Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors
black chicken which the administrator could not catch, black as
is blanched and accursed there, and before that becomes necessary
week of even weather I took exactly the same number of steps, and of
human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape! Again,
my house, about half a mile long, might have been represented by a
as it was afterward whispered, came they who set the fire and gave
was still and deserted in comparison. At suitable intervals there
from time to time; but I had no more for society there.
then men saluted one another, and heard and told the news, and went
East of my bean-field, across the road, lived Cato Ingraham,
ditcher. Napoleon went to St. Helena; Quoil came to Walden Woods.
evidence of our senses, until at a turn in the road we heard the
had been a soldier at Waterloo. If he had lived I should have made
to read Chalmers collection of English poetry without skipping. It
deepest no wanderer ventured near my house for a week or fortnight
a professors gown, and is as ready to extract the moral out of
which philosophy requires.
dissolve there. There we worked, revising mythology, rounding a
title to be called -- "a man of color," as if he were discolored.
nowhere has it freer play; and when the frost had smitten me on one
walk at evening I crossed the deep tracks of a woodchopper leading
house; I should not dare to say how many pounds weight there was
to my taste. Not long since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln
underlie the present dusty highway, from the Stratton, now the
Hugh Quoil (if I have spelt his name with coil enough), who occupied
whole herd of cows, but did not see the man approaching from the
In the deepest snows, the path which I used from the highway to
where there was absolutely nothing but a heap of bricks and ashes.
traveller. And when I returned new drifts would have formed,
expressed our sentiments through speaking-trumpets, or in lower tone
to convince me that it was no common "rider." I felt it, and still
affected with the trembling delirium, and his face was the color of
together, since he enhanced the beauty of the landscape. A
house filled with the odor of his pipe. Or on a Sunday afternoon,
deep on a level, and shaking down another snow-storm on my head at
now. In some places, within my own remembrance, the pines would
long ago bought a potters wheel of him, and wished to know what had
half-century after they had grown up and died -- blossoming as fair,
team, it once amused the traveller more than now by its variety, and
cannot spare him.
for the townsfolk, making the Walden Woods ring with her shrill
leisure and a quiet mind, who earnestly seek the right road." He is
up the former occupants of these woods. Within the memory of many
New-England Rum. But history must not yet tell the tragedies
dawning of his day.
acted a prominent and astounding part in our New England life, and
through the pines, spreading his wings to unexpected breadth, I
outline of a garden, which had been planted but had never received
A true friend of man; almost the only friend of human progress. An
to roost in the next apartment. In the rear there was the dim
that passage in the preface about wit being the souls powder --
Farther down the hill, on the left, on the old road in the
could well attend to. He wore a greatcoat in midsummer, being
gurgling pot -- "Ye are all bones, bones!" I have seen bricks amid
But to return toward Lincoln.
business have thrived here, making the wilderness to blossom like
was another welcome visitor, who at one time came through the
sluggishly turn about on his perch, as if impatient at having his
that he must be the man of the most faith of any alive. His words
the meadows, I encountered many a blustering and nipping wind, for
furnished his townsmen with earthenware, and left descendants to
up; which, thank Heaven, could never be burned; and he groped long
low-land degeneracy. Alas! how little does the memory of these
-- not to be discovered till some late day -- with a flat stone
farmers could not get to the woods and swamps with their teams, and
him. He could hear me when I moved and cronched the snow with my
an azure tint to them. Here the most indistinct and dubious
depositing the powdery snow round a sharp angle in the road, and not
already picked.
village, through snow and rain and darkn
九九藏书
ess, till he saw my lampwhittled them, trying our knives, and admiring the clear yellowish
city, whose materials are ruins, whose gardens cemeteries. The soil
after I came to the woods, so that I have not remembered him as a
engine bell tinkled behind, more slow and sure; and rearmost of all,
diamonds, spades, and hearts, were scattered over the floor. One
including Bascoms shop, and, between ourselves, we thought that,
at a time, but there I lived as snug as a meadow mouse, or as cattle
town.
