148 
WALDEN. 
value for each other. We meet at meals three times a 
day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty 
cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain 
set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this 
frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come 
to open war. We meet at the post-office, and at the 
sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live 
thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one 
another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for 
one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice 
for all important and hearty communications. Con¬ 
sider the girls in a factory, — never alone, hardly in their 
dreams. It would be better if there were but one in¬ 
habitant to a square mile, as where I live. The value 
of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him. 
I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying 
of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose 
loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with 
which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagina¬ 
tion surrounded him, and which he believed to be real. 
So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, 
we may be continually cheered by a like but more nor¬ 
mal and natural society, and come to know that we are 
never alone. 
I have a great deal of company in my house; es¬ 
pecially in the morning, when nobody calls. Let me 
suggest a few comparisons, that some one may convey 
an idea of my situation. I am no more lonely than the 
loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden 
Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake, I 
pray ? And yet it has not the blue devils, but the blue 
angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters. The sun is 
alone, except in thick weather, when there sometimes 
