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1My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of several farms,--the refusal was all I wanted,--but I
2never got my fingers burned by actual possession. The nearest that I came to actual possession was when I bought the
3Hollowell place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on
4or off with; but before the owner gave me a deed of it, his wife--every man has such a wife--changed her mind and wished
5to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to release him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and
6it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all
7together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for I had carried it far enough; or rather, to be
8generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten
9dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a
10rich man without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the landscape, and I have since annually carried off what it
11yielded without a wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes,-- "I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to
12dispute." I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty
13farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has
14put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and
15got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk. The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were;
16its complete retirement, being, about two miles from the village, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated
17from the highway by a broad field; its bounding on the river, which the owner said protected it by its fogs from frosts
18in the spring, though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house and barn, and the
19dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between me and the last occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered apple
20trees, gnawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I should have; but above all, the recollection I had of it from
21my earliest voyages up the river, when the house was concealed behind a dense grove of red maples, through which I heard
22the house-dog bark. I was in haste to buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out some rocks, cutting down the
23hollow apple trees, and grubbing up some young birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, had made any
24more of his improvements. To enjoy these advantages I was ready to carry it on; like Atlas, to take the world on my
25shoulders,--I never heard what compensation he received for that,--and do all those things which had no other motive or
26excuse but that I might pay for it and be unmolested in my possession of it; for I knew all the while that it would
27yield the most abundant crop of the kind I wanted if I could only afford to let it alone. But it turned out as I have
28said. All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on a large scale, (I have always cultivated a garden,) was,
29that I had had my seeds ready. Many think that seeds improve with age. I have no doubt that time discriminates between
30the good and the bad; and when at last I shall plant, I shall be less likely to be disappointed. But I would say to my
31fellows, once for all, As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are
32committed to a farm or the county jail. Old Cato, whose "De Re Rusticâ" is my "Cultivator," says, and the only
33translation I have seen makes sheer nonsense of the passage, "When you think of getting a farm, turn it thus in your
34mind, not to buy greedily; nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not think it enough to go round it once. The
35oftener you go there the more it will please you, if it is good." I think I shall not buy greedily, but go round and
36round it as long as I live, and be buried in it first, that it may please me the more at last. The present was my next
37experiment of this kind, which I purpose to describe more at length; for convenience, putting the experience of two
38years into one. As I have said, I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in
39the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up. When first I took up my abode in the woods, that
40is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July,
411845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or chimney,
42the walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. The upright white hewn
43studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its
44timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imagination
45it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain
46which I had visited the year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and
47where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of
48mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows,
49the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth every
50where. The only house I had been the owner of before, if I except a boat, was a tent, which I used occasionally when
51making excursions in the summer, and this is still rolled up in my garret; but the boat, after passing from hand to
52hand, has gone down the stream of time. With this more substantial shelter about me, I had made some progress toward
53settling in the world. This frame, so slightly clad, was a sort of crystallization around me, and reacted on the
54builder. It was suggestive somewhat as a picture in outlines. I did not need to go outdoors to take the air, for the
55atmosphere within had lost none of its freshness. It was not so much within doors as behind a door where I sat, even in
56the rainiest weather. The Harivansa says, "An abode without birds is like a meat without seasoning." Such was not my
57abode, for I found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds; not by having imprisoned one, but having caged myself near
58them. I was not only nearer to some of those which commonly frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those wilder and
59more thrilling songsters of the forest which never, or rarely, serenade a villager,--the wood-thrush, the veery, the
60scarlet tanager, the field-sparrow, the whippoorwill, and many others.
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