[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
the Codman place," affirmed another. And then fresh sparks went up above the wood, as
if the roof fell in, and we all shouted "Concord to the rescue!" Wagons shot past with
furious speed and crushing loads, bearing, perchance, among the rest, the agent of the
Insurance Company, who was bound to go however far; and ever and anon the engine
bell tinkled 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, rejecting the evidence of our senses, until at a turn in the road we heard the
crackling 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 concluded to let it burn, it was so far gone and so
worthless. So we stood round our engine, jostled one another, expressed our sentiments
Walden& 190
through speaking-trumpets, or in lower tone referred to the great conflagrations which the
world has witnessed, including Bascom's 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 one into another flood. We finally retreated without doing
any mischief--returned to sleep and "Gondibert." But as for "Gondibert," I would except
that passage in the preface about wit being the soul's powder--"but most of mankind are
strangers to wit, as Indians are to powder."
It chanced 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 interested in this burning, lying on his stomach and looking over the cellar wall
at the still smouldering cinders beneath, muttering to himself, as is his wont. He had been
working 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, concealed between the stones, 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 fastened to the heavy end--all that he could now cling to--to convince
me that it was no common "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 Lincoln.
Farther in the woods than any of these, where the road approaches nearest to the pond,
Wyman the potter squatted, and furnished his townsmen with earthenware, and left
descendants to succeed him. Neither were they rich in worldly goods, holding the land by
Walden& 191
sufferance while they lived; and there often the sheriff came in vain to collect the taxes,
and "attached a chip," for form's sake, as I have read in his accounts, 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 concerning Wyman the younger. He had long ago bought a potter's wheel of
him, and wished to know what had become of him. I had read of the potter's clay and
wheel in Scripture, but it had never occurred to me that the pots we use were not such as
had come down unbroken from those days, or grown on trees like gourds somewhere, and
I was pleased 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 name with coil enough), who occupied Wyman's tenement--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 over again. His trade here was that of a ditcher. Napoleon went
to 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 Brister's Hill shortly after I came to the woods, so that I have not remembered him as a
neighbor. Before his house was pulled down, when his comrades 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
confessed to me that, though he had heard of Brister's Spring, he had never seen it; and
soiled cards, kings of diamonds, spades, and hearts, were scattered over the floor. One
black chicken which the administrator could not catch, black as night and as silent, not
even croaking, awaiting Reynard, still went to roost in the next 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 stuck to my clothes for all
Walden& 192
fruit. The skin of a woodchuck was freshly stretched upon the back of the house, a trophy
of his last Waterloo; but no warm cap or mittens would he want more.
Now only a dent in the earth marks the site of these dwellings, with buried cellar stones,
and strawberries, raspberries, thimbleberries, hazel-bushes, and sumachs growing in the
sunny sward there; some pitch pine or gnarled oak occupies what was the chimney nook,
and a sweet-scented 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 under the sod,
when the last of the race departed. What a sorrowful act must that be--the covering up of
wells! coincident 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 can learn of their conclusions 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 generation after the door and lintel and the sill are gone,
unfolding its sweet-scented flowers each spring, to be plucked by the musing traveller;
planted and tended once by children's hands, hi front-yard plots--now standing by
wallsides in retired 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 stuck in the ground in the shadow of the house and daily [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl rafalstec.xlx.pl
the Codman place," affirmed another. And then fresh sparks went up above the wood, as
if the roof fell in, and we all shouted "Concord to the rescue!" Wagons shot past with
furious speed and crushing loads, bearing, perchance, among the rest, the agent of the
Insurance Company, who was bound to go however far; and ever and anon the engine
bell tinkled 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, rejecting the evidence of our senses, until at a turn in the road we heard the
crackling 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 concluded to let it burn, it was so far gone and so
worthless. So we stood round our engine, jostled one another, expressed our sentiments
Walden& 190
through speaking-trumpets, or in lower tone referred to the great conflagrations which the
world has witnessed, including Bascom's 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 one into another flood. We finally retreated without doing
any mischief--returned to sleep and "Gondibert." But as for "Gondibert," I would except
that passage in the preface about wit being the soul's powder--"but most of mankind are
strangers to wit, as Indians are to powder."
It chanced 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 interested in this burning, lying on his stomach and looking over the cellar wall
at the still smouldering cinders beneath, muttering to himself, as is his wont. He had been
working 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, concealed between the stones, 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 fastened to the heavy end--all that he could now cling to--to convince
me that it was no common "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 Lincoln.
Farther in the woods than any of these, where the road approaches nearest to the pond,
Wyman the potter squatted, and furnished his townsmen with earthenware, and left
descendants to succeed him. Neither were they rich in worldly goods, holding the land by
Walden& 191
sufferance while they lived; and there often the sheriff came in vain to collect the taxes,
and "attached a chip," for form's sake, as I have read in his accounts, 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 concerning Wyman the younger. He had long ago bought a potter's wheel of
him, and wished to know what had become of him. I had read of the potter's clay and
wheel in Scripture, but it had never occurred to me that the pots we use were not such as
had come down unbroken from those days, or grown on trees like gourds somewhere, and
I was pleased 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 name with coil enough), who occupied Wyman's tenement--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 over again. His trade here was that of a ditcher. Napoleon went
to 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 Brister's Hill shortly after I came to the woods, so that I have not remembered him as a
neighbor. Before his house was pulled down, when his comrades 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
confessed to me that, though he had heard of Brister's Spring, he had never seen it; and
soiled cards, kings of diamonds, spades, and hearts, were scattered over the floor. One
black chicken which the administrator could not catch, black as night and as silent, not
even croaking, awaiting Reynard, still went to roost in the next 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 stuck to my clothes for all
Walden& 192
fruit. The skin of a woodchuck was freshly stretched upon the back of the house, a trophy
of his last Waterloo; but no warm cap or mittens would he want more.
Now only a dent in the earth marks the site of these dwellings, with buried cellar stones,
and strawberries, raspberries, thimbleberries, hazel-bushes, and sumachs growing in the
sunny sward there; some pitch pine or gnarled oak occupies what was the chimney nook,
and a sweet-scented 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 under the sod,
when the last of the race departed. What a sorrowful act must that be--the covering up of
wells! coincident 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 can learn of their conclusions 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 generation after the door and lintel and the sill are gone,
unfolding its sweet-scented flowers each spring, to be plucked by the musing traveller;
planted and tended once by children's hands, hi front-yard plots--now standing by
wallsides in retired 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 stuck in the ground in the shadow of the house and daily [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]