VI

Henry weighs in his hand a book that has just come from the press. A

duodecimo, bearing on its back: H. D. THOREAU--A WEEK ON THE CONCORD

AND MERRIMAC RIVERS.

From it rises a faintly insipid odour of glue and ink. But it is no

cardboard tomb that he has wished to raise to the memory of the dear

companion to whom these pages are dedicated. He is wondering how the

delight of a week like that, two adventurous weeks passed with his

brother, could possibly be contained between two layers of brown

cardboard, and he has half a mind to fling the volume into the corner.

It is less true than that arrow-head there on the table.

He is examining his first book, which has at last appeared. It is a

mere trifle of pulp or dirty rags, boiled down, flattened into sheets,

dried and finally blackened with ink. And beyond that? How about

all the things he had meant to put into it? The best part has been

lost between the manuscript and the composing-stick. A book that is

nothing more than a book may be a very attractive accessory among the

drawing-room furnishings of people of taste if the shade of the binding

harmonizes with the hangings and the rugs. To a man of the woods whose

eye prefers to linger on bare boards and plain whitewashed walls, a

book is a useless knick-knack, a rather sorry one, mere dust in a

cardboard box.

In this scrap-book of verse and prose (the verse--old verse, for he

has ceased to write it--like dried flowers pressed between the leaves)

in which the glorious voyage ... yes, ten summers ago now ... serves

only as a pretext for personal digressions, he would have liked to

put the whole world, with its blowing winds, its floods of light, the

fragrance of the river-banks at dawn and all the surprises under heaven

that had been gathered in by a twenty-year-old heart. A book of which

the first outlines had been sketched under a tent and the chapters had

been assembled in a cabin in the woods was not intended merely for the

mahogany shelves of Mr. Pettifogger the bibliophile. It should dance

and plash like the boat that had borne the two conquerors; it should

preserve a little of the flavour of the melons they had carried on

board. What was the use of it otherwise? There were enough cemeteries

of books already, full of the other kind, with mortuary emblems

watching over them.

Did they amount to as much as one dip of an oar in a river spangled

with reflexions, these few hundred pages, black on white? (See if you

can find any black in nature.) Well, anyway, the book had come out.

Not without difficulty. The publishers would have nothing to do with

it. In the end he had had to resign himself to a “published by the

author.” Another fling of the adventurer, launching his bark for the

conquest of the world, with the good Jersey blood of the mariner in his

veins. It was for the public now to do its duty by demanding _Weeks_

and _Weeks_ from the booksellers, enough weeks to make up the life of a

centenarian, or at least the age of the author. Here’s a book for you,

just out, a thousand copies, by Henry Thoreau, out of his own head,

every word of it, from the title to the last period. Quite a different

affair from an article published in a magazine, between a cream-puff

and a sermon.

When you have cherished from college days an ambition to be a writer

there is naturally a little warmth in the hand that holds the back of

the first book. You have made your bow in the world, you have started,

you have set out for the antipodes; you are off on a voyage that will

never end. You have openly confessed your secret passion, accepted the

ordeal of the daylight that shines on a larger world than Concord. The

Sage has encouraged you to try your luck. You are going to see. The

author is not greatly troubled in advance about the judgment of the

world on the first fruits of a writer of thirty-two. In his silent

communion with his notebooks, during the dozen years that he has been

preparing himself to write, Henry has fortified himself with assurances

that have nothing to do with success or failure.

Curious Journal, curious confidant, a work that is to be continued

through many volumes--eight or ten already exist--and that will never

be finished till the day when the universe ceases to surprise him, the

day when his two eager eyes are closed at last. As the farmer has been

in no hurry to sell his crop while he was reaping it, his barn contains

the harvest of several years. It has been necessary to add one floor

after another in order to get it all stored away. Heaven knows whether

all this will keep; but he has taken good care that all the garnered

sheaves shall be quite dry.

On his rambles the explorer scribbles on the spot a note or a few

cabalistic signs, while he is under the direct impression of the

phenomenon or the landscape he is observing. On his return the note

is copied out, more deliberately. Later, in its final form, it will

be incorporated in the Journal. What Henry, the writer, adds in the

evening to the visions and thoughts of the day’s walk in no way

destroys their freshness, for they are thoughts of a true Pilgrim,

flowers that have unfolded in the rhythm of the walk and that he turns

over in his hands at home, in the evening, with his spirit bathed in

the open air, so as to study their tints. It might be called, this

Journal, the account of a journey that never comes to an end, for the

world about Concord is immense and has a genius for metamorphosis; or

perhaps the review of a spectacle that is performed for himself alone,

with a programme that is constantly renewed, action and setting, with

the strange encounters one has after a performance, the people one

likes, the people one laughs at. Or the “love story” of a boy who is

looking for his own affinities and finds them oftener in the world

of plants than in human form. It is illustrated now and then by rude

sketches carefully recording some observation or discovery. But whether

it is to be called a report, a review, a story or the music of the

day, the notebook contains nothing that is not veracious testimony.

A descendant of merchants and like them a hoarder of treasures,

Henry reckons up in the Journal the gains of the day. He too is in

business, and he keeps his accounts with the meticulous exactness of

a book-keeper. You can examine his books. Observe the debits and the

credits. If the profits do not strike you as very clear, it is because

you have singular ideas about wealth, my dear fellow.

The harvest might well have remained in the barn. No purchasers appear,

but at times the desire seizes him to sell a few armfuls if only to see

whether or not it is keeping well--perhaps, too, for the fun of having

a little cash. Now and then Henry wants to buy some fine old book, if

only to escape the bother of having to go to the library to read it,

or he needs a good pair of boots. Then he draws from his Journal the

substance of an article and sends it off to a magazine. Horace Greeley,

whose acquaintance he has made in New York, has been of great service

in finding a place for his work and has even agreed to advance him a

small sum. But Concordians propose and editors dispose. The manuscript

is too long, or they will not countenance some of his audacities of

thought. Or, what is more likely to happen, the article is printed and

the author is swindled. What, dear sir, you are not satisfied with

the honour of appearing in print in my celebrated sheet? You expect

to be paid for it? You can dig in your own pockets. This misadventure

befell him long since with the editor of a certain _Boston Miscellany_

and more recently with that of _Graham’s Magazine_, who published his

essay on Carlyle, written at Walden. There you are! You are a Concord

hayseed, and these fine gentlemen are giving you a lesson in humility.

One doesn’t write for money. Pocket the lesson and clench your fist.

And get back to work at your Journal.

And now it has appeared, after all, this volume he has just brought

back, freshly bound, from his printer Monroe’s, at whose shop he has

been to see it through the press on this twenty-sixth of May. Henry

examines his first book, and he does not feel so very proud. He is

the author of _A Week on the Concord_. It has been introduced to

the public. What next? One must sometimes have confidence in one’s

fellowmen and place a figure before a line of zeros.

(Yes, a book is born, and almost at once someone close to you dies,

someone whose loss hurts you deeply and blots out all thought of

books. Henry loses his sister Helen, the eldest--called back, she too,

to the grandfather--Helen who had his features, his eyes, and was so

sympathetic with his ideas. Helen has gone, not yet thirty-seven, to

keep John company in the cemetery.)

The writer also appears in public when he gives a lecture. It is in the

Concord Lyceum that Waldo distributes the honey from his hives. Since

he made his first appearance at twenty-one, Henry has spoken there

every year. He has been chosen secretary. The honour of addressing

one’s fellow-citizens from a chair that has been occupied by a sage

of European fame is worth the effort of trying to do it graciously.

From the fund on which he can draw to organize his series of winter

lectures, Henry can offer in exceptional cases ten dollars to an

orator of note; he himself pockets only the thanks of the committee.

But the neighbouring Lyceums ask him to come and speak in other towns.

Last year his friend Hawthorne, who has left Concord and now lives in

Salem, arranged for him to be invited there and asked him to stay at

his house. Henry received twenty dollars for his trouble. A fine haul.

This year he is taking his eloquence to Worcester, where Harrison Blake

lives.

What do you think of the lecturer? Hm, hm.... In the first place, he

doesn’t speak, he “reads” a paper elaborately written; he doesn’t drop

his manuscript for an instant, and he utters it all in a desperately

earnest, monotonous voice. A bad method. He pronounces his r’s harshly.

And he is not exactly engaging, this young man. He doesn’t give

himself. The people listen attentively to this sober soul who talks

to them about things that interest them very little; they are not

repelled, they are not indignant, they are simply bored. And the worst

of it is that Henry not only believes in what he says but is quite

aware of the freezing effect his little discourse has upon people; he

plods along with imperturbable gravity. It is as if he had started

with some such little preamble as this in his mind: You blockheads

down there listening to me, what do I care whether I interest you or

not? You seem to think I’ve come here to give you lollypops. Here are

a few sour apples and some acorns I’ve collected for you. Do what you

like with them. What can a man expect from such frozen wits? It’s

quite useless to waste any finesse on these dolts. They wouldn’t see

anything in it. They make no personal effort; they don’t come half-way

to meet you.... If you go on speaking just the same, it is because you

are sustained by the hope of finding one or two living beings among

these mummies, a few simple and impressionable souls thanks to whom

your pains will not be lost. As a rule, no one comes up after the

lecture to tell you how extraordinarily good it is. Well, never mind;

you can go home, ladies and gentlemen. There is something to be said

for you for having listened without a murmur to such a trying pedant.

No, Henry doesn’t hit it off with the audience at all. You don’t

get very far with these good people with paradoxes and ferocious

affirmations; you must have the art of flattering and tickling them,

putting them into a good humour and touching their hearts. This fellow

here doesn’t know the first thing about his business. There is nothing

these people like better than to be amused in a sociable kind of way,

and he doesn’t even know how to make himself agreeable. He is the worst

bore in New England. If you have all that faith, my boy, hand it out

in little sandwiches that can be taken with a cup of tea. Add a little

water-cress, sprinkle it with a pinch of salt, and serve it with a

smile. See what will happen then.

Henry, you are no sort of cook at all. You are only up to boiling gruel

in your cabin. It’s pathetic to see a man satisfied with being as poor

an orator as he is a man of letters. This refusal to yield to the ways

of the world gets to be irritating after a while. No use for him to

want to be a writer; he will never enter the paradise of the literary.

He would merely bring to it an absurd respect for his art and the firm

intention of pleasing himself before pleasing others. Henry, the lover

of good work, takes a workman’s pains in perfecting his page. Thanks

to the erasures, this manuscript has become an illegible scrawl, not

because in the first draught the writing was so uncertain but because

the author is so extremely severe with himself. He has a pitiless blue

pencil. No “almosts.” Nothing that savours of improvisation. Every word

that is not alive, that is merely a word, must disappear. Struggle

and toil count for nothing, he must get there. If you could only find

me some sort of eraser that would obliterate from this page the exact

things that ought to be obliterated: that invention would be even more

useful than the best pencil bearing the mark of Thoreau and Son. In

everyday life with your neighbours garrulity is irritating enough; in

art it is intolerable. The work that comes from Henry’s hands is to the

point. You can take it and see how firm the texture is. The man who

made it wears corduroy clothes because they are durable and take on an

exquisite tone with time. Very well. But let me repeat that with these

principles you will never be anybody in the literary world. There copy

is knitted by the yard for firms that do a thriving trade.

And isn’t it just as odd to have such a passionate love for plants,

animals, minerals, to study with such fervour all these physical

phenomena, and yet to have so little in common with the scientists?

Science consists of shells, stuffed animals, glass phials, long names,

dissertations in musty books, and what interests Henry is the living

animal in all its wildness and freedom, the plant with its sap, the

phenomenon seized alive in its natural setting. In spite of his tastes

and his gift for exact observation, the poet and the lover in him are

too exigent to yield precedence to the naturalist. And besides, there

is a strange animal that interests him enormously; namely, himself.

