n the wind passes over it, bends."

The Ponds

Sometimes, having had a surfeit of human society and gossip, and worn
out all my village friends, I rambled still farther westward than I
habitually dwell, into yet more unfrequented parts of the town, "to
fresh woods and pastures new," or, while the sun was setting, made my
supper of huckleberries and blueberries on Fair Haven Hill, and laid up
a store for several days. The fruits do not yield their true flavor to
the purchaser of them, nor to him who raises them for the market. There
is but one way to obtain it, yet few take that way. If you would know
the flavor of huckleberries, ask the cowboy or the partridge. It is a
vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted huckleberries who never
plucked them. A huckleberry never reaches Boston; they have not been
known there since they grew on her three hills. The ambrosial and
essential part of the fruit is lost with the bloom which is rubbed off
in the market cart, and they become mere provender. As long as Eternal
Justice reigns, not one innocent huckleberry can be transported thither
from the country's hills.

Occasionally, after my hoeing was done for the day, I joined some
impatient companion who had been fishing on the pond since morning,
as silent and motionless as a duck or a floating leaf, and, after
practising various kinds of philosophy, had concluded commonly, by the
time I arrived, that he belonged to the ancient sect of Coenobites.
There was one older man, an excellent fisher and skilled in all kinds of
woodcraft, who was pleased to look upon my house as a building erected
for the convenience of fishermen; and I was equally pleased when he sat
in my doorway to arrange his lines. Once in a while we sat together on
the pond, he at one end of the boat, and I at the other; but not many
words passed between us, for he had grown deaf in his later years, but
he occasionally hummed a psalm, which harmonized well enough with my
philosophy. Our intercourse was thus altogether one of unbroken harmony,
far more pleasing to remember than if it had been carried on by speech.
When, as was commonly the case, I had none to commune with, I used
to raise the echoes by striking with a paddle on the side of my boat,
filling the surrounding woods with circling and dilating sound, stirring
them up as the keeper of a menagerie his wild beasts, until I elicited a
growl from every wooded vale and hillside.

In warm evenings I f