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