esh as ever, dived as
willingly, and swam yet farther than at first. It was surprising to see
how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the
surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet beneath. His usual note
was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a water-fowl; but
occasionally, when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long
way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that
of a wolf than any bird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground
and deliberately howls. This was his looning--perhaps the wildest sound
that is ever heard here, making the woods ring far and wide. I concluded
that he laughed in derision of my efforts, confident of his own
resources. Though the sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so
smooth that I could see where he broke the surface when I did not hear
him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and the smoothness of
the water were all against him. At length having come up fifty rods off,
he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of
loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and
rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, and I was
impressed as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his god was
angry with me; and so I left him disappearing far away on the tumultuous
surface.

For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and
hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman; tricks which they
will have less need to practise in Louisiana bayous. When compelled to
rise they would sometimes circle round and round and over the pond at a
considerable height, from which they could easily see to other ponds
and the river, like black motes in the sky; and, when I thought they had
gone off thither long since, they would settle down by a slanting flight
of a quarter of a mile on to a distant part which was left free; but
what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not
know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.

House-Warming

In October I went a-graping to the river meadows, and loaded myself with
clusters more precious for their beauty and fragrance than for food.
There, too, I admired, though I did not gather, the cranberries, small
waxen gems, pendants of the meadow grass, pearly and red, which the
farmer plucks with an ugly rake, leaving the smooth meadow in a