Thoreau writes in his journal:
I who have been sick hear cattle low in the street with such a healthy ear as prophecies my cure. These sounds lay a finger on my pulse to some purpose. A fragrance comes in at all my senses which proclaims that I am still of Nature the child. The threshing in yonder bran and the tinkling of the anvil come from the same side of Styx with me . . . Nature seems to have given me these hours to pry into her private drawers. I watch the shadow of the insensible perspiration rising from my coat or hand on the wall. I go and feel my pulse in all the recesses of the house and see if I am of force to carry a homely life and comfort into them.
