rnoon, and the happiest one of the day, is our walk.... So comes the
night; and I look back upon a day spent in what the world would call
idleness, and for which I myself can suggest no more appropriate
epithet, but which, nevertheless, I cannot feel to have been spent
amiss. True, it might be a sin and shame, in such a world as ours, to
spend a lifetime in this manner; but for a few summer weeks it is good
to live as if this world were heaven. And so it is, and so it shall be,
although, in a little while, a flitting shadow of earthly care and toil
will mingle itself with our realities.

* * * * *

_Monday, August 15th._--George Hillard and his wife arrived from Boston
in the dusk of Saturday evening, to spend Sunday with us. It was a
pleasant sensation, when the coach rumbled up our avenue, and wheeled
round at the door; for I felt that I was regarded as a man with a
household,--a man having a tangible existence and locality in the
world,--when friends came to avail themselves of our hospitality. It was
a sort of acknowledgment and reception of us into the corps of married
people,--a sanction by no means essential to our peace and well-being,
but yet agreeable enough to receive. So we welcomed them cordially at
the door, and ushered them into our parlor, and soon into the
supper-room.... The night flitted over us all, and passed away, and up
rose a gray and sullen morning,... and we had a splendid breakfast of
flapjacks, or slapjacks, and whortleberries, which I gathered on a
neighboring hill, and perch, bream, and pout, which I hooked out of the
river the evening before. About nine o'clock, Hillard and I set out for
a walk to Walden Pond, calling by the way at Mr. Emerson's, to obtain
his guidance or directions, and he accompanied us in his own illustrious
person. We turned aside a little from our way, to visit Mr. ----, a
yeoman, of whose homely and self-acquired wisdom Mr. Emerson has a very
high opinion. We found him walking in his fields, a short and stalwart
and sturdy personage of middle age, with a face of shrewd and kind
expression, and manners of natural courtesy. He had a very free flow of
talk, and not much diffidence about his own opinions; for, with a little
induction from Mr. Emerson, he began to discourse about the state of the
nation, agriculture, and business in general, uttering thoughts that had
come to him at the plough, and which had a sort of flavor of the fresh
ea