September 8, 2025 • 36 mins
17 - Chapter 12. Walden by Henry David Thoreau.
Walden, series of 18 essays by Henry David Thoreau, published in 1854. An important contribution to New England Transcendentalism, the book was a record of Thoreau’s experiment in simple living on the northern shore of Walden Pond in eastern Massachusetts (1845–47). Walden is viewed not only as a philosophical treatise on labour, leisure, self-reliance, and individualism but also as an influential piece of nature writing. It is considered Thoreau’s masterwork.
Walden, series of 18 essays by Henry David Thoreau, published in 1854. An important contribution to New England Transcendentalism, the book was a record of Thoreau’s experiment in simple living on the northern shore of Walden Pond in eastern Massachusetts (1845–47). Walden is viewed not only as a philosophical treatise on labour, leisure, self-reliance, and individualism but also as an influential piece of nature writing. It is considered Thoreau’s masterwork.
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o r G. This reading by Gordon mackenzie Walden by
Henry David Thoro, Chapter twelve, Brute Neighbors. Sometimes I had
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a companion in my fishing who came through the village
to my house from the other side of town. And
the catching of the dinner was as much a social
exercise as the eating of it. Hermit, I wonder what
the world is doing now? I have not heard so
much as a locust over the sweet fern these three hours.
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The pigeons are all asleep upon their roosts, no flutter
from them. Was that a farm noon horn which sounded
from beyond the woods. Just now? The hands are coming
in to boiled salt beef and cider and Indian bread.
Why will men worry themselves? So he that does not
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eat need not work? I wonder how much they have reaped?
Who would live there where a body can never think
for the barking of boats, And oh the house keeping
to keep bright? The devil's door knobs and scour his
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tubs this bright day. Better not keep a house, say
some hollow tree, And then for morning calls and dinner
parties only a woodpecker tapping. Oh, they swarm the sun
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is too warm there. They are borne too far into life.
For me, I have water from the spring and a
loaf of brown bread on the shelf. Hark, I hear
a rustling of the leaves? Is it some ill fed
village hound yielding to the instinct of the chase, or
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the lost pig which is said to be in these
woods whose tracks I saw after the rain? It comes
on apace, My sumacs and sweetbriars tremble eh, mister poet,
is it you? How do you like the world to day? Poet?
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See those clouds, how they hang? That's the greatest thing
I have seen to day. There's nothing like it in
old paintings, nothing like it in foreign lands, unless when
we were off the coast of Spain. That's a true
Mediterranean sky. I thought, as I have my living to
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get and have not eaten to day, that I might
go a fishing. That's the true industry for poets. It
is the only trade I have learned. Come that's along, hermit.
I cannot resist. My brown bread will soon be gone.
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I will go with you gladly soon. But I am
just concluding a serious meditation. I think that I am
near the end of it. Leave me alone then for
a while, but that we may not be delayed. You
shall be digging the bait. Meanwhile. Angle worms are rarely
to be met with in these parts, where the soil
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was never fattened with manure, the race is nearly extinct.
The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to
that of catching the fish when one's appetite is not
too keen. And this you may have all to yourself
to day. I would advise you to set in the
spade down yonder among the ground nuts, where you see
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the Johnswart waving. I think that I may warrant you
one worm to every three sods you turn up. If
you look well in among the roots of the grass,
as if you were weeding, or if you choose to
go farther, it will not be unwise, for I have
found the increase of fair bait to be very nearly
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as the squares of the distances. Hermit alone, let me
see where was I methinks I was nearly in this
frame of mind. The world lay about at this angle.
Shall I go to heaven or a fishing If I
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should soon bring this meditation to an end, would another
so sweet occasion be likely to offer? I was as
near being resolved into the essence of things as ever
I was in my life. I fear my thoughts will
not come back to me. If it would do any good,
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I would whistle for them when they make us an offer.
Is it wise to say we will think of it?
My thoughts have left no track, and I cannot find
the path again? What was it that I was thinking of?
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And was a very hazy day? I will just try
these three sentences of confutcy. They may fetch that state
about again. I know not whether it was the dumps
or a budding echoes to see mem There never is
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but one opportunity of a kind poet, How now, Hermit,
is it too soon? I have got just thirteen whole ones,
besides several which are imperfect or undersized. But they will
do for the smaller fry. They do not cover up
the hook so much. Those village worms are quite too large.
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A shiner may make a meal of one without finding
the skewer. Hermit, Well, then let's be off, Shall we
to concord. There's good sport there if the water be
not too high. Why do precisely these objects which we
behold make a world? Why has man just these species
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of animals for his neighbors, as if nothing but a
mouse could have filled this crevice? I suspect that pill
Pay and company have put animals to their best use,
for they are all beasts of burden, in a sense,
made to carry some portion of our thoughts. The mice
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which haunted my house were not the common ones which
are said to have been introduced into the country, but
a wild native kind not found in the village. I
sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it interested him much.
When I was building, one of these had its nest
underneath the house, and before I had laid the second
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floor and swept out the shavings, would come out regularly
at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet.
