Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/113

Rh, we spoke an American privateer, the General Lincoln, Captain Barnes. If the above-mentioned incident occurred at sea, it was probably on this occasion.

June 11, 1855. When I would go a-visiting, I find that I go off the fashionable street (not being inclined to change my dress) to where man meets man, and not polished shoe meets shoe.

What if we feel a yearning to which no breast answers. I walk alone. My heart is full. Feelings impede the current of my thoughts. I knock on the earth for my friend. I expect to meet him at every turn, but no friend appears, and perhaps none is dreaming of me. I am tired of frivolous society in which silence is forever the most natural and the best manners. I would fain walk on the deep waters, but my companions will only walk on shallows and puddles. I am naturally silent in the midst of twenty persons, from day to day, from year to year. I am rarely reminded of their presence One complains that I do not take his jokes. I took them before he had done uttering them, and went my way. One talks to me of his apples and pears, and I depart with my secret untold. His are not the apples that tempt me.

June 11, 1856. To Flint's Pond. It is very hot this, and that peculiar stillness which belongs to summer noons now reigns in