Walden by Henry David Thoreau, Chapter 14

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The holidays are all about sharing with family, meals, couches, stories,
Gramma secret pecan pie recipe, and now you can also
share a cart with Instacart's family carts. Everyone can add
what they want to one group cart from wherever they are,
so you don't have to go from room to room
to find out who wants cranberry sauce, or who should
get many marshmallows for the ams, or collecting votes for
sugar cookies versus shortbread. Just share a cart and then

(00:22):
share the meals and the moments. Download the instacart app
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and terms apply.

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Why get all your.

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Speaker 4 (01:00):
In terms ofpply.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
Walden by Henry David Thoro, Chapter fourteen. Former inhabitants and
winter visitors. I weathered some merry snow storms and spent
some cheerful winter evenings by my fireside, while the snow

(01:22):
whirled wildly without and even the hooting of the owl
was hushed. For many weeks. I met no one in
my walks, but those who came occasionally to cut wood
and sled it to the village. The elements, however, abetted
me in making a path through the deepest snow in

(01:43):
the woods. For when I had once gone through, the
wind blew the oak leaves into my tracks, where they lodged,
and by absorbing the rays of the sun, melted the snow,
and so not only made a bed for my feet,
but in the night their dark line was my guide

(02:04):
for human society. I was obliged to conjure up the
former occupants of these woods within the memory of many
of my townsmen. The road near which my house stands
resounded with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the
woods which border. It were notched and dotted here and
there with their little gardens and dwellings, though it was

(02:28):
then much more shut in by the forest than now.
In some places within my own remembrance, the pines would
scrape both sides of a chaise at once, and women
and children who were compelled to go this way to
Lincoln alone and on foot, did it with fear, and
often ran a good deal of the distance, though mainly

(02:52):
but a humble route to neighboring villages or for the
woodsman's team. It once amused the traveler more more than
now by its variety, and lingered longer in his memory,
where now firm open fields stretch from the village to
the woods. It then ran through a maple swamp on

(03:15):
a foundation of logs, the remnants of which doubtless still
underlie the present dusty highway from the Stratton now the
Almshouse Farm to Brister's Hill east of my beanfield. Across
the road lived Cato Ingraham, slave of Duncan Ingraham esquire,

(03:37):
gentlemen of Concord Village, who built his slave a house
and gave him permission to live in Walden Woods. Cato,
but not utasensues, but concordiensis. Some say that he was
a guinea negro. There are a few who remember his

(03:58):
little patch among the walnut which he let grow up
till he should be old and need them. But a
younger and whiter speculator got them at last. He too, however,
occupies an equally narrow house. At present, Cato's half obliterated
cellar hole still remains, though known to few, being concealed

(04:23):
from the traveler by a fringe of pines. It is
now filled with the smooth sumac Russ glabra, and one
of the earliest species of golden rod, Solidago stricta, grows
there luxuriantly. Here by the very corner of my field.
Still nearer to town Zilpha, a colored woman had her

(04:47):
little house where she spun linen for the townsfolk, making
the walden woods ring with her shrill singing, for she
had a loud and notable voice at length. In the
War of eighteen twelve, her dwelling was set on fire
by English soldiers prisoners on parole when she was away,

(05:12):
and her cat and dog and hens were all burned
up together. She led a hard life and somewhat inhumane.
One old frequenter of these woods remembers that as he
passed her house one noon, he heard her muttering to
herself over her gurgling pot. Ye are all bones bones,

(05:38):
I have seen bricks amid the oak copse. There down
the road on the right hand, on Brister's hill lived
Brister Freeman, a handy Negro slave of Squire Cummings. Once
there where grow still the apple trees which Brister planted

(05:58):
and tended, large old trees now, but their fruit still
wild and siderish to my taste. Not long since I
read his epitaph in the old Lincoln burying ground, a
little on one side, near the unmarked graves of some
British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord, where

(06:22):
he is styled Scipio Brister Scipio Africanus. He had some
title to be called a man of color, as if
he were discolored. It also told me, with staring emphasis

(06:42):
when he died, which was but an indirect way of
informing me that he ever lived with him dwelt Fenda,
his hospitable wife, who told fortunes yet pleasantly large, round
and black blacker than any of the children of night,
such a dusky orb as never rose on Concord before

