ABSTRACT
To put this better, let me borrow a favored word from Henry David Thoreau: extravagance. Near the end of Walden Thoreau writes: “Extra-vagance! it depends on how you are yarded. The migrating buffalo which seeks new pastures in another latitude, is not extravagant like the cow which kicks over the pail, leaps the cowyard fence, and runs after her calf, in milking time.”1 Thoreau’s -vagance! shares its Latin root, vagus, with vagrancy and vague. These words bespeak an indeterminacy that has no place in the field of academic history, and a wanderlust that receives no ready welcome there either. Thoreau’s image of mad mother cow adds yet another element-danger. Fences provide security; leaping them is perilous in any field.
