same place. i lingered most about the fireplace, as themost vital part of the house. indeed, i worked so deliberately, thatthough i commenced at the ground in the morning, a course of bricks raised a fewinches above the floor served for my pillow
at night; yet i did not get a stiff neck for it that i remember; my stiff neck is ofolder date. i took a poet to board for a fortnightabout those times, which caused me to be put to it for room. he brought his own knife, though i had two,and we used to scour them by thrusting them into the earth.he shared with me the labors of cooking. i was pleased to see my work rising sosquare and solid by degrees, and reflected, that, if it proceeded slowly, it wascalculated to endure a long time. the chimney is to some extent anindependent structure, standing on the
ground, and rising through the house to theheavens; even after the house is burned it still stands sometimes, and its importanceand independence are apparent. this was toward the end of summer.it was now november. the north wind had already begun to coolthe pond, though it took many weeks of steady blowing to accomplish it, it is sodeep. when i began to have a fire at evening,before i plastered my house, the chimney carried smoke particularly well, because ofthe numerous chinks between the boards. yet i passed some cheerful evenings in thatcool and airy apartment, surrounded by the rough brown boards full of knots, andrafters with the bark on high overhead.
my house never pleased my eye so much afterit was plastered, though i was obliged to confess that it was more comfortable. should not every apartment in which mandwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickeringshadows may play at evening about the rafters? these forms are more agreeable to the fancyand imagination than fresco paintings or other the most expensive furniture. i now first began to inhabit my house, imay say, when i began to use it for warmth as well as shelter.
i had got a couple of old fire-dogs to keepthe wood from the hearth, and it did me good to see the soot form on the back ofthe chimney which i had built, and i poked the fire with more right and moresatisfaction than usual. my dwelling was small, and i could hardlyentertain an echo in it; but it seemed larger for being a single apartment andremote from neighbors. all the attractions of a house wereconcentrated in one room; it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; andwhatever satisfaction parent or child, master or servant, derive from living in ahouse, i enjoyed it all. cato says, the master of a family(patremfamilias) must have in his rustic
villa "cellam oleariam, vinariam, doliamulta, uti lubeat caritatem expectare, et rei, et virtuti, et gloriae erit," that is, "an oil and wine cellar, many casks, sothat it may be pleasant to expect hard times; it will be for his advantage, andvirtue, and glory." i had in my cellar a firkin of potatoes,about two quarts of peas with the weevil in them, and on my shelf a little rice, a jugof molasses, and of rye and indian meal a peck each. i sometimes dream of a larger and morepopulous house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and withoutgingerbread work, which shall still consist
of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, withoutceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lowerheaven over one's head--useful to keep off rain and snow, where the king and queen posts stand out to receive your homage,when you have done reverence to the prostrate saturn of an older dynasty onstepping over the sill; a cavernous house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole to see the roof; where some may livein the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some on settles, some at oneend of the hall, some at another, and some
aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose; a house which you have got intowhen you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; where the wearytraveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in atempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing forhouse-keeping; where you can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg, that a manshould use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, storehouse, and garret;where you can see so necessary a thing, as
a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, andpay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner, and the oven that bakes yourbread, and the necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments; where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, northe mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trap-door,when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you withoutstamping. a house whose inside is as open andmanifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot
go in at the front door and out at the backwithout seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to becarefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and toldto make yourself at home there--in solitary confinement. nowadays the host does not admit you to hishearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, andhospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. there is as much secrecy about the cookingas if he had a design to poison you.
i am aware that i have been on many a man'spremises, and might have been legally ordered off, but i am not aware that i havebeen in many men's houses. i might visit in my old clothes a king andqueen who lived simply in such a house as i have described, if i were going their way;but backing out of a modern palace will be all that i shall desire to learn, if ever iam caught in one. it would seem as if the very language ofour parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our livespass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched, through slidesand dumb-waiters, as it were; in other
words, the parlor is so far from thekitchen and workshop. the dinner even is only the parable of adinner, commonly. as if only the savage dwelt near enough tonature and truth to borrow a trope from them. how can the scholar, who dwells away in thenorth west territory or the isle of man, tell what is parliamentary in the kitchen? however, only one or two of my guests wereever bold enough to stay and eat a hasty- pudding with me; but when they saw thatcrisis approaching they beat a hasty retreat rather, as if it would shake thehouse to its foundations.
nevertheless, it stood through a great manyhasty-puddings. i did not plaster till it was freezingweather. i brought over some whiter and cleaner sandfor this purpose from the opposite shore of the pond in a boat, a sort of conveyancewhich would have tempted me to go much farther if necessary. my house had in the meanwhile been shingleddown to the ground on every side. in lathing i was pleased to be able to sendhome each nail with a single blow of the hammer, and it was my ambition to transferthe plaster from the board to the wall neatly and rapidly.
i remembered the story of a conceitedfellow, who, in fine clothes, was wont to lounge about the village once, givingadvice to workmen. venturing one day to substitute deeds forwords, he turned up his cuffs, seized a plasterer's board, and having loaded histrowel without mishap, with a complacent look toward the lathing overhead, made a bold gesture thitherward; and straightway,to his complete discomfiture, received the whole contents in his ruffled bosom. i admired anew the economy and convenienceof plastering, which so effectually shuts out the cold and takes a handsome finish,and i learned the various casualties to
which the plasterer is liable. i was surprised to see how thirsty thebricks were which drank up all the moisture in my plaster before i had smoothed it, andhow many pailfuls of water it takes to christen a new hearth. i had the previous winter made a smallquantity of lime by burning the shells of the unio fluviatilis, which our riveraffords, for the sake of the experiment; so that i knew where my materials came from. i might have got good limestone within amile or two and burned it myself, if i had cared to do so.
the pond had in the meanwhile skimmed overin the shadiest and shallowest coves, some days or even weeks before the generalfreezing. the first ice is especially interesting andperfect, being hard, dark, and transparent, and affords the best opportunity that everoffers for examining the bottom where it is shallow; for you can lie at your length on ice only an inch thick, like a skaterinsect on the surface of the water, and study the bottom at your leisure, only twoor three inches distant, like a picture behind a glass, and the water isnecessarily always smooth then. there are many furrows in the sand wheresome creature has travelled about and
doubled on its tracks; and, for wrecks, itis strewn with the cases of caddis-worms made of minute grains of white quartz. perhaps these have creased it, for you findsome of their cases in the furrows, though they are deep and broad for them to make. but the ice itself is the object of mostinterest, though you must improve the earliest opportunity to study it. if you examine it closely the morning afterit freezes, you find that the greater part of the bubbles, which at first appeared tobe within it, are against its under surface, and that more are continually
rising from the bottom; while the ice is asyet comparatively solid and dark, that is, you see the water through it. these bubbles are from an eightieth to aneighth of an inch in diameter, very clear and beautiful, and you see your facereflected in them through the ice. there may be thirty or forty of them to asquare inch. there are also already within the icenarrow oblong perpendicular bubbles about half an inch long, sharp cones with theapex upward; or oftener, if the ice is quite fresh, minute spherical bubbles one directly above another, like a string ofbeads.
