Life of Henry David Thoreau

%2

^

>%

Th90

s

n

'??6

LIFE

OF

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

&6H<U.

BY

HENRY sTsALT

• •„

LONDON
WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED

PATERNOSTER SQUARE

1896

(All rights reserved)

PREFATORY NOTE.

A few words of preface are needed to explain the relation
of this Life of Thoreau to the original edition issued by
Messrs. Bentley in 1890. In that volume, which was
published in England only, and at a time when Thoreau's
writings, with the exception of Walden, were compara-
tively little known, there were included a number of
quotations from the Letters, Diaries, Excursions, etc.,
then inaccessible to the mass of English readers. In the
new form of the book, abridged to meet the requirements
of. a popular series, most of these passages have been
omitted; but, on the other hand, I have been able to
make some important corrections and additions, — thanks
to the courtesy of Mr. F. B. Sanborn and other American
friends, who have supplied me, during the past five years,
with a large amount of information. I am especially
indebted to Dr. S. A. Jones, of Ann Arbor, Michigan,
and Mr. A. W. Hosmer, of Concord, from both of whom
I have received most friendly aid and encouragement.
By his invaluable Bibliography, and other labours full of
sympathy and insight, Dr. Jones has earned the gratitude
of all Thoreau-students ; and to him, as a slight acknow-
ledgment of personal obligation, I take the liberty of
inscribing this book.

H. S. S.

"(Breat Writers."

EDITED BY

ERIC ROBERTSON AND FRANK T. MARZIALS.

LIFE OF THOREA U.

\

r FOR PULL LIST OF THE VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES,
SEE CATALOGUE AT END OF BOOK.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

PAGE

The artificial and the natural; Henry Thoreau's birth and
parentage ; the village of Concord : its inhabitants,
scenery, climate, and traditions; Thoreau's boyhood;
influences of heredity and association ; the Thoreau
family ; his career at Harvard University : character and
appearance ; opinion of college system ; early tendency
to idealism ; devotion to Concord I 1

CHAPTER II.

Choice of a profession ; keeps the Concord "Academy"; the
Transcendental movement ; effect on Thoreau ; abandon-
ment of professional pursuits ; ,.^^4;iUMfttv.,qpe.u-i4rJife.;
early writings ; youthful love and self-sacrifice ; his
brother John ; week on the Concord River ; friendship
with R. W. Emerson; connection with the Dial; the
Concord transcendentalists ; Thoreau's residence with the
Emersons ; friendship with Alcott, Margaret Fuller,
Ellery Channing ; death of John Thoreau . . .30

8 CONTENTS.

CHAPTER III.

PAGE

Influence of Emerson on Thoreau ; acquaintance with Haw-
thorne; contributions to the Dial; the "Walk to
Wachusett"; solitude and society; life in Emerson's
family; tutorship in Staten Island; letters to the Emer-
sons; visits to New York; new acquaintances; the Brook
Farm community; Thoreau's individualism; plans for
living in retirement; why he went to Walden . . .51

CHAPTER IV.

^Walden Pond; site of Thoreau's hut ; building and furnishing;
mode of life in the woods; simplicity of dress and diet;
solitude; visitors from the village; fugitive slaves; refusal
to pay poll-tax ; imprisonment; studies in natural history;
reasons for leaving Walden ; value of Thoieat?s^p€RESSifrf" 66

CHAPTER V.

Thoreau's personal appearance ; mode of dress ; fitness of
body and mind ; keenness of senses ; idealism ; its effect
on his friendships ; dislike of society ; not a misanthrope ;
*** sympathy with children; a Yankee Stoic; favourite
2 authors; Oriental books; Greek and Latin classics;
I Indian studies; love^of the wild; his walks; familiarity
1 with wild animals ; a poet-naturalist ; magnetism of his
^"^ character ~ r ^r""-* 86

CHAPTER VI.

Second residence with the Emersons ; publication of the
Week; domestic life at Concord; friendship with Harrison
Blake; pencil-making, surveying, and lecturing; meets
A. H, Clough; a fugitive slave assisted; publication of

CONTENTS. 9

PAGE

Walden ; new friends, Thomas Cholmondeley, Daniel
Ricketson, F. B. Sanborn; meeting with Walt Whit-
man; John Brown; visits to "Brooklawn"; Mr. Ricket-
son's testimony 105

CHAPTER VII.

Thoreau's mode of travelling ; excursions to Cape Cod ; the
Yankee in Canada ; three excursions to the Maine Woods ;
letter to T. W. Higginson ; love ofmountains ; the White
Mountains; Monadnock . 122

CHAPTER VIII.

Signs of ill-health ; relations with editors ; death of Thoreau's
father ; the Harper's Ferry incident ; Thoreau's " Plea
for John Brown " ; a touchstone of his character ; appre-
ciated by his townsmen; his confidence in the future;
commencement of illness ; visit to Minnesota ; the Civil
War ; Thoreau's last winter ; his courage and cheerfulness ;
his death ; burial in " Sleepy Hollow" . . . 134

CHAPTER IX.

Thoreau's aveision to system; idealism combined with practi-
calness; originality; optimistic nature- worship ; views on
religion; insistence on self-culture and self-respect ; dislike
of "business"; a champion of individuality; his gospel
of Simplicity ; his attitude towards civilisation, science, and
art; misunderstandings of his doctrine; his tenderness;
\ humanitarian views; sympathy with animals; peculiar
position among naturalists; powers of observation; ideal-
ism the : secleTorEis^cfeeS 152

10 CONTENTS.

CHAPTER X.

PAGE

Thoreau's disregard of "style"; combination of literary work
and manual ; conscientious workmanship ; idealisation of
common themes ; poetical images and metaphors ; his love
of concentration and paradox; his humour; open-air
sketches; essays; diaries; letters; poems . . .170

CHAPTER XI.

5

Uniqueness of Thoreau's personality; c ompared wjth other
y naturalists ; erroneous criticisms of his doctrines by Lowell

^. and others; their true significance; final estimate of his

character 186

Index 201

Bibliography

HENRY DAVID THOREAU.

CHAPTER I.

/~\F the various perils which beset the path of our
modern civilisation, none perhaps are more subtle
and dangerous than those which may be summed up
under the term artificiality. As life becomes more com-
plex, and men of culture are withdrawn farther and
farther from touch with wild nature, there is a corre-
sponding sacrifice of hardihood and independence — there
is less individuality, less mastery over circumstance, less
probity of conduct and candour of speaking, less faith
in one's self and in the leading of one's destiny. These
may be but incidental disadvantages, outweighed by the
general improvement in the condition of the race ; yet
they are serious enough to demand thoughtful recog-
nition, and to make us welcome any signs of a contrary
tendency.

The enormous increase which the present age has
witnessed in material wealth and mechanical invention
has accentuated both the magnitude of the evil and the
necessity of relieving it. A century ago, it might have

12 LIFE OF

occurred to those who were living on the threshold of the
new era, and who foresaw (as some must have foreseen)
the coming rush of civilisation, with its fretful hurry and
bustle of innumerable distractions, to wonder whether
the very prevalence of the malady would work out its
own reformation. Must society ever be divorced from
simplicity ? Must intellect and wildness be incompatible ?
Must we lose in the deterioration of the physical senses
what we gain in mental culture ? Must perfect com-
munion with Nature be impossible? Or would there
arise a man capable of showing us in his own character
— whatever its shortcomings and limitations — that it
is still possible and profitable to live, as the Stoics
strove to live, in accordance with Nature, with absolute
serenity and self-possession; to follow out one's own
ideal, in spite of every obstacle, with unfaltering devotion;
and so to simplify one's life, and clarify one's senses, as
to master many of the inner secrets of that book of
Nature which to most men remains unintelligible and
unread. Such anticipation — if we may imagine it to
have been entertained — was amply fulfilled in the life
and character of Henry David Thoreau.

In the year 1823 there was living in the village of
Concord, Massachusetts, with his wife and four children,
one John Thoreau, a pencil-maker by employment,
whose father, a younger son in a well-to-do Jersey family
of French extraction, had emigrated from St. Helier to
New England in 1773, married a Scotch wife, established
a mercantile business in Boston, and died at Concord in
1 80 1. 1 John Thoreau, who at the time of which I speak

1 It is said that the name Thoreau was common in the annals
of Tours several hundred years ago. The earliest known ancestors

THOREAU. 13

was thirty-six years old, had begun life as a merchant,
but having failed in business and lost whatever property
he inherited from his father, he had recently turned his
attention to pencil-making, a trade which had been in-
troduced into Concord some ten or twelve years earlier,
from which he not only derived a competent livelihood,
but gained distinction by the excellence of his workman-
ship. He is described by those who knew him as a
small, quiet, plodding, unobtrusive man, thoroughly
genuine and reliable, occupying himself for the most
part in his own business, though he could be friendly
and sociable when occasion invited. His wife, whose
maiden name was Cynthia Dunbar, 1 was very different in
character, being remarkable, like the other members of
her family, for her keen dramatic humour and intellectual
sprightliness ; she was tall, handsome, quick-witted; she
had a good voice and sang well, and often monopolised
the conversation by her unfailing flow of talk.

Henry David Thoreau, the third child of these parents,
was born at Concord, 12 th July 181 7, in a quaint, old-
fashioned house on the Virginia Road, surrounded by
pleasant orchards and peat-meadows, and close to an
extensive tract known as "Bedford levels." In this

of Henry Thoreau are his great-grandparents, Philip Thoreau and
Marie le Galais, the parents of the emigrant above mentioned. The
family is now extinct both in Jersey and New England.

1 Her father, the Rev. Asa Dunbar of Keene, New Hampshire,
died in 1787, and his widow afterwards married a Concord farmer
named Minott. In Mrs. Thoreau's brother, Charles Dunbar, the
ready wit, characteristic of the Dunbar family, had run to eccen-
tricity. He led a strange vagabond life, roving from town to town,
and winning a pot-house notoriety by his waggish speeches and
dexterity in wrestling and conjuring.

14 LIFE OF

house, the home of his grandmother, Mrs. Minott, he
lived for eight months; then for another period of the
same length in a house on the Lexington Road, on the
outskirts of the village. In 1818 his parents left Concord
for five years, and lived first at Chelmsford, a town ten
miles distant, and afterwards at Boston, where Henry first
went to school But as their business did not prosper
in either place, the family returned in 1823 to Concord,
which thenceforth continued to be their home. They
little thought, however, that the name of Concord and
the name of Thoreau were destined in later years to be
so inseparably associated.

This village of Concord, which lies twenty miles to the
north-west of Boston, and must be distinguished from
the capital of New Hampshire, which bears the same
name, was at the time of Henry Thoreau's boyhood the
centre of a scattered township of about two thousand
inhabitants. Under the name of Musketaquid it
had been an ancient settlement of the Indians, its
attraction, in earlier as in later ages, consisting in
the rich meadows which border the Musketaquid, or
"Grass-ground" river. "When I walk in the fields of
Concord," so Thoreau afterwards wrote in his diary,
"I forget that this which is now Concord was once
Musketaquid. Everywhere in the fields, in the corn and
grain land, the earth is strewn with the relics of a race
which has vanished as completely as if trodden in with
the earth. Wherever I go I tread in the tracks of the
Indian." In 1635 tne district was purchased from the
Indians by the Massachusetts colony, which there made
its first inland plantation; and it was from the peaceful
settlement then effected that the place received its name

THOREAU. 15

of Concord. At the beginning of the present century
Concord, though not yet associated with any of the great
literary names which have since made it famous, was not
unknown to the world; for there, in 1775, na< ^ been
struck the first blow for American independence, when
the English troops, after some desultory fighting, were
repulsed by the "rebel" farmers. Lafayette visited
Concord in 1824, and the following year, half a century
after the battle, there was a celebration of that event, at
which Henry Thoreau, then a child of seven, is said to
have been present.

The inhabitants of Concord were mostly agriculturists
— sturdy farmers, living in comfortable old-fashioned
homesteads; but there was a considerable sprinkling
also of mechanics and men of business; and as the town
lay on the high-road between the uplands of New Hamp-
shire and the port of Boston, it w r as to some extent a
centre of trade; it was also at that time one of the places
appointed for the holding of the county assizes. A
frank and natural equality was one of the traditional
characteristics of Concord society, extreme wealth and
extreme poverty being alike rare; so that its citizens,
a plain and frugal folk, quite unostentatious in their
manners and mode of life, yet prizing literature and
learning, were saved from the evils of either luxury or
destitution; while the well-known Concord families —
the Hosmers and Barretts and Hey woods — preserved and
handed on from generation to generation their sterling
hereditary qualities. The two leading personages at
Concord at the time of Henry Thoreau's birth, and for
many years afterwards, were Dr. Ripley, the Unitarian
pastor of the village, who lived in the "old Manse"

16 LIFE OF

which Hawthorne subsequently inhabited, and Samuel
Hoar, a man of senatorial rank, who exemplified in his
character some of the best New England qualities of
dignity, justice, and simplicity. Dr. Ripley, quaint,
humorous, and patriarchal, was minister at Concord for
over half a century, and was regarded by his parishioners
as a friend and teacher to whom they could look for
advice and assistance in all matters that concerned them.
Henry Thoreau was one of the many Concord children
who had been baptised by him into the Unitarian
Church, and in whose welfare the kindly pastor con-
tinued to take an affectionate interest.

The dominant features of the natural scenery of
Concord are its waters and its woods; it has been
described as " a village surrounded by tracts of wood-
land and meadows, abounding in convenient yet retired
paths for walking. " The two rivers of Concord, the
slow-flowing Musketaquid and the swifter Assabet, which
meet close to the north of the village, have been immor-
talised by both Hawthorne and Thoreau. "The sluggish
artery of the Concord meadows," says the latter, "steals
thus unobserved through the town, without a murmur
or a pulse-beat, its general course from south-west to
north-east, and its length about fifty miles; a huge
volume of matter, ceaselessly rolling through the plains
and valleys of the substantial earth, with the mocassined
tread of an Indian warrior, making haste from the high
places of the earth to its ancient reservoir." 1 As for
the Assabet, we have it on Hawthorne's authority that
" a lovelier stream than this, for a mile above its junction

1 Introduction to The Week, Compare Hawthorne's account in
Mosses from an Old Manse,

THOREAU. 17

with the Concord, never flowed on earth — nowhere,
indeed, except to lave the interior regions of a poet's
imagination." Of the Ponds, Walden, Sandy, and
White Pond to the south of the village, and Bateman's
to the north, are the most considerable; moreover, after
the heavy rains, which are usual at two periods of the
year, the lowlands adjacent to the river are converted
by the floods into a chain of shallow lakes; so that
there is no portion of the township of Concord which
is not more or less in proximity to some lake or stream.

And if well watered, Concord is also well wooded,
its sandy soil being covered in almost every direction
by thick groves of oak, pine, chestnut, maple, and other
forest trees, which even to this day retain much of their
primeval severity. "I saw nothing wilder," wrote a
visitor to Concord, 1 "among the unbroken solitudes of
the Upper Ottawa tributaries than these woods that fringe
the bank of Walden. Not a human habitation, not a
cleared farm, not a sign of life or civilised occupation
anywhere broke the unvaried expanse of wild woodland."
The hills which surround Concord — Anursack, Nashaw-
tuck, Ball's Hill, Brister's Hill, and the rest — are of no
great height; but they command fine prospects, west-
ward and northward, in the direction of loftier ranges,
Wachusett, Monadnock, and the White Mountains of
New Hampshire.

" Thoreau's country," says a picturesque writer, 2 " has the broad
effects and simple elements that 'compose' well in the best
landscape art. It is a quiet bit of country that under the seeing' eye
can be made to yield a store of happiness. Its resources for the

i Grant Allen, in Fortnightly Review, May 1888.

2 "A. L.," in New York Evening Post, October 10th, 1890.

^

18 LIFE OF

naturalist, at first scarcely suspected, are practically inexhaustible.
It is not tame, as an English landscape is tame. It keeps its
memories and traditions of the red man along with his flint-flakes
and arrow-heads, and its birds and wild-flowers are varied and
abundant. A country of noble trees, wide meadow-expanses— and
the little river, quiet almost to stagnation, with just current enough
to keep it pure, in places much overgrown with water- weed, in
other places thick strewn with lily-pads, the banks umbrageous and
grassy, fringed with ferns and wild-flowers, and here and there
jutting into a point of rocks, or expanding into placid lake-like
stretches — these are the main elements of Thoreau's country.
Then we must add a clean, sandy soil, through which water per-
colates with great rapidity, leaving paths pleasant to the feet.
Then come the low ranges of hills, the marshes, the ponds, and the
forests, fit home for a rich varied wild flora. And then the weather
influences maist be taken into account. This small district of
country, though it feels the breath of the sea twenty miles away, is
still somewhat sheltered from the asperities of the east wind. The
summer nights are cool and refreshing, though the day may have
a heart of fire, and the autumn has stretches of bright, cool,
resplendent weather. Owing to the dry soil, the ways seem more
open and cheery in winter than in other places, and the roads are
good for walking all the year round."

Among such scenes and surroundings did Henry
Thoreau grow up and receive his earliest impressions of
nature and society. From the first he was inured to a
hardy outdoor life, driving his mother's cow to pasture
when he was a child of six, and going barefoot like the
other village boys. School games and athletic sports
formed no part of his youthful amusements, but at as
early an age as ten or twelve, after the habit of New
England boys, he was permitted to shoulder a fowling-
piece or fishing-rod and betake himself to the wildest
and most solitary recesses of wood or river. The
water-side seems to have had a special fascination for

THOREAU. 19

him at an early date, one of his childish reminiscences
being a visit to Walden Pond, which excited a desire in
him to live there, and as he grew older he was fond of
bathing and boating on the Concord river in company
with his schoolmates, making himself acquainted with
all the rocks and soundings of that placid stream. Now
and then the news would spread like wildfire that a
canal-boat, laden with lime, or bricks, or iron-ore, was
gliding mysteriously along the river, and the village
children would eagerly flock out to gaze with wonder
on these " fabulous river-men," who came and went so
unaccountably. Still more interesting were the annual
visits of the remnants of some Indian tribes, who used
to pitch their tents in the rich meadows which had
belonged of old to their forefathers, and there string
their beads and weave their baskets, or initiate the
Concord youths into the art of paddling an Indian
canoe.

We are surprised to learn that, as a child, Henry
Thoreau was afraid of thunderstorms, and at such times
would creep to his father for protection; for most of the
anecdotes related of his school-days are indicative of the
fearlessness, self-reliance, and laconic brevity of speech
for which he was afterwards conspicuous. At the age of
three years he was informed that, like the godly men of
whom he read in his religious exercise-book, he too
would some day have to die ; he received the news with
equanimity, asserting, however, that he "did not want
to go to heaven, because he could not carry his sled
with him, for the boys said it was not shod with iron,
and therefore not worth a cent" — a characteristic re-
nouncement of a paradise in which, as he surmised

20 LIFE OF

outer appearances would be unduly regarded. When
charged with taking a knife belonging to another boy he
replied briefly, " I did not take it ; " and steadily refused
to exculpate himself by further explanation until after
the true offender was discovered. All being made clear,
the natural inquiry put to him was why he did not
sooner explain himself. " I did not take it," was again
his reply. When ten years old he carried some pet
chickens for sale to a neighbouring innkeeper, who, in
order to return the basket promptly, took them out one
by one and wrung their necks before the eyes of the
boy, who let no word betray the agony of his outraged
feelings. His gravity had already earned him among his
schoolfellows the title of "the judge"; of that spright-
liness of intellect which subsequently showed itself in
such a marked degree in his conversation and writings
there seems at this time to have been no trace, at any
rate no early instance has been recorded.

On the important question of Thoreau's hereditary
traits, I quote the following from an interesting article
by Dr. S. A. Jones on " Thoreau's Inheritance " : —

" His inheritance included also the endowment of heredity : a
potent factor which has not yet had just and due consideration from
any of his biographers. A gentleman who attended the school
kept by the Thoreau brothers once wrote to me : ' Henry Thoreau
was not a superior scion upon an inferior stock, neither was he
begotten by a north-west wind, as many have supposed. There
were good and sufficient reasons for the Thoreau children's love of,
and marked taste for, Botany and Natural History. John Thoreau
and his wife were to be seen, year after year, enjoying the pleasures
of nature, in their various seasons, on the banks of the Assabet, at
Fairhaven, Lee's Hill, Walden, and elsewhere ; and this too with-
out neglecting the various duties of their humble sphere. Indeed,

THOREAU. 21

such was Mrs. Thoreau's passion for these rambles that one of her
children narrowly escaped being born in a favourite haunt on Lee's
Hill.

" c The father was a very cautious and secretive man, a close
observer, methodical and deliberate in action, and he produced
excellent results. His marbled paper and his pencils were the best in
the market, while his stove polish and his plumbago for electrotyping
have never, to my knowledge, been excelled. He was a French
gentleman rather than a Yankee, and once having his confidence,
you had a very shrewd and companionable friend to commune with.
Then, when there were no unauthorised listeners about, the other-
wise quiet man, who had such a faculty for "minding his own
business," would sit with you by the stove in his little shop and
chat most delightfully. '" 1

The preponderance of the Saxon, the maternal ele-
ment in Henry's character, was a matter of observation
and comment among his townsfolk. He was a complete
New Englander, and prided himself on being " autoch-
thonous" at Concord. "I think the characteristics
which chiefly impressed those of us who knew Mrs.
Thoreau," says one who was intimate with her, "were
the activity of her mind and the wideness of her sym-
pathy. She was an excellent mother and housewife.
In the midst of poverty she brought up her children to
all the amenities of life, and if she had but a crust of
bread for dinner she would see that it was properly
served. She was never so poor or so busy that she did
not find means of helping those poorer than herself.'' 2

We see then that Thoreau was indebted to both his
parents for some of his best qualities — to his mother for

1 The Inlander, February 1893.

2 E. M. F., in Boston Daily Advertiser, February 18th, 1883.
I must plead guilty to having done less than justice to Thoreau's
parents in the first edition of this book.

22 LIFE OF

a quick-witted spirit and passionate love of Nature, to
his father for the counterbalance of a calm, sane, indus-
trious temperament, with absolute honesty of purpose
and performance. " The marriage of quiet John Thoreau
and the vivacious Cynthia Dunbar was a happy conjunc-
tion (so it has been well said) of diverse temperaments
and opposite traits, of substantial virtues and of simple
habits; and with bodies undefiled by luxury, and minds
unsophisticated by social dissimulation, they made a
home, and its lowly hearth became a shrine whose
incense brought blessings to their offspring." It must
be added that they entered with such zeal into the
agitation for the abolition of slavery, that when that
question began to be debated in Massachusetts, they
were willing to make their house a rendezvous for
abolitionist conspirators.

The younger members of the Thoreau household were
also possessed of an unusual strength of will and serious-
ness of purpose. Both his sister Helen and his brother
John, who were Henry's elders by five and three years
respectively, were earnest and lovable natures; so too
was his younger sister Sophia; and it was remarked by
those friends who were intimately associated with the
family, that they each possessed a distinctive and unmis-
takable personality. At this period, when new ideas
were permeating American society and* preparing men's
minds for the great intellectual and social awakening
that was shortly to follow, the Thoreaus had won
general respect among their neighbours at Concord by
their humanity, thoughtfulness, and unaffected simplicity
of living.

Here is an early glimpse of Thoreau. It seems that in

THOREAU. 23

1828 they had a Concord Academic Debating Society,
and the report of the secretary for November 5th, 1828,
runs thus : — "The discussion of the question selected for
debate next followed : Is a good memory preferable to a
good understanding in order to be a distinguished scholar at
school? E. Wright, affirmative; Henry Thoreau, negative.
The affirmative disputant, through negligence, had pre-
pared nothing for debate, and the negative not much
more. Accordingly, no other member speaking, the
president decided in the negative. His decision was
confirmed by a majority of four."

In 1833, when sixteen years old, Henry Thoreau was
sent to Harvard University, 1 where he occupied a room
in Hollis Hail, in which, if we may trust a chance
reference in one of his volumes, he experienced the in-
convenience of "many and noisy neighbours, and a
residence in the fourth storey." He had been prepared
for college at the Concord "Academy," an excellent
school famous for its successful teaching of Greek,
where he had already exhibited a strong liking for the
classics, though his reading was not confined to the
prescribed course, but began to embrace a considerable
extent of English literature. His expenses at Harvard
were a serious matter in a family whose means were very
limited; the difficulty, however, was surmounted partly
by his own carefulness and economy, partly by the help
of his aunts and his elder sister, herself a school-teacher
at this time. During the college vacations he took
pupils, or assisted in school-teaching in several country

1 He is entered in the Harvard register as he was christened,
David Henry Thoreau; but he afterwards put the more familiar
name first.