It probably had never seen a man before, and it
soon became quite familiar, and would run over my shoes
and up my clothes. It could readily ascend the sides
of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, which
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it resembled in its motions. At length as I leaned
with my elbow on the bench. One day, it ran
up my clothes and along my sleeve, and round and
round the paper which held my dinner, while I kept
the latter close and dodged and played at bo peep
with it. And when at last I held still a
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piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it came
and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned
its face and paws like a fly, and walked away.
A phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robin
for protection in a pine which grew against the house.
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In June, the partridge tetrau umbellus, which is so shy.
A bird led her brood past my windows, from the
woods in the rear to the front of my house,
plucking and calling to them like a hen, and in
all her behavior proving herself the hen of the woods.
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The young suddenly disperse on your approach at a signal
from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them away.
And they so exactly resemble the dried leaves and twigs
that many a traveler has placed his foot in the
midst of a brood and heard the whir of the
old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls
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and mewing, or seen her trail her wings to attract
his attention without suspecting their neighborhood. The parent will sometimes
roll and spin round before you in such a dishabille
that you cannot, for a few moments detect what kind
of creature it is. The young squat still and flat,
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often running their heads under a leaf, and mind only
their mother's directions given from a distance. Nor will your
approach make them run again and betray themselves. You may
even tread on them, or have your eyes on them
for a minute without discovering them. I have held them
in my open hand at such a time, and still
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their only care, obedient to their mother, and their instinct
was to squat there without fear or trembling. So perfect
is this instinct that once, when I had lain them
on the leaves again, and one accidentally fell on its side,
it was found with the rest in exactly the same
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position ten minutes afterward. They are not callow, like the
young of most birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious
even than chickens. The remarkably adult, yet innocent expression of
their open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelligence
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seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the purity
of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an
eye was not born when the bird was, but is
coevil with the sky. It reflects. The woods do not
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yield another such a gem. The traveler does not often
look into such a limpid well. The ignorant or reckless
sportsman often shoots the parent at such a time, and
leaves these innocents to fall a prey to some prowling
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beast or bird, or gradually mingle with the decaying leaves
which they so much resemble. It is said that when
hatched by a hen, they will directly disperse on some alarm,
and so are lost, for they never hear the mother's
call which gathers them again. These were my hens and chickens.
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It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free,
though secret, in the woods, and still sustain themselves in
the neighborhood of towns suspected by hunters. Only how retired
the otter manages to live here. He grows to be
four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps
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without any human being getting a glimpse of him. I
formerly saw the raccoon in the woods behind where my
house is built, and probably still heard there wintering at night.
Commonly I rested an hour or two in the shade
at noon after planting, and ate my lunch, and read
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a little by a spring which was the source of
a swamp and of a brook oozing from under Brister's Hill,
half a mile from my field. The approach to this
was through a succession of descending grassy hollows full of
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young pitch pines into a larger wood about the swamp. There,
in a very secluded and shaded spot, under a spreading
white pine, there was yet a clean firm sward to
sit on. I had dug out the spring and made
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a well of clear gray water, where I could dip
up a pailful without roiling it. And thither I went
for this purpose almost every day in midsummer, when the
pond was warmest. Thither too, the woodcock led her brew
to probe the mud for worms, flying but a foot
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above them down the bank, while they ran in a
troop beneath. But at last spying me, she would leave
her young and circle round and round me nearer and
nearer till within four or five feet, pretending broken wings
and legs to attract my attention and get off her young,
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who would already have taken up their march with faint,
wiry peep, single file through the swamp as she directed.
Or I heard the peep of the young when I
could not see the parent bird there too, the turtle
doves sat over the spring, or fluttered from bow to
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bow of the soft white pines over my head, or
the red squirrel coursing down the nearest bough was particularly
familiar and inquisite. You only need sit still long enough
in some attractive spot in the woods that all its
inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns. I was
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witnessed to events of a less peaceful character. One day,
when I went out to my wood pile, or rather
my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the
one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch
long and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once
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got hold, they never let go, but struggled and wrestled
and rolled on the chips, incessantly looking farther. I was
surprised to find that the chips were covered with such
combatants that it was not a dullum, but a bellum,
a war between two races of ants, the red always
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pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to
one black. The legions of these mere miduns covered all
the hills and vales in my wood yard, and the
ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both
red and black. It was the only battle which I
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have ever witnessed, the only battlefield I ever trod. While
the battle was raging inter nessine war, the Red Republicans
on the one hand and the Black imperialists on the other.
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On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet
without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers
never fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that were
fast locked in each other's embraces in a little sunny
valley amid the chips, now at noonday, prepared to fight
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till the sun went down or life went out. The
smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to
his adversary's front, and through all the tumblings on that field,
never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of
his feelers. Near the root, having already caused the other
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to go by the board, while the stronger black one
dashed him from side to side, and as I saw
on looking nearer, had already divested him of several of
his members. They fought with more pertinacity than bull dogs.
Neither manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident
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that their battle cry was conquer or die in the Meanwhile,
there came along a single red ant on the hill
side of this valley, evidently full of excitement, who either
had despatched his foe or had not yet taken part
in the battle, probably the latter, for he had lost
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none of his limbs, whose mother had charged him to
return with his shield or upon it, or perchance he
was some Achilles who had nourished his wrath apart, and
had now come to avenge or rescue his patruclus. He
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saw this unequal combat from afar, for the Blacks were
nearly twice the size of the red. He drew near
with rapid pace till he stood on his guard within
half an inch of the combatants. Then, watching his opportunity,
he sprang upon the black warrior and commenced his operations
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near the root of his right fore leg, leaving the
foe to select among his own members. And so there
were three united for life, as if a new kind
of attraction had been invented, which put all other locks
and cements to shame. I should not have wondered by
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this time to find that they had their respective musical
bands stationed on some eminent chip and playing their national airs,
the while to excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants.
