Page:Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906) v7.djvu/127

1838] arms hung listlessly by his side. He was the most communicative man I had met. Talked of hunting and fishing, old times and new times. Pointing up the Penobscot, he observed, "Two or three mile up the river one beautiful country!" and then, as if he would come as far to meet me as I had gone to meet him, he exclaimed, "Ugh! one very hard time!" But he had mistaken his man.

May 11. Bangor to Belfast via Saturday Cove.

May 12. Belfast.

May 13. To Castine by sailboat "Cinderilla [sic]."

May 14. Castine to Belfast by packet, Captain Skinner. Found the Poems of Burns and an odd volume of the "Spectator" in the cabin.

May 15. Belfast to Bath via Thomaston.

May 16. To Portland.

May 17. To Boston and Concord.

May 21.

The school-boy loitered on his way to school,

Scorning to live so rare a day by rule.

So mild the air a pleasure 't was to breathe,

For what seems heaven above was earth beneath.

Soured neighbors chatted by the garden pale,

Nor quarrelled who should drive the needed nail;

The most unsocial made new friends that day,

As when the sun shines husbandmen make hay.

How long I slept I know not, but at last

I felt my consciousness returning fast,