(07:07):
or since. Farther down the hill on the left, on
the old road in the woods are marks of some
homestead of the Stratton family, whose orchard once covered all
the slope of Brister's Hill, but was long since killed
out by pitch pines, excepting a few stumps, whose old

(07:27):
roots furnish still the wild stalks of many a thrifty
village tree. Nearer yet to town you come to Breed's
location on the other side of the way, just on
the edge of the wood ground, famous for the pranks
of a demon not distinctly named in old mythology, who

(07:48):
has acted a prominent and astounding part in our New
England life, and deserves as much as any mythological character,
to have his biography written one day, who first comes
in the guise of a friend or hired man, and
then robs and murders the whole family New England rum.

(08:12):
But history must not yet tell the tragedies enacted here.
Let time intervene in some measure to assage and lend
an azure tint to them. Here the most indistinct and
dubious tradition says that once a tavern stood the well,
the same which tempered the traveler's beverage and refreshed his steed.

(08:37):
Here then men saluted one another, and heard and told
the news, and went their ways again. Breed's hut was
standing only a dozen years ago, though it had long
been unoccupied. It was about the size of mine. It
was set on fire by mischievous boys one election. If

(09:00):
I do not mistake, I lived on the edge of
the village then, and had just lost myself over Davenance
Gondebert that winter that I labored with a lethargy, which,
by the way, I never knew whether to regard as
a family complaint, having an uncle who goes to sleep

(09:20):
shaving himself and is obliged to sprout potatoes in a
cellar Sundays in order to keep awake and keep the Sabbath,
or as the consequence of my attempt to read Chalmer's
collection of English poetry without skipping it fairly overcame my nervie.

(09:41):
I had just sunk my head on this when the
bells rung fire, and in hot haste, the engines rolled
that way, led by a straggling troop of men and boys,
and I among the foremost, For I had leaped the brook.
We thought it was far south over the woods. We
who had run to fires before, barn shop or dwelling

(10:04):
house were all together. It's Baker's barn, cried one. It
is the codman place, affirmed another. And then fresh sparks
went up above the wood as if the roof fell in,
and we all shouted concord to the rescue. Wagons shot
past with furious speed and crushing loads, bearing perchance. Among

(10:28):
the rest the agent of the insurance company, who was
bound to go however far and ever, and Anon the
engine bell tinkled behind, more slow and sure and rear,
most of all, as it was afterward, whispering.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
The holidays are all about sharing with family, meals, couches, stories,
gramm a secret pecan pie recipe. And now you can
also share a cart with Instant Cart's family carts. Everyone
can add what they want to one group cart from
wherever they are, so you don't have to go from
roomed room to find out who wants cranberry sauce, or
who should get many marshmallows for the ams, or collecting
votes for sugar cookies versus shortbread. Just share a cart

(11:07):
and then share the meals and the moments. Download the
instacart app and get delivery in as fast as thirty minutes.
Plus enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service
fees and terms apply.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Why get all your holiday decorations delivered through instacart Because
maybe you only bought two wreaths but you have twelve windows,
Or maybe your toddler got very eager with the advent calendar,
or maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm,
or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason,
this season, Instacart's here for hosts and their whole holiday hall.

(11:38):
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Speaker 4 (11:44):
Service fees in terms apply.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
Bird came they who set the fire and gave the alarm.
Thus we kept on like true idealists, rejecting the evidence
of our senses, until at a turn in the row,
we heard the crackling and actually felt the heat of
the fire from over the wall, and realized alas that

(12:08):
we were there the very nearness of the fire, but
cooled our ardor At first we thought to throw a
frog pond on to it, but concluded to let it burn,
and was so far gone and so worthless. So we
stood round our engine, jostled one another, expressed our sentiments

(12:29):
through speaking trumpets, or in lower tone, referred to the
great conflagrations which the world has witnessed, including Bascombe's shop,
and between ourselves we thought that were we there in season,
with our tub and a full frog pawned by, we
could turn that threatened last and universal one into another flood.