U LIFE OF

towns, one of those engagements being at Canton, near
Boston, where in 1835, his "sophomore year," he
boarded and studied German with a minister named
Brownson, at the same time teaching in the "district
school." Meantime his interests at Harvard were being
promoted by his future friend, R. W. Emerson, who in
1834 had gone to live at Concord, where his forefathers
had held the ministry for generations. Emerson pre-
sumably was informed by Dr. Ripley, with whom he was
staying, of the promise shown by Thoreau, and it seems
to have been due to his good offices that the young
man received some small pecuniary assistance from the
beneficiary funds of the college.

We are fortunate in having a graphic account of
Thoreau's personal appearance and mode of life at
Harvard from the pen of one of his class-mates. 1 It
seems that he passed for nothing among his companions,
taking little share in their studies and amusements,
shunning their oyster suppers and wine parties, and
mysteriously disappearing from the scene when, as occa-
sionally happened, the course of college discipline was
temporarily interrupted by a " rebellion."

" He was cold and unimpressible. The touch of his hand was
moist and indifferent, as if he had taken up something when he
saw your hand coming, and caught your grasp upon it. How the
prominent grey-blue eyes seemed to rove down the path,, just in
advance of his feet, as his grave Indian stride carried him down to
University Hall. He did not care for people; his class-mates
seemed very remote. This reverie hung always about him, and not
so loosely as the odd garments which the pious household care
furnished. Thought had not yet awakened his countenance; it
was serene, but rather dull, rather plodding. The lips were not yet

1 Rev. John Weiss, Christian Examiner ; Boston, July 1865.

THOME AU. 25

firm ; there was almost a look of smug satisfaction lurking round
their corners. It is plain now that he was preparing to hold his
future views with great setness and personal appreciation of their
importance. The nose was prominent, but its curve fell forward
without firmness over the upper lip, and we remember him as look-
ing very much like some Egyptian sculptures of faces, large-featured,
but brooding, immobile, fixed in a mystic egoism. Yet his eyes
were sometimes searching as if he had dropped, or expected to find,
something. In fact his eyes seldom left the ground, even in his
most earnest conversations with you.

" He would smile to hear the word * collegiate career' applied to
the reserve and inaptness of his college life. He was not signalised
by the plentiful distribution of the parts and honours which fall to
the successful student. Of his private tastes there is little of conse-
quence to recall, except that he was devoted to the old English
literature, and had a good many volumes of the poetry from Gower
and Chaucer down through the era of Elizabeth. In this mine he
worked with a quiet enthusiasm."

These traits of aloofness and self-seclusion are attributed
by his class-mate^oTT6^*any conceil of superciliousness,
still less to shyness, but to a sort of homely " com-
placency," which, though quite natural and inevitable,
had the effect of putting him out of sympathy with his
surroundings at Harvard. His complacency was "per-
fectly satisfied with its own ungraciousness, because that
was essential to its private business." This determined
concentration on his own life-course was, as we shall see,
very characteristic of Thoreau in his mature career, and
it is interesting to find that it was thus early developed.

" In college Thoreau had made no great impression,' '
says another of his contemporaries; 1 "he was far from
being distinguished as a scholar, was not known to have

1 The Rev. D. G. Haskins, in his Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Boston, 1887.

\

26 LIFE OF

any literary tastes, was never a contributor to the college
periodical, Harvardiana ; he was not conspicuous in
any of the literary or scientific societies of the under-
graduates, and withal was of an unsocial disposition, and
kept himself very much aloof from his class-mates. At
the time we graduated, I doubt whether any of his
acquaintances regarded him as giving promise of future
distinction." Against this, however, must be set what
the historian of Thoreau's college class wrote in 1887,
that "notwithstanding what he himself says of his entrance
to the college, and the impression that one gets from
some of his biographers that he was rather under the
ban of the authorities, Thoreau maintained a very fair
rank in his class, and at graduation took part in a Con-
ference on the c Commercial Spirit of Modern Times.' ,?1
This was somewhat of an honour; and there is no reason
to suppose that Thoreau had any part in the " rebellions "
and other irregularities of the students, as has sometimes
been suggested.

We can well believe, however, that his strong indi-
vidualist tendencies had even now begun to manifest
themselves; indeed it is apparent from his youthful
"themes" that he was already a fearless thinker and
questioner on various matters, social and religious — a
quality which would not be likely to conciliate the good
opinion of the college authorities. His integrity, how-
ever, and high moral principle were clearly recognised ;
and from the first he seems to have practised a simple
and abstemious mode of living. " He had been so
wisely nourished at the collegiate fount," says Channing,

1 Memorials of the Class of 1837 % by Henry Williams, Boston,
1 38;.

THOREAU, 27

" as to come forth undissipated, not digging his grave in
tobacco and coffee — those two perfect causes of paralysis."
Thoreau has himself stated that he never smoked any-
thing more noxious than dried lily-stems, from which
indulgence he had a faint recollection of deriving pleasure
before he was a man.

It has been said that Thoreau's debt to his College
was important ; but this is a statement which it will be
prudent to accept with some reservation. It is true
that although not " successful," in the ordinary sense of
the word, he had become a good classical scholar, and
had derived intellectual benefit from the teaching of at
least one of the lecturers, Professor Channing, whose
nephew, Ellery Channing, afterwards became his most
intimate friend. He himself says in a letter of 1843 tnat
what he learned in College was chiefly " to express him-
self," and this, in his case, was certainly no unimportant
gift. But, on the whole, we shall probably be safe in
concluding that the advantages which Thoreau obtained
from his college career were mainly of the indirect kind,
and that he profited far less by the actual instruction
there given him than by the opportunities afforded fbr
wide reading and self-culture.

Meantime his love of outdoor life and open-air pur-
suits had in nowise diminished during his residence at
Harvard ; on the contrary, he was as diligent a student
of natural history as of rhetoric or rhathematics, and felt
as much veneration for Indian relics as for Greek classics;
more so, if we are to believe what he wrote subsequently
in a letter to the Class Secretary. "Though bodily I
have been a member of Harvard University, heart and
soul I have been far away among the scenes of my boy-

28 LIFE OF

hood. Those hours that should have been devoted to
study have been spent in scouring the woods and explor-
ing the lakes and streams of my native village. Immured
within the dark but classic walls of a Stoughton or a
Hollis, my spirit yearned for the sympathy of my old and
almost forgotten friend, Nature." It is stated that his
first experiment in camping-out took place during his
senior year at college, when he made an excursion of
this sort to Lincoln Pond, a few miles from Walden. On
this occasion his companion was Stearns Wheeler, one of
his school-mates both at Concord and Harvard, whose
early death in 1843 is lamented in one of his letters.

But undoubtedly it was in his conception of ethical
principles, together with a kind of mystic nature-worship,
that he had made the greatest progress towards maturity
of thought. We are told that he resolved at an early
period of his life, probably during his college career, " to
read no book, take no walk, undertake no enterprise, but
such as he could endure to give an account of to him-
self; and live thus deliberately for the most part," When
only seventeen he had become convinced of the utility
of " keeping a private journal or record of thoughts,
feelings, studies, and daily experience," with a view to
"settling accounts with one's mind" — an introspective
tendency which grew stronger and stronger with increas-
ing years. Already, too, his intense ideality of tempera-
ment was clearly developing itself; while still a boy he
had w T ritten that " the principle Which prompts us to pay
an involuntary homage to the infinite, the incomprehen-
sible, the sublime, forms the very basis of our religion."
It was his delight, as he tells us, to monopolise a little
Gothic window overtaking the garden at the back of his

THOREA U. 29

father's house, which stood on the main street of Concord
village, and there, especially on Sunday afternoons, to
muse in undisturbed reverie. Often in the early dawn
he would stroll with his brother John, to whom he was
devotedly attached, to the " Cliffs," a rocky ridge which
overhangs the river Concord, and there watch the sunrise
over the expanse of Fairhaven Bay.

His devotion to Concord was already a fixed and
unalterable sentiment, which sometimes showed him in
a softer and more emotional mood than was usual to his
self-repressed nature. While he was still at college he
happened one day to ask his mother what profession she
would advise him to choose. She replied that he could
buckle on his knapsack and roam abroad to seek his
fortune in the world. The tears rose to his eyes at this
suggestion, and his sister Helen, who was standing by,
tenderly put her arm round him, and said, " No, Henry,
you shall not go ; you shall stay at home and live with
us." So fully were these words verified that twenty years
later we find him still living at Concord, and writing to
one of his friends that he had " a real genius for staying
at home."

CHAPTER II.

YVTHEN Thoreau left the University he was just twenty
years old, and the first question which occupied
his mind was naturally the choice of a profession by which
he might gain his living. Like the other members of
his family he became a teacher, an occupation of which
he had, as we have seen, already made trial during his
vacations at college. In the spring of 1838 he went on
a visit to Maine, where his mother had relatives, on the
look-out for some educational appointment, bearing with
him testimonials signed by Dr. Ripley, R. W. Emerson,
and the President of Harvard University, all of whom
spoke in the highest terms of his intellectual and moral
character. He seems, however, to have been unsuccess-
ful in this particular quest; for in the same year we find
him engaged with his brother in keeping the "Academy"
at Concord, the private school for boys and girls at
which he himself had been educated, and which had
been established about twenty years before by some of
the leading Concord citizens. How long Thoreau held
this post is not precisely recorded, but it is evident that
he did not find his tutorial position at all congenial to
his tastes ; indeed, it is difficult nowadays to conceive of
this champion of individuality discharging the functions
of teacher under the supervision of a visiting committee.

LIFE OF THOREAU. 31

If we may trust the humorous account given by Ellery
Channing of Thoreau's pedagogic experiences, the im-
mediate cause of the resignation of his office was the
question of corporal punishment. He at first announced
that he should not flog, but should substitute the punish-
ment of "talking morals" to his pupils; but after a
time one of the School Committee remonstrated against
this novel system, and protested that the welfare of the
school was being endangered by the undue leniency of
its master. Mr. Thoreau must use the ferule, or the
school would spoil. "So he did, by feruling six of his
pupils after school, one of whom was the maid-servant
in his own house. But it did not suit well with his
conscience, and he reported to the Committee that he
should no longer keep their school, as they interfered
with his arrangements." School-keeping seems to have
been practised by Thoreau for about two years in all ;
then, as more congenial subjects occupied his attention,
he gave it up altogether, and betook himself to his fore-
ordained and inevitable profession — the study of nature.
The ferule of the schoolmaster was laid by for the her-
barium and spy-glass of the poet-naturalist.

This brings us to the mention of a movement which
was gathering force in New England during Thoreau's
youth and early manhood, and had a marked influence
on the whole development of his character. Trans-
cendentalism (i.e., the study of the pure reason which
transcends the finite senses, the " feeling of the infinite,"
as Emerson expressed it), which originated in the philo-
sophy of Kant, and was revived by Coleridge and
Carlyle in England, had now begun to be a disturbing
and regenerating power in American thought, and to

32 LIFE OF

find its chief exponents in such men as George Ripley,
Alcott, and Emerson; though there had long before
been a vein of native transcendentalist doctrine in the
quietism and quakerism of Penn, John Woolman, and
others. The transcendentalism of New England was
simply a fresh outburst of ideal philosophy; it was a
renaissance in religion, morals, art, and politics; a
period of spiritual questioning and awakening. " The
transcendental movement," says Lowell, "was the pro-
testant spirit of Puritanism seeking, a new outlet and an
escape from forms and creeds which compressed rather
than expressed it." The "apostles of the newness,"
or "realists," as the transcendentalists were variously
styled, aimed at a return from conventionality to nature,
from artifice to simplicity; they held that every one
should not only think for himself, but should labour
with his own hands ; and the exaltation of the individual,
as opposed to the State and the territorial immensity of
America, was one of their most cherished purposes.

It was not to be expected that this transcendentalist
revival, which by its very nature was vague, misty, and
ill-defined, would be exempt from the extravagances and
absurdities which almost inevitably accomp^py such a
movement. But if certain members of the transcendent-
alist party were deservedly the butt for a good deal of
ridicule, the main purpose of the movement was too
important to be laughed down, and fully justified itself
in the light of subsequent events. Originating in the
meetings of a few friends, of whom Emerson was one, at
George Ripley's house in Boston, this New England
transcendentalism proved to be one of the most power-
ful forces in American literature and politics.

THOREAU. 33

Concord, where Thoreau was born and bred, became,
as we shall see, one of the centres of the transcendental
movement, which aimed at carrying its doctrines into
every branch of social life ; it is not surprising, therefore,
that a mind already naturally predisposed to idealism
should have been strongly affected by the congenial
gospel of an inner intellectual awakening. His diaries,
poems, and early letters are full of this transcendental
tone; and it was doubtless in great part owing to the
same influence that he felt so marked a disinclination to
settle down in the ordinary groove of business.

It was not only school-keeping that was given up by
Thoreau, under the stress of this new faith. In 1838,
or thereabouts, while he was still a school teacher, he
had quietly but definitely seceded from Dr. Ripley's
congregation, to the grief and disappointment, it must
be feared, of the venerable pastor, who looked with
suspicion and alarm on the gospel of the transcendent-
alists, which he saw promulgated all around him towards
the close of his long career. The youthful secessionist
had moreover run the risk of imprisonment by his
refusal to pay the church-tax, on the ground that he did
not see why the schoolmaster should support the priest
more than the priest the schoolmaster. The difficulty
was finally settled by his signing a statement in which he
testified that he was not a member of any congregational
body. That so fearless and independent a thinker as
Thoreau should maintain his adherence to any religious
formula was not to be expected, for the very reason that
the natural piety of his mind was so simple and sincere.
If a name be sought for the faith which he henceforth
field and practised, he should probably be styled a

3

34 LIFE OF

pantheist. Never was there a more passionately devout

worshipper of the beauty and holiness of Life, and it

was on this instinctive belief in the eternal goodness of

\ Nature that he based the optimistic creed which we shall

( find to be the central point of his philosophy.

School-keeping being abandoned, the question of a
profession, it may well be supposed, was still pressed on
the youthful enthusiast by anxious relatives and friends.
As we have already seen, pencil-making was the regular
employment of the Thoreau family, and Henry, like his
father, had acquired much skill in this handicraft, to
which, for a time at any rate, he applied himself with
great diligence. Mr. John Thoreau's secret consisted in
his process for making the lead The levigated plum-
bago was made into a paste by using Fuller's earth and
water. This ingredient was John Thoreau's device.
The paste was rolled into sheets, cut into strips, and
burned. Henry Thoreau made the levigated plumbago
long after the pencil-making had ceased. The story
goes that when he had entirely mastered the secrets of
the trade, had obtained certificates from the recognised
connoisseurs in Boston of the excellence of his work-
manship, and was being congratulated by his friends on
having now secured his way to fortune: — he suddenly
declared his intention of making not another pencil,
since " he would not do again what he had done once."
True or not, the anecdote is happily characteristic of
Thoreau's whimsical manner of expressing his most
serious convictions.

He had early discovered, by virtue of that keen
insight which looked through the outer husk of con-
ventionality, that what is called " profit " in the bustle

THOREAU. 35

of commercial life is often far from being, in the true
sense, profitable; that the just claims of leisure are
fully as important as the just claims of business; and
that the surest way of becoming rich is to need little :
in his own words, " a man is rich in proportion to the
number of things which he can afford to let alone."
This being so, why should he, at the outset of his
career, pledge himself irrevocably, after the manner of
young men, to some professional treadmill, and for the
sake of imaginary "comforts" sacrifice the substantial
happiness of life? "No, no," he exclaims, at a later
period, in reply to a well-meant suggestion that, being
without a definite profession, he should engage in some
commercial enterprise; "I am not without employment
at this stage of the voyage. To tell the truth, I saw an
advertisement for able-bodied seamen, when I was a
boy, sauntering in my native port, and as soon as I
came of age, I embarked." This enterprise was none
other than the study of wild nature; his "business"
was to w be,a^ or "saunterer," as he

called it; to spend at least one half of each day in the
open air; to watch the dawns and the sunsets; to carry
express what was in the wind; to secure the latest news
from, fprest and hill-top, and to be "self-appointed
msp^ctjpr of snow storms and rain storms." These

duties he subsequently declared that he had faithfully

<v«— „., '

and regularly performed; if his friends were disappointed,

he at least was not. Witness his own lines in his

41 Prayer"—

i( Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf
Than that I may not disappoint myself,
That in my action I may soar as high
As I can now discern with this clear eye.

36 LIFE OF

And next in value, which thy kindness lends,
That I may greatly disappoint my friends,
Howe'er they think or hope that it may be,
They may not dream how thou'st distinguished me."

Idleness, however, formed no part of Thoreau's
" loitering " ; he was not one who would permit himself
to be dependent on the labour of others; for he was,
well aware that one of the most significant questions as
to a man's life is "how he gets his living, what pro-
portion of his daily bread he earns by day labour or job
work with his pen, what he inherits, what steals." Apart
from the chosen occupation of his lifetime, to which he
devoted himself with unflagging industry and zeal, he
conscientiously supported himself by such occasional
labour as his position required, toiling from time to time
(to quote an illustration which he was fond of using)
like Apollo in the service of Admetus. During the first
ten years of his mature life, that is from 1837 to 1847,
he earned what little he needed chiefly by manual work,
his remarkable mechanical skill enabling him to do this
with readiness. At the family business of pencil-making,
in spite of his reported youthful abjuration, he worked at
intervals during the greater portion of his life, chiefly by
way of rendering aid to his father and sisters. Land-
surveying was another employment in which he incident-
ally busied himself; and here too, owing to his adroit-
ness in mensuration, and his intimate acquaintance with
the Concord hill-sides and " wood-lots," his services were
highly valued.

He also began at this time, though but slightly and
tentatively at first, to give his attention to lecturing and
literary work. His first lecture, the subject of which

THOREAU. 37

was "Society," was delivered in April 1838, at the
Concord "Lyceum," where he afterwards lectured
almost every year during the remainder of his life. His
' earliest poems were composed about 1837. While in
residence at Harvard University he had been a constant
reader of verse, had mastered Chalmers' Collection, and
become acquainted with a quaint and old-fashioned
school of poetry little known to his neighbours and con-
temporaries. The influence of Herbert, who was one
of his early favourites, is very discernible in Thoreau's
youthful poems, and Cowley, Davenant, and Donne
were most attentively studied by him, Quarles also at
a somewhat later period. One of the most remarkable
of these early poems is the piece entitled " Sic Vita,"
of which the first stanza runs thus —

" I am a parcel of vain strivings, tied
By a chance bond together,
Dangling this way and that, their links
Were made so loose and wide,
Methinks,
For milder weather."

This poem was written on a strip of paper which bound
together a bunch of violets, and so thrown in by
Thoreau at the window of Mrs. Brown, of Plymouth,
a lady with whom he corresponded, and who was the
means, as will be related, of his being introduced to
Emerson. In 1837 a strong stimulus was given to his
prose writing by the commencement of a regular series
,of diaries, the first of which, the Red Journal^ ran on to
some six hundred long pages in less than three years.
Here : he systematically noted his daily walks, adventures,

38 LIFE OF

and meditations, so that as the diary was revised and

corrected witnconsiderable minuteness, its author was
able to draw direct from this literary store whenever he
needed the materials for a poem or essay. This was
the case with his contributions to the Dia/, when that
transcendentalist organ was started in 1840 by certain
of Thoreau's friends.

At this time there were living in the Thoreaus' house
at Concord a Mrs. Ward, widow of Colonel Joseph
Ward, an officer who distinguished himself in the War of
Independence, and her daughter, Miss Prudence Ward,
who is referred to in an early passage of Thoreau's first
volume, The Week, as the friend to whom the two
voyagers sent news of the whereabouts of the rare
hibiscus. The Wards and the Thoreaus had been old
friends in Boston, when both families were living there ;
and Mrs. and Miss Ward had come to Concord in 1833,
living first with Henry Thoreau's aunts, Jane and Maria
Thoreau, and afterwards at the house of his father.
This led to an incident which must have affected
Thoreau very deeply at the time, and may possibly
furnish a key to some otherwise obscure traits in his
writings — his love for the girl to whom his brothe/ John
is also said to have been attached. This was Ellen
Sewall, a granddaughter of Mrs. Ward, and daughter of
the Rev. E. Sewall, pastor of Scituate. Her brother,
then a boy of eleven, was at school at Concord under
John and Henry Thoreau, and Ellen, a beautiful girl of
seventeen, used to visit the Thoreaus in order to be
near her relatives. These visits were much enjoyed by
all the party, as the four younger members of the
Thoreau household were then at home; and many

THOREAU. 39

hours were pleasantly spfinLinJtong country walks or
boating-excursions, or in reading aloud and discussing,
according to a custom then popular in Concord, some
book in which they were interested.

Hence it happened that the two brothers fell in love
with Miss Sewall; and the story has been told that
Henry, in a rare spirit of self-sacrifice, abstained from
urging his own claims, so as to avoid placing himself in
any rivalry with his brother. There is, however, no
reason to believe that the girl felt anything more than
friendship for either of them, and shortly after John
Thoreau's death she married the man of her choice, a
clergyman, with whom she lived happily to a good old
age. Thoreau's elegiac stanzas, published in the Dial
in 1840 under the title of- "Sympathy," are said, on
Emerson's authority, to contain a reference, under a
thin disguise, to his love for Ellen Sewall, the "gentle
boy" of the poem being in truth a gentle girl; but,
according to another statement, the verses were dedicated
to her brother, a boy of great promise and most lovable
disposition, who bore a strong likeness to his sister.
At any rate it seems probable that Ellen Sewall was to
som£ extent in Thoreau's mind when he wrote the poem
u Sympathy," and it is said that certain sonnets which
he addressed to her will some day see the light. It is
to be regretted that, from a false notion of propriety,
such extreme reticence has so long been maintained
concerning the story of Thoreau's love, and that facts
which have much interest for his readers, and can cause
no pain to his survivors, should even now be very
imperfectly known.

40 LIFE OF

" Irately, alas ! I knew a gentle boy
Whose features all were cast in Virtue's mould,
As one she had designed for Beauty's toy,
But after manned him for her own stronghold.

So was I taken unawares by this,

I quite forgot my homage to confess j

Yet now am forced to know, though hard it is,

I might have loved him, had I loved him less.

Each moment as we nearer drew to each,
A stern respect withheld us further yet,
So that we seemed beyond each other's reach,
And less acquainted than when first we met.

Eternity may not the chance repeat ;
But I must tread my single way alone,
In sad remembrance that we once did meet,
And know that bliss irrevocably gone.".

To those who are acquainted with even the outline of
this story of Thoreau's youthful passion, it becomes less
difficult to understand the somewhat severe and remotely
ideal tone that pervades his utterances on friendship
and love. "In the light of this new fact," says Mr,
R. L. Stevenson in his essay on Thoreau, " those pages,
so seemingly cold, are seen to be alive with feeling. "
In this relation we see that there is a peculiar appro-
priateness in the title which Emerson first applied to
Thoreau — the " Bachelor of Nature."

That Thoreau would have been willing to make any
sacrifice of his personal happiness for the sake of his
brother, we can well believe; for this brother was, as he
has gratefully recorded, his " good genius," a " cheerful
spirit " by whose sunny presence he was ever invigorated

THOREAU. 41

and reassured. The two had been intimately associated
from childhood, had worked together and played to-
gether, and roamed in company over all the hills and
woodlands of Concord. It was with his brother John
that Henry made, in 1839, that famous holiday-trip
on the waters of the Concord and Merrimac rivers, an
account of which was published, ten years later, in The
Week, Starting from Concord on the last day of
August, in their boat, the Musketaquid^ which they
had made with their own hands in the spring, and
taking with them their tent, and guns, and fishing-
tackle, and various provisions for the voyage, they
journeyed down the slow-flowing Concord river, till
they came to its confluence with the larger and swifter
Merrimac at Lowell. Thence they rowed up the stream
of the Merrimac, which, by comparison with that which
they had left, seemed like "a silver cascade which falls
all the way from the White Mountains to the sea," until
they arrived within a few miles of the New Hampshire
capital, which bears the same name as their native
village. Here they were compelled to leave their boat,
while they proceeded on foot along the bank of the
narrowing stream, and so traced the Merrimac river to
its source among the White Mountains. This was one
of the first of the " Excursions " to which Thoreau was
afterwards so much addicted, and from which he often
derived benefit both in health and enlarged experiences.
The boat in which the brothers made their voyage
came subsequently into the possession of Nathaniel
Hawthorne, and is the one referred to in the Introduc-
tion to the Mosses from an Old Manse.

