Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

X

the surface. Truly, we are deep thinkers, we are ambitious spirits! As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and hide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information. I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect.

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I need only suggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened countries. There are such words as joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary and mean. We think that we can change our clothes only. It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind. Who knows what sort of seventeen-year locust will next come out of

the ground? The government of the world. I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.

The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this be the eventful year, may

which will drown out all our muskrats.

It

was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks which the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets. Every one has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer's kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts, from an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened by hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for

ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb, heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board, may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society's most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last!

I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this; but such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning-star.

INDEX

ACTON (Mass.), 192.

Es alienum, another's brass, a
very ancient slough, 13.
Esculapius, that old herb-doc-
tor, 217.

Age and youth, 16.
Alms House Farm, 397.
America, the only true, 321.
"Amok" against T., society run-
ning, 268.

Amusements, games and, despair
concealed under, 15.
Animal food, objections to, 334.
Animal labor, man better without
the help of, 91.

Animal life and heat nearly syn-
onymous, 23.

Ants, battle of the, 355-361.
Apple, the world eating green,

[blocks in formation]

"Best" room, the pine wood be
hind house, 221.

Bibles of mankind, 167, 168.
Birds, living with the, 135.
Body a temple, man's, 345.
Bogs with hard bottom, 509.
Books, how to read, 159; the in-
heritance of nations, 162.
Box, living in a, 48.
Brahmins, their forms of con-

scious penance, 9; Walden ice
makes T. one with the, 459.
Bread without yeast, 98-101.
Breed's hut, 400.

Bricks, mortar growing harder
on 373.

-

Brighton or Brighttown, 209.
Brister's Hill, 354; 397; 399;
405; 412.

Brister's Spring, 406, 408.
BRUTE NEIGHBORS, 347-368.
Bug from an egg in table of apple
wood, the, 513.

Building one's own house, sig-
nificance of, 74.

Business habits indispensable,
strict, 33.

Busk, Indian feast of first fruits,
108.

Calidas', Sacontala quoted, 491.
Cambridge, college room rent
compared with T.'s, 80; crowd-
ed hives of, 212.
Canadian wood - chopper, 224-
234.

Canoe, water-logged in Walden
Pond, 299

Cards left by visitors, 203.
Carew, Thomas, quoted, 127.
Caryatides, gossips leanin
against barn like, 263.

Cat, the Collins's, 71; in the

woods, domestic and “winged,"
361-363.

Cato Major, quoted, 101; 132,
133; 258; 376.

Caves, birds do not sing in, 47.
Celebrating, men, a committee of
arrangements, always, 508.
Celestial Empire, conditions of
successful trade with, 33.
Cellar, a burrow to which house
is but a porch, 72.
Cellini, Benvenuto, quoted, 316.
Chairs for society, three, 218.
Change of air, 493.

Channing, W. E., quoted, 317.
Chapman, George, quoted, 55.
Chastity, the flowering of man,
342.

Chaucer, Geoffrey, quoted, 331.
Chickadees, coming of the, 426.
Chief end of man, 15.
Christianity, adopted as an im-
proved method of agri-culture,
61.

Circulating library, 165.
Civilization not all a success, 51.
Classics, a study of the, 158-160;
must be read in the original,

163.

Clothing, a necessary of life, 22;
not always procured for true
utility, 36; new and old, 39.
Cock-crowing, the charms of,
199-201.

Codinan place, the, 401.
Cold Friday, dating from, 394.
Collins, James, Irishman whose
shanty T. bought, 69.
Commerce, in praise of, 186-192.
Commonsense, the sense of men
asleep, 501.

Compost, better part of man soon
ploughed into soil for, 11.
CONCLUSION, 493-514.

Concord (Mass.), Walden Pond
in, 7; traveled a good deal in,
9; the farmers of, 53; house
surpassing the luxury of, 79;
little fresh meal and corn sold
in, 101; Battle Ground, 136;
effect of a fire bell on people
living near, 147; culture, 167;
wiser men than produced by
soil of, 169; hired man of, 170;
liberal education in, 171;"its
soothing sound is ," 180;
sign of a trader in, 189; bells

of, 192; two-colored waters of,
275; Walden bequeathed to,
303; fight of ants, 358; D. In-
grahain, Esq., of, 397; "to the
rescue," 401; 408; 431.
Concord River, 304; 308, 309.
Confucius, quoted, 20; 211.
Coöperation, difficulties of, 114.
Cost, the amount of life ex-
changed for a thing, 51; of
house, items of, 79; of food for
eight months, 94; total, of liv-
ing, 96; bean-field, 253.
Cowper, William, quoted, 130.
Cummings, slave of Squire, 399.

Damodara, quoted, 138.
Darwin, Charles R., quoted, 22.
Davenant, Sir Wm., Gondibert
quoted, 402.

Day, deliberately, like nature,
spending one, 153.

Debt, getting in and out of, 13.
Desperation, mass of men lead-
lives of quiet, 15.

Dialogue between Hermit and
Poet, 347-350.

Digby, Sir Kenelm, quoted, 253.
Discontented, speaking mainly to
the, 28.

Divinity in man! Look at the
teamster, 14.

Dog in the woods, a village Bose,
361.

Doing-good, a crowded profes
sion, 116.
Drummond

of Hawthornden,
William, quoted, 308.
Ducks on Walden Pond, 368.
Dug-out houses of American col-
onists, 63, 64.

Dwelling-house, what not to
make it, 47.

ECONOMY, 7–127.
Education, tuition bills pay for
the least valuable part of, 81.
Egotism in writers, 8.
Eloquence a transient thing, 160.
Elysian life, summer makes pos-
sible, 24.
England, last news from, 149.
Epidermis, our outside clothes,
40.

Epitome of the year, the day, 464.
Etesian winds, news simmers
through men like, 262.

« AnteriorContinuar »