On the Road to Concord Available to Purchase

IT was unlikely that I should remember, even when in Boston, Massachusetts for the first time, that there was a pond called Walden, presumably near, and good for rod and line. Walden is a familiar name, but it suggests only some rare ideas—ideas so rare, you may retort, that they could not embody so much as an image of a pond. That may be so—I bear in mind my schoolmaster's comment on Thoreau. The comment was “all moonshine.” I defend myself with the suggestion that moonshine is all right. It is said that phases of it are so admired by everybody at times that they will swear it is plain daylight; they will go as far as to declare, of their particular lunar phase, that if you can't see things plainer by its light then you are probably a traitor or an atheist. We know that in our rough island story there was once a Hidden Hand, obvious enough by moonlight, but invisible by day. I am all for freedom in moonshine.