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19 - Walden - Henry David Thoreau · Logic Library

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