Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/373

Rh 9 Up river to Fair Haven Pond. Met on the river,  fishing, wearing an old coat much patched with many colors. He represents the Indian still. The very patches on his coat and his improvident life do so. I feel that he is as essential a part, nevertheless, of our community as the lawyer in the village. He tells me that he caught three pickerel here the other day that weighed seven pounds all together. It is the old story. The fisherman is a natural story-teller. No man's imagination plays more pranks than his, while he is tending his reels, and trotting from one to another, or watching his cork in summer. He is ever waiting for the sky to fall. He has sent out a venture. He has a ticket in the lottery of fate, and who knows what it may draw. He ever expects to catch a bigger fish yet. He is the most patient and believing of men. Who else will stand so long in wet places? When the hay-maker runs to shelter, he takes down his pole, and bends his steps to the river, glad to have a leisure day. He is more like an inhabitant of nature.

Men tell about the mirage to be seen in certain deserts, and in peculiar states of the atmosphere. The mirage is constant. The state of the atmosphere is continually varying, and to a keen observer objects do not twice present exactly the same appearance. If I invert my head