Sounds
merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk
-- no gate -- no front-yard -- and no path to the civilized world.
that once in human shape night-walked the earth and did the deeds of
heard by day or night, summer or winter.
Mountains and the Connecticut, shot like an arrow through the
his mark; and when this observance has made the circuit of the
I never go to see
early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of
on far northern hills, which has winged its way over the Green
But while we are confined to books, though the most select and
graveyard ditty, the mutual consolations of suicide lovers
ere long ran away and came home again, quite down at the heel and
the Maine woods, which did not go out to sea in the last freshet,
We live the steadier for it. We are all educated thus to be sons of
horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. All sound heard
on the next bough, life-everlasting grows under the table, and
the former place. I have been astonished at the miracles it has
vegetable, or mineral, and yet it shall be as pure as a snowflake,
the azure tint it imparts to it. There came to me in this case a
the woods sounded sweet and melodious, and at first I would mistake
is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.
they were starved out, or rather were never baited in -- only
palatable. The sumach (Rhus glabra) grew luxuriantly about the
oaks and sand cherry, blueberry and groundnut. Near the end of May,
the little hills like lambs. A carload of drovers, too, in the
music, the regrets and sighs that would fain be sung. They are the
qualities, so lately all of one quality, to wave over the bear, and
afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work,
darkness, now expiating their sins with their wailing hymns or
uninterupted. It was pleasant to see my whole household effects out
ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is
should never be troubled with ennui. Follow your genius closely
threes athwart my view, or perching restless on the white pine
your meadows, and wild sumachs and blackberry vines breaking through
their heads peering, above the mould-board which is turning down
graceful green and tender boughs, an inch in diameter; and
homesick. He had never seen such a dull and out-of-the-way place;
and I must get off the track and let the cars go by;--
arriving within the circle of the town, or adventurous country
said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one
saturation and waterloggedness and distention. The most aldermanic,
enterprise were as innocent as it is early! If the snow lies deep,
common dwelling. Oh-o-o-o-o that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n!
if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should
comes over the water from some distant cove the same password
adventurous, and unwearied. It is very natural in its methods
winter, sounding like the scream of a hawk sailing over some
cars are now the epochs in the village day. They go and come with
pine tree snapped off or torn up by the roots behind your house for
gelatinous, mildewy stage in the mortification of all healthy and
mountains, to fodder and harness his steed. Fire, too, was awakened
domesticated, it would soon become the most famous sound in our
comes the cotton, down goes the woven cloth; up comes the silk, down
fain be a track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of the earth.
risen four dollars on the thousand because of what did go out or was
reaching up to your very sills. A young forest growing up under
horse make the hills echo with his snort like thunder, shaking the
fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes to
more legible and interesting now than if they should be wrought into
bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water on the floor,
the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would
perchance, which is still raging and chilling mens blood, I bear
But their dogs, where are they? It is a stampede to them; they are
whistle! I doubt if there is such a place in Massachusetts now:--
distinguished not only the cluck after each note, but often that
singular buzzing sound like a fly in a spiders web, only
opportunity to become acquainted with their habits. Sometimes I
flock of wild geese or a laughing loon on the pond, and a fox to
perchance run wild and strike a league with the wolf and the fox.
unwearied!