I was myself excited, and somewhat even as if they
had been men. The more you think of it, the
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less the difference. And certainly there is not the fight
recorded in Concord history, at least if in the history
of America they will bear a moment's comparison with this,
whether for the number engaged in it, or for the
patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers and for carnage, it
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was an Austerlitz or Dresden Concord fight. Two killed on
the patriot's side, and Luther Blanchard wounded. Why here every
ant was a buttrick fire for God's sake, fire and
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thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was
not one hireling there. I have no doubt that it
was a principle they fought for as much as our ancestors,
and not to avoid a three penny tax on their tea.
And the results of this battle will be as important
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and memorable to those whom it concerns as those of
the Battle of Bunker Hill at least. I took up
the chip on which the three I have particularly described
were struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it
under a tumbler on my window sill in order to
see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first mentioned
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red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing
at the near fore leg of his enemy, having severed
his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn away,
exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of
the black warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too thick for
him to pierce. And the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's
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eyes shone with ferocity such as war only could excite.
They struggled half an hour longer under the tumbler, and
when I looked again, the black soldier had severed the
heads of his foes from their bodies, and the still
living heads were hanging on either side of him like
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ghastly trophies. At his saddle bow, still apparently as firmly
fastened as ever, And he was endeavoring with feeble struggles,
being without feelers and with only the remnant of a leg,
and I know not how many other wounds, to divest
himself of them, which at length, after half an hour
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more he accomplished. I raised the glass, and he went
off over the window sill in that crippled state. Whether
he finally survived that combat and spent the remainder of
his days in some hotel des Invalide, I do not know,
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but I thought that his industry would not be worth
much thereafter. I never learned which party was victorious, nor
the cause of the war. But I felt for the
rest of that day as if I had had my
feelings excited, ighted, and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the
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ferocity and carnage of a human battle before my door.
Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of Ants
have long been celebrated and the date of them recorded,
though they say that Huber is the only modern author
who appears to have witnessed them. Annius Silvius say they,
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after giving a very circumstantial account of one contested with
great obstinacy by a great and small species on the
trunk of a pear tree, adds that this action was
fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the fourth, in the
presence of Nicholas Pistorienus, an eminent lawyer, who related the
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whole history of the battle with the greatest fidelity. A
similar engagement between great and small ants is recorded by
Olaus Magnus, in which the small ones, being victorious, are
said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers,
but left those of their giant enemies a prey to
the birds. This event happened previous to the expulsion of
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the tyrant Christierne the Second from Sweden. The battle which
Eye witnessed took place in the presidency of Polk, five
years before the passage of Webster's fugitive slave Bill. Many
a village bose fit only to course a mud turtle
in a victualling cellar sported his heavy quarters in the
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woods without the knowledge of his master, and ineffectually smelled
at old fox burrows and wood chucks holes led perchance
by some slight cur which nimbly threaded the wood and
might still inspire a natural terror in its denizens. How
far behind his guide, barking like a canine bull towards
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some small squirrel which had treat itself for scrutiny, then
cantering off, bending the bushes with his weight, imagining that
he is on the track of some stray member of
the Gerbilla family. Once I was surprised to see a
cat walking along the stony shore of the pond, for
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they rarely wander so far from the home. The surprise
was mutual. Nevertheless, the most domestic cat, which is lain
on a rug all her days, appears quite at home
in the woods, and by her sly and stealthy behavior,
proves herself more native there than the regular inhabitants. Once,
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when burying, I met with a cat with young kittens
in the woods, quite wild, and they all, like their mother,
had their backs up and were fear fiercely spitting at me.
A few years before I lived in the woods, there
was what was called a winged cat, and one of
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the farm houses in Lincoln nearest the pond, mister Gillian Baker's.
When I called to see her in June eighteen forty two,
she was gone a hunting in the woods, as was
her wont. I am not sure whether it was a
male or female, and so used the more common pronoun,
but her mistress told me that she came into the
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neighborhood a little more than a year before in April,
and was finally taken into their house. That she was
of a dark brownish gray color, with a white spot
on her throat and white feet, and had a large
bushy tail like a fox. That in the winter the
fur grew thick and flatted out along her sides, forming
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stripes ten or twelve inches long by two and a
half wide, and under her chin like a muff, the
upper side loose, the under matted like felt, and in
the spring these appendages dropped off. They gave me a
pair of her wings, which I keep still. There is
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no appearance of a membrane about them. Some thought it
was part flying squirrel or some other wild animal, which
is not impossible, for according to naturalists, prolific hybrids have
been produced by the union of the marten and domestic cat.
