They sang at intervals throughout the night, and were again as musical as ever just before and about dawn.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, and to see if I could not learn what life had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to drive life into a corner, and, if it proved to be mean, to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or, if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it.

CLASS ACTIVITIES

1. Which of the four parts of this narrative interested you most? Explain your interest.

2. Read aloud your list of the experiences which Thoreau enjoyed most (see p. 43).

3. Read aloud the part of the selection in which Thoreau gives his reason for wishing to live in the woods.

4. Wagner, in "The Roof-Tree," in Book One, p. 25, says that a dwellingplace reveals the character of the inmates. What does the dwelling Thoreau built for himself at Walden Pond tell us about him? Write four adjectives which express your idea of him and be able to read sentences or paragraphs in the selection which justify each of your adjectives.

5. Why does Thoreau tell about his expenses and his income in such detail?

6. Explain: "I made no haste in my work, but rather made the most out of it."

7. Which of the birds mentioned by Thoreau do you know? Are all the birds mentioned by hin included in the selections on birds in Book One, pp. 248-255?

8. Volunteer work: Have you ever lived or camped in the woods? If so, write a short composition describing your most amusing or most exciting experience.

ADDITIONAL READINGS.-I. "Winter Rambles in Thoreau's Country," H. W. Gleason, in National Geographic Magazine, 37: 165–180. 2. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, H. D. Thoreau. 3. The Maine Woods, H. D. Thoreau. 4. Cape Cod, H. D. Thoreau. 5. Fisherman's Luck, Henry van Dyke. 6. "The Woods of Maine," D. L. Sharp, in Harper's Magazine, 145 185-196.

6. A FIGHT WITH AN OCTOPUS

VICTOR MARIE HUGO

Gilliatt, the hero of The Toilers of the Sea, from which this story is taken, has gone to save a valuable engine from a wrecked ship which lies between two gigantic rocks far from an inhabited shore. Here, unaided and alone, he overcomes cold, hunger, thirst, wave, wind, and hurricane.

The tempest had lasted nearly twenty hours. Now that the struggle was over Gilliatt perceived that he was weary. Dropping down in the boat, he fell asleep. When he awoke, hours later, he was hungry. Having no more food, he began to prowl among the rocks in search of crawfish and clams. He held his knife open in his hand and, from time to time, tore off a shellfish from under the seaweed, eating as he walked.

Just as Gilliatt was making up his mind to resign himself to these small creatures, there was a splash at his feet. A large crab, frightened by his approach, had just dropped into the water. The crab did not sink so deeply that Gilliatt lost sight of it. Gilliatt set out on a run after the crab along the base of the reef. The crab sought to escape. Suddenly, it was no longer in sight; it had hidden in some crevice under the rock.

Clinging to the projections of this rock, Gilliatt thrust his head forward to look under the overhanging cliff. Here he saw a cavity in which the crab must have taken refuge. The cavity was something more than a crevice: it was a sort of porch.

The sea entered beneath this porch, but the water was not deep. The bottom was visible, covered with stones. These stones were smooth and clothed with seaweed, which indicated that they were never dry. They resembled the tops of children's heads covered with green hair. Holding his knife in his teeth Gilliatt climbed down with his hands and feet from the top of the cliff, and leaped into the water. It reached almost to his shoulders.

Passing under the porch, Gilliatt entered a much-worn corridor in the form of a rude pointed arch overhead. The walls were smooth and polished. He no longer saw the crab. Keeping his

foothold, he advanced through the diminishing light. He began to be unable to distinguish objects.

After about fifteen paces, the wall above him came to an end. He was out of the corridor. He had here more space, consequently, more light; besides, the pupils of his eyes were now dilated; he saw with tolerable clearness.

As his eyes became accustomed to the place, he was astounded to find an extraordinary palace of shadows, with pillars, purple and blood-like, with jewel-like vegetation, and at the end a stone which was almost an altar.

Nearer the opening to the cavern, he noticed a horizontal fissure in the granite over the level of the water. The crab was probably there. He thrust in his hand as far as he could reach and began to grope in this hole of shadows.

All at once he felt himself seized by the arm.

What he felt that moment was indescribable horror.

Something thin, rough, flat, slimy, and living had just wound itself round his bare arm in the dark. It crept toward his breast. It was like the pressure of a leather thong and the thrust of a gimlet. In less than a second an indescribable spiral form had passed around his wrist and his elbow, and reached to his shoulder. The point burrowed under his armpit.