but these within the ice are not sonumerous nor obvious as those beneath. i sometimes used to cast on stones to trythe strength of the ice, and those which broke through carried in air with them,which formed very large and conspicuous white bubbles beneath. one day when i came to the same placeforty-eight hours afterward, i found that those large bubbles were still perfect,though an inch more of ice had formed, as i could see distinctly by the seam in theedge of a cake. but as the last two days had been verywarm, like an indian summer, the ice was not now transparent, showing the dark greencolor of the water, and the bottom, but
opaque and whitish or gray, and though twice as thick was hardly stronger thanbefore, for the air bubbles had greatly expanded under this heat and run together,and lost their regularity; they were no longer one directly over another, but often like silvery coins poured from a bag, oneoverlapping another, or in thin flakes, as if occupying slight cleavages.the beauty of the ice was gone, and it was too late to study the bottom. being curious to know what position mygreat bubbles occupied with regard to the new ice, i broke out a cake containing amiddling sized one, and turned it bottom
upward. the new ice had formed around and under thebubble, so that it was included between the two ices. it was wholly in the lower ice, but closeagainst the upper, and was flattish, or perhaps slightly lenticular, with a roundededge, a quarter of an inch deep by four inches in diameter; and i was surprised to find that directly under the bubble the icewas melted with great regularity in the form of a saucer reversed, to the height offive eighths of an inch in the middle, leaving a thin partition there between the
water and the bubble, hardly an eighth ofan inch thick; and in many places the small bubbles in this partition had burst outdownward, and probably there was no ice at all under the largest bubbles, which were afoot in diameter. i inferred that the infinite number ofminute bubbles which i had first seen against the under surface of the ice werenow frozen in likewise, and that each, in its degree, had operated like a burning- glass on the ice beneath to melt and rotit. these are the little air-guns whichcontribute to make the ice crack and whoop. at length the winter set in good earnest,just as i had finished plastering, and the
wind began to howl around the house as ifit had not had permission to do so till then. night after night the geese came lumberingin the dark with a clangor and a whistling of wings, even after the ground was coveredwith snow, some to alight in walden, and some flying low over the woods toward fairhaven, bound for mexico. several times, when returning from thevillage at ten or eleven o'clock at night, i heard the tread of a flock of geese, orelse ducks, on the dry leaves in the woods by a pond-hole behind my dwelling, where they had come up to feed, and the fainthonk or quack of their leader as they
hurried off. in 1845 walden froze entirely over for thefirst time on the night of the 22d of december, flint's and other shallower pondsand the river having been frozen ten days or more; in '46, the 16th; in '49, about the 31st; and in '50, about the 27th ofdecember; in '52, the 5th of january; in '53, the 31st of december. the snow had already covered the groundsince the 25th of november, and surrounded me suddenly with the scenery of winter. i withdrew yet farther into my shell, andendeavored to keep a bright fire both
within my house and within my breast. my employment out of doors now was tocollect the dead wood in the forest, bringing it in my hands or on my shoulders,or sometimes trailing a dead pine tree under each arm to my shed. an old forest fence which had seen its bestdays was a great haul for me. i sacrificed it to vulcan, for it was pastserving the god terminus. how much more interesting an event is thatman's supper who has just been forth in the snow to hunt, nay, you might say, steal,the fuel to cook it with! his bread and meat are sweet.
there are enough fagots and waste wood ofall kinds in the forests of most of our towns to support many fires, but which atpresent warm none, and, some think, hinder the growth of the young wood. there was also the driftwood of the pond.in the course of the summer i had discovered a raft of pitch pine logs withthe bark on, pinned together by the irish when the railroad was built. this i hauled up partly on the shore.after soaking two years and then lying high six months it was perfectly sound, thoughwaterlogged past drying. i amused myself one winter day with slidingthis piecemeal across the pond, nearly half
a mile, skating behind with one end of alog fifteen feet long on my shoulder, and the other on the ice; or i tied several logs together with a birch withe, and then,with a longer birch or alder which had a hook at the end, dragged them across. though completely waterlogged and almost asheavy as lead, they not only burned long, but made a very hot fire; nay, i thoughtthat they burned better for the soaking, as if the pitch, being confined by the water,burned longer, as in a lamp. gilpin, in his account of the forestborderers of england, says that "the encroachments of trespassers, and thehouses and fences thus raised on the
borders of the forest," were "considered as great nuisances by the old forest law, andwere severely punished under the name of purprestures, as tending ad terroremferarum--ad nocumentum forestae, etc.," to the frightening of the game and thedetriment of the forest. but i was interested in the preservation ofthe venison and the vert more than the hunters or woodchoppers, and as much asthough i had been the lord warden himself; and if any part was burned, though i burned it myself by accident, i grieved with agrief that lasted longer and was more inconsolable than that of the proprietors;nay, i grieved when it was cut down by the
proprietors themselves. i would that our farmers when they cut downa forest felt some of that awe which the old romans did when they came to thin, orlet in the light to, a consecrated grove (lucum conlucare), that is, would believethat it is sacred to some god. the roman made an expiatory offering, andprayed, whatever god or goddess thou art to whom this grove is sacred, be propitious tome, my family, and children, etc. it is remarkable what a value is still putupon wood even in this age and in this new country, a value more permanent anduniversal than that of gold. after all our discoveries and inventions noman will go by a pile of wood.
it is as precious to us as it was to oursaxon and norman ancestors. if they made their bows of it, we make ourgun-stocks of it. michaux, more than thirty years ago, saysthat the price of wood for fuel in new york and philadelphia "nearly equals, andsometimes exceeds, that of the best wood in paris, though this immense capital annually requires more than three hundred thousandcords, and is surrounded to the distance of three hundred miles by cultivated plains." in this town the price of wood rises almoststeadily, and the only question is, how much higher it is to be this year than itwas the last.
mechanics and tradesmen who come in personto the forest on no other errand, are sure to attend the wood auction, and even pay ahigh price for the privilege of gleaning after the woodchopper. it is now many years that men have resortedto the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts: the new englander and the newhollander, the parisian and the celt, the farmer and robin hood, goody blake and harry gill; in most parts of the world theprince and the peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticksfrom the forest to warm them and cook their food.
