WALDEN POND[65]

HENRY DAVID THOREAU


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 frequently sat in the boat playing the flute, and saw
the perch, which I seemed to have charmed, hovering around me, and the