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WALDEN
By Henry David Thoreau
Chapter 10 Baker Farm
Sometimes I rambled to pine groves, standing like temples, or like
fleets at sea, full-rigged, with wavy boughs, and rippling with light,
so soft and green and shady that the Druids would have forsaken their
oaks to worship in them; or to the cedar wood beyond Flint's Pond, where
the trees, covered with hoary blue berries, spiring higher and higher,
are fit to stand before Valhalla, and the creeping juniper covers the
ground with wreaths full of fruit; or to swamps where the usnea lichen
hangs in festoons from the white spruce trees, and toadstools, round
tables of the swamp gods, cover the ground, and more beautiful fungi
adorn the stumps, like butterflies or shells, vegetable winkles; where
the swamp-pink and dogwood grow, the red alderberry glows like eyes of
imps, the waxwork grooves and crushes the hardest woods in its folds,
and the wild holly berries make the beholder forget his home with their
beauty, and he is dazzled and tempted by nameless other wild forbidden
fruits, too fair for mortal taste. Instead of calling on some scholar,
I paid many a visit to particular trees, of kinds which are rare in this
neighborhood, standing far away in the middle of some pasture, or in the
depths of a wood or swamp, or on a hilltop; such as the black birch, of
which we have some handsome specimens two feet in diameter; its cousin,
the yellow birch, with its loose golden vest, perfumed like the first;
the beech, which has so neat a bole and beautifully lichen-painted,
perfect in all its details, of which, excepting scattered specimens, I
know but one small grove of sizable trees left in the township, supposed
by some to have been planted by the pigeons that were once baited with
beechnuts near by; it is worth the while to see the silver grain
sparkle when you split this wood; the bass; the hornbeam; the _Celtis
occidentalis_, or false elm, of which we have but one well-grown; some
taller mast of a pine, a shingle tree, or a more perfect hemlock than
usual, standing like a pagoda in the midst of the woods; and many
others I could mention. These were the shrines I visited both summer and
winter.
Once it chanced that I stood in the very abutment of a rainbow's arch,
which filled the lower stratum of the atmosphere, tinging the grass and
leaves around, and dazzling me as if I looked through colored crystal.
It was a lake of rainbow light, in which, for a short while, I lived
like a dolphin. If it had lasted longer it might have tinged my
employments and life. As I walked on the railroad causeway, I used
to wonder at the halo of light around my shadow, and would fain fancy
myself one of the elect. One who visited me declared that the shadows
of some Irishmen before him had no halo about them, that it was only
natives that were so distinguished. Benvenuto Cellini tells us in his
memoirs, that, after a certain terrible dream or vision which he had
during his confinement in the castle of St. Angelo a resplendent light
appeared over the shadow of his head at morning and evening, whether
he was in Italy or France, and it was particularly conspicuous when the
grass was moist with dew. This was probably the same phenomenon to which
I have referred, which is especially observed in the morning, but also
at other times, and even by moonlight. Though a constant one, it is
not commonly noticed, and, in the case of an excitable imagination like
Cellini's, it would be basis enough for superstition. Beside, he tells
us that he showed it to very few. But are they not indeed distinguished
who are conscious that they are regarded at all?
I set out one afternoon to go a-fishing to Fair Haven, through the
woods, to eke out my scanty fare of vegetables. My way led through
Pleasant Meadow, an adjunct of the Baker Farm, that retreat of which a
poet has since sung, beginning,—
"Thy entry is a pleasant field, Which some mossy fruit trees yield
Partly to a ruddy brook, By gliding musquash undertook,
And mercurial trout, Darting about."
I thought of living there before I went to Walden. I "hooked" the
apples, leaped the brook, and scared the musquash and the trout. It
was one of those afternoons which seem indefinitely long before one,
in which many events may happen, a large portion of our natural life,
though it was already half spent when I started. By the way there came
up a shower, which compelled me to stand half an hour under a pine,
piling boughs over my head, and wearing my handkerchief for a shed; and
when at length I had made one cast over the pickerelweed, standing up
to my middle in water, I found myself suddenly in the shadow of a cloud,
and the thunder began to rumble with such emphasis that I could do no
more than listen to it. The gods must be proud, thought I, with such
forked flashes to rout a poor unarmed fisherman. So I made haste for
shelter to the nearest hut, which stood half a mile from any road, but
so much the nearer to the pond, and had long been uninhabited:—
"And here a poet builded, In the completed years,
For behold a trivial cabin That to destruction steers."
