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1Breed's hut was standing only a dozen years ago, though it had long been unoccupied. It was about the size of mine. It
2was set on fire by mischievous boys, one Election night, if I do not mistake. I lived on the edge of the village then,
3and had just lost myself over Davenant's Gondibert, that winter that I labored with a lethargy,--which, by the way, I
4never knew whether to regard as a family complaint, having an uncle who goes to sleep shaving himself, and is obliged to
5sprout potatoes in a cellar Sundays, in order to keep awake and keep the Sabbath, or as the consequence of my attempt to
6read Chalmers' collection of English poetry without skipping. It fairly overcame my Nervii. I had just sunk my head on
7this when the bells rung fire, and in hot haste the engines rolled that way, led by a straggling troop of men and boys,
8and I among the foremost, for I had leaped the brook. We thought it was far south over the woods,--we who had run to
9fires before,--barn, shop, or dwelling-house, or all together. "It's Baker's barn," cried one. "It is the Codman place,"
10affirmed another. And then fresh sparks went up above the wood, as if the roof fell in, and we all shouted "Concord to
11the rescue!" Wagons shot past with furious speed and crushing loads, bearing, perchance, among the rest, the agent of
12the Insurance Company, who was bound to go however far; and ever and anon the engine bell tinkled behind, more slow and
13sure; and rearmost of all, as it was afterward whispered, came they who set the fire and gave the alarm. Thus we kept on
14like true idealists, rejecting the evidence of our senses, until at a turn in the road we heard the crackling and
15actually felt the heat of the fire from over the wall, and realized, alas! that we were there. The very nearness of the
16fire but cooled our ardor. At first we thought to throw a frog-pond on to it; but concluded to let it burn, it was so
17far gone and so worthless. So we stood round our engine, jostled one another, expressed our sentiments through
18speaking-trumpets, or in lower tone referred to the great conflagrations which the world has witnessed, including
19Bascom's shop, and, between ourselves, we thought that, were we there in season with our "tub," and a full frog-pond by,
20we could turn that threatened last and universal one into another flood. We finally retreated without doing any
21mischief,--returned to sleep and Gondibert. But as for Gondibert, I would except that passage in the preface about wit
22being the soul's powder,--"but most of mankind are strangers to wit, as Indians are to powder." It chanced that I walked
23that way across the fields the following night, about the same hour, and hearing a low moaning at this spot, I drew near
24in the dark, and discovered the only survivor of the family that I know, the heir of both its virtues and its vices, who
25alone was interested in this burning, lying on his stomach and looking over the cellar wall at the still smouldering
26cinders beneath, muttering to himself, as is his wont. He had been working far off in the river meadows all day, and had
27improved the first moments that he could call his own to visit the home of his fathers and his youth. He gazed into the
28cellar from all sides and points of view by turns, always lying down to it, as if there was some treasure, which he
29remembered, concealed between the stones, where there was absolutely nothing but a heap of bricks and ashes. The house
30being gone, he looked at what there was left. He was soothed by the sympathy which my mere presence implied, and showed
31me, as well as the darkness permitted, where the well was covered up; which, thank Heaven, could never be burned; and he
32groped long about the wall to find the well-sweep which his father had cut and mounted, feeling for the iron hook or
33staple by which a burden had been fastened to the heavy end,--all that he could now cling to,--to convince me that it
34was no common "rider." I felt it, and still remark it almost daily in my walks, for by it hangs the history of a family.
35Once more, on the left, where are seen the well and lilac bushes by the wall, in the now open field, lived Nutting and
36Le Grosse. But to return toward Lincoln. Farther in the woods than any of these, where the road approaches nearest to
37the pond, Wyman the potter squatted, and furnished his townsmen with earthen ware, and left descendants to succeed him.
38Neither were they rich in worldly goods, holding the land by sufferance while they lived; and there often the sheriff
39came in vain to collect the taxes, and "attached a chip," for form's sake, as I have read in his accounts, there being
40nothing else that he could lay his hands on. One day in midsummer, when I was hoeing, a man who was carrying a load of
41pottery to market stopped his horse against my field and inquired concerning Wyman the younger. He had long ago bought a
42potter's wheel of him, and wished to know what had become of him. I had read of the potter's clay and wheel in
43Scripture, but it had never occurred to me that the pots we use were not such as had come down unbroken from those days,
44or grown on trees like gourds somewhere, and I was pleased to hear that so fictile an art was ever practiced in my
45neighborhood. The last inhabitant of these woods before me was an Irishman, Hugh Quoil (if I have spelt his name with
46coil enough,) who occupied Wyman's tenement,--Col. Quoil, he was called. Rumor said that he had been a soldier at
47Waterloo. If he had lived I should have made him fight his battles over again. His trade here was that of a ditcher.
48Napoleon went to St. Helena; Quoil came to Walden Woods. All I know of him is tragic. He was a man of manners, like one
49who had seen the world, and was capable of more civil speech than you could well attend to. He wore a great coat in
50mid-summer, being affected with the trembling delirium, and his face was the color of carmine. He died in the road at
51the foot of Brister's Hill shortly after I came to the woods, so that I have not remembered him as a neighbor. Before
52his house was pulled down, when his comrades avoided it as "an unlucky castle," I visited it. There lay his old clothes
53curled up by use, as if they were himself, upon his raised plank bed. His pipe lay broken on the hearth, instead of a
54bowl broken at the fountain. The last could never have been the symbol of his death, for he confessed to me that, though
55he had heard of Brister's Spring, he had never seen it; and soiled cards, kings of diamonds spades and hearts, were
56scattered over the floor. One black chicken which the administrator could not catch, black as night and as silent, not
57even croaking, awaiting Reynard, still went to roost in the next apartment. In the rear there was the dim outline of a
58garden, which had been planted but had never received its first hoeing, owing to those terrible shaking fits, though it
59was now harvest time. It was over-run with Roman wormwood and beggar-ticks, which last stuck to my clothes for all
60fruit. The skin of a woodchuck was freshly stretched upon the back of the house, a trophy of his last Waterloo; but no
61warm cap or mittens would he want more.
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