Up to the date of which we are speaking Thoreau

42 LIFE OF

had no very intimate companion except his brother
John, for he had made no close friendships at college,
such as should last him for a lifetime. One friendship,
however, had already commenced, which was of extreme
importance to him both in itself and as being the means
of introducing him to a larger circle of friends, Emerson,
as has been stated, had settled in Concord in 1834, and
had at once manifested a kindly interest in the welfare
of his young neighbour, fifteen years his junior, " r ho was
then studying at Harvard University. It was probably
in 1837 that their first personal meeting, which could
not long have been delayed, was brought about through
the agency of a lady who was a relative of Emerson's
family and a friend of the Thoreaus, the Mrs. Brown to
whom the stanzas headed * * Sic Vita " were dedicated by
their youthful author. This lady, having been informed
by Helen Thoreau that there was a passage in her
brother Henry's diary which contained some ideas
similar to those expressed by Emerson in a recent
lecture, reported the matter to Emerson, and at his
request brought Henry Thoreau to his house. Thus
began an intercourse which continued unbroken during
the rest of Thoreau's life, and was productive of much,
pleasure and profit on both sides, to the elder mani
as well as to the younger. "I delight much in my
young friend," wrote Emerson in 1838, "who seems to
have as free and erect a mind as any I have ever met."

The value to Thoreau of this admission into the
Emersonian circle, exactly at the time when he was able
to derive from it the most advantage and encouragement,
can hardly be over-estimated; for not only did it draw
out the latent energies of his character, but gave him an

THOREAU. 43

opportunity of expressing and publishing his thoughts.
Ajeriodical which should be the accredited organ of
the new ideas had for some time been in contemplation
among the members of the transcendental " symposium,"
and in 1840 this project was carried into effect by the
establishment of the quarterly Dial, the management of
which was chiefly in the hands of Emerson, Margaret
Fuller, and George Ripley. Its chances of success, in
the commercial sense, were from the first very precarious,
for the number of original subscribers was small, and a
transcendental magazine was not likely to attain to much
popularity; but the Dial was nevertheless the means of
uniting the advocates of the new philosophy, and of
affording an opening for many writers of merit who had
been hitherto unknown. Commencing in July 1840, it
continued to be issued for four years, the editorship
during the first half of tr;at time being entrusted to
Margaret Fuller and George Ripley, while among the
contributors were Emerson, Alcott, Margaret Fuller,
Ripley, Theodore Parker, Elizabeth Peabody, Lowell,
Thoreau, Ellery Channing, Jones Very, W. H. Channing,
and many others of more or less note. Each of the
four volumes of the Dial contained essays and poems
from Thoreau's pen, his poem on "Sympathy" in the
first number being his earliest appearance in print.
This, however, was but his novitiate in literary work,
and several of his papers were rejected by Margaret
Fuller, during the term of her editorship, with a candid
criticism of what she judged to be their crudities and
defects.

The presence of Emerson at Concord, to which place
he was bound by family ties and early associations —

44 LIFE OF

four of his ancestors having been Concord ministers and
Dr. Ripley being his step-grandfather — was an event
of no slight importance in the history of that some-
what secluded township. After resigning his Unitarian
pastorate at Boston in 1832, and spending the next
year in England, he had married his second wife, Miss
Lydia Jackson, and taken up his permanent residence
at Concord in 1835, where he was so clearly recognised
as its most illustrious citizen that in 1836, when a
monument was erected on the site of the battlefield of
1775, he was chosen to commemorate the occasion by
those stanzas which have since become celebrated —

" By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, <

Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world."

Through the rise of transcendentalism and the rapid
spread of Emerson's literary fame, Concord — such is the
attraction of genius — became more and more a place of
note and the resort of poets and philosophers; it was
the beginning of a new era for the quiet country town
whose sturdy farmers were no longer to be its most
prominent representatives, but were to see their placid
region invaded by a host of eager enthusiasts from every
part of New England.

N^ But of far more importance than these restless visitors
was the permanent circle of friends and fellow-workers
who, as old Dr. Ripley was passing away from his ministry,
were gathering round the acknowledged seer of Concord.
Prominent among these was Amos Bronson Alcott, who
came to Concord with his wife and daughters in 1840,

THOREAU. 45

tall, slender, white-headed, one of the gentlest and most

lovable of men, and highly valued by Emerson, as by all

who knew him (smile though they might at his mysticism

and lack of worldly prudence), for his lofty aims and

disinterested zeal for humanity. Two years later came

Nathaniel Hawthorne, a mystic of a gloomier type, who

brought his bride, Sophia Peabody, to the seclusion of

the Old Manse which had been Dr. Ripley's residence.

Hawthorne's sister-in-law, the talented Elizabeth Peabody,

had already settled in Concord; and Margaret Fuller,

the Zenobia of his famous romance, plain indeed in her

personal appearance as compared with that brilliant

heroine, yet exercising no less marvellous fascination by

her learning, genius, versatility, and rich sympathetic

nature, was a frequent visitor for weeks together in the

village, where her sister, Ellen Fuller, who had married

Ellery Channing, the poet, was then living. Here too

resided Elizabeth Hoar, another of those earnest,

* thoughtful women by whom the Concord society was

rendered remarkable.

These, with Henry Thoreau, were the chief members
of that transcendentalist company of which Concord was
the meeting-place, and it cannot be doubted that the
course of his speculations, however stubborn his in-
dividuality, must have been appreciably affected by his
introduction into so distinguished a group. As early
as 1840 he was fully admitted into the inner circle
of which Emerson, Alcott, and Margaret Fuller were the
chief representatives, and used to be present at Alcott's
philosophical "conversations," held at Emerson's house,
which were attended by many advanced thinkers from
Boston, Cambridge, and other neighbouring towns.

46 LIFE OF

Early in 1841 Thoreau was invited by Emerson to
become an inmate of his household, and for two years
from that time he lived under his friend's roof. " He is
to have his board, etc., for what labour he chooses to
do," wrote Emerson, "and he is thus far a great bene-
factor and physician to me, for he is an indefatigable and
skilful labourer." Emerson's house was a square, sub-
stantial building on the Boston Road, at the outskirts
of the village. The ground was low-lying, and at first
somewhat bare and open, but some fruit-treeS were
planted by Thoreau in which Emerson afterwards
delighted. Emphatic testimony to Thoreau's helpfulness
and kindness of heart has been borne by Emerson's son
in some recently published memoirs of his father. 1 " He
was as little troublesome a member of the household,
with his habits of plain living and high thinking, as could
well have been, and in the constant absences of the
master of the house in his lecturing trips, the presence
there of such a friendly and sturdy inmate was a great
comfort. He was handy with tools, and there was no
limit to his usefulness and ingenuity about the nouse
and garden." That Emerson at times felt a little out of
sympathy with the rather pugnacious and contradictory
temperament of his young friend, as shown in his
suggestive remark, " Thoreau is, with difficulty, sweet,"
is probable enough, and does not necessarily conflict
With the above statement It appears that John Thoreau,
Henry's brother, was also intimate with Emerson's family
at this time, and was in the habit of performing similar
friendly services. On one occasion he fixed a blue-bird's
box on Emerson's barn, a gift which remained for years,
1 Emerson in Concord^ 1889, by Dr. E. W. Emerson.

THOREA U. 47

as Emerson notes, "with every summer a melodious
family in it, adorning the place and singing his praises."
It was by John Thoreau's arrangement, too, that a
daguerreotype portrait was taken of little Waldo Emerson
only a few months before the child's death.

Thoreau's friendship with Alcott, though less intimate
than with Emerson, was very constant and sincere, and
Alcott himself has borne grateful testimony to the worth
of Thoreau as a friend. Margaret Fuller, whose con-
nection with the Dial brought her into association and
correspondence with Thoreau, also seems to have felt
considerable interest in his character at this time, and
expressed herself in her letters with her wonted candour
^1 and freedom. In rejecting some verses which Thoreau
had offered for publication, she thus sketches the out-
lines, as they appear to her, of his personality : —

" He is healthful, rare, of open eye, ready hand, and noble scope.
He sets no limit to his life, nor to the invasions of nature ; he is
not wilfully pragmatical, cautious, ascetic, or fantastical. But he
is as yet a somewhat bare hill, which the warm gales of spring have
not visited. Yet what could a companion do at present, unless to
tame the guardian of the Alps too early ? Leave him at peace amid
his native snows. He is friendly ; he will find the generous office
that shall educate him. It is not a soil for the citron and the rose,
but for the whortleberry, the pine, or the heather."

In this same year Thoreau made another acquaintance
which soon ripened into the warmest and most intimate
friendship of his life. Ellery Channing, the nephew of
the great Unitarian minister, Dr. W. E. Channing, and
the brother-in-law of Margaret Fuller, came to Concord
in 1 841, and lived for a time in a cottage near Emerson's
house. He was a poet and a man of genius, though of

48 LIFE OF

so whimsical, moody, and unstable a character that
he never won the popularity which his friends were
constantly anticipating for him, " Could he have drawn
out that virgin gold," says Hawthorne of Channing's
talent, "and stamped it with the mint-mark that alone
gives currency, the world might have had the profit and
he the fame." Between him and Thoreau, whose junior
he was by one year, there was quickly established a
strong bond of sympathy and mutual understanding,
which perhaps originated in the fact that each stood in
a position of antagonism towards the canons of society.
Channing, who was as impatient of routine as Thoreau
himself, had not graduated at the University ; and while
his new friend had been keeping school at Concord he
r had been living in a log-hut in the wilds of Illinois. In
his ^unwearying devotion to nature and natural scenery
his pastes exactly coincided with Thoreau's, and many
were the rambling walks and talks they had together at
all houj^an^seBons, while the good folk of Concord
were intent on their more sober business.

It was well for Henry Thoreau that at this period of his
early manhood he had formed these lasting friendships
with such men as Emerson, Alcott, and Channing; for
a blow was impending which might otherwise have left
him lonely and friendless on the very threshold of active
life. We have seen how his natural self-control and
fortitude of character enabled him to perform an act of
self-renunciation for the sake of the brother to whom he
was so closely attached; he was now to be subjected
to a still severer trial by the unexpected death of the
companion of his youthful days. In February 1842
John Thoreau died from lock-jaw, caused by an injury

THOREAU. 49

done to his hand in shaving — a death so sudden and
painful that his brother could rarely endure to hear
mention of it in after-life, and is said to have turned pale
and faint when narrating the circumstances to a friend
more than twelve years later. " After the sad and un-
fortunate death of his brother," says one who knew them
both, "he seemed to have no earthly companion in
whom he could confide and love; he appeared in-
different to all about him, and sometimes I thought he
even hated himself." When he visited Cohasset in 1849,
and witnessed a terrible death-scene after the shipwreck
of an Irish brig, he remarked that if he had found one
body cast upon the beach in some lonely place it would
have affected him more. "A man," he adds, "can
attend but one funeral in the course of his life, can
behold but one corpse;" in which saying there is a
reference to his own bereavement. It is noticeable that
in his Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers % his
brother, though necessarily often alluded to, is not once
mentioned by name.

For this heavy blow Thoreau sought and found the\
needed comfort in that strong belief in the immutable \
goodness of Nature, which was the basis of his whole Sf
intellectual creed. "I find these things," he wrote, J
" more strange than sad to me. What right have I to ;
grieve, who have not ceased to wonder ? " He had lost x, ^
the loved companion of his daily pilgrimage ; but one f
effect of his brother's death was to incline him still more I
strongly towards a close study of nature and the trans- (
cendental manner of thought; he might indeed have beerf
in danger of lapsing into that vague mysticism which was
the besetting weakness of some of the transcendentalists,

4

50 LIFE OF THOME AU,

had it not been for the sound practical frame of mind
which was as much a part of him as his idealism. It
was this solid element of good sense that kept the balance
in his character; soar as he might in his transcendental
reveries, and scoff as he might at the absurdities of con-
ventional habit, he never lost hold on the simple essential
facts of everyday life.

CHAPTER III.

A FTER his brother's death in 1842 Thoreau con-
tinued to live in Emerson's house, the bereavement
which each of the two friends had recently undergone
(for little Waldo, Emerson's favourite child, had died
early in the same year) being doubtless instrumental in
bringing them more closely together. Thoreau's regard
for Emerson and Mrs. Emerson was very deep, and it
was natural that a young man, even when possessed of
Thoreau's strength of character, should be lastingly in-
fluenced by so commanding a personality as Emerson's.
It has been remarked by several of those who knew both
men, that Thoreau unconsciously caught certain of the
traits of Emerson's voice and expression, and even of
his personal appearance — that he deliberately imitated
Emerson is declared on the best authority to be an " idle
and untenable" assertion. The following account of
Thoreau's receptivity in this respect is given by one of
his college class-mates, whom I have already quoted : —

" Not long after I happened to meet Thoreau in Mr. Emerson's
study at Concord — the first time we had come together after leaving
college. I was quite startled by the transformation that had taken
place in him. His short figure and general cast of countenance
were of course unchanged; but in his manners, in the tones of his
voice, in his modes of expression, even in the hesitations and

52 LIFE OF

pauses of his speech, he had become the counterpart of Mr.
Emerson. Thoreau's college voice bore no resemblance to Mr.
Emerson's, and was so familiar to my ear that I could have readily
identified him by it in the dark, I was so much struck by the
change that I took the opportunity, as they sat near together
talking, of listening with closed eyes, and I was unable to deter-
mine with certainty which was speaking. I do not know to what
subtle influences to ascribe it, but after conversing with Mr.
Emerson for even a brief time, I always found myself able and
inclined to adopt his voice and manner of speaking." 1

The change noticed in Thoreau was not due only
to the stimulating influence of Emerson's personality,
though that doubtless was the immediate means of
effecting his awakening. Underneath the sluggish and
torpid demeanour of his life at the University there had
been developing, as his school-mates afterwards recog-
nised, the strong stern qualities which were destined to
make his character remarkable, and these had now been
called into full play both by the natural growth of his
mind, and by the opportunities afforded in the brilliant
circle of which he was a member. " In later years,"*
says John Weiss, who knew him well at Harvard, " his
chin and mouth grew firmer, as his resolute and audacious,
opinions developed, the eyes twinkled with the latent
humour of his criticisms of society." It was a veritable
transformation — an awakening of the dormant intellectual
fire — and it has been ingeniously suggested that the
" transformation" of Donatello in Hawthorne's novel may
have been founded in the first place on this fact in the
life of Thoreau.

So too with regard to his social and ethical opinions;
it would have been strange if the youth of twenty-five
1 Ralph Waldo Emerson, by Rev. D. G. Haskins.

THOREA U> 53

had not been in some degree affected and influenced by
the philosopher of forty ; but the freshness and originality
of his genius, in all essential respects, is none the less
incontestable. Thoreau, in fact, was one of the very
few men by whom Emerson was himself in some degree
impressed. We are told by Dr. E. W. Emerson that
his father " delighted in being led to the very inner
shrines of the wood-god by this man, clear-eyed and
true and stern enough to be trusted with their secrets;"
and there is no doubt that Thoreau influenced him per-
ceptibly in the direction of a more diligent and minute
study of nature, and a simpler and austerer mode of life.
He differed in one important respect both from Emerson
and from the other members of the Emersonian circle
of transcendentalists — in his aboriginal hardihood and
vigour. To them Concord was a suitable place of
adoption; to him it was the place of his birth. The
simplicity of living, personal independence, and intimacy
with wild nature, which to the others involved more or
less a deliberate effort, were in his case an innate and
unconscious instinct.

With Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was the latest
addition to the society of Concord, Thoreau had
perhaps little in common except his friendship with
Ellery Channing, though courteous relations seem to
have subsisted between them. Some of the references
to Thoreau in Hawthorne's journal have a touch of the
petulance and harshness of judgment to which Hawthorne
was rather prone when recording his impressions of his
acquaintances; but on the whole he speaks of Thoreau
with unusual admiration and respect. "Mr. Thoreau
dined with us yesterday," he writes on ist September

54 LIFE OF

1842. " He is a singular character — a young man with
much of wild original nature still remaining in him;
and so far as he is sophisticated, it is in a way and
method of his own. He is as ugly as sin, long-nosed,
queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and somewhat rustic
though courteous manners corresponding very well with
such an exterior. But his ugliness is of an honest arivl
agreeable fashion, and becomes him much better than
beauty." No reliance is to be placed in some further
remarks of Hawthorne's, to the effect that Thoreau's
sojourn in Emerson's household had been burdensome
to his host, for all the facts point strongly in the other
direction.

On another occasion we learn that Thoreau rowed
Hawthorne on the Concord river in the boat built and
used by himself and his brother in their week's excursion
to the Merrimac in 1839, and Hawthorne, delighted at
Thoreau's skill in paddling, decided to purchase the
boat and change its name from Musketaquid to Pond-
lily. But the art of managing a canoe, which Thoreau
had learnt from some Indians who had visited Concord
a few years previously, was not to be acquired in a
day. " Mr. Thoreau had assured me," writes Hawthorne
plaintively, " that it was only necessary to will the boat
to go in any particular direction, and she would immedi-
ately take that course, as if imbued with the spirit of the
steersman. It may be so with him, but it is certainly
not so with me." The difficulty once mastered, Haw-
thorne took much pleasure in his new purchase, and
seems to have been inspired by something of Thoreau's
enthusiasm for the wildness of open-air life. " Oh that
I could run wild," he exclaims, when recording his first

THOREAU. 55

successful voyage in the Pond-lily ; "that is, that I could
put myself in a true relation with nature, and be on
friendly terms with all congenial elements."

By the middle of 1842 the Dial, which had never
been prosperous from a pecuniary point of view, was in
severe straits, and the editorship having been resigned
by Margaret Fuller, was undertaken by Emerson himself,
in which work he was largely assisted by Thoreau, who
was then living in his house. It is said that Thoreau
not only canvassed for new subscribers, read proof-
sheets, and selected passages from the " Ethnical Scrip-
tures" of the Oriental philosophers, which formed one
of the features of the Dial under Emerson's manage-
ment, but also acted as sole editor on one or two
occasions during his friend's absence. 1 A large number
of Thoreau's writings were inserted by Emerson, whose
estimate of his ability was far higher than that held by
Margaret Fuller; so that the young author was now
becoming recognised as one of the leaders of transcen-
dental thought. The Dial for July 1842 contained his
delightful essay on "The Natural History of Massa-
chusetts," to which Emerson prefixed an introductory
note in which he hinted that Izaak Walton and
White of Selbome had now a worthy successor. The
"Winter Walk," another essay of the same character
and of almost equal merit, appeared in the Dial sl
year later.

In July 1842 Thoreau, accompanied by a friend,

went on a three days' excursion to Wachusett, a

mountain to the west of Concord ("the blue wall," he

calls it, "which bounds the western horizon"), which,

1 VoL iii., No. 3, is said to have been edited by Thoreau.

56 LIFE OF

from its isolated position, forms a conspicuous feature
in the landscape, and is familiar by name to all readers
of his writings. More than once he expresses a feeling
of sympathy with this solitary height—

" But special I remember thee,
Wachusett, who like me
Standest alone without society."

His account of the walk, and how they camped a night
on the mountain, was published the following year in
the Boston Miscellany », under the title of "A Walk to
Wachusett." "Wachusett," he wrote, in describing the
view from the summit, "is, in fact, the observatory of
the State. There lay Massachusetts spread out before
us in length and breadth like a map." Thoreau's love
of mountains is exemplified in many passages of his
diary, and the occasional excursions which he made to
the lofty outlying ranges visible from the Concord hills
formed some of the most pleasing episodes in his life.
" A mountain chain," he says, "determines many things
for the statesman and philosopher. The improvements
of civilisation rather creep along its sides than cross its
summit. How often is it a barrier to prejudice and
fanaticism! In passing over these heights of landi
through their thin atmosphere, the follies of the plain
are refined and purified; and as many species of plants
do not scale their summits, so many species of folly no
doubt do not cross the Alleghanies."

Thoreau's predilection for solitude, and indifference
or dislike to "society," in the ordinary sense of the
word, may be gathered from a good deal of what has
already been related of him. There was an aloofness

THOREAU. 57

and reserve in his nature which, together with his stern
and lofty ideals, made him appear at times somewhat
unbending and unapproachable. It was no question of
being better, or worse, than the generality of men — he
was different; and the sympathy which he could not
find in civilised man he sought in wild nature, though
well aware that Nature herself is nothing except in her
relation to man. "I feel," he said, "that my life is
very homely, my pleasures very cheap. Joy and sorrow,
success and failure, grandeur and meanness, and indeed
most words in the English language, do not mean for
me what they do for my neighbours. I see that my
neighbours look with compassion on me, that they think
it is a mean and unfortunate destiny which makes me to
walk in these fields and woods so much, and sail on this
river alone. But so long as I find here the only real
Elysium, I cannot hesitate in my choice." To say, as
is often said, that Thoreau was unsocial is, however,
incorrect, except in a limited and qualified degree.
"He enjoyed common people," says Channing; "he
relished strong acrid characters." The rough honest
farmers of Concord were his especial favourites, and in
their company he could show plenty of that good fellow-
ship of which he appeared, under some conditions, to
be deficient. The impression which he left on his
friends in Emerson's household, after his two years'
residence there, was a wholly agreeable one. "He was
by no means unsocial," says Dr. E. W. Emerson, " but
a kindly and affectionate person, especially to children,
whom he could endlessly amuse and charm in most
novel and healthful ways. With grown persons he had
tact and high courtesy, though with reserve. But folly,

58 LIFE OF

or pretence, or cant, or subserviency, excited his formid-
able attack."

Early in 1843 Thoreau ceased to live in Emerson's
house, having accepted the offer of a tutorship in the
family of Judge Emerson, the brother of the Concord
philosopher, who was then living in Staten Island, near
New York. Before leaving Concord to take up this
duty, he wrote as follows to Emerson, who was lecturing
at New York : —

1 ' At the end of this strange letter I will not write what alone
I had to say — to thank you and Mrs. Emerson for your long
kindness to me. It would be more ungrateful than my constant
thought. I have been your pensioner for nearly two years, and
still left free as the sky. It has been as free a gift as the sun or the
summer, though I have sometimes molested you with my mean
acceptance of it — I, who have failed to render even those slight
services of the hand which would have been for a sign at least;
and, by the fault of my nature, have failed of many better and
higher services. But I will trouble you no more with this, but for
once thank you and Heaven. "

It is probable that some stanzas of Thoreau's entitled
" The Departure" were written about this time, when he
had just left with regret the friends whose house had for
two years been his home.

Several months were spent by Thoreau in Staten
Island. Here, in his spare hours during the spring
and summer of 1843, he continued his walking ex-
cursions as regularly as at Concord, and was frequently
mistaken by the inhabitants for a busy surveyor, who
was studying every yard of the ground with a view to
some extensive speculation. From an old ruined fort
he used to watch the emigrant vessels pass up the

THOREAU. 59

narrow channel from the wide outer bay and go on their
course to New York, or, as the case might be, remain in
quarantine at Staten Island, when the passengers would
be allowed to go ashore and refresh themselves on that
"artificial piece of the land of liberty." From the low
hills in the interior of the island, among the homesteads
where the Huguenots had been the first settlers, he
could see the long procession of out-going ships, stretch-
ing far as the eye could reach, "with stately march and
silken sails," as he describes it; at other times he roamed
along the desolate sandy shore, where packs of half-wild
dogs were on the look-out for carcases of horses or oxen
washed up by the tide. " An island," he says, in his
Week, "always pleases my imagination, even the smallest,
as a continent and integral portion of the globe. I have
a fancy for building my hut on one. Even a bare,
grassy isle, which I can see entirely over at a glance, has
some undefined and mysterious charms for me."

It was at Staten Island that Thoreau wrote those
beautiful and highly characteristic stanzas on the sea : —

* ' My life is like a stroll upon the beach,
As near the ocean's edge as I can go ;
My tardy steps its waves sometimes o'erreach,
Sometimes I stay to let them overflow.

My sole employment 'tis, and scrupulous care,
To place my gains beyond the reach of tides,

Each smoother pebble, and each shell more rare,
Which Ocean kindly to my hand confides.

I have but few companions on the shore :
They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea ;

Yet oft I think the ocean they've sailed o'er
Is deeper known upon the strand to me.

60 LIFE OF

The middle sea contains no crimson dulse,
Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view ;

Along the shore my hand is on its pulse,
And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew."

During the sojourn in Staten Island, Thoreau was
frequently in New York, where he made the acquaint-
ance of W. H. Channing, Edward Palmer, Lucretia
Mott, Henry James, Horace Greeley, and other persons
of note. "In this city," he wrote to his sister on 21st
July, " I have seen, since I last wrote, W. H. Channing,
at whose house in Fifteenth Street I spent a few pleasant
hours, discussing the all-absorbing question — what to
do for the race. Also Horace Greeley, editor of the
Tribune, who is cheerfully in earnest at his office of
all work, a hearty New Hampshire boy as one could
wish to meet, and says, ' Now be neighbourly.'" With
Greeley, who was at this time preaching Fourierism in
the New York Tribune, in conjunction with Margaret
Fuller and George Ripley, Thoreau established a firm
friendship; and it will be seen that Greeley was able,
a few years later, to render him valuable service in
securing publication for his writings. In a letter
addressed to Emerson from Staten Island, 23rd May
1843, Thoreau thus relates his impressions of New
York :—

l " You must not count much upon what I can do or learn in New
tyork. Everything there disappoints me but the crowd, rather, I
was disappointed with the rest before I came. I have no eyes for
their churches, and what else they have to brag of. Though I
know but little about Boston, yet what attracts me in a quiet way
seems much meaner and more pretending than there — libraries,
pictures, and faces in the street. You don't know where any

THOREAU. 61

respectability inhabits. The crowd is something new and to be
attended to. It is worth a thousand Trinity Churches and
Exchanges, while it is looking at them ; and it will run over them
and trample them underfoot. There are two things I hear and am
aware I live in the neighbourhood of — the roar of the sea and the /
hum of the city."

