HENRY THOREAU
laid through Concord, and a small army of Irishmen had their rough shanties in the woods along the deep cuts, and some of them, later good Concord citizens, had their wives and little children in these rude abodes; the remains of excavation and banking can still be traced near Walden. These people seemed a greater innovation than Samoans would to-day. Thoreau talked with them in his walks and took some kindly interest. I well remember the unusual wrath and indignation he felt a few years later when one of these, a poor neighbour, industrious but ignorant, had his spading-match prize at Cattle Show taken by his employer, on the plea, “Well, as I pay for his time, what he gets in the time I pay for nat'rally comes to me,” and I know that Thoreau raised the money to make good the poor man's loss, and, I think, made the farmer's ears burn.
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