city, where a social crowd is gathered, the next in the Dismal
It does not clasp its hands and pray to Jupiter. I see these men
through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or
affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front
rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass,
domestic sounds; neither the churn, nor the spinning-wheel, nor even
who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the
hopeless and incurable are all constitutional vices. I confess,
me in the woods a few feet distant as if tethered by a string, when
beneficent as that which floats over the farmers fields, then the
quite thrown out; they have lost the scent. Methinks I hear them
referred to the setting of the sun, every evening. I had a rare
When I meet the engine with its train of cars moving off with
http://www.99lib.netwas up early this winter morning by the light of the stars amid the
if this traveling demigod, this cloud-compeller, would ere long take
thoroughly cured for this world, so that nothing can spoil it, and
pig, nor hens, so that you would have said there was a deficiency of
elements their servants for noble ends! If the cloud that hangs
Their train of clouds stretching far behind and rising higher and
it for the voices of certain minstrels by whom I was sometimes
he expects some by the next train of prime quality. It is
lungs are sound, his spirits never flag. Even the sailor on the
bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often, and
country. For I did not live so out of the world as that boy who, as
fall like a fan to the ground, when there was not a breath of air
so independent on his farm that he can say them nay. And heres
its delicate flowers arranged in umbels cylindrically about its
other than daisies and the nests of field mice, like bowlders of the
flitting hither and thither; and for the last half-hour I have heard
perchance, at evening, I hear him in his stable blowing off the
try to imitate it -- expressive of a mind which has reached the
responses, trilled along the woodside; reminding me sometimes of
snow-storm, and I behold the plowmen covered with snow and rime,
chairs, and bedsteads -- because they once stood in their midst.
When other birds are still, the screech owls take up the strain,
thus early to put the vital heat in him and get him off. If the
employed than they could have consciously devised. I am less
birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the
It sets the sand a-blowing,
by the poets of all countries along with the notes of their native
superfluous energy of the day, that he may calm his nerves and cool
sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, worth importing into the
this to stereotype and make permanent in her choir the dying moans
I perceived clearly that it was akin to the music of the cow, and
healthy, wealthy, and wise? This foreign birds note is celebrated
this once wild Indian pheasant is certainly the most remarkable of
the folks were all gone off; why, you couldnt even hear the
on the alert. Who would not be early to rise, and rise earlier and
with his chin upon a heart-leaf, which serves for a napkin to his
chilled breath, which announces that the cars are coming, without
atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by
classic, and read only particular written languages, which are
his oldest customer cannot tell surely whether it be animal,
spirits, the low spirits and melancholy forebodings, of fallen souls
Sierra Nevada, that occupy an outside place in the universe.
I was also serenaded by a hooting owl. Near at hand you could
weight again bent down and broke the tender limbs.
(what kind of winged horse or fiery dragon they will put into the
never roused me from my slumbers. I kept neither dog, cat, cow,
and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and
heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the
the sunset sky for the livery of his train; when I hear the iron
disposition, I have no hopes of changing it for the better or worse
dimples the glassy surface of the pond and brings up a fish; a mink
"In truth, our village has become a butt
And the blackberries a-growing,
elements and Nature herself would cheerfully accompany men on their
be warmed, and pressed, and bound round with ligatures, and after a
sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery,
stage-office? There is something electrifying in the atmosphere of
wrought; that some of my neighbors, who, I should have prophesied,
imports for the farmers near his clearing, and now perchance stands
your pay for them! screams the countrymans whistle; timber like
express my appreciation of those youths singing, when I state that
always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student
The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my woods summer and
in this state of existence. As the Orientals say, "A curs tail may
squirrels on the roof and under the floor, a whip-poor-will on the
senses or died of ennui before this. Not even rats in the wall, for
And makes banks for the swallows,
buds, suddenly pushing out late in the spring from dry sticks which
south of where I dwell. I usually go to the village along its
about my clearing; the tantivy of wild pigeons, flying by two and
himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly
short stems, which last, in the fall, weighed down with goodsized
tax their weak joints, I heard a fresh and tender bough suddenly
woods, surpassing the clangor of the goose and the hooting of the
curve -- with its steam cloud like a banner streaming behind in
undeveloped nature which men have not recognized. They represent
up by his door for a sign when he commences business, until at last
putting, the perseverance of the saints to the blush? with which you
earlier every successive day of his life, till he became unspeakably
barking behind the Peterboro Hills, or panting up the western slope
only, on which, forsooth, will be written tales of real life, high
light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening,
flocks, all but the mountain pastures, whirled along like leaves
scrubbed it clean and white; and by the time the villagers had
head rattles his bell, the mountains do indeed skip like rams and
bridges -- a sound heard farther than almost any other at night --
metaphor, which alone is copious and standard. Much is published,
fancy it the most melancholy sound in Nature, as if she meant by
hour. Housework was a pleasant pastime. When my floor was dirty, I
but little printed. The rays which stream through the shutter will
entering the dark valley, made more awful by a certain gurgling
I tasted them out of compliment to Nature, though they were scarcely
remembering the pangs and the delights of supernal love in the
What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and bravery.
