Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/149

Rh the soil favored this commodity. In tribute of memory, he wrote,—"I came to love my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the soil, and so I got strength like Antæus." Here spoke the poetic, well-rounded workman, who knew the glory of true work! He had close rivals in the woodchucks who "nibbled for me a quarter of an acre clean." He maintained, however, as did Lowell of birds in "My Garden Acquaintance," that the transgressors had prior rights of residence. Though he caught one in a trap, and confined him for a few hours, he refused to concur in any sentence more severe than transportation two miles away and a reprimand, accentuated by a stick; so the woodchuck departed in quest of pastures new. Thoreau was often amused at the comments heard from the roadway, as travelers passed in gigs, "with elbows on knees and reins hanging loosely in festoons." "Does he live there?" asks the black bonnet of the gray coat; "and the hard-featured farmer reins up his grateful dobbin to inquire what you are doing when he sees no manure in the furrow, and recommends a little chip dirt, or any little waste stuff, or it may be, ashes or plaster." What a vivid silhouette! Occasionally, he gave variety to his diet by a catch of fish from Walden or Flint Pond.