I took a walk on Spaulding's
Farm the other afternoon. I saw the setting sun lighting
up the opposite side of a stately pine wood. Its golden rays straggled into the aisles of
the wood as into some noble hall. I was impressed as if some ancient and altogether
admirable and shining family had settled there in that part of the land called Concord,
unknown to me,--to whom the sun was servant,--who had not gone into society in the
village,--who had not been called on. I saw their park, their pleasure-ground, beyond
through the wood, in Spaulding's cranberry-meadow. The pines furnished them with
gables as they grew.
Their house was not obvious to vision;
their trees grew through it. I do not know
whether I heard the sounds of a suppressed hilarity or not.
They seemed
to recline on the sunbeams. They have sons and daughters. They are
quite well. The farmer's cart-path, which leads directly through their hall, does not in
the least put them out,--as the muddy bottom of a pool is sometimes seen through
the reflected skies. They never heard of Spaulding, and do not know that he is their
neighbor,--notwithstanding I heard him whistle as he drove his team through the
house. Nothing can equal the serenity of their lives.
Their coat of arms
is simply a lichen. I saw it painted on the pines and oaks. Their
attics were in the tops of the trees. They are of no politics. There was no noise of
labor. I did not perceive that they were weaving or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the
wind lulled and hearing was done away, the finest imaginable sweet musical hum,--
as of a distant hive in May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking. They
had no idle thoughts, and no one without could see their work, for their industry was
not as in knots and excrescences embayed.
But I find it difficult
to remember them. They fade irrevocably out of my mind even
now while I speak and endeavor to recall them, and recollect myself. It is only after a
long and serious effort to recollect my best thoughts that I become again aware of
their cohabitancy. If it were not for such families as this, I think I should move out of
Concord.
Thoreau: "Walking."
