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In October I went a-graping to the river meadows, and loaded rance than for food There, too, I aderass, pearly and red, which the far the s them by the bushel and the dollar only, and sells the spoils of the meads to Boston and New York; destined to be jammed, to satisfy the tastes of lovers of Nature there So butchers rake the tongues of bison out of the prairie grass, regardless of the torn and drooping plant The barberry&039;s brilliant fruit was likewise food for my eyes merely; but I collected a s, which the proprietor and travellers had overlooked When chestnuts were ripe I laid up half a bushel for winter It was very exciting at that season to roam the then boundless chestnut woods of Lincoln -- they now sleep their long sleep under the railroad -- with a bag on my shoulder, and a stick to open burs with in my hand, for I did not alait for the frost, a of leaves and the loud reproofs of the red squirrels and the jays, whose half-consumed nuts I sometimes stole, for the burs which they had selected were sure to contain sound ones Occasionally I clirew also behind e tree, which almost overshadowed it, hen in flower, a bouquet which scented the whole neighborhood, but the squirrels and the jays gotin flocks early in thethe nuts out of the burs before they fell, I relinquished these trees to them and visited the more distant woods composed wholly of chestnut These nuts, as far as they went, were a good substitute for bread Many other substitutesone day for fishwor, the potato of the aborigines, a sort of fabulous fruit, which I had begun to doubt if I had ever dug and eaten in childhood, as I had told, and had not dreamed it I had often since seen its crumpled red velvety blosso it to be the sah exterminated it It has a sweetish taste, much like that of a frost-bitten potato, and I found it better boiled than roasted This tuber seemed like a faint promise of Nature to rear her own children and feed them simply here at sorain-fields this humble root, which was once the toteotten, or known only by its flowering vine; but let wild Nature reign here once rains will probably disappear before a myriad of foes, and without the care of man the crow reat cornfield of the Indian&039;s God in the southwest, whence he is said to have brought it; but the now alround-nut will perhaps revive and flourish in spite of frosts and wildness, prove itself indigenous, and resunity as the diet of the hunter tribe Some Indian Ceres or Minerva must have been the inventor and bestower of it; and when the reign of poetry co of nuts may be represented on our works of art

Already, by the first of September, I had seen two or three small maples turned scarlet across the pond, beneath where the white steed, at the point of a promontory, next the water Ah, radually from week to week the character of each tree came out, and it admired itself reflected in the sallery substituted souished by , for the old upon the walls

The wasps cae in October, as to winter quarters, and settled on my ithin and on the walls overhead, so, when they were numbed with cold, I swept soet rid of the my house as a desirable shelter They never radually disappeared, into what crevices I do not know, avoiding winter and unspeakable cold

Like the wasps, before I finally went into winter quarters in November, I used to resort to the northeast side of Walden, which the sun, reflected from the pitch pine woods and the stony shore, made the fireside of the pond; it is so much pleasanter and wholesomer to be warmed by the sun while you can be, than by an artificial fire I thus war embers which the summer, like a departed hunter, had left

When I ca second-hand ones, required to be cleaned with a trowel, so that I learned more than usual of the qualities of bricks and trowels The rowing harder; but this is one of those sayings which s thee, and it would take many bloith a trowel to clean an old wiseacre of thees of Mesopotaood quality, obtained from the ruins of Babylon, and the cement on them is older and probably harder still However that hness of the steel which bore soworn out As h I did not read the name of Nebuchadnezzar on them, I picked out its many fireplace bricks as I could find, to save work and waste, and I filled the spaces between the bricks about the fireplace with stones from the pond shore, and also ered most about the fireplace, as the most vital part of the house Indeed, I worked so deliberately, that though I co, a course of bricks raised a few inches above the floor served for et a stiff neck for it that I remember; my stiff neck is of older date I took a poet to board for a fortnight about those tiht his own knife, though I had two, and we used to scour the the I was pleased to see rees, and reflected, that, if it proceeded slowly, it was calculated to endure a long time The chi on the ground, and rising through the house to the heavens; even after the house is burned it still stands sometimes, and its importance and independence are apparent This was toward the end of summer It was now November

The north wind had already begun to cool the pond, though it tookto accoan to have a fire at evening, before I plastered my house, the chimney carried smoke particularly well, because of the numerous chinks between the boards Yet I passed sos in that cool and airy aparth brown boards full of knots, and rafters with the bark on high overhead My house never pleased ed to confess that it was more comfortable Should not every aparth to create so shadows reeable to the fancy and is or other the an to inhabit an to use it for wars to keep the wood froood to see the soot form on the back of the chiht andwas small, and I could hardly entertain an echo in it; but it seehbors All the attractions of a house were concentrated in one roo-room; and whatever satisfaction parent or child,in a house, I enjoyed it all Cato says, the master of a family (patremfamilias) must have in his rustic villa "cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritateloriae erit," that is, "an oil and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hard tilory" I had in my cellar a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts of peas with the weevil in the of molasses, and of rye and Indian meal a peck each

