Concord Snapshot: Thoreau Invites Guests for Watermelon

He said, frankly, that he grows the best melons in Concord. He doesn't like other people very much, but he wanted to share the late summer bounty, so Henry Thoreau allowed the public to see him in his element, Walden Pond.

Thoreau sat in his spare cabin on Sunday talking freely, though without smiling, about his life at the pond through the voice of his alter ego, Richard Smith III.

"My melons are the juiciest, so I don't like to keep them too long," he said.

Smith, dressed in informal Colonial garb, delighted children of all ages at his Sunday party at the state park. It was hot, but he said the breeze kept things cool inside his one-room cabin.

He said about a dozen friends and family had come for the melon, including Ralph Waldo Emerson's daughters, "my sisters," a few of the Alcott family and his friend Ellery Channing.

He was finishing a book about a canoe trip he took with his brother to New Hampshire. His cabin had a small desk, fireplace, a "new" wood-burning stove and a narrow bed.

He said he had a vegetable garden at his mother's house on Texas Street which was changed to Belknap Street later on.

"If I follow the tracks, it takes about a half-hour to get to her house," Thoreau said.