HIGHER LAWS. 
229 
the race, when the hunters are the 66 best men,” as the 
Algonquins called them. We cannot but pity the boy 
who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, 
while his education has been sadly neglected. This was 
my answer with respect to those youths who were bent 
on this pursuit, trusting that they would soon outgrow 
it. No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boy¬ 
hood, will wantonly murder any creature, which holds 
its life by the same tenure that he does. The hare in 
its extremity cries like a child. I warn you, mothers, 
that my sympathies do not always make the usual phil- 
anthropic distinctions. 
Such is oftenest the young man’s introduction to the 
forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes 
thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he 
has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes 
his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and 
leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. The mass of 
men are still and always young in this respect. In 
some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. 
Such a one might make a good shepherd’s dog, but is 
far from being the Good Shepherd. I have been sur¬ 
prised to consider that the only obvious employment, 
except wood-chopping, ice-cutting, or the like business, 
which ever to my knowledge detained at Walden Pond 
for a whole half day any of my fellow-citizens, whether 
fathers or children of the town, with just one exception, 
was fishing. Commonly they did not think that they 
were lucky, or well paid for their time, unless they got 
a long string of fish, though they had the opportunity 
of seeing the pond all the while. They might go there 
a thousand times before the sediment of fishing would 
sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure; but no 
