FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. 17, 1903. 
Swallows* 
It was only a schoolboy's ^ay old bam 
Where catnip and smartweed throve; 
Where a straw-stack stood on the bank of the tarn. 
And the cattle we called a drove 
Stood and browsed, or wandered about the yard 
As the milking time drew near; 
Where the gates were closed and the fence was barred. 
But the wide-cracked barn was dear 
For the urchin who stole away from school 
To lie on the hay-mow high, „ _ , 
, And free from the Ihralldom of teacher's rule. 
He watched the swallows fly, 
And perch by their nests on the purline plates 
To bow and twitter and sing. 
Or snuggle together as happy mates. . 
How memories cluster and cling, 
As here in the sunshine, swallows glide 
O'er the river's quiet flow! 
A swallow's blithe notes have opened "wide 
The gates of the long ago. 
L. F. Brown. 
Thoreau. 
It is something more than natural when things occur 
that divert a man's thoughts into remote channels by- 
strange coincidents. 
A few days ago, amid a lot of rubbish thrown out of 
a miner's cabin in an obscure ravine in the Shasta 
Mountains, I noticed an Atlantic Monthly of June, 
1862. Glancing through its pages, which were in a 
good, fresh-looking state, considering the age and loca- 
tion of the magazine, I noticed some articles upon the 
Civil War, in "progress at the titne of its issue, and 
brought it away with me to my wickyup. 
The first article in the magazine was "Walking," the 
first of a series to follow by Thoreau, the proof sheets 
of which had been corrected during the last weeks of 
the author's life, and which were published during the 
year in which he died — 1862. 
The same day I received Forest and Stream for 
Sept. 12, and the first article after the editorial tiiatter 
is a commentary upon Thoreau by your contributor 
T. J. Chapman, in which he quotes President Jordan, 
of Stanford UniA-ersity as characterizing Thoreau "the 
Chief Prophet of the Order of Saunterers." 
Mr. Chapman asserts in advance that "it is difficult 
to characterize Thoreau; difficult to understand what 
his chief motive in life was; but he seems to have had 
in mind to give the world a practical illustration of the 
doctrine of plain living and high thinking." 
If Mr. Chapman has studied Thoreau he may per- 
haps award him a more exalted title than does the 
learned professor; but I do not presume to contend 
that a Chief Saunterer is altogether inappropriate to so 
great and singular a person. 
I would merely ask the attention of Mr. Chapmaii to 
the essay upon walking, if he is not already familiar 
wi^ it. As it appears in this old number of the Atlan- 
tic Monthly, the author says in* his short preface: 
"I wish to speak a word for nature, for absolute 
freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and 
culture merely civil; to regard man as an inhabitant, or 
a part and parcel of nature, rather than a member of 
society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so 
I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough 
champions of civilization: the minister, and the school 
committee and every one of you will take care of that." 
In the foregoing' brief preface or preamble to this 
series of essays— "Walking," "Autumnal Tints," and 
"Wild Apples," etc. — it would seem that Thoreau has 
given something of his creed or doctrine of the science 
of existing. I do not believe it is very difficult for one 
who has come in close contact with "absolute freedom 
and wildness," and with "freedom and culture merely 
civil," to understand the nobility of Thoreau. But to 
do so the man must be free enough to contract the two 
states without inbred bias or prejudice either way. 
I believe the entire essay, "Walking," by Thoreau, 
would find many attentive readers if reproduced in 
Forest and Stream; but I shall ofifer but a few ex- 
tracts from it bearing upon what seems to me to be 
glimpses of the real character or disposition of the 
author. 