This is a very poor sort of recommendation among scientists.

On three occasions, however, he sends Concord fish from Walden to

Agassiz, who is preparing his great work on the fishes of America.

Agassiz is very grateful and promises to pay a visit to his Concord

“colleague.” The latter has been appointed a corresponding member

of the Society of Natural History in Boston; he has just sent it a

goshawk, a rare bird. Even in the village, people have fallen into the

way of consulting him as an authority on botanical and ornithological

matters. This does not prevent him from being very sarcastic whenever

the subject of science and scientists comes up. Just speak to him about

the specialists who write a big book on turtles--to amuse a man who

knows how turtles live! Or about this or that communication to some

learned society.... He says very little about his own zoölogical or

botanical observations; he confides them to his Journal alone, for the

benefit of those knowing persons who are going to jeer some day at the

amateur naturalist and his discoveries. Go ahead and stuff your birds,

pedants. Give them your Latin names. See if you can find one that any

tree or quadruped pronounces with its branches or its caperings. In

this Journal living animals pass, birds call, fishes glide through

the water, the loon flings its laughter over the pond, the sap rises

in the plants, the trees quiver to the tips of their branches, juicy

bay-bushes scent the air: Hebrew for your Latin. These fancies are

enough to show that he doesn’t belong to the profession. Leave him to

his innocent pastimes.

Besides, this “amateur” places too high a value on ignorance to be

taken seriously by the academies. This man who reads Latin and French

as well as his mother tongue, Greek fluently, German, Italian, Spanish

a little, has a thorough knowledge of old English literature and is

more interested than a philologist in the development of the life of a

word, as a beautiful plant among plants, runs about the country every

day like a schoolboy throwing to the winds the knowledge learned from

books. The consciousness that he knows so little delights him so much

that he is willing to make his ignorance the very apex of knowledge.

Absurd Henry, to be so infatuated with his not-knowing.

Sometimes, as seldom as possible, he goes to the city, for now and then

he wants to consult some book that interests him. It is a sad business,

reading in a big library. Fresh books, vibrant, vagabond, libertine

books, how in the world can you stay so still among those rows of

shrivelled corpses? The friend who comes to see you at intervals pities

your distress.

When he has finished his reading, the villager invariably goes off to

consume a dish of boiled apple pudding at some cheap eating-house (he

distrusts their accursed stews), then crosses the town without stopping

till he reaches the end of Long Wharf, where his grandfather had his

store. There he looks at the sea, the ships, the piles of merchandise.

Save for a glance at the market on his way, this is all he sees of

Boston. The stir of the metropolis means nothing to him whatever; the

fronts of the substantial houses and the faces of men seem to shut him

out. Everything here, to the very stones, reeks of respectability.

The windows full of idlers and the brawling vulgarity of the streets

make him ill. The city is a pickpocket who wants to filch from you

the most precious possession you have and leave you on the sidewalk

dejected and destitute in a vast solitude. This is because you were

not born, because you never played as a boy in one of these crowded

neighbourhoods, because you grew up on the bank of a river that wanders

through the fields, bathing the whole world with its freshness. For

others no doubt, among its stones, the city has wondrous gifts; for a

boy who is thinking of old Minot’s cottage on the hillside it is full

of shams and shoddy, and what this boy demands is the real. There is

a club in Boston made up of some very sympathetic people who meet on

the last Saturday of every month; among them are Emerson, Agassiz and

Henry James. But although Henry has been invited he never goes there.

Quick, take the train and put twenty miles between yourself and this

dismal burden of stone house-fronts. Quick, get back to Concord where

the village is merely a shabby excrescence amid the verdure. At Concord

there are no steamers, no Long Wharves, no crowds in the streets,

no immigrants, no big, bustling shops, no special editions; and you

feel as if you were at the heart of the world. In Boston there are no

humming and singing telegraph-poles where you can listen to the news

from afar. Call it parochialism, if you like, but parish towers answer

one another. Concordance is no empty word.

At Concord you have a chance to remain simple. Suppose you were to

become a great writer or a fashionable lecturer or a light of science

and lose the simplicity of heart that alone permits you to have

access to the unknown riches that surround you. That would be a fine

advancement! There you would be with the esteem of everybody, with

your glory or your hard cash, wondering how in the world you could

get rid of all these substantial advantages and recover your boyish

ingenuousness, and the keen, inquisitive nose, the gift of marvelling

at the commonest object that have always so astonished the good

William. You would have taken a false step indeed. You would have

been transformed into one of those men who are too sober-minded, too

dignified or too intelligent to stop and pick a tempting huckleberry

beside their path. Your eyes would be dead to the miracle of every

day. You would no longer want to be a sailor and skirt the bays and

promontories of “some fair wild island in the ocean,” suggested by an

oak-leaf. You would lose your elasticity. You would become old before

your time, old, respectable and unhappy. You might even pose as a

little saint and cease to feel yourself a man complete with his virtues

and his vices, no better at bottom than the neighbour he scoffs at and

lectures. You would be a success, and you would have lost everything,

while at Concord one never becomes a success.

There may have been a moment when Henry wondered if the art of writing

could not support the writer; but this moment had passed. He understood

the trade and the taste of its customers only too well. Precarious as

his other resources might be, they were better than that. As a small

boy, running barefoot in the fields and up to all sorts of mischief,

and later as an ingenious older boy, he had learned how to dig, plane,

paint houses, plant, survey. And now Henry continues to work by the

day, as occasion offers. A precious thing, manual labour. It stops

babbling tongues and toughens a frail body. It gives a tone to what

you write afterwards. Your qualities as a workingman reappear when you

come to weigh and balance words. When you have finished a fence of

pickets and lattice at $1.50 for every five yards, or built a woodshed

by contract for six dollars, it is very pleasant to receive the money;

but that is not everything. You must also reckon the pleasure you have

had. And add to this the profit you have received in indirect ways,

such as the quality of the page on which you relate the impressions

of the day. Henry does surveying, and he also helps his father in the

workshop. When he is not engaged elsewhere, he gives him his mornings.

The family industry is being transformed. The Thoreau pencils are

selling fairly well, and a new market has opened for the famous

plumbago powder--the secret. It happens to fit exactly the needs of a

new invention--electrotyping--and the people give them ten dollars a

pound for it. Even though they can sell only a few hundred pounds of it

a year, this is not a bad stroke of business for the little family. The

pencils have become only a side-issue; they work for the big industry.

But Henry makes a trip to New York to dispose of a lot he has made, for

he has a large debt to pay.

The poorer you are in Concord, the better you know your true wealth.

It is all very clever to create happiness with a thousand costly

accessories, but to create happiness out of nothing, to be happiness

yourself, is much more interesting, and happiness of this kind has

quite a different quality. To have been born poor is a privilege too.

In the most authentic great man, no matter how magnificent and complete

he is in appearance, never to have worn rags or gone without a meal,

never to have been able to toss his dignified respectability to the

winds, never to have known what hardship means is a lacuna that can

never be filled up. Think of that poor, great Goethe, too well brought

up, as he said, to have had any intercourse in his childhood with the

boys in the streets.... Whatever you may say, the boy who has never

set his bare, smarting feet on the hard ground has missed one of the

best of gifts. He has not been judged worthy of experiencing the real

savour of this world. Henry has no inclination to make a profession

of his poverty, to set himself up in the square for the admiration of

connoisseurs. He saves it for himself because it keeps him warm, as a

sheepskin coat warms a driver in winter. It has a taste that he likes

and it helps him to keep up his good spirits. It lives with him like

a comrade in the attic he has arranged for himself in the new house,

the yellow one, where his parents have been living on Main Street since

August, 1850. He is very much at home there and William lives across

the way. At the foot of his garden the boat is moored.

There in his den Henry lives like a king among the spoils of his

expeditions, his collections of birds’ eggs, mosses, plants,

arrow-heads, his bedside books, his manuscripts--and always a store of

nuts to take the place of pipe and bottle. There he sleeps and works

and talks with his comrade, enjoying the tawny shade of the latter’s

eyes and blessing the fate that has provided for him so generously.

Recently his classmates have asked him for an account of himself for

the record they are preparing of the class of 1837 at Harvard. Henry’s

reply is as follows:

Am not married. I don’t know whether mine is a profession, or a

trade, or what not. It is not yet learned, and in every instance

has been practised long before being studied. The mercantile part

of it was begun by myself alone. It is not one but legion. I

will give you some of the monster’s heads. I am a Schoolmaster,

a private Tutor, a Surveyor, a Gardener, a Farmer, a Painter (I

mean a House Painter), a Carpenter, a Mason, a Day-labourer, a

Pencil-maker, a Glass-paper-maker, a Writer, and sometimes a

Poetaster. If you will act the part of Iolas, and apply a hot

iron to any of these heads, I shall be greatly obliged to you. My

present employment is to answer such orders as may be expected from

so general an advertisement as the above. That is, if I see fit,

which is not always the case, for I have found out a way to live

without what is commonly called employment or industry, attractive

or otherwise. Indeed, my steadiest employment, if such it can be

called, is to keep myself at the top of my condition, and ready for

whatever may turn up in heaven or on earth. The last two or three

years I lived in Concord woods, alone, something more than a mile

from any neighbour, in a house built entirely by myself.

P. S. I beg that the class will not consider me an object of

charity, and if any of them are in want of any pecuniary assistance

and will make known their case to me, I will engage to give them

some advice of more worth than money.

As he sends off this description and thinks of his fellows at college,

he sees this poor devil, at the head of a factory, condemned to sweat

money out of his machines and his workmen ... this poor devil, launched

in politics or absorbed in business, deep in the auriferous mire ...

this poor devil reduced to working as some high office-holder ... this

poor devil, consenting to spend his life manufacturing counterfeit

money stamped with the effigy of Jesus, the enemy of all money ...

a whole list of poor devils, with round shoulders or an air of

satisfaction, who have not wasted the money their fathers sacrificed

to send them to college. He sees them with their positions, their

prestige, their prosperous households, their wives, their children,

their mothers-in-law and heaven knows what, and himself beside them,

the failure, without position, bank-account or influence, with his

workman’s clothes, earning a meagre living by the labour of his hands,

hands which, like theirs, have thumbed so many books. And how glad and

privileged he feels in his attic with his tawny-eyed companion! He

would be only too happy to work in their gardens or split the wood for

their stoves, offering them his pity in exchange for their dollars.

If he met the most fortunate of them all, he would feel like hanging

a placard round his neck: “Have pity on a poor rich man”--for some

passer-by with a generous heart to slip into his hand a pennyworth of

compassion. And if no charitable passer-by appeared, he would gladly

give the poor fellow his own mite. You are magnanimous when you are a

success.

Is it not from the worst that we often get the very best? Then why not

meet ill fortune with a high heart and refuse, on the dullest day, not

to be happy over a mere nothing, a trembling leaf, a swaying twig, or

the smile of old Minot’s house on the hillside--happy, you don’t know

why, because you are happy, happy as a child who plays with his poverty

as a comrade, finding in its eyes the colour of your own real wealth?

When you are a rich man like Henry you want to treat yourself, now

and then, to some little trip. For one who disposes of his time as he

pleases, this is merely a matter of gathering together a few odds and

ends. A week or so of surveying, a windfall in the shape of a lecture

or a cheque for an article provides you with the means of surveying

good fortune for many hours, a week, two weeks, not to mention a store

of memories. This is one of the satisfactions of the lot of a man

who is free, as all men ought to be free. It is good to work on your

manuscripts. But you never write a story to be compared with those that

are traced by your feet as you welcome the surprises of the road.

There are always more surprises in Concord than anywhere else; but the

world is wide and you want to see how the sun shines in other places.

And besides, you want to give your old notions an airing; no matter how

wide open you keep your window, they are always in danger of getting a

little musty.... There are those hills on the horizon towards the West

behind which, at nightfall, from the top of the Cliffs, you see that

blazing reflection. The land of the sunset is a powerful magnet.