neither could i do without them.every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection. i love to have mine before my window, andthe more chips the better to remind me of my pleasing work. i had an old axe which nobody claimed, withwhich by spells in winter days, on the sunny side of the house, i played about thestumps which i had got out of my bean- field. as my driver prophesied when i was plowing,they warmed me twice--once while i was splitting them, and again when they were onthe fire, so that no fuel could give out
more heat. as for the axe, i was advised to get thevillage blacksmith to "jump" it; but i jumped him, and, putting a hickory helvefrom the woods into it, made it do. if it was dull, it was at least hung true. a few pieces of fat pine were a greattreasure. it is interesting to remember how much ofthis food for fire is still concealed in the bowels of the earth. in previous years i had often goneprospecting over some bare hillside, where a pitch pine wood had formerly stood, andgot out the fat pine roots.
they are almost indestructible. stumps thirty or forty years old, at least,will still be sound at the core, though the sapwood has all become vegetable mould, asappears by the scales of the thick bark forming a ring level with the earth four orfive inches distant from the heart. with axe and shovel you explore this mine,and follow the marrowy store, yellow as beef tallow, or as if you had struck on avein of gold, deep into the earth. but commonly i kindled my fire with the dryleaves of the forest, which i had stored up in my shed before the snow came. green hickory finely split makes thewoodchopper's kindlings, when he has a camp
in the woods.once in a while i got a little of this. when the villagers were lighting theirfires beyond the horizon, i too gave notice to the various wild inhabitants of waldenvale, by a smoky streamer from my chimney, that i was awake.-- light-winged smoke, icarian bird,melting thy pinions in thy upward flight, lark without song, and messenger of dawn,circling above the hamlets as thy nest; or else, departing dream, and shadowy formof midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts;by night star-veiling, and by day darkening the light and blotting out thesun;
go thou my incense upward from this hearth,and ask the gods to pardon this clear flame. hard green wood just cut, though i used butlittle of that, answered my purpose better than any other. i sometimes left a good fire when i went totake a walk in a winter afternoon; and when i returned, three or four hours afterward,it would be still alive and glowing. my house was not empty though i was gone. it was as if i had left a cheerfulhousekeeper behind. it was i and fire that lived there; andcommonly my housekeeper proved trustworthy.
one day, however, as i was splitting wood,i thought that i would just look in at the window and see if the house was not onfire; it was the only time i remember to have been particularly anxious on this score; so i looked and saw that a spark hadcaught my bed, and i went in and extinguished it when it had burned a placeas big as my hand. but my house occupied so sunny andsheltered a position, and its roof was so low, that i could afford to let the fire goout in the middle of almost any winter day. the moles nested in my cellar, nibblingevery third potato, and making a snug bed even there of some hair left afterplastering and of brown paper; for even the
wildest animals love comfort and warmth as well as man, and they survive the winteronly because they are so careful to secure them.some of my friends spoke as if i was coming to the woods on purpose to freeze myself. the animal merely makes a bed, which hewarms with his body, in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes upsome air in a spacious apartment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in which he can move aboutdivested of more cumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of summer in the midst ofwinter, and by means of windows even admit
the light, and with a lamp lengthen out theday. thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct,and saves a little time for the fine arts. though, when i had been exposed to therudest blasts a long time, my whole body began to grow torpid, when i reached thegenial atmosphere of my house i soon recovered my faculties and prolonged mylife. but the most luxuriously housed has littleto boast of in this respect, nor need we trouble ourselves to speculate how thehuman race may be at last destroyed. it would be easy to cut their threads anytime with a little sharper blast from the north.
we go on dating from cold fridays and greatsnows; but a little colder friday, or greater snow would put a period to man'sexistence on the globe. the next winter i used a small cooking-stove for economy, since i did not own the forest; but it did not keep fire so well asthe open fireplace. cooking was then, for the most part, nolonger a poetic, but merely a chemic process. it will soon be forgotten, in these days ofstoves, that we used to roast potatoes in the ashes, after the indian fashion. the stove not only took up room and scentedthe house, but it concealed the fire, and i
felt as if i had lost a companion.you can always see a face in the fire. the laborer, looking into it at evening,purifies his thoughts of the dross and earthiness which they have accumulatedduring the day. but i could no longer sit and look into thefire, and the pertinent words of a poet recurred to me with new force.-- "never, bright flame, may be denied to methy dear, life imaging, close sympathy. what but my hopes shot upwarde'er so bright? what but my fortunes sunkso low in night? why art thou banished fromour hearth and hall,
thou who art welcomedand beloved by all? was thy existence then too fancifulfor our life's common light, who are so dull? did thy bright gleam mysteriousconverse hold with our congenial souls?secrets too bold? well, we are safe and strong,for now we sit beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit, where nothing cheers nor saddens,but a fire warms feet and handsnor does to more aspire;
by whose compact utilitarian heapthe present may sit down and go to sleep, nor fear the ghostswho from the dim past walked, and with us by the unequal light of the oldwood fire talked." chapter 14former inhabitants and winter visitors i weathered some merry snow-storms, andspent some cheerful winter evenings by my fireside, while the snow whirled wildlywithout, and even the hooting of the owl was hushed. for many weeks i met no one in my walks butthose who came occasionally to cut wood and sled it to the village.
the elements, however, abetted me in makinga path through the deepest snow in the woods, for when i had once gone through thewind blew the oak leaves into my tracks, where they lodged, and by absorbing the rays of the sun melted the snow, and so notonly made a my bed for my feet, but in the night their dark line was my guide.for human society i was obliged to conjure up the former occupants of these woods. within the memory of many of my townsmenthe road near which my house stands resounded with the laugh and gossip ofinhabitants, and the woods which border it were notched and dotted here and there with
their little gardens and dwellings, thoughit was then much more shut in by the forest than now. in some places, within my own remembrance,the pines would scrape both sides of a chaise at once, and women and children whowere compelled to go this way to lincoln alone and on foot did it with fear, andoften ran a good part of the distance. though mainly but a humble route toneighboring villages, or for the woodman's team, it once amused the traveller morethan now by its variety, and lingered longer in his memory. where now firm open fields stretch from thevillage to the woods, it then ran through a
maple swamp on a foundation of logs, theremnants of which, doubtless, still underlie the present dusty highway, from the stratton, now the alms-house farm, tobrister's hill. east of my bean-field, across the road,lived cato ingraham, slave of duncan ingraham, esquire, gentleman, of concordvillage, who built his slave a house, and gave him permission to live in walden woods;--cato, not uticensis, butconcordiensis. some say that he was a guinea negro. there are a few who remember his littlepatch among the walnuts, which he let grow
up till he should be old and need them; buta younger and whiter speculator got them at last. he too, however, occupies an equally narrowhouse at present. cato's half-obliterated cellar-hole stillremains, though known to few, being concealed from the traveller by a fringe ofpines. it is now filled with the smooth sumach(rhus glabra), and one of the earliest species of goldenrod (solidago stricta)grows there luxuriantly. here, by the very corner of my field, stillnearer to town, zilpha, a colored woman, had her little house, where she spun linenfor the townsfolk, making the walden woods
ring with her shrill singing, for she had aloud and notable voice. at length, in the war of 1812, her dwellingwas set on fire by english soldiers, prisoners on parole, when she was away, andher cat and dog and hens were all burned up together. she led a hard life, and somewhat inhumane. one old frequenter of these woodsremembers, that as he passed her house one noon he heard her muttering to herself overher gurgling pot--"ye are all bones, bones!" i have seen bricks amid the oak copsethere.