So the Muse fables. But therein, as I found, dwelt now John Field, an
Irishman, and his wife, and several children, from the broad-faced boy
who assisted his father at his work, and now came running by his
side from the bog to escape the rain, to the wrinkled, sibyl-like,
cone-headed infant that sat upon its father's knee as in the palaces
of nobles, and looked out from its home in the midst of wet and hunger
inquisitively upon the stranger, with the privilege of infancy, not
knowing but it was the last of a noble line, and the hope and cynosure
of the world, instead of John Field's poor starveling brat. There we sat
together under that part of the roof which leaked the least, while it
showered and thundered without. I had sat there many times of old
before the ship was built that floated his family to America. An honest,
hard-working, but shiftless man plainly was John Field; and his wife,
she too was brave to cook so many successive dinners in the recesses of
that lofty stove; with round greasy face and bare breast, still thinking
to improve her condition one day; with the never absent mop in one hand,
and yet no effects of it visible anywhere. The chickens, which had also
taken shelter here from the rain, stalked about the room like members
of the family, too humanized, methought, to roast well. They stood and
looked in my eye or pecked at my shoe significantly. Meanwhile my
host told me his story, how hard he worked "bogging" for a neighboring
farmer, turning up a meadow with a spade or bog hoe at the rate of ten
dollars an acre and the use of the land with manure for one year, and
his little broad-faced son worked cheerfully at his father's side the
while, not knowing how poor a bargain the latter had made. I tried to
help him with my experience, telling him that he was one of my nearest
neighbors, and that I too, who came a-fishing here, and looked like a
loafer, was getting my living like himself; that I lived in a tight,
light, and clean house, which hardly cost more than the annual rent of
such a ruin as his commonly amounts to; and how, if he chose, he might
in a month or two build himself a palace of his own; that I did not use
tea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so did not
have to work to get them; again, as I did not work hard, I did not have
to eat hard, and it cost me but a trifle for my food; but as he began
with tea, and coffee, and butter, and milk, and beef, he had to work
hard to pay for them, and when he had worked hard he had to eat hard
again to repair the waste of his system—and so it was as broad as
it was long, indeed it was broader than it was long, for he was
discontented and wasted his life into the bargain; and yet he had rated
it as a gain in coming to America, that here you could get tea, and
coffee, and meat every day. But the only true America is that country
where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may enable you
to do without these, and where the state does not endeavor to compel
you to sustain the slavery and war and other superfluous expenses
which directly or indirectly result from the use of such things. For I
purposely talked to him as if he were a philosopher, or desired to be
one. I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a
wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem
themselves. A man will not need to study history to find out what is
best for his own culture. But alas! the culture of an Irishman is an
enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe. I told him,
that as he worked so hard at bogging, he required thick boots and stout
clothing, which yet were soon soiled and worn out, but I wore light
shoes and thin clothing, which cost not half so much, though he might
think that I was dressed like a gentleman (which, however, was not the
case), and in an hour or two, without labor, but as a recreation, I
could, if I wished, catch as many fish as I should want for two days, or
earn enough money to support me a week. If he and his family would
live simply, they might all go a-huckleberrying in the summer for their
amusement. John heaved a sigh at this, and his wife stared with arms
a-kimbo, and both appeared to be wondering if they had capital enough to
begin such a course with, or arithmetic enough to carry it through. It
was sailing by dead reckoning to them, and they saw not clearly how to
make their port so; therefore I suppose they still take life bravely,
after their fashion, face to face, giving it tooth and nail, not having
skill to split its massive columns with any fine entering wedge, and
rout it in detail;—thinking to deal with it roughly, as one
should handle a thistle. But they fight at an overwhelming
disadvantage—living, John Field, alas! without arithmetic, and failing
so.
"Do you ever fish?" I asked. "Oh yes, I catch a mess now and then when
I am lying by; good perch I catch."—"What's your bait?" "I catch shiners
with fishworms, and bait the perch with them." "You'd better go now,
John," said his wife, with glistening and hopeful face; but John
demurred.
The shower was now over, and a rainbow above the eastern woods promised
a fair evening; so I took my departure. When I had got without I asked
for a drink, hoping to get a sight of the well bottom, to complete my
survey of the premises; but there, alas! are shallows and quicksands,
and rope broken withal, and bucket irrecoverable. Meanwhile the right
culinary vessel was selected, water was seemingly distilled, and after
consultation and long delay passed out to the thirsty one—not yet
suffered to cool, not yet to settle. Such gruel sustains life here, I
thought; so, shutting my eyes, and excluding the motes by a skilfully
directed undercurrent, I drank to genuine hospitality the heartiest
draught I could. I am not squeamish in such cases when manners are
concerned.
