Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/181

Rh of senses, mind and soul with nature. Very explicit are the directions for equipment for a long journey on foot, "the cheapest way to travel and the way to travel the farthest in the shortest distance." For paraphernalia one needs an umbrella, (he drolly recalls that he was once taken for an umbrella mender) a dipper, a spoon, a fish-line, some Indian meal, some salt, and some sugar. Lacking the amenities of modern outing garb, which perhaps he would have rejected had they then been in vogue, he urges the use of old clothes for journey-wear. The traveler in his fine clothes is treated as guest, not friend. "Instead of going in quietly and sitting by the kitchen fire, he would be shown into a cold parlor, there to confront a fire-board and excite a commotion in the whole family. The women would scatter at his approach, and the husbands and sons would go right off to hunt up their black coats, for they all have them."

"Wild Apples" which appeared in the Atlantic for November, 1862, was another successful lecture. A Concord schoolboy recorded that this lecture made the audience laugh at first, but "it was the best lecture of the season, and at its close there was long, continued applause." Thoreau's wide knowledge of poetry, mythology, and horticulture, enabled him to recount with grace and rare interest