Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/143

Rh cove, Thoreau selected his site about forty yards from the water. He delighted to call himself a "squatter" on Emerson's land, for this nomadic term well suited his mood. In the early spring of 1845 he associated yet another friend with his enterprise by borrowing Alcott's axe to hew his timbers. He states, with grim humor and exactness mingled, that he returned the axe sharper than when he received it. Happily he spent his days, felling and shaping and joining his timbers, never too busy to note each sight and sound of nature, the scream of the Walden owl, the movements of the pouts in the water, and each night he returned to his home. At last the frame was completed, the cellar dug, the planks bought from an Irishman's shanty, and the famous little lodge, ten feet by fifteen, with its snug closet, garret, window, two doors and fireplace, was raised by the friendly assistance of Alcott, Hosmer, and George William Curtis, then an inmate of Hosmer's home and an apprentice on his farm. With graceful tribute to these friends, Thoreau wrote in "Walden";—"No man was ever more honored in the character of his raisers than I. They are destined, I trust, to assist at the raising of loftier structures one day." The necessary plain furniture, not forgetting the desk and small looking-glass, as well as the cooking