Gilliatt threw himself back, but could hardly move. He was as though nailed to the spot. With his left hand, which remained free, he took his knife from between his teeth, and, holding the knife with his hand, braced himself against the rock, in a desperate effort to withdraw his arm. He succeeded in disturbing the ligature only a little; it then resumed its pressure. As supple as leather, it was also as solid as steel, as cold as night.

A second thong, narrow and pointed, issued from the crevice of the rock. It was like a tongue from the jaws of a monster. It licked Gilliatt's naked form in a terrible fashion, and suddenly stretching out, immensely long and slender, applied itself to his skin and surrounded his whole body. At the same time unheardof suffering, comparable to nothing he had previously known, swelled Gilliatt's contracted muscles. He felt in his skin round and horrible perforations; it seemed to him that innumerable lips were fastened to his flesh and were seeking to drink his blood.

A third thong undulated outside the rock, felt of Gilliatt, and, lashing his sides like a cord, fixed itself there.

Anguish is mute when at its highest point. Gilliatt did not utter a cry. There was light enough for him to see the repulsive forms adhering to him.

A fourth ligature, as swift as a dart, leaped toward his stomach and rolled itself around his waist.

Gilliatt found it impossible either to tear or to cut away these slimy thongs, which adhered closely to his body by a number of points. Each point was the seat of frightful and peculiar pain, similar to what one experiences if he were being swallowed simultaneously by a throng of mouths which were too small.

A fifth prolongation leaped from the hole. It fell upon the others, and folded over Gilliatt's chest. Compression was added to the horror; Gilliatt could hardly breathe.

These thongs, pointed at their extremity, spread out gradually like the blades of swords toward the hilt. All five evidently belonged to the same center. They crept and crawled over Gilliatt. He felt these strange points of pressure, which seemed to him to be mouths, changing their places.

Suddenly, a large, round, flat, slimy mass emerged from the lower part of the crevice.

It was the center; the five thongs were attached to it like spokes of a hub; on the opposite side of this foul disk could be distinguished the beginnings of three other tentacles, which remained under the slope of the rock. In the middle of this sliminess were two eyes, gazing.

The eyes were fixed on Gilliatt.

Gilliatt recognized the octopus (devil-fish).

To believe in the octopus, one must have seen it. Compared with it, the hydras of old are laughable. The unknown has the marvelous at its disposal, and it makes use of the marvelous to compose the monster. Orpheus and Homer were able to make only the chimera; God made the octopus. All ideals being admitted, if terror be an object the octopus is a masterpiece.

The whale has enormous size, the octopus is small; the hippopotamus has armor, the octopus is naked; the jararaca hisses, the octopus is dumb; the rhinoceros has a horn, the octopus has no

horn; the swordfish has a sword, the octopus has no sword; the viper has a venom, the octopus has no venom; the lion has claws, the octopus has no claws; the crocodile has jaws, the octopus has no teeth.

The octopus has no muscular organization, no menacing cry, no breastplate, no horn, no dart, no pincers, no cutting fins, no barbed wings, no quills, no sword, no venom, no claws, no beak, no teeth. Yet of all creatures, the octopus is the most formidably armed.

The hydra harpoons its victim. This creature applies itself to its prey; covers and knots its long bands about its captive. In form the octopus is spider-like. Its most terrible quality is its softness. Its folds strangle; its contact paralyzes.

The octopus is not to be torn away. It adheres closely to its prey. How? By a vacuum. Its eight antennæ, large at the root, gradually taper off and end in needles. Underneath each one of them are arranged two rows of decreasing pustules, the largest near the head, the smallest at the tip. Each row consists of twenty-five; there are fifty pustules to each antenna, and the whole creature has four hundred of them. These pustules are horny, livid cartilages, fragments of tubes, which are thrust out from the animal and retire into it. They can be inserted into the prey for more than an inch.

This monster was the inhabitant of the grotto. It was the frightful genius of the place, a sort of demon of the water.

When Gilliatt, entering the cave in pursuit of the crab, saw the crevice in which he thought the crab had taken refuge, the octopus was lying in wait.

Can the reader picture that lying in wait?

Not a bird would dare to brood, not an egg would dare to hatch, not a flower would dare to open, not a heart would dare to love, if one meditated on the sinister shapes patiently lying in ambush in the abyss.

Gilliatt had thrust his arm into the hole; the octopus had seized it. He was the fly for this spider.

Gilliatt stood in water to his waist, his feet clinging to the slippery roundness of the stones, his right arm grasped and subdued by the flat coils of the thongs of the octopus, his body almost