This would have been the right kind of cat for
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me to keep if I had kept any For why
should not a poet's cat be winged as well as
his horse. In the fall, the loon Columbus glacialis came
as usual to molt and bathe in the pond, making
the woods ring with his wild life laughter. Before I
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had risen at rumor of his arrival, all the mill
damned sportsmen are on the alert in gigs in on
foot two by two and three by three, with patent
rifles and conical balls and spyglasses. They come, rustling through
the woods like autumn leaves, at least ten men to
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one loon. Some station themselves on this side of the pond,
some on that. For the poor bird cannot be omnipresent.
If he dive here, he must come up there. But
now the kind october wind rises, rustling the leaves and
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rippling the surface of the water, so that no loon
can be heard or seen. Though his foes sweep the
pond with spyglasses and make the woods resound with their discharges.
The waves generously rise and dash angrily, taking sides with
all water fowl, and our sportsmen must beat a retreat
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to town and shop and unfinished jobs, but they were
too often successful. When I went to get a pail
of water hurly in the morning, I frequently saw this
stately bird sailing out of my cove within a few rods.
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If I endeavored to overtake him in a boat in
order to see how he would maneuver, he would dive
and be completely lost, so that I did not discover
him again, sometimes till the latter part of the day.
But I was more than a match for him on
the surface. He commonly went off in a rain. As
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I was paddling along the north shore one very calm
October afternoon. For such days especially, they settle on to
the lakes like the milkweed down, having looked in vain
over the pond for a loon. Suddenly, one, sailing out
from the shore toward the middle a few rods in
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front of me, set up his wild laugh and betrayed himself.
I pursued with a paddle, and he dived, but when
he came up I was nearer than before. He dived again,
but I miscalculated the direction he would take, and we
were fifty rods apart when he came to the surface
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this time, For I had helped to widen the interval,
And again he laughed long and loud, and with more
reason than before. He maneuvered so cunningly that I could
not get within half a dozen rods of him each
time when he came to the surface, turning his head
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this way and that, he coolly surveyed the water and
the land, and apparently chose his course so that he
might come up where there was the widest expanse of water,
and at the greatest distance from the boat. It was
surprising how quickly he made up his mind and put
his resolve into execution. He led me at once to
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the widest part of the pond, and could not be
driven from it. While he was thinking one thing in
his brain, I was endeavoring to divine his thought in mine.
It was a pretty game played on the smooth surface
of the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly your
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adversary's checker disappears beneath the board, and the problem is
to place yours nearest to where his will appear again.
Sometimes he would come up unexpectedly on the opposite side
of me, having apparently passed directly under the boat. So
long winded was he and so unweariable that when he
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had swum farthest, he would immediately plunge again nevertheless, and
then no wit could divine where in the deep pond,
beneath the smooth surface he might be speeding his way
like a fish, for he had time and ability to
visit the bottom of the pond in its deepest part.
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It is said that loons have been caught in the
New York Lakes eighty feet beneath the surface with hooks
set for trout, though Walden is deeper than that. How
surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly visitor
from another sphere speeding his way amid their schools. Yet
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he appeared to know his course as surely under water
as on the surface, and swam much faster there. Once
or twice I saw a ripple where he approached the surface,
just put his head out to reconnoiter, and instantly dived again.
I found that it was as well for me to
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rest on my oars and wait his reappearing, as to
endeavor to calculate where he would rise, For again and again,
when I was straining my eyes over the surface one way,
I would suddenly be startled by his unearthly laugh behind me.
But why, after displaying so much cunning did he invariably
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betray himself the moment he came up by that loud laugh,
did not his white breast enough betray him? He was
indeed a silly loon. I thought I could commonly hear
the splash of the water when he came up, and
so also detected him. But after an hour he seemed
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as fresh as ever, dived as willingly, and swam yet
farther than at first. It was surprising to see how
serenely he sailed off, with unruffled breast when he came
to the surface, doing all the war work with his
webbed feet beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter,
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yet somewhat like that of a waterfowl. But occasionally, when
he had bulked me most successfully and come up a
long way off, he uttered a long, drawn, unearthly howl,
probably more like that of a wolf than any bird,
as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground
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and deliberately howls. This was his looning, perhaps the wildest
sound that is ever heard here, making the woods ring
far and wide. I concluded that he laughed in derision
of my efforts, confident of his own resources. Though the
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sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so
smooth that I could see where he broke the surface.
When I did not hear him. His white breast, the
stillness of the air, and the smoothness of the water
were all against him. At length, having come up fifty
rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as
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if calling on the God of loons to aid him.
And immediately there came a wind from the east and
rippled the surface and filled the whole air with misty rain.
And I was impressed, as if it were the prayer
of the loon answered, and his God was angry with me,
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and so I left him, disappearing far away on the
tumultuous surface. For hours in fall days, I watched the
ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of
the pond, far from the sportsman tricks, which they will
have less need to practice in Louisiana Bayous. When compelled
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to rise, they would sometimes circle round and round and
over the pond at a considerable height, from which they
could easily see to other ponds in the river like
black moats in the sky. And when I thought they
had gone off thither, long since they would settle down,
by a slanting flight of a quarter of a mile
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on to a distant part which was left free. But
what besides safety they got by sailing in the middle
of Walden, I do not know, unless they love its
water for the same reason that I do. End of
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Chapter twelve.