any birds, and if they could be naturalized without being
Atlantic and Pacific is awakened by his voice; but its shrill sound
often did better than this. There were times when I could not
advertised that at a certain hour and minute these bolts will be
and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom
ridge-pole of the house. They would begin to sing almost with as
serenaded, who might be straying over hill and dale; but soon I was
And hark! here comes the cattle-train bearing the cattle of a
drooling chaps, under this northern shore quaffs a deep draught of
a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening
and natural music of the cow. I do not mean to be satirical, but to
golden and silver wreaths, like many a downy cloud which I have
shot toward particular points of the compass; yet it interferes with
steals out of the marsh before my door and seizes a frog by the
vale. The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein
the once scorned water, and passes round the cup with the
I watch the passage of the morning cars with the same feeling
Bedford, or Concord bell, when the wind was favorable, a faint,
no mans business, and the children go to school on the other track.
seen, high in the heavens, unfolding its masses to the light -- as
I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and
end. If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating
more alone than ever. For the rest of the long afternoon, perhaps,
Do they not talk and think faster in the depot than they did in the
restlessness of despair to some new perch on the gray oaks. Then --
the sun for a minute and casts my distant field into the shade, a
house. Instead of a scuttle or a blind blown off in the gale -- a
merely the three-o-clock-in-the-morning courage, which Bonaparte
long delay, notwithstanding the veto of a New England northeast
Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert,
every leaf and needle of the wood, that portion of the sound which
reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in
that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n! echoes another on the farther
melody which the air had strained, and which had conversed with
this moment stopping at some brilliant station-house in town or
acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine needles in the
are stripped, all the cranberry meadows are raked into the city. Up
far, that the farmers set their clocks by them, and thus one
blackberry, and life-everlasting, johnswort and goldenrod, shrub
from the mountains to the seaboard, in which the cars, like a
stores which go dispensing their odors all the way from Long Wharf
tu-whit tu-who of the poets, but, without jesting, a most solemn
his liver and brain for a few hours of iron slumber. If the
country hands a chair to the city. All the Indian huckleberry hills
new Mythology I dont know), it seems as if the earth had got a race
men who inhabit the snowplow for their winter quarters; who have not
Grand Banks and the fisheries. Who has not seen a salt fish,
wilderness. At a sufficient distance over the woods this sound
The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a hundred rods
threnodies in the scenery of their transgressions. They give me a
circulate above, and the chickadee lisps amid the evergreens, and
the larger wood, in the midst of a young forest of pitch pines and
the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp, where the
fuel. Instead of no path to the front-yard gate in the Great Snow
and handsome cherries, fell over in wreaths like rays on every side.
that practically speaking, when I have learned a mans real
side with tremulous sincerity, and -- bor-r-r-r-n! comes faintly
Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln, Acton,
not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in
feebler notes of other birds -- think of it! It would put nations
cotton and linen descend, the final result of dress -- of patterns
Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I
moose, and caribou. Next rolls Thomaston lime, a prime lot, which
like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu. Their dismal scream is
accident one a bar behind another, and so near me that I
expanded when the freight train rattles past me, and I smell the
so sincerely by any power to get off its track. There is no
in this case. We have constructed a fate, an Atropos, that never
over the country, stopping only that his master may rest, and I am
sighs one on this side of the pond, and cir99lib•netcles with the
songsters. All climates agree with brave Chanticleer. He is more
woodchuck under the house, a screech owl or a cat owl behind it, a
Our peaceful plain its soothing sound is -- Concord."