many a "bran new" theory of life over a thin dish of gruel, which
were regular salutes of laughter, which might have been referred
were compelled to go this way to Lincoln alone and on foot did it
I weathered some merry snow-storms, and spent some cheerful
and so not only made a my bed for my feet, but in the night their
comparatively disregarded now, when his day comes, laws unsuspected
found it only by the hole which the chimneys breath made in the
hospitable intellect he embraces children, beggars, insane, and
passed her house one noon he heard her muttering to herself over her
much better by the carriage road from Bristers Hill. For I came to
such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I
and attitude always suppose a better state of things than other men
Down the road, on the right hand, on Bristers Hill, lived
pledged to no institution in it, freeborn, ingenuus. Whichever way
points of view by turns, always lying down to it, as if there was
where he is styled "Sippio Brister" -- Scipio Africanus he had some
crackling and actually felt the heat of the fire from over the wall,
stable-broom, mat-making, corn-parching, linen-spinning, and pottery
following night, about the same hour, and hearing a low moaning at
slave of Duncan Ingraham, Esquire, gentleman, of Concord village,
were obliged to cut down the shade trees before their houses, and,
by most will take effect, and masters of families and rulers will
lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding its sweet-scented flowers
scrape both sides of a chaise at once, and women and children who
cold, bracing weather, with clear heads; and when other dessert
Little did the dusky children think that the puny slip with its two
from the village to the woods, it then ran through a maple swamp on
long been unoccupied. It was about the size of mine. It was set on
"Entertainment for man, but not for his beast. Enter ye that have
indifferently to the last-uttered or the forth-coming jest. We made
The last inhabitant of these woods before me was an Irishman,
the town of Sutton, in this State, whose cottage was completely
few, being concealed from the traveller by a fringe of pines. It is
they lodged, and by absorbing the rays of the sun melted the snow,
even when doctors sleep. We made that small house ring with
from my door, and found his pile of whittlings on the hearth, and my
sake, as I have read in his accounts, there being nothing else that
who built his slave a house, and gave him permission to live in
a foundation of logs, the remnants of which, doubtless, still
longer if he pleases, to await the arrival of a guest." I often
some louder noise or my nearer approach, he would grow uneasy and
was now harvest time. It was overrun with Roman wormwood and
Scripture, but it had never occurred to me that the pots we use were
himself about me; nor needed he, for the master of the house was at
tender, civil, cheerful lilac colors.
fairly overcame my Nervii. I had just sunk my head on this when the
combined the advantages of conviviality with the clear-headedness
remark it almost daily in my walks, for by it hangs the history of a
an indirect way of informing me that he ever lived. With him dwelt
Now only a dent in the earth marks the site of these dwellings,
It also told me, with staring emphasis, when he died; which was but
I should not forget that during my last winter at the pond there
a spring oozed; now dry and tearless grass; or it was covered deep
he could lay his hands on. One day in midsummer, when I was hoeing,
through which I floundered, where the busy northwest wind had been
could turn that threatened last and universal one into another
Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after the door and
grain of the pumpkin pine. We waded so gently and reverently, or we
felt a slumberous influence 九*九*藏*书*网after watching him half an hour, as he
worthless. So we stood round our engine, jostled one another,
snows and most dismal tempests, was a poet. A farmer, a hunter, a
The house being gone, he looked at what there was left. He was
of his death, for he confessed to me that, though he had heard of
scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came
every step; or sometimes creeping and floundering thither on my
brains. These he peddles still, prompting God and disgracing man,
act must that be -- the covering up of wells! coincident with the
of whom they are but defaced and leaning monuments. With his
"but most of mankind are strangers to wit, as Indians are to
blue-robed man, whose fittest roof is the overarching sky which
tempered the travellers beverage and refreshed his steed. Here
Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and
It chanced that I walked that way across the fields the
making a path through the deepest snow in the woods, for when I had
meandering dotted line, with wide intervals between the dots. For a
church or state as to haul a load of manure from his barn-yard. We
sight, feeling his twilight way, as it were, with his sensitive
trees like gourds somewhere, and I was pleased to hear that so
midwinter, some warm and springly swamp where the grass and the
town still, like a friendly Indian, when the contents of the broad
once gone through the wind blew the oak leaves into my tracks, where
no water privileges, forsooth? Ay, the deep Walden Pond and cool
But this small village, germ of something more, why did it fail
As I walked over the long causeway made for the railroad through
fire by mischievous boys, one Election night, if I do not mistake.
Nearer yet to town, you come to Breeds location, on the other
At this season I seldom had a visitor. When the snow lay
to converse with whom was a New England Nights Entertainment. Ah!
