36 INDOOR STUDIES 



row something more earnest and significant than 

 I have dreamed of? Have I heard what this tiny- 

 passenger has to say while it flits thus from tree 

 to tree 1" "I love the birds and beasts because 

 they are mythologically in earnest. " ^ 



If he had had the same eye for natural history 

 he possessed for arrow-heads, what new facts he 

 would have disclosed! But he was looking for 

 arrow-heads. He had them in his mind; he thought 

 arrow-heads; he was an arrow-head himself, and 

 these relics fairly kicked themselves free of the 

 mould to catch his eye. 



"It is surprising how thickly-strewn our soil is 

 with arrow-heads. I never see the surface broken 

 in sandy places but I think of them. I find them 

 on all sides, not only in corn, grain, potato, and 

 bean fields, but in- pastures and woods, by wood- 

 chucks' holes and pigeon beds, and, as to-night, 

 in a pasture where a restless cow had pawed the 

 ground. " 



Thoreau was a man eminently "preoccupied of 

 his own soul." He had no self-abandonment, no 

 self-f orgetf ulness ; he could not give himself to the 

 birds or animals : they must surrender to him. He 

 says to one of his correspondents: "Whether he 

 sleeps or wakes, whether he runs or walks, whether 

 he uses a microscope or a telescope, or his naked 

 eye, a man never discovers anything, never over- 

 takes anything, or leaves anything behind, but him- 

 self." This is half true of some; it is wholly true 

 1 Early Spring in Massachusetts, p. 286. 



