Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/458

 432 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [I860,

shorter and shorter, and, at each expiration, some of their wits leave them, till, when they reach the pinnacle, they are so light-headed as to be fit only to show how the wind sits. I sus pect that Emerson s criticism called &quot;Monad- noc &quot; was inspired, not by remembering the in habitants of New Hampshire as they are in the valleys, so much as by meeting some of them on the mountain top.

After several nights experience, Channing came to the conclusion that he was &quot; lying out doors,&quot; and inquired what was the largest beast that might nibble his legs there. I fear that he did not improve all the night, as he might have done, to sleep. I had asked him to go and spend a week there. We spent five nights, being gone six days, for C. suggested that six working days made a week, and I saw that he was ready to decamp. However, he found his account in it as well as I.

We were seen to go up in the rain, grim and silent, like two genii of the storm, by Fassett s men or boys ; but we were never identified after ward, though we were the subject of some con versation which we overheard. Five hundred persons at least came on to the mountain while we were there, but not one found our camp. We saw one party of three ladies and two gentlemen spread their blankets and spend the night on the