74 DYER'S HOLLOW, 



would have called the sight pathetic. To 

 me it was rather inspiring. Only a day or 

 two before, in another part of the township, 

 I had seen a man sitting in a chair among 

 his bean-poles picking beans. Those heavy, 

 sandy roads -and steep hills must be hard 

 upon the legs, and probably the dwellers 

 thereabout (unlike the Lombardy poplars, 

 which there, as elsewhere, were decaying at 

 the top) begin to die at the v lower extremi- 

 ties. It was not many miles from Dyer's 

 Hollow that Thoreau fell in with the old 

 wrecker, "a regular Cape Cod man," of 

 whom he says that "he looked as if he some- 

 times saw a doughnut, but never descended 

 to comfort." Quite otherwise was it with 

 my wise-hearted agricultural economists; 

 and quite otherwise shall it be with me, also, 

 who mean to profit by their example. If I 

 am compelled to dig when I get old (to 

 beg may I ever be ashamed!), I am deter- 

 mined not to forget the camp-stool. The 

 Cape Cod motto shall be mine, He that 

 hoeth cabbages, let him do it with assiduity. 

 This aged cultivator, not so much "on 

 his last legs " as beyond them, was evidently 

 a native of the soil, but several of the few 



