wagon and some farm implements. Near this there was a large, compact
tent, made entirely of cornstalks, with, for door, a bundle of the
same, in the dry, warm, nest-like interior of which the husking of the
corn crop seemed to have taken place. A few rods farther on, we passed
through another humble dooryard, musical with dogs and dusky with
children. We crossed here the outlying fields of a large, thrifty,
well-kept-looking farm with a showy, highly ornamental frame house in
the centre. There was even a park with deer, and among the gayly
painted outbuildings I noticed a fancy dovecote, with an immense flock
of doves circling aboxe it; some whiskey-dealer from the city, we were
told, trying to take the poison out of his money by agriculture.

We next passed through some woods, when we emerged into a broad,
sunlit, fertile-looking valley, called Oxen Run. We stooped down and
drank of its clear white-pebbled stream, in the veritable spot, I
suspect, where the oxen do. There were clouds of birds here on the warm
slopes, with the usual sprinkling along the bushy margin of the stream
of scarlet grosbeaks. The valley of Oxen Run has many good-looking
farms, with old picturesque houses, and loose rambling barns, such as
artists love to put into pictures.

But it is a little awkward to go east. It always seems left-handed. I
think this is the feeling of all walkers, and that Thoreau's experience
in this respect was not singular. The great magnet is the sun, and we
follow him. I notice that people lost in the woods work to the
westward. When one comes out of his house and asks himself, "Which way
shall I walk?" and looks up and down and around for a sign or a token,
does he not nine times out of ten turn to the west? He inclines this
way as surely as the willow wand bends toward the water. There is
something more genial and friendly in this direction.