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In Slavery in Massachusetts, Thoreau writes:

But it chanced the other day that I scented a white water-lily, and a season I had waited for had arrived. It is the emblem of purity. It bursts up so pure and fair to the eye, and so sweet to the scent, as if to show us what purity and sweetness reside in, and can be extracted from, the slime and muck of earth. I think I have plucked the first one that has opened for a mile.

What does for a mile mean in this sentence? I looked up for in a dictionary, and methinks the author might mean the first lily that he came across, and that was opened, after walking a mile. Or does Thoreau mean something else here?

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  • While your other questions about Thoreau concerned the features of the nineteenth century English that are not regularly seen nowadays, or the puzzling idiosyncrasies of his style, there is nothing particularly outdated or puzzling about his use of this phrase.
    – jsw29
    Commented May 3, 2023 at 14:57
  • It's a metaphorical mile — a long distance: the first one that has opened as far as the eye can see (or the nose can smell).
    – Tinfoil Hat
    Commented May 4, 2023 at 14:14

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Thoreau is telling you how far he has walked before seeing the lily.

For a mile = over the distance of a mile.

The OED:

For (prep.)

VIII. Expressing duration and extension.

24. Marking an amount of spatial extension: over, over the space of, to the extent of.

1978 Nature 5 Jan. 50/2 The Bathurst and McDonald faults..are major sinistral and dextral strike-slip fault systems that extend for hundreds of kilometres.

2009 Argus (Sussex) (Nexis) 20 June Turn left along the drive for 100 yards and, just before a house called Murrells, take the right turning

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Your interpretation is correct. "for" has many meanings but here is the relevant one:

Cambridge
for: preposition
towards; in the direction of:
They looked as if they were heading for the train station.
Just follow signs for the museum.
This time tomorrow we'll be setting off for the States.
It says this train is for (= going to stop at) Birmingham and Coventry only.

Hence, we have the implication that Thoreau was walking in some direction towards the point where he found the flower in bloom, at which point he would have walked a mile.

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