Though literary work had not yet come to be regarded
by Thoreau as his principal employment, his pen was
not idle during his visit to Staten Island. He wrote
some articles for the Democratic Review and Dial, and
made some translations from the Greek of ^schylus
and Pindar. The Dial, in spite of the fact that its con-
tributors wrote gratuitously, was unable to pay its way,
and the difficulties in which it was already involved led
to its discontinuance in the spring of 1844. But although
the transcendentalist organ thus failed to win the neces-
sary public support, transcendentalism as a movement
was now in the hejday of its vigour. It was, as we
have seen, part of the creed that every one should
labour with his own hands, and that men should
endeavour to revert, as much as possible, from an
artificial to a simple mode of living. When these
thoughts began to be embodied in deeds the move-
ment took two directions, the one towards collective
action, and the other towards individualism. It was in
reference to the former that Emerson wrote to Carlyle
in 1840: "We are all a little wild with numberless
projects of social reform; not a reading man but has a
draft of a new community in his waistcoat pocket."
The most important of such communal projects was the
famous Brook Farm experiment, which was commenced
in the spring of 1841, and came to an end in 1847, on

62 LIFE OF

which subject the opinion of the chief transcendentalists
was divided, Margaret Fuller and George Ripley joining
in the enterprise, while Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau
stood aloof. The spread of Fourierism in New England
during these same years had led to the establishment of
"Phalansteries," in which Horace Greeley and W. H.
Channing took a leading part. Yet another attempt at
transcendental colonisation was that made by Alcott
and one or two friends in 1843, on an estate near
Harvard, which was purchased by them and named
" Fruitlands." This small colony, to which Thoreau
paid a visit, though he declined the offer of membership,
was, like most of the rest, a failure; and in less than a
year Alcott gave it up and returned to Concord.

Of the second, or individualist, method of practising
the "return to nature," Thoreau himself was destined to
be the most successful exponent. His utter distrust of
communities is very characteristic of his independent
and self-assertive temperament. "As for these com-
munities," he wrote in his journal, " I think I had rather
keep bachelor's hall in hell than go to board in heaven."
But, though he had no intention of sacrificing one iota'
of his individuality by joining a community at Brook
Farm or elsewhere, he had for some time been con-
sidering the feasibility of putting his principles into
practice by a temporary and tentative withdrawal from
the society of his fellow-townsmen, a plan which was
possibly suggested to him by his friend Stearns Wheeler,
who lived for some months, in 1841 or 1842, in a hut
near Flint's Pond, where he was visited by Thoreau.
This desire appears in his journal as early as 1841. " I
want to go soon and live away by the pond," he wrote

THOREAU. 63

on December 24th, " where I shall hear only the wind
whispering among the reeds. It will be success if I
shall have left myself behind. But my friends ask what
I will do when I get there. Will it not be employment
enough to watch the progress of the seasons?" A
couple of months before the date of this entry Margaret
Fuller had written to Thoreau : "Let me know whether
you go to the lonely hut, and w T rite to me about Shake-
speare if you read him there." It has already been
mentioned that Walden Pond was associated with his
earliest reminiscences; as a child he had thought he
would like to live there, and as a boy he had been
accustomed to come to its shores on dark nights, and
fish for the " pouts " which were supposed to be attracted
by the glare of a fire lit close to the water's edge, or, on
a summer morning, to sit and muse for hours in his
boat, as it drifted where the wind took it.

There was, however, another spot with which he was
also familiar, which came very near being the scene of
his projected hermitage. In his youthful voyages up
the Concord river he had noticed, at a distance of about
two miles from the village, an old-fashioned ruinous
farm-house, concealed behind a dense grove of red
maples, through which was heard the barking of the
house-dog. This was the Hollowell Farm, the seclusion
of which, if we may trust a passage in Walden, so
tempted Thoreau that, at some period in his early man-
hood, he actually agreed to become its possessor. But
before the purchase was effected and the contract signed,
the owner of the place changed his mind, and had no
difficulty in inducing Thoreau to release him from the
bargain.

64 LIFE OF

We may surmise that in 1844, after the conclusion of
his educational engagement in Staten Island, he was
still more decidedly bent on putting his favourite plan
into execution; and that his thoughts now reverted to
Walden woods as the place most suitable for his pur-
pose. Alcott's experiment at " Fruitlands," although
unsuccessful in a pecuniary sense, had doubtless stimu-
lated Thoreau's inclination to a forest life; and Emerson
himself, while sceptical, in the main, as to the wisdom
of such enterprises, had bought land on both sides of
Walden Pond, with the idea of building a summer-house.
Ellery Channing, who in his youth had made trial of a
rough backwoods life, was of course taken into his
friend's confidences respecting this retirement to the
woods. "I see nothing for you in this earth," he
wrote in 1845, "but that field which I once christened
'Briers'; go out upon that, build yourself a hut, and
there begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive.
I see no alternative, no other hope for you. Eat your-
self up ; you will eat nobody else, nor anything else."

Encouraged by these exhortations, and firmly trusting
the promptings of his own destiny, Thoreau determined
in the spring of 1845, being now in his twenty-eigbtk.
Jgar T rn build himsHf a hut c-n the sfrorg of Walden.
Pond and there live for such time, and in such a
manner, as might best conduce to his intellectual and
spiritual advantage. The objects of his retirement have
been so often misunderstood that they will bear repeti-
tion in his own words : —

"Finding that my fellow-citizens were not likely to offer me any
room in the court-house, or any curacy or living anywhere else, but
that I must shift for myself, I turned my face more exclusively than

THOREAU. 65

ever towards the woods, where I was better known. I determined
to go into business at once, and not wait to acquire the usual
capital, using such slender means as I had already got. My purpose
in going to Waiden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly
there, but to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles.
... I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to
front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what
it 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, living is so dear ;
nor did I wish to practise resignation unless it was quite necessary.
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
cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and
reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then
to get the w r hole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its mean-
ness to the world ; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience,
and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."

Waiden was, in fact, to Thoreau what Brook Farm \
was to others of the transcendentalists — a retreat suitable j
for philosophic meditation, and the practice of a simpler,
hardier, and healthier life.

CHAPTER IV.

TVTALDEN POND, on the shore of which Thoreau
determined to make his hermitage, is a small
lake, about a mile and a half south of the village of
Concord, surrounded by low thickly-wooded hills. Its
water, which is of a greenish-blue colour, is so brilliantly
transparent that the bottom is visible at a depth of thirty
feet 7 in which respect it is unrivalled by the other ponds
of 'the neighbourhood, except by White Pond, which lies
some two miles westward, on the other side of the
Concord river. Walden had doubtless in primitive ages
been frequented by the Indians, as was testified by
arrow-heads discoverable on its shores, and by dim
traces of a narrow shelf-like path, " worn by the feet of
aboriginal hunters," which ran round the steeply-sloping
bank. In the early days of the Massachusetts colony,
the dense woods, which even in Thoreau's memory com-
pletely surrounded the pond, had been the haunt of
fugitives and outlaws; but, at a later period, the road
from Concord to Lincoln, which skirts the east shore of
Walden, had been dotted by the cottages and gardens of
a small hamlet, and had resounded, as Thoreau tells us,
" with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants." Drink had
been the ruin of these former settlers; and the hardy
water-drinker who now came to make his home in

LIFE OF THOREA U. 67

Walden woods took care to choose a new and unpol-
luted spot for his dwelling.

The ground chosen by Thoreau for the building of
his hut was on a wood-lot belonging to Emerson — a
sloping bank at the outskirts of the forest, on the north
shore of the pond, and some thirty or forty yards from
the water-edge. No house could be seen from this
point, the horizon being bounded by the woods on the
opposite shore, half a mile distant; and although the
village was within easy reach, and the newly-constructed
railway was visible on one hand, and the woodland road
on the other, there was no neighbour within a mile, and
the solitude was usually as complete as the strictest
anchorite could have desired. This position exactly
suited Thoreau's requirements, since he could either
pursue his meditations undisturbed, or, if the mood took
him, pay a visit to his friends in the village, from whose
society he had no intention of permanently banishing
himself

So one morning towards the end of March 1845,

when the approach of spring was already heralded by
the voice of song-birds and the thawing of the ice on
Walden, the " Bachelor j)£Jtfature " addressed himself to
the pleasurable task of " squatting" on the selected spot.
Having borrowed the favourite axe of his friend Alcott,
who warned him that it was " the apple of his eye," he
began to cut down pine-trees and hew the timber into
shape fqr the frame of his hut, working leisurely each
day, so as to get the full enjoyment of his occupation,
and returning betimes to the village to sleep. After two
or three weeks spent in this labour, when the hduse was
framed and ready for raising, he dug his cellar in the--

68 LIFE OF

sand of the sloping bank, six feet square by seven deep;
and having bought the planks of a shanty belonging to
an Irishman who worked on the Fitchburg railroad, he
transported them to the site of the hut. Early in May
he set up the frame of his house, on which occasion —
for the sake of neighbourliness, as he is careful to tell us,
rather than of necessity — he accepted the assistance of
some of his friends, among whom were Alcott (to whom
he returned the axe sharper than he had received it),
George William Curtis, 1 who was then spending a year
or two at Concord, having hired himself out as an agri-
cultural labourer, and Edmund Hosmer, one of the
leading farmers of Concord, with whom Thoreau Was
on intimate terms. The hut, which was ten feet wide
by fifteen long, with a garret and a closet, a large
window at the side, a door at one end, and a brick fire-
place at the other, was then boarded and roofed so as to
be quite rain-proof, but during the summer months it
remained without plastering or chimney. It was the
4th of July, or Independence Day — a significant and
auspicious date for the commencement of such an
undertaking — when Thoreau, who previously had been
owner of no habitations but a boat and a tent, took up
his residence in this house, which he could call his own
property, and which, as he proudly records, had cost
him but twenty-eight dollars in the building.

The question of "furnishing," which is a cause of
such anxious consideration to so many worthy house-

1 In his contribution to Homes of American Authors he refers
to Thoreau's hut. " One pleasant afternoon a small party of us
helped him raise it — a bit of life as Arcadian as any at Brook
Farm."

THOREAU. 69

holders, was solved by Thoreau with his usual boldness
and expedition. "Furniture!" he exclaims, in an out-
burst of pitying wonder at the spectacle of men who are
enslaved by their own chattels. " Thank God, I can sit
and I can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse."
His furniture at Walden, which was partly of his own
manufacture, consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three
chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of
tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-pan,
a dipper, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates,
one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and
a japanned lamp. Curtains he did not need, since there
were no gazers to look in on him except the sun and
moon, and he had no carpet in danger of fading, nor
meat and milk to be guarded from sunshine or moon-
beam. When a lady offered him a mat, he declined it
as being too cumbrous and troublesome an article; he
preferred to wipe his feet on the sod outside his door.
Finding that three pieces of limestone which lay upon
his desk required to be dusted daily, he threw them out
of the window, determined that if he had any furniture
to dust, it should be " the furniture of his mind." With
a house thus organised, housework, instead of being an
exhausting and ever-recurring labour, was a pleasant
pastime.

" When my floor was dirty I rose early, and setting all my
furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making but
one budget, dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white sand
from the pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed it clean and
white; and by the time the villagers had broken their fast, the
morning sun had dried my house sufficiently to allow me to move
in again, and my meditations were almost uninterrupted. It was
pleasant to see my whole household effects on the grass, making

70 LIFE OF

a little pile like a gipsy's pack, and my three-legged table, from
which I did not remove the books and pen and ink, standing amidst
the pines and hickories."

Having thus chosen his surroundings, he was free to
choose also the most congenial manner of life. He
rose early, and took his bath in the pond, a habit which
he regarded as nothing less than "a religious exercise."
After the morning bath came the work — or the leisure —
of the day. In the early summer, before the building
was finished, he had ploughed and planted about two
and a half acres of the light sandy soil in the neighbour-
hood of his hut, the crop chiefly consisting of beans,
with a few potatoes, peas, and turnips; and during this
first summer at Walden the bean-field was the chief
scene of his labours, from five o'clock till noon being
the hours devoted to the work. Day after day the
travellers on the road from Concord to Lincoln would
rein in their horses and pause to look with wonder on
this strange husbandman, who cultivated a field where
all else was wild upland, who put no manure on the soil,
and continued to sow beans at a time when others had
begun to hoe.

Meantime the husbandman himself was deriving from
his rough matter-of-fact occupation a sort of sublime
transcendental satisfaction; it was agriculture and mys-
ticism combined to which he was devoting his bodily and
mental energies. What matter if, when the pecuniary
gains and losses of the season came to be estimated, he
found himself with a balance of but eight dollars in his
favour, which represented his year's income from the
farm ? Was he not less anxious and more contented
than his fellow-agriculturists of the village ? The follow-

THOREAU. 71

ing season he improved on these results by cultivating
only a third of an acre, and using the spade instead of
the plough. Whatever money was further needed for
his food and personal expenses, he earned by occasional
day-labour in the village, for he had, as he tells us, " as
many trades as fingers."

After a morning thus spent in work, whether manual
or literary, he would refresh himself by a second plunge
in the pond, and enjoy an afternoon of perfect freedom,
rambling, according to his wont, by river or forest,
wherever his inclination led him. He had also his entire
days of leisure, when he could not afford "to sacrifice
the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether
of the head or hands." " Sometimes," he says, "in a
summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I
sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in
a reverie, amidst the pines, and hickories, and sumachs,
in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang
around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by
the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of
some traveller's waggon on the distant highway, I was
reminded of the lapse of time." He was well aware
that these day-dreams must be accounted sheer idleness
by his enterprising townsmen ; but of that he himself
was the best and only judge. On moonlit evenings
he would walk on the sandy beach of the pond, and t
wake the echoes of the surrounding woods with his
flute.

We have seen what amount of shelter Thoreau thought
needful for his comfort ; his estimate of what is necessary
in the way of food and clothing was conceived in the
same spirit. His costume was habitually coarse, shabby,

72 LIFE OF

and serviceable ; he would wear corduroy, Channing tells
us, but not shoddy. His drab hat, battered and weather- \
stained, his clothes often torn and as often mended, his }
dusty cow-hide boots, all told of hard service in field ^
and forest, and of the unwillingness of their wearer to ]
waste a single dollar on the vanities of outward appear-^ 7
ance. He wished his garments to become assimilated
to himself, and to receive a true impress of his character;
he would not be, like some king or nobleman, a wooden
horse on which clean clothes might be hung for a day's
ornament. His diet was fully as simple and economical
as his clothing; his food, while he stayed at Walden,
consisted of rice, Indian meal, potatoes, and very rarely
salt pork, and his drink was water. He baked his own
bread of rye and Indian meal, at first procuring yeast
from the village, but afterwards coming to the conclusion
that it was " simpler and more respectable " to omit the
process of leavening. He had a strong preference at all
times for a vegetarian diet, though he would occasionally
catch a mess of fish for his dinner from Walden Pond,
and pleads guilty on one occasion to having slaughtered
and devoured a wood-chuck which had made inroads on
his bean field.

Here is an anecdote of Thoreau, by one who visited
him at Walden : —

\ u One of the axioms of his philosophy had been to take the life of
V 'nothing that breathed, if he could avoid it; but it had now become
a serious question with him whether to allow the wood-chucks and
rabbits to destroy his beans, or to fight. Having determined on the
latter, he procured a steel trap, and soon caught a venerable old
fellow ' to the manor born,' and who had held undisputed posses-
sion there for all time. After re|aimng the enemy of all beans ' in
durance. m1© 'for a few hours, he pressed his foot on the spring o

THOREAU. 73

the trap and let him go — expecting and hoping never to see him
more. Vain delusion !

"A few days after, on returning from the village post-office and
looking in the direction of his bean field, to his disgust and
apprehension he saw the same old grey-back disappear behind some
brush just outside the field. Accordingly he set the trap and again
caught the thief.

" Now it so happened that those old knights of the shot-gun, hook
and line, Wesson, Pratt and Co. , were on a piscatorial visit to the
Pond. A council of war was thereupon held to determine what
should be done with the wood-chuck.

"A decision was rendered immediately by the landlord of the
Middlesex Hotel in his terse and laconic manner : * Knock his
brains out ! '

" This, however, was altogether too severe on the wood-chuck,
thought Henry ; even wood-chucks had some rights that * Squatter
Sovereigns' should respect. Was he not the original occupant
there; and had not he * jumped' the wood-chuck's * claim,' de-
stroyed his home and built the 'hut' upon the ruins?

"After considering the question carefully he took the wood-chuck
in his arms and carried him some two miles away, and then, with a
severe admonition at the end of a good stick, he opened the trap
and again let him depart in peace, — and he never saw him more." 1

In November, when the summer weather was ended
and frost coming on apace, he put the finishing touches
to his house by shingling its sides, building a fire-place
and chimney, and finally plastering the walls. Hardly
was this last process over when the winter set in with full
severity, and by the middle of December the pond was
completely frozen and the ground covered with snow.
He now began, in the full sense, to inhabit his hermitage,
his outdoor employments being limited to collecting and
chopping firewood, while dining the long evening hours

3 Some Recollections and Incidents concerning Tkoreau, by Joseph
Hosmer.

74 LIFE OF

he occupied himself with the journal, which he still kept
with unfailing regularity, and which formed the basis of
his Walden and the Week on the Concord and Merrimac
Rivers^ the latter of which was now in course of pre-
paration. Now, too, he had full leisure to weigh the
respective merits of society and solitude. Of the solitude
thus offered him he availed himself with gratitude and
profit; it was during this period that he matured his
thoughts and perfected his literary style, so that having
come to Walden with still somewhat of the crudeness of
youth, he might leave it with the firmness and dignity of
manhood.
\ In this connection may be quoted the pleasant stanzas
of the "Winter Walk," written at Walden, though at a
somewhat earlier date : —

" When Winter fringes every bough
With his fantastic wreath,
And puts the seal of silence now
Upon the leaves beneath ;

When every stream in its pent-house

Goes gurgling on its way,
And in his gallery the mouse

Nibbleth the meadow hay ;

Methinks the summer still is nigh,

And lurketh underneath,
As that same meadow-mouse doth he

Snug in that last year's heath.

Eager I hasten to the vale,

As if I heard brave news,
How nature held high festival,

Which it were hard to lose.

THOREAU. 75

I gambol with my neighbour ice,

And sympathising quake,
As each new crack darts in a trice

Across the gladsome lake.

One with the cricket in the ground,

And fagot on the hearth,
Resounds the rare domestic sound

Along the forest path."

It is, however, a mistake to suppose that Thoreau was
entirely isolated from society during his seclusion at
Walden — such had never been his intention, and such
was not, in fact, the case. Every day or two, in winter
as well as in summer, he strolled to the village to see his
relatives and friends, and to hear the gossip of the hour,
sometimes returning late at night after supper at a friend's
house, and steering his way with difficulty through the
darkness of the Walden woods. The Fitchburg railroad
often provided him with a pathway on these occasions ;
indeed, so well known was he along the line, that the
drivers of the trains were accustomed to bow to him as
to an old acquaintance. Nor was the visiting altogether
on Thoreau's side; for, as may well be believed, the
news of his strange retirement brought him numerous
unbidden guests, whom he received with such hospitality
as was possible in his sylvan abode. To the simple
holiday folk, who came to enjoy themselves and make
the best of their time, such as children and railroad
men, wood-choppers, fishermen, hunters, and even idiots
from the almshouse, he seems invariably to have extended
a hearty welcome and good fellowship ; not so, perhaps,
to the dilettante reformers, prying gossips, and sham
philanthropists, whose advances he characteristically

76 LIFE OF

resented, men who " did not know when their visit had
terminated," though he sought to indicate this fact to
them by going about his business again, and answering
them " from greater and greater remoteness."

He also received welcome visits from Emerson, on
whose land he was "squatting," and from his other per-
sonal friends. Ellery Channing spent a fortnight with
him in his hut at Walden, at the time when he was
building his fireplace, and was a frequent visitor at all
seasons of the year. Alcott w T as another of his regular
guests, and it is he who is referred to in the pages of
Walden as "one of the last of the philosophers," the
man "of the most faith of any alive." On a Sunday
afternoon he would sometimes be cheered by the approach
of the " long-headed farmer," Edmund Hosmer, one of
the firmest and heartiest of his friends, and the talk
would then be of "rude and simple times, when men
sat about large fires in cold bracing weather, with clear
heads."

The following is a record of a visit paid to Thoreau
by Joseph Hosmer, the son of his farmer friend : —

" Early in September 1845, on his invitation, I spent a Sunday at
his lake-side retreat. His hospitality and manner of entertainment
were unique, and peculiar to the time and place. The cooking
apparatus was primitive, and consisted of a hole made in the earth
and inlaid with stones, upon which the fire was made, after the
manner at the sea-shore when they have a clam-bake. When suffi-
ciently hot, remove the embers and place on the fish, frog, etc.

" Our bill-of-fare included horned pout, corn, bread, beans, salt,
etc. The beans had been previously cooked. Tfre meal for our
bread was mixed with lake water only, and when prepared it was
spread upon the surface of a thin stone used for that purpose, and
baked. When the bread had been sufficiently baked the stone was

THOREAU. 77

removed, then the fish was placed over the hot stones and roasted —
some in wet paper and some without — and when seasoned with salt
they were delicious."

It will be seen from these instances that Thoreau was
by no means the misanthropic anchorite that some have
imagined him. He well knew the value of social inter-
course ; but, on the other hand, he knew also that
" society is commonly too cheap"; he loved at times to
be alone, and confesses that he " never found the com-
panion that was so companionable as solitude."

It has been supposed that the Walden hermitage was
occasionally a refuge to quite other visitors than those
who have been enumerated, and that Thoreau's hut was
a station in the great "Underground Railway" for run-
away slaves, though Thoreau himself only mentions one
visitor of this kind, whom he had helped " to forward
toward the north star."

I am informed, however, on good authority, that of
Colonel Wentworth Higginson, that Thoreau's hut can
have had little, if anything, to do with the Underground
Railway. " Massachusetts did not, like Ohio, lie in the
shortest line between the slave-states and Canada ; hence
fewer fugitives passed through, and those who did were
less hotly pursued, so that the Underground Railway,
which was a pretty definite chain of houses in Ohio, was
rather a vague figure of speech hereabouts. In one or
two cases fugitives were expressly taken to Concord, and
may have been in Thoreau's hut, but it must have been
quite exceptional." " I have made this a matter of
special investigation," says Dr. S. A. Jones, 1 "and the

1 Lippincotfs Magazine, August 1 89 1. In the first edition of this
book I was in error on this point.

78 LIFE OF

truth is that there were specially prepared houses in
'Old Concord' which afforded infinitely more secure
resting and hiding-places for the fugitive slave. More-
over, the survivors who managed Concord 'station'
declare that Thoreau's hut was not used for such a
purpose."

It was in connection with Thoreau's abolitionist enthu-
siasm that a remarkable incident befell him during his
first autumn at Walden. His individualistic view of life
had naturally led him, as it led Alcott and some other
transcendentalists, to the adoption of anarchist doctrines,
and he heartily accepted and endorsed the dictum that
" that government is best which governs not at all." His
deep disapproval of the foreign policy of the United
States in their war with Mexico, and his still stronger
detestation of the sanction given by Government to
negro slavery at home, had the effect of spurring his
latent discontent into a sense of active personal anta-
gonism to the State and its representatives, and he felt
that something more than a verbal protest was demanded
from those who, like himself, were required to show their
allegiance in the form of taxes. " I meet this American
Government, or its representative the State Government,
directly, and face to face, once a year — no more — in the
person of its tax-gatherer. ... If a thousand men were
not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a
violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them,
and enable the State to commit violence and shed inno-
cent blood." 1

So when his " civil neighbour," the tax-gatherer, came
to Thoreau for the poll-tax, it was refused (as the church-
1 Essay on Civil Disobedience, 1 849.