What if you were to explore one of those hills that rise up, like

a challenge and a promise, beyond that stretch of country over

there--climb it, brush your boots on its brow, watch the sun rise from

up there and see if you can discover the faraway spot in the valley

from which you set out? That ought to do your soul good and expand your

lungs. There is that solitary Wachusett, for example, forever crouching

there in the distance, as if it were watching over some treasure; you

would like to go and ask that brother if he finds his solitude bitter

or friendly. His younger brother from Concord is coming to make him a

visit. That blue wall is not a fabulous vision; it is a solid reality,

in harmony with the woods, the fields, the river. It belongs to the

family too. Another time the thirty-seven hundred feet of Monadnoc draw

him up. He has to prolong his visit, live with the mountain a while,

become familiar with the dawn and the sunset on those heights. The

visitor camps for one night, two nights, in the open, on the summit of

the vision that holds him aloft with all its mass till a small man, on

this pedestal, has the illusion of being a somebody.

On the day before, in the morning, well before dawn, he had set out on

foot with a companion. They passed through villages and woods, with

staves in their hands like pilgrims. The fields were full of fragrance

for the early risers, the farms still asleep in the twilight of dawn;

save for one reaper already sharpening his scythe, they were the first

that morning to tread the July countryside; they passed through the

hop-fields, rested on the fence-rails of a farm from which the sound

of music reached them; and in the afternoon in the valley they sought

shelter from the broiling heat and bathed their feet in the streams

they found there. And at last they arrived together on a grassy

plateau, strewn with clumps of huckleberry and raspberry bushes, in

time to see the moon rising in this tremendous silence--two little

souls, serious, lost in wonder, half frightened at finding themselves

so high above the rest of their fellow-townsmen. And the dawn, the

notes of the birds before the dawn on these heights, the great waves

of the slopes below rise out of the shadows as if they were at sea--on

what a ship!--as the camp-fire pales and the day breaks and the

landscape unrolls in all its unreality: old Massachusetts, the whole of

it, bathed in the sunrise, at their feet, spreading its panorama before

them in the summer morning! The air of the heights intoxicates them;

it has a quality that is unknown to dwellers on the plain. It is not

so much that it acts upon your lungs: its rarity has a strange power

of exalting the spirit. Henry revels in it and feels at home on the

shoulder of the mountain. If he did not live in Concord he would be a

mountaineer.

And the charm of the mountains persists. Sometimes he goes still

further west, as far as Greylock or Saddle-back Mountain, to pay a

visit to Their Majesties. And then--wonder of wonders--the mountains he

has always seen towards the sunset rise, in a spirit of contradiction,

to the east! Is he a new man who, without realizing it, has taken a

trip round the world?... Before beginning his climb he stops in this

mountain valley at the next to the last house. It would be fun to spend

a week in that house if they would take him in. The mistress is a young

woman who continues to arrange her hair while she talks to him in the

friendliest way, without any fuss, thank heaven; she is dark and her

eyes are full of fire and she questions him with as much familiarity

as if they had been children together. She makes him think of his

cousin in Bangor. And they really are cousins in a way. She has taken

him for one of those daredevil students who often come on trips to the

mountain. On the top he finds bits of newspapers they have left about;

it is strange to read a stray sheet of some old paper alone on the

summit of a mountain by the light of a camp-fire. What wears the best

at this altitude is the advertisements and the market prices, for there

is a bit of real poetry mixed with them, though the advertisers are

quite unaware of it (fortunately); as for the rest, editorials, news,

jokes, reviews, heaven save us! And then, after a cold night that he

has passed without a blanket, the day dawns over an ocean of fog that

covers the three adjoining States as if it were a dream-country rolling

off into infinity.... It is the earth that has become unreal, and you

are planted there as if you were the centre of this tremendous glory

that rises with the sun.... And you descend Tabor again, a little drunk

with this vision and no longer in the least cold in spite of the night

passed without a blanket.

In the other direction from the land of the sunset lies the sea, quite

close--another magnet. The peaks are silent and contemplative, but the

sea stirs and rustles like a forest of gigantic pines, lulling its old

anguish. On an island in the middle of the ocean you might contrive to

have a rich existence if you could ever forget Concord. Or in one of

those villages about Cape Ann. The whole Atlantic coast and all the

width of the continent lie at the ends of the roads that set out from

the village square.

Yes, to go off for two, three, four days, according to the occasion and

the plumpness of your purse, to leave Main Street and the church-tower

and the sidewalks of the grey little town behind you and attempt an

unexplored world ... that’s the thing, Henry ... the real holidays of

life. You must have them complete. The first thought of most poor souls

on such occasions is to take the train or the stage. They are poor

souls indeed. When you are rich you have the means to travel on foot.

Henry has no intention of surrendering to a machine or animal the

pleasure of treading the road and devouring it for him; this traveller

likes the taste of it far too much to leave it to a mere auxiliary. It

is a part of the adventure. When a vagabond journeys on foot, the earth

invites him to her table and lets him roam all over her domain; those

other people are mere stupid tourists who follow where their baggage

leads them. Before they set out, the latter are sure to worry about

where they will find a lodging; why do they leave home if they begin a

journey with the thought of lodgings?

Henry starts off with a pack on his back. It’s a marvel, this knapsack.

See if you can find one like it in the shops! The traveller has

manufactured it to suit himself. It is waterproof and has compartments;

a notebook, the map of the country, his old music-book for pressing

flowers, his change of linen are in no danger of being injured. If

he is going some distance he carries a little bundle in his hand. It

is a package tied up in a handkerchief or a piece of brown paper. He

recommends this to you as preferable to any sort of handbag, first

because it is lighter and swings more merrily in your fist, and

secondly because it causes less trouble. Don’t forget the inevitable

accessory of any expedition, a good stout umbrella. A raincoat or an

oilskin might be more becoming, but they keep you too warm and they are

unwholesome, while under an umbrella you are always exposed to the air

and you have only to shut it up when the shower is over. And then you

have the rare pleasure of hearing the rain patter on your roof, while

you are perfectly sheltered yourself; you are a householder on your own

threshold, and you take it easy listening to the rain dripping from the

eaves. When you are tired of carrying the umbrella in your hand, you

can carry it on your shoulder and even hang your bundle on it, or any

other prize you pick up--a bird or a bit of sea-weed. People may laugh

at you. Let them. They will never have so much fun in all their lives.

The clever fellow has thought of everything, down to the sewing-case

for mending rips and fastening on buttons that fall off. These accursed

leather shoestrings are always undone and cause endless bother in

walking; they really abuse their right to relaxation. Henry and William

have often exchanged their views on this grave subject, a theme worthy

of philosophers at least who despise the fiddle-faddle of learning.

One day Henry finds the knot-that-will-not-come-undone and triumphs.

If everyone applied himself to solving such problems, the world would

soon stand on a different basis. But above all, do not forget to take

along some old newspapers. You will find them providential. If you

don’t already know to how many uses old newspapers can be put, on a

journey or at home, try some experiments. You are leaving your shanty

for a week or two or for six months and you are afraid that during this

time your kettle will rust. Wrap it up in a newspaper and go your way

in peace. Or you want to give your copper basin a good scouring; take

a wad of newspaper and polish it up as it should be. Your face will

smile at you in the mirror you have brightened so easily. And what

a comfort a few old newspapers are on your trip, if you have taken

them along: they serve as wrappers, as a tablecloth, as a plate, as a

means of starting the fire, or as a light, warm chest-protector if it

turns cold. And there are still so many fools in the world who believe

that newspapers are made to be read, to inform you about accidents

and politics. Among the humble truths that might shed a little light

on their existence, this is not the least important: in spending your

two cents you are making a golden investment if, instead of unfolding

the sheet, you place it carefully on a pile of old papers for the

approaching day when it will reveal its true use.

The question of provisions also demands a good bit of attention and

experience. Henry has weighed this for a long time. He has been armed

with certitudes ever since he first took the road. For drinking on a

journey nothing equals good strong tea. Because you have seen so many

old souls busy over teapots, brewing and stewing, don’t imagine that

tea is an old woman’s beverage. A grave mistake. Winter or summer, it

is a powerful and subtle tonic. For solid food, carry with you a good

loaf of heavy cake. If it is made by your mother it will be A-number-1.

You will thank me for this advice. Add a little cornmeal, enough to

make some gruel, a small bag of rice, some salt. With a spoon, a tin

quart-measure, and, if you like, a saucepan--not to mention the matches

and the knife that a walker must always have--you are the master of

circumstance. No longer any need to knock at a door, when the fresh air

of the road has given you an appetite, except for the pleasure of a

chat or to add a glass of milk to your usual fare if you want to bring

back your childhood. You are both the inn and the traveller.

These arrangements are very important for the success of the trip. As

for your clothes, they should be durable and old, preferably brown or

tan--the colour of the earth. They will show the dust and the mud less,

and you will not offend the landscape as the figure of a townsman in

the country does with his funereal black. In heaven’s name, avoid the

“tourist’s” get-up. You must slip through the countryside like an old

family friend, not like an intruder. One more recommendation. A straw

hat is one of those creations in which the inventive genius of man

triumphs. Light and as solid as flexible armour, it places between the

burning sun and your poor skull just the right amount of space for you

to be able to speak of the _good_ sun.... Suppose a shower, a downpour,

surprises you on a day when you have left your umbrella behind. If it

does not last too long the wide rim of your head-covering will shelter

you. If the straw is a little warped after this bath, well, it has seen

plenty of others. It will soon get back its proper shape; your oval,

square or pointed skull takes care of that gratis. And this invention,

you know, costs only a few cents. If some accident befalls it, if it

has not been fastened firmly with your handkerchief knotted under your

chin, and a gust of wind blows it into the water or some ditch, well,

good-bye, old friend.... I shall regret you because my head breathed

its warmest thoughts through you, but I shall find another like you for

a mere song at the first shop I reach.

If you travel with this modest outfit, you must not expect to be

treated as a rich gentleman travelling for his pleasure. That

humiliation will certainly be spared you. Nor must you be too surprised

if, along the road, you are taken for a pedlar by the women on the

doorsteps or the labourers in the fields. That’s natural enough, and

it will even please you, for nothing could be more creditable. They

may ask you if you are able to mend an umbrella (why an umbrella in

your hand in this radiant sunlight?) or if you are not a tinker. Or a

clock-setter. Or one of those casual labourers who work by the day in

the hay-making season. You will certainly not be offended by anything

of this kind; indeed you will be flattered, for it will show you

that they don’t take you for a fool. This is a compliment you don’t

often receive from your own fellow-townsmen. At home they are not

particularly struck by your ability, but out in the world your ten

fingers are in constant request. Even if some theft has been committed

in the neighbourhood as you are passing through with a friend and they

look at you suspiciously and the constable discreetly walks along with

you, you are not indignant at the inquisition. How could the police,

with their infallible noses, fail to suspect two mischievous-looking

young fellows, roaming about the roads without any apparent purpose,

instead of the traveller who puts up at the best hotel and orders his

dinner in a lofty voice? You and your companion must be the criminals,

or good-bye to the constable and the constable’s nose.

In case you don’t care to sleep out under the stars, ask for a bed

in some house along the way. It is so much cosier. You will make the

acquaintance of some very good souls. Under their roof, as your wet

boots are drying before the fire, you will feel that you are in the

very heart of the country. And you will not have to refuse the hotel

boy the tip he has failed to deserve, the wretch, because he has

polished your famous boots instead of greasing them with a rind of pork.

So, no matter where you go, the world responds to your expectations.

It likes to be approached on its own level, and it is for you, the man

with the knapsack, that it keeps its finest stories. Finally, you will

spend less money than if you stayed at home.

