258 
■WALDEN. 
man the crow may carry back even the last seed of 
corn to the great corn-field of the Indian’s God in the 
south-west, whence he is said to have brought it; but 
the now almost exterminated ground-nut will perhaps 
revive and flourish in spite of frosts and wildness, prove 
itself indigenous, and resume its ancient importance 
and dignity as the diet of the hunter tribe. Some In¬ 
dian Ceres or Minerva must have been the inventor and 
bestower of it; and when the reign of poetry com¬ 
mences here, its leaves and string of nuts may be repre¬ 
sented on our works of art. 
Already, by the first of September, I had seen two 
or three small maples turned scarlet across the pond, 
beneath where the white stems of three aspens di¬ 
verged, at the point of a promontory, next the water. 
Ah, many a tale their color told ! And gradually from 
week to week the character of each tree came out, and 
it admired itself reflected in the smooth mirror of the 
lake. Each morning the manager of this gallery sub¬ 
stituted some new picture, distinguished by more bril¬ 
liant or harmonious coloring, for the old upon the walls. 
The wasps came by thousands to my lodge in Octo¬ 
ber, as to winter quarters, and settled on my windows 
within and on the walls over-head, sometimes deterring 
visitors from entering. Each morning, when they were 
numbed with cold, I swept some of them out, but I did 
not trouble myself much to get rid of them; I even felt 
complimented by their regarding my house as a desira¬ 
ble shelter. They never molested me seriously, though 
they bedded with me; and they gradually disappeared, 
into what crevices I do not know, avoiding winter and 
unspeakable cold. 
Like the wasps, before I finally went into winter 
