"// is as when a family, your neighbors, return to an empty house 

 after a Jong absence, and you hear the cheerful hum of voices and the 

 laughter of children, and see the smoke from the kitchen fire. The doors 

 are thrown open, the children go screaming through the halL So the 

 flicker dashes through the aisles of the grove, throws up a window here 

 and cackles out of it, and then there, airing the house. It is as good 

 as a house-warming to all Nature." 



THOREAU. 