THOREAU. 79

tax had been refused by him in 1838) on the ground that
he did not care to trace the course of his dollar " till it
buys a man, or a musket to shoot one with." To the
anxious inquiry of the tax-gatherer what he was to do
under these perplexing circumstances, the answer returned
was that if he really wished to do anything, he should
resign his office. The first difficulty of this kind had
arisen in 1843, when Alcott, who was probably acting in
conjunction with Thoreau, was arrested for his refusal to
pay the tax; but it was not till 1845 1 that the State pro-
ceeded against the younger and, as it was presumably
thought, less important offender. One afternoon, when
Thoreau chanced to have gone in from Walden to the
village to get a shoe from the cobbler's, he was inter-
cepted and lodged in the town gaol. " Henry, why are
you here ? " were the words of Emerson, when he came
to visit his friend in this new place of retirement. "Why
are you not here?" was the significant reply of the
prisoner, in allusion to the characteristic caution of
Emerson. A humorous account of the night he spent
in prison, and of the fellow-criminals he met there, was
afterwards written by Thoreau. " It was like travelling/'
he tells us, "into a far country, such as I had never
expected to behold, to lie there for one night. It seemed
to me that I had never heard the town-clock strike before,
nor the evening sounds of the village, for we slept with
the windows open, which were inside the grating. It
was a closer view of my native town. I was fairly inside
of it. I never had seen its institutions before. I began
to comprehend what its inhabitants were about." The
next morning he was discharged, his mother and aunts
1 The date is wrongly given in Emerson's Memoir as 1847.

80 LIFE OF

having paid the tax without his consent — a somewhat
tame conclusion of the dispute on which he had not
reckoned. 1 He proceeded straight from the prison door,
among the meaning glances of his fellow-townsmen, to
finish the errand in which he had been interrupted over-
night, and having put on his mended shoe, was soon in
command of a huckleberry party, on a hill two miles
from Concord, from which spot, as he characteristically
remarked, "the State was nowhere to be seen."

During all his walks over the fields and forests of the

Walden neighbourhood, in which he was absent for hours,

and sometimes days together, he never fastened the

door of his hut; yet he never missed anything but a

volume of Homer, and "was never molested by any

person but those who represented the State." His

longest absence from Walden seems to have been the

fortnight he spent in Maine, in September 1846, when,

v in company with a cousin who was residing at Bangor,

he explored the recesses of the Maine woods, ascended

the mountain Ktaadn, and made personal acquaintance,}

with some of the native Indian hunters, whose habits)

Jie was never weary of studying.

/ In 1847 he had some correspondence and personal

S intercourse with Agassi^ who had come to the States

' in the preceding autumn, and paid more than one

visit to Concord. On several occasions collections of

s fishes, turtles, and various local fauna were sent to

1 The payment of the tax has been wrongly ascribed to Emerson.
The money was\ actually handed to the gaoler by Miss Maria
Thoreau, disguised\by wrapping something round her head. The
gaoler, who is still giving (1894), says that the payment made
Thoreau "mad as the devil."

THOREAU. 81

Agassiz by Thoreau, of whose knowledge and observa-
tion the great^juatoalist formed a high opinion. In
one way, however, Thoreau differed widely from other
members of the same profession, for, though a naturalist,
he had discarded the use of the gun and the trap before
he lived in the woods, his field-glass being the sole
weapon of attack which he now carried in his excursions.
Fishing was the only sport which he did not abandon,
and even on this point his conscience was already
uneasy, and he had discovered that he could not fish
("without falling a little in self-respect."

Thus two summers and two winters passed by,
fruitful in quiet meditation and ripening experience,
though offering few incidents which call for special
remark. When the summer of 1847 had arrived, he
began to feel that the object for which he retired to
Walden was now sufficiently accomplished, and that
it was time for him to return to the more social atmo-
sphere of the village. His period of retirement had
not been wasted or misspent, for he had learnt by his
experiment two great lessons concerning the practical
life and the spiritual. First, "that to maintain one's
self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if
we will live simply and wisely," it being his own ex-
perience that he could meet all the expenses of the year
by six weeks of work. Secondly, "that if one
advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined,
he will meet with a success unexpected in common
hours; in proportion as he simplifies his life the laws
of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude
will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty nor weakness

82 LIFE OF

weakness." He had put his transcendental philosophy
to the test, and the result had not disappointed him; he
was no longer the " parcel of vain strivings " which he
had pictured himself in his youthful poem, but he had
now firm ground beneath his feet, and a clear object
towards which to direct his course in the future.
H^ ^ O n 6tl1 September 1847 ne left Walden, and again
^ took up his residence in his father's household at

Concord. The hut in which he had spent so many
pleasant hours became the habitation of a Scotch
gardener; a few years later it was bought by a farmer,
and removed to another quarter of the Concord
township, where it was used as a small granary and
tool-house till some time after the death of its architect
and original inhabitant.

"I left the woods," he says, "for as good a reason as I went
there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to
live, and could not spare any more time for that one." "Why
did I leave the woods ? " he wrote in his journal a few years later.
" I do not think that I can tell. I do not know any better how I
came to go there. I have often wished myself back. Perhaps I
wanted change. There was a little stagnation, it may be, about
two o'clock in the afternoon. Perhaps if I lived there much longer,
I might live there for ever. One might think twice before he
accepted heaven on such terms."

Walden, the most famous of Thoreau's volumes, which
contains the account of his life in the woods, was not
published till 1834. That this most characteristic
episode of his life should be a cause of wonder and
misunderstanding to the majority of his readers and
fellow-citizens, was, perhaps, only to be expected Men-
tion is made in one of the later diaries of an acquaintance

THOREAU. 83

of Emerson's, who was much interested in Walden, but
who was convinced that the book was nothing more than
a satire and jeu (Fesprit, written solely for the amuse-
ment of the passing moment, — a misconception of the
whole spirit of Thoreau's life, which is scarcely more
wide of the mark than are some of the judgments passed
on the Walden experiment in more recent criticism.
" His shanty life," says Mr. Lowell, " was a mere im-
possibility, so far as his own conception of it goes, as an
entire independency of mankind. The tub of Diogenes
had a sounder bottom." l But there is not a word to
indicate that Thoreau was thinking of an "entire in-
dependency of mankind," or of abjujiag~ft- single product
of civilisation which is of real use to men. The fact
that this enterprise of Thoreau's, as described in his
Walden, has been an encouragement and help to many
persons, both in America and England, to live a simpler
and saner life, is of itself sufficient testimony to the
success of his endeavours. Yet Mr. Lowell's most un-
justifiable confusion of simplicity with barbarism has
again and again been quoted by later critics as an
exposure of Thoreau's fallacies !

" Thoreau," says Dr. E. W. Emerson, "is absurdly
misconceived by most people. He did not wish that
every one should live in isolated cabins in the woods,
on Indian corn and beans and cranberries. His own
Walden camping was but a short experimental episode,

1 The author of the article on Thoreau in the Eficyclofiiedia
Britantiica falls into a similar error, when he states that Thoreau
was " desirous of proving to himself and others that man could be
as independent of mankind as the nest-building bird." So, too,
Professor Nichol, in his American Literature.

i^"

84 LIFE OF

and even then this really very human and affectionate
man constantly visited his friends in the village, and was
a most dutiful son and affectionate brother. It is idle
for cavilling Epicureans to announce as a great discovery
that he sometimes took supper comfortably at a friend's
house, or was too good a son to churlishly thumb back
the cake that his good mother had specially made for
him. He was not like the little men of that day who
magnified trifles of diet until they could think of little
else."

It is necessary, if we would understand Thoreau aright,
to appreciate carefully the importance of his sojourn at
Walden in relation to the rest of his career. It seems to
be sometimes forgotten that the period of his retirement
was only two years out of the twenty of his adult life,
and that it is therefore an injustice to him to connect
his work too exclusively with Walden, or to speak
of that episode as containing the sum and sub-
stance of his philosophical belief. It was a time of
self- probation rather than an attempt to influence
others, a trial rather than an expression of his trans-
cendental ideas ; he was under thirty years of age when
he went to Walden, had published no volumes, and was
altogether unknown except to a limited circle of his
fellow-townsmen. On the other hand, it must be noted
that this was the time when his t houghts ripe ned, and
his ethical creed assumed a definite form, and that his
residence in the woods was riot only the most striking,
because the most picturesque, incident in his life, but
also gave a determining direction to his later career.
He was a student when he came to Walden ; when he
returned to Concord he was a teacher.

THOREAU. 85

And now, at this critical point in Thoreau's story, it
may be well to interrupt for a time the external narrative
of his life, in order to show what manner of man he was,
in appearance, character, sympathies, studies, and other
personal traits, when he thus came forward to preach to
an inattentive world his gospel of simplicity.

CHAPTER V.

HP HE personality of Thoreau was one which seldom
failed to arrest the attention of those who met him.
" He was short of stature," says Mr. Moncure Conway,
who visited him a few years after he left Walden, " well
built, and such a man as I have fancied Julius Caesar to
have been. Every movement was full of courage and
repose ; the tones of his voice were those of Truth her-
self ; and there was in his eye the pure bright blue of
the New England sky, as there was sunshine in his flaxen
hair. He had a particularly strong aquiline Roman
nose, which somehow reminded me of the prow of a
ship." This description is fully corroborated by that
^ given in Thoreau^ the Potf-Naturalist, by Ellery Channing,
/ who, from his long and intimate acquaintance with
\ Thoreau, could speak with peculiar authority : —

41 His face, once seen, could not be forgotten. The features were
quite marked : the nose aquiline, or very Roman, like one of the
portraits of Caesar (more like a beak, as was said); large overhanging
brows above the deepest-set blue eyes that could be seen, in certain
lights, and in others grey — eyes expressive of all shades of feeling,
but never weak or near-sighted ; the forehead not unusually broad
or high, full of concentrated energy or purpose ; the mouth with
prominent lips, pursed up with meaning and thought when silent,
and giving out when open a stream of the most varied and unusual
and instructive sayings. His whole figure had an active earnestness,

LIFE OF THOREAU, 87

as if he had no moment to waste* Even in the boat he had a wary,
transitory air, his eyes on the outlook — perhaps there might be
ducks, or the Blondin turtle, or an otter, or sparrow."

From 1840 to i860 Thoreau's figure must have been

a very familiar one to his fellow-townsmen of Concord,

since he was abroad in all weathers and at all hours, a

( noticeable man with his sloping shoulders, " his eyes

<( bent on the ground, his long swinging gait, his hands

) perhaps clasped behind him, or held closely at his side,

the fingers made into a fist." The indomitable spirit

that animated his whole character was written unmistak-

5* ably in his personal appearance. " How deep and clear

*is the mark that thought sets upon a man's face!" was

the exclamation of one who saw him for the first time. 1

The homeliness of Thoreau's mode of dress has
already been noticed, and this, during his more lengthy
walks or excursions, often led to strange errors as to his
object and vocation. In Cape Cod and elsewhere he
was several times mistaken for a pedlar, and on board a
steamboat on the Hudson river he was once asked for a
"chaw o' baccy" by a bystander, who took him for a

1 There are three portraits of Thoreau which have been repro-
duced in various forms. (1) A crayon done by S. W. Rowse (a
young artist who stayed with the Thoreaus) in 1854, before the
time when Thoreau wore a beard. (2) A photograph by Critcher-
son, taken at Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1857 or 1858 (not in
1861, as has been wrongly stated). Thoreau here appears with a
fringe of beard on his throat. (3) An ambrotype photograph,
taken by Dunshee at New Bedford, at the request of Mr. Daniel
Ricketson, in August 186 1, when Thoreau was wearing a full
beard and moustache. From this photograph a bas-relief medallion
head, in profile, life-size, was produced by Mr. Walton Ricketson,
the son of Thoreau's friend.

88 LIFE OF

shipmate. It is said that his speech "had always a burr <
in it," owing to his peculiar pronunciation of the letter r;}
but all his oddities of appearance and manner were soon
forgotten under the singular charm of his conversation,!
the power of which is attested By"a1t "who TSiew him.
He MmlseTHsays^ in a passage of his diary, that his bon-
mots were the " ripe, dry fruit of long past experience,^
which fell from him easily without giving him either pain
or pleasure. This experiejocft was j& q% gather ed, as is

Usually the case, by foreign travel or a varied manner

[ of life, but by ^ hrew3 nativ e sense^ and keen practical
insig ht. There was a wonderful fitness, Emerson tells
us, between his body and mind. He was expert as a
walker, swimmer, runner, rower, and in all outdoor
employments; he could measure any given distance or
height by foot or eye with extraordinary precision, could
estimate the exact weight of anything put into his hands,

! and from a box containing a bushel or more of loose
pencils could take up just a dozen pencils at every

vgrasp.

In 1847, in answer to a circular which was issued at
the time for the purpose of collecting facts in the lives
of the Harvard class of 1837, Thoreau wrote the follow-
ing highly characteristic letter : —

" Am not married. I don't know whether mine is a profession,
or a trade, or what not. It is not yet learned, and in every instance
has been practised before being studied. The mercantile part of it
was begun by myself alone. It is not one but legion. I will give
you some of the monster's heads. I am a Schoolmaster, a private^
Tutor, a Surveyor, a Gardener, a Farmer, a Painter (I mean a <
House Painter), a Carpenter, a Mason, a Day-labourer, a Pencil- K >
maker, a Glass-paper-maker, a Writer, and sometimes a Poetaster. J
If you will act the part of Iolus, and apply a hot iron to any of

/

THOREAU. 89

these heads, I shall be greatly obliged to you. My present employ-
ment is to answer such orders as may be expected from so general
an advertisement as the above. That is, if I see fit, which is not
always the case, for I have found out a way to live without what is
commonly called employment or industry, attractive or otherwise.
^Indeed, my steadiest employment, if such it can be called, is to
.keep myself at the top of my condition, and ready for whatever
' may turn up in heaven or on earth. The last two or three years I
lived in Concord woods, alone, something more than a mile from
any neighbour, in a house built entirely by myself.

"P.S. — I beg that the class will not consider me an object of
charity, and if any of them are in want of any pecuniary assistance
and will make known their case to me, I will engage to give them
some advice of more worth than money." 1

He has sometimes been called an_as££Jicj but if he
seldom used flesh or wine, tea or coffee, and other
supposed "necessaries" of diet, this abstinence was
assuredly due to the fact that he found he thus
increased, rather than diminished, the pleasure of
existence. The rare delicacy of his nature showed
itself in his abhorrence of every form of sensuality or
grossness, and in his expressed desire to live "as
tenderly and daintily as one would pluck a flower."
\Yet seldom has there been a greater lover of healthy
\ physical life. The keenness of his senses was extra-
ordinary, and the perceptions of colour, sound, smell,
and taste are always spoken of in his diaries as luxuries

Sbr which he can never be sufficiently grateful. Music
lad at all times a peculiar attraction for him (he was
dm self a skilful player on the flute), and is repeatedly
mentioned in the diaries and letters as one of the

1 From " Memorials of the Class of 1837, prepared for the
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Graduation," by Henry Williams,
Boston, 1887.

90 LIFE OF

supreme delights of life. But, if we wish to discover
the central and distinctive quality of Thoreau's character,
we must look beyond the above-mentioned faculties to
<qthe inner secret of his power — the ideality that domin-
ated all his thoughts and actions. He was a transcend-
entalist in a far deeper and more literal sense than the
majority of those who bore that name.

It was this ideality that gave to his character a certain
external coldness and remoteness. " I love Henry,"
said one of his friends, " but I cannot like him; and as
for taking his arm, I should as soon think of taking
the arm of an elm-tree." The misunderstandings thus
generated were keenly felt by Thoreau himself, who
rightly attributes them to his own extreme sensibility
and exacting disposition. There are a number of
passages in the .diaries (perhaps not to be taken very
literally), in which his over-sensitive nature seems to be
tormented by unnecessary doubts as to his relations
with his friends, and this rigid strictness of ideal is
especially observable in his essays on Love and Friend-
ship, the latter of which forms a portion of one of the
best known chapters in The Week, Thus it was that
the very value which Thoreau set on his friendships
was his chief difficulty in maintaining them, their
rarity being to him the measure of their worth; so
that, with a few exceptions, he turned to nature for /
what he could not find in man. It is only fair to add "^
that Ellery Channing, who, as Thoreau's most intimate
friend, should be an authority on this point, asserts
positively that the essay on Friendship was "poetical
and romantic," and that to read it literally would be to
accuse its author of stupidity. "The living actual

THOREAU. 9i

friendship and affection," says Channing, " which makes
time a reality, no one knew better. He meant friend-
ship, and meant nothing else, and stood by it without
the slightest abatement."

To a man of this temperament, who needed leisure,
breathing-space, and elbow-room, and could not endure
to be shut up in polite drawing-rooms and dining-rooms,
where the guests jostled each other, mentally and bodily,
and where all true individuality was hidden and wasted,
the frivolities and formalities of conventional society
could not be otherwise than a burden and an irritant.
Under such conditions he became contradictory and
pugnacious, and marred the course of conversation by
the promptitude with which he negatived every pro-
position that might be advanced, most of all when he
detected any signs of hypocrisy, foppishness, or dilet-
tantism. The sharp sayings, and still more~ u aTcTRTrig
suences^ as Emerson terms them, which Thoreau dealt
out to all pretentious personages, had, of course, the
effect of getting him the reputation of cynicism and
misanthropy; those readers, however, who> rightly appre-
ciate his character, will distinguish between the normal
churlishness, which certainly was not one of his failings,
and the occasional acridity of speech which he deliber-
ately adopted in his intercourse with his fellow-citizens.
" If he had any affectation in his sincere and aspiring
nature," wrote one who knew him well, Mr. Edward
Hoar, of Concord, " it was a sort of inherited petulance,
that covered a sensitive and affectionate nature, easily
wounded by the scornful criticism which his new de-
parture sometimes brought upon him."

To style Thoreau a misanthrope is to misunderstand

v

92 LIFE OF

his whole nature, and to do him a great injustice. He
loved to study all forms of innocent and healthy char-
acter, and in one of his works he quotes, as specially
applicable to himself, Terence's famous maxim of regard
for our common humanity. Had he been the mere
fastidious recluse that some critics have supposed
him, he could not have drawn his sympathetic and
humorous sketches of the sturdy Concord farmers, or
of the hearty unsophisticated wood-chopper by whom he
was visited at Walden, or of the aged brown-coated
fisherman who haunted the banks of the Musketaquid,
or of the drunken Dutchman on board a New York
steamboat, or of the merry old oysterman who gave him
hospitality at Cape Cod. For idealist and enthusiast
f though he was, he possessed a true vein of humour,
which is none the less piquant because it is expressed in
?a manner so dry, pithy, and laconic. It is pleasant,
too, to note that the gravity which was habitual with the
hermit and philosopher could melt, when occasion arose,
£into merriment and good-fellowship, and that when he
Vaughed " the operation was sufficient to split a pitcher."
JHe was fond of playing on his flute, and would at times
/sing "Tom Bowling" and other nautical songs with
/much gusto and animation; and it is even recorded that
(he once or twice startled his friends by performing an
improvised dance.

S Reference has already been made to his sympathy
/with children, and his remarkable power of interesting
land amusing them. He would tell them stories, sing to
them, and play on his flute, or perform various pieces
of jugglery for their entertainment — an accomplishment
which he had probably learnt from his eccentric uncle,

THOREAU. 93

Charles Dunbar, in whose oddities he always took much
interest. But it was in the huckleberry expeditions that
his services were in greatest request, for then he would
drive the hay-cart in which the children journeyed to the
hills where the berries abounded, — and who knew each
knoll and dingle so intimately as Thoreau? — "leading
the frolic with his jokes and laughter as they jolted
along." When we read the delightful accounts of his
kindness and helpfulness on these occasions, we know
how to estimate the charges of misanthropy and
churlishness.

''Though shy of general society," says the writer of the re-
miniscences in Fraser, " Thoreau was a hero among children, and
the captain of their excursions. He was the sine qud 11011 of the
Concord huckleberry party, which is in that region something of an
institution. To have Thoreau along with them was to be sure of
finding acres of bushes laden with the delicious fruit. ... A child
stumbles and falls, losing his carefully gathered store of berries ;
^Thoreau kneels beside the weeping unfortunate, and explains to
^ him and to the group that nature has made these little provisions
")for next year's crop. If there were no obstacles, and little boys did
i not fall occasionally, how would berries be scattered and planted ?
\ and what would become of huckleberryings ? He will then arrange
that he who has thus suffered for the general good shall have the
first chance at the next pasture."

The severity of Thoreau J s ideal was not less con-
spicuous in matters of business than in his relations
towards his friends. He was absolutely and austerely

> faithful to his inner sense of right, keeping his engage-

> ments with stern regularity, and never failing in the full
(^discharge of his duty to those who engaged him as

surveyor or handicraftsman. Himself thus inflexible in
his probity, he expected and exacted a corresponding

/

94 LIFE OF

^uprightness in others; and where this was not exhibited,
< he made no polite pretence of concealing his dissatisfac-
tion. No meanness, hypocrisy, or dishonesty, whether
£on the part of rich or poor, could escape the rigorous
£ censure of " that terrible Thoreau," as his acquaintances
* called him ; nor would he waste on thriftless applicants
one cent of the money which he had earned by his own
conscientious labours. He maintained sincerity to be^
the chief of all virtues. O

/" A Yankee stoic " is a term that has been applied to
Thoreau. Though cosmopolitan in his philosophical
views, he was American to the backbone in sentiment
and manner, and did not study to conceal his indifference
or aversion for English and European fashions. Hex
- possessed in large measure the American qualities of >
self- consciousness and self-assertion, and avows in J
Walden his intention "to bra^ as lustily as chanticleer
fo tll ft ^ftimfoffi" m order to wake up his neighbours.
And as America was the most favoured of countries, so
did he extol his native Concord as the most favoured of
towns. This preference, however, was not due, as some
have supposed, to mere parochialism and narrowness of
mind — for parochialism, the study of the little instead
of the great, was certainly not one of Thoreau's failings
— but was, as Emerson has pointed out, a half-serious,
half-humorous way of reasserting the old stoical maxim
that all places are the same to a wise man, and that "the
best place for each is where he stands." On the same
principle, being asked at table what dish he preferred,
he is said to have answered, " The nearest."/

Not even the suspicion of provincial prejudice can
attach to Thoreau's literary tastes. It is true that his

THOREAU. 95

earnest practical mind could not relish the subtleties of
metaphysical works, the dulness of moral treatises, or
the floweriness of romance; and he was usually averse
to reading the magazines and journals of the day, the
" news " in which he was interested being other than
that which newspapers report. But he read largely and
widely nevertheless, and his discrimination never deterior-
ated into fastidiousness and partiality. The class of
books which he most highly valued was undoubtedly
the " sacred scriptures, " as he calls them, of the poets
and philosophers of Persia^ and India — the "KhflgYflt

Geeta^ '^^^^^^l^S^^ i$£mvi^dL&^
'" bibles^ of the old Orien tal relig ions. These he studied
chiefly in French and German translations, which he
accumulated with such zeal that he is said to have had
the best library of, such books in the country; and this
w*as supplemented, in 1855, by a handsome present of
volumes in English, French, Latin, Greek, and Sanscrit,
sent him by Mr. Cholmondeley, a young English
friend. There are numerous citations from these
ancient writings in Thoreau's, own works, and so great
was his reverence for them that he jealously asserted
their claim to the title of "scriptures" in common
with those of Jewish origin. When a young visitor
from Harvard College informed him that he was
studying "the Scriptures," Thoreau quickly retorted,
"But which?"

Thoreau's classical studies were not confined to his
early years, but were fully maintained in after-life,
Homer, ^Eschylus, Virgil, and the poets of the Greek
Anthology being his chief favourites. Classical learning P
is eulogised in both the Week and Walden % as being the )

96 LIFE OF

most heroic and tranquillising of all branches of reading.
"The value of the classic languages," says Wentworth
Higginson, " was never better exemplified than in their
influence on his training. They were real ' humanities '
to him, linking him with the great memories of the race,
and with high intellectual standards, so that he could
never, like some of his imitators, treat literary art as a
thing unmanly and trivial. I remember how that fine
old classical scholar, the late John Glen King, of Salem,
used to delight in Thoreau as being ' the only man who
thoroughly loved both nature and Greek.'" His reading
in Greek and Latin included not only the "classics"
proper, but many old-fashioned authorities on agriculture
and natural history, such as Aristotle, ^Eiian, Theo-
phrastus, Cato, Varro, and Pliny.

His respect for Linnaeus was, according to Channing,
" transcendent." He loved to study Froissart and the
old-fashioned chronicles, and such voyages as those of
Drake and Purchas, with any books of travel that came
in his way. Among poets the old English writers were
most to his liking; he read and appreciated old ballad-
writers, Chaucer, Spenser, Ossian, Herbert, Cowley,
Quarles, and, above all others, Milton, whose "Lycidas"
was often on his lips. For the moderns he cared com-
paratively little, the chief exceptions being Goethe,
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Ruskin, and Carlyle. He
admired Ruskin, but thought him somewhat bigoted,
finding in him, as he expressed it, "too much about
art for me and the Hottentots." For Carlyle he felt
and expressed the sincerest admiration, as may be seen
in the essay which he contributed to Graham's Maga-
zine in 1847.