Henry finds the highway tedious, for it is the road of trade and

traffic. He has not buckled on his haversack to perform a military

march. On the highway the gravel crunches under your feet, the dust

gets between your teeth. If his itinerary obliges him to take the road,

he at least walks on the bank, stopping from time to time to listen

to what the wind has to say on the wires. What’s the latest news? As

a rule he follows the paths, taking short-cuts across fields, jumping

over hedges, clambering up the little hills without slackening his

pace. He has a good wind. Once he has made up his mind to reach a

point he has marked on his map, all the obstacles in the world, natural

and artificial, can get in his way: he makes straight for his object,

scaling every one. Obstacles are made to be leapt over--a much quicker

way than going round them. He never loses his sense of direction in

the woods. He is a walker who can count more years of experience than

Christianity can count centuries. A pagan of a walker.

This time the man with the old umbrella is going off alone. To set out

in company would certainly be to multiply by two or three the pleasure

of the adventure. But where can he find them, the rare birds that

share his tastes? He knows one or two perhaps, scarcely three. Most of

his friends are simply not to be thought of as travelling companions.

People who wear black clothes and are impeccably correct to the very

soles of their feet, people who are charming in their own houses but

whom you can’t imagine eating a bowl of gruel before a camp-fire. They

would make you conspicuous on the road. You can’t go and ask them to

travel like a common tramp, with an old umbrella and a bundle. And

besides, you who are an indefatigable walker and as abstemious as a

camel would soon leave your companion behind. Half-way along the road

you would hear him complaining back there that his boot hurt him or

that he was melting with perspiration. He would have to belong to a

special type, a Henry number 2 or a brother John.... Or a William. But

William does not dare to start out this time; he is afraid of what

might befall him with such an intrepid companion when it is no longer a

question of a mere afternoon’s ramble to Nine Acre Corner.

Some friends have sent Henry an invitation to lecture over yonder; it

is a chance for a little trip. If he sometimes has to be urged a bit,

it is only for the stupidest of reasons. When he goes to see some of

his friends or appears in public, he has to dress up more or less (a

remnant of respect for the conventions, you know).... His old togs,

frayed by all the thickets of the wilderness, have such a beautiful

patina and they are so well moulded to all his movements and so easy at

the arm-holes that it is heart-breaking to be obliged to give them up

and harness himself in a frock-coat in which he feels as cramped as a

best man dressing up for his cousin’s wedding. The mere thought of it

almost spoils his pleasure in advance. He would like to be his everyday

self, not this promenader in his Sunday best.

But Henry is ready for any sacrifice. He is going to take the train

for Worcester and pay his friend Harrison Blake a visit. The latter

is an old Harvard man like himself whom he met through Emerson when

he was living at Walden. A little too full of starch, this good

man--Henry would like to pinch him now and then to see if he has blood

in his veins--but a firm and faithful friend. They write to each other

regularly. Henry is a little bored by the correspondence, and he would

be very happy if he could make this excellent Blake, who absolutely

insists upon regarding him as a sage and a great philosopher,

understand how seriously mistaken he is. No, my friend, you are quite

wrong; I am a very ordinary soul and very much at a loss how to reply

to you, for to me two words exchanged with a carter mean more than

all the moral counsels in the world. You insist on asking me for all

sorts of spiritual directions, and I am as threadbare in philosophical

matters as I am in the matter of clothes. You are throwing your respect

away, dear fellow. It is very hard for a pagan, an artist and a savage

to make himself intelligible to a churchman, for he is a churchman,

this good, faithful Blake. It is a safe bet that in fifty years he

would never understand. To appease this keen spiritual hunger, the

great “philosopher,” in his letters--after ten years of correspondence

they are invariably addressed to “Mr. Blake”--copies out for him whole

pages from his Journal, carefully selected from those that are the

most “moral.” Their correspondence and their relations always keep

this grave tone. Henry feels the frock-coat that cramps him at the

arm-holes. But Mr. Blake is certainly the most loyal of friends.

Henry feels more at home with Daniel Ricketson, who invites him to

his house at New Bedford, the whaling port. On the first occasion it

is mid-winter, and Ricketson, who is a Quaker, is clearing the snow

off his front steps and thinking of his visitor who is very late in

arriving. Up the carriage road comes someone who looks like a pedlar,

in a long overcoat, carrying a little bag and a big umbrella. But it

is the expected personage, and he strolls up imperturbably through

the friendly snow; he has had no thought of preparing a sensational

appearance; they will receive him cheerfully in this disguise as Santa

Claus, for it is Christmas Day. The following year Daniel returns the

visit. He is a new friend. There are good years for friendship as

there are for trees. It even comes to Henry from across the sea in the

person of that tall, fair-haired, distinguished-looking young man, the

descendant of Anglican bishops, who, on his trip through America, comes

to see Emerson who sends him to the Thoreaus’ house, where there is

always room for a boarder. Rather an odd fish, this Thomas “Cholmley,”

and a little hard to swallow just at first, but charming at bottom

under his English patrician’s uniform, fresh from Oriel College. He is

just back from New Zealand, where he has had a taste of cattle-raising.

They go off on several rambles together about Concord; with William to

make up a trio, they set out for the conquest of that old solitary

Wachusett. Henry has very little use for these over-civilized young

blades who respectfully ask him to take them along on his walks; but he

has made an exception of this tall, fair-haired fellow who has been to

New Zealand. Some day he must take him to New Bedford.

There, at least, there is no constraint. On the very threshold he

shakes off his gloom, the melancholy of the northern pine; he is

himself, he is a child. In this congenial atmosphere he is ready for

any joke, and he laughs and sings. He doesn’t quite catch the tune,

but who cares?--it sounds just as well. The bathing is excellent

and they get up a boating-party. One afternoon--is it the venerable

Alcott’s presence that excites him?--when Mrs. Ricketson is at the

piano, the northern pine, seized with a mad gaiety, actually begins

to execute a Zulu dance around the room, taking pains to tread on the

toes of Alcott who smilingly watches his good colleague’s extravagant

behaviour. If that blessed Blake were only in a corner of the parlour

too, on this occasion, ready for a little nip from the dancer’s boots!

It would enlighten him better than the longest letter on the nature

of Henry’s philosophy. Henry’s face is as long as a night-cap when

he is with ceremonious people who bore him. He writes deep, serious

things because he is not interested solely in trifles. And there he

is, forever pigeon-holed as the most dismal of souls. They haven’t

seen him, brimming over with nonsense, acting a pantomime with his

own intimate friends; they have never heard him singing at the top of

his lungs alone in the woods or surprised him with the children doing

some marvellous trick. No, he is and he will remain the morose ascetic

who went off into the woods one day, full of hatred for humanity, and

pounded out his black thoughts in a rough-hewn mortar. Rubbish!... Let

them talk, Henry, while you go on dancing about the room. And look out

for your toes, Alcott!

One day, towards the end of July, 1850, Henry sets out hurriedly on

a strange journey. He is not going to spend Sunday this time with a

friend who is waiting for him; he has to find the body of a friend

who has died. Poor Margaret Fuller, whom he had never known well but

who recalled to him the days of the _Dial_, was returning from Italy,

married now and a mother, on a ship that had gone ashore in a storm on

Fire Island. She was one of the victims, after having watched death

approaching for twelve hours till a mightier wave delivered her with

her child and her husband. Henry has been commissioned by all the

Concord friends--Margaret was William’s sister-in-law--to search the

scene of the shipwreck and try to recover her pitiful remains and her

belongings. He scours the beach, questions everybody, pursues his

inquiries. Plunderers of the wreck have been there before him. At first

nothing is found but a few papers, some love-letters and the little

body of Nino.... Then, eight days after the shipwreck, Henry, who has

got his direction from a lighthouse-keeper, finds on a lonely beach the

shapeless remains of a body, ravaged by the rough jaws of the sea--a

few bones with a little flesh still adhering to them....

Concord enfolds a man very tenderly in the arms of its river and woods

when he comes back with roughened skin from such trips as these. But

when you are at once a stay-at-home and a nomad, there are few holidays

to be compared to a long expedition when your confounded circumstances

permit you to think of such a thing. And nothing could be happier than

the happiness of the preliminaries when you are making your plans and

studying your itinerary, inspecting your knapsack and your boots,

and reading the books about the country you are going to explore.

Don’t talk about recreation or satisfying some asinine taste for the

picturesque by following the footsteps of other travellers. Henry

sets out from his village to reconnoitre, to get light on some very

important matters and bring back something to fill up his chests there

in the garret. These are his campaigns.

There is that crooked beak, shaped like a fishhook, which Massachusetts

thrusts out into the sea--perhaps in an attempt to catch that big

greedy fish Long Island, if the latter, tired of sniffing the

unprofitable metropolis, should decide some day to turn to the North

for its food. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to go and see how the wind

blows there and have a look at the old sea-dogs that incrust it

like shell-fish? Cape Cod. A long tongue of land curving out like a

breakwater into the open Atlantic--an immense organ from which the

ocean draws its grandest tones.

This year, with his book out at last, Henry can give himself a little

extra treat. William has decided to come too. They set out together at

the beginning of October (they are obliged to take the train so as not

to spend an eternity on the way) and stumble straight into a shipwreck

at Cohasset. The train is crowded with Irishmen who are on their way to

identify the bodies--from the beach to the church the farm-wagons come

and go, some of them carrying the corpses, others the sea-weed thrown

up by the storm. Immigrants from Galway in Ireland, and here they are,

livid under their white sheets, arriving, feet first, in the land of

their hopes. The flag of the shipwrecked vessel is drying there on the

rocks with pebbles on its four corners, still keeping its colours--not

dead like the Irish lads. The captain and the other survivors will lead

the funeral procession.... At the base of the fishhook they leave the

train and take the stage as far as Orleans, where the tongue of land

grows so thin: it is nothing but a sandbar sixty-five miles long by

a few miles in width. How good-natured the people in the stage are!

Simple and natural as if--O joy!--no blessed social categories existed

in their astonishing country and they were all old acquaintances. Does

the nearness of the ocean teach people the art of living?

It rains and blows the next day, when they start out on foot. Never

mind, they are not going to wait for it to clear. They walk along the

shore; the umbrella shields them and the wind drives them on. They are

not loaded down like those two little Italians who are walking towards

Provincetown with their organs on their backs. It is an entirely new

landscape for the lads from Concord. No trees. Here and there a cottage

with a red roof. Octagonal windmills, such as they have never seen

except in pictures. In the fields heaps of clam-shells; the pigs, they

say, are fattened on the clams, those marine acorns. And see there,

those stunted apple-trees sheltered in a hollow, those little old

toy-like trees from which a child could pick the apples by hand. It

would be difficult to creep your way under them, the branches are so

low and shrubby. The little Cape Cod horses are as amusing as goats.

You great Concord farmers, if you could measure the scantness of the

land the people cultivate here--about as much as a miser could hold in

his palm! But it yields a little rather meagre corn and the vegetables

in the tiny gardens actually seem to be thriving. This is the country

of the sea.

The best thing is to leave the road and march along to this roar that

you hear uninterruptedly on the right. The companions have come here

not to follow a road but to enjoy the ocean. They cut across the

fields in the direction of the three Nauset Lights. Then, in the

wind and rain, they are lost in an absolutely bare plain, shut in by

fog. The smallest object appears immense in this desert and as if

suspended between sky and sand. It is just the way one should see this

interminable plain. Henry feels so happy that he could sing. He is

going to try to keep clear of the villages up to the very end of the

Cape so as not to break the powerful charm. At the end of this vast

plain, and after crossing a stretch of upland covered with shrub-oak

and beech-grass and a strip of bare sand, they suddenly find themselves

at the top of a Bluff: at their feet lies everything they have come

to seek--the beach and the Atlantic. The ocean is dark under a stormy

sky--as Atlantic as possible. Those white lines of foam, some distance

out, reveal the sandbars. And beyond that nothing ... nothing but

Europe, and faraway Jersey ... so people say. It is too beautiful here

for you to have any desire to go over and see it. From this point on

the two umbrellas set out to skirt the shore, as close to the water as

possible where the sand is hardest.

