Solitude and Company 175 



How we might be warmed and contented 

 by it! 



Solitude must have led me into the 

 thought of music, for of all the arts that 

 of harmony beguiles one most efficiently 

 to loneliness. We conjoin harps and her- 

 mits in tradition and poetry. The hermit 

 of Walden played on a flute as he rocked 

 on the water. If I lived in a cave I would 

 have a piano, a library, and a dog. Dogs, 

 and their fleas, come to me as naturally as 

 if I were raw meat. You ought to have 

 seen the dog I gathered in my Berkshire 

 tramp, Sassingers. He was couched in a 

 yard in Great Barrington a fine, big chap 

 looking as if he were waiting to be in- 

 vited. So I asked, " Old fellow, how 

 would you like to take a walk?" And he 

 said, with his tail, he would like it, and we 

 formed a partnership on the spot. I felt 

 as if I had stolen him, but a farmer re- 

 lieved my conscience on that point when 

 he told me that he had been wandering 

 about the place for a week. Sassingers 

 was mighty good company. He climbed 

 Monument Mountain and lay panting on 