THOREAU. 97

There was another and wholly different branch of
reading to which Thoreau devoted a considerable
portion of his time — the records of the native Indian
tribes, which he extracted with much labour and research
from the histories of the Jesuit missionaries, the early
New England chroniclers, and various other sources of
information. Everything connected with the Indians
had a strange interest and fascination for him ; he noted
and admired their natural instinct of woodcraft, their *
immobility and self-possession, and their mysterious "
sense of remoteness from the white man; he several
times visited Maine in order to study their language
and habits, and never failed to converse with the
wandering parties who sometimes pitched their tents
for a few weeks on the banks of the Concord river.
His collection of Indian relics had been commenced
while he was still a youth, for the soil of Concord — an
old settlement of Indian tribes — was rich in these
treasures, arrow-heads, pottery, and stone implements
being often turned up by the plough. Regularly every
spring, when the fields had been washed bare by rains
and thawing snow, would Thoreau set out to gather his
crop of arrow-heads, and his extraordinary keenness of
sight in detecting these relics was often a cause of
wonder to less observant minds. " I do not see where
you find your Indian arrow-heads," once remarked the
companion of his walk. " Here is one," replied Thoreau
on the instant, picking one up and presenting it to his
astonished friend.

This remarkable sympathy, on the part of one of the
most advanced of modern thinkers, with the spirit of a
savage and decaying race is accounted for by Thoreau's

7

I

I

98 LIFE OF

<* strong natural inclination to the uncultivated and wild.
"He loved the sea and all desert places ; preferred the
wild apple to the cultured orchard, and the dreariest
swamp to the most fragrant garden; and it cheered him
to see the young forest-pines springing up anew in the
fertile corn-land. The Indian, the human representative
S of wild life in New England, thus attracted his sym-
pathies, just as the sympathies of George Borrow were
attracted to the roaming gipsy tribes.
\ This inclination of Thoreau to wild nature was not,
^as some critics have suggested, a symptom of an un-
healthy temperament, but rather a method of retaining
the excellent soundness of his mind. " His whole life,"
says Lowell, " was a search for the doctor." This was

jatit the case. He went to nature, . not^JUS a, sickly

valetudinarian, seeking a cure for his ailments, but as a
? sane and hjalth^onan, the secret of whose health lay in
^ thi§jvjgrx£a.n Walking was a

/necessity of Thoreau's existence; he demanded four
\ hours at least each day for sauntering at leisure over
3 hills, and woods, and fields, taking short cuts when he
could, and avoiding for the most part the grit and noise
of the busier high-roads. The old Marlboro' road which
led south-west from Concord, through a spacious tract
of open country abounding in patches of scrub-oak and
wild apples, was one of his favourite haunts; so, too,
were Walden woods and the " Cliffs " which overhang
Fairhaven, the wide bay formed by a bend of the river
two miles south of the village. The river was much )
frequented by him at all seasons of the year; for in /
summer he made almost daily voyages in his boat, \
which he kept moored in Ellery Channing's riverside /

THOREAU. 99

garden, and in winter the frozen stream offered a
convenient pathway.

On these expeditions Thoreau was generally un-
accompanied, unless Ellery Channing or one of his
few chosen friends happened to be with him. Offers
of companionship were not rarely forthcoming, but
these he for the most part declined with that frankness
which was all his own. "Would he not walk with
them?" some acquaintances would ask. "He did not
know; there was nothing so important to him as his
w T alk; he had no walks to throw away on company."
But for those who succeeded in gaining this privilege
a rare treat was assured. Here is a reminiscence of
Thoreau from a private letter of G. W. Curtis : —

" It always seems to me one of the good fortunes of
my life that I knew Concord when Emerson, Hawthorne,
and Thoreau were citizens there, and that I personally
knew them. If in personal intercourse Thoreau some-
times seemed to be, as Hawthorne said, £ a cast-iron
man/ he was after all no more rigid than the oak which
holds fast by its own roots whatever betides. One of
my most vivid recollections of my life in Concord is
that of an evening upon the shallow river with Thoreau
in his boat. We lighted a huge fire of fat pine in an
iron crate beyond the bow of the boat and drifted slowly
through an illuminated circle of the ever-changing aspect
of the river bed. In that house beautiful you can fancy
what an interpreter he was."

f " His powers of conversation," says another who was
fthus favoured, " were extraordinary. I remember being
surprised and delighted at every step with revelations of
laws and significant attributes in common things. . . .

100 LIFE OF

£ The acuteness of his senses was marvellous; no hound
*) could scent better, and he could hear the most faint and
(distant sound without even laying his ear to the ground
aike an Indian. As we penetrated farther and farther
^nto the woods he seemed to gain a certain transforma-
tion, and his face shone with a light that I had not seen
'in the village." The account of Thoreau's skilful and
genial leadership of the Concord huckleberry-parties has
already been quoted, and from the same authority we
have an equally charming description of how he would
guide his friends to the haunts of the water-lily. 1

"Upon such occasions his resources for our entertainment were
inexhaustible. He would tell stories of the Indians who once
dwelt thereabouts, till the children almost looked to see a red man
skulking with his arrow on shore ; and every plant or flower qn the
bank or in the -water, and every fish, turtle, frog, lizard about us,
was transformed by the wand of his knowledge from the low form
into which the spell of our ignorance had reduced it, into a mystic
beauty. One of his surprises was to thrust his hand softly into the
water, and as softly raise up before our astonished eyes a large
bright fish, which lay as contentedly in his hand as if they were old
acquaintances."

' i|lfThis fish was probably the Bream, whose nest-guarding
hatnts ar6 described by Thoreau in The Week. " The^
Breams are so careful of their charge that you may stand /
close by in the water and examine them at your leisure* K -
I have stood over them half-an-hour at a time, and /
stroked them familiarly without frightening them, . . ..
and have even taken them gently out of the water with "
my hand."
Pis extraordinary sympathy with animals was one of

1 Moncure Conway, Fraser, April 1866.

THOREAU. 101

the most singular and pleasing features in Thoreau's
character. Like St. Francis, he felt a sense of love
and brotherhood towards the lower races, and regarded
them not as " brute beasts," without sensibility or soul","
but as possessing " the character and importance of
another order of men." He protested against the con-
ceited self-assurance with which man sets down the
intelligence of animals as mere " instinct," while over-
looking their real wisdom and fitness of behaviour.
They were his " townsmen and fellow-creatures," whose
individuality must be recognised as much as his own,
and who must be treated with courtesy and gentleness.

The strange influence which Thoreau was able to

exercise over beasts, and birds, and fishes was doubtless

chiefly due to the power of his humane sympathy, partly,

also, to his habits of patient silence and watchfulness,

in which he resembled the hermits of the Middle Ages.

His hut at Walden was inhabited by other creatures

besides himself; the birds would flit fearlessly through

the room ; the red squirrel raced over the roof, while

moles and hares stabled in the cellar; and chickadees

perched on the armfuls of wood which he carried across

his threshold. Once, as he was hoeing in a garden, a

sparrow alighted on his shoulder, which he regarded as

"a greater honour than any epaulet he could have worn."

Nor was this all, for his mingled firmness and sympathy

enabled him to take all sorts of liberties with the wildest

/ of wild creatures. A story is told how a squirrel, which

r he had taken home for a few days in order to observe its

^ habits, refused to be set at liberty, returning again and

V again to its new friend with embarrassing persistence,

climbing up his knee, sitting on his hand, and at last

102 LIFE OF

gaining the day by hiding its head in the folds of his
waistcoat — an appeal which Thoreau was not able to
withstand.

\ Thoreau was essentially a "goet -naturalist," as Ellery
vChanning entitled him, and not a man of science. He
was, indeed, an honorary member and correspondent of
the Boston Natural History Society; but he declined, as
a rule, to write memoirs of his experiences in this branch
of study, on the ground that he could not properly
detach the mere external record of observation from the
inner associations with which such facts were connected
in his mind— -Sri a word, the natural history of the subject
- could not be separated from the poetry.j His whole
method, as we have se^n, was different from that of the
scientific anatomist; he observed but he did not kill,
making it his object to hold his bird "in the affections "
rather than in the hand. It is said that when some
Concord loafers mockingly asked Thoreau if he really
did not shoot a bird when he wanted to study it, he
replied, " Do you think I should shoot you if I wanted
to study you?"

£ His diaries testify to the jmmense diligence, and keen-
•^jKJSSof his communion with nature, and his unflagging
interest in the seasons and all they bring with them.
He noted and recorded the habits of animals, the tracks
l of the fox and otter, the migrations and song of birds,
the croak of frogs and chirp of crickets, the spawning
and nests of fishes, the blossoming of flowers, the fall of
leaves, the height of the river, the temperature of ponds
/ and springs, and innumerable other phenomena of out-
door life. Like all true naturalists, he loved birds, and
many are the entries in his journal respecting the kinds

THOREAU. 103

that are native at Concord — the bobolink, the robin, the
song-sparrow, the whip-poor-will, the cat-bird, and the
blue-bird, which, as he beautifully said of it, "carries
the sky on its back." He loved to be awakened in/
the early summer mornings by the song of birds, and
nothing cheered him so much in the midst of a winter
storm as a bird's chirp or whistle.

The neighbourhood of Concord, with its wide tracts
of meadow and woodland, was a fine field for the
naturalist; and Thoreau, in his characteristic love of
paradox, was fond of asserting that it surpassed all other
places as a centre of observation — ajjoibl^ for which he
was gently bantered by Emerson. He talked about
nature, it waswittilyremarked, "as if she had been born
and brought up at Concord." Ne quid qucesiveris extra
te Concordiamque was his humorous maxim. He con-
tended that all the important plants of America were
included in the flora of Massachusetts, and after reading
Kane's Arctic Voyage he expressed his conviction that
most of the Arctic phenomena might be noted at
Concord — an assertion which he partly substantiated
by the discovery of red snow and one or two Labrador
plants. He had thoughts of constructing a complete
calendar for the natural phenomena of Concord, and
believed that if he waked up from a trance the time of
year would be as plain to him from the plants as the
time of day from a dial. Of all flowers the water-lily
was his favourite, but there were none that he did not
know and love ; even the growth of the sturdy aboriginal
weeds gave him a sense of satisfaction. He often
walked miles to note the condition of some rare tree or
shrub, and congratulated himself that the time thus spent

tX

104 LIFE OF THOREAU.

was more profitably laid out than in a good many social
visits. "On one occasion," says a friend who visited
him at Concord, "he mentioned the hibiscus beside the
river — a rare flower in New England — and when I
desired to see it, told me it would open ' about Monday
r and not stay long.' I went on Tuesday afternoon and
^was a day too late — the petals lay on the ground."

Such were the points in Thoreau's personality which
made him an object of interest and wonder from the
first to his own friends and acquaintances, and after-
wards to a far wider circle. We can well believe that a
man gifted with such an intense and genuine individu-
ality often found himself, as Emerson tells us, in
" dramatic situations," and that in any debatable matter
there was no person whose judgment was awaited by his
townsmen with keener expectation. As his fame spread
he gained an increasing number of admiring friends,
some of whom travelled long distances to see and
converse with him, in the belief that "this was the
man they were in search of, the man of men, who could
\ tell them all they should do."

CHAPTER VI.

TN the autumn of 1847, shortly after leaving the hut
at Walden, Thoreau again took up his residence at
Emerson's house, and lived there a year during his
friend's absence in Europe, in order to keep Mrs.
Emerson company and take charge of the garden. He
was in the habit of assisting Mr. Alcott in garden work
on his estate at "Hillside/' and in 1847 the two friends
and fellow- workers had built Emerson a summer-house,
to be used as a study. Early in October Thoreau
accompanied Emerson to Boston to see him start on
his voyage, and in a letter to his sister Sophia he feelingly
described the appearance and dimensions of the philo-
sopher's cabin, and how, instead of a walk in Walden
woods, he would be compelled to promenade on deck,
" where the few trees, you know, are stripped of their
bark." Emerson, on his part, was not forgetful of
Thoreau during his visit to England, and we find him
planning, in 1848, a new joint American and English
magazine, to which Thoreau was to be one of the chief
contributors. After Emerson's return to Concord in
1849 Thoreau lived at his father's house in the village,
and this continued to be his home for the rest of his
life.

He had now begun to consider literature his regular

106 LIFE OF

occupation, and it was as a writer and lecturer that he
was henceforth xhiefly known. We have seen that
during his literary novitiate he had contributed articles
(unpaid, for the most part) to the Dial and other
journals; and in 1847, by the kind services of Horace
Greeley, his essay on Carlyle was printed in Graham's
Magazine. This was followed in 1849 by the essay on
"Civil Disobedience," an expression of his anarchist
views, which found place in the Boston ^Esthetic Papers.
In the spring of the same year he took a more daring
and important step by the publication of his first volume,
the Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers^ which
was issued, at the author's expense, by Munroe, a Boston
bookseller. The book was well reviewed, but did not
sell, and the result was that Thoreau was compelled to
raise money to pay off the debt by devoting his time for
an unusually long period to the more remunerative but
less congenial task of surveying. An edition of one
thousand copies had been printed, and for several years
the bulk of these lay idle on the publisher's shelves,
until, in 1853, the remaining seven hundred volumes
were returned en masse to the author. This event was
recorded by Thoreau in his characteristic vein of dry
humour, and with a manly courage and self-reliance not
to be surpassed in the history of literary authorship.

" The wares are sent to me at last, and I have an opportunity to
examine my purchase. They are something more substantial than
fame, as my back knows, which has borne them up two flights of
stairs to a place similar to that to which they trace their origin.
Of the remaining two hundred ninety and odd, seventy-five were
given away, the rest sold. I have now a library of nearly nine
hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.

THOREAU. 107

Is it not well that the author should behold the fruits of his labour ?
My works are piled up in my chamber, half as high as my head, my
opera omnia. This is authorship. These are the work of my brain.
There was just one piece of good luck in the venture. The un-
bound were tied up by the printer four years ago in stout paper
wrappers, and inscribed ' H. D. Thoreau's Concord River, fifty
copies/ So Munroe had only to cross out * River' and write
'Mass.,' and deliver them to the express-man at once. I can see
now what I write for, and the result of my labours. Nevertheless,
in spite of this result, sitting beside the inert mass of my works, I
take up my pen to-night, to record what thought or experience I
may have had, with as much satisfaction as ever. Indeed, I believe
that this result is more inspiring and better than if a thousand had
bought my wares. It affects my privacy less, and leaves me
freer."

That The Week should at first have failed to win the
favour of any but a few sympathetic readers can hardly
be a matter of surprise, since its intense idealism and
strongly pantheistic tone were ill calculated to conciliate
the ordinary American mind. Purporting to be a record
of the trip made by the two brothers in 1839, it was in
reality an outpouring of its author's ideal philosophy on
a great variety of topics, a number of essays and poems
(mostly reprints from the Dial) being interwoven, in the
most arbitrary manner, w r ith the thread of the nominal
subject. The book is thus rendered vague, disjointed,
and discursive; and is, moreover, almost arrogant in its
transcendental egoism. Yet, with all its deficiencies, it
has, and must ever have, a great and indefinable charm
for the lovers of Thoreau's genius. Its very lack of
cohesion and entire disregard of method contribute to
enhance the effect of its poetical mysticism and brilliant
descriptive power, while several of the discourses intro-
duced into it — notably those on Friendship and Religion

108 LIFE OF

— are written in Thoreau's most admirable and telling
style. 1

In the autumn of 1849 Thoreau accompanied a friend
on an excursion to the wild sandy tract of Cape Cod,
for which he conceived so great a liking that he visited
it again on several occasions; in like manner he spent
a week in Canada, with Ellery Channing as his fellow-
traveller, in September 1850. Each of these excursions
provided material for a series of articles in Putnam's
Magazine; but both came to an abrupt conclusion
owing to misunderstandings between author and pub-
lisher — a mishap to which Thoreau's outspoken tone
and uncompromising temper made him peculiarly liable.
His visit to the Maine Woods in 1846 was described in
the Union Magazine two years later; and he again went
to Maine in 1853 and 1857. 2 These occasional excur-
sions were a great pleasure to Thoreau, as extending the
circle of his observations, without putting any restriction
on his freedom; but he still resolutely declined to
extend his travels to more distant regions, in spite of the
offers he sometimes received from admirers and friends,
who wished to take him round the world at their own
cost. Believing that " the far-fetched is of least value,"
he asserted that the sight of a marsh-hawk in the Con-
cord meadows was of more interest to him than the
entry of the allies into Paris. It is easy to laugh at

1 The AthmcEum of 27th October 1849 contained a brief notice
of The Week. "The matter is for the most part poor enough,"
said the reviewer, " but there are a few things in the volume,
scattered here and there, which suggest that the writer is a man
with a habit of original thinking."

2 For an account of these excursions, see Chapter VII.

THOREAU. 109

this deliberate concentration of thought on a particular
locality; but a study of Thoreau's life inclines one to
believe that he gauged correctly the peculiar strength
and the peculiar weakness of his shy and sensitive
genius.

The course of his life at Concord was singularly quiet
and uneventful. Always an affectionate son and brother,
he lived contentedly as a member of the household
of his father, who, with his assistance, had now built
himself a dwelling of his own and was no longer a
tenant. Thoreau's study was in the garret, where he
stored his collections of birds' eggs, botanical specimens,
and Indian relics, and carried on his literary work, His
regard for his father was in nowise diminished by the
dissimilarity of their characters, a contrast which is
illustrated by some suggestive passages in the journal.
On one occasion we find a protest made by the quiet,
unobtrusive, but eminently practical old man against
what he considered a waste of time on the part of his
more imaginative son, who was busying himself in
making sugar from a neighbouring maple-grove when
^>he could have bought it cheaper at the village shop.
('To his father's remark that it took him from his studies,
^Thoreau made the characteristic answer that it was his
('study, and that after being engaged in this pursuit he
4 felt "as if he had been to a university." Mrs. Thoreau,
who was of the same age as her husband, retained all
her dramatic vivacity of manner, love of society, and
extraordinary power of talk. It is said that when his
mother began to talk at table, Thoreau would patiently
remain silent until she had finished, and then, with a
courteous obeisance, resume the thread of his conversa-

>/

110 LIFE OF

tion at the point where it had been interrupted In
1849 the family circle suffered a heavy loss in the death
of Helen, Thoreau's elder sister, whose character, like
that of the brother who died seven years earlier, was full
of ability and promise.

It was about this time that Thoreau became acquainted
with Mr. Harrison G. O. Blake, a clergyman and tutor
residing at Worcester, Massachusetts, with whom he
corresponded largely from 1848 onwards, chiefly on
subjects connected with his ideal method of thought.
Mr. Blake has kindly furnished me with the following
reminiscences of his friendly intercourse with Thoreau : —

' ' I was introduced to him first by Mr. Emerson more than forty
years ago, though I had known him by sight before at college. I
recall nothing of that first interview unless it be some remarks upon
astronomy, and his want of interest in the study as compared with
studies relating more directly to this world — remarks such as he
has made here and there in his writings. My first real introduction
was from the reading of an article of his in the Dial on 'Aulus
Persius Flaccus,' which appears now in the Week. That led to my
first writing to him, and to his reply, which is published in the
volume of letters. Our correspondence continued for more than
twelve years, and we visited each other at times, he coming here to
Worcester, commonly to read something in public, or being on his
way to read somewhere else.

" As to the outward incidents of our intercourse, I think of little
or nothing that it seems worth while to write. Our conversation,
or rather his talking, when we were together, was in the strain of
his letters and cf his books. Our relation, as I look back on it,
seems almost an impersonal one, and illustrates well his remark
that * our thoughts are the epochs in our lives ; all else is but as a
journal of the winds that blew while we were here.' His personal
appearance did not interest me particularly, except as the associate
of his spirit, though I felt no discord between them. When to-
gether, we had little inclination to talk of personal matters. His

THOREAU. Ill

aim was directed so steadily and earnestly towards what is essential
in our experience, that beyond all others of whom I have known,
he made but a single impression on me. Geniality, versatility,
personal familiarity are, of course, agreeable in those about us, and
seem necessary in human intercourse, but I did not miss them in
Thoreau, who was, while living, and is still in my recollection and
in what he has left to us, such an effectual witness to what is
highest and most precious in life. As I re-read his letters from
time to time, which I never tire of doing, I am apt to find new
significance in them, am still warned and instructed by them, with
more force occasionally than ever before ; so that in a sense they
are still in the mail, have not altogether reached me yet, and
will not probably before I die. They may well be regarded as
addressed to those who can read them best."

In addition to his pedestrian excursions, Thoreau
paid occasional visits to Cambridge and Boston, the
attraction at the former place being the University
£ Library, from which, owing to the insistence with which
%he petitioned the librarian and president, he was per-
mitted unusual privileges in the taking out of books.
At Boston he was fond of studying the books of the
Natural History Society and walking on the Long
Wharf; the rest "was barrels." Salem, too, he some-
times visited as the guest of Hawthorne, who had left
Concord in 1846, and he lectured once or twice at the
Salem Lyceum, of which Hawthorne was the secretary.
One other journey he had about this time of a more
mournful character. In July 1850, when Margaret
Fuller, who had become the wife of the Marquis of
Ossoli, was shipwrecked on her return from Italy and
drowned off the coast of Fire Island, near New York,
Thoreau with her other friends hurried to the scene of
the disaster, to assist in the vain attempt to recover her
body.

112 LIFE OF

Though Thoreau had now attained a certain recog-
nised position as a writer, he was still compelled to earn
the greater part of his means of subsistence by pencil-
making or land-surveying. This last employment — or
rather the company into which his employment brought
him — was very far from being a congenial one; on
such occasions he was no longer the poet-naturalist
and idealist, but " merely Thoreau the surveyor/' as he
informs his friend Blake. Lecturing was probably a
more agreeable occupation, though here, too, he speaks
of himself as "simply their hired man"; while his
candour occasionally placed him in strained relations
towards his audience. Though he several times made
his mark on the platform, the more usual result was to
puzzle and bewilder those who heard him. " He was a
poor lecturer," says Joseph Hosmer. "He had no
magnetism, and only gave simple dry details, as though
he was before a jury to give his evidence under oath.
Hence he never succeeded as a platform or lyceum
speaker, which I think he desired to be."

In the autumn of 1852 Thoreau met Arthur Hugh
Clough, who had come over to Boston with Thackeray
and thence paid Emerson a visit at Concord. " Walk
with Emerson to a wood with a prettyish pool," writes
Clough in his diary for 14th November, the pool being
presumably Walden. "Concord is very bare; it is a
small sort of village, almost entirely of wood houses,
painted white, with Venetian blinds, green outside, with
two white wooden churches. There are some American
elms and sycamores, i.e. planes ; but the wood is mostly
pine — white pine and yellow pine —somewhat scrubby,
occupying the tops of the low banks and marshy hay-

TEOREAU. 113

land between. A little brook runs through to the
Concord river. At 6.30, tea and Mr. Thoreau; and
presently Mr. Ellery Channing, Miss Channing, and
others." It was in this same year that Nathaniel
Hawthorne returned to Concord, and took up his
residence at " Hillside" — now renamed "Wayside" —
an estate which had been for some years in Alcott's
possession, and on which Thoreau and Alcott had done
a great deal of manual work in constructing terraces
and summer-houses.

v It has already been stated that Thoreau's sympathies
\were enlisted from his earliest manhood in the cause
of abolition, and that he was himself instrumental in
furthering the escape of a fugitive slave. Another *
instance of this kind has been recorded by Mr. Conway,^ ^ w,
who was introduced to Thoreau by Emerson in the
summer of 1853 : — 1

" When I went to the house next morning I found them all in a
state of excitement by reason of the arrival of a fugitive negro from
the South, who had come fainting to their door about daybreak,
and thrown himself on their mercy. ... I sat and watched the
singularly lowly and tender devotion of the scholar to the slave.
He must be fed, his swollen feet bathed, and he must think of
nothing but rest. Again and again this coolest and calmest of men
drew near to the trembling negro, and bade him feel at home, and
have no fear that any power should again wrong him. He could
not walk this day, but must mount guard over the fugitive, for
slave-hunters were not extinct in those days, and so I went away
after a while, much impressed by many little traits that I had seen
as they appeared in this emergency, and not much disposed to cavil
at their source, whether Bible or Bhaghavat."