Alluding to himself as a walker, he says, as to him- 
self and a companion: "We have felt that we almost 
alone hereabouts have practiced this noble art, though, 
to tell the truth, at least, if their own assertions are to be 
received, most of my townsmen would fain walk some- 
times as I do, but they cannot. No wealth can buy the 
requisite leisure, freedom and independence which are 
the capital in this profession. It comes only by the 
grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from 
heaven to become a walker. You must be born into 
the family of the walkers. Ambulator nascitur, non 
fit. Some of my townsmen, it is true, can remember 
and have described to me some of the walks which they 
took ten years ago, in which they were so blessed as to 
lose themselves for half an hour in the woods; but 
I know very well that they have confined thernselves to 
the highway ever since, whatever pretensions they 
may make to belong to this select class. No doubt 
they vfere elevated for a moment, as by the reminis- 
cence of a previous state of existence, when even they 
were foresters and outlaws. 
" 'When he came to grene wode, 
In a mery mornynge, 
There he herde the notes small 
Of byrdes mery syngynge. 
" 'It is ferre gone, sayd Robyn, 
That I was last here; ■ '■ ' ' . 
Me lyste a lytell for to shote . 
At the donne dere.' . 
"I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits 
unless I spend four hours a day at least — and it is 
commonly more than that — sauntering through the 
woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from 
all worldlj' engagements. You may safely say 'a penny 
for your thoughts,' or a thousand pounds. When some- 
times I am reminded that the mechanics and the shop- 
keepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, 
but all the afternoon, too, sitting with crossed legs, so 
many of them — as if the legs were made to sit upon 
and not to stand or walk upon. I think they deserve 
some credit for not having all committed suicide long 
ago. 
"I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day 
without acquiring some rust, and when sometimes I 
have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh hour of 
4 o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, 
when the shades of night were already beginning to be 
mingled with the daylight, have felt as if I had com- 
mitted some" sin to be atoned for, I confess that I am 
astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing 
of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine 
themselves to shops and . offices the whole day for 
weeks and months, ay, and years almost, together. I 
know not what manner of stufif they are of, sitting there 
now at 3 o'clock in the afternoon as if it were 3 o'clock 
in the morning. 
"No doubt, temperament, and, above all, age, have 
a good deal to do with it. As a man grows older his 
ability to sit still and follow indoor occupations in- 
creases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as the 
evening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth 
otily just before sundown, and gets all the walk that he 
requires in half an hour. But the walking of which 
I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it 
is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours — 
as the swinging of dumb-bells or chairs — but is itself 
the enterprise and adventure of the day. If you would 
get exercise,, go in search of the springs of life. Think 
of a man's swinging dumb-bells for his health, when 
those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures un- 
sought by hini!" 
So many of his words upon his subject, walking. 
Let me quote a few paragraphs as free of his topic as 
his soul would be of conventional customs, although 
the paragraphs are from the same essay: 
"In short, all good things are wild and free. There 
is something in a strain of music, whether produced by 
an instrument or by the human voice — take the sound 
of a bugle in a summer night, for instance — which by 
its wildness, to speak without satire, reminds me of the 
cries emitted by wild beasts in their native forests. It 
is so much of their wildness as I can understand. 
Give me for my friends and neighbors wild men, not 
tame ones. The wildness of the savage is but a faint 
symbol of the awful ferity with which good men and 
lovers meet." 
"I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken 
before they can be made the slaves ot men, and that 
men themselves have some wild oats still left to sow 
before they become submissive members of_ society. 
Undoubted]}', all men are not equally fit subjects for 
civilization, and because the majority, like dogs and 
sheep, are tame by inherited disposition, this is no 
reason why the others should have their natures broken 
that they may be reduced to the same level. Men are 
in the main alike, but they were made several in order 
that they might be various. If a low use is to be served, 
one man will do nearly or quite as well as another; if a 
high one, individual excellence is to be regarded. Any 
man can stop a hole to keep the wind away, but no 
other man could serve so rare a use as the author of 
this illustration did." 
"W'hile almost all men find an attraction drawing 
them to society, few are attracted strongly to nature. 
In their relation to nature, men appear to me for the 
most part, notwithstanding their arts, lower than the 
animals. It is not often a beautiful relation, as in the 
case of animals. How little appreciation of the beauty 
of the landscape there is among us! We have to be 
told that the Greeks called the world Beauty or Order, 
but we do not see clearly why they did so, and we esteem 
it at best only a curious philological fact. 
