He was simple in his habits, and fond of being out of doors, but not--after his college days--as a sportsman. While living beside the Concord, he rowed frequently, with a dreamy devotion to the pastime, and was fond of fishing; swimming, too, he enjoyed. But his chief exercise was walking; he had a vast capacity for it, and was, I think, never even seen upon horseback. At Brook Farm he "belabored the rugged furrows" with a will; and at the Old Manse he presided over his garden in a paradisiacal sort of way. Books in every form he was always eager for, sometimes, as has been reported, satisfying himself with an old almanac or newspaper, over which he would brood as deeply as over richly stored volumes of classic literature. At other times he was fastidious in his choice, and threw aside many books before he found the right one for the hour. [Footnote: He would attach himself to a book or a poem apparently by some law perceptible only to himself, perhaps often giving an interest by his own genius. A poem On Solitude, in Dryden's Miscellany, was at one time a special favorite with him. It begins:-- "O Solitude, my sweetest choice, Places devoted to the Night, Remote from Tumult and from Noise, How you my restless thoughts delight!" And the last stanza has these lines:-- "O, how I solitude adore, That element of noblest wit, Where I have learned Apollo's lore, Without the pains to study it."] An impression has been set afloat that he cared nothing for books in themselves, but this is incorrect. He never had the means to accumulate a library of any size, but he had a passion for books. "There yet lingers with me a superstitious reverence for literature of all kinds," he writes in "The Old Manse." "A bound volume has a charm in my eyes similar to what scraps of manuscript possess for the good Mussulman; ... every new book or antique one may contain the 'open sesame,'--the spell to disclose treasures hidden in some unsuspected cave of Truth." When he lived at the Wayside, and would occasionally bring home a small package of books from Boston, these furnished him fresh pleasure for many days. He would carry some favorite of them with him everywhere, from room to room or to his hill-top. He was, as we have seen, a cordial admirer of other writers, seldom vexing himself with a critical review of their merits and defects, but applying to them instead the test of his own catholic capacity for enjoyment. The deliberate tone in which he judges his own works, in his letters, shows how little his mind was impressed by the greatness of their fame and of the genius found in them. There could not have been a more modest author, though he did not weakly underrate his work. "Recognition," he once said to Mr. Howells, "makes a man very modest."