altogether admirable and shining family had settled there in that
part of the land called Concord, unknown to me--to whom the sun
was servant--who had not gone into society in the village--who
had not been called on. I saw their park, their pleasure-ground,
beyond through the wood, in Spaulding's cranberry-meadow. The
pines furnished them with gables as they grew. Their house was
not obvious to vision; the trees grew through it. I do not know
whether I heard the sounds of a suppressed hilarity or not. They
seemed to recline on the sunbeams. They have sons and daughters.
They are quite well. The farmer's cart-path, which leads directly
through their hall, does not in the least put them out, as the
muddy bottom of a pool is sometimes seen through the reflected
skies. They never heard of Spaulding, and do not know that he is
their neighbor--notwithstanding I heard him whistle as he drove
his team through the house. Nothing can equal the serenity of
their lives. Their coat-of-arms is simply a lichen. I saw it
painted on the pines and oaks. Their attics were in the tops of
the trees. They are of no politics. There was no noise of labor.
I did not perceive that they were weaving or spinning. Yet I did
detect, when the wind lulled and hearing was done away, the
finest imaginable sweet musical hum,--as of a distant hive in
May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking. They had no
idle thoughts, and no one without could see their work, for their
industry was not as in knots and excrescences embayed.

But I find it difficult to remember them. They fade irrevocably
out of my mind even now while I speak, and endeavor to recall
them and recollect myself. It is only after a long and serious
effort to recollect my best thoughts that I become again aware of
their cohabitancy. If it were not for such families as this, I