comes," and again confession of "a little stagnation, it may be, about two o'clock in the afternoon." When he plastered his cabin during the first autumn, Channing was his guest for a fortnight; it seems unfortunate that he has not given the world a more adequate vision of such phases of the life of his friend. In the series of poems, commemorative of Thoreau, "The Wanderer," Channing has described lovingly the interior of the hut and his friend's general aspect. The use of the term, hermit, must not be considered literal, for Channing did not so construe Thoreau's nature, as many passages in his biography witness:
"I loved to mark him,
So true to nature. In his scanty cabin,
All along the walls, he hid the crevice
With some rustic thought,—a withered grass,
Choice-colored blackberry vines, and nodding sedge
Fantastically seeded; or the plumes
The golden-rod dries in the fall; and tops
Of lespedeza, brown as the Spanish mane;
And velvet bosses quaintly cut away
Off the compliant birches, of whose trunks
This hermit blest made pillage."
Joseph Hosmer recalled a Sunday spent at Walden in September, 1845, "as pure and delightful as with my mother." From the spiritual uplift which he received he descends to a recital of the dinner, well-cooked and daintily served.