As I was leaving the Irishman's roof after the rain, bending my steps
again to the pond, my haste to catch pickerel, wading in retired
meadows, in sloughs and bog-holes, in forlorn and savage places,
appeared for an instant trivial to me who had been sent to school and
college; but as I ran down the hill toward the reddening west, with the
rainbow over my shoulder, and some faint tinkling sounds borne to my ear
through the cleansed air, from I know not what quarter, my Good Genius
seemed to say—Go fish and hunt far and wide day by day—farther and
wider—and rest thee by many brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving.
Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free from care
before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee by other
lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no
larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played.
Grow wild according to thy nature, like these sedges and brakes, which
will never become English bay. Let the thunder rumble; what if it
threaten ruin to farmers' crops? That is not its errand to thee. Take
shelter under the cloud, while they flee to carts and sheds. Let not
to get a living be thy trade, but thy sport. Enjoy the land, but own it
not. Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying
and selling, and spending their lives like serfs.
O Baker Farm!
"Landscape where the richest element Is a little sunshine innocent."...
"No one runs to revel On thy rail-fenced lea."...
"Debate with no man hast thou, With questions art never perplexed,
As tame at the first sight as now, In thy plain russet gabardine dressed."...
"Come ye who love, And ye who hate,
Children of the Holy Dove, And Guy Faux of the state,
And hang conspiracies From the tough rafters of the trees!"
Men come tamely home at night only from the next field or street, where
their household echoes haunt, and their life pines because it breathes
its own breath over again; their shadows, morning and evening, reach
farther than their daily steps. We should come home from far, from
adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day, with new experience
and character.
Before I had reached the pond some fresh impulse had brought out John
Field, with altered mind, letting go "bogging" ere this sunset. But he,
poor man, disturbed only a couple of fins while I was catching a fair
string, and he said it was his luck; but when we changed seats in the
boat luck changed seats too. Poor John Field!—I trust he does not read
this, unless he will improve by it—thinking to live by some derivative
old-country mode in this primitive new country—to catch perch with
shiners. It is good bait sometimes, I allow. With his horizon all
his own, yet he a poor man, born to be poor, with his inherited Irish
poverty or poor life, his Adam's grandmother and boggy ways, not to
rise in this world, he nor his posterity, till their wading webbed
bog-trotting feet get _talaria_ to their heels.
Higher Laws
As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing
my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck
stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight,
and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I was
hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented. Once or
twice, however, while I lived at the pond, I found myself ranging the
woods, like a half-starved hound, with a strange abandonment, seeking
some kind of venison which I might devour, and no morsel could have been
too savage for me. The wildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar.
I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or,
as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a
primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the
wild not less than the good. The wildness and adventure that are in
fishing still recommended it to me. I like sometimes to take rank hold
on life and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed
to this employment and to hunting, when quite young, my closest
acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us
in scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should have little
acquaintance. Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending
their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of
Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her,
in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who
approach her with expectation. She is not afraid to exhibit herself to
them. The traveller on the prairie is naturally a hunter, on the head
waters of the Missouri and Columbia a trapper, and at the Falls of
St. Mary a fisherman. He who is only a traveller learns things at
second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most
interested when science reports what those men already know practically
or instinctively, for that alone is a true _humanity_, or account of human
experience.
They mistake who assert that the Yankee has few amusements, because he
has not so many public holidays, and men and boys do not play so many
games as they do in England, for here the more primitive but solitary
amusements of hunting, fishing, and the like have not yet given place
to the former. Almost every New England boy among my contemporaries
shouldered a fowling-piece between the ages of ten and fourteen; and his
hunting and fishing grounds were not limited, like the preserves of an
English nobleman, but were more boundless even than those of a savage.
No wonder, then, that he did not oftener stay to play on the common. But
already a change is taking place, owing, not to an increased humanity,
but to an increased scarcity of game, for perhaps the hunter is the
greatest friend of the animals hunted, not excepting the Humane Society.
Moreover, when at the pond, I wished sometimes to add fish to my fare
for variety. I have actually fished from the same kind of necessity that
the first fishers did. Whatever humanity I might conjure up against it
was all factitious, and concerned my philosophy more than my feelings.
I speak of fishing only now, for I had long felt differently about
fowling, and sold my gun before I went to the woods. Not that I am less
humane than others, but I did not perceive that my feelings were much
affected. I did not pity the fishes nor the worms. This was habit. As
for fowling, during the last years that I carried a gun my excuse was
that I was studying ornithology, and sought only new or rare birds. But
I confess that I am now inclined to think that there is a finer way of
studying ornithology than this. It requires so much closer attention
to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only, I have been
willing to omit the gun. Yet notwithstanding the objection on the score
of humanity, I am compelled to doubt if equally valuable sports are
ever substituted for these; and when some of my friends have asked me
anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have
answered, yes—remembering that it was one of the best parts of my
education—_make_ them hunters, though sportsmen only at first, if
possible, mighty hunters at last, so that they shall not find game large
enough for them in this or any vegetable wilderness—hunters as well as
fishers of men. Thus far I am of the opinion of Chaucer's nun, who
"yave not of the text a pulled hen That saith that hunters ben not holy men."
