The pines still stand here older than I or, if some have fallen, I have cooked my supper with their stumps, and a new growth is rising all around, preparing another aspect for new infant eyes. And now to–night my flute has waked the echoes over that very water. It is one of the oldest scenes stamped on my memory. When I was four years old, as I well remember, I was brought from Boston to this my native town, through these very woods and this field, to the pond. But what right had I to oust johnswort and the rest, and break up their ancient herb garden? Soon, however, the remaining beans will be too tough for them, and go forward to meet new foes.

The last have nibbled for me a quarter of an acre clean. My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks. My auxiliaries are the dews and rains which water this dry soil, and what fertility is in the soil itself, which for the most part is lean and effete. What shall I learn of beans or beans of me? I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them and this is my day's work. This was my curious labor all summer-to make this portion of the earth's surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse. But why should I raise them? Only Heaven knows. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus.

I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. What was the meaning of this so steady and self–respecting, this small Herculean labor, I knew not. Meanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added together, was seven miles already planted, were impatient to be hoed, for the earliest had grown considerably before the latest were in the ground indeed they were not easily to be put off. You should visit Browse Happy and update your internet browser today! The embedded audio player requires a modern internet browser.

Walden life in the woods