122 
WALDEN. 
hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, 
in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed 
bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, 
rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and 
sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while 
the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the 
house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, 
or the noise of some traveller’s wagon on the distant 
highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew 
in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were 
far better than any work of the hands would have 
been. They were not time subtracted from my life, 
but so much over and above my usual allowance. I 
realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and 
the forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded 
not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to 
light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now 
it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. 
Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my 
incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, 
sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my 
chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out 
of my nest. My days were not days of the week, 
bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they 
minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; 
for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said 
that “ for yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow they have 
only one word, and they express the variety of mean¬ 
ing by pointing backward for yesterday, forward for to¬ 
morrow, and overhead for the passing day.” This was 
sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if 
the birds and flowers had tried me by their stan¬ 
dard, I should not have been found wanting. A man 