There is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race, when
the hunters are the "best men," as the Algonquins called them. We cannot
but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while
his education has been sadly neglected. This was my answer with respect
to those youths who were bent on this pursuit, trusting that they would
soon outgrow it. No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood,
will wantonly *** any creature which holds its life by the same
tenure that he does. The hare in its extremity cries like a child.
I warn you, mothers, that my sympathies do not always make the usual
phil-_anthropic_ distinctions.
Such is oftenest the young man's introduction to the forest, and the
most original part of himself. He goes thither at first as a hunter and
fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he
distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be,
and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. The mass of men are still and
always young in this respect. In some countries a hunting parson is no
uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd's dog, but is far
from being the Good Shepherd. I have been surprised to consider that the
only obvious employment, except wood-chopping, ice-cutting, or the like
business, which ever to my knowledge detained at Walden Pond for a whole
half-day any of my fellow-citizens, whether fathers or children of the
town, with just one exception, was fishing. Commonly they did not think
that they were lucky, or well paid for their time, unless they got a
long string of fish, though they had the opportunity of seeing the pond
all the while. They might go there a thousand times before the sediment
of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure; but
no doubt such a clarifying process would be going on all the while.
The Governor and his Council faintly remember the pond, for they went
a-fishing there when they were boys; but now they are too old and
dignified to go a-fishing, and so they know it no more forever. Yet even
they expect to go to heaven at last. If the legislature regards it, it
is chiefly to regulate the number of hooks to be used there; but they
know nothing about the hook of hooks with which to angle for the pond
itself, impaling the legislature for a bait. Thus, even in civilized
communities, the embryo man passes through the hunter stage of
development.
I have found repeatedly, of late years, that I cannot fish without
falling a little in self-respect. I have tried it again and again. I
have skill at it, and, like many of my fellows, a certain instinct for
it, which revives from time to time, but always when I have done I feel
that it would have been better if I had not fished. I think that I do
not mistake. It is a faint intimation, yet so are the first streaks of
morning. There is unquestionably this instinct in me which belongs to
the lower orders of creation; yet with every year I am less a fisherman,
though without more humanity or even wisdom; at present I am no
fisherman at all. But I see that if I were to live in a wilderness
I should again be tempted to become a fisher and hunter in earnest.
Beside, there is something essentially unclean about this diet and all
flesh, and I began to see where housework commences, and whence the
endeavor, which costs so much, to wear a tidy and respectable appearance
each day, to keep the house sweet and free from all ill odors and
sights. Having been my own butcher and scullion and cook, as well as
the gentleman for whom the dishes were served up, I can speak from an
unusually complete experience. The practical objection to animal food in
my case was its uncleanness; and besides, when I had caught and
cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me
essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than it
came to. A little bread or a few potatoes would have done as well, with
less trouble and filth. Like many of my contemporaries, I had rarely
for many years used animal food, or tea, or coffee, etc.; not so much
because of any ill effects which I had traced to them, as because they
were not agreeable to my imagination. The repugnance to animal food
is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more
beautiful to live low and fare hard in many respects; and though I never
did so, I went far enough to please my imagination. I believe that every
man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties
in the best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from
animal food, and from much food of any kind. It is a significant fact,
stated by entomologists—I find it in Kirby and Spence—that "some
insects in their perfect state, though furnished with organs of feeding,
make no use of them"; and they lay it down as "a general rule, that
almost all insects in this state eat much less than in that of larvæ.
The voracious caterpillar when transformed into a butterfly... and the
gluttonous maggot when become a fly" content themselves with a drop or
two of honey or some other sweet liquid. The abdomen under the wings
of the butterfly still represents the larva. This is the tidbit which
tempts his insectivorous fate. The gross feeder is a man in the larva
state; and there are whole nations in that condition, nations without
fancy or imagination, whose vast abdomens betray them.
It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as will not
offend the imagination; but this, I think, is to be fed when we feed the
body; they should both sit down at the same table. Yet perhaps this may
be done. The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of
our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra
condiment into your dish, and it will poison you. It is not worth the
while to live by rich cookery. Most men would feel shame if caught
preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of
animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by others.
Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen and
ladies, are not true men and women. This certainly suggests what change
is to be made. It may be vain to ask why the imagination will not be
reconciled to flesh and fat. I am satisfied that it is not. Is it not a
reproach that man is a carnivorous animal? True, he can and does live,
in a great measure, by preying on other animals; but this is a miserable
way—as any one who will go to snaring rabbits, or slaughtering lambs,
may learn—and he will be regarded as a benefactor of his race who shall
teach man to confine himself to a more innocent and wholesome diet.
Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of
the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off
eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each
other when they came in contact with the more civilized.
If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius,
which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even
insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute
and faithful, his road lies. The faintest assured objection which one
healthy man feels will at length prevail over the arguments and customs
of mankind. No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though
the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the
consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity
to higher principles. If the day and the night are such that you greet
them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented
herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal—that is your
success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause
momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are
farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist.
We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts
most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man.
The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and
indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little
star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish; I could sometimes eat
a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am glad to have
drunk water so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky
to an ***-eater's heaven. I would fain keep sober always; and there
are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I believe that water is the only
drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of
dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an
evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by
them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes
destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America. Of all
ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?
I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long
continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also. But
to tell the truth, I find myself at present somewhat less particular in
these respects. I carry less religion to the table, ask no blessing; not
because I am wiser than I was, but, I am obliged to confess, because,
however much it is to be regretted, with years I have grown more coarse
and indifferent. Perhaps these questions are entertained only in youth,
as most believe of poetry. My practice is "nowhere," my opinion is here.
Nevertheless I am far from regarding myself as one of those privileged
ones to whom the Ved refers when it says, that "he who has true faith in
the Omnipresent Supreme Being may eat all that exists," that is, is not
bound to inquire what is his food, or who prepares it; and even in their
case it is to be observed, as a Hindoo commentator has remarked, that
the Vedant limits this privilege to "the time of distress."
Who has not sometimes derived an inexpressible satisfaction from his
food in which appetite had no share? I have been thrilled to think that
I owed a mental perception to the commonly gross sense of taste, that
I have been inspired through the palate, that some berries which I had
eaten on a hillside had fed my genius. "The soul not being mistress
of herself," says Thseng-tseu, "one looks, and one does not see; one
listens, and one does not hear; one eats, and one does not know the
savor of food." He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can
never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise. A puritan
may go to his brown-bread crust with as gross an appetite as ever an
alderman to his turtle. Not that food which entereth into the mouth
defileth a man, but the appetite with which it is eaten. It is neither
the quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors; when
that which is eaten is not a viand to sustain our animal, or inspire our
spiritual life, but food for the worms that possess us. If the hunter
has a taste for mud-turtles, muskrats, and other such savage tidbits,
the fine lady indulges a taste for jelly made of a calf's foot, or for
sardines from over the sea, and they are even. He goes to the mill-pond,
she to her preserve-pot. The wonder is how they, how you and I, can live
this slimy, beastly life, eating and drinking.
Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce
between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never
fails. In the music of the harp which trembles round the world it is the
insisting on this which thrills us. The harp is the travelling patterer
for the Universe's Insurance Company, recommending its laws, and our
little goodness is all the assessment that we pay. Though the youth at
last grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent,
but are forever on the side of the most sensitive. Listen to every
zephyr for some reproof, for it is surely there, and he is unfortunate
who does not hear it. We cannot touch a string or move a stop but the
charming moral transfixes us. Many an irksome noise, go a long way off,
is heard as music, a proud, sweet satire on the meanness of our lives.
We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our
higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be
wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy
our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its
nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own; that we
may be well, yet not pure. The other day I picked up the lower jaw of
a hog, with white and sound teeth and tusks, which suggested that
there was an animal health and vigor distinct from the spiritual. This
creature succeeded by other means than temperance and purity. "That
in which men differ from brute beasts," says Mencius, "is a thing very
inconsiderable; the common herd lose it very soon; superior men preserve
it carefully." Who knows what sort of life would result if we had
attained to purity? If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity I
would go to seek him forthwith. "A command over our passions, and over
the external senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved
to be indispensable in the mind's approximation to God." Yet the spirit
can for the time pervade and control every member and function of the
body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality into
purity and devotion. The generative energy, which, when we are loose,
dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates
and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called
Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which
succeed it. Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is
open. By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down. He is
blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out in him day by day,
and the divine being established. Perhaps there is none but has cause
for shame on account of the inferior and brutish nature to which he
is allied. I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and
satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and
that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace.—
"How happy's he who hath due place assigned To his beasts and disafforested his mind!
. . . . . . . Can use this horse, goat, wolf, and ev'ry
beast, And is not *** himself to all the rest!
Else man not only is the herd of swine, But he's those devils too which did incline
Them to a headlong rage, and made them worse."
