The railroad from Bangor to Oldtown is civilization shooting off in a tangent into the forest. I had much conversation with an old Indian at the latter place, who sat dreaming upon a scow at the waterside and striking his deer-skin moccasins against the planks, while his 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 MORNING _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 'twas 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, For Zephyr rustled past with leafy tread, And heedlessly with one heel grazed my head. My eyelids opened on a field of blue, For close above a nodding violet grew; A part of heaven it seemed, which one could scent, Its blue commingling with the firmament. WALDEN _June 3._ True, our converse a stranger is to speech; Only the practiced ear can catch the surging words That break and die upon thy pebbled lips. Thy flow of thought is noiseless as the lapse of thy own waters, Wafted as is the morning mist up from thy surface, So that the passive Soul doth breathe it in, And is infected with the truth thou wouldst express.