Sometimes, having had a surfeit of human society and gossip, and
worn out all my village friends, I rambled still farther westward
than I habitually dwell, into yet more unfrequented parts of the
town, "to fresh woods and pastures new," or, while the sun was
setting, made my supper of huckleberries and blueberries on Fair
Haven Hill, and laid up a store for several days. The fruits do not
yield their true flavor to the purchaser of them, nor to him who
raises them for the market. There is but one way to obtain it, yet
few take that way. If you would know the flavor of huckleberries,
ask the cowboy or the partridge. It is a vulgar error to suppose
that you have tasted huckleberries who never plucked them. A
huckleberry never reaches Boston; they have not been known there
sihey grew ohree hills. The ambrosial and essential
part of the fruit is lost with the bloom which is rubbed off in the
market cart, and they beere provender. As long as Eternal
Justice reigns, not one i huckleberry be transported
thither from the trys hills.
Occasionally, after my hoeing was done for the day, I joined
some impatient panion who had been fishing on the pond since
m, as silent and motionless as a duck or a floating leaf, and,
after practising various kinds of philosophy, had cluded
only, by the time I arrived, that he beloo the a
sect of obites. There was one older man, an excellent fisher
and skilled in all kinds of woodcraft, who leased to look upon
my house as a buildied for the venience of fishermen; and
I was equally pleased whe in my doorway te his
lines. On a while we sat together on the pond, he at one end
of the boat, and I at the other; but not many words passed between
us, for he had grown deaf in his later years, but he occasionally
hummed a psalm, which harmonized well enough with my philosophy.
Our intercourse was thus altogether one of unbroken harmony, far
more pleasing to remember than if it had been carried on by speech.
When, as was only the case, I had o uh, I used
to raise the echoes by striking with a paddle on the side of my
boat, filling the surrounding woods with cirg and dilating
sound, stirring them up as the keeper of a menagerie his wild
beasts, until I elicited a growl from every wooded vale and
hillside.
In warm evenings I frequently sat in the boat playing the flute,
and saw the perch, which I seem to have charmed, h around me,
and the moon travelling over the ribbed bottom, which was strewed
with the wrecks of the forest. Formerly I had e to this pond
adventurously, from time to time, in dark summer nights, with a
panion, and, making a fire close to the waters edge, which we
thought attracted the fishes, we caught pouts with a bunch of worms
strung on a thread, and when we had done, far in the night, threw
the burning brands high into the air like skyrockets, which, ing
down into the pond, were quenched with a loud hissing, and we were
suddenly groping in total darkness. Through this, whistling a tune,
we took our way to the haunts of men again. But now I had made my
home by the shore.
Sometimes, after staying in a village parlor till the family had
all retired, I have returo the woods, and, partly wi