All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one. It
is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually.
They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one
of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can
neither stand nor sit with purity. When the reptile is attacked at
one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another. If you would be
chaste, you must be temperate. What is chastity? How shall a man know if
he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but
we know not what it is. We speak conformably to the rumor which we have
heard. From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and
sensuality. In the student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. An
unclean person is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove,
whom the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes without being fatigued. If
you would avoid uncleanness, and all the sins, work earnestly, though it
be at cleaning a stable. Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be
overcome. What avails it that you are Christian, if you are not purer
than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more
religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose
precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors,
though it be to the performance of rites merely.
I hesitate to say these things, but it is not because of the subject—I
care not how obscene my _words_ are—but because I cannot speak of them
without betraying my impurity. We discourse freely without shame of one
form of sensuality, and are silent about another. We are so degraded
that we cannot speak simply of the necessary functions of human nature.
In earlier ages, in some countries, every function was reverently
spoken of and regulated by law. Nothing was too trivial for the Hindoo
lawgiver, however offensive it may be to modern taste. He teaches how to
eat, drink, cohabit, void excrement and urine, and the like, elevating
what is mean, and does not falsely excuse himself by calling these
things trifles.
Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he
worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering
marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material
is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to
refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
John Farmer sat at his door one September evening, after a hard day's
work, his mind still running on his labor more or less. Having bathed,
he sat down to re-create his intellectual man. It was a rather cool
evening, and some of his neighbors were apprehending a frost. He had
not attended to the train of his thoughts long when he heard some one
playing on a flute, and that sound harmonized with his mood. Still he
thought of his work; but the burden of his thought was, that though this
kept running in his head, and he found himself planning and contriving
it against his will, yet it concerned him very little. It was no more
than the scurf of his skin, which was constantly shuffled off. But the
notes of the flute came home to his ears out of a different sphere
from that he worked in, and suggested work for certain faculties which
slumbered in him. They gently did away with the street, and the village,
and the state in which he lived. A voice said to him—Why do you stay
here and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is
possible for you? Those same stars twinkle over other fields than
these.—But how to come out of this condition and actually migrate
thither? All that he could think of was to practise some new austerity,
to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself
with ever increasing respect.
Brute 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 the catching 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 over the sweet-fern these three hours. The pigeons are all
asleep upon their roosts—no flutter from them. Was that a farmer's noon
horn which sounded from beyond the woods just now? The hands are coming
in to boiled salt beef and 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 never think
for the barking of Bose? And oh, the housekeeping! to keep bright the
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 of brown bread on the shelf.—Hark! I hear a
rustling of the leaves. Is it some ill-fed village hound yielding to
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
and sweetbriers 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, and have
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 am just 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 shall be digging the bait meanwhile.
Angleworms are rarely to be met with in these parts, where the soil was
never fattened with manure; the race is nearly extinct. The sport of
digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when
one's appetite is not too keen; and this you may have all to yourself
today. I would advise you to set in the spade down yonder among the
ground-nuts, where you see the johnswort waving. I think that I may
warrant you one worm to every three sods you turn up, if you look well
in among the roots of the grass, as if you were weeding. Or, if you
choose to go farther, it will not be unwise, for I have found the
increase of fair bait to be very nearly as the 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 to an 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 to me. If it would do any good, I would
whistle for them. When they make us an offer, is it wise to say, We will
think of it? My thoughts have left no track, and I cannot 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 about again. I know not whether it was the dumps or a budding
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, beside several which are imperfect or undersized; but they will
do for the smaller fry; they do not cover up the hook so much. Those
village worms are quite too large; a shiner 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 animals for his neighbors; as if nothing but
a mouse could have filled this crevice? I suspect that Pilpay & Co. have
put animals to their best use, for they are all beasts of burden, in a
sense, made to carry some portion of our thoughts.
The mice which haunted my house were not the common ones, which are said
to have been introduced into the country, but a wild 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 its nest
underneath the house, and before I had laid the second floor, and swept
out the shavings, 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 the room by short impulses, like a
squirrel, which it resembled in its motions. At length, as I leaned
with my elbow on the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, and along my
sleeve, and round and round the paper which held my dinner, while I kept
the latter close, and dodged and played at bopeep with it; and when at
last I held still a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it came
and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned its face and
paws, like a fly, and walked away.