Twenty-five good miles lie before them to the tip. As they sail along

under the umbrellas that shelter and aid them, with the wind at their

backs, the walk side by side becomes glorious. Two happy souls under

their whalebone turtle-shells travel along so close to the water’s

edge that every now and then they have to leap quickly aside to escape

a great wave that has watched them from afar and flung itself upon

them: perhaps it is the umbrellas that have provoked it into lashing

them with its kelp-weed tails. And when you have played with the waves

it is a delight to scramble up the sandbank that forms the back-bone

of the Cape, so as to have a wider view of the ocean and look off

into the distance and over to the left, to the desert of sand. The

rolling country yonder, covered with autumn-tinted shrubbery, permits

them at intervals a glimpse of the bay. Walking now on the ridge,

straddling the Cape, now on the fine sand--there are no rocks to break

the wonderful monotony of this shore--the wayfarers take their time,

resting now and then; for the sand, soft as it is to their feet, makes

walking difficult after a while. Not a sail in sight, for the sea is

too heavy; not a soul on the beach. It is as if the ocean preferred to

see no one about him when he is roused. Days might pass without your

encountering two natives of the country, those plunderers of wrecks

with faces hard as a stone, a stone that the sea has rolled from the

beginning of time and is ready to go on rolling for as many ages as it

chooses.

But they do not ask for any distraction. The enormous spectacle fills

the scene. It is better even not to talk amid this continual roar

that obliges them to shout; and if they do it is only to thunder some

Homeric lines to put themselves in tune with this bass voice. Surprises

strew their path, marvellous plants, dragged up from the sunken palaces

of the sea, all of which they would like to carry away if they could

only keep them alive in their flexibility and their lustre. Henry

chews a tip of one of them. The beautiful sea-medusas that strew the

beach in their tattered finery are as if struck with consternation not

to be swinging any longer, delicate and transparent, in the hollow

of the waves: dispossessed princesses whose hearts shrivel on this

alien strand. In spite of the noise of the sea they hear the piping

of a plover. Suppose they have a little lunch? It is noon, time to

settle themselves in a hollow of the bank and eat something, as two

good boys should who have gone a long way since breakfast in the inn

at Orleans and are famished by the salt air. Some dry sticks, a fire,

a superb clam cooked over the sand as the principal dish; the meat is

a bit rubbery, but with a cracker and sprinkled with the cries of the

sea-gulls it is quite edible and even savoury. And look there, the

weather is clearing....

By evening the pilgrims have reached Wellfleet. They must think of

shelter for the night. In that little house over there, with the

gable pierced with those small irregular windows, there will surely

be a corner for two fellows who are not hard to please. No one at

home. How about the other? An old woman who has had her eye on these

two suspicious-looking individuals fastens her fence-gate, then

resolutely goes back into the house. Hm.... We’ll see. Knock, knock.

An old man opens the door and asks them with a distrustful air where

they have come from and what they want. They explain. Of course we

might be almanac-vendors, but no, my friend, we’re not. We’re from the

famous Concord where the great battle took place at the time of the

Revolution. The old man is eighty-eight, so he was fourteen when that

historic event occurred. These pedlars who are not pedlars are too

much for him. Well, walk in, since you’ve come from the country of the

Revolution. The old woman relieves the strangers of their bundles and

their hats, while the grandfather grumbles: “I am all broken down this

year. I am under petticoat government here.”

The hospitable family is composed of a daughter who looks as old

as her mother, and a brutish-looking, heavy-jawed son who goes out

abruptly at the sight of these strangers; there is also a boy of

ten. “These women,” the old man says to Henry, “are both of them

poor good-for-nothing critturs. This one is my wife. I married her

sixty-five years ago. She is eighty-four years old, and as deaf as an

adder, and the other is not much better.” The good soul is an old

oysterman who, since sailing the seas in his young days, has had much

intercourse with oysters and the Bible. He likes to gossip and they

converse in a friendly way about oysters, surveying and apple-raising.

The half-witted son returns and begins to mutter, without lifting his

head: “Damn book-pedlars--all the time talking about books. Better

do something. Damn ’em. I’ll shoot ’em”.... Whereupon, the old man,

assuming an air of authority as if he were used to it, says: “John, go

sit down, mind your business. Precious little you’ll do--your bark is

worse than your bite.” But the sullen imbecile persists in muttering,

goes and sits down at the table, eats up everything that is on it and

reaches out for the apples which his mother is paring for her guests’

meal. She draws them away and sends him about his business. There are

many of these imbeciles in the villages of Massachusetts.

But it is a pleasure to listen to the old oysterman who relates his

recollections in a language as salty as the water that you swallow

with an oyster. He well remembers seeing Washington, a man with such

a fine bearing! And to show how well the great general sat his horse

the old fellow strikes an attitude, straightens his shoulders and bows

ceremoniously to right and left, sweeping the absent three-cornered hat

with a wide gesture. It is just as you see him in the school-books,

but in what picture will the general ever have such a grand air as

he has in this little house on Cape Cod, evoked by the mimicry of an

old oysterman? After this they all go to bed. The boy, who is in the

chimney-corner, takes off his shoes and stockings, and as he has a sore

leg they rub it with salve before he goes upstairs. The imbecile takes

off his old shoes and follows. Then the old man, removing his shoes

in turn, without ceasing to discourse on the miseries of the world,

exhibits with pride a pair of calves as plump as a baby’s.

William and Henry retire to their room. Someone behind them draws

the bolt and fastens them in. You can’t be too careful. After all,

you never know with these clever people who are up to all sorts

of tricks.... (Ah, good people, how right you were to distrust

two strangers who had dropped from the clouds. Two days later the

Provincetown Bank was robbed and the police were looking for two men

who must have done the job. Good heavens, to think you might have had

those two scoundrels under your roof.... Nothing more prophetic than

the instinct of an imbecile who wants to execute them out of hand.

Put this in your pipe and smoke it, you sham pedlars, even if you are

not the thieves. You have been taken for tinkers or almanac-vendors

already--it may be pickpockets next. If you had never left your own

hole-in-the-ground, how would you have ever known that you had in you

the makings of all these characters?)

The door is unlocked before dawn and Henry runs to the beach to watch

the sun come out of the sea. They have breakfast. The old man begins

to spin his yarns again, forgetting to eat, and says to his wife, who

reminds him of this: “Don’t hurry me; I have lived too long to be

hurried”.... Meanwhile, the two comrades breakfast a little gingerly,

not being sure of the exact spots on the hearth sprinkled by the old

man’s tobacco-juice while the meal was being prepared there. They

pay their score and set out. The weather is marvellously clear this

morning, swept clean by the wind that howled in the chimney.

They follow the dunes. The tide is coming in. The vessels are skimming

like gulls over the ocean; one, a barque, furls her sails and drops

anchor a gunshot from the shore. In this miraculous brightness of

the ocean how large and strange objects on the sand appear: at a

distance a bit of wreckage looks like a cliff. The most absurd little

rocking-horse here would have the size of some monstrous steed. And

always, under your feet, those gifts of the sea that would go so well

in your collection: a wet pebble, gleaming like a jewel, debris, come

heaven knows whence, rolled by the waves heaven knows how long, roughly

modelled by the ocean, polished or tarnished, a beautiful crab’s

shell, a sponge, a five-franc piece, bearing the image of Louis XV the

Well-beloved. Henry’s eyes, with their Concord habits, even find an

arrow-head, placed there in his honour. They must bathe in that little

basin formed by a sandbar, then sit down to dry and watch the coots

dancing like corks on the waves or the schools of menhaden, with their

back fins projecting two or three inches out of the water. In some

patches the sea is as purple as a grape. That sail yonder comes from

some port of dreams for which you are homesick even without knowing

what it is. It speaks mysteriously to a man, naked in the sun after his

bath, who hears the pores of his skin murmuring together how marvellous

it is to belong to a body that is freed from its braces and buttons.

It will be best not to stop at Truro but to push on to the Highland

Light where they will find comfortable quarters. Indeed the keeper

receives them without asking them who they are, receives them, in

his simple brick dwelling attached to the white lighthouse, with the

generosity of a lonely soul. They climb with him up the winding iron

stairway to the lantern when he goes up to light his fifteen oil lamps.

(What a job keeping them in order! There are the wicks, the oil that

congeals in winter, the reflectors, the windows, and on warm summer

nights the moths that glue themselves there by the million, dimming

the lights--and yet everything is neat and in apple-pie order in the

lantern.) Think what a fine place it would be for a lad with studious

tastes who was too poor to feed his own lamp! And what a beautiful inn!

There you are, all night, close to the waves, snug in your bed, a part

of the lighthouse, yourself a light towards which the lookout-men at

sea direct their eyes. Wonderful!

The Cape narrows and is soon nothing but a shrunken tongue of land

along which move two insects in holiday spirits. They are approaching

the point of the hook. Three or four days along the seashore, tramping

in the October wind, and there is Provincetown at last, a mere dot. A

compactly built little town, a barking cur, people going about their

business--all these things cut a sorry figure before an ocean that

swings from one continent to another. The two hundred schooners of the

mackerel fleet that lie there in the harbour are like toys scattered

on a green carpet. There is a smell of drying fish along the plank

sidewalks of the little town, which is engulfed in the fine sand that

filters into everything, into your shoes, into the houses. To bid

farewell to the Cape they push on across the deserted region to the

North of the port. The wind from the open sea stings and caresses them

and makes their skin smart. The whole burden of the Atlantic comes to

die at their feet in the whiteness of the foam and a rumbling as of the

end of the world.

It is Sunday. Some sailors are engaged in painting their boat at

Provincetown when a tithing-man comes along and tells them they are

disturbing the Sabbath. That’s all very well for you, my friend. On

Sunday you lounge about the house after church, smoking your pipe with

your family, looking at the picture-papers or getting drunk if you

like; it’s easy for you to observe the Sabbath without causing any

scandal. But from where I sit, peacefully watching the harbour and the

sea, I can hear the shouts of a preacher from the meeting-house over

there with its windows wide open to the sunlight. (Wouldn’t you think

he was a drill-sergeant or a boatswain giving his commands?) Now,

tithing-man, why not tell that fellow to stop making a nuisance of

himself? Those sailors are not disturbing a soul as they paint their

boat, but that fanatic poisons the beautiful Sunday air for everybody.

Monday, the departure. They set off for home by sea, saluted, as they

leave the harbour, by some red-shirted men who, from their boats, watch

the little steamer passing: a Newfoundland dog, with his paws on the

rail of one of the boats, watches them too, watches as a big sailor’s

dog knows how to watch. In no time at all the Cape and everything

over there behind them is a mere pale beak almost level with the sea,

and before they know it they are tying up at Long Wharf between two

big boats ... Boston ... the train for Concord. Oh, to get to Concord

quickly enough to bring home before they are gone that scent of codfish

and oysters and that drone of the sea in the shell at your ear....

It is so beautiful, this desolate coast, so powerfully appealing, this

Atlantic solitude, that Henry returns alone to the Cape the following

summer and twice later, alone or with William. Cape Cod has become the

first colonial possession of an affluent lover of the wilds. But the

danger of these long expeditions is that one becomes insatiable. A rich

man always wants more. Having gone to the extremities of Massachusetts,

to the mountains and the sea, he has taken it into his head to press on

to the boundary of the United States, and beyond....

Henry, you are ready to throw your money out of the window. William

has agreed to go up to Canada with you, or is he the tempter who

has induced you to go? However that may be, the matter is settled

between the two accomplices. They are going to take advantage of a

special excursion train. It is very disagreeable to travel under such

conditions, packed in with those idiotic tourists, but it enables them

to go a long way for very little money, and once they are there they

can get rid of the other reduced-price gentry soon enough and set out

by themselves on a tour of discovery. They will have a week before them.