I so in a golden age, of enduring erbread work, which shall still consist of only one roo or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven over one&039;s head -- useful to keep off rain and snohere the king and queen posts stand out to receive your hoe, when you have done reverence to the prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty on stepping over the sill; a cavernous house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole to see the roof; where some may live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a , and some on settles, some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose; a house which you have got into when you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; where the weary traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a te all the essentials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping; where you can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg, that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chaarret; where you can see so necessary a thing, as a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner, and the oven that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils are the chief orna is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trap-door, when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you without sta A house whose inside is as open and o in at the front door and out at the back without seeing souest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded frohths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there -- in solitary confinement Nowadays the host does not adot the mason to build one for yourself so you at the greatest distance There is as n to poison you I am aware that I have been on ally ordered off, but I aht visit inand queen who lived si their way; but backing out of a modern palace will be all that I shall desire to learn, if ever I aht in one

It would seee of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its h slides and dumb-waiters, as it were; in other words, the parlor is so far from the kitchen and workshop The dinner even is only the parable of a dinner, coh to Nature and Truth to borrow a trope from them How can the scholar, ells away in the North West Territory or the Isle of Man, tell what is parliamentary in the kitchen?

However, only one or two of h to stay and eat a hasty-pudding withthey beat a hasty retreat rather, as if it would shake the house to its foundations Nevertheless, it stood through a great s

I did not plaster till it was freezing weather I brought over some whiter and cleaner sand for this purpose from the opposite shore of the pond in a boat, a sort of conveyance which would have teo much farther if necessary My house had in the round on every side In lathing I was pleased to be able to send hole blow of the hammer, and it was my ambition to transfer the plaster from the board to the wall neatly and rapidly I remembered the story of a conceited felloho, in fine clothes, ont to lounge about the village once, giving advice to work one day to substitute deeds for words, he turned up his cuffs, seized a plasterer&039;s board, and having loaded his troithoutoverhead, htway, to his complete discomfiture, received the whole contents in his ruffled boso, which so effectually shuts out the cold and takes a handsome finish, and I learned the various casualties to which the plasterer is liable I was surprised to see how thirsty the bricks hich drank up all the moisture in my plaster before I had smoothed it, and how many pailfuls of water it takes to christen a new hearth I had the previous winterthe shells of the Unio fluviatilis, which our river affords, for the sake of the experiht have got good limestone within a mile or two and burned it myself, if I had cared to do so

The pond had in the meanwhile skimmed over in the shadiest and shallowest coves, so The first ice is especially interesting and perfect, being hard, dark, and transparent, and affords the best opportunity that ever offers for exa the bottoth on ice only an inch thick, like a skater insect on the surface of the water, and study the bottom at your leisure, only two or three inches distant, like a picture behind a glass, and the water is necessarily always smooth then There are many furrows in the sand where some creature has travelled about and doubled on its tracks; and, for wrecks, it is streith the cases of caddis-worrains of white quartz Perhaps these have creased it, for you find soh they are deep and broad for them to h you must improve the earliest opportunity to study it If you exa after it freezes, you find that the greater part of the bubbles, which at first appeared to be within it, are against its under surface, and thatfrom the bottom; while the ice is as yet coh it These bubbles are frohth of an inch in diameter, very clear and beautiful, and you see your face reflected in theh the ice There may be thirty or forty of them to a square inch There are also already within the ice narrow oblong perpendicular bubbles about half an inch long, sharp cones with the apex upward; or oftener, if the ice is quite fresh, minute spherical bubbles one directly above another, like a string of beads But these within the ice are not so numerous nor obvious as those beneath I soth of the ice, and those which broke through carried in air with thee and conspicuous white bubbles beneath One day when I caht hours afterward, I found that those large bubbles were still perfect, though an inch more of ice had fore of a cake But as the last two days had been very warm, like an Indian sureen color of the water, and the bottoh twice as thick was hardly stronger than before, for the air bubbles had greatly expanded under this heat and run together, and lost their regularity; they were no longer one directly over another, but often like silvery coins poured fro another, or in thin flakes, as if occupying slight cleavages The beauty of the ice was gone, and it was too late to study the bottoreat bubbles occupied with regard to the new ice, I broke out a cake containing asized one, and turned it bottom upward The new ice had formed around and under the bubble, so that it was included between the two ices It holly in the lower ice, but close against the upper, and was flattish, or perhaps slightly lenticular, with a rounded edge, a quarter of an inch deep by four inches in diameter; and I was surprised to find that directly under the bubble the ice was ularity in the forhths of an inch in thea thin partition there between the water and the bubble, hardly an eighth of an inch thick; and in many places the small bubbles in this partition had burst out doard, and probably there was no ice at all under the largest bubbles, which were a foot in diameter I inferred that the infinite nuainst the under surface of the ice were now frozen in likewise, and that each, in its degree, had operated like a burning-glass on the ice beneath to uns which contribute to make the ice crack and whoop