(12:53):
We finally retreated, without doing any mischief, returned to sleep
and Gondebert. But as for Gondibert, I would accept that
passage in the preface about wit being the soul's powder,
But most of mankind are strangers to wit, as Indians

(13:13):
are to powder. It chanced that I walked that way
across the fields the following night about the same hour,
and hearing a low moaning at this spot, I drew
near in the dark and discovered the only survivor of
the family that I know, the heir of both its
virtues and its vices, who alone was interested in this burning,

(13:38):
Lying on his stomach, and looking over the cellar wall
at the still smoldering cinders beneath, muttering to himself, as
is his wont He had been working far off in
the river meadows all day and had improved the first
moments that he could call his own to visit the
home of his fathers and his youth. He gazed into

(14:01):
the cellar from all sides and points of view by turns,
always lying down to it, as if there was some
treasure which he remembered concealed between the stones, where there
was absolutely nothing but a heap of bricks and ashes,
the house being gone, he looked at what there was left.

(14:22):
He was soothed by the sympathy which my mere presence
implied and showed me, as well as the darkness permitted
where the well was covered up, which thank heaven, could
never be burned. And he groped long about the wall
to find the well sweep which his father had cut
and mounted, feeling for the iron hook or staple by

(14:45):
which a burden had been fastened to the heavy end,
all that he could now cling to to convince me
that it was no common rider. I felt it, and
still remark it almost daily in my walks, for by
it hangs the history of a family. Once more on

(15:07):
the left, where are seen the well and lilac bushes
by the wall. In the now open field lived nothing
and le grosse, but to return toward Lincoln. Farther in
the woods than any of these, where the road approaches
nearest to the pond. Wyman the potter squatted and furnished

(15:31):
his townsmen with earthenware, and left descendants to succeed him.
Neither were they rich in worldly goods, holding the land
by sufferance while they lived, and there often the sheriff
came in vain to collect the taxes, and attached a
chip for form's sake, as I have read in his accounts,

(15:54):
there being nothing else that he could lay his hands on.
One day in midsummer, when I was hoeing, a man
who was carrying a load of pottery to market, stopped
his horse against my field and inquired concerning Wyman the younger.
He had long ago bought a potter's wheel of him,
and wished to know what had become of him. I

(16:17):
had read of the potter's clay and wheel in scripture,
but it had never occurred to me that the pots
we use were not such as had come down unbroken
from those days, or grown on trees like gourds somewhere,
And I was pleased to hear that so fictile an
art was ever practiced in my neighborhood. The last inhabitant

(16:41):
of these woods before me was an irishman, Hugh Coil
if I have spelt his name with Coil enough, who
occupied Wyman's tenement. Colonel Coyl. He was called. Rumor said
that he had been a soldier at Waterloo. If he
had lived, I should have made him fight his battles

(17:03):
over again. His trade here was that of a ditcher.
Napoleon went to Saint Helena, Quoyle came to Walden Woods.
All I know of him is tragic. He was a
man of manners, like one who had seen the world,
and was capable of more civil speech than you could

(17:25):
well attend to. He wore a greatcoat in midsummer, being
affected with the trembling delirium, and his face was the
color of carmine. He died in the road at the
foot of Brister's Hill shortly after I came to the woods,
so that I have not remembered him as a neighbor

(17:48):
before his house was pulled down when his comrades avoided
it as an unlucky castle. I visited it. There lay
his old clothes, curled up by use, as if they
were himself, upon his raised plank bed. His pipe lay

(18:08):
broken on the hearth, instead of a bowl broken at
the fountain. The last could never have been the symbol
of his death, for he confessed to me that though
he had heard of Brister's spring, he had never seen it.
And soiled cards, kings of diamonds, spades, and hearts were

(18:31):
scattered over the floor. One black chicken, which the administrator
could not catch. Black as night and as silent, not
even croaking, awaited, Reynard still went to roost in the
next apartment. In the rear there was the dim outline
of a garden which had been planted but had never

(18:54):
received its first hoeing owing to those terrible shaking fits.
Though it was now harvest time, it was overrun with
roman wormwood and beggar ticks, which last stuck to my
clothes for all fruit. The skin of a woodchuck was

(19:15):
freshly stretched upon the back of the house, a trophy
of his last waterloo, but no warm cap or mittens.
Would he want more? Now? Only a dent in the
earth marks the site of these dwellings, with berried cellar
stones and strawberries, raspberries, thimbleberries, hazel bushes and sumacs growing