They leave Concord in the morning, before eight o’clock, and by six

in the evening they are on the shore of Lake Champlain, which crosses

the frontier ... on the map. For it crosses nothing on the landscape.

But is there a single one of these fifteen hundred excursionists who,

at this solemn moment of passing from one country into another, is not

looking for some mountain-chain, some gulf, some gigantic gate--heaven

knows what--to show that here one nation begins and another ends? A

frontier, and the face of the earth goes straight on as if it knew

nothing about its own political geography? But they begin to hear

people speaking in a different language (is that the looked-for gulf?),

and already they feel far away from home--on the “foreign soil” of the

romances.

More than anything else, Montreal is the church of Notre Dame. A deep

cave like that in the heart of a city deserves a visit. It is very

still there. The church can hold ten thousand worshippers, but at the

moment it seems to contain only three women who are praying, and the

latter do not even lift their eyes to look at two fellows who are

softly making the tour of the nave with their hats in their hands. A

troop of natives come in, countrymen on a visit to town whose first

thought is to kneel before the high altar, with the rather awkward

movements--as Henry thinks--of cattle preparing to lie down. The

glitter of the altars, the candles and the images do not impress him,

but he is touched by this ingenuous respect. The silence is good in

this cavern. There reigns here a little of the mystery of the deep

woods; it is open every day to all comers, a retreat to which you can

come and meditate, away from the crowds, and really feel at peace with

yourself. If you were condemned for your sins to live in a town like

this, you would certainly come to Notre Dame, with the same respect

as these good women, to pray in your own fashion between services. If

it were not for the priests and their mummery, this Catholic religion

would not be a bad thing at all. It has such beautiful shrines for

meditation. Even the holy water in the basins would not disturb you

very much if, in the minds of the faithful, it were sacred like the

water of a fountain dedicated to a goddess. This Roman religion merely

needs to be brushed up a little by a pagan. Notre Dame is certainly an

astonishing cave.

In the streets, priests and Sisters of Charity. These latter must have

been weeping all their lives long to have such scalded-looking eyes;

they have the faces of people who have been buried and dug up. They

all go about with lowered eyeballs, as if they had made up their minds

never to smile again. The sight of them insults the daylight. There are

also a great many soldiers about, mounting guard or drilling. Henry

wonders of what use all these puppets are. They are probably to amuse

the citizens, like a Punch and Judy show. And there are market-women

in the square with beautiful apples, pears and peaches for sale. (It

is the end of September.) Henry buys some, hazarding a few words of

the language of the country. These honest fruit-sellers at least are

flesh-and-blood women, and their apples are apples and not church

ornaments. And the old French names that he reads in the town have as

much flavour as the apples, or as the chronicles of the navigators

who set sail from Saint-Malo in their immense old tubs and landed at

Tadousac, at the confluence of the Saguenay. Henry has read those

chronicles, and they enchant him.

The zigzag fissures there in the rock are Quebec and its climbing

streets. And the citadel--and the barracks and the barracks. High up

there on the ramparts he perceives from afar a terrible warrior with

an immense cocked hat; he wonders if it is the god of war stuck up

there like a scarecrow, or if that horrifying puppet with its gun is

preparing to destroy the world. These soldiers are the ornament of

Quebec; they are set about everywhere to make it clear that the English

are energetic people. In the citadel the Highlanders are drilling.

They have the graceful, elastic step of mountaineers: strong, healthy

young men, condemned to a humiliating and ridiculous occupation that

is stupefying them and turning them into automatons in the service of

Her Britannic Majesty. Their movements make a sad impression upon a

man who stands there, with his old umbrella and his bundle, staring at

the soldiers, as if they were a new species whose habits are unknown

to him. He is poorly dressed, as his way is when he travels, with a

thin, twenty-five-cent palm-leaf hat on his head and a brown linen sack

to conceal the raggedness of his coat. The spectator compares himself

mentally with that superb officer there who, without his disguise,

would probably look just like anybody else. He would almost like to

hand him his own duster out of charity, so that he wouldn’t have to

look so much like an old bogie.

But he had better climb down again to the town and have a look at the

milkmen’s dogs, harnessed to the little carts containing a single

immense can, and the market by the water-side, and the old women

sitting in the open air behind their vegetables and fruit--and the

ferry-boats continually going to and fro with their motley, chattering

crowds. The cabmen talking in French to their old hacks remind him of

the ancient France that still keeps its aroma here. In this restaurant

he has just entered what interests Henry is not the bottles and the

glasses on the table but a great map of Canada hanging on the wall.

This table is made of mahogany, and it would be a pity to scratch it.

The guest spreads out his handkerchief, then climbs up on the table and

begins to study the map. When he sets foot on the floor again, without

having broken any of the dishes, he has had his meal; the food itself

will be merely dessert.

But it is to see the country that he has come to this “foreign soil.”

The two friends set out on foot to explore the Falls of Montmorenci.

They promise themselves a good deal of pleasure. There may be less

uniforms and nuns along the roads. It will be a great experience to see

simple human beings.

The peasant women are working in the fields, buxom, healthy-looking

creatures with ruddy cheeks under their broad-brimmed hats, and much

more agreeable to look at than the natives of the stronger sex. The

villages straggle along with their whitewashed houses. Thank goodness,

you no longer feel yourselves strangers as you did at Montreal and

Quebec. Isn’t it odd? No matter where you wander on the planet, as long

as there is a tree of any species, a blade of grass, a glint of running

water or a beach where pebbles have been washed up, you are immediately

at home; while a score of miles from your own church-tower you have

only to set foot on the sidewalk of a town to feel yourself an alien,

with all communications cut with the world and your own kindred. A

strange business, this “foreign soil.”

Evening falls. They have reached the village of Beauport. It would

be much cosier if they could put up with some of the inhabitants.

They are in the heart of the Canuck country, where you have to speak

the language. Even the little curs bark in a kind of French. Henry

courageously knocks at a door, and when they shout “Entrez” from

within some fine little phrases emerge, the fruit of his reading since

school-days. His accent may not be very good, but often enough the

people understand it. The only trouble is that he can make scarcely

anything of their voluble replies. And the blunders are very amusing.

These honest Canucks are full of good will, but unfortunately they are

poor people and have no bed to offer the strangers. So our friends are

compelled to enquire in their best pigeon-French: “_Y a-t-il une maison

publique ici?_” Who would ever guess that these two boys are looking

for a simple inn? The Canucks of Beauport have no inn, as they have no

_maison publique_. But there may be room at the mill or the grocery. At

this other house, where the travellers sit down for a moment to drink a

glass of water, the people politely excuse themselves by showing them

the loft where the whole family sleep, the only bedroom in the house.

At last, under a less poverty-stricken roof, they are offered the best

room and a bed with coarse, unbleached linen sheets. But there is no

coarseness in the hospitality of the Binets, who do not lock them into

their room like that funny old oysterman who had seen Washington;

they even ask their guests if they would like some brandy with their

breakfast. No, good lady, a plain apple will taste better to us than

any drink.

The next day they set out for the Falls. The spot from which they

can see them best has been appropriated by a mill-owner, who has his

mansion and grounds there. Very sorry, dear sir, but we are going

to cross your land with as little fuss as if we were in Concord. It

appears that you supplanted on this spot a mighty lord of the last

generation. But mighty lord or not, there is a great natural spectacle

here, and the view belongs to the humblest of walkers who comes from

a distance with his bundle to see the Falls. What do we care for your

land-title? Sir William and Sir Henry here have a right to enjoy the

sight to their hearts’ content.

There should still be time to go and see the Falls of Sainte-Anne, a

simple matter of thirty miles on foot. On the road they constantly pass

wooden crosses and little shrines to the Blessed Virgin with ex-votos.

Now and then they meet some villager wearing a cap of red, blue or

grey worsted who bids them a polite good-day and lifts his hand to

his bonnet. How civil and human they are! Even this fat, friar-like

personage in his black, priestly robe--what can these fellows do for

a living?--who appears at the door of his parsonage, where they have

knocked to ask their way, gives them a friendly greeting. There is no

inn at Sainte-Anne any more than at Beauport, but here too there are

good souls to put them up. The master of the house, in his red cap,

has the true Norman stamp; he talks with his stubby pipe between his

teeth, which makes his Canuck French very hard to understand. Just

the same, two fellows who have come from New England feel very near

home here, very near and very far away at once, much further away in

time and space than the excursion-ticket had given them any reason to

expect. They are in the heart of old Normandy--Henry has returned for

one night to sleep in the cradle of his race. He may not be thinking

of this perhaps, but it is very much to his taste here. The villages,

the streams have such charming names: Rivière de la Blondelle, Rivière

de la Friponne, Rivière de la Rose, Rivière du Sault a la Puce, Pointe

aux Trembles ... How can he help feeling that he belongs to the race

of poets-without-knowing-it who thought of such names as these? All

the little houses turn their backs on the road, perhaps the better to

preserve the fragrance of the old country.

After the visit to the Falls and a good stiff walk along the Saint

Lawrence, they stop again at nightfall at a farm where they pass a very

agreeable evening chattering French in the great kitchen. It is Sunday.

William’s pipe pays a tribute of incense to the little Canuck gods

who have never died on the cross. What they cannot make intelligible

because of their accent they write. This little girl knows how to

write. Henry amuses them all by drawing a map of the country in chalk

on the old oiled table-cloth. They are the best of friends in no time.

With the few words at their disposal they talk about the soil, for that

subject can be expressed in very simple terms. The good people talk

about “senelles,” and Henry at first supposes that they mean snails

till they show him the little red apples of the hawthorn. They also go

out for some real apples to give the two strangers, beautiful, firm,

glossy apples that have just been picked. In the autumn fragrance of

ripe apples, Mother Earth says thanks in a universal language.

These poor Canucks, who are so gentle, with their rather humble

politeness and an intelligence that seems to have been arrested in its

development, are pitiful creatures in the eyes of you Yankee tourists,

and you make fun of them because you are so clever and so strong. But

what would you have been if it had been perpetually rammed down your

throat by your father and your father’s father that the one great

thing in this world is to obey our holy mother the Church? You would

have been dunces, and you would have been mean, hard-hearted dunces.

You would not have had the openheartedness, the simple courage, the

good nature and humanity of these people. (Henry is thinking of the

clear, laughing “By gosh” of the wood-chopper from Quebec who had come

to see him in his cabin.) A little of the wealth of these “poor souls”

would not come amiss in your pockets, shrewd fellows that you are.

But they must rejoin their fellow-excursionists. Quebec. Yes, the

soldiers in red, the priests in black, the nuns, the seminarists....

You have seen enough of them. To Montreal on the boat, and then the

train that is to carry you home. In the car the inevitable wag of

the party begins to imitate the cry of the cabmen in the streets of

Quebec. Among these prosperous Yankees a silent man is thinking of

the landscape along that tremendous river, so many miles wide, with

its falls, its islands, and the little children who said good-day so

politely to the strangers on the road. Reckoning all the expenses, the

journey to Canada has amounted to $12. A little more, to be sure, than

the net profits of a year of farming at Walden. But he does not regret

his money.

Henry has cousins at Bangor, in Maine, the stepsons of his Aunt

Elizabeth, one of whom is in the lumber-trade. He has never gone back

there since that time in his twenty-first year when he had wanted so

much to find a place as a schoolmaster almost anywhere. While he was

living at Walden, he was seized with a desire to go up and shake hands

with his cousin and do a little exploring with him in the forests up

there. Henry lived in the woods, and the woods are cousins of the

forest. One special attraction was that mountain which was more than

five thousand feet high and in the midst of the wilderness and still

almost unknown, Ktaadn. A royal mouthful, with that dense primitive

forest he would have to penetrate before reaching the giant and

offering it the homage of a very small cousin who had come a very long

way with his knapsack to dine with His Mightiness.

