THE PONDS. 
189 
Occasionally, after my hoeing was done for the day, I 
joined some impatient companion who had been fish¬ 
ing on the pond since morning, as silent and motion¬ 
less as a duck or a floating leaf, and, after practising 
various kinds of philosophy, had concluded commonly, 
by the time I arrived, that he belonged to the ancient 
sect of Coenobites. There was one older man, an ex¬ 
cellent fisher and skilled in all kinds of woodcraft, 
who was pleased to look upon my house as a building 
erected for the convenience of fishermen; and I was 
equally pleased when he sat in my doorway to arrange 
his lines. Once in a while we sat together on the pond, 
he at one end of the boat, and I at the other; but not 
many words passed between us, for he had grown deaf 
in his later years, but he occasionally hummed a psalm, 
which harmonized well enough with my philosophy. 
Our intercourse was thus altogether one of unbroken 
harmony, far more pleasing to remember than if it had 
been carried on by speech. When, as was commonly 
the case, I had none to commune with, I used to raise 
the echoes by striking with a paddle on the side of my 
boat, filling the surrounding woods with circling and di¬ 
lating sound, stirring them up as the keeper of a mena¬ 
gerie his wild beasts, until I elicited a growl from every 
wooded vale and hill-side. 
In warm evenings I frequently sat in the boat play¬ 
ing the flute, and saw the perch, which I seemed to 
have charmed, hovering around me, and the moon travel¬ 
ling over the ribbed bottom, which was strewed with the 
wrecks of the forest. Formerly I had come to this 
pond adventurously, from time to time, in dark summer 
nights, with a companion, and making a fire close to the 
water’s edge, which we thought attracted the fishes, we 