(19:40):
in the sunny sward. There some pitch pine or gnarled
oak occupies what was the chimney nook and a sweet
scented black birch, perhaps waves where the door stone was.
Sometimes the well dent is visible where one a spring oozed,

(20:02):
now dry and tearless grass, or it was covered deep,
not to be discover'd till some late day with a
flat stone under the sod, when the last of the
race departed. What a sorrowful act must that be? The

(20:24):
covering up of wells coincident with the opening of wells
of tears. These cellar dents, like deserted fox burrows old holes,
are all that is left where once were the stir

(20:44):
and bustle of human life and fate. Free will, foreknowledge
absolute in some form and dialect or other were by
turns discussed. But all I can learn of their conclusions
amount to just this that Cato and Brister pulled wool,

(21:09):
which is about as edifying as the history of more
famous schools of philosophy still grows the vivacious Lilac, a
generation after the door and lintel and the sill are gone,
unfolding its sweet scented flowers each spring to be.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
The holidays are all about sharing with family, meals, couches, stories,
gramma secret pecan pie recipe, and now you can also
share a cart with Instacart's family carts. Everyone can add
what they want to one group cart from wherever they are,
so you don't have to go from roomed room to
find out who wants cranberry sauce, or who should get
many marshmallows for the ams, or collecting votes for sugar
cookies versus shortbread. Just share a cart and then share

(21:52):
the meals and the moments. Download the instacart app and
get delivery in as fast as thirty minutes. Plus enjoy
free delivery on your first three orders and terms apply.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
Why get all your holiday decorations delivered through instacart Because
maybe you only bought two wreaths but you have twelve windows,
or maybe your toddler got very eager with the advent calendar,
or maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm,
or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason,
this season, Instacart's here for hosts and their whole holiday hall.

(22:23):
Get decorations from the home depots, cvs and more through instacart,
and enjoy free delivery on your.

Speaker 4 (22:28):
First three orders. Service fees in terms apply.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
Fucked by the musing traveler, planted and tended once by
children's hands in front yard plots, now standing by wallsides
in retired pastures, and giving place to new rising forests,
the last of that stirp soul survivor of that family.

(22:56):
Little did the dusky children think that the puny s lip,
with its two eyes only, which they stuck in the
ground in the shadow of the house and daily watered,
would root itself so and outlive them, and house itself
in the rear that shaded it, and grown man's garden

(23:20):
and orchard, and tell their story faintly to the lone
wanderer a half century after they had grown up and died.
Blossoming as fair and smelling as sweet as in that
first spring, I mark its still tender, civil, cheerful lilac colors.

(23:51):
But this small village germ of something more? Why did
it fail while conquer lord keeps its ground? Were there
no natural advantages, no water privileges forsooth high the deep
walden pond and cool brister spring, privilege to drink long

(24:14):
and healthy drafts at these all unimproved by these men.
But to dilute their glass they were universally a thirsty race.
Might not the basket stable, broom, mat making, corn parching,
linen spinning, and pottery business have thrived here, making the

(24:39):
wilderness to blossom like the rose, and a numerous posterity
have inherited the land of their fathers. The sterile soil
would at least have been proof against a low land degeneracy. Alas,
how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance

(25:02):
the beauty of the landscape. Again, perhaps nature will try
with me for a first settler, and my house raised
last spring to be the oldest in the hamlet. I

(25:23):
am not aware that any man has ever built on
the spot which I occupy. Deliver me from a city
built on the site of a more ancient city, whose
materials are ruins, whose gardens cemeteries. The soil is blanched
and accursed there, and before that becomes necessary, the earth

(25:47):
itself will be destroyed. With some reminiscences, I repeopled the
woods and lulled myself to sleep. At this season I
seldom had a visitor when the snow lay deepest. No
wanderer ventured near my house for a week or fortnight

(26:09):
at a time. But there I lived as snug as
a meadow mouse, or as cattle and poultry, which are
said to have survived for a long time buried in drifts,
even without food, Or like that early settler's family in
the town of Sutton in this state, whose cottage was

(26:31):
completely covered by the great snow of seventeen seventeen when
he was absent, and an Indian founded only by the
whole which the chimney's breath made in the drift, and
so relieved the family. But no friendly Indian concerned himself
about me, nor needed he, for the master of the