Far through unfrequented woods on the confines of towns, where
long battering-rams going twenty miles an hour against the citys
now worthy to inhabit it. If all were as it seems, and men made the
goes the woollen; up come the books, but down goes the wit that
over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals
hickories, and half a dozen rods from the pond, to which a narrow
our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we
of the Green Mountains. They will not be in at the death. Their
errands and be their escort.
are proof-sheets which need no correction. Here goes lumber from
the strong New England and commercial scent, reminding me of the
drovers with their sticks, and shepherd boys in the midst of their
whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life.
tropical leaf was pleasant though strange to look on. The large
into your cellar; sturdy pitch pines rubbing and creaking against
twelve years labor bestowed upon it, still it will retain its
"to be the mast
amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude
method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever
I feel more like a citizen of the world at the sight of the
tails still preserving their twist and the angle of elevation they
these bright saloons without the knowledge of their inhabitants;
house, pushing up through the embankment which I had made, and
strawberry leaves are strewn about. It looked as if this was the
their old festal tables, though their voices have waxed hoarse and
shores, then ejaculates the master of ceremonies, with satisfaction,
I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those
improved somewhat in punctuality since the railroad was invented?
advertised in the Cuttingsville Times.
tr-r-r-oonk! and each in his turn repeats the same down to the least
experiments, and hence its singular success. I am refreshed and
enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every
men on the freight trains, who go over the whole length of the road,
courageous thought. It reminded me of ghouls and idiots and insane
indigenous even than the natives. His health is ever good, his
content, doing more even than they suspect, and perchance better
Swamp, scaring the owl and fox. The startings and arrivals of the
Of some great ammiral."
clear and shrill for miles over the resounding earth, drowning the
will get far among the hills before it gets slacked. These rags in
those splendid articles, English, French, or American prints,
thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so
vocation, too, is gone. Their fidelity and sagacity are below par
As I sit at my window this summer afternoon, hawks are circling
and hear the free wind blow on them; so much more interesting most
bird to his tame stock -- to say nothing of the eggs and drumsticks.
stopping to read the riot act, no firing over the heads of the mob,
allow me to move in again, and my meditations were almost
split up; pine, spruce, cedar -- first, second, third, and fourth
gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their
following drill-barrow, sprinkle all the restless men and floating
is usually done with them, and then they will stay put and stick.
on into futurity.
hope behind, and howls like an animal, yet with human sobs, on
part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to
these tails exhibit is to make glue of them, which I believe is what
are on hand when the bell rings. To do things "railroad fashion" is
are frogs there -- who would fain keep up the hilarious rules of
and low, and founded on fact! This closed car smells of salt fish,
no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most
remote glen in the woods he fronts the elements incased in ice and
higher, going to heaven while the cars are going to Boston, conceals
Late in the evening I heard the distant rumbling of wagons over
So is your pastoral life whirled past and away. But the bell rings,
night, and were again as musical as ever just before and about dawn.
day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but
from far in the Lincoln woods.
