Page:Autumn. From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/149

Rh to call it avarice or penury, this childlike delight in finding something in the woods or fields, and carrying it home in the October evening, as a trophy to be added to his winter's stores. Oh, no, he was happy to be nature's pensioner still, and bird-like to pick up his living. Better his robin than your turkey, his shoes full of apples than your barrels full. They will be sweeter, and suggest a better tale. He can afford to tell how he got them, and I to listen. There is an old wife, too, at home, to share them, and hear how they were obtained; like an old squirrel shuffling to his hole with a nut. Far less pleasing to me the loaded wain, more suggestive of avarice and of spiritual penury. This old man's cheeriness was worth a thousand of the church's sacraments and memento moris. It was better than a prayerful mood. It proves to me old age as tolerable, as happy, as infancy. I was glad of an occasion to suspect that this afternoon he had not been at work, but living somewhat after my own fashion (though he did not explain the axe), and been out to see what nature had for him, and was now hastening home to a burrow he knew of, where he could warm his old feet. If he had been a young man he would probably have thrown away his apples, and put on his shoes for shame when he saw me coming, but old age is manlier. It has