34 INDOOR STUDIES 



ceives at a reverent distance from its surface even. " ^ 

 This "fine effluence" lie was always reaching after, 

 and often grasping or inhaling. This is the mythi- 

 cal hound and horse and turtle-dove which he says 

 in "Walden" he long ago lost, and has heen on 

 their trail ever since. He never abandons the 

 search, and in every woodchuck-hole or muskrat 

 den, in retreat of bird, or squirrel, or mouse, or 

 fox that he pries into, in every walk and expedition 

 to the fields or swamps or to distant woods, in 

 every spring note and call that he listens to so 

 patiently, he hopes to get some clew to his lost 

 treasures, to the effluence that so provokingly eludes 

 him. 



Hence, when we regard Thoreau simply as an 

 observer or as a natural historian, there have been 

 better, though few so industrious and persistent. 

 He was up and out at all hours of the day and 

 night, and in all seasons and weathers, year in and 

 year out, and yet he saw and recorded nothing new. 

 It is quite remarkable. He says in his journal 

 that he walked half of each day, and kept it up 

 perhaps for twenty years or more. Ten years of 

 persistent spying and inspecting of nature, and no 

 \ new thing found out; and so little reported that 

 ! is in itself interesting, that is, apart from his de- 

 scription of it. I cannot say that there was any 

 felicitous and happy seeing; there was no inspira- 

 tion of the eye, certainly not in the direction of 

 natural history. He has added no new line or 

 1 Early Spring in Massachusetts, p. 83. 