paper and printed books. Who can write so graphically the history
shore; the sedge is bending under the weight of the reed-birds
revisit this system, since its orbit does not look like a returning
growing five or six feet the first season. Its broad pinnate
awakened by his tramp and defiant snort at midnight, when in some
they strap on his snowshoes, and, with the giant plow, plow a furrow
start once more on his travels without rest or slumber. Or
turns aside. (Let that be the name of your engine.) Men are
heard four or five at once in different parts of the wood, by
and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories. They seemed glad to
causeway, and am, as it were, related to society by this link. The
once for all, would never get to Boston by so prompt a conveyance,
they may affect the price for him, telling his customers this
sometimes, as I sat at my window, so heedlessly did the
99lib•nety grow and
infernal groves. Yet I love to hear their wailing, their doleful
bark in the night. Not even a lark or an oriole, those mild
sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had
bales, of all hues and qualities, the lowest condition to which
the shingles for want of room, their roots reaching quite under the
my clearing, and I thought that it might be worth the while to keep
Tell. The air is full of invisible bolts. Every path but your own
such regularity and precision, and their whistle can be heard so
I hear, was put out to a farmer in the east part of the town, but
familiar objects look out of doors than in the house. A bird sits
the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have. All day
probably I was near its eggs. They sang at intervals throughout the
withal, far more so than many fantastic enterprises and sentimental
and become only liquor to distend their paunches, and sweet
when their lords clarions rested! No wonder that man added this
the evening train had gone by, the whip-poor-wills chanted their
a cockerel for his music merely, as a singing bird. The note of
merchandise in the country for seed. All day the fire-steed flies
teamster shelter himself and his lading against sun, wind, and rain
music and singing birds; as if it were the dark and tearful side of
of the storms they have weathered as these rents have done? They
a reply.
snow; and he will reach his stall only with the morning star, to
traders from the other side. As they come under one horizon, they
of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees,
not if with that velocity and with that direction it will ever
the beat of a partridge, conveying travellers from Boston to the
and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the
celestial train beside which the petty train of cars which hugs the
admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking
sometimes tempted to stretch an awning over them and take my seat
plantation birds, ever visited my clearing. No cockerels to crow
them, and the fishes in the pond no longer feel their rumbling, I am
be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed. No
ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and without an
disconsolate cow in a distant barn-yard. In the mean-while all the
dun-fish for a Saturdays dinner. Next Spanish hides, with the
owl; and then imagine the cackling of the hens to fill the pauses
summer, the Manilla hemp and cocoanut husks, the old junk, gunny
that I do the rising of the sun, which is hardly more regular.
for the most part it suggested only pleasing associations, whether
Here is a hogshead of molasses or of brandy directed to John Smith,
mistake; and then the howl goes round again and again, until the sun
Now that the cars are gone by and all the restless world with
and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless
groceries, country; your rations, countrymen! Nor is there any man
on the alert. What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry,
broken their fast the morning sun had dried my house sufficiently to
pond, but vainly bellowing troonk from time to time, and pausing for
Where it ends.
earth with his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils
shout their warning to get off the track to the other, heard
palm-leaf which will cover so many flaxen New England heads the next
word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward
the noise of some travellers wagon on the distant highway, I was
shore rang with the trump of bullfrogs, the sturdy spirits of
they were at length one articulation of Nature.
the rattle of railroad cars, now dying away and then reviving like
the elements had taken up and modulated and echoed from vale to
I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my
for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing
melodiousness -- I find myself beginning with the letters gl when I
stirring, broken off by its own weight. In August, the large masses
ejaculation tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r--oonk, tr-r-r-oonk! and straightway
boughs behind my house, gives a voice to the air; a fish hawk
had when the oxen that wore them were careering over the pampas of
and if it be put into a pot and boiled, will come out an excellent
howlings. But now one answers from far woods in a strain made
vespers for half an hour, sitting on a stump by my door, or upon the
was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood;
earth is but the barb of the spear. The stabler of the iron horse
bags, scrap iron, and rusty nails. This carload of torn sails is
Cuttingsville, Vermont, some trader among the Green Mountains, who
may sweep or pave the streets, and split your kindlings, and the
is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what
Regularly at half-past seven, in one part of the summer, after
single spruce stands hung with usnea lichens, and small hawks
solemnly grave, mocking at mirth, and the wine has lost its flavor,
thousand hills, sheepcots, stables, and cow-yards in the air,
enterprise were as heroic and commanding as it is protracted and
had seemed to be dead, developed themselves as by magic into
apparently they take me for an employee; and so I am. I too would
maniacal hooting for 九-九-藏-书-网men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps
once only the hunter penetrated by day, in the darkest night dart
there. It was worth the while to see the sun shine on these things,
ancient wine-bibbers and wassailers, still unrepentant, trying to
For one of those fleet railroad shafts, and oer
At evening, the distant lowing of some cow in the horizon beyond
way these forms came to be transferred to our furniture, to tables,
with the bleating of calves and sheep, and the hustling of oxen, as
ridge-pole, a blue jay screaming beneath the window, a hare or
their iron steed are frozen. On this morning of the Great Snow,
the baying of dogs, and sometimes again the lowing of some
the muffled tone of their engine bell from out the fog bank of their
much precision as a clock, within five minutes of a particular time,
of a human being -- some poor weak relic of mortality who has left
eyes put out and my ears spoiled by its smoke and steam and hissing.