On the last day of August, in the second year of his stay in the

woods, he left his cabin (no need to bolt the door) and set off with

his outfit in his haversack. From Bangor, Henry and his relative, the

lumber-merchant, reached by buggy the meeting-point of the two branches

of the Penobscot, where two companions were to join them. On an island

in the river, where some degenerate Indians were living on their lands,

they engaged two of the latter who were to serve as guides. One of them

pathetically called himself Louis Neptune. The real journey began here.

Humanity, in this region, already presented the rough, honest features

of a wood-cutter in a red flannel shirt. A solitary store stood for

trade; it was filled with all kinds of “sweet cakes” upon which the

lumberers threw themselves like starving men after their long fast in

the woods. They also sold cartridges and toys for the children who were

anything but visible. Perhaps these too were to amuse the wood-cutters.

The road stopped here; they marched forward in Indian file. The forest

had engulfed them; from an elevation they saw, as far as the eye could

reach, nothing but its sombre green bosom. Pines, beeches, birches

fraternized and struggled over the moss. There was no animal so scarce

as man, and what a surprise it was to encounter him in the form of

Uncle George, as he was called, living here on his lands so far from

everyone, with another man and two women and his beasts, like a pasha!

They were to spend the night under his roof, for it was here that the

two Indian guides were to join them.

Excellent Uncle George, offering his hospitality with such an open hand

to four travellers, and refusing to take any recompense! It was easy

enough to see that his ancestors belonged to the good Scotch race.

And what hospitality! Henry saw them preparing a royal dinner over an

enormous fire with logs as long as an axle-tree: on the table were ham

and eggs, wheat cakes, cheese, salmon, shad, sweet cakes and stewed

cranberries, all in profusion. And butter in such quantities that they

gave it to you to grease your boots with. Henry felt very much alive in

this land of Cockaigne. Henry the sober rejoiced in this munificence,

for it was all seasoned after his own heart and everything was so

simple, so grand and so beautiful in this forest setting. He dreamed

at Uncle George’s of that “larger and more populous house, standing

in a golden age,” where his blessed fellow-townsmen, those dear

little provincial souls whom he knew all too well, had died of their

stinginess, and the large spirit, the magnificent generosity reigned

that he had found here in the remote depths of the woods.

Louis Neptune and the other Indian did not arrive, and Uncle George

consented to serve as their guide. They would lose nothing by this.

With a neighbouring settler whom they persuaded to join the party,

there were six of them in a boat that played in the cleverest fashion

with the current, the rapids, the whirlpools and rocks on a level

with the water. George and his neighbour Tom were quick and sure-eyed

boatmen. Henry was enraptured with the sport, which was all new to

him. This was the logging country, where the great felled trunks

adventurously jostled their way down the watery road and came to a stop

in piles, waiting for the flood to dislodge them. It was a country of

lakes too, big and little and strewn with islands. They were now on

North Twin Lake; it was evening, and in the moonlight they rowed by

turns, singing, pausing now and then to listen to the voices of the

solitude. Henry no longer knew where he was nor what adventures lay

before them through these interlacing waters and islands....

At the loggers’ camp where the expedition halted in the afternoon, they

had had some tea and sweet cakes; this was the last human vestige in

the direction they were going. And now as evening had come they made

camp, cooked their supper, and then, stretching out with their feet to

the fire, gossiped a little before going to sleep while they studied

the starry sky. By daylight, through the clouds that encircled it, they

had already caught a glimpse of the giant’s brow. This was a trout

country too, and the fish fell upon the bait ravenously, shimmering

like flowers as you heaved them out of the water and flung them on the

bank. Henry, the veteran fisherman, had a dream about them. He dreamed

that he was fishing the whole night long in a miraculous shower of

these flower-fishes. The vision was so acute that he was compelled

to get up early in the morning and go and see whether it was true or

whether he had only dreamed it. He went to the bank, cast his line and

in the moonlight caught as many as ever he could want: trout and roach

leaped and fluttered just as they had in his dream. They were like

flying-fish.

The party was obliged now to leave the boat and turn towards the

mountain on foot. Uncle George had never been further than this spot.

So now it was Henry, rover of the woods, who took the head of the

column. Following his old custom he took the compass and steered

straight through the dense forest for the foot of the mountain,

without seeing it. By noon they had breasted their way over so many

firs and birches that their stomachs were groaning, and they broiled

some trout on sharpened sticks, each with his own fish and stick.

Gathered about the fire, they were like six sorcerers fishing in the

flames. That night they camped within sight of the summit. But the

guide was too impatient to wait for the next day; he scrambled up

alone, on all fours, hanging by branches, slipping and recovering

himself, till at last he reached a rocky plateau where he could reach

with his finger the skirt of a cloud. And the next morning, while his

companions were still struggling in a chaos of rocks, there he was on

the summit, on the last ridge, pressed on all sides by the clouds.

He had hardly expected to find the Giant in such a savage humour. The

little man who had come to pay him a visit felt rather overwhelmed; the

spirit in him was silent, intimidated. He had hoped for some sort of

rugged smile. But no, the Giant sounded as if he were muttering between

his granite teeth: “What the devil are you doing here, you little worm?

Go back to your mother.” The Giant had no invitations for a little

man who had made such a long journey and run the risk of breaking his

neck to see him. He was a crabbed, secretive Giant who didn’t like

people to meddle in his affairs. Had this rather cold welcome somewhat

disheartened Henry? The country through which he passed on his return,

after having tumbled down the mountain by the bed of a torrent,

drenching himself to his heart’s content, was stamped with an almost

menacing severity that chilled him at times. The desolation of these

dense, infinite forests, without a suggestion of a path, without the

faintest sign of anything akin to this biped who was groping his way

and had to scramble up to the top of a fir-tree to get his bearings was

so enormous that he felt excluded, baffled, effaced--so utterly that

he wondered, as he touched his own body, if it was not itself matter

without a soul.... Had he had to come all this way then to find the

limits of his own wilderness? Was such a region as this, absolutely

devoid of any relation to humanity, outside his domain? Would the gods

of his own wilderness at home refuse to haunt the forests of Upper

Maine? In that case Walden would find its master here. Was that so?

Strange, anyway--very strange.

He did not become himself again till he heard the laughter of running

water and found the boat once more. That was human at least. The

Giant no longer weighed on him, nor the mighty roof of the forest.

They descended the stream; the rapids were terrible. You should

have seen the two men with their spike-poles, catching hold again

of the empty boat after letting it drop over a fall, leaping into

it and allowing themselves to be whirled down the rapids, cool and

collected, familiar with all the tricks of this crafty water. When they

reached the neighbourhood of Tom’s house, whom should they see but

Louis Neptune and his companion, each in his own canoe! In their old

clothes, broad-brimmed hats, broad capes, they looked like veritable

blackguards. And their explanations were like their looks. It was not

their fault that they had missed the rendezvous; they had been the

victims of a wild jollification and had not yet recovered from the

effects, poor devils. It was all right. And they were welcome to their

muskrats too.

A glass of beer at Tom’s, a farewell to Uncle George, whose dogs were

mad with joy at the sight of their master and fairly devoured him; then

off for Bangor, Boston and Concord.

Henry was coming back to see his cousin again. This mass of virgin

forest, with its watery veins, dappled with lakes as the lakes were

dappled with islands, attracted him as a kind of challenge; and this

ursine wilderness disturbed a little the thought of his own. Seven

years later, the pair were off again, in an open wagon, on the road

from Bangor to Moosehead Lake. This time the Indian they had engaged

as guide and paddler met them as he had promised. No drunken Louis

Neptunes this time. Joe was a good-looking lad of twenty-four, short

and stout, with small feet, a broad face, eyes narrow and slanting

towards the temples, wearing the red flannel shirt of the lumberman.

Although he knew all the American slang, he was a full-blooded Indian.

This time they were not going to disturb a Giant in his stony

meditation. They were setting out by water for Lake Chesuncook, another

solitary majesty but a less lofty one. After crossing Moosehead Lake

on a little steamboat, they carried their canoe and provisions over to

the Penobscot. It was a joy to Henry to watch Joe tarring the little

boat, which was nineteen and a half feet long and painted green. They

sat in the bottom on birch-bark mats, and there were two big paddles

which they used by turns; they sat with their legs stretched out or

tailor-wise and sometimes knelt. Whenever a bird appeared, Joe said

its name in the Indian language--a strange melody, as if the bird were

naming itself. You couldn’t help thinking how happy the creatures would

have been at the Creation if that great poet, the Redskin god, had been

there in his paradise to name them.

This was the country of the moose, as big as a bull or even a powerful

horse, with two palm-leaves on his head for horns and delicate hoofs

that divide very far up and are flexible when he bends over. It was a

long time since Henry had done any hunting, but his curiosity was too

lively for him not to accompany the two others when they pursued the

moose, whose tracks they saw on all sides.

Joe, in the silence in which they glided along in the moonlight,

imitated the call of the animal by blowing into a birch-bark

hunting-horn. No reply this evening: nothing but an occasional dry

rushing sound as of the closing of some faraway door in the forest,

a falling tree. But later, as they were ascending a little tributary

stream, a great head appeared which, when they took good aim, dropped

into the water. It was not Henry’s shot, needless to say. The animal

was as big as a good-sized mare; the long fall from the high shoulders

to the receding rump gave it almost the look of a giraffe. Henry

watched Joe, skilfully removing the skin, making a fearful butchery

of what the moment before had been a clothed and perfect form. Henry

was no milksop, but he did not like to see life destroyed. It was true

that this evening he did not refuse to eat a moose steak, which tasted

rather like pickled veal. It was also true that three comrades eating

together fried moose-meat cut directly from the animal and cooked over

live coals in the open wind, in a magnificent solitude, while they sat

with their backs against the towering fir-trees to the sound of the

rippling water that rocked their canoe, was a very different thing

from seeing a similar scene pictured in the almanac or in the tales of

missionaries. You felt as if you were living a mighty life. And as for

savagery, you didn’t have to aspire to it any longer; you were eating

it, you were partaking of it.

In the moonlight, the fairies had taken possession of the prospect,

erected their scenery, arranged their lighting effects, and Henry half

thought he was some personage of the forest of Arden in the brain of

Shakespeare and not just a little fellow from Concord crouching in a

canoe with Joe the Indian and his cousin the lumber-merchant. Henry

was sleepy and he fell into a dreamy state: he was floating through

prodigious gardens and avenues bordered with fantastic architecture

where he heard the sound of Joe’s horn calling the moose: _ugh, ugh,

ou-ou-ou ... ou-ou-ou_.... The venison had gone to Henry’s head. The

others were hoping for the chance of a second shot. But for him the

hunting was finished. One moose was enough. That great despoiled

carcass had impressed him too painfully, and he had not digested the

moose-steak very well. He had not made the journey with any such

intentions as these. And there were enough of these red-shirted

woodsmen coming in the pay of employers or a company to massacre

trees and animals; the forest should know the face of at least one

disinterested friend.

Henry left the others to their pleasure and sat down by the camp-fire

to examine the fruits of his own hunt--the botanical specimens he had

collected that afternoon. Then he took out his notebook and jotted

down his impressions, just as if he had been in his own bedroom at

Concord. But his room was vast this evening, and what an evening it

was here for a solitary man with that stream of moonlight on the river

... with those great shafts surrounding him with their sombre profiles

... friendly shafts destined for the axe, destined for the saw, for

the crime of being great and brawny and for holding under their skins

the promise of such beautiful timber. The common destiny of trees and

men, to be doomed to trade, to be sold in planks or pencils, instead

of being understood, loved and glorified. In the dancing light of the

flames the little men and the tall trees looked as if they were bending

over the shoulder of a boy who was writing instead of joining in the

chase.