At this time Thoreau's mind was a good deal occupied

1 Fraser, April 1 866,

8

114 LIFE OF

with the question of slavery, for in 1850 the iniquitou s
Fugitive Slave Law had been passed by Act of Congress,
and in the spring of 1854 the heart of Massachusetts had
been stirred by the case of Anthony Burns, an escaped
slave, who was sent back by the authorities of the State
in compliance with the demand of his owner. This
event formed the main topic of Thoreau's essay on
" Slavery in Massachusetts," which was delivered as an
address at the anti-slavery celebration at Framingham in
1854, on which occasion the Constitution of the United
States was publicly burned by Lloyd Garrison, an incident
which may explain the passionate tone of Thoreau's
paper. " For my part," he said, " my oldest and worthiest
pursuits have lost I cannot say how much of their
attraction, and I feel that my investment in life here
is worth many per cent, less since Massachusetts last
deliberately sent back an innocent man, Anthony Burns,
to slavery." In his kindred essay on "Civil Dis-
obedience," when dealing with this same subject of
state-supported slavery, he had expressed the conviction
that if but one honest man in the State of Massachusetts
were to withdraw his allegiance as a protest against this
iniquity, and to be imprisoned therefor, "it would be
the abolition of slavery in America." This was written
before the appearance of John Brown.

In 1854 occurred the most memorable event of
Thoreau's literary life — the publication of Walden by
Messrs. Ticknor & Co. of Boston. The greater part of
the book was drawn from the journal kept by Thoreau
during his residence in the woods, but there are also
passages which were written at a later date, when he was
working his materials into their ultimate form. The

THOREAU. 115

inducement to Thoreau to give the story of his sojourn
at Walden to the world was, he tells us, that very
particular inquiries had been made by his townsmen
concerning the manner of his life, and that he felt he
had something to say which bore not remotely on the
social condition of the inhabitants of Concord. The
result justified the expectations of the author in writing
the book, and of the publishers in printing it, for in
spite of the ridicule and hostility of some critics, a great
deal of interest was aroused by Walden, and the edition
appears to have been sold out in the course of a few
years, in marked contrast to the unsaleableness of its
predecessor, The Week. 1 From whatever point of view
it be regarded, Walden is undoubtedly Thoreau's master-
piece; it contains the sum and essence of his ideal
philosophy; it is written in his most powerful and
incisive style, while by the freshness and naivete of its
narrative it excites the sympathy and imagination of
the reader, and wins a popularity far exceeding that of
his other writings.

"Welcome, Englishmen! welcome, Englishmen!"
Thoreau exclaimed in Walden, "for I had had com-
munication with that race." "A young Englishman,
Mr. Cholmondeley, is just now waiting for me to take
a walk with him," he writes in a letter dated ist October
1854. This was Mr. Thomas Cholmondeley, of Over-

1 In March 1855 the New York Knickerbocker devoted an article,
entitled " Town and Rural Humbugs," to a comparison of Barnum
and Thoreau, and declared Walden to be the antidote of Barnum's
autobiography. Walden was reviewed in Putnam's Magazine in
1854, and was noticed in this country in Chambers's Journal for
.November 1857, under the title of " An American Diogenes."

116 LIFE OF

leigh, Cheshire, a nephew of Bishop Heber, and six
years Thoreau's junior in age, the only Englishman, it
appears, with whom Thoreau ever became intimate. He
spent some time with Thoreau at Concord, accompanying
him on a visit to Mr. Ricketson, a friend who lived at
New Bedford; and the strong personal admiration which
this travelled English gentleman conceived for the Con-
cord hermit is one of many testimonies to Thoreaq/s
singularly impressive character. A correspondence was
maintained after Mr. Cholmondeley's return to Europe
in 1855, and towards the end of that year Thoreau
received a splendid gift of Oriental books from his
English friend, who knew how deep an interest he felt
in Buddhist literature. Mr. Cholmondeley again visited
Concord in 1859. In later years he took the name of
Owen. He succeeded to the Condover estate, near
Shrewsbury, in 1863, and died in the following year.

Increasing fame brought Thoreau an increasing
number of friends, while his intimacy with Emerson,
Alcott, and Channing continued as close as ever. One
of these later friends and correspondents was Mr. Daniel
Ricketson. Their first meeting was at Christmas 1854,
when Thoreau, then on his way to lecture at Nantucket,
paid a passing visit to New Bedford, and spent a day or
two in Mr. Ricketson's house. On presenting himself
to his host, he was at first mistaken, as on several other
occasions, for "a pedlar of small wares," but this un-
favourable impression was quickly corrected when he
gave proof of his singular conversational powers. The
points in his personal appearance which particularly
arrested Mr. Ricketson's attention were his keen blue
eyes, "full of the greatest humanity and intelligence,"

THOREAU. 117

\ and, next to these, his sloping shoulders (in which he
f resembled Emerson), long arms, and short sturdy legs,
\ which generally enabled him to outwalk his companions
in his daily excursions.

In Mr. F. B. Sanborn, who as a young man came to
live at Concord early in 1855, Thoreau found another
friend with whom he gradually became intimate. The
first impressions of Thoreau, as recorded at the time by
one who was destined to be his biographer a quarter of
a century later, are extremely interesting. "Thoreau
£iooks eminently sagacious, like a sort of wise wild beast.
5He dresses plainly, wears a beard in his throat, and has
a brown complexion." Thoreau's beard, which is here
for the first time mentioned, must have been of quite
recent growth, for in the crayon portrait of 1854 he
appears as beardless.

Thoreau's friendship with Horace Greeley, editor of
the New York Tribune, had been kept up since his
visit to Staten Island chiefly by letter, for Thoreau
was seldom at New York; but Greeley had done him
valuable service at a critical period in obtaining publica-
tion for several of his articles in Graham, Putnam, and
other magazines, and in acting generally as a literary
friend and adviser. Greeley had a farm at Chappaqua,
thirty-six miles north of New York, and in the early part
of 1856 he pressed Thoreau to come to reside at this
place and act as tutor to his children, which offer seems
to have been for a time seriously entertained.

It was in the following November, when Thoreau
accompanied Alcott on a short visit to Chappaqua,
that he had a memorable interview with an even more
powerful and remarkable personality than his own. The

118 LIFE OF

meeting of Thoreau with Walt Whitman, of the author
of Walden with the author of Leaves of Grass, is told
by Thoreau in his letters to Mr. Blake. It is remark-
able, when one considers the strong dissimilarity between
the two men — types as they are of different sides of
human nature, the thrifty, simple, self-complete type, as
opposed to the largely inclusive and sympathetic— that
Thoreau should have so rightly appreciated, after one
short conversation, the breadth of Whitman's genius,
and should have recognised in him "the greatest democrat
the world has seen," one who suggested " something a
little more than human."

" To be sure," wrote Thoreau, " I sometimes feel a little imposed
on. By his heartiness and broad generalities he puts me into a
liberal frame of mind, prepared to see wonders— as it were, sets me
upon a hill or in the midst of a plain — stirs me well up, and then —
throws in a thousand of brick. Though rude and sometimes in-
effectual, it is a great primitive poem, an alarum or trumpet-note
ringing through the American camp. Wonderfully like the
Orientals, too, considering that when I asked him if he had read
them, he answered, 'No ; tell me about them.'

" I did not get far in conversation with him — two more being
present — and among the few things I chanced to say, I remember
that one was, in answer to him as representing America, that I did
not think much of America, or of politics, and so on, which may
have been somewhat of a damper to him.

" Since I have seen him I find that I am not disturbed by any
brag or egoism in his book. He may turn out the least of a
braggart of all, having a better right to be confident. He is a
great fellow."

We can only regret that Whitman, on his part, left
no record of his impressions of Thoreau; but it is
interesting, in this connection, to note the mention of

THOREAU. 119

Thoreau in Specimen Days in America. On 1 7 th Sep-
tember 1 88 1, when visiting Concord, Whitman met
Emerson, Alcott, Louisa Alcott, and other Concord
friends. "A good deal of talk," he records, "the
subject Henry Thoreau — some new glints of his life
and fortunes, with letters to and from him — one of
the best by Margaret Fuller, others by Horace
Greeley, Channing, etc. — one from Thoreau himself,
most quaint and interesting." Mr. Sanborn informs me
that on this occasion Whitman expressed a high opinion
of Thoreau.

In the following year Thoreau had the satisfaction of
meeting another of the great figures of American demo-
cracy. John Brown, then fresh from his anti-slavery
struggle in Kansas, was a guest at Mr. Sanborn's house
in March 1857, and was introduced by his host to
Emerson, Alcott, Thoreau, and other Concord friends.
It was arranged that Brown should address a meeting in
the Town Hall on the subject of slave-holding. " On
the day appointed," says Mr. Sanborn, 1 "Brown went
up from Boston at noon, and dined with Mr. Thoreau,
then a member of his father's family, and residing not
far from the railroad station. The two idealists, both of
them in revolt against the civil government because of
its base subservience to slavery, found themselves friends
from the beginning of their acquaintance. They sat
after dinner discussing the events of the border w r arfare
in Kansas, and Brown's share in them, when, as it often
happened, Mr. Emerson called at Mr. Thoreau's door
on some errand to his friend. Thus the three men met

1 Memoirs of John Brown , 1878.

120 LIFE OF

under the same roof, and found that they held the same
opinion of what was uppermost in the mind of Brown."
Emerson and Thoreau were both present at the meeting
in the evening, when Brown produced a thrilling effect
on his audience by his earnestness and eloquence, and
by the display of the very chain worn by one of his
sons who had been made prisoner and tortured by the
champions of slavery. From that time there were
many people in Concord who were favourable to
Brown's cause.

On the occasion of one of his visits to Mr. Ricketson
at "Brooklawn," New Bedford, Thoreau surprised the
company by an unexpected outburst of hilarity, under
which impulse he sang "Tom Bowling,'* and finally
entered upon an improvised dance. Mr. Ricketson,
" not being able to stand what appeared at the time the
somewhat ludicrous appearance of our Walden hermit,"
retreated to his shanty, a short distance from his house,
whilst the more "humour-loving" Alcott remained to
see the entertainment. Thoreau afterwards told his
sister Sophia that in the excitement of this dance he had
made a point of treading on the toes of the guileless
Alcott.

Here is an extract from Alcott's diary in 1857 : —

" 1st April 1857. — At Mr. Ricketson's, two and a half miles from
New Bedford, a neat country residence, surrounded by wild pastures
and low woods ; the little stream Achushnet flowing east of the
house and into Fair Haven Bay at the City, Ricketson's tastes are
pastoral, simple even to wildness, and he passes a good part of his
day in the fields and woods, or in his rude shanty near his house,
where he writes and reads his favourite authors, Cowper having the
first place in his affections. He is in easy circumstances, and has
the manners of an English gentleman — frank, hospitable, and with

THOREAU. 121

positive persuasions of his own ; a man to feel on good terms with,
and reliable as to the things good and true — mercurial, perhaps, and
wayward a little sometimes.

1 * yd Aj>ri/ f a. M. — In house and shanty. Thoreau and Ricketson
treating of nature and the wild. Thoreau has visited Ricketson be-
fore, and won him as a disciple, though not in the absolute way he
has Blake of Worcester, whose love for his genius partakes of the
exceeding tenderness of woman, and is a pure Platonism to the
fineness and delicacy of the devotee's sensibility. But Ricketson
is himself, and plays the manly part in the matter, defending
himself against the master's tough ' thoroughcraft ' with spirit and
ability."

Mr. Blake's estimate of Thoreau's character has already
been quoted ; equally interesting is that given me by Mr.
Ricketson, with which this chapter may fitly conclude.

" On this point I can bear my own testimony, that without any
formality he was remarkable in his uprightness and honesty ; indus-
trious and frugal ; simple though not fastidious in his tastes,
whether in food, dress, or address ; an admirable conversationist,
and a good story-teller, not wanting in humour. His full blue eye,
aquiline nose, and peculiarly puxsed lips added much to the effect
of the descriptive powers. He was a man of rare courage, physi-
cally and intellectually. In the way of the former, he arrested two
young fellows on the lonely road leading to his hermitage by Walden -
Pond, who were endeavouring to entrap a young woman on her /
way home, and took them to the village. Intellectually his was"a^
strong manly mind, enriched by a classical education, and extensive s
knowledge of history, ancient and modern, and English literature —
himself a good versifier, if not true poet, whose poetic character
often seen in his prose works."

'")

CHAPTER VII.

*T0 avoid the need of too frequently breaking the con-
tinuity of the story of Thoreau's Concord life, it is
convenient to group together some of the chief excur-
sions made by him between 1846 and i860. And first
as to his mode of journeying. The perfection of travel-
ling, he thought, was to travel without luggage; and
after considerable experience he decided that "the best
bag for the foot-traveller is made with a handkerchief, or,
if he study appearances, a piece of stiff brown paper well
tied up." He would travel as a common man, and not
as a gentleman, for he had no wish to spend a moment
more than was necessary in the railway-carriage, among
the sedentary travellers, "whose legs hang dangling the
while," or to be a prey to the civility and rapacity of the
landlords of hotels ; he preferred to journey on foot, and
to spend the night in the homes of farmers and fisher-
men, where he could sit by the kitchen fire, and hear the
sort of conversation in which he was always interested.
" The cheapest way to travel," he wrote in The Wee%;\
"and the way to travel the farthest in the shortest
distance, is to go afoot, carrying a dipper, a spOon, and ,
a fish-line, some Indian meal, some salt, and some sugar. \
When you come to a brook or pond, you can catch fish
and cook them; or you can boil a hasty-pudding; or

LIFE OF THOREAU. 123

you can buy a loaf of bread at a farmer's house for four-
pence, moisten it in the next brook that crosses the road,
and dip it into your sugar — this alone will last you a
whole day." He wore a shabby grey coat and a drab
hat, and carried with him a piece of tallow for greasing
his boots, for he no more thought of blacking these than
his face; and "many an officious shoe-black," he tells
us, who carried off his shoes while he w r as slumbering,
mistaking him for a gentleman, " had occasion to repent
it before he produced a gloss on them." He was better
pleased when the farmers called out to him, as he passed
their fields, to come and help in the hay-making ; or
when he was mistaken for a travelling mechanic, and
asked to do tinkering jobs, and repair clocks or um-
brellas ; or when, as once happened, a man wished to buy
the tin cup which he carried strapped to his belt.

Before starting on an expedition it was his habit to
procure all the available information from maps and
guide-books, and he often took with him a part of the
large Government map of Massachusetts. His pack was
quickly made up, for he kept a list of the few necessaries ;
that he carried, among which were sewing materials, a !
book for pressing plants, spy-glass, compass, and measur-
ing-tape. He had learnt the art of camping out in his
earlier excursions, and was well skilled in pitching a tent
or constructing a hut at the shortest possible notice.
On these occasions his favourite drink was tea, which he
made strong and sweet in his tin cup, so that, as Chan-
ning hints, the traveller was not only refreshed but "grew
intimate with tea-leaves." He was fond of carrying with
him a large slice of cake, with plums in it, for he found
that this furnished him with dinner and dessert at the

124 LIFE OF

same time. Thus simply equipped, he was practically
independent of time-tables and hotel-lists, could roam
wherever the fancy took him, and take his own time in
his observation of the fauna and flora of the districts
which he visited. Such expeditions were not only an
agreeable change in themselves, but were a means of
adding to his various collections and suggesting new
subjects for his pen; so that it was natural that the
pleasant experience which he gained in his week's jaunt
in 1839 should have been repeated more frequently in
later years.

Cape Cod, the long sandy spit which was visited by
Thoreau in 1849, and on several later occasions, is
described by him as "the bared and bended arm of
Massachusetts, behind which the State stands on her
guard, with her back to the Green Mountains, and her
feet planted on the floor of the ocean, like an athlete
protecting her Bay." All wild and desolate landscapes
had an attraction for him, and he delighted in the dreary
expanse of this long monotonous tract of shore, with its ,
drift-wood and kelp-weed, flocks of gulls and plovers,
and incessant din of waves. His accounts of these vast
sandy tracts are extremely vivid and picturesque; the
very dash and roar of the waves seem to be reproduced,
as though we were reading, as the author suggests, " with
a large conch-shell at our ear."

It was amidst these surroundings that Thoreau, after
witnessing the pathetic scenes that followed the wreck of
an Irish brig at Cohasset, walked and meditated with a
companion (Ellery Channing, presumably, though the
name is not recorded) in the wet, windy days of a stormy
October. "Day by day," it has been said, "with his

THOREAU. 125

stout pedestrian shoes, he plodded along that level beach
— the eternal ocean on one side, and human existence
reduced to its simplest elements on the other — and he
pitilessly weighing each." They journeyed northward,
on the Atlantic side of the Cape, till they came to
Provincetown at its upper extremity, avoiding towns and
villages on their route, and spending the nights in the
cottages of fishermen and lighthouse-keepers, where
Thoreau was several times mistaken for a travelling
pedlar. " Well," said an old fisherman, unconvinced by
the explanations that had been offered, "it makes no
odds what it is you carry, so long as you carry truth
along with you." At Wellfleet, where the wayfarers were
entertained in the hut of an aged oysterman, an idiot son
of their host expressed his determination to get a gun
and shoot the "damned book-pedlars, all the time talk-
ing about books." What might have been a more
serious misunderstanding was caused by a robbery of the
Provincetown Bank about the time of their visit to Cape
Cod, for Thoreau learnt afterwards that the suspicion of
the police had centred on him and his companion, and
that their journey had been traced the whole length of
the Cape.

The volume on Cape Cod, parts of which appeared in
Putnanis Magazine in 1855, and in the Atlantic Monthly
in 1864, is deliberately formless in style, being inter-
spersed with quotations from old histories and records of
merely local interest; it abounds, however, in its author's
dry sententious humour and sparkling paradoxes. It has
been said that Cape Cod is in one sense the most human
of Thoreau's books, and has more tenderness of tone
than Waldeii) as if the sea had exercised a mellowing

126 LIFE OF

influence on his mind. Especially good are the Dutch
pictures of the Wellfleet oysterman and the "sea-
captains " of Provincetown. " It is worth the while,"
says Thoreau, "to talk with one whom his neighbours
address as Captain, though his craft may have long been
sunk, and he may be holding by his teeth to the shattered
mast of a pipe alone, and only gets half-seas-over in a
figurative sense now. He is pretty sure to vindicate his
right to the title at last — can tell one or two good stories
at least." In Cape Cod the experiences of several visits
are condensed into one account.

On 25th September 1850, Thoreau and Ellery Chan-
ning started on a week's tour in Canada, equipped each
of them in the simple fashion which Thoreau adopted on
his excursions (he avows that he wore his "bad weather
clothes" on this occasion), and styling themselves, accord-
ingly, the "Knights of the Umbrella and the Bundle."
They first visited Montreal, where the Church of Notre
Dame made a great impression on Thoreau's imagination,
as described by him in a very characteristic passage —

" It was a great cave in the midst of a city, — and what were the
altars and the tinsel but the sparkling stalactites ? — into which you
entered in a moment, and where the still atmosphere and the sombre
light disposed to serious and profitable thought. Such a cave at
hand, which you can enter any day, is worth a thousand of our
churches which are open only Sundays, hardly long enough for an
airing, and then filled with a bustling congregation — a church where
the priest is the least part, where you do your own preaching, where
the universe preaches to you and can be heard. In Concord, to be
sure, we do not need such. Our forests are such a church, far
grander and more sacred, I think of its value not only to religion,
but to philosophy and to poetry ; besides a reading-room, to have a
thinking-room in every city I Perchance the time will come when
every house even will have not only its sleeping-rooms, and dining-

THOREAU. 127

room, and talking-room or parlour, but its thinking-room also, and
the architects will put it in their plans. Let it be furnished and
ornamented with whatever conduces to serious and creative thought.
I should not object to the holy water, or any other simple symbol,
if it were consecrated by the imagination of the worshippers." 1

From Montreal they went on to Quebec, and thence
to the Falls of St. Anne, thirty miles lower down the
St. Lawrence. In the latter district they obtained lodging
in a house where their French host and his family could
speak but a few words of English, and they concluded
that " a less crime would be committed on the whole if
they spoke French with him, and in no respect aided or
abetted his attempts to speak English," a resolve which
they carried into effect with some amusing difficulties —
for in spite of his Gallic extraction, a knowledge of the
French tongue was not one of Thoreau's accomplish-
ments — solving their frequent misunderstandings by
writing on the table with a piece of chalk. What chiefly
impressed Thoreau, during his brief visit to Canada, was
the contrast between the imperialism of the Canadian
cities, whose inhabitants appeared to him " to be suffer-
ing between two fires — the soldiery and the priesthood, "
and the more homely free-thinking independence of
American life.

The Excursion to Canada % in which his experiences
and impressions are related, was partly published in
Putnam in 1853. It is certainly one of the least suc-
cessful of its author's writings ; for though it contains a
few fine passages and interesting touches, it is overladen
with description, the cities being, as Horace Greeley
expressed it, "described to death." " I fear that I have
1 Putnam* s Magazine , 1853.

128 LIFE OF

not got much to say about Canada," says Thoreau, in
his opening sentence, "not having seen much; what I
got by going to Canada was a cold."

The object of Thoreau's three excursions to the Maine
Woods, the wild district which lies at the extreme north-
east of New England, was chiefly to gratify his strong
curiosity and interest in the habits and character of the
Indians. In September 1846, during his fortnight's
absence from the Walden hermitage, he visited Maine
and in company with a cousin, who was employed in the
Bangor lumber trade, made a voyage up the western
branch of the Penobscot river, and ascended Ktaadn,
one of the loftiest mountains of New England, over 5000
feet in height. The paper on " Ktaadn and the Maine
Woods," which appeared in the Union Magazine in 1848,
is a record of this expedition, and contains some vivid
descriptions of the outlying lumber-farms and log-huts ;
the manufacture and management of the batieau^ or *
" bark-canoe," by which they navigated the rapids of the
Penobscot ; their trout-fishing extraordinary in the clear
swift streams which descend from the heights of Ktaadn ;
and, above all, the primitive solitudes of the Maine
forests, which were still the haunt of the bear, the moose,
the deer, the wolf, and other wild animals.

" Perhaps I most fully realised that this was primeval, untamed,
and for ever untamable Nature^ or whatever else men call it, while
coming down this part of the mountain. We were passing over
6 Burnt Lands,' burnt by lightning, perchance, though they showed
no recent marks of fire, hardly so much as a charred stump, but
looked rather like a natural pasture for the moose and deer,
exceedingly wild and desolate, with occasional strips of timber
crossing them, and low poplars springing up, and patches of blue-
berries here and there. I found myself traversing them familiarly.

THOREAU. 129

like some pasture run to waste, or partially reclaimed by man ; but
when I reflected what man, what brother or sister or kinsman of
our race made it and claimed it, I expected the proprietor to rise
up and dispute my passage. It is difficult to conceive of a region
uninhabited by man. We habitually presume his presence and
influence everywhere. And yet we have not seen pure Nature,
unless we have seen her thus vast and drear and inhuman, though
in the midst of cities. . . .

"What is most striking in the Maine wilderness is the con-
tinuousness of the forest, with fewer open intervals or glades than
you had imagined. Except the few burnt-lands, the narrow inter-
vals on the rivers, the bare tops of the high mountains, and the
lakes and streams, the forest is uninterrupted. It is even more grim
and wild than you had anticipated, a damp and intricate wilderness,
in the spring everywhere wet and miry. . . . Who shall describe
the inexpressible tenderness and immortal life of the grim forest,
where nature, though it be mid- winter, is ever in her spring, where
the moss-grown and decaying trees are not old, but seem to enjoy a
perpetual youth ; and blissful, innocent nature, like a serene infant,
is too happy to make a noise, except by a few tinkling, lisping birds
and trickling rills ? "

In the autumn of 1853 Thoreau, accompanied by the
same relative, and by an Indian hunter named Joe
Aitteon, paid his second visit to the Maine Woods, the
lake of Chesuncook being this time his destination. The
paper entitled "Chesuncook," which was published in
the Atlantic Monthly in 1858, is occupied in great
measure with the subject of moose-hunting, and contains,
among other things, some characteristic reflections on
the "murder of the moose," in which Thoreau had been
a witness and to some extent a participator.

" The Allegash and East Branch," the account of his
third and final excursion to Maine, in July 1857, at which
time he had been in weak health for two years, forms the
concluding portion of the volume afterwards published

9

s

130 LIFE OF

under the title of The Maine Woods, and is chiefly con-
cerned with geographical topics, botanical specimens, and
the character of Joe Polis, an intelligent Indian guide,
from whom Thoreau derived much valuable information.
"As to Thoreau's courage and manliness," says Mr.
Edward Hoar, of Concord, who was his fellow-traveller
on this expedition, " nobody who had seen him among
the Penobscot rocks and rapids, the Indian trusting his
life and his canoe to his skill, promptitude, and nerve,
would ever doubt it."

The following extracts from a letter addressed by
Thoreau to Colonel Wentworth Higginson, in reference
to a projected tour through the Maine forests to Canada,
are interesting as showing w T ith what precision and
practical acuteness his expeditions were planned: —

" Concord, 2%th January 1858.

