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."