down the road, on the right hand, onbrister's hill, lived brister freeman, "a handy negro," slave of squire cummingsonce--there where grow still the apple trees which brister planted and tended; large old trees now, but their fruit stillwild and ciderish to my taste. not long since i read his epitaph in theold lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of somebritish grenadiers who fell in the retreat from concord--where he is styled "sippio brister"--scipio africanus he had sometitle to be called--"a man of color," as if he were discolored.
it also told me, with staring emphasis,when he died; which was but an indirect way of informing me that he ever lived. with him dwelt fenda, his hospitable wife,who told fortunes, yet pleasantly--large, round, and black, blacker than any of thechildren of night, such a dusky orb as never rose on concord before or since. farther down the hill, on the left, on theold road in the woods, are marks of some homestead of the stratton family; whoseorchard once covered all the slope of brister's hill, but was long since killed out by pitch pines, excepting a few stumps,whose old roots furnish still the wild
stocks of many a thrifty village tree. nearer yet to town, you come to breed'slocation, on the other side of the way, just on the edge of the wood; ground famousfor the pranks of a demon not distinctly named in old mythology, who has acted a prominent and astounding part in our newengland life, and deserves, as much as any mythological character, to have hisbiography written one day; who first comes in the guise of a friend or hired man, and then robs and murders the whole family--new-england rum. but history must not yet tell the tragediesenacted here; let time intervene in some
measure to assuage and lend an azure tintto them. here the most indistinct and dubioustradition says that once a tavern stood; the well the same, which tempered thetraveller's beverage and refreshed his steed. here then men saluted one another, andheard and told the news, and went their ways again.breed's hut was standing only a dozen years ago, though it had long been unoccupied. it was about the size of mine.it was set on fire by mischievous boys, one election night, if i do not mistake.
i lived on the edge of the village then,and had just lost myself over davenant's "gondibert," that winter that i laboredwith a lethargy--which, by the way, i never knew whether to regard as a family complaint, having an uncle who goes tosleep shaving himself, and is obliged to sprout potatoes in a cellar sundays, inorder to keep awake and keep the sabbath, or as the consequence of my attempt to read chalmers' collection of english poetrywithout skipping. it fairly overcame my nervii. i had just sunk my head on this when thebells rung fire, and in hot haste the
engines rolled that way, led by astraggling troop of men and boys, and i among the foremost, for i had leaped thebrook. we thought it was far south over the woods--we who had run to fires before--barn, shop, or dwelling-house, or all together. "it's baker's barn," cried one."it is the codman place," affirmed another. and then fresh sparks went up above thewood, as if the roof fell in, and we all shouted "concord to the rescue!" wagons shot past with furious speed andcrushing loads, bearing, perchance, among the rest, the agent of the insurancecompany, who was bound to go however far;
and ever and anon the engine bell tinkled behind, more slow and sure; and rearmost ofall, as it was afterward whispered, came they who set the fire and gave the alarm. thus we kept on like true idealists,rejecting the evidence of our senses, until at a turn in the road we heard thecrackling and actually felt the heat of the fire from over the wall, and realized,alas! that we were there. the very nearness of the fire but cooledour ardor. at first we thought to throw a frog-pond onto it; but concluded to let it burn, it was so far gone and so worthless.
so we stood round our engine, jostled oneanother, expressed our sentiments through speaking-trumpets, or in lower tonereferred to the great conflagrations which the world has witnessed, including bascom's shop, and, between ourselves, we thoughtthat, were we there in season with our "tub," and a full frog-pond by, we couldturn that threatened last and universal one into another flood. we finally retreated without doing anymischief--returned to sleep and "gondibert." but as for "gondibert," i would except thatpassage in the preface about wit being the
soul's powder--"but most of mankind arestrangers to wit, as indians are to powder." it chanced that i walked that way acrossthe fields the following night, about the same hour, and hearing a low moaning atthis spot, i drew near in the dark, and discovered the only survivor of the family that i know, the heir of both its virtuesand its vices, who alone was interested in this burning, lying on his stomach andlooking over the cellar wall at the still smouldering cinders beneath, muttering tohimself, as is his wont. he had been working far off in the rivermeadows all day, and had improved the first
moments that he could call his own to visitthe home of his fathers and his youth. he gazed into the cellar from all sides andpoints of view by turns, always lying down to it, as if there was some treasure, whichhe remembered, concealed between the stones, where there was absolutely nothingbut a heap of bricks and ashes. the house being gone, he looked at whatthere was left. he was soothed by the sympathy which mymere presence implied, and showed me, as well as the darkness permitted, where thewell was covered up; which, thank heaven, could never be burned; and he groped long about the wall to find the well-sweep whichhis father had cut and mounted, feeling for
the iron hook or staple by which a burdenhad been fastened to the heavy end--all that he could now cling to--to convince methat it was no common "rider." i felt it, and still remark it almost dailyin my walks, for by it hangs the history of a family. once more, on the left, where are seen thewell and lilac bushes by the wall, in the now open field, lived nutting and legrosse. but to return toward lincoln. farther in the woods than any of these,where the road approaches nearest to the pond, wyman the potter squatted, andfurnished his townsmen with earthenware,
and left descendants to succeed him. neither were they rich in worldly goods,holding the land by sufferance while they lived; and there often the sheriff came invain to collect the taxes, and "attached a chip," for form's sake, as i have read in his accounts, there being nothing else thathe could lay his hands on. one day in midsummer, when i was hoeing, aman who was carrying a load of pottery to market stopped his horse against my fieldand inquired concerning wyman the younger. he had long ago bought a potter's wheel ofhim, and wished to know what had become of i had read of the potter's clay and wheelin scripture, but it had never occurred to
me that the pots we use were not such ashad come down unbroken from those days, or grown on trees like gourds somewhere, and i was pleased to hear that so fictile an artwas ever practiced in my neighborhood. the last inhabitant of these woods beforeme was an irishman, hugh quoil (if i have spelt his name with coil enough), whooccupied wyman's tenement--col. quoil, he was called. rumor said that he had been a soldier atwaterloo. if he had lived i should have made himfight his battles over again. his trade here was that of a ditcher.
