Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/28

10 and Brister's Hill, the reader of Thoreau notes the varieties of willows, pines, and maple keys, listens to the notes of veery, bluebird, or pewee, or watches a gay chipmunk in his gallop over the trees. Hickories and pines still form close barricade around the little lake of Walden, though the woods are more sparse than when Thoreau threaded their mazes. Sundry footpaths all verge towards the cairn, witnessing its thousand yearly visitors. A hundred rods away, the modern pavilions of a pleasure park have detracted from the beauty and sacred peace of this nature-shrine.

Such are some of the scenes visited by pilgrims, not because Concord contains rare historical monuments alone, nor yet in memory of her sage and romancer, but because they have been immortalized, "covered with suitable inscriptions," by the hand of Thoreau. As naturalist, he has revealed the hidden secrets of flora, wood-fibre, and bird-life throughout the Concord region with a completeness and poetry unsurpassed. As man, he found pleasure in the free, agrarian life of his birth-town and it is fitting to recall briefly the social and political environment. Concord of to-day is about twice as large in population as the village of Thoreau's records. In active life, however, it is hardly less somnolent than fifty years ago, for it was then the