trees, and married the whole clump with a perfectly inextricable knot of polygamy.  Once, while sheltering myself from a summer shower, the fancy had taken me to clamber up into this seemingly impervious mass of foliage.  The branches yielded me a passage, and closed again beneath, as if only a squirrel or a bird had passed.  Far aloft, around the stem of the central pine, behold a perfect nest for Robinson Crusoe or King Charles!  A hollow chamber of rare seclusion had been formed by the decay of some of the pine branches, which the vine had lovingly strangled with its embrace, burying them from the light of day in an aerial sepulchre of its own leaves.  It cost me but little ingenuity to enlarge the interior, and open loopholes through the verdant walls.  Had it ever been my fortune to spend a honeymoon, I should have thought seriously of inviting my bride up thither, where our next neighbors would have been two orioles in another part of the clump.

It was an admirable place to make verses, tuning the rhythm to the breezy symphony that so often stirred among the vine leaves; or to meditate an essay for “The Dial,” in which the many tongues of Nature whispered mysteries, and seemed to ask only a little stronger puff of wind to speak out the solution of its riddle.  Being so pervious to air-currents, it was just the nook, too, for the enjoyment of a cigar.  This hermitage was my one exclusive possession while I counted myself a brother of the socialists.  It symbolized my individuality, and aided me in keeping it inviolate.  None ever found me out in it, except, once, a squirrel.  I brought thither no guest, because, after Hollingsworth failed me, there was no longer the man alive with whom I could think of sharing all.  So there I used to sit, owl-like, yet not without liberal and hospitable thoughts.  I counted the innumerable clusters of my vine, and fore-reckoned the abundance of my vintage.  It gladdened me to anticipate the surprise of the Community, when, like an allegorical figure of rich October, I should make my appearance, with shoulders bent beneath the burden of ripe grapes, and some of the crushed ones crimsoning my brow as with a bloodstain.

Ascending into this natural turret, I peeped in turn out of several of its small windows.  The pine-tree, being ancient, rose high above the rest of the wood, which was of comparatively recent growth.  Even where I sat, about midway between the root and the topmost bough, my position was lofty enough to serve as an observatory, not for starry investigations, but for those sublunary matters in which lay a lore as infinite as that of the planets.  Through one loophole I saw the river lapsing calmly onward, while in the meadow, near its brink, a few of the brethren were digging peat for our winter’s fuel.  On the interior cart-road of our farm I discerned Hollingsworth, with a yoke of oxen hitched to a drag of stones, that were to be piled into a fence, on which we employed ourselves at the odd intervals of other labor.  The harsh tones of his voice, shouting to the sluggish steers, made me sensible, even at such a distance, that he was ill at ease, and that the balked philanthropist had the battle-spirit in his heart.