while I lived in the woods than at any other period in my life; I mean
that I had some. I met several there under more favorable circumstances
than I could anywhere else. But fewer came to see me on trivial
business. In this respect, my company was winnowed by my mere distance
from town. I had withdrawn so far within the great ocean of solitude,
into which the rivers of society empty, that for the most part, so
far as my needs were concerned, only the finest sediment was deposited
around me. Beside, there were wafted to me evidences of unexplored and
uncultivated continents on the other side.

Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true Homeric or
Paphlagonian man--he had so suitable and poetic a name that I am sorry I
cannot print it here--a Canadian, a woodchopper and post-maker, who can
hole fifty posts in a day, who made his last supper on a woodchuck which
his dog caught. He, too, has heard of Homer, and, "if it were not for
books," would "not know what to do rainy days," though perhaps he has
not read one wholly through for many rainy seasons. Some priest who
could pronounce the Greek itself taught him to read his verse in the
Testament in his native parish far away; and now I must translate to
him, while he holds the book, Achilles' reproof to Patroclus for his sad
countenance.--

"Why are you in tears, Patroclus, like a young girl?"
"Or have you alone heard some news from Phthia?
They say that Menoetius lives yet, son of Actor,
And Peleus lives, son of AEacus, among the Myrmidons,
Either of whom having died, we should greatly grieve."

He says, "That's good." He has a great bundle of white oak bark under
his arm for a sick man, gathered this Sunday morning. "I suppose there's
no harm in going after such a thing to-day," says he. To him Homer was a
great writer, though what his writing was about he did not know. A more
simple and natural man it would be hard to find. Vice and disease, which
cast such a sombre moral hue over the world, seemed to have hardly any
existance for him. He was about twenty-eight years old, and had left
Canada and his father's house a dozen years before to work in the
States, and earn money to buy a farm with at last, perhaps in his native
country. He was cast in the coarsest mould; a stout but sluggish body,
yet gracefully carried, with a thick sunburnt neck, dark bushy hair, and
dull sleepy blue eyes, which were occasionally lit up with expre