(26:55):
house was at home the great snow. How cheerful it
is to hear of when the farmers could not get
to the woods and swamps with their teams, and were
obliged to cut down the shade trees before their houses,
and when the crust was harder cut off the trees

(27:17):
in the swamps ten feet from the ground. As it
appeared the next spring. In the deepest snows, the path
which I used from the highway to my house, about
half a mile long, might have been represented by a
meandering dotted line with wide intervals between the dots. For

(27:41):
a week of even weather, I took exactly the same
number of steps and of the same length, coming and going,
stepping deliberately in with the precision of a pair of
dividers in my own deep tracks. To such routine, the
winter reduces us. Yet often they were filled with Heaven's

(28:02):
own blue. But no weather interfered fatally with my walks,
or rather my going abroad. For I frequently tramped eight
or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an
appointment with a beech tree, or a yellow birch, or
an old acquaintance among the pines, when the ice and snow,

(28:26):
causing their limbs to droop and so sharpening their tops,
had changed the pines into fir trees. Wading to the
tops of the highest hills when the snow was nearly
two feet deep on a level, and shaking down another
snow storm on my head at every step, or sometimes

(28:49):
creeping and floundering thither on my hands and knees. When
the hunters had gone into winter quarters. One afternoon, I
amused myself by watching a barred owl Strix nebulosa, sitting
on one of the lower dead limbs of a white pine,

(29:12):
close to the trunk, in broad daylight. I standing within
a rod of him. He could hear me when I
moved and crunched the snow with my feet, but could
not plainly see me. When I made most noise. He
would stretch out his neck and erect his neck feathers,

(29:32):
and open his eyes wide, but their lids soon fell again,
and he began to nod. I too, felt a slumbrous
influence after watching him half an hour. As he sat
thus with his eyes half open, like a cat winged

(29:53):
brother of the cat, there was only a narrow slit
left between them lids, by which be preserved a peninsular
relation to me. Thus, with half shut eyes, looking out
from the land of dreams and endeavoring to realize me

(30:14):
vague object or mote that interrupts his visions at length
on some louder noise or my nearer approach, he would
grow uneasy and sluggishly turn about on his perch, as
if impatient at having his dreams disturbed. And when he

(30:35):
launched himself off and flapped through the pines, spreading his
wings to unexpected breadth, I could not hear the slightest
sound from them. Thus, guided amid the pine boughs rather
by a delicate sense of their neighborhood than by sight.

(30:58):
Feeling his twice light way, as it were, with his
sensitive pinions, he found a new perch where he might,
in peace await the dawning of his day. As I
walked over the long causeway made for the railroad through
the meadows, I encountered many a blustering and nipping wind.

(31:22):
For nowhere has it freer play. And when the frost
had smitten me on one cheek heathen as I was,
I turned it to the other also. Nor was it
much better by the carriage road from Bristers Hill, For
I came to town still like a friendly Indian, when the

(31:43):
contents of the broad open fields were all piled up
between the walls of the walden road, and half an
hour sufficed to obliterate the tracks of the last traveler.
And when I returned, new drifts would have formed through
which I floundered. Where the busy northwest wind had been

(32:04):
depositing the powdery snow round a sharp angle in the road,
and not a rabbit's track, nor even the fine print
the small type of a meadow mouse was to be seen.
Yet I rarely failed to find, even in midwinter, some
warm and springly swamp, where the grass and the skunk

(32:29):
cabbage still put forth their perennial verdure, and some hardier
bird occasionally awaited the return of spring, sometimes notwithstanding the snow.
When I returned from my walk at evening, I crossed
the deep tracks of a wood chopper leading from my door,

(32:51):
and found his pile of whitlings on the hearth, and
my house filled with the odor of his pipe. Or
on a Sunday afternoon, if I chanced to be at home,
I heard the crunching of the snow made by the
step of a long headed farmer, whom, from far through

(33:11):
the woods sought my house to have a social crack.
One of the few of his vocation who are men
of their farms, who donned a frock instead of a
professor's gown, and is as ready to extract the moral
out of church or state, as to haul a load
of manure from his barn yard. We talked of rude

(33:35):
and simple times when men sat about large fires in cold,
bracing weather, with clear heads, and when other dessert failed,
we tried our teeth on many a nut which wise
squirrels have long since abandoned, for those which have the
thickest shells are commonly empty. The one who came from

(34:01):
farthest to my lodge, through deepest snows and most dismal tempests,
was a poet, a farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter.
Even a philosopher may be daunted, but nothing can deter
a poet, for he is actuated by pure love, who

(34:27):
can predict his comings and goings. His business calls him
out at all hours, even when doctors sleep. We made
that small house ring with boisterous mirth, and resound with
the murmur of much sober talk. Making amends then to
walden Vale, for the long silences, Broadway was still and deserted.

