66 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



was in its heroic age, rather than as it has since 

 degenerated. 



Walden is Walden still, very much as Thoreau 

 painted it. No chimney smoke rises in view from 

 its shore. No picnic pavilion disturbs its outline 

 or jangle of trolley echoes within its spaces. The 

 woods grow tall all about it, and if they are more 

 frequented by men than in his day and less by 

 wild creatures the casual visitor need hardly know 

 the difference. The pond was low when he wrote 

 of Walden. So it is now and the same stones with 

 which it was " walled-in " then pave the wide mar- 

 gins to-day. You may walk all around it on 

 this crushed granite and note the sparkle of 

 plentiful mica in the pebbles. Near the beach 

 where he took his morning swim is the tiny 

 meadow which in the years of high water is a cove 

 to be fished in. You may throw a stone across this 

 meadow cove and in any direction save at its 

 narrow entrance from the pond you will hit tall 

 woods that in dense array lean lovingly over it 

 and give it cool shadows except when the sun is 

 high. Between the tall trees and the meadow 

 grasses grows the clethra, its white spikes of per- 



