that time
discriminates between the good and the bad; and when at last I shall
plant, I shall be less likely to be disappointed. But I would say to my
fellows, once for all, As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It
makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the
county jail.

Old Cato, whose "De Re Rustica" is my "Cultivator," says--and the only
translation I have seen makes sheer nonsense of the passage--"When you
think of getting a farm turn it thus in your mind, not to buy greedily;
nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not think it enough to go
round it once. The oftener you go there the more it will please you, if
it is good." I think I shall not buy greedily, but go round and round it
as long as I live, and be buried in it first, that it may please me the
more at last.

The present was my next experiment of this kind, which I purpose to
describe more at length, for convenience putting the experience of two
years into one. As I have said, I do not propose to write an ode
to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning,
standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up.

When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my
nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on Independence
Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter,
but was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or
chimney, the walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide
chinks, which made it cool at night. The upright white hewn studs and
freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look,
especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so
that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my
imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral
character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I had
visited a year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit
to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her
garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep
over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial
parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the
poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it.
Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere.

The only house I had been the owner of before, if I except a boat,