determined to explore. The
first thing that impressed me when I reached the eminence was the
silence. It was something to be dreamed of, when the Lake was also
still. There was no road; a hay field came down to the very edge of the
bluff, and the shore fifty feet below was narrow and rocky. Very few
people passed there. That most comfortable little town was lying against
the rear horizon to the West. I used to come in the evenings and smoke
as the sun went down. Sometimes the beauty of it was all I could
bear--the voices of children in the distance and the Pelee light
flashing every seven seconds far out in the Lake.

I first saw it in dry summer weather and did not know that a bumper crop
of frogs had been harvested that Spring from the deep, grass-covered
hollows formed by the removal of clay for a brick-business long ago.
There was good forage on the mounds, which I did not appreciate at the
time. The fact is these mounds were formed of pure dark loam, as fine a
soil as anywhere in the Lake Country.

Those of the dim eyes say that once upon a time an orchard and
brick-house stood on a bluff in front of the brick-yard, on a natural
point, but that the Lake had nibbled and nibbled, finally digesting the
property, fruit-trees, brick-house and all.

I could well believe it when the first storm came. An East wind for
three days brought steady deluges of high water that wore down the
shore-line almost visibly. A week later came a West wind that enfiladed,
so that what remained of the little point was caught in the cross-play
of the weathers. If some one did not intervene, the brick-yard site
would follow the orchard--that was clear.

... Three or four times the owner came to see me. We had rejoiced in the
rented property, rejoiced in owning nothing, yet having it all....
Thoreau in his daily westward migrations studied it all with the same
critical delight, and found his abode where others did not care to
follow. We look twice at the spot we choose to build our house. That
second look is not so free and innocent.... Yet a man may build his
house. Thoreau had no little brood coming up, and I have doubted many
times, even in moments of austere admiration, if he wouldn't have lived
longer, had there been a woman about to nourish him. She would have
insisted upon a better roof, at least.... I told the neighbour-man I
would buy the brick-yard, if he didn't stop pestering me about it. He
smiled and came once too often.

Th