Alms-House Farm, to Bristers Hill.
hands and knees, when the hunters had gone into winter quarters.
mounted, feeling for the iron hook or staple by which a burden had
this, that "Cato and Brister pulled wool"; which is about as
Old Mortality, say rather an Immortality, with unwearied patience
can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. Who can predict
fathers and his youth. He gazed into the cellar from all sides and
never comes. The Vishnu Purana says, "The house-holder is to remain
vices, who alone was interested in this burning, lying on his
while Concord keeps its ground? Were there no natural advantages --
stomach and looking over the cellar wall at the still smouldering
performed this duty of hospitality, waited long enough to milk a
reflects his serenity. I do not see how he can ever die; Nature
keep awake and keep the Sabbath, or as the consequence of my attempt
lethargy -- which, by the way, I never knew whether to regard as a
bells rung fire, and in hot haste the engines rolled that way, led
me, as well as the darkness permitted, where the well was covered
have spoken of -- we three -- it expanded and racked my little
long since abandoned, for those which have the thickest shells are
land by sufferance while they lived; and there often the sheriff
his comings and goings? His business calls him out at all hours,
war of 1812, her dwelling was set on fire by English soldiers,
side of the way, just on the edge of the wood; ground famous for the
some breadth and elegance. I think that he should keep a
soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing
this spot, I drew near in the dark, and discovered the only survivor
when the ice and snow causing their limbs to droop, and so
nations might put up, and on his sign should be printed,
there where grow still the apple trees which Brister planted and
woods, are marks of some homestead of the Stratton family; whose
from the ground, as it appeared the next spring.
prisoners on parole, when she was away, and her cat and dog and hens
burying-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of
their ways again.
and need them; but a younger and whiter speculator got them at last.
talked of rude and simple times, when men sat about large fires in
been fastened to the heavy end -- all that he could now cling to --
in drifts, even without food; or like that early settlers family in
hardier bird occasionally awaited the return o九_九_藏_书_网f spring.
enacted here; let time intervene in some measure to assuage and lend
failed, we tried our teeth on many a nut which wise squirrels have
were all burned up together. She led a hard life, and somewhat
clothes curled up by use, as if they were himself, upon his raised
earth offered no worthy foundation. Great Looker! Great Expecter!
raised last spring to be the oldest in the hamlet.
world -- he peddled first her wares, afterwards, as he declares, his
referred to the great conflagrations which the world has witnessed,
chimney nook, and a sweet-scented black birch, perhaps, waves where
patch among the walnuts, which he let grow up till he should be old
not such as had come down unbroken from those days, or grown on
-- we who had run to fires before -- barn, shop, or dwelling-house,
opening of wells of tears. These cellar dents, like deserted fox
by the wall, in the now open field, lived Nutting and Le Grosse.
dreams disturbed; and when he launched himself off and flapped
forests; -- the last of that stirp, sole survivor of that family.
dwellings, though it was then much more shut in by the forest than
I lived on the edge of the village then, and had just lost myself
nebulosa) sitting on one of the lower dead limbs of a white pine,
roots furnish still the wild stocks of many a thrifty village tree.
dark line was my guide. For human society I was obliged to conjure
the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the woods which border it
the same length, coming and going, stepping deliberately and with
were notched and dotted here and there with their little gardens and
and smelling as sweet, as in that first spring. I mark its still
and faith making plain the image engraven in mens bodies, the God
or rather my going abroad, for I frequently tramped eight or ten
commonly empty.
or hired man, and then robs and murders the whole family --
cinders beneath, muttering to himself, as is his wont. He had been
could not hear the slightest sound from them. Thus, guided amid the
powder."
discussed. But all I can learn of their conclusions amounts to just
on to it; but concluded to let it burn, it was so far gone and so
feet, but could not plainly see me. When I made most noise he would
the alarm. Thus we kept on like true idealists, rejecting the
fable here and there, and building castles in the air for which
cat. There was only a narrow slit left between their lids, by which
sought my house, to have a social "crack"; one of the few of his
heavens own blue. But no weather interfered fatally with my walks,
the oak copse there.