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o r G. This reading by Gordon mackenzie Walden by
Henry David Thoro, Chapter twelve, Brute Neighbors. Sometimes I had
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a companion in my fishing who came through the village
to my house from the other side of town. And
the catching of the dinner was as much a social
exercise as the eating of it. Hermit, I wonder what
the world is doing now? I have not heard so
much as a locust over the sweet fern these three hours.
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The pigeons are all asleep upon their roosts, no flutter
from them. Was that a farm noon horn which sounded
from beyond the woods. Just now? The hands are coming
in to boiled salt beef and cider and Indian bread.
Why will men worry themselves? So he that does not
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eat need not work? I wonder how much they have reaped?
Who would live there where a body can never think
for the barking of boats, And oh the house keeping
to keep bright? The devil's door knobs and scour his
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tubs this bright day. Better not keep a house, say
some hollow tree, And then for morning calls and dinner
parties only a woodpecker tapping. Oh, they swarm the sun
(01:59):
is too warm there. They are borne too far into life.
For me, I have water from the spring and a
loaf of brown bread on the shelf. Hark, I hear
a rustling of the leaves? Is it some ill fed
village hound yielding to the instinct of the chase, or
(02:23):
the lost pig which is said to be in these
woods whose tracks I saw after the rain? It comes
on apace, My sumacs and sweetbriars tremble eh, mister poet,
is it you? How do you like the world to day? Poet?
(02:45):
See those clouds, how they hang? That's the greatest thing
I have seen to day. There's nothing like it in
old paintings, nothing like it in foreign lands, unless when
we were off the coast of Spain. That's a true
Mediterranean sky. I thought, as I have my living to
(03:07):
get and have not eaten to day, that I might
go a fishing. That's the true industry for poets. It
is the only trade I have learned. Come that's along, hermit.
I cannot resist. My brown bread will soon be gone.
(03:29):
I will go with you gladly soon. But I am
just concluding a serious meditation. I think that I am
near the end of it. Leave me alone then for
a while, but that we may not be delayed. You
shall be digging the bait. Meanwhile. Angle worms are rarely
to be met with in these parts, where the soil
(03:50):
was never fattened with manure, the race is nearly extinct.
The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to
that of catching the fish when one's appetite is not
too keen. And this you may have all to yourself
to day. I would advise you to set in the
spade down yonder among the ground nuts, where you see
(04:12):
the Johnswart waving. I think that I may warrant you
one worm to every three sods you turn up. If
you look well in among the roots of the grass,
as if you were weeding, or if you choose to
go farther, it will not be unwise, for I have
found the increase of fair bait to be very nearly
(04:33):
as the squares of the distances. Hermit alone, let me
see where was I methinks I was nearly in this
frame of mind. The world lay about at this angle.
Shall I go to heaven or a fishing If I
(04:58):
should soon bring this meditation to an end, would another
so sweet occasion be likely to offer? I was as
near being resolved into the essence of things as ever
I was in my life. I fear my thoughts will
not come back to me. If it would do any good,
(05:19):
I would whistle for them when they make us an offer.
Is it wise to say we will think of it?
My thoughts have left no track, and I cannot find
the path again? What was it that I was thinking of?
(05:42):
And was a very hazy day? I will just try
these three sentences of confutcy. They may fetch that state
about again. I know not whether it was the dumps
or a budding echoes to see mem There never is
(06:04):
but one opportunity of a kind poet, How now, Hermit,
is it too soon? I have got just thirteen whole ones,
besides several which are imperfect or undersized. But they will
do for the smaller fry. They do not cover up
the hook so much. Those village worms are quite too large.
(06:27):
A shiner may make a meal of one without finding
the skewer. Hermit, Well, then let's be off, Shall we
to concord. There's good sport there if the water be
not too high. Why do precisely these objects which we
behold make a world? Why has man just these species
(06:52):
of animals for his neighbors, as if nothing but a
mouse could have filled this crevice? I suspect that pill
Pay and company have put animals to their best use,
for they are all beasts of burden, in a sense,
made to carry some portion of our thoughts. The mice
(07:16):
which haunted my house were not the common ones which
are said to have been introduced into the country, but
a wild native kind not found in the village. I
sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it interested him much.
When I was building, one of these had its nest
underneath the house, and before I had laid the second
(07:39):
floor and swept out the shavings, would come out regularly
at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet.
It probably had never seen a man before, and it
soon became quite familiar, and would run over my shoes
and up my clothes. It could readily ascend the sides
of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, which
(08:02):
it resembled in its motions. At length as I leaned
with my elbow on the bench. One day, it ran
up my clothes and along my sleeve, and round and
round the paper which held my dinner, while I kept
the latter close and dodged and played at bo peep
with it. And when at last I held still a
(08:24):
piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it came
and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned
its face and paws like a fly, and walked away.
A phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robin
for protection in a pine which grew against the house.
(08:47):
In June, the partridge tetrau umbellus, which is so shy.
A bird led her brood past my windows, from the
woods in the rear to the front of my house,
plucking and calling to them like a hen, and in
all her behavior proving herself the hen of the woods.
(09:10):
The young suddenly disperse on your approach at a signal
from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them away.