A phœbe soon built in my shed, and a robin for 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 to the front of my house, clucking and calling to them like a
hen, and in all her behavior proving herself the hen of the woods. The
young suddenly disperse on your approach, at a signal from the mother,
as if a whirlwind had swept them away, and they so exactly resemble the
dried leaves and twigs that many a traveler has placed his foot in the
midst of a brood, and heard the whir of the old bird as she flew off,
and her anxious calls and mewing, or seen her trail her wings to attract
his attention, without suspecting their neighborhood. The parent will
sometimes roll and spin round before you in such a dishabille, that you
cannot, for a few moments, detect what kind of creature it is. The young
squat still and flat, often running their heads under a leaf, and mind
only their mother's directions given from a distance, nor will your
approach make them run again and betray themselves. You may even tread
on them, or have your eyes on them for a minute, without discovering
them. I have held them in my open hand at such a time, and still their
only care, obedient to their mother and their instinct, was to squat
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, it was found with the rest in exactly the same position ten
minutes afterward. They are not callow like the young of most birds,
but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. The
remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene
eyes is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They
suggest not merely the purity of infancy, 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 often shoots the parent at such a time, and leaves
these innocents to fall a prey to some prowling beast or bird, or
gradually mingle with the decaying leaves which they so much resemble.
It is said that when hatched by a hen they will directly disperse on
some alarm, and so are lost, for they never hear the mother's call which
gathers them again. These were my hens and chickens.
It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free though secret in
the woods, and still sustain themselves in the neighborhood 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 being getting a glimpse of him. I formerly saw the raccoon in
the woods behind where my house is built, and probably still heard their
whinnering at night. Commonly I rested an hour or two in the shade at
noon, after planting, and ate my lunch, and read a little by a spring
which was the source of a swamp and of a brook, oozing from under
Brister's Hill, half a mile from my field. The approach to this was
through a succession of descending grassy hollows, full of young pitch
pines, into a larger wood 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 of clear gray
water, where I could dip up a pailful without roiling it, and thither I
went 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 they ran in
a troop beneath; but at last, spying me, she would leave her young and
circle round and round me, nearer and nearer till within 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 she directed. Or I heard
the peep of the young when I could not see the parent bird. There too
the turtle doves sat over the spring, or fluttered from bough to bough
of the soft white pines over my head; or the red squirrel, coursing down
the nearest bough, was particularly familiar and inquisitive. You only
need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all
its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.
I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. One day when I
went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two
large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch
long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once got
hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the
chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the
chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a _duellum_, but
a _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 all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the
ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and
black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, 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 the
other. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any
noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely.
I watched a couple that were fast locked in each other's embraces, in
a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noonday prepared to fight
till the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red champion had
fastened himself like a vice to his adversary's front, and through all
the tumblings on that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one
of his feelers near the root, having already caused the other to go by
the board; while the stronger black one dashed him from side to side,
and, as I saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of several of
his members. They fought with more pertinacity than bulldogs. Neither
manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident that their
battle-cry was "Conquer or die." In the meanwhile there came along
a single red ant on the hillside of this valley, evidently full of
excitement, who either had 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 had nourished his wrath apart, and
had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He saw this unequal
combat from afar—for the blacks were nearly twice the size of the
red—he drew near with rapid pace till he stood on his guard within half
an inch of the combatants; then, watching his opportunity, he sprang
upon the black warrior, and commenced his operations near the root of
his right fore leg, leaving the foe to select among his own members; and
so there were three united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had
been invented which put all other locks and cements to shame. I should
not have wondered by this time to find that they had their respective
musical bands stationed on some eminent chip, and playing their national
airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was
myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think
of it, the less the difference. And certainly there is not the fight
recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America,
that will bear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers
engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers
and for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight! Two
killed on the patriots' side, and Luther 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 principle they fought for, as much as
our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the
results of this battle will be as important and memorable to those whom
it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least.
I took up the chip on which the three I have particularly described were
struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it under a tumbler on
my window-sill, in order to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the
first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing
at the near fore leg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler,
his own breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there
to the jaws of the black warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too
thick for him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes
shone with ferocity such as war only could excite. They struggled half
an hour longer under the tumbler, and when I looked again the black
soldier had severed the heads of his foes 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 feeble struggles, being without feelers and
with only the remnant of a leg, and I know not how many other wounds,
to divest himself of them; 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 I thought 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 my feelings
excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and
carnage, of a human battle before my door.
Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have long been
celebrated and the date of them recorded, though they say that Huber
is the only modern author who appears to have witnessed them. "Æneas
Sylvius," say they, "after giving a very circumstantial account of one
contested with great obstinacy by a great and small species on the trunk
of a pear tree," adds that "this action was fought in the pontificate
of Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an
eminent lawyer, who related the whole history of the battle with the
greatest fidelity." A similar engagement between great and small ants is
recorded by Olaus Magnus, in which the small ones, being victorious, are
said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of
their giant enemies a prey to the birds. This event happened previous
to the expulsion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden. The
battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five
years before the passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill.