(34:54):
In comparison, at suitable intervals, there were regulars sole lutes
of laughter, which might have been referred indifferently to the
last uttered or the forthcoming jest, we made many a
bran new theory of life over a thin dish of gruel,

(35:15):
which combined the advantages of conviviality with the clear headedness
which philosophy requires. I should not forget that during my
last winter at the pond, there was another welcome visitor
who at one time came through the village through snow
and rain and darkness, till he saw my lamp through

(35:37):
the trees, and shared with me some long winter evenings.
One of the last of the philosophers Connecticut gave him
to the world. He peddled first her wares. Afterwards, as
he declares his brains, these he pedals, still prompting God

(35:59):
and disgracing man, bearing for fruit his brain only like
the nut its kernel. I think that he must be
the man of the most faith of any alive. His
words and attitude always suppose a better state of things
than other men are acquainted with, and he will be

(36:22):
the last man to be disappointed as the ages revolve.
He has no venture in the present, But though comparatively
disregarded now, when his day comes, laws unsuspected by most
will take effect, and masters of families and rulers will

(36:42):
come to him for advice, how blind that cannot see serenity,
A true friend of man, almost the only friend of
human progress. An old mortality, say, rather, an immortality with

(37:05):
unwearied patience and faith, making plain the image engraven in
men's bodies, the God of whom they are, but defaced
and leaning monuments. With his hospitable intellect, he embraces children, beggars, insane,
and scholars, and entertains the thought of all, adding to

(37:31):
it commonly some breadth and elegance. I think that he
should keep a caravansari on the world's highway, where philosophers
of all nations might put up, and on his sign
should be printed entertainment for man, but not for his beast.

(37:54):
Enter ye that have leisure and a quiet mind, who
earnestly seek the right road. He is perhaps the sanest man,
and has the fewest crutchets of any I chance to
know the same. Yesterday and tomorrow of yore we had

(38:17):
sauntered and talked, and effectually put the world behind us,
for he was pledged to no institution in it, free
born in genus. Whichever way we turned, it seemed that
the heavens and the earth had met together, since he

(38:38):
enhanced the beauty of the landscape. A blue robed man
whose fittest roof is the overarching sky, which reflects his serenity.
I do not see how he can, ever die. Nature
cannot spare him. Having each some shingles of thought well dried,

(39:04):
we sat and whittled them, trying our knives and admiring
the clear, yellowish grain of the pumpkin pine. We waded
so gently and reverently. Or we pulled together so smoothly
that the fishes of thought were not scared from the stream,

(39:24):
nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and
went grandly, like the clouds which float through the western sky,
and the mother o pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve.
There There we worked, revising mythology, rounding a fable here

(39:48):
and there, and building castles in the air for which
Earth offered no worthy foundation. Great booker, great expect to
converse with whom was a New England knight's entertainment. Ah.

(40:12):
Such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old
settler I have spoken of we three. It expanded and
racked my little house. I should not dare to say
how many pounds weight there was above the atmospheric pressure

(40:34):
on every circular inch. It opened its seams so that
they had to be calked with much dullness thereafter to
stop the consequent leak. But I had enough of that
kind of oakum already picked. There was one other with

(40:55):
whom I had solid seasons, long to be remembered, at
his house in the village, and who looked in upon
me from time to time. But I had no more
for society there there too, as everywhere I sometimes expected
the visitor who never comes. The Vishnu Purana says the

(41:22):
householder is to remain at eventide in his courtyard as
long as it takes to milk a cow, or longer
if he pleases, to await the arrival of a guest.
I often performed this duty of hospitality, waited long enough
to milk a whole herd of cows, but did not

(41:46):
see the man approaching from the town end of chapter fourteen.

Speaker 1 (41:57):
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