He knew the best places to find huckleberries and blackberries
and chestnuts and lilies and cardinal and other rare flowers.
We used to call him Trainer Thoreau, because the boys called
the soldiers the "trainers," and he had a long, measured stride
and an erect carriage which made him seem something like a
soldier, although he was short and rather ungainly in figure.
He had a curved nose which reminded one a little of the beak
of a parrot.
His real name was David Henry Thoreau, although he changed
the order of his first two names afterward. He was a great
finder of Indian arrow-heads, spear-heads, pestles, and other
stone implements which the Indians had left behind them, of
which there was great abundance in the Concord fields and
meadows.
He knew the rare forest birds and all the ways of birds and
wild animals. Naturalists commonly know birds and beasts
and wild flowers as a surgeon who has dissected the human
body, or perhaps sometimes a painter who has made pictures
of them knows men and women. But he knew birds and beasts
as one boy knows another--all their delightful little habits
and fashions.
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