drift, and so relieved the family. But no friendly Indian concerned
plank bed. His pipe lay broken on the hearth, instead of a bowl
sky, and the mother-o-pearl flocks which sometimes form and
scholars, and entertains the thought of all, adding to it commonly
Breeds hut was standing only a dozen years ago, though it had
tended once by childrens hands, in front-yard plots -- now standing
and talked, and effectually put the world behind us; for he was
over Davenants "Gondibert," that winter that I labored with a
but a humble route to neighboring villages, or for the woodmans
pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not
covered by the great snow of 1717 when he was absent, and an Indian
lingered longer in his memory. Where now firm open fields stretch
Sometimes, notwithstanding the snow, when I returned from my
tradition says that once a tavern stood; the well the same, which
earliest species of goldenrod (Solidago stricta) grows there
rescue!" Wagons shot past with furious speed and crushing loads,
tended; large old trees now, but their fruit still wild and ciderish
approaches nearest to the pond, Wyman the potter squatted, and
each spring, to be plucked by the musing traveller; planted and
neighbor. Before his house was pulled down, when his comrades
edifying as the history of more famous schools of philosophy.
become of him. I had read of the potters clay and wheel in
flood. We finally retreated without doing any mischief -- returned
cheek, heathen as I was, I turned to it the other also. Nor was it
come to him for advice.
avoided it as "an unlucky castle," I visited it. There lay his old
and is obliged to sprout potatoes in a cellar Sundays, in order to
fictile an art was ever practiced in my neighborhood.
house, a t藏书网rophy of his last Waterloo; but no warm cap or mittens
absolute," in some form and dialect or other were by turns
stretch out his neck, and erect his neck feathers, and open his eyes
we turned, it seemed that the heavens and the earth had met
perhaps the sanest man and has the fewest crotchets of any I chance
vague object or mote that interrupted his visions. At length, on
perhaps, Nature will try, with me for a first settler, and my house
One afternoon I amused myself by watching a barred owl (Strix
eyes only, which they stuck in the ground in the shadow of the house
orchard once covered all the slope of Bristers Hill, but was long
Company, who was bound to go however far; and ever and anon the
wide; but their lids soon fell again, and he began to nod. I too
working far off in the river meadows all day, and had improved the
would he want more.
miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech
above the atmospheric pressure on every circular inch; it opened its
Walden Woods; -- Cato, not Uticensis, but Concordiensis. Some say
Wymans tenement -- Col. Quoil, he was called. Rumor said that he
him fight his battles over again. His trade here was that of a
against my field and inquired concerning Wyman the younger. He had
Bristers Spring -- privilege to drink long and healthy draughts at
stop the consequent leak; -- but I had enough of that kind of oakum
since killed out by pitch pines, excepting a few stumps, whose old
are acquainted with, and he will be the last man to be disappointed
family.
the rose, and a numerous posterity have inherited the land of their
by a straggling troop of men and boys, and I among the foremost, for
came in vain to collect the taxes, and "attached a chip," for forms
as the ages revolve. He has no venture in the present. But though
remembered, at his house in the village, and who looked in upon me
and realized, alas! that we were there. The very nearness of the
pranks of a demon not distinctly named in old mythology, who has
fire but cooled our ardor. At first we thought to throw a frog-pond
singing, for she had a loud and notable voice. At length, in the
at eventide in his courtyard as long as it takes to milk a cow, or
of the family that I know, the heir of both its virtues and its
bearing, perchance, among the rest, the agent of the Insurance
beggar-ticks, which last stuck to my clothes for all fruit. The
with buried cellar stones, and strawberries, raspberries,
skunk-cabbage still put forth with perennial verdure, and some
The one who came from farthest to my lodge, through deepest
by wallsides in retired pastures, and giving place to new-rising
with fear, and often ran a good part of the distance. Though mainly
the earth itself will be destroyed. With such reminiscences I
Bristers Spring, he had never seen it; and soiled cards, kings of
were we there in season with our "tub," and a full frog-pond by, we
Catos half-obliterated cellar-hole still remains, though known to
broken at the fountain. The last could never have been the symbol
home. The Great Snow! How cheerful it is to hear of! When the
to sleep and "Gondibert." But as for "Gondibert," I would except
wood, as if the roof fell in, and we all shouted "Concord to the
and bustle of human life, and "fate, free will, foreknowledge
fathers? The sterile soil would at least have been proof against a
Once more, on the left, where are seen the well and lilac bushes
tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines;
boisterous mirth and resound with the murmur of much sober talk,
to the tops of the highest hills when the show was nearly two feet
repeopled the woods and lulled myself asleep.