I am not sure that I ever heard the sound of cock-crowing from
truly Ben Jonsonian. Wise midnight hags! It is no honest and blunt
sometimes through the circles of two towns. Here come your
blackberry vines run round its legs; pine cones, chestnut burs, and
Whats the railroad to me?
now. They will slink back to their kennels in disgrace, or
the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph.
theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and never
blown from the mountains by the September gales. The air is filled
get out themselves, and as if unwilling to be brought in. I was
reprove his indolence.
really melodious by distance -- Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo; and indeed
well-conducted institution regulates a whole country. Have not men
My house was on the side of a hill, immediately on the edge of
carriage or team along the distant highway.
on the grass, making a little pile like a gypsys pack, and my
line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the
footpath led down the hill. In my front yard grew the strawberry,
disperses the morning mist, and only the patriarch is not under the
behind it -- and the trader, as a Concord trader once did, hang it
and Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the extent of the globe.
forgetting the language which all things and events speak without
natural form." The only effectual cure for such inveteracies as
proportionally louder. Sometimes one would circle round and round
walls, and chairs enough to seat all the weary and heavy-laden that
going
sing a catch in their Stygian lake -- if the Walden nymphs will
at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect,
mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most
have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much
every day go about their business with more or less courage and
moment, as he has told them twenty times before this morning, that
three-legged table, from which I did not remove the books and pen
which are now no longer cried up, unless it be in Milwaukee, as
over the engine were the perspiration of heroic deeds, or as
While these things go up other things come down. Warned by the
I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I
if a pastoral valley were going by. When the old bell-wether at the
themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of
not unpleasantly disappointed when it was prolonged into the cheap
It fills a few hollows,
intoxication never comes to drown the memory of the past, but mere
the sand cherry (Cerasus pumila) adorned the sides of the path with
nor hens to cackle in the yard. No yard! but unfenced nature
still clinging to their useless sticks as their badge of office.
the Spanish Main -- a type of all obstinacy, and evincing how almost
new sense of the variety and capacity of that nature which is our
the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath; but now a more dismal and
township within ten minutes, and scarce another eye beholds it;
writes them.
To walk in a winter morning in a wood where these birds abounded,
the singing of the kettle, nor the hissing of the urn, nor children
my meditations are interrupted only by the faint rattle of a
their native woods, and hear the wild cockerels crow on the trees,
express the meaning of Nature there.
and poverty, going to become paper of one color or a few shades
over his bulkhead and thinks of the last arrivals on the coast, how
pardon the comparison, for though there are almost no weeds, there
dwell within them. With such huge and lumbering civility the
now the byword; and it is worth the while to be warned so often and
distended, leakiest, and flabbiest paunched, that there be no
repeated, where the next in seniority and girth has gulped down to
planetary motion -- or, rather, like a comet, for the beholder knows
to Lake Champlain, reminding me of foreign parts, of coral reefs,
ginghams, muslins, etc., gathered from all quarters both of fashion
but I cross it like a cart-path in the woods. I will not have my
midst, on a level with their droves now, their vocation gone, but
farmers yard, informing me that many restless city merchants are
crying, to comfort one. An old-fashioned man would have lost his
nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any
whizzing sound, I look up from my book and see some tall pine, hewn