napoleon went to st. helena; quoil came towalden woods. all i know of him is tragic. he was a man of manners, like one who hadseen the world, and was capable of more civil speech than you could well attend to. he wore a greatcoat in midsummer, beingaffected with the trembling delirium, and his face was the color of carmine. he died in the road at the foot ofbrister's hill shortly after i came to the woods, so that i have not remembered him asa neighbor. before his house was pulled down, when hiscomrades avoided it as "an unlucky castle,"
i visited it. there lay his old clothes curled up by use,as if they were himself, upon his raised plank bed.his pipe lay broken on the hearth, instead of a bowl broken at the fountain. the last could never have been the symbolof his death, for he confessed to me that, though he had heard of brister's spring, hehad never seen it; and soiled cards, kings of diamonds, spades, and hearts, werescattered over the floor. one black chicken which the administratorcould not catch, black as night and as silent, not even croaking, awaitingreynard, still went to roost in the next
apartment. in the rear there was the dim outline of agarden, which had been planted but had never received its first hoeing, owing tothose terrible shaking fits, though it was now harvest time. it was overrun with roman wormwood andbeggar-ticks, which last stuck to my clothes for all fruit. the skin of a woodchuck was freshlystretched upon the back of the house, a trophy of his last waterloo; but no warmcap or mittens would he want more. now only a dent in the earth marks the siteof these dwellings, with buried cellar
stones, and strawberries, raspberries,thimble-berries, hazel-bushes, and sumachs growing in the sunny sward there; some pitch pine or gnarled oak occupies what wasthe chimney nook, and a sweet-scented black birch, perhaps, waves where the door-stonewas. sometimes the well dent is visible, whereonce a spring oozed; now dry and tearless grass; or it was covered deep--not to bediscovered till some late day--with a flat stone under the sod, when the last of therace departed. what a sorrowful act must that be--thecovering up of wells! coincident with the opening of wells of tears.
these cellar dents, like deserted foxburrows, old holes, are all that is left where once were the stir and bustle ofhuman life, and "fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute," in some form anddialect or other were by turns discussed. but all i can learn of their conclusionsamounts to just this, that "cato and brister pulled wool"; which is about asedifying as the history of more famous schools of philosophy. still grows the vivacious lilac ageneration after the door and lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding its sweet-scented flowers each spring, to be plucked by the musing traveller; planted and tended
once by children's hands, in front-yardplots--now standing by wallsides in retired pastures, and giving place to new-risingforests;--the last of that stirp, sole survivor of that family. little did the dusky children think thatthe puny slip with its two eyes only, which they stuck in the ground in the shadow ofthe house and daily watered, would root itself so, and outlive them, and house itself in the rear that shaded it, andgrown man's garden and orchard, and tell their story faintly to the lone wanderer ahalf-century after they had grown up and died--blossoming as fair, and smelling assweet, as in that first spring.
i mark its still tender, civil, cheerfullilac colors. but this small village, germ of somethingmore, why did it fail while concord keeps its ground?were there no natural advantages--no water privileges, forsooth? ay, the deep walden pond and cool brister'sspring--privilege to drink long and healthy draughts at these, all unimproved by thesemen but to dilute their glass. they were universally a thirsty race. might not the basket, stable-broom, mat-making, corn-parching, linen-spinning, and pottery business have thrived here, makingthe wilderness to blossom like the rose,
and a numerous posterity have inherited theland of their fathers? the sterile soil would at least have beenproof against a low-land degeneracy. alas! how little does the memory of thesehuman inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape! again, perhaps, nature will try, with mefor a first settler, and my house raised last spring to be the oldest in the hamlet.i am not aware that any man has ever built on the spot which i occupy. deliver me from a city built on the site ofa more ancient city, whose materials are ruins, whose gardens cemeteries.
the soil is blanched and accursed there,and before that becomes necessary the earth itself will be destroyed.with such reminiscences i repeopled the woods and lulled myself asleep. at this season i seldom had a visitor. when the snow lay deepest no wandererventured near my house for a week or fortnight at a time, but there i lived assnug as a meadow mouse, or as cattle and poultry which are said to have survived for a long time buried in drifts, even withoutfood; or like that early settler's family in the town of sutton, in this state, whosecottage was completely covered by the great
snow of 1717 when he was absent, and an indian found it only by the hole which thechimney's breath made in the drift, and so relieved the family. but no friendly indian concerned himselfabout me; nor needed he, for the master of the house was at home.the great snow! how cheerful it is to hear of! when the farmers could not get to the woodsand swamps with their teams, and were obliged to cut down the shade trees beforetheir houses, and, when the crust was harder, cut off the trees in the swamps,
ten feet from the ground, as it appearedthe next spring. in the deepest snows, the path which i usedfrom the highway to my house, about half a mile long, might have been represented by ameandering dotted line, with wide intervals between the dots. for a week of even weather i took exactlythe same number of steps, and of the same length, coming and going, steppingdeliberately and with the precision of a pair of dividers in my own deep tracks--to such routine the winter reduces us--yetoften they were filled with heaven's own blue.
but no weather interfered fatally with mywalks, or rather my going abroad, for i frequently tramped eight or ten milesthrough the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among thepines; when the ice and snow causing their limbs to droop, and so sharpening theirtops, had changed the pines into fir trees; wading to the tops of the highest hills when the show was nearly two feet deep on alevel, and shaking down another snow-storm on my head at every step; or sometimescreeping and floundering thither on my hands and knees, when the hunters had goneinto winter quarters.
one afternoon i amused myself by watching abarred owl (strix nebulosa) sitting on one of the lower dead limbs of a white pine,close to the trunk, in broad daylight, i standing within a rod of him. he could hear me when i moved and cronchedthe snow with my feet, but could not plainly see me. when i made most noise he would stretch outhis neck, and erect his neck feathers, and open his eyes wide; but their lids soonfell again, and he began to nod. i too felt a slumberous influence afterwatching him half an hour, as he sat thus with his eyes half open, like a cat, wingedbrother of the cat.
there was only a narrow slit left betweentheir lids, by which he preserved a peninsular relation to me; thus, with half-shut eyes, looking out from the land of dreams, and endeavoring to realize me, vague object or mote that interrupted hisvisions. at length, on some louder noise or mynearer approach, he would grow uneasy and sluggishly turn about on his perch, as ifimpatient at having his dreams disturbed; and when he launched himself off and flapped through the pines, spreading hiswings to unexpected breadth, i could not hear the slightest sound from them.
thus, guided amid the pine boughs rather bya delicate sense of their neighborhood than by sight, feeling his twilight way, as itwere, with his sensitive pinions, he found a new perch, where he might in peace awaitthe dawning of his day. as i walked over the long causeway made forthe railroad through the meadows, i encountered many a blustering and nippingwind, for nowhere has it freer play; and when the frost had smitten me on one cheek, heathen as i was, i turned to it the otheralso. nor was it much better by the carriage roadfrom brister's hill. for i came to town still, like a friendlyindian, when the contents of the broad open
fields were all piled up between the wallsof the walden road, and half an hour sufficed to obliterate the tracks of thelast traveller. and when i returned new drifts would haveformed, through which i floundered, where the busy northwest wind had been depositingthe powdery snow round a sharp angle in the road, and not a rabbit's track, nor even the fine print, the small type, of a meadowmouse was to be seen. yet i rarely failed to find, even inmidwinter, some warm and springly swamp where the grass and the skunk-cabbage stillput forth with perennial verdure, and some hardier bird occasionally awaited thereturn of spring.
