After hoeing, or perhaps reading and writing, in the forenoon, I

usually bathed again in the pond, swimming across one of its coves

for a stint, and washed the dust of labor from my person, or

smoothed out the last wrinkle which study had made, and for the

afternoon was absolutely free. Every day or two I strolled to the

village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on

there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to

newspaper, and which, taken in homoeopathic doses, was really as

refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of

frogs. As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so

I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind

among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from my

house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the

grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of

busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prairie-dogs, each

sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor's

to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their habits. The

village appeared to me a great news room; and on one side, to

support it, as once at Redding & Company's on State Street, they

kept nuts and raisins, or salt and meal and other groceries. Some

have such a vast appetite for the former commodity, that is, the

news, and such sound digestive organs, that they can sit forever in

public avenues without stirring, and let it simmer and whisper

through them like the Etesian winds, or as if inhaling ether, it

only producing numbness and insensibility to pain—otherwise it

would often be painful to bear—without affecting the

consciousness. I hardly ever failed, when I rambled through the

village, to see a row of such worthies, either sitting on a ladder

sunning themselves, with their bodies inclined forward and their

eyes glancing along the line this way and that, from time to time,

with a voluptuous expression, or else leaning against a barn with

their hands in their pockets, like caryatides, as if to prop it up.

They, being commonly out of doors, heard whatever was in the wind.

These are the coarsest mills, in which all gossip is first rudely

digested or cracked up before it is emptied into finer and more

delicate hoppers within doors. I observed that the vitals of the

village were the grocery, the bar-room, the post-office, and the

bank; and, as a necessary part of the machinery, they kept a bell, a

big gun, and a fire-engine, at convenient places; and the houses

were so arranged as to make the most of mankind, in lanes and

fronting one another, so that every traveller had to run the

gauntlet, and every man, woman, and child might get a lick at him.

Of course, those who were stationed nearest to the head of the line,

where they could most see and be seen, and have the first blow at

him, paid the highest prices for their places; and the few

straggling inhabitants in the outskirts, where long gaps in the line

began to occur, and the traveller could get over walls or turn aside

into cow-paths, and so escape, paid a very slight ground or window

tax. Signs were hung out on all sides to allure him; some to catch

him by the appetite, as the tavern and victualling cellar; some by

the fancy, as the dry goods store and the jeweller's; and others by

the hair or the feet or the skirts, as the barber, the shoemaker,

or the tailor. Besides, there was a still more terrible standing

invitation to call at every one of these houses, and company

expected about these times. For the most part I escaped wonderfully

from these dangers, either by proceeding at once boldly and without

deliberation to the goal, as is recommended to those who run the

gauntlet, or by keeping my thoughts on high things, like Orpheus,

who, "loudly singing the praises of the gods to his lyre, drowned

the voices of the Sirens, and kept out of danger." Sometimes I

bolted suddenly, and nobody could tell my whereabouts, for I did not

stand much about gracefulness, and never hesitated at a gap in a

fence. I was even accustomed to make an irruption into some houses,

where I was well entertained, and after learning the kernels and

very last sieveful of news—what had subsided, the prospects of

war and peace, and whether the world was likely to hold together

much longer—I was let out through the rear avenues, and so

escaped to the woods again.

It was very pleasant, when I stayed late in town, to launch

myself into the night, especially if it was dark and tempestuous,

and set sail from some bright village parlor or lecture room, with a

bag of rye or Indian meal upon my shoulder, for my snug harbor in

the woods, having made all tight without and withdrawn under hatches

with a merry crew of thoughts, leaving only my outer man at the

helm, or even tying up the helm when it was plain sailing. I had

many a genial thought by the cabin fire "as I sailed." I was never

cast away nor distressed in any weather, though I encountered some

severe storms. It is darker in the woods, even in common nights,

than most suppose. I frequently had to look up at the opening

between the trees above the path in order to learn my route, and,

where there was no cart-path, to feel with my feet the faint track

which I had worn, or steer by the known relation of particular trees

which I felt with my hands, passing between two pines for instance,

not more than eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods,

invariably, in the darkest night. Sometimes, after coming home thus

late in a dark and muggy night, when my feet felt the path which my

eyes could not see, dreaming and absent-minded all the way, until I

was aroused by having to raise my hand to lift the latch, I have not

been able to recall a single step of my walk, and I have thought

that perhaps my body would find its way home if its master should

forsake it, as the hand finds its way to the mouth without

assistance. Several times, when a visitor chanced to stay into

evening, and it proved a dark night, I was obliged to conduct him to

the cart-path in the rear of the house, and then point out to him

the direction he was to pursue, and in keeping which he was to be

guided rather by his feet than his eyes. One very dark night I

directed thus on their way two young men who had been fishing in the

pond. They lived about a mile off through the woods, and were quite

used to the route. A day or two after one of them told me that they

wandered about the greater part of the night, close by their own

premises, and did not get home till toward morning, by which time,

as there had been several heavy showers in the meanwhile, and the

leaves were very wet, they were drenched to their skins. I have

heard of many going astray even in the village streets, when the

darkness was so thick that you could cut it with a knife, as the

saying is. Some who live in the outskirts, having come to town

a-shopping in their wagons, have been obliged to put up for the

night; and gentlemen and ladies making a call have gone half a mile

out of their way, feeling the sidewalk only with their feet, and not

knowing when they turned. It is a surprising and memorable, as well

as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any time. Often in

a snow-storm, even by day, one will come out upon a well-known road

and yet find it impossible to tell which way leads to the village.

Though he knows that he has travelled it a thousand times, he cannot

recognize a feature in it, but it is as strange to him as if it were

a road in Siberia. By night, of course, the perplexity is

infinitely greater. In our most trivial walks, we are constantly,

though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known

beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still

carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not

till we are completely lost, or turned round—for a man needs only

to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost

—do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. Every

man has to learn the points of compass again as often as be awakes,

whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in

other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find

ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our

relations.

One afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when I went to

the village to get a shoe from the cobbler's, I was seized and put

into jail, because, as I have elsewhere related, I did not pay a tax

to, or recognize the authority of, the State which buys and sells

men, women, and children, like cattle, at the door of its

senate-house. I had gone down to the woods for other purposes.

But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their

dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to

their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might have

resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run "amok"

against society; but I preferred that society should run "amok"

against me, it being the desperate party. However, I was released

the next day, obtained my mended shoe, and returned to the woods in

season to get my dinner of huckleberries on Fair Haven Hill. I was

never molested by any person but those who represented the State. I

had no lock nor bolt but for the desk which held my papers, not even

a nail to put over my latch or windows. I never fastened my door

night or day, though I was to be absent several days; not even when

the next fall I spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine. And yet my

house was more respected than if it had been surrounded by a file of

soldiers. The tired rambler could rest and warm himself by my fire,

the literary amuse himself with the few books on my table, or the

curious, by opening my closet door, see what was left of my dinner,

and what prospect I had of a supper. Yet, though many people of

every class came this way to the pond, I suffered no serious

inconvenience from these sources, and I never missed anything but

one small book, a volume of Homer, which perhaps was improperly

gilded, and this I trust a soldier of our camp has found by this

time. I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I

then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place

only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient

while others have not enough. The Pope's Homers would soon get

properly distributed.

"Nec bella fuerunt,

Faginus astabat dum scyphus ante dapes."

"Nor wars did men molest,

When only beechen bowls were in request."

"You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass—I the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends."