356 
WALDEN. 
locust will next come out of the ground? The gov¬ 
ernment of the world I live in was not framed, like 
that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the 
wine. 
The life in us is like the water in the river. It may 
rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and 
flood the parched uplands ; even this may be the event¬ 
ful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was 
not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland 
the banks which the stream anciently washed, before 
science began to record its freshets. Every one has 
heard the story which has gone the rounds of New 
England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out 
of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which 
had stood in a farmer’s kitchen for sixty years, first in 
Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts, —from an 
egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still, 
as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; 
which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched 
perchance by the heat of an urn. Who does not feel his 
faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened by 
hearing of this ? Who knows what beautiful and 
winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages un¬ 
der many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead 
dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of 
the green and living tree, which has been gradually con¬ 
verted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb, — 
heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the as¬ 
tonished family of man, as they sat round the festive 
board, — may unexpectedly come forth from amidst so¬ 
ciety’s most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its 
perfect summer life at last! 