sometimes, notwithstanding the snow, when ireturned from my walk at evening i crossed the deep tracks of a woodchopper leadingfrom my door, and found his pile of whittlings on the hearth, and my housefilled with the odor of his pipe. or on a sunday afternoon, if i chanced tobe at home, i heard the cronching of the snow made by the step of a long-headedfarmer, who from far through the woods sought my house, to have a social "crack"; one of the few of his vocation who are "menon their farms"; who donned a frock instead of a professor's gown, and is as ready toextract the moral out of church or state as to haul a load of manure from his barn-yard.
we talked of rude and simple times, whenmen sat about large fires in cold, bracing weather, with clear heads; and when otherdessert failed, we tried our teeth on many a nut which wise squirrels have long since abandoned, for those which have thethickest shells are commonly empty. the one who came from farthest to my lodge,through deepest snows and most dismal tempests, was a poet. a farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter,even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he isactuated by pure love. who can predict his comings and goings?
his business calls him out at all hours,even when doctors sleep. we made that small house ring withboisterous mirth and resound with the murmur of much sober talk, making amendsthen to walden vale for the long silences. broadway was still and deserted incomparison. at suitable intervals there were regularsalutes of laughter, which might have been referred indifferently to the last-utteredor the forth-coming jest. we made many a "bran new" theory of lifeover a thin dish of gruel, which combined the advantages of conviviality with theclear-headedness which philosophy requires. i should not forget that during my lastwinter at the pond there was another
welcome visitor, who at one time camethrough the village, through snow and rain and darkness, till he saw my lamp through the trees, and shared with me some longwinter evenings. one of the last of the philosophers--connecticut gave him to the world--he peddled first her wares, afterwards, as hedeclares, his brains. these he peddles still, prompting god anddisgracing man, bearing for fruit his brain only, like the nut its kernel.i think that he must be the man of the most faith of any alive. his words and attitude always suppose abetter state of things than other men are
acquainted with, and he will be the lastman to be disappointed as the ages revolve. he has no venture in the present. but though comparatively disregarded now,when his day comes, laws unsuspected by most will take effect, and masters offamilies and rulers will come to him for advice. "how blind that cannot see serenity!"a true friend of man; almost the only friend of human progress. an old mortality, say rather animmortality, with unwearied patience and faith making plain the image engraven inmen's bodies, the god of whom they are but
defaced and leaning monuments. with his hospitable intellect he embraceschildren, beggars, insane, and scholars, and entertains the thought of all, addingto it commonly some breadth and elegance. i think that he should keep a caravansaryon the world's highway, where philosophers of all nations might put up, and on hissign should be printed, "entertainment for man, but not for his beast. enter ye that have leisure and a quietmind, who earnestly seek the right road." he is perhaps the sanest man and has thefewest crotchets of any i chance to know; the same yesterday and tomorrow.
of yore we had sauntered and talked, andeffectually put the world behind us; for he was pledged to no institution in it,freeborn, ingenuus. whichever way we turned, it seemed that theheavens and the earth had met together, since he enhanced the beauty of thelandscape. a blue-robed man, whose fittest roof is theoverarching sky which reflects his serenity.i do not see how he can ever die; nature cannot spare him. having each some shingles of thought welldried, we sat and whittled them, trying our knives, and admiring the clear yellowishgrain of the pumpkin pine.
we waded so gently and reverently, or wepulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not scared from thestream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which float through the western sky, andthe mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there. there we worked, revising mythology,rounding a fable here and there, and building castles in the air for which earthoffered no worthy foundation. great looker! great expecter! to converse with whom was anew england night's entertainment.
ah! such discourse we had, hermit andphilosopher, and the old settler i have spoken of--we three--it expanded and rackedmy little house; i should not dare to say how many pounds' weight there was above the atmospheric pressure on every circularinch; it opened its seams so that they had to be calked with much dulness thereafterto stop the consequent leak;--but i had enough of that kind of oakum alreadypicked. there was one other with whom i had "solidseasons," long to be remembered, at his house in the village, and who looked inupon me from time to time; but i had no more for society there.
there too, as everywhere, i sometimesexpected the visitor who never comes. the vishnu purana says, "the house-holderis to remain at eventide in his courtyard as long as it takes to milk a cow, orlonger if he pleases, to await the arrival of a guest." i often performed this duty of hospitality,waited long enough to milk a whole herd of cows, but did not see the man approachingfrom the town. chapter 15winter animals when the ponds were firmly frozen, theyafforded not only new and shorter routes to many points, but new views from theirsurfaces of the familiar landscape around
when i crossed flint's pond, after it wascovered with snow, though i had often paddled about and skated over it, it was sounexpectedly wide and so strange that i could think of nothing but baffin's bay. the lincoln hills rose up around me at theextremity of a snowy plain, in which i did not remember to have stood before; and thefishermen, at an indeterminable distance over the ice, moving slowly about with their wolfish dogs, passed for sealers, oresquimaux, or in misty weather loomed like fabulous creatures, and i did not knowwhether they were giants or pygmies. i took this course when i went to lecturein lincoln in the evening, travelling in no
road and passing no house between my ownhut and the lecture room. in goose pond, which lay in my way, acolony of muskrats dwelt, and raised their cabins high above the ice, though nonecould be seen abroad when i crossed it. walden, being like the rest usually bare ofsnow, or with only shallow and interrupted drifts on it, was my yard where i couldwalk freely when the snow was nearly two feet deep on a level elsewhere and thevillagers were confined to their streets. there, far from the village street, andexcept at very long intervals, from the jingle of sleigh-bells, i slid and skated,as in a vast moose-yard well trodden, overhung by oak woods and solemn pines bentdown with snow or bristling with icicles.
