182 A WEEK ON WALDEN'S EIDGE. 



luxuriantly about it. Just over them, an 

 azalea still held two fresh pink flowers, the 

 last till another May. In such a spot it 

 would have been easy to grow sentimental ; 

 but there came a rumbling of thunder, the 

 sky darkened, and, with a final hasty look 

 about me, I picked up my umbrella and 

 started homeward. 



My last walk had ended like many others 

 in that showery, fragmentary week. But 

 what is bad weather when the time is past ? 

 All those black clouds have left no shadow 

 on Walden's Ridge, and the best of all my 

 strolls beside Falling Water, a stroll not yet 

 finished, 



" The calm sense of seen beauty without sight," 



suffers no harm. As Thoreau says, " It is 

 after we get home that we really go over the 

 mountain." 



