290 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1854,
As above mentioned, Thoreau went to lecture at Nantucket, and on his way spent a day or two with Mr. Ricketson, reaching his house 011 Christmas Day. His host, who then saw him for the first time, says :
" I had expected him at noon, but as he did not arrive, I had given him up for the day. In the latter part of the afternoon I was clearing off the snow from my front steps, when, looking up, I saw a man walking up the carriage-road, bearing a portmanteau in one hand and an um brella in the other. He was dressed in a long overcoat of dark color, and wore a dark soft hat. I had no suspicion it was Thoreau, and rather supposed it was a peddler of small wares."
This was a common mistake to make. When Thoreau ran the gauntlet of the Cape Cod vil lages, " feeling as strange," he says, " as if he were in a town in China," one of the old fish ermen could not believe that he had not some thing to sell. Being finally satisfied that it was not a peddler with his pack, the old man said, "Wai, it makes no odds what tis you carry, so long as you carry Truth along with ye." Mr. Ricketson soon came to the same conclusion about his visitor, and in the early September of 1855 returned the visit.