' "For my part, I feel that with regard to nature I 
live a sort of border life, on the confines of a world 
into which I make occasional and transient forays only, 
and my patriotism and allegiance to the State into 
whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a 
moss-trooper. Unto a life which I call natural, I 
would gladly follow even a will-o'-the-wisp through 
bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moon or fire- 
fly has shown me the causeway to it. Nature is a per- 
sonality so vast and universal that Ave have never seen 
one of her features." 
"We are accustomed to say in Ncav England that 
few and fcAver pigeons visit us every year. Our for- 
ests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem, few 
and fcAver thoughts visit each growing rnan from year 
to year, foi- the grove in our ininds is laid waste — sold 
to feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to mill, 
and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on. 
They no longer build nor breed Avith us. In some more 
genial season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across 
the landscape ol the mind, cast by the Avings of some 
thought in its A-ernal or autumnal migratiofi; but, look- 
ing up, we are unable to detect the substance of the 
thought itself. Our Avinged thoughts are turned to 
poultry. They no longer soar, and they attain only to 
a Shanghai and Cochin-China grandeur. Those gra- 
a-te thoughts, those gra-a-ate men you hear of!" 
"We hug the earth; how rarely Ave mount! Me- 
thinks Ave might elevate ourselves a little more. We 
might climb a tree, at least." 
"Above all, Ave cannot afford not lo live in the pres- 
ent. He is blessed oA^er all mortals Avho loses no 
moment of the passing life in remembering the past. 
Unless our philosophy hears the cock croAV m eA^ery 
barnj^ard Avithin our horizon, it is belated. The sound 
commonly reminds us that Ave are growing rusty and 
antique in our employments and habits of thought. 
His philosophy comes doAvn to a more recent time 
than ours. There is something suggested by it that is 
a ncAver testament: the gospel according to this mo- 
ment. He has not fallen astern;, he has. got up early, 
aud to be Avhere he is is to be in season, in the fore- 
most rank of time. It is an expression' of the health 
and soundness of nature, a brag for all the Avorld." _ 
It seems to me that much character and motn^e hes 
uncovered and exposed in the few extracts given. Fcav 
men could write such paragraphs as those, and there 
are not a great number who would interpret them 
alike. I do not understand them as implying a sneer 
at the attainments of men in art and ciA'ilization, but I 
believe they contain the confident, caustic criticism of 
a powerful mind, embittered by the defects and shams 
so readily and universally sanctioned by society. If 
Thoreau tried to put his feet into a pair of "tooth- 
pick" or French toed shoes to find that they hurt or 
pinched, he Avould tell the whole French nation that he 
did not like thein. If there were not other shoes he 
Avould make some for himself. In contrasting civil 
culture and conventional customs A\ith nature's wild- 
ness his words and his life attest that he abjured the 
former for the other as far and as fearlessly as he 
could. He is one of those who 
"Make for themSjelves a fearful monument! 
The wreck of old Opinions." 
In niA'^ estimation Thoreau Avas more than an exalted 
saunterer. He Avas of the heroic pioneer strain. He 
did not like the higliAvay, where men and mules crowd 
forward half stifled by their own dust, and he keot out 
of it as well as he could. He did not approve of houses 
like jails, and he shouldered an ax and constructed one 
in the Avoods to his liking, evidently regretting the ex- 
penditure of $28 for its furnishings as a concession _ to 
civil culture not Avholly necessary. He did not sanction 
the hypocrisy of ciAalized men and did not hesitate to say 
he Avould prefer Avild ctoes for his neighbors. 
Thoreau's achievement in building his house with his 
own hands and living for two years or so in the tame, 
wilderness Avas remarkable chiefly in shoAving the fear- 
less determination of his independent nature. The fact 
that he existed as he did is known to the Avorld merely 
because of his literarj' intellectual attainments. He hewed 
a wider clearing and blazed out more territory with his 
pen than ever with his ax. Thousands of silent pioneers 
and foresters have exerted more poAver, endurance and 
ph3'sica] fortitude in the real strife Avith American fron- 
tiers than did Thoreau. 