Many a village Bose, fit only to course a mud-turtle in a victualling
cellar, sported his heavy quarters in the woods, without the knowledge
of his master, and ineffectually smelled at old fox burrows and
woodchucks' holes; led perchance by some slight cur which nimbly
threaded the wood, and might still inspire a natural terror in its
denizens;—now far behind his guide, barking like a canine bull toward
some small squirrel which had treed itself for scrutiny, then, cantering
off, bending the bushes with his weight, imagining that he is on the
track of some stray member of the jerbilla family. Once I was surprised
to see a cat walking along the stony shore of the pond, for they rarely
wander so far from home. The surprise was mutual. Nevertheless the most
domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at
home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself
more native there than the regular inhabitants. Once, when berrying,
I met with a cat with young kittens in the woods, quite wild, and they
all, like their mother, had their backs up and were fiercely spitting at
me. A few years before I lived in the woods there was what was called a
"winged cat" in one of the farm-houses in Lincoln nearest the pond, Mr.
Gilian Baker's. When I called to see her in June, 1842, she was gone
a-hunting in the woods, as was her wont (I am not sure whether it was
a male or female, and so use the more common pronoun), but her mistress
told me that she came into the neighborhood a little more than a year
before, in April, and was finally taken into their house; that she was
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; that in the winter
the fur grew thick and flatted out along her sides, forming stripes ten
or twelve inches long by two and a half wide, and under her chin like
a ***, the upper side loose, the under matted 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 about them.
Some thought it was part flying squirrel or some 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 cat for me to keep, if I had kept any;
for why should not a poet's cat be winged as well as 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 wild laughter before I
had risen. At rumor of his arrival all the Mill-dam sportsmen are on the
alert, in gigs and on foot, two by two and three by three, with patent
rifles and conical balls and spy-glasses. They come rustling through
the woods like autumn leaves, at least ten men to one loon. Some station
themselves on this side of the pond, some on that, for the poor bird
cannot be omnipresent; if he dive here he must come up there. But
now the kind October wind rises, rustling the leaves and rippling the
surface of the water, so that no loon can be heard or seen, though his
foes sweep the pond with spy-glasses, and make the woods resound 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
and shop and unfinished jobs. But they were too often successful. When
I went to get a pail of water early in the morning I frequently saw this
stately bird sailing out of my cove within a few rods. 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 that I did not discover him again,
sometimes, till the latter part of the day. But I was more than a match
for him on the surface. He commonly went off in a rain.
As I was paddling along the north shore one very 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 the middle 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 the direction he would take, and we were fifty rods
apart when he came to the surface this time, for I had helped to widen
the interval; and again he laughed long and loud, and with more reason
than before. He manoeuvred so cunningly that I could not get 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, and
apparently chose his course so that he might come up where there was the
widest expanse of water and at the greatest distance from the boat. It
was surprising how quickly he made up his mind and put his resolve into
execution. He led me at once to the widest part of the pond, and could
not be driven from it. While he was thinking one thing in his brain,
I was endeavoring to divine his thought in mine. It was a pretty game,
played on the smooth surface of the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly
your adversary's checker disappears beneath the board, and the problem
is to place yours nearest to where his will appear again. Sometimes he
would come up unexpectedly on the 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; and then no wit could divine where in the deep
pond, beneath the smooth surface, he might be speeding his way like a
fish, for he had time and ability to visit the bottom of the pond in
its deepest part. It is said that loons have been caught in the New York
lakes eighty feet beneath the surface, with hooks set for trout—though
Walden is deeper than that. How surprised must the fishes be to see
this ungainly visitor from another sphere speeding his way amid their
schools! Yet he appeared to know his course as surely under water as on
the surface, and swam much faster there. Once or twice I saw a ripple
where he approached the surface, just put his head out to reconnoitre,
and instantly dived again. I found that it was as well for me to rest
on 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 laugh
behind 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 the water when he came up, and so also
detected him. But after an hour he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as
willingly, and swam yet farther than at first. It was surprising to see
how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the
surface, doing all the work with 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 most successfully and come up a long
way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that
of a wolf than any bird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground
and deliberately howls. This was his looning—perhaps the wildest sound
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 not hear
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,
he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of
loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and
rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, and I was
impressed as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his god was
angry with me; and so I left him disappearing far away on the tumultuous
surface.
For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks 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 sometimes circle round and round and over the pond at a
considerable height, from which they could easily see to other ponds
and the river, like black motes in the sky; and, when I thought they had
gone off thither long since, they would settle down by a slanting flight
of a quarter of a mile on to a distant part which was left free; but
what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not
know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.
End of Chapter 12 