was
a tent, which I used occasionally when making excursions in the summer,
and this is still rolled up in my garret; but the boat, after passing
from hand to hand, has gone down the stream of time. With this more
substantial shelter about me, I had made some progress toward
settling in the world. This frame, so slightly clad, was a sort of
crystallization around me, and reacted on the builder. It was suggestive
somewhat as a picture in outlines. I did not need to go outdoors to take
the air, for the atmosphere within had lost none of its freshness. It
was not so much within doors as behind a door where I sat, even in the
rainiest weather. The Harivansa says, "An abode without birds is like
a meat without seasoning." Such was not my abode, for I found myself
suddenly neighbor to the birds; not by having imprisoned one, but having
caged myself near them. I was not only nearer to some of those which
commonly frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those smaller and
more thrilling songsters of the forest which never, or rarely, serenade
a villager--the wood thrush, the veery, the scarlet tanager, the field
sparrow, the whip-poor-will, and many others.

I was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and a half south
of the village of Concord and somewhat higher than it, in the midst of
an extensive wood between that town and Lincoln, and about two miles
south of that our only field known to fame, Concord Battle Ground; but
I was so low in the woods that the opposite shore, half a mile off, like
the rest, covered with wood, was my most distant horizon. For the first
week, whenever I looked out on the pond it impressed me like a tarn high
up on the side of a mountain, its bottom far above the surface of other
lakes, and, as the sun arose, I saw it throwing off its nightly clothing
of mist, and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth
reflecting surface was revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were
stealthily withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at the
breaking up of some nocturnal conventicle. The very dew seemed to
hang upon the trees later into the day than usual, as on the sides of
mountains.

This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals of a
gentle rain-storm in August, when, both air and water being perfectly
still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the serenity of
evening, and the wood thrush sang around, and was heard from shore to
shore. A