1G6 
WALDEN. 
I could not but notice some of the peculiarities of 
my visitors. Girls and boys and young women gen¬ 
erally seemed glad to be in the woods. They looked 
in the pond and at the flowers, and improved their 
time. Men of business, even farmers, thought only of 
solitude and employment, and of the great distance at 
which I dwelt from something or other; and though 
they said that they loved a ramble in the woods occa¬ 
sionally, it was obvious that they did not. Kestless 
committed men, whose time was all taken up in getting 
a living or keeping it; ministers who spoke of God as 
if they enjoyed a monopoly of the subject, who could 
not bear all kinds of opinions; doctors, lawyers, uneasy 
housekeepers who pried into my cupboard and bed 
when I was out, — how came Mrs.-to know that 
my sheets were not as clean as hers? — young men 
who had ceased to be young, and had concluded that 
it was safest to follow the beaten track of the profes¬ 
sions, — all these generally said that it was not possible 
to do so much good in my position. Ay! there was 
the rub. The old and infirm and the timid, of whatever 
age or sex, thought most of sickness, and sudden acci¬ 
dent and death; to them life seemed full of danger, —- 
what danger is there if you don’t think of any ? — and 
they thought that a prudent man would carefully select 
the safest position, where Dr. B. might be on hand at a 
moment’s warning. To them the village was literally 
a com-munity , a league for mutual defence, and you 
would suppose that they would not go a-huckleberrying 
without a medicine chest. The amount of it is, if a 
man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, 
though the danger must be allowed to be less in pro¬ 
portion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man 
