When I return to my house I find that visitors have been there and
left their cards, either a bunch of flowers, or a wreath of evergreen,
or a name in pencil on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip. They who come
rarely to the woods take some little piece of the forest into their
hands to play with by the way, which they leave, either intentionally
or accidentally. One has peeled a willow wand, woven it into a ring,
and dropt it on my table. I could always tell if visitors had called
in my absence, either by the bended twigs or grass, or the print of
their shoes, and generally of what sex or age or quality they were by
some slight trace left, as a flower dropt, or a bunch of grass plucked
and thrown away, even as far off as the railroad, half a mile distant,
or by the lingering odor of a cigar or pipe. Nay, I was frequently
notified of the passage of a traveler along the highway sixty rods off
by the scent of his pipe....
[Footnote 33: From Chapter IV of "Walden."]
I have never felt lonesome, or in the least opprest by a sense of
solitude but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods,
when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not
essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something
unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity
in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a
gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of
such sweet and beneficent society in nature, in the very pattering of
the drops and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite
and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere
sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood
significant, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pine
needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so
distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, even
in scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also
that the nearest of blood to me and humanest was not a person, nor a
villager, that I thought no place could ever be strange to me
again....
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in
company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love
to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as
solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among
men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is
always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by
the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The
really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge
College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work
alone in the field all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome,
because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he can not sit
down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where
he can "see the folks," and recreate, and, as he thinks, remunerate
himself for his day's solitude; and hence he wonders how the student
can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui
and "the blues"; but he does not realize that the student, tho in the
house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as
the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society
that the latter does, tho it may be a more condensed form of it.
Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not
having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at
meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old
musty cheese that we are. We have to agree on a certain set of rules,
called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting
tolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the
post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night;
we live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one
another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another.
Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty
communications. Consider the girls in a factory--never alone, hardly
in their dreams. It would be better if there were but one inhabitant
to a square mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in his
skin, that we should touch him.
I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning,
when nobody calls. Let me suggest a few comparisons, that some one may
convey an idea of my situation. I am no more lonely than the loon in
the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden pond itself. What
company has that lonely lake, I pray? And yet it has not the blue
devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters.
The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there sometimes appear
to be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone--but the devil, he is
far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion. I
am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or
a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a humble-bee. I am no more
lonely than the Mill brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or
the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first
spider in a new house.
I have occasional visits in the long winter evenings, when the snow
falls fast and the wind howls in the wood, from an old settler and
original proprietor, who is reported to have dug Walden pond, and
stoned it, and fringed it with pine woods; who tells me stories of old
time and of new eternity; and between us we manage to pass a cheerful
evening, with social mirth and pleasant views of things, even without
apples or cider; a most wise and humorous friend, whom I love much,
who keeps himself more secret than ever did Goffe or Whalley;[34] and
tho he is thought to be dead, none can show where he is buried. An
elderly dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to most
persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to stroll sometimes,
gathering simples and listening to her fables; for she has a genius of
unequaled fertility, and her memory runs back farther than mythology,
and she can tell me the original of every fable, and on what fact
every one is founded, for the incidents occurred when she was young. A
ruddy and lusty old dame, who delights in all weathers and seasons,
and is likely to outlive all her children yet.
[Footnote 34: The English regicides who came to America, and after
1660 lived in concealment in New England, a part of the time in a cave
near New Haven. William Goffe died in Hadley, Mass., in 1679. Edward
Whalley, who had been one of Cromwell's major generals, died also in
Hadley a year before Goffe.]