Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/27

 he 'may see something.' If the Indian and the bear are exterminated, the partridge and the rabbit are left."

In contrast with the poetry and philosophy of this young stoic, we find in the manuscript this legend:

"I have been told (a tradition in our family) that when my grandmother with her second husband, the Captain [Minott], first went into Kearsarge Gore in her chaise,—where, by the way, the inhabitants had baked a pig in expectation of their coming, which, as they did not come immediately, was kept baking for three days,—her chaise so frightened the geese in the road that they actually rose and flew half a mile. And the sheep all ran over the hills, with the pigs after them; and some of the horses they met broke their tackling or threw their riders; so that they had to put their chaise down several times to save life. When they drove up to the meeting-house, snap, snap, went the bridles of several of the horses that were tied there, and they scattered without a benediction. Though it was in the middle of sermon-time, the whole congregation rushed [xix]