Walden | Page 9

are some who complain most
energetically and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they say, doing their duty. I
also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all,
who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have
forged their own golden or silver fetters.
If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to spend my life in years past, it would
probably surprise those of my readers who are somewhat acquainted with its actual
history; it would certainly astonish those who know nothing about it. I will only hint at
some of the enterprises which I have cherished.
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick
of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past

and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. You will pardon some
obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men's, and yet not
voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know
about it, and never paint "No Admittance" on my gate.
I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle dove, and am still on their trail. Many
are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls
they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the
horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to
recover them as if they had lost them themselves.
To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible, Nature herself! How
many mornings, summer and winter, before yet any neighbor was stirring about his
business, have I been about mine! No doubt, many of my townsmen have met me
returning from this enterprise, farmers starting for Boston in the twilight, or
woodchoppers going to their work. It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his
rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.
So many autumn, ay, and winter days, spent outside the town, trying to hear what was in
the wind, to hear and carry it express! I well-nigh sunk all my capital in it, and lost my
own breath into the bargain, running in the face of it. If it had concerned either of the
political parties, depend upon it, it would have appeared in the Gazette with the earliest
intelligence. At other times watching from the observatory of some cliff or tree, to
telegraph any new arrival; or waiting at evening on the hill-tops for the sky to fall, that I
might catch something, though I never caught much, and that, manna-wise, would
dissolve again in the sun.
For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, whose editor has
never yet seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too common with
writers, I got only my labor for my pains. However, in this case my pains were their own
reward.
For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms, and did
my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot
routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the
public heel had testified to their utility.
I have looked after the wild stock of the town, which give a faithful herdsman a good deal
of trouble by leaping fences; and I have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners
of the farm; though I did not always know whether Jonas or Solomon worked in a
particular field to-day; that was none of my business. I have watered the red huckleberry,
the sand cherry and the nettle-tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the
yellow violet, which might have withered else in dry seasons.
In short, I went on thus for a long time (I may say it without boasting), faithfully minding
my business, till it became more and more evident that my townsmen would not after all
admit me into the list of town officers, nor make my place a sinecure with a moderate

allowance. My accounts, which I can swear to have kept faithfully, I have, indeed, never
got audited, still less accepted, still less paid and settled. However, I have not set my
heart on that.
Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known
lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you wish to