And they so exactly resemble the dried leaves and twigs
that many a traveler has placed his foot in the
midst of a brood and heard the whir of the
old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls
(09:33):
and mewing, or seen her trail her wings to attract
his attention without suspecting their neighborhood. The parent will sometimes
roll and spin round before you in such a dishabille
that you cannot, for a few moments detect what kind
of creature it is. The young squat still and flat,
(09:57):
often running their heads under a leaf, and mind only
their mother's directions given from a distance. Nor will your
approach make them run again and betray themselves. You may
even tread on them, or have your eyes on them
for a minute without discovering them. I have held them
in my open hand at such a time, and still
(10:17):
their only care, obedient to their mother, and their instinct
was to squat there without fear or trembling. So perfect
is this instinct that once, when I had lain them
on the leaves again, and one accidentally fell on its side,
it was found with the rest in exactly the same
(10:38):
position ten minutes afterward. They are not callow, like the
young of most birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious
even than chickens. The remarkably adult, yet innocent expression of
their open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelligence
(11:02):
seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the purity
of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an
eye was not born when the bird was, but is
coevil with the sky. It reflects. The woods do not
(11:26):
yield another such a gem. The traveler does not often
look into such a limpid well. The ignorant or reckless
sportsman often shoots the parent at such a time, and
leaves these innocents to fall a prey to some prowling
(11:48):
beast or bird, or gradually mingle with the decaying leaves
which they so much resemble. It is said that when
hatched by a hen, they will directly disperse on some alarm,
and so are lost, for they never hear the mother's
call which gathers them again. These were my hens and chickens.
(12:14):
It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free,
though secret, in the woods, and still sustain themselves in
the neighborhood of towns suspected by hunters. Only how retired
the otter manages to live here. He grows to be
four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps
(12:38):
without any human being getting a glimpse of him. I
formerly saw the raccoon in the woods behind where my
house is built, and probably still heard there wintering at night.
Commonly I rested an hour or two in the shade
at noon after planting, and ate my lunch, and read
(13:00):
a little by a spring which was the source of
a swamp and of a brook oozing from under Brister's Hill,
half a mile from my field. The approach to this
was through a succession of descending grassy hollows full of
(13:21):
young pitch pines into a larger wood about the swamp. There,
in a very secluded and shaded spot, under a spreading
white pine, there was yet a clean firm sward to
sit on. I had dug out the spring and made
(13:41):
a well of clear gray water, where I could dip
up a pailful without roiling it. And thither I went
for this purpose almost every day in midsummer, when the
pond was warmest. Thither too, the woodcock led her brew
to probe the mud for worms, flying but a foot
(14:05):
above them down the bank, while they ran in a
troop beneath. But at last spying me, she would leave
her young and circle round and round me nearer and
nearer till within four or five feet, pretending broken wings
and legs to attract my attention and get off her young,
(14:27):
who would already have taken up their march with faint,
wiry peep, single file through the swamp as she directed.
Or I heard the peep of the young when I
could not see the parent bird there too, the turtle
doves sat over the spring, or fluttered from bow to
(14:49):
bow of the soft white pines over my head, or
the red squirrel coursing down the nearest bough was particularly
familiar and inquisite. You only need sit still long enough
in some attractive spot in the woods that all its
inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns. I was
(15:11):
witnessed to events of a less peaceful character. One day,
when I went out to my wood pile, or rather
my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the
one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch
long and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once
(15:34):
got hold, they never let go, but struggled and wrestled
and rolled on the chips, incessantly looking farther. I was
surprised to find that the chips were covered with such
combatants that it was not a dullum, but a bellum,
a war between two races of ants, the red always
(15:58):
pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to
one black. The legions of these mere miduns covered all
the hills and vales in my wood yard, and the
ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both
red and black. It was the only battle which I
(16:22):
have ever witnessed, the only battlefield I ever trod. While
the battle was raging inter nessine war, the Red Republicans
on the one hand and the Black imperialists on the other.
(16:42):
On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet
without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers
never fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that were
fast locked in each other's embraces in a little sunny
valley amid the chips, now at noonday, prepared to fight
(17:05):
till the sun went down or life went out. The
smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to
his adversary's front, and through all the tumblings on that field,
never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of
his feelers. Near the root, having already caused the other
(17:28):
to go by the board, while the stronger black one
dashed him from side to side, and as I saw
on looking nearer, had already divested him of several of
his members. They fought with more pertinacity than bull dogs.
Neither manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident
(17:53):
that their battle cry was conquer or die in the Meanwhile,
there came along a single red ant on the hill
side of this valley, evidently full of excitement, who either
had despatched his foe or had not yet taken part
in the battle, probably the latter, for he had lost
(18:13):
none of his limbs, whose mother had charged him to
return with his shield or upon it, or perchance he
was some Achilles who had nourished his wrath apart, and
had now come to avenge or rescue his patruclus. He
(18:34):
saw this unequal combat from afar, for the Blacks were
nearly twice the size of the red. He drew near
with rapid pace till he stood on his guard within
half an inch of the combatants. Then, watching his opportunity,
he sprang upon the black warrior and commenced his operations
(18:57):
near the root of his right fore leg, leaving the
foe to select among his own members. And so there
were three united for life, as if a new kind
of attraction had been invented, which put all other locks
and cements to shame. I should not have wondered by
(19:19):
this time to find that they had their respective musical
bands stationed on some eminent chip and playing their national airs,
the while to excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants.