At length the winter set in good earnest, just as I had finished plastering, and the wind began to howl around the house as if it had not had pereese ca of wings, even after the ground was covered with snow, so low over the woods toward Fair Haven, bound for Mexico Several tie at ten or eleven o&039;clock at night, I heard the tread of a flock of geese, or else ducks, on the dry leaves in the woods by a pond-hole behind , where they had come up to feed, and the faint honk or quack of their leader as they hurried off In 1845 Walden froze entirely over for the first tiht of the 22d of December, Flint&039;s and other shallower ponds and the river having been frozen ten days or more; in &039;46, the 16th; in &039;49, about the 31st; and in &039;50, about the 27th of December; in &039;52, the 5th of January; in &039;53, the 31st of Deceround since the 25th of November, and surrounded me suddenly with the scenery of winter I withdrew yet farther into ht fire both within my house and within my breast My employment out of doors noas to collect the dead wood in the forest, bringing it ina dead pine tree under each arm to my shed An old forest fence which had seen its best days was a great haul for od Ter an event is that man&039;s supper who has just been forth in the snow to hunt, nay, you ht say, steal, the fuel to cook it with! His bread and ots and waste wood of all kinds in the forests of most of our towns to support many fires, but which at present war wood There was also the driftwood of the pond In the course of the sus with the bark on, pinned together by the Irish when the railroad was built This I hauled up partly on the shore After soaking two years and then lying high sixI a this piece behind with one end of a log fifteen feet long on s together with a birch withe, and then, with a longer birch or alder which had a book at the end, dragged theed and al, but ht that they burned better for the soaking, as if the pitch, being confined by the water, burned longer, as in a lamp

Gilpin, in his account of the forest borderers of England, says that "the encroachments of trespassers, and the houses and fences thus raised on the borders of the forest," were "considered as great nuisances by the old forest law, and were severely punished under the na ad terrore of the game and the detriment of the forest But I was interested in the preservation of the venison and the vert h I had been the Lord Warden hih I burned it er and was rieved when it was cut down by the proprietors themselves I would that our farmers when they cut down a forest felt some of that ahich the old Roht to, a consecrated grove (lucum conlucare), that is, would believe that it is sacred to so, and prayed, Whatever god or goddess thou art to whorove is sacred, be propitious to me, my family, and children, etc

It is ree and in this new country, a value old After all our discoveries and inventions no o by a pile of wood It is as precious to us as it was to our Saxon and Norun-stocks of it Michaux, o, says that the price of wood for fuel in New York and Philadelphia "nearly equals, and soh this immense capital annually requires more than three hundred thousand cords, and is surrounded to the distance of three hundred miles by cultivated plains" In this town the price of wood rises alher it is to be this year than it was the last Mechanics and tradesmen who come in person to the forest on no other errand, are sure to attend the wood auction, and even pay a high price for the privilege of gleaning after the woodchopper It is now many years that men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the lander and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the farmer and Robin Hood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill; in most parts of the world the prince and the peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their food Neither could I do without them

Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection I love to have mine before my , and thework I had an old axe which nobody claimed, hich by spells in winter days, on the sunny side of the house, I played about the stuot out of , they warain when they were on the fire, so that no fuel could give out e blacks a hickory helve from the woods into it,true

A few pieces of fat pine were a great treasure It is interesting to remember how much of this food for fire is still concealed in the bowels of the earth In previous years I had often gone prospecting over some bare hillside, where a pitch pine wood had forot out the fat pine roots They are almost indestructible Stumps thirty or forty years old, at least, will still be sound at the core, though the sapwood has all becoetablea ring level with the earth four or five inches distant from the heart With axe and shovel you explore this mine, and follow the marrowy store, yellow as beef tallow, or as if you had struck on a vein of gold, deep into the earth But commonly I kindled my fire with the dry leaves of the forest, which I had stored up in my shed before the snow came Green hickory finely split s, when he has a caot a little of this When the villagers were lighting their fires beyond the horizon, I too gave notice to the various wild inhabitants of Walden vale, by a smoky streamer from ht-winged S thy pinions in thy upward flight,

Lark without song, andabove the hamlets as thy nest;

Or else, departing dreaht vision, gathering up thy skirts;

By night star-veiling, and by day