At Chesuncook, that great log-house belonged to Ansell Smith, who

had cleared a good stretch along the lake. It was enough to see the

assembled logs of which it was made, lapping over one another several

feet at the corners, enough to see that forester’s broad-axe leaning

by the door to love the fine, manly air of the place and be happy at

the prospect of spending the night there in a beautiful room where

the wooden partition creaked with every movement. On the way back to

Bangor, they stopped at an island that had been left as a reservation

for the Indians. The Governor was a rare old boy whom they found

sitting on the edge of his bed, in his shanty, dressed in a frock-coat

and well-worn black pantaloons, with a red silk handkerchief about

his neck and a straw hat. He was deaf, but he had hardly a grey hair

in spite of his eighty-nine years. His corpulent squaws were gathered

about him. They were tamed, Christianized, slatternly Indians. They

were interested in politics, and were not in agreement on the question

of the school which the priest, the sole holder of the Roman candles,

wanted to close. Henry stopped for some time by an Indian who was

making canoes. He would have liked to spend a whole season there, as an

apprentice, and master this fine, primitive art. But he was obliged to

take the trail for Concord again.

How was he going to like it after having gorged himself with this wild

nature? Very much indeed, you may be sure. It had variety and all sorts

of fine shades, and he never wearied of his old domain as he would have

wearied after a while of the deep, monotonous forest. These solitudes

of Upper Maine were like a strong wine that he liked to have a taste

of now and then as a tonic. But they would never have done for every

day. Those dear old attaching surroundings at home were ... how was

he to put it?... “nature humanized.” Exactly. You would never have

believed it perhaps: hu-man-i-zed. A fellow does not come back from

Upper Maine, you see, without a curious little memory to accompany the

indigestibleness of the moose.

Four years later the taste of this strong wine tempted Henry again. He

had made another visit to Cape Cod early in the season and had scarcely

been home a month when he started for Bangor. This time it was not his

cousin who was going to make the journey with him but his friend Edward

Hoar, the beloved companion of many a ramble about Concord--including

the one when the two “damned rascals” set fire to the woods. Rambles

of long ago, for Edward had been living for eight years in California.

They meant to reach the Allegash Lakes and return by the East Branch

of the Penobscot. In this way they would encircle Ktaadn, giving it a

sufficiently wide berth not to disturb the Giant.

They could not do this without a guide. The Bangor cousin recommended

one whom he had known from boyhood. He was another Joe--Joseph Polis; a

very different sort of fellow from the Joe of four years back. This Joe

was a grown-up man, forty-eight years old, who had spent his childhood

exploring the solitudes around the sources of the St. John. He now

lived with his wife in a pretty house surrounded by a vegetable garden,

just like a New England villager who subscribed to the county paper.

A stoutly built chap, of rather more than middle height, with a broad

face--the true Indian type. He spoke a passable English, using l’s

for r’s. He belonged to the aristocracy of his tribe. Joe was glad to

join the expedition and agreed to the price. He was to carry his own

canoe--literally, for he bore it on his head to the stage, where he

installed himself beside the driver. As an old hand, he brought with

him, along with the great knife that dangled in a sheath from his belt,

nothing but his axe, his gun, a blanket and a good supply of tobacco.

Joe had bought a new pipe. He was very economical with his words; when

you spoke to him, he muttered some vague phrase, as if all such things

interested him very little. At the tavern, when a tipsy man asked

him if he smoked, adding, in reply to a kind of yes: “Won’t you lend

me your pipe a little while?”, Joe looked straight over his head and

answered with an absent air: “Me got no pipe.” Joe’s silence would be

the greatest relief after the palaver and smartness of white people.

As there were three of them in the bark canoe, with their baggage,

there was no room for them to stretch their legs, but even so it was

better than it was in the stage. And in the evening how much better

than the inn was the little tent, set up in a dense wood where it was

as black as an oven. They were in no need of a lullaby to put them to

sleep as they rolled up in their blankets; but Joe, at Henry’s request,

sang in Indian a slow, rather nasal chant on some well-known themes,

obligingly furnished by the missionaries, about the only and sole

Almighty, ruler of the world. But there was such a fine simplicity

about it that you utterly forgot the flatness of the performance: it

was like a child singing his childish thoughts. Henry, who slipped

outside the tent some time after midnight, saw a bit of phosphorescent

wood. With his knife he shaved off a few chips which, when he placed

them in the hollow of his hand, lighted up the lines of the palm.

It was the first time he had seen this. He was so entranced by his

discovery that he had to go and wake up Edward and show him his magic

night-lamp.

In the morning, the piercing _ah, te-te-te, te-te-te, te-te-te_ of the

white-throated sparrow ringing through the wood sounded the Sunday

reveille. Joe wanted to stop for the day. Joe was a good Protestant and

he had principles; at home he never failed to go to church. Of course

if they were absolutely determined to go ahead, he would have to go

with them, but the money he earned would be the wages of sin.... Well,

perhaps this could be arranged ... later.

Joe was exquisitely ingenuous. He was full of admiration for pious

people. He said his prayers on his knees, in a loud voice, in his

own language, morning and evening. If, by inadvertence, he happened

to lie down at night without having said them and remembered it, he

immediately scrambled out of his blanket and said them in double-quick

time. You could see that he had been to a good school. This evening, to

atone for having worked on Sunday, he said a particularly long prayer.

But how much more natural a Joe he revealed when, glued to the bank on

his stomach, he began to talk to the muskrats in their own language,

calling them with a strange squeaking sound with his lips.... Or better

still, when he named in his own tongue some incident of the forest

life. The Indian word for echo was _Pockadunkquaywayle_: kindly place

the accent where it belongs and see if you can find anything like it in

your own language. Henry was quick to note every scrap of this music;

it enchanted him. The words of his own tongue had been worn away like

pennies that have been passed from hand to hand for centuries. Joe’s

words were like butterflies--he wanted to catch them without hurting

them at a moment when they were motionless on a leaf, with their wings

open and still beating. How he would have liked to write a dictionary

of all these earthy words, which had the quality of the pressed leaves

he brought home in his old music-case or those veiny pebbles on the

beaches of Cape Cod.

Two white men and an Indian plunged into the immense forest of

fantastically shaped larches, where the mosquitoes poisoned them

and made an infernal buzzing din about the fire when they stopped.

Sometimes, in the depths of the night, a man rolled up, still awake,

in his blanket on his arbor-vitae mattress heard in the dense silence

the long-drawn call of the loon, rather like the hallooing of a man on

a very high key. They reached Lake Apmoojenegamook, the goal of the

excursion, and then Heron Lake, where a procession of sheldrakes passed

them.

But no creature could have been odder than this odd fish Joe. As

sharp as a weasel, by turns lively and taciturn, sparing of words and

gestures, he was always master of himself except when he had made a

good shot, when he trembled with emotion like a novice. If you asked

him the same question twice, his silence gave you to understand that

you had asked him once too often, and if you suggested that he might

explain one of the numerous tricks he knew, he would oblige you to

swallow this reply: “There are some things a man does not even tell

his old woman.” And then sometimes, along the trail, or when he was

paddling, or, more often, in the evening, after he had said his

prayers, when you were not asking him anything he would suddenly begin

to tell you some interminable yarn. You should have heard him describe

his interview with the famous Daniel Webster whom he had gone to see

in Boston. After an endless wait, he was received like a dog by the

great man, so rudely that Joe said to himself: “You’d better take care.

If you try that I shall know what to do.” A humbug, that Webster,

a talking-machine. No Indian would ever have received a visitor so

bluntly.

Joe had preserved the old Indian custom of leaving a trace of his

passing by making an inscription on a tree or hanging up a bit of

birch-bark. Once all of a sudden he said to Henry: “Me make a bet. We

two follow the path. I take canoe and you take the rest. See which gets

there first.” And he at once pulled off his boots and stockings, tossed

the boots to Henry and set out ahead. To make up a bundle of all the

utensils, the moose-skin, axe, paddle, gun, frying-pan and the rest,

would have taken time for a little white man who merely gathered up

everything he could, dashed off in pursuit, overtook the Indian, passed

him.... But he was forced to stop, for the innumerable utensils slipped

out of his arms, and Joe overtook him in turn. The obstinate little

white man, however, hugging all his traps desperately to his sides,

outran the Indian again and saw him no more. When the man-canoe came

up with him, both were out of breath. Joe explained that he had cut

his feet on the rocks and concluded with a laugh: “Oh, me love to play

sometimes.”

One night Henry had a bad scare. In a desolate region where a great

stretch of the forest had been destroyed by fire, he suddenly noticed

that Edward was missing. It was inexplicable. Among the standing

or fallen corpses of the trees, he vainly searched for him in the

twilight. Near a waterfall that made the earth tremble, Henry camped

with Joe, but he could not sleep. From time to time he thought he heard

the voice of his friend calling him through the roar of the water.

What could have happened to him? He was nearsighted, and he might have

fallen over some precipice. On the morning after this terrible night,

Edward was found again, smoking his pipe to soothe the cry of his

hollow stomach which had been empty since the day before. He thought

they were ahead of him when they were behind. After this they could

have eaten two moose-steaks each for breakfast.

The great journey was ended. They were back again among men, or

almost. That evening, the new-mown hay on which they were sleeping in

an open barn was like a foretaste of the feather beds that awaited

them; the hay was full of grasshoppers, but the smell was delicious.

Now, from time to time, they met an Indian in a canoe on the river, and

Joe would exchange a word with him in his own language. Before reaching

the end of the voyage, Joe, who had taught Henry the proper way to

paddle, asked: “How you like ’em your pilot?” There was his house at

last. The two friends stopped there for an hour to rest after the rough

journey. They caught a glimpse of Mrs. Polis, who was wearing a hat and

a silver brooch; but the Indian did not introduce his fellow-travellers

to his “old woman.”

That very evening, two veterans climbed into the train for Bangor, with

their battered belongings, back again from the lakes of Finland perhaps

or, who knows, from a journey across some _terra incognita_ of the map.

What a beautiful trip! Joseph Polis.... He was just a poor devil of a

denatured Indian who said his prayers like a theological student--a

fallen sovereign who hired himself out as a guide to strangers. Just

the same, it was Joe who had made of this fortnight the richest of

the three expeditions to Upper Maine. Henry was full of him. He could

talk of nothing else but their guide, mentioned him in his letters

to friends, thought of him every time he ate something that Joe had

taught him to like. Joe had entered his life for good and all. Poor Joe

was going to find himself placed, without knowing it, on a level with

heroic and immortal figures; he had earned on this expedition a great

deal more than his dollar and a half a day.

Joe had spoken for his whole race, which had always appealed so

strongly to Henry’s heart. Every time he had found himself in the

presence of an Indian--degenerate, catechised, mere shadow as he

might be--the blood had spoken in him; not the old Norman blood, nor

the Scottish, nor the English, nor the Welsh, but this subtler blood

that is mixed, in everybody, with the red blood. There was no romantic

passion in this cult; it was like an avowal of a secret kinship. Yes,

it was of Joe especially that he would think if he was able to carry

out some day the work he dreamed of composing so lovingly on the North

American Indian. Joe’s coat-of-arms should be a bear paddling a canoe.

There were far less proud artists than these to whom America could turn

for the designs of its armorial bearings.

So many dreams of childhood, affinities, old desires, found their

embodiment in Joe.... The artist’s love of the finest shades of

instinct, admired in a descendant of the race that scattered music

as it scattered words along the way. The taste for the primeval so

ingrained in a man to whom, in spite of college and the classics and

his environment, a valueless arrow-head spoke more intimately than

a verse of the Bible. The ambition also of a writer to secrete the

flint-flakes under his phrases, so that other vagabonds, finding them

there some day, might make a collection of them and keep them in their

dens. All this found something in Joe.