NOTES
pure water supplied by springs at the bottom, were quite different from those of the sluggish and more weedy river, with its darker water. The latter seemed of less delicate lines, and were of a dark, more muddy green, while the Walden pickerel were more silvery, and the green, as I recall it, was very pure, light and iridescent.
Page 107, note 1. Abbot Samson is the hero in Carlyle's Past and Present.
Page 107, note 2. On my birthday, in the early summer, just before I went to take my examination for Harvard, my father and mother invited Thoreau and Channing, both, but especially Thoreau, friends from my babyhood, to dine with us. When we left the table and were passing into the parlour, Thoreau asked me to come with him to our East door — our more homelike door, facing the orchard. It was an act of affectionate courtesy, for he had divined my suppressed state of mind and remembered that first crisis in his own life, and the wrench that it seemed in advance, as a gate leading out into an untried world. With serious face, but with a very quiet, friendly tone of voice, he reassured me, told me that I should be really close to home; very likely should pass my life in Concord. It was a great relief.
Page 108, note 1. The legend is beautifully given by Browning in his “Pheidippides.”
Page 117, note 1. Mr. Reynolds also told how,
147
