by contrast.  Being in this dreamy state, which the moonlight enhanced, I did not clearly discern the shore, but seemed, most of the time, to be floating through ornamental grounds,—­for I associated the fir-tops with such scenes;—­very high up some Broadway, and beneath or between their tops, I thought I saw an endless succession of porticos and columns, cornices and facades, verandas and churches.  I did not merely fancy this, but in my drowsy state such was the illusion.  I fairly lost myself in sleep several times, still dreaming of that architecture and the nobility that dwelt behind and might issue from it; but all at once I would be aroused and brought back to a sense of my actual position by the sound of Joe’s birch horn in the midst of all this silence calling the moose, ugh, ugh, oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo, and I prepared to hear a furious moose come rushing and crashing through the forest, and see him burst out on to the little strip of meadow by our side.

But, on more accounts than one, I had had enough of moose-hunting.  I had not come to the woods for this purpose, nor had I foreseen it, though I had been willing to learn how the Indian manoeuvred; but one moose killed was as good, if not as bad, as a dozen.  The afternoon’s tragedy, and my share in it, as it affected the innocence, destroyed the pleasure of my adventure.  It is true, I came as near as is possible to come to being a hunter and miss it, myself; and as it is, I think that I could spend a year in the woods, fishing and hunting, just enough to sustain myself, with satisfaction.  This would be next to living like a philosopher on the fruits of the earth which you had raised, which also attracts me.  But this hunting of the moose merely for the satisfaction of killing him,—­not even for the sake of his hide,—­without making any extraordinary exertion or running any risk yourself, is too much like going out by night to some wood-side pasture and shooting your neighbor’s horses.  These are God’s own horses, poor, timid creatures, that will run fast enough as soon as they smell you, though they are nine feet high.  Joe told us of some hunters who a year or two before had shot down several oxen by night, somewhere in the Maine woods, mistaking them for moose.  And so might any of the hunters; and what is the difference in the sport, but the name?  In the former case, having killed one of God’s and your own oxen, you strip off its hide,—­because that is the common trophy, and, moreover, you have heard that it may be sold for moccasins,—­cut a steak from its haunches, and leave the huge carcass to smell to heaven for you.  It is no better, at least, than to assist at a slaughter-house.