I was myself excited, and somewhat even as if they
had been men. The more you think of it, the
(19:44):
less the difference. And certainly there is not the fight
recorded in Concord history, at least if in the history
of America they will bear a moment's comparison with this,
whether for the number engaged in it, or for the
patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers and for carnage, it
(20:08):
was an Austerlitz or Dresden Concord fight. Two killed on
the patriot's side, and Luther Blanchard wounded. Why here every
ant was a buttrick fire for God's sake, fire and
(20:29):
thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was
not one hireling there. I have no doubt that it
was a principle they fought for as much as our ancestors,
and not to avoid a three penny tax on their tea.
And the results of this battle will be as important
(20:51):
and memorable to those whom it concerns as those of
the Battle of Bunker Hill at least. I took up
the chip on which the three I have particularly described
were struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it
under a tumbler on my window sill in order to
see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first mentioned
(21:15):
red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing
at the near fore leg of his enemy, having severed
his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn away,
exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of
the black warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too thick for
him to pierce. And the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's
(21:39):
eyes shone with ferocity such as war only could excite.
They struggled half an hour longer under the tumbler, and
when I looked again, the black soldier had severed the
heads of his foes from their bodies, and the still
living heads were hanging on either side of him like
(22:00):
ghastly trophies. At his saddle bow, still apparently as firmly
fastened as ever, And he was endeavoring with feeble struggles,
being without feelers and with only the remnant of a leg,
and I know not how many other wounds, to divest
himself of them, which at length, after half an hour
(22:23):
more he accomplished. I raised the glass, and he went
off over the window sill in that crippled state. Whether
he finally survived that combat and spent the remainder of
his days in some hotel des Invalide, I do not know,
(22:43):
but I thought that his industry would not be worth
much thereafter. I never learned which party was victorious, nor
the cause of the war. But I felt for the
rest of that day as if I had had my
feelings excited, ighted, and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the
(23:04):
ferocity and carnage of a human battle before my door.
Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of Ants
have long been celebrated and the date of them recorded,
though they say that Huber is the only modern author
who appears to have witnessed them. Annius Silvius say they,
(23:30):
after giving a very circumstantial account of one contested with
great obstinacy by a great and small species on the
trunk of a pear tree, adds that this action was
fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the fourth, in the
presence of Nicholas Pistorienus, an eminent lawyer, who related the
(23:52):
whole history of the battle with the greatest fidelity. A
similar engagement between great and small ants is recorded by
Olaus Magnus, in which the small ones, being victorious, are
said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers,
but left those of their giant enemies a prey to
the birds. This event happened previous to the expulsion of
(24:17):
the tyrant Christierne the Second from Sweden. The battle which
Eye witnessed took place in the presidency of Polk, five
years before the passage of Webster's fugitive slave Bill. Many
a village bose fit only to course a mud turtle
in a victualling cellar sported his heavy quarters in the
(24:40):
woods without the knowledge of his master, and ineffectually smelled
at old fox burrows and wood chucks holes led perchance
by some slight cur which nimbly threaded the wood and
might still inspire a natural terror in its denizens. How
far behind his guide, barking like a canine bull towards
(25:04):
some small squirrel which had treat itself for scrutiny, then
cantering off, bending the bushes with his weight, imagining that
he is on the track of some stray member of
the Gerbilla family. Once I was surprised to see a
cat walking along the stony shore of the pond, for
(25:24):
they rarely wander so far from the home. The surprise
was mutual. Nevertheless, the most domestic cat, which is lain
on a rug all her days, appears quite at home
in the woods, and by her sly and stealthy behavior,
proves herself more native there than the regular inhabitants. Once,
(25:50):
when burying, I met with a cat with young kittens
in the woods, quite wild, and they all, like their mother,
had their backs up and were fear fiercely spitting at me.
A few years before I lived in the woods, there
was what was called a winged cat, and one of
(26:10):
the farm houses in Lincoln nearest the pond, mister Gillian Baker's.
When I called to see her in June eighteen forty two,
she was gone a hunting in the woods, as was
her wont. I am not sure whether it was a
male or female, and so used the more common pronoun,
but her mistress told me that she came into the
(26:32):
neighborhood a little more than a year before in April,
and was finally taken into their house. That she was
of a dark brownish gray color, with a white spot
on her throat and white feet, and had a large
bushy tail like a fox. That in the winter the
fur grew thick and flatted out along her sides, forming
(26:56):
stripes ten or twelve inches long by two and a
half wide, and under her chin like a muff, the
upper side loose, the under matted like felt, and in
the spring these appendages dropped off. They gave me a
pair of her wings, which I keep still. There is
(27:19):
no appearance of a membrane about them. Some thought it
was part flying squirrel or some other wild animal, which
is not impossible, for according to naturalists, prolific hybrids have
been produced by the union of the marten and domestic cat.
This would have been the right kind of cat for
(27:39):
me to keep if I had kept any For why
should not a poet's cat be winged as well as
his horse. In the fall, the loon Columbus glacialis came
as usual to molt and bathe in the pond, making
the woods ring with his wild life laughter. Before I
(28:01):
had risen at rumor of his arrival, all the mill
damned sportsmen are on the alert in gigs in on
foot two by two and three by three, with patent
rifles and conical balls and spyglasses. They come, rustling through
the woods like autumn leaves, at least ten men to
(28:22):
one loon. Some station themselves on this side of the pond,
some on that. For the poor bird cannot be omnipresent.