for sounds in winter nights, and often inwinter days, i heard the forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owlindefinitely far; such a sound as the frozen earth would yield if struck with a suitable plectrum, the very linguavernacula of walden wood, and quite familiar to me at last, though i never sawthe bird while it was making it. i seldom opened my door in a winter eveningwithout hearing it; hoo hoo hoo, hoorer, hoo, sounded sonorously, and the firstthree syllables accented somewhat like how der do; or sometimes hoo, hoo only. one night in the beginning of winter,before the pond froze over, about nine
o'clock, i was startled by the loud honkingof a goose, and, stepping to the door, heard the sound of their wings like a tempest in the woods as they flew low overmy house. they passed over the pond toward fairhaven, seemingly deterred from settling by my light, their commodore honking all thewhile with a regular beat. suddenly an unmistakable cat-owl from verynear me, with the most harsh and tremendous voice i ever heard from any inhabitant ofthe woods, responded at regular intervals to the goose, as if determined to expose and disgrace this intruder from hudson'sbay by exhibiting a greater compass and
volume of voice in a native, and boo-hoohim out of concord horizon. what do you mean by alarming the citadel atthis time of night consecrated to me? do you think i am ever caught napping atsuch an hour, and that i have not got lungs and a larynx as well as yourself? boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-hoo!it was one of the most thrilling discords i ever heard. and yet, if you had a discriminating ear,there were in it the elements of a concord such as these plains never saw nor heard. i also heard the whooping of the ice in thepond, my great bed-fellow in that part of
concord, as if it were restless in its bedand would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and had dreams; or i was waked by the cracking of the ground by thefrost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning wouldfind a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide. sometimes i heard the foxes as they rangedover the snow-crust, in moonlight nights, in search of a partridge or other game,barking raggedly and demoniacally like forest dogs, as if laboring with some anxiety, or seeking expression, strugglingfor light and to be dogs outright and run
freely in the streets; for if we take theages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as wellas men? they seemed to me to be rudimental,burrowing men, still standing on their defence, awaiting their transformation. sometimes one came near to my window,attracted by my light, barked a vulpine curse at me, and then retreated. usually the red squirrel (sciurushudsonius) waked me in the dawn, coursing over the roof and up and down the sides ofthe house, as if sent out of the woods for this purpose.
in the course of the winter i threw outhalf a bushel of ears of sweet corn, which had not got ripe, on to the snow-crust bymy door, and was amused by watching the motions of the various animals which werebaited by it. in the twilight and the night the rabbitscame regularly and made a hearty meal. all day long the red squirrels came andwent, and afforded me much entertainment by their manoeuvres. one would approach at first warily throughthe shrub oaks, running over the snow-crust by fits and starts like a leaf blown by thewind, now a few paces this way, with wonderful speed and waste of energy, making
inconceivable haste with his "trotters," asif it were for a wager, and now as many paces that way, but never getting on morethan half a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somerset, as ifall the eyes in the universe were eyed on him--for all the motions of a squirrel,even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much as those of a dancing girl--wasting more time indelay and circumspection than would have sufficed to walk the whole distance--inever saw one walk--and then suddenly, before you could say jack robinson, he
would be in the top of a young pitch pine,winding up his clock and chiding all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing andtalking to all the universe at the same time--for no reason that i could ever detect, or he himself was aware of, isuspect. at length he would reach the corn, andselecting a suitable ear, frisk about in the same uncertain trigonometrical way tothe topmost stick of my wood-pile, before my window, where he looked me in the face, and there sit for hours, supplying himselfwith a new ear from time to time, nibbling at first voraciously and throwing the half-naked cobs about; till at length he grew
more dainty still and played with his food, tasting only the inside of the kernel, andthe ear, which was held balanced over the stick by one paw, slipped from his carelessgrasp and fell to the ground, when he would look over at it with a ludicrous expression of uncertainty, as if suspecting that ithad life, with a mind not made up whether to get it again, or a new one, or be off;now thinking of corn, then listening to hear what was in the wind. so the little impudent fellow would wastemany an ear in a forenoon; till at last, seizing some longer and plumper one,considerably bigger than himself, and
skilfully balancing it, he would set out with it to the woods, like a tiger with abuffalo, by the same zig-zag course and frequent pauses, scratching along with itas if it were too heavy for him and falling all the while, making its fall a diagonal between a perpendicular and horizontal,being determined to put it through at any rate;--a singularly frivolous and whimsicalfellow;--and so he would get off with it to where he lived, perhaps carry it to the top of a pine tree forty or fifty rods distant,and i would afterwards find the cobs strewn about the woods in various directions.
at length the jays arrive, whose discordantscreams were heard long before, as they were warily making their approach an eighthof a mile off, and in a stealthy and sneaking manner they flit from tree to tree, nearer and nearer, and pick up thekernels which the squirrels have dropped. then, sitting on a pitch pine bough, theyattempt to swallow in their haste a kernel which is too big for their throats andchokes them; and after great labor they disgorge it, and spend an hour in the endeavor to crack it by repeated blows withtheir bills. they were manifestly thieves, and i had notmuch respect for them; but the squirrels,
though at first shy, went to work as ifthey were taking what was their own. meanwhile also came the chickadees inflocks, which, picking up the crumbs the squirrels had dropped, flew to the nearesttwig and, placing them under their claws, hammered away at them with their little bills, as if it were an insect in the bark,till they were sufficiently reduced for their slender throats. a little flock of these titmice came dailyto pick a dinner out of my woodpile, or the crumbs at my door, with faint flittinglisping notes, like the tinkling of icicles in the grass, or else with sprightly day
day day, or more rarely, in spring-likedays, a wiry summery phe-be from the woodside. they were so familiar that at length onealighted on an armful of wood which i was carrying in, and pecked at the stickswithout fear. i once had a sparrow alight upon myshoulder for a moment while i was hoeing in a village garden, and i felt that i wasmore distinguished by that circumstance than i should have been by any epaulet icould have worn. the squirrels also grew at last to be quitefamiliar, and occasionally stepped upon my shoe, when that was the nearest way.
