I approached them, two mornings afterward, from the opposite side,
where, finding no other place of entrance, I climbed a six-barred,
tightly locked gate--feeling all the while like "a thief and a
robber"--in front of a deserted cabin. Then I had only to cross a grassy
field, in which meadow larks were singing, and I was in the woods. I
wandered through them without finding anything more unusual or
interesting than summer tanagers and yellow-throated warblers, which
were in song there, as they were in every such place, and after a while
came out into a pleasant glade, from which different parts of the
plantation could be seen, and through which ran a plantation road. Here
was a wooden fence,--a most unusual thing,--and I lost no time in
mounting it, to rest and look about me. It is one of the marks of a true
Yankee, I suspect, to like such a perch. My own weakness in that
direction is a frequent subject of mirth with chance fellow travelers.
The attitude is comfortable and conducive to meditation; and now that I
was seated and at my ease, I felt that this was one of the New England
luxuries which, almost without knowing it, I had missed ever since I
left home.
Of my meditations on this particular occasion I remember nothing; but
that is no sign they were valueless; as it is no sign that yesterday's
dinner did me no good because I have forgotten what it was. In the
latter case, indeed, and perhaps in the former as well, it would seem
more reasonable to draw an exactly opposite inference.
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