e 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 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 wilder 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 whippoorwill,
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
imprest 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 mighty clothing of mist, and here and there, by
degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface were
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.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front
only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what
it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not
lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear;
nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary.
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so
sturdily