Let almost any man spend as brief a time as tAvo years 
in a wilderness — even though it be no wilder than that 
about Concord, Massachusetts, Avas in i860 — let him 
really keep himself aloof from the throngs of his kind 
and their cities and tOAAms ; let him hve as simply as did 
Thoreau, contemplate the animal and plant life _ closely ; 
let him be exposed more or less to severe priA^ations ; 
let him see forests shrivel in flames and storms break in 
fury over mountains, floods bursting in yellow frenzy 
doAvn roaring gorges — let him in solitary obscurity see 
the lightnings rend, the thunder shake the earth, and let 
him knoAv that the activity of his own brain, the efforts 
of his own unaided strength must protect and_ presetA^e 
his insignificant self from terrifying destruction upon 
every hand; let him see the morning break over vast 
solitudes, and the Avonder of the sunrise, and all the real 
majesty of the Avorld ! 
Take that man to Rome, to Venice, to Paris, or to New 
York, and shoAv him the achievements of civilization, cen- 
tralization, competition and wasted intelligence. _ With 
Thoreau's brain the man might discern imperfections in 
civil culture and conventional tendencies. With Thoreau's 
fearless nature the man might try to blaze a pathAvay in 
some Avild direction. VicAved from these battlements I 
would consider the man neither eccentric to notable de- 
gree nor as inscrutable as some of your more civil 
optimists. 
In this particular region of the Avorld_ twenty or thirty 
years ago there was no end of hermits. There Avere 
inen of every nationality and of every degree of intellec- 
tuality. The discovery of gold brought most of them to 
the Pacific Coast of Califomia, but doubtless many ^ame 
Avith the acquisition of the Avorshipped metal a merely 
incidental attraction. In a thousand crannies of the hills 
and mountains of California you might have found her- 
mits of more absolute convictions and firmer, or rather 
more extreme, vicAvs than those of Thoreau. You might 
find the Avisdom of all the "Old World" in a hut ten feet 
square and built of the crudest of rocks and logs in the 
gorges and ravines of the Sierras, while there Avere those 
ignorant to a degree that Thoreau might have called 
"beautiful," for he asserts that_ man's ignorance is not 
only sometimes useful but beautiful. 
TA\'enty-five years ago I Avas presented Avith' "Tupper's 
Complete Poetical Works" by a pioneer and a hermit of 
this region. The volume was inscribed as follows : 
"To , 
From his friend, , 
A member of the Society of California Pioneers, by pro- 
fession a miner, a Physician, a Materialist, a loA^er of 
Nature, and a bitter foe to ignorance, intolerance, and 
superstition. The present system of Christian educa- 
tion fills your penitentiaries, your poorhouses, and the 
streets of your cities are SAvarming Avith the monstrosi- 
ties begotten of an Orthodox Christian Mythology'. 
I long for the time Avhen man, emancipated 
from the thraldom of Priests and Myths, shall be abje to 
conceive the sublimity of Nature's laAvs, and by living 
in accordance Avith them shall purify the people and the 
government; and that a philosophy so founded, practiced 
and taught, Avill produce a_ nation greater and nobler 
than any history makes mention of." 
The doctor Avas an influential citizen, Avhen he went, to 
tOAvn. I have seen conventions of people listen respect- 
fully Avhile he addressed them, and upon more than one 
occasion he was conspicuous in local history for the main- 
tenance of good order and the Avelfare of the community 
near Avhich he lived. He might have commanded seniors 
or Senators. Like Thoreau, he was a pioneer, but not 
necessarilv either eccentric or inscrutable. 
Charles L. Paige. 
CiiLIFORNIA. 
A Popttlaf Man, 
Dinwiddle — I wonder if I could induce the commodore, 
of your, yacht club to be the agent for my firm's .chaiti- 
pagne? ' ' 
Ottinger (confidently)— Don't bother about him. ■ Yoti' 
make me the agent for your chainpagne and. the club. will, 
make me commodore.— Puck's Library. _ 
