HENRY THOREAU
the owner's feelings, it is better not to do it when he is by.” Read his very human yet humorous remarks upon his half-witted and his one-and-a-half-witted visitors at Walden, and on the “spirit knockings” in Concord,1 and, in Mr. Channing's biography, his charming description of the drunken young Dutch deck-hand on the boat.
While living at Walden he wrote: “One evening I overtook one of my townsmen, who has accumulated what is called a handsome property, — though I never got a fair view of it, — on the Walden road, driving a pair of cattle to market, who inquired of me how I could bring my mind to give up so many of the comforts of life. I answered that I was very sure that I liked it passably well; I was not joking. And so I went home to my bed and left him to pick his way through the darkness and the mud to
86
