Walden

substantial shelter about me, I had made some progress toward settling
in the world. This frame, so slightly clad, was a sort of
crystallization around me, and reacted on the builder. It was
suggestive somewhat as a picture in outlines. I did not need to go
outdoors to take the air, for the atmosphere within had lost none of
its freshness. It was not so much within doors as behind a door where I
sat, even in the rainiest weather. The Harivansa says, “An abode
without birds is like a meat without seasoning.” Such was not my abode,
for I found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds; not by having
imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them. I was not only
nearer to some of those which commonly frequent the garden and the
orchard, but to those wilder and more thrilling songsters of the forest
which never, or rarely, serenade a villager,—the wood-thrush, the
veery, the scarlet tanager, the field-sparrow, the whippoorwill, and
many others.

I was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and a half
south of the village of Concord and somewhat higher than it, in the
midst of an extensive wood between that town and Lincoln, and about two
miles south of that our only field known to fame, Concord Battle