Page:Thoreau - As remembered by a young friend.djvu/172

 when I am in the woods I sometimes sing.” She asked him to sing to the family. He answered, “Oh, I fear if I do I shall take the roof of the house off.” His hostess urged him, and sat down to play the accompaniment, and he sang his favorite “Tom Bowling” with spirit and feeling, giving the full sentiment of the verses.

Alcott and George William Curtis were both visiting Mr. Ricketson, and interesting discourse had gone on at the dinner, Thoreau talking very well. After dinner, Alcott and Curtis went with Mr. Ricketson to his “Shanty” for serious talk, but the others went into the parlor to consult some bird book. Mrs. Ricketson, playing at her piano, struck into “The Campbells are Coming.” Thoreau put down his book and began to dance — a sylvan dance, as of a faun among rocks and bushes in a sort of labyrinthine fashion, now leaping over obstacles, then advancing with stately strides, returning in curves, then coming back in leaps. Alcott, coming in, stood thunderstruck to see “Thoreau acting his feelings in motion” as he called it. Alcott did not have that kind of feelings.

Page 96, note 1. The fishman, in those days, proclaimed his advent by blasts on a long tin horn, as he drove his covered wagon through the country roads. Only towns near the seashore had fishmarkets.

Page 97, note 1. The pickerel of Walden, now nearly, if not quite, extinct, who lived in that