If he dive here, he must come up there. But
now the kind october wind rises, rustling the leaves and
(28:42):
rippling the surface of the water, so that no loon
can be heard or seen. Though his foes sweep the
pond with spyglasses and make the woods resound with their discharges.
The waves generously rise and dash angrily, taking sides with
all water fowl, and our sportsmen must beat a retreat
(29:05):
to town and shop and unfinished jobs, but they were
too often successful. When I went to get a pail
of water hurly in the morning, I frequently saw this
stately bird sailing out of my cove within a few rods.
(29:26):
If I endeavored to overtake him in a boat in
order to see how he would maneuver, he would dive
and be completely lost, so that I did not discover
him again, sometimes till the latter part of the day.
But I was more than a match for him on
the surface. He commonly went off in a rain. As
(29:48):
I was paddling along the north shore one very calm
October afternoon. For such days especially, they settle on to
the lakes like the milkweed down, having looked in vain
over the pond for a loon. Suddenly, one, sailing out
from the shore toward the middle a few rods in
(30:09):
front of me, set up his wild laugh and betrayed himself.
I pursued with a paddle, and he dived, but when
he came up I was nearer than before. He dived again,
but I miscalculated the direction he would take, and we
were fifty rods apart when he came to the surface
(30:30):
this time, For I had helped to widen the interval,
And again he laughed long and loud, and with more
reason than before. He maneuvered so cunningly that I could
not get within half a dozen rods of him each
time when he came to the surface, turning his head
(30:51):
this way and that, he coolly surveyed the water and
the land, and apparently chose his course so that he
might come up where there was the widest expanse of water,
and at the greatest distance from the boat. It was
surprising how quickly he made up his mind and put
his resolve into execution. He led me at once to
(31:14):
the widest part of the pond, and could not be
driven from it. While he was thinking one thing in
his brain, I was endeavoring to divine his thought in mine.
It was a pretty game played on the smooth surface
of the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly your
(31:34):
adversary's checker disappears beneath the board, and the problem is
to place yours nearest to where his will appear again.
Sometimes he would come up unexpectedly on the opposite side
of me, having apparently passed directly under the boat. So
long winded was he and so unweariable that when he
(31:54):
had swum farthest, he would immediately plunge again nevertheless, and
then no wit could divine where in the deep pond,
beneath the smooth surface he might be speeding his way
like a fish, for he had time and ability to
visit the bottom of the pond in its deepest part.
(32:16):
It is said that loons have been caught in the
New York Lakes eighty feet beneath the surface with hooks
set for trout, though Walden is deeper than that. How
surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly visitor
from another sphere speeding his way amid their schools. Yet
(32:40):
he appeared to know his course as surely under water
as on the surface, and swam much faster there. Once
or twice I saw a ripple where he approached the surface,
just put his head out to reconnoiter, and instantly dived again.
I found that it was as well for me to
(33:00):
rest on my oars and wait his reappearing, as to
endeavor to calculate where he would rise, For again and again,
when I was straining my eyes over the surface one way,
I would suddenly be startled by his unearthly laugh behind me.
But why, after displaying so much cunning did he invariably
(33:22):
betray himself the moment he came up by that loud laugh,
did not his white breast enough betray him? He was
indeed a silly loon. I thought I could commonly hear
the splash of the water when he came up, and
so also detected him. But after an hour he seemed
(33:44):
as fresh as ever, dived as willingly, and swam yet
farther than at first. It was surprising to see how
serenely he sailed off, with unruffled breast when he came
to the surface, doing all the war work with his
webbed feet beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter,
(34:08):
yet somewhat like that of a waterfowl. But occasionally, when
he had bulked me most successfully and come up a
long way off, he uttered a long, drawn, unearthly howl,
probably more like that of a wolf than any bird,
as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground
(34:30):
and deliberately howls. This was his looning, perhaps the wildest
sound that is ever heard here, making the woods ring
far and wide. I concluded that he laughed in derision
of my efforts, confident of his own resources. Though the
(34:52):
sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so
smooth that I could see where he broke the surface.
When I did not hear him. His white breast, the
stillness of the air, and the smoothness of the water
were all against him. At length, having come up fifty
rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as
(35:15):
if calling on the God of loons to aid him.
And immediately there came a wind from the east and
rippled the surface and filled the whole air with misty rain.
And I was impressed, as if it were the prayer
of the loon answered, and his God was angry with me,
(35:37):
and so I left him, disappearing far away on the
tumultuous surface. For hours in fall days, I watched the
ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of
the pond, far from the sportsman tricks, which they will
have less need to practice in Louisiana Bayous. When compelled
(36:01):
to rise, they would sometimes circle round and round and
over the pond at a considerable height, from which they
could easily see to other ponds in the river like
black moats in the sky. And when I thought they
had gone off thither, long since they would settle down,
by a slanting flight of a quarter of a mile
(36:23):
on to a distant part which was left free. But
what besides safety they got by sailing in the middle
of Walden, I do not know, unless they love its
water for the same reason that I do. End of
(36:43):
Chapter twelve.
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