hat "though you
trade in messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade attaches to
the business." The nearest his conscience would allow him to approach
any kind of trade was to offer himself to his townsmen as a
land-surveyor. This would take him to the places where he liked to be;
he could still walk in the fields and woods and swamps and earn his
living thereby. The chain and compass became him well, quite as well
as his bean-field at Walden, and the little money they brought him was
not entirely sordid.

In one of his happy moods in "Walden" he sets down in a
half-facetious, half-mystical, but wholly delightful way, his various
avocations, such as his self-appointment as inspector of snow-storms
and rain-storms, and surveyor of forest paths and all across-lot
routes, and herdsman of the wild stock of the town. He is never more
enjoyable than in such passages. His account of going into business at
Walden Pond is in the same happy vein. As his fellow citizens were
slow in offering him any opening in which he could earn a living, he
turned to the woods, where he was better known, and determined to go
into business at once without waiting to acquire the usual capital. He
expected to open trade with the Celestial Empire, and Walden was just
the place to start the venture. He thought his strict business habits
acquired through years of keeping tab on wild Nature's doings, his
winter days spent outside the town, trying to hear what was in the
wind, and his early spring mornings before his neighbors were astir to
hear the croak of the first frog, all the training necessary to ensure
success in business with the Celestial Empire. He admits, it is true,
that he never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but doubted
not that it was of the last importance only to be present at it. All
such fooling as this is truly delightful. When he goes about his
sylvan business with his tongue in his cheek and a quizzical,
good-humored look upon his face in this way, and advertises the hound,
the bay horse, and the turtle-dove he lost so long ago, he is the true
Thoreau, and we take him to our hearts.

One also enjoys the way in which he magnifies his petty occupations.
His brag over his bean-field is delightful. He makes one want to hoe
beans with him:

When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to
the woods and the sky and was an accompaniment to my labor
which yielded an instant and immeasurable cr