40 INDOOR STUDIES 



deaf: "Think of it, — lie stood half an hour to-day 

 to hear the frogs croak, and he wouldn't read the 

 life of Chalmers ! " He would go any number of 

 miles to interview a muskrat or a woodchuck, or to 

 keep an "appointment with an oak-tree;" but he 

 records in his journal that he rode a dozen miles 

 one day with his employer, keeping a profound 

 silence almost all the way. "I treated him simply 

 as if he had bronchitis and could not speak, — just 

 as I would a sick man, a crazy man, or an idiot." 



Thoreau seems to have been aware of his defect 

 on the human side. He says: "If I am too cold 

 for human friendship, I trust I shall not soon be 

 too cold for natural influences ; " and then he goes 

 on with this doubtful statement: "It appears to 

 be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy 

 with both man and nature. Those qualities which 

 bring you near to the one estrange you from the 

 other." One day he met a skunk in the field, and 

 he describes its peculiar gait exactly when he says: 

 "It runs, even when undisturbed, with a singular 

 teter or undulation, like the walking of a Chinese 

 lady." He ran after the animal to observe it, keep- 

 ing out of the reach of its formidable weapon, and 

 when it took refuge in the wall he interviewed it 

 at his leisure. If it had been a man or a woman 

 he had met, he would have run the other way. 

 Thus he went through the season, Nature's reporter, 

 taking down the words as they fell from her lips, 

 and distressed if a sentence was missed. 



The Yankee thrift and enterprise, that he had so 