when the ground was not yet quite covered,and again near the end of winter, when the snow was melted on my south hillside andabout my wood-pile, the partridges came out of the woods morning and evening to feedthere. whichever side you walk in the woods thepartridge bursts away on whirring wings, jarring the snow from the dry leaves andtwigs on high, which comes sifting down in the sunbeams like golden dust, for thisbrave bird is not to be scared by winter. it is frequently covered up by drifts, and,it is said, "sometimes plunges from on wing into the soft snow, where it remainsconcealed for a day or two." i used to start them in the open land also,where they had come out of the woods at
sunset to "bud" the wild apple trees. they will come regularly every evening toparticular trees, where the cunning sportsman lies in wait for them, and thedistant orchards next the woods suffer thus not a little. i am glad that the partridge gets fed, atany rate. it is nature's own bird which lives on budsand diet drink. in dark winter mornings, or in short winterafternoons, i sometimes heard a pack of hounds threading all the woods withhounding cry and yelp, unable to resist the instinct of the chase, and the note of the
hunting-horn at intervals, proving that manwas in the rear. the woods ring again, and yet no fox burstsforth on to the open level of the pond, nor following pack pursuing their actaeon. and perhaps at evening i see the huntersreturning with a single brush trailing from their sleigh for a trophy, seeking theirinn. they tell me that if the fox would remainin the bosom of the frozen earth he would be safe, or if he would run in a straightline away no foxhound could overtake him; but, having left his pursuers far behind, he stops to rest and listen till they comeup, and when he runs he circles round to
his old haunts, where the hunters awaithim. sometimes, however, he will run upon a wallmany rods, and then leap off far to one side, and he appears to know that waterwill not retain his scent. a hunter told me that he once saw a foxpursued by hounds burst out on to walden when the ice was covered with shallowpuddles, run part way across, and then return to the same shore. ere long the hounds arrived, but here theylost the scent. sometimes a pack hunting by themselveswould pass my door, and circle round my house, and yelp and hound without regardingme, as if afflicted by a species of
madness, so that nothing could divert themfrom the pursuit. thus they circle until they fall upon therecent trail of a fox, for a wise hound will forsake everything else for this. one day a man came to my hut from lexingtonto inquire after his hound that made a large track, and had been hunting for aweek by himself. but i fear that he was not the wiser forall i told him, for every time i attempted to answer his questions he interrupted meby asking, "what do you do here?" he had lost a dog, but found a man. one old hunter who has a dry tongue, whoused to come to bathe in walden once every
year when the water was warmest, and atsuch times looked in upon me, told me that many years ago he took his gun one afternoon and went out for a cruise inwalden wood; and as he walked the wayland road he heard the cry of houndsapproaching, and ere long a fox leaped the wall into the road, and as quick as thought leaped the other wall out of the road, andhis swift bullet had not touched him. some way behind came an old hound and herthree pups in full pursuit, hunting on their own account, and disappeared again inthe woods. late in the afternoon, as he was resting inthe thick woods south of walden, he heard
the voice of the hounds far over towardfair haven still pursuing the fox; and on they came, their hounding cry which made all the woods ring sounding nearer andnearer, now from well meadow, now from the baker farm. for a long time he stood still and listenedto their music, so sweet to a hunter's ear, when suddenly the fox appeared, threadingthe solemn aisles with an easy coursing pace, whose sound was concealed by a sympathetic rustle of the leaves, swift andstill, keeping the round, leaving his pursuers far behind; and, leaping upon arock amid the woods, he sat erect and
listening, with his back to the hunter. for a moment compassion restrained thelatter's arm; but that was a short-lived mood, and as quick as thought can followthought his piece was levelled, and whang!- -the fox, rolling over the rock, lay deadon the ground. the hunter still kept his place andlistened to the hounds. still on they came, and now the near woodsresounded through all their aisles with their demoniac cry. at length the old hound burst into viewwith muzzle to the ground, and snapping the air as if possessed, and ran directly tothe rock; but, spying the dead fox, she
suddenly ceased her hounding as if struck dumb with amazement, and walked round andround him in silence; and one by one her pups arrived, and, like their mother, weresobered into silence by the mystery. then the hunter came forward and stood intheir midst, and the mystery was solved. they waited in silence while he skinned thefox, then followed the brush a while, and at length turned off into the woods again. that evening a weston squire came to theconcord hunter's cottage to inquire for his hounds, and told how for a week they hadbeen hunting on their own account from weston woods.
the concord hunter told him what he knewand offered him the skin; but the other declined it and departed. he did not find his hounds that night, butthe next day learned that they had crossed the river and put up at a farmhouse for thenight, whence, having been well fed, they took their departure early in the morning. the hunter who told me this could rememberone sam nutting, who used to hunt bears on fair haven ledges, and exchange their skinsfor rum in concord village; who told him, even, that he had seen a moose there. nutting had a famous foxhound namedburgoyne--he pronounced it bugine--which my
informant used to borrow. in the "wast book" of an old trader of thistown, who was also a captain, town-clerk, and representative, i find the followingentry. jan. 18th, 1742-3, "john melven cr. by 1 greyfox 0--2--3"; they are not now found here; and in his ledger, feb, 7th, 1743, hezekiahstratton has credit "by 1/2 a catt skin 0-- 1--4-1/2"; of course, a wild-cat, for stratton was a sergeant in the old frenchwar, and would not have got credit for hunting less noble game.credit is given for deerskins also, and
they were daily sold. one man still preserves the horns of thelast deer that was killed in this vicinity, and another has told me the particulars ofthe hunt in which his uncle was engaged. the hunters were formerly a numerous andmerry crew here. i remember well one gaunt nimrod who wouldcatch up a leaf by the roadside and play a strain on it wilder and more melodious, ifmy memory serves me, than any hunting-horn. at midnight, when there was a moon, isometimes met with hounds in my path prowling about the woods, which would skulkout of my way, as if afraid, and stand silent amid the bushes till i had passed.
squirrels and wild mice disputed for mystore of nuts. there were scores of pitch pines around myhouse, from one to four inches in diameter, which had been gnawed by mice the previouswinter--a norwegian winter for them, for the snow lay long and deep, and they were obliged to mix a large proportion of pinebark with their other diet. these trees were alive and apparentlyflourishing at midsummer, and many of them had grown a foot, though completelygirdled; but after another winter such were without exception dead. it is remarkable that a single mouse shouldthus be allowed a whole pine tree for its
dinner, gnawing round instead of up anddown it; but perhaps it is necessary in order to thin these trees, which are wontto grow up densely. the hares (lepus americanus) were veryfamiliar. one had her form under my house all winter,separated from me only by the flooring, and she startled me each morning by her hastydeparture when i began to stir--thump, thump, thump, striking her head against thefloor timbers in her hurry. they used to come round my door at dusk tonibble the potato parings which i had thrown out, and were so nearly the color ofthe ground that they could hardly be distinguished when still.
sometimes in the twilight i alternatelylost and recovered sight of one sitting motionless under my window.when i opened my door in the evening, off they would go with a squeak and a bounce. near at hand they only excited my pity. one evening one sat by my door two pacesfrom me, at first trembling with fear, yet unwilling to move; a poor wee thing, leanand bony, with ragged ears and sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws. it looked as if nature no longer containedthe breed of nobler bloods, but stood on her last toes.its large eyes appeared young and
unhealthy, almost dropsical. i took a step, and lo, away it scud with anelastic spring over the snow-crust, straightening its body and its limbs intograceful length, and soon put the forest between me and itself--the wild free venison, asserting its vigor and thedignity of nature. not without reason was its slenderness.such then was its nature. (lepus, levipes, light-foot, some think.)what is a country without rabbits and partridges? they are among the most simple andindigenous animal products; ancient and
venerable families known to antiquity as tomodern times; of the very hue and substance of nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground--and to one another; it iseither winged or it is legged. it is hardly as if you had seen a wildcreature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much tobe expected as rustling leaves. the partridge and the rabbit are still sureto thrive, like true natives of the soil, whatever revolutions occur. if the forest is cut off, the sprouts andbushes which spring up afford them concealment, and they become more numerousthan ever.
that must be a poor country indeed thatdoes not support a hare. our woods teem with them both, and aroundevery swamp may be seen the partridge or rabbit walk, beset with twiggy fences andhorse-hair snares, which some cow-boy tends.
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