212 
WALDEN. 
Moreover, tlie waves, I suspect, do not so much con¬ 
struct as wear down a material which has already ac¬ 
quired consistency. They preserve their form when 
dry for an indefinite period. 
Flmts 9 Pond! Such is the poverty of our nomencla¬ 
ture. What right had the unclean and stupid farmer, 
whose farm abutted on this sky water, whose shores he 
has ruthlessly laid bare, to give his name to it ? Some 
skin-flint, who loved better the reflecting surface of a 
dollar, or a bright cent, in which he could see his own 
brazen face; who regarded even the wild ducks which 
settled in it as trespassers; his fingers grown into crook¬ 
ed and horny talons from the long habit of grasping har¬ 
py-like ; — so it is not named for me. I go not there to 
see him nor to hear of him; who never saw it, who nev¬ 
er bathed in it, who never loved it, who never pro¬ 
tected it, who never spoke a good word for it, nor 
thanked God that he had made it. Rather let it be 
named from the fishes that swim in it, the wild fowl or 
quadrupeds which frequent it, the wild flowers which 
grow by its shores, or some wild man or child the thread 
of whose history is interwoven with its own; not from 
him who could show no title to it but the deed which a 
like-minded neighbor or legislature gave him,—-him 
who thought only of its money value; whose presence 
perchance cursed all the shore; who exhausted the land 
around it, and would fain have exhausted the waters 
within it; who regretted only that it was not English hay 
or cranberry meadow, — there was nothing to redeem it, 
forsooth, in his eyes, — and would have drained and sold 
it for the mud at its bottom. It did not turn his mill, 
and it was no privilege to him to behold it. I respect 
not his labors, his farm where every thing has its price; 