Brister Freeman, "a handy Negro," slave of Squire Cummings once --
I am not aware that any man has ever built on the spot which I
deserves, as much as any mythological character, to have his
biography written one day; who first comes in the guise of a friend
burrows, old holes, are all that is left where once were the stir
by the step of a long-headed farmer, who from far through the woods
sharpening their tops, had changed the pines into fir trees; wading
without, and even the hooting of the owl was hushed. For many weeks
the precision of a pair of dividers in my own deep tracks -- to such
night and as silent, not even croaking, awaitin九_九_藏_书_网g Reynard, still went
sat thus with his eyes half open, like a cat, winged brother of the
vocation who are "men on their farms"; who donned a frock instead of
and poultry which are said to have survived for a long time buried
There too, as everywhere, I sometimes expected the Visitor who
luxuriantly.
occupy. Deliver me from a city built on the site of a more ancient
were universally a thirsty race. Might not the basket,
and sled it to the village. The elements, however, abetted me in
the door-stone was. Sometimes the well dent is visible, where once
when the crust was harder, cut off the trees in the swamps, ten feet
family complaint, having an uncle who goes to sleep shaving himself,
some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord --
these, all unimproved by these men but to dilute their glass. They
to know; the same yesterday and tomorrow. Of yore we had sauntered
be preserved a pennisular relation to me; thus, with half-shut eyes,
routine the winter reduces us -- yet often they were filled with
itself in the rear that shaded it, and grown mans garden and
that he was a Guinea Negro. There are a few who remember his little
pine boughs rather by a delicate sense of their neighborhood than by
Zilpha, a colored woman, had her little house, where she spun linen
its first hoeing, owing to those terrible shaking fits, though it
making amends then to Walden vale for the long silences. Broadway
seams so that they had to be calked with much dulness thereafter to
or all together. "Its Bakers barn," cried one. "It is the Codman
succeed him. Neither were they rich in worldly goods, holding the
orchard, and tell their story faintly to the lone wanderer a
large, round, and black, blacker than any of the children of night,
and went grandly, like the clouds which float through the western
such a dusky orb as never rose on Concord before or since.
meadow mouse was to be seen. Yet I rarely failed to find, even in
open fields were all piled up between the walls of the Walden road,
and half an hour sufficed to obliterate the tracks of the last
a rabbits track, nor even the fine print, the small type, of a
of my townsmen the road near which my house stands resounded with
There was one other with whom I had "solid seasons," long to be
now filled with the smooth sumach (Rhus glabra), and one of the
inhumane. One old frequenter of these woods remembers, that as he
bearing for fruit his brain only, like the nut its kernel. I think
looking out from the land of dreams, and endeavoring to realize me,
a man who was carrying a load of pottery to market stopped his horse
He too, however, occupies an equally narrow house at present.
Farther in the woods than any of these, where the road
some treasure, which he remembered, concealed between the stones,
through the trees, and shared with me some long winter evenings.
I had leaped the brook. We thought it was far south over the woods
close to the trunk, in broad daylight, I standing within a rod of
"How blind that cannot see serenity!"
thimble-berries, hazel-bushes, and sumachs growing in the sunny
and daily watered, would root itself so, and outlive them, and house
One of the last of the philosophers -- Connecticut gave him to the
winter evenings by my fireside, while the snow whirled wildly
place," affirmed another. And then fresh sparks went up above the
under the sod, when the last of the race departed. What a sorrowful
sward there; some pitch pine or gnarled oak occupies what was the
Here, by the very corner of my field, still nearer to town,
Fenda, his hospitable wife, who told fortunes, yet pleasantly --
had seen the world, and was capable of more civil speech than you
first moments that he could call his own to visit the home of his
carmine. He died in the road at the foot of Bristers Hill shortly
about the wall to find the well-sweep which his father had cut and
I met no one in my walks but those who came occasionally to cut wood
if I chanced to be at home, I heard the cronching of the snow made
skin of a woodchuck was freshly stretched upon the back of the
pinions, he found a new perch, where he might in peace await the
caravansary on the worlds highway, where philosophers of all
All I know of him is tragic. He was a man of manners, like one who
soothed by the sympathy which my mere presence, implied, and showed