shire-town and the direct trade-mart for farmers and lumbermen en route from New Hampshire to Boston. Through Concord passed stages for Boston, Lowell and Framingham; the four taverns were well patronized in those earlier decades when toddy was a symbol of hospitality not of inebriety. With extremes of heat and cold, lacking the luxuries of modern houses, the people developed that sturdy, self-reliant endurance which characterized the best New England communities. If the sheets froze about their faces on cold nights, as Thoreau related, and a drop of water from the pitcher at once congealed upon the floor, yet they possessed that vigor of body and soul which is fostered by hardihood, not indulgence. Around the wide fireplace, they gathered with zest for leisurely, earnest conversation, when the evening came, a happiness too little known in these later days of over-heated houses and hurried gossip of the hour.
The old-time farms, with their hospitable inmates, the Arcadian homesteads of the Minotts, the Barretts, the Hosmers, formed the nucleus of Thoreau's domestic pictures. During his encampment at Walden, he visited his farmer-friends almost every day or lingered at the few village homes where he was most welcome. With a touch of keen insight, mixed with humor, he describes, in "Walden," the typical