"Dear Sir, — It would be perfectly practicable to go to the
Madawaska the way you propose. As for the route to Quebec, I
do not find the ' Sugar Loaf Mts. ' on my maps. The most direct
and regular way, as you know, is substantially Montresor's and
Arnold's and the younger John Smith's — by the Chaudiere ; but this
is less wild. If your object is rather to see the St. Lawrence River
below Quebec, you will probably strike it at the Riviere du Loup
{v. Hodge's account of his excursion thither vid the Allegash. I
believe it is in the second Report en the Geology of the Public
Lands of Maine and Mass. in '37). I think that our Indian last
summer, when we talked of going to the St. Lawrence, named
another route, near the Madawaska — perhaps the St. Francis,
which would save the long portage which Hodge made.

" I do not know whether you think of ascending the St. Lawrence
in a canoe — but if you should, you might be delayed not only by the
current, but by the waves, which frequently run too high for a canoe
on such a mighty stream. It would be a grand excursion to go to
Quebec by the Chaudiere — descend the St. Lawrence to the Riviere

THOREAU. 131

du Loup— and return by the Madawaska and St. John's to
Frederickton, or further — almost all the way down stream — a very
important consideration. . . .

11 Perhaps you would like a few more details. We used (three of
us) exactly 26 lbs. of hard bread, 14 lbs. of pork, 3 lbs. of coffee,
12 lbs. of sugar (and could have used more), besides a little tea,
Indian meal and rice, and plenty of berries and moose-meat. This
was faring very luxuriously. I had not formerly carried coffee,
sugar, or rice. But for solid food, I decide that it is not worth
the while to carry anything but hard bread and pork, whatever
your tastes and habits may be. These wear best, and you have no
time nor dishes in which to cook anything else. Of course you
will take a little Indian meal to fry fish in, and half-a-dozen lemons
also, if you have sugar, will be very refreshing, for the water is
warm.

"To save time, the sugar, coffee, tea, salt, etc., etc., should be
in separate watertight bags, labelled and tied with a leathern
string ; and all the provisions and blankets should be put into two
large india-rubber bags, if you can find them watertight. Ours
were not.

" A four-quart tin pail makes a good kettle for all purposes, and
tin plates are portable and convenient. Don't forget an india-
rubber knapsack, with a large flap, plenty of dish cloths, old news-
papers, strings, and twenty-five feet of strong cord.

" Of india-rubber clothing the most you can wear, if any, is a
very light coat, and that you cannot work in.

" I could be more particular, but perhaps have been too much
so already. — Yours truly,

" Henry D. Thoreau."

Mention has already been made of Thoreau's fond-
ness for mountains. He possessed in a marked degree
} the instinct of topography, and with map and compass
/ would make out his way unerringly through the
/ wildest regions, and could run up the steepest places
\ without losing breath. " He ascended such hills as
\Monadnock or Saddleback mountains," says Channing,

132 LIFE OF

j " by his own path, and would lay down his map on the
\ x summit and draw a line to the point he proposed to visit
v below, perhaps forty miles away in the landscape, and
set off bravely to make the short cut. The lowland
people wondered to see him scaling the heights as if he
had lost his way, or at his jumping over their cow-yard
fences, asking if he had fallen from the clouds."

In July 1858 he made another expedition with his
friend Edward Hoar, this time to the White Mountains
of New Hampshire, the Switzerland of New England,
which he had visited with his brother nineteen years
earlier. They travelled by carriage, and Thoreau com-
plains in his journal of the loss of independence, as
regards choice of camping-stations, which this method
involved; it was not simple and adventurous enough to
suit his tastes. He also disliked the " mountain houses"
which were already erected in New Hampshire, with
large saloons, and other appurtenan gfis. of the city, for
the supposed convenience of the tourist ; " give me," he
says, "a spruce-house made in the rain." Their chief
exploit during the fortnight they spent in New Hamp-
shire was the ascent of Mount Washington, the highest
mountain in New England, where, in descending to-
wards Tuckerman's Ravine, Thoreau lost his footing
on the steep crust of a snow-slope, and was only saved
by digging his finger-nails into the snow. They camped
for several days in a plantation of dwarf firs near the
foot of the ravine, and by the carelessness of their guide
in lighting a fire several acres of brushwood were burnt.
The next afternoon Thoreau sprained his ankle while
scrambling on the rocks, and was laid up in the camp
for two or three days.

THOREAU. 133

Monadnock, a mountain of nearly four thousand feet,
which is visible from Concord on the north-west horizon,
had been visited by Thoreau, like Wachusett, in his early
manhood. In 1858, a month before his excursion to
the White Mountains, he camped a couple of nights on
its summit in company with Mr. Blake, and two years
later he again ascended it with Ellery Channing, who,
being unaccustomed to mountain life, did not relish its
inconveniences as much as his friend, but complains
pathetically of the fatigue, "the blazing sun, the face
getting broiled ; the pint-cup never scoured ; shaving
unutterable; your stockings dreary, having taken to
\ peat," and other similar discomforts. This visit to Mon-
adnock was the last excursion of Thoreau's in which he
camped out. The reasons which compelled the dis-
continuance of a practice in which he found such
pleasure will appear when we resume the story of his
life at Concord.

CHAPTER VIII.

A S early as 1855 Thoreau's health had begun to be a
*^ matter of some anxiety to himself and to his friends.
Frequent mention has been made by those who knew
him personally of the iron endurance and sturdy strength
of limb which enabled him to outstrip the companions
of his walks and open-air pursuits. Emerson, who was
himself little qualified for an outdoor life, marvelled
at his friend's indefatigable energy in tree-felling and
field-work ; while Channing and others who accompanied
him to the mountains suffered acutely from the exposure
Thoreau seemed not to feel. Nevertheless, this power
of prolonged endurance was due, there is reason to
believe, far more to an indomitable spirit than to a
natural strength of constitution ; for, idealist as he was,
he was too apt to compel his body at all times to keep
pace with his mind, and if he was somewhat exacting in
his demands on his friends, he had still less consideration
for his own weaknesses. " The physique given him at
birth," says Dr. E. W. Emerson, " was unusually slight.
I have never seen a person with more sloping shoulders,
and seldom a narrower chest. Yet he made his frame
ail that it could be made." It is on record that his
college career was interrupted by an illness which kept
him for some time from his studies; and as early as 1841

LIFE OF THOME AU. 135

there is reference in the journal to a bronchial attack,
which is significant when read in connection with the
story of his closing years.

In the autumn of 1855 we find him writing of the
"months of feebleness" that had preceded, and of his
satisfaction at partly regaining his health, though he
would have liked " to know first what it was that ailed
him." During the winter that followed he was able to
walk afield as usual, and boasts that he had made it
a part of his business " to wade in the snow and take the
measure of the ice," and that, in spite of his recent ill-
health, he was probably the greatest walker in Concord.
In the spring of 1857 he refers to his "two-year-old
invalidity," from which we see that the disquieting
symptoms had not wholly abated; and it cannot be
doubted that he at all times subjected himself to
considerable risks both by the severity of his ex-
ertions in carrying heavy loads and taking long walks,
and also in the recklessness with which he exposed
himself to all extremes of weather, and all changes of
season, regardless alike of frost and sun, wind and snow,
the chills of midnight and the mists of the early morning.
For the present, however, we hear no more of his illness,
and he continued to lead the same equable contented
state of life which has already been described.

After the appearance of Walden in 1854, Thoreau did
not publish any further volume, though he was busily
engaged in various literary plans, chief among which was
his projected book on the Indians. His relations with
editors and publishers, partly no doubt owing to his own
unaccommodating temperament, had not always been
of the most amicable kind ; his essays were repeatedly

136 LIFE OF

refused by papers and magazines on account of their
religious unorthodoxy, and it is said an editor once
begged Emerson to persuade Thoreau to write an article
containing no allusion to God. In 1858, when, at
Emerson's suggestion, he contributed his paper on
"Chesuncook" (the Maine Woods) to the Atlantic
Monthly^ of which Mr. Lowell was then editor, a fresh
point of difference arose. A sentence in which Thoreau
had spoken in his idealistic style of the "living spirit" of
the pine tree ("it is as immortal as I am, and perchance
will go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me
still ") was struck out under editorial censorship, without
the permission of the author, and this being an indignity
to which Thoreau would never submit, he sent no more
of his essays to the Atlantic Monthly until the editorship
had passed into other hands. The sentence in question
was of course restored when the article on "Chesuncook"
was included in the volume on The Maine Woods.

On 3rd February 1857 Thoreau records in his diary
the death of his father, who had lived to the age of
seventy-two. This was the third time he had mourned
the loss of a near relative, his brother having died, as
narrated, in 1842, and his sister Helen in 1849. ^ n tne
following letter to Mr. Daniel Ricketson he gives an
interesting account of his father's character : —

" Concord, 12M February 1859*
" Friend Ricketson, — I thank you for your kind letter. I
sent you the notice of my father's death as much because you knew
him as because you know me. I can hardly realise that he is dead.
He had been sick about two years, and at last declined rather rapidly
though steadily. Till within a week or ten days before he died he
was hoping to see another spring, but he then discovered that this

THOREAU. 137

was a vain expectation, and thinking that he was dying, he took
his leave of us several times within a v/eek before his departure.
Once or twice he expressed a slight impatience at the delay. - He
was quite conscious to the last, and his death was so easy that
though we had all been sitting around the bed for an hour or more
expecting that event, as we had sat before, he was gone at last
almost before we were aware of it.

" I am glad to read what you say about his social nature. I
think I may say that he was wholly unpretending, and there was
this peculiarity in his aim, that though he had pecuniary difficulties
to contend with the greater part of his life, he always studied
merely how to make a good article, pencil or other (for he practised
various arts), and was never satisfied with what he had produced.
Nor was he ever in the least disposed to put off a poor one for the
sake of pecuniary gain, as if he laboured for a higher end.

" Though he was not very old, and was not a native of Concord,
I think that he was, on the whole, more identified with Concord
street than any man now alive, having come here when he was
about twelve years old, and set up for himself as a merchant here at
the age of twenty-one, fifty years ago.

"As I sat in a circle the other evening with my mother and
sister, my mother's two sisters, and my father's two sisters, it
occurred to me that my father, though seventy-one, belonged to the
youngest four of the eight who recently composed our family.

" How swiftly at last, but unnoticed, a generation passes away !
Three years ago I was called, with my father, to be a witness to
the signing of our neighbour Mr. Frost's will. Mr. Samuel Hoar,
who was there writing it, also signed it. I w T as lately required to
go to Cambridge to testify to the genuineness of the will, being the
only one of the four who could be there, and now I am the only
one alive.

" My mother and sister thank you heartily for your sympathy.
The latter in particular agrees with you in thinking that it is com-
munion with still living and healthy nature alone which can restore
to sane and cheerful views. I thank you for your invitation to
New Bedford, but I feel somewhat confined here for the present.
I did not know but we should see you the day after Alger was
here. It is not too late for a winter walk in Concord. It does me

138 LIFE OF

good to hear of spring birds and singing ones too, for spring seems
far away from Concord yet. I'm going to Worcester to read a
parlour lecture on the 22nd, and shall see t BIake and Brown.
What if you were to meet me there ? or go with me from here ?
You would see them to good advantage. Cholmondeley has been
here again, after going as far south as Virginia, and left for Canada
about three weeks ago. He is a good soul, and I am afraid that I
did not sufficiently recognise him.

" Please remember me to Mrs. Ricketson, and to the rest of your
family.— Yours, Henry David Thoreau."

After his father's death Thoreau carried on the family
business, pencil-making and the preparation of plumbago,
on behalf of his mother and his younger sister Sophia.
This same year, 1859, was destined to be one of the
most memorable in his experience. We have seen how
he was, from the first, an ardent abolitionist, how he had
withdrawn his allegiance from the State of Massachusetts
owing to its sanction of slavery, and had delivered
lectures and published essays on the subject at a time
when the outspoken profession of abolitionist principles
was neither safe nor comfortable ; and how he had himself
assisted escaped slaves in their flight to Canada, True-
hearted American though he was, he had little respect
for the patriotic feelings of those of his fellow-countrymen
who could combine a pride in their national liberties
with an indifference to negro slavery ; and on one of the
occasions when a runaway was surrendered to his owners
by the Massachusetts Government, he is said to have
proposed to his townsmen at Concord that the monu-
ment which commemorated American independence
should be coated with black paint.

When he was introduced to John Brown in 1857 he
doubtless recognised in him the "one righteous man"

THOREAU. 139

whose advent he had heralded in the essay on Slavery
in Massachusetts^ which he had written and published
several years before, and it is not difficult to imagine
the intensity of admiration with which he must have
followed the phases of the great emancipator's career.
Himself an individualist, and, as regards politics, less a
man of action than a man of thought, he reverenced
in Brown the very qualities in which he was himself
deficient. The final effort of Brown's heroism was now
at hand, and the events that followed proved to be in
some respects the crowning point of Thoreau's life also.

In October 1859 John Brown, who was just entering
on his sixtieth year, was again in Concord, and it was
from Mr. Sanborri's house that he started on his last and
fateful expedition against the Virginian slaveholders. On
1 6th October Brown was arrested at Harper's Ferry, and
then ensued those seven weeks of suspense and anxiety
and vituperation which ended in his trial and death.
To Thoreau — the anchorite and idealist — belongs the
lasting honour of having spoken the first public utterance
on behalf of John Brown, at a time when a torrent of
ridicule and abuse was being poured by the American
press on the so-called crazy enthusiast whose life was
to pay forfeit for his boldness. Notice was given by
Thoreau that he would speak in the Town Hall on
Sunday evening, 30th October, on the subject of John
Brown's condition and character; and when this course
was deprecated by certain republicans and abolitionists
as hasty and ill-advised, they received the emphatic
assurance that he had not sent to them for advice, but
to announce his intention of speaking. A large and
attentive audience, composed of men of all parties,

140 LIFE OF

assembled to hear Thoreau's address, — the "Plea for
Captain John Brown," which is in every respect one of
the very finest of his writings. In the plainest and most
unequivocal terms, and with all his accustomed incisive-
ness of style and expression, he avowed his absolute
approval of the conduct of a man who was indicted as
a rebel and traitor. When we read the magnificent and
heart-stirring passages in which he eulogised the heroic
character of John Brown, we can well believe Emerson's
statement that the address was heard "by all respect-
fully, by many with a sympathy that surprised them-
selves."

On November ist Thoreau read the same lecture at
Boston, an event which was reported in the Liberator of
November 4. " This exciting theme," it says, " seemed
to have awakened 'the hermit of Concord' from his
usual state of philosophic indifference, and he spoke
with real enthusiasm for an hour and a half. A very
large audience listened to this lecture, crowding the hall
half-an-hour before the time of its commencement, and
giving hearty applause to some of the most energetic
expressions of the speaker."

The time was short, and from the first it could
scarcely have been hoped that Brown's life would be
spared. Those few weeks were probably the only period
in Thoreau's career when he turned in vain to nature for
the customary comfort and repose; and he has put on
record the stunned, incredulous feelings with which he
received, on 2nd December, the news of the execution.
On that day a solemn service in commemoration of
Brown's martyrdom was held in the Town Hall at
Concord, when addresses were delivered by Thoreau,

THOREAU, 141

Alcott, Emerson, and other abolitionists, and a funeral-
hymn, composed by Sanborn, was sung by those
assembled. 1

Thoreau regarded the whole episode of Brown's
capture and trial as a touchstone designed to bring
out into a strong light the nature of the American
Government. That it afforded a touchstone of his own
character few will deny. It has been well remarked
by John Burroughs that " this instant and unequivocal
indorsement of Brown by Thoreau, in the face of the
most overwhelming public opinion even among anti-
slavery men, throws a flood of light upon him. It is
the most significant act of his life. It clinches him.
It makes the colours fast." The " Plea for Captain
John Brown," which bears in every sentence unmis-
takable signs of the intensity of feeling under which it
was written, must have convinced even those of Thoreau's
hearers who were least in accord with him that they saw
before them no cynical misanthrope who had placed
himself in unreasonable antagonism to the social opinions
of his townsmen, but a man of humaner sympathies and
larger aspirations than their own. 2

And indeed the judgment of the good people of Con-
cord had already changed concerning the eccentric recluse
who some twelve years before, had excited their con-

1 These speeches may be read in Echoes from Harper's Ferry,
Boston, i860.

2 Yet Professor Nichol {American Literature) speaks of Thoreau
as " lethargic, self-complacently defiant, and too nearly a stoico-
epicurean adiaphorist (!) to discompose himself in party or even in
national strifes." Full justice is done to this zeal in the anti-slavery
cause by Dr. Japp (" H« A. Page ") in his book on Thoreau.

y

142 LIFE OF

temptuous surprise by his sojourn in the Walden woods;
they had learnt to appreciate the kindness and courtesy
that underlay his rough exterior, and the shrewd wisdom
which found expression in his trenchant and out-spoken
words. He thus cante to be respected and honoured
in the very quarter where honour is proverbially most
difficult to attain for the prophet who is not willing to
prophesy smooth things; and his fellow-citizens recog-
nised the superiority of character " which addressed all
men with a native authority."

Nor had the lapse of years and the increase of ex-
perience failed to exercise a mellowing effect on Thoreau's
own temperament; and his intimate friends have noted
how the foibles and crudeness which marked the less
pleasing side in his distinctive and self-assertive per-
sonality were gradually losing their sharpness as he
grew older, while he still retained all the freshness and
originality of his genius, and looked forward to the
future with the same unbounded confidence as ever.
This prospect, unhappily, was not destined to be
realised; but there is satisfaction in the thought that it
was his championship of John Brown which formed, the
last public act of Thoreau's career, and that no act could
possibly have been more characteristic and significant.

It was in November i860 that his fatal illness had its
beginning. He took a severe cold while counting the
rings on trees, at a time when the ground was covered
with a deep snow; this led to a bronchial affection, ,
which was increased by his persistence in keeping a
lecturing engagement at Waterbury, and the precautions
which he afterwards exercised were too late, as con-
sumption had then set in. It is to be noted that his

THOREAU. 143

grandfather, the emigrant from St. Helier, had died of
consumption; so that it is possible that Thoreau inherited
consumptive tendencies from that source. In the spring
of 1 86 1 he was advised by his doctor to travel, and he
was now willing to do in sickness what he had always
refused to do in health, though even now he preferred to
remain within the boundaries of the States.

Mr. Blake being unable to accompany him in this
journey to Minnesota, his place was taken by Horace
Mann, a connection of Nathaniel Hawthorne's. In a
letter addressed to Mr. Sanborn from Minnesota, on
26th June, Thoreau speaks of himself as better in health
than when he left home, but still far from well, having
performed the journey in a very dead-and-alive manner,
though he much enjoyed the weeks they spent in the
neighbourhood of St. Paul's and the novel sights of the
Mississippi. From St. Paul's Thoreau and his com-
panion made a further expedition some three hundred
miles up the Minnesota or St. Peter's River, in order to
witness a gathering of the Sioux Indians at Redwood,
where an annual payment was made to the tribe by the
United States Government. One of the sights which
most interested Thoreau, during this tour in the West,
was that of the aboriginal crab-apple, as told by him in
the essay on "Wild Apples," which appeared in the
Atlantic Monthly in 1862.

Meantime the spark which had been kindled by John
Brown's heroism had not been quenched by his death, and
the war between the northern and southern States had
already commenced in the spring of 1861. The mis-
fortunes of the North in the first months of the war
affected Thoreau so powerfully that he used to say he

144 LIFE OF

could never recover while the war lasted, and he told his
friends in these dark days that he was "sick for his
country." There is not the least justification for Lowell's
statement that Thoreau "looked with utter contempt on
the august drama of destiny, of which his country was
the scene, and on which the curtain had already risen."
"Was it Thoreau or Lowell," asks Wentworth Higgin-
son, " who found a voice when the curtain fell, after the
first act of that drama, upon the scaffold of John Brown?
Had Thoreau retained health and "life, there is no telling
but what the civil war might have brought out a wholly
new aspect of him, as it did for so many."

The journey to Minnesota was not productive of any
lasting improvement in Thoreau's health. When he
visited Mr. Ricketson at New Bedford a few weeks later
(on which occasion an ambrotype portrait was taken at
Mr. Ricketson's request), his racking cough impressed
his friend with the conviction that his strength was fast
failing, though his face, "except for a shade of sadness
in the eyes," did not betray the change. But in the
course of the winter that followed it became evident
that the disease had reached a point at which it could
not be arrested, and that there was no longer any hope
of saving his life. " It was my good fortune to see him
again last November," wrote G. W. Curtis (Harper's
Magazine, July 1862), " when he came into the library of
a friend to borrow a volume of Pliny's Letters. He was
much wasted, and his doom was clear. But he talked
in the old strain of wise gravity without either sentiment
or sadness." Then it was that the exaltation of spirit
ovjer matter, of the mind over the body, which had
throughout his life been one of Thoreau's prominent

THOREAU. 145

characteristics, was still more strongly manifested as he
neared his death; whatever his friends might feel, he
himself appeared to be unaffected by his illness; he
looked at himself, as it were, from an outer standpoint,
surveying, without alarm and without anxiety, this in-
trusion into his bodily system of a weakness to which
his mind at least should never be subject.

It was one of Thoreau's maxims that work of some
kind is as necessary for those who are sick as for those
who are strong, and it is recorded by his sister Sophia,
who, with their mother's help, tenderly nursed him in
his illness, that to the last day of his life he never ceased
to call for the manuscripts on which he was engaged.
He was about to become a contributor to the Atlantic
Monthly magazine, which was now edited by Mr. Fields
in the place of Mr. Lowell, and during the last few
months of his life he accomplished, in his sister's words,
"a vast amount of labour," in preparing these papers
for the press, and in completing the records of his visits
to the Maine Woods. There was something fitting in
the fact that in this closing scene of his life his thoughts
should be occupied with the Indian, whom he resembled
not only in his sympathy with wild nature, but also in
his stoical reserve, unfaltering self-command, and passive
acquiescence in whatever his destiny had in store for
him.

His unfailing patience and fortitude are described as
wonderful by those who witnessed them; it was impos-
sible to be sad in his presence, or to realise that one
so cheerful and contented was on the verge of death.
When he could not sleep he would ask his sister to

arrange the furniture so as to cast weird shadows on the

10

y

U6 LIFE OF

walls, and he expressed the wish that his bed were in
spiral form, that he might curl up in it as in a shell; at
other times, when rest was not altogether denied him, he
would interest his friends by a narration of his strange
and fantastic dreams, saying that "sleep seemed to hang
round his bed i nfestoons* " As long as sufficient strength
remained to him, he resolutely took his seat at table
with his mother and sister, insisting that " it would not
be social to take his meals alone," and when he could no
longer walk, his bed was brought down into the front
parlour of the house, where he was visited by many of
his neighbours and townsmen, from whom, during the
whole course of his illness, he received such touching
and gratifying tokens of kindness and affection that he
would sometimes protest he would be ashamed to stay
in the world after so much had been done for him.

Several of the remarks which he made on these
occasions were very characteristic. When Channing,
the faithful and intimate companion of his walks and
studies, hinted at the weary change that had now come
over his life, and how "solitude began to peer out
curiously from the dells and wood-roads," he whispered
in reply, "It is better some things should end." He
said to Alcott that he " should leave the world without a
regret" Nor in these last weary months of suffering did
he lose his shrewd humour and native incisiveness of
speech. " Well, Mr. Thoreau, we must all go," said a
well-meaning visitor, who thought to comfort the dying
man by the ordinary platitudes. " When I was a boy,"
answered Thoreau, " I learnt that I must die, so I am
not disappointed now; death is as near to you as it is to
me." When asked whether he "had made his peace

THOREAU. 147

with God," he quietly replied that "he had never
quarrelled with him." He was invited by another
acquaintance to enter into a religious conversation con-
cerning the next world. "One world at a time," was
the prompt retort.

It would, however, be an injustice to Thoreau to
represent his death-bed as nothing but a scene of stoical
fortitude and iron self-restraint — there are other and not
less admirable traits of tenderness and love. From his
window, which looked out on the village street, he saw
passing and repassing some of his favourite children,
whom he had so often conducted in their merry expedi-
tions after the huckleberry or water-lily. " Why don't
they come to see me?" he said to his sister. "I love
them as if they were my own;" and it is pleasant to
read that they often visited him, and enjoyed these last
meetings scarcely less than the first. The sound of
music had the same charm for him to the end, and on
hearing a street musician play some old tune that had
been familiar to him in childhood, he is said to have
shed tears and asked his mother to give the man some
money.

The thought of death was never a cause of anxiety to
him; but terrible indeed to a man of Thoreau's tem-
perament must have been the death-in-life of that long
and dreary winter, when the daily walk and converse
with nature, which had seemed necessities of his exist-
ence, were but memories of the past, and even the
carefully kept journal must needs be discontinued,
since there was in fact nothing to record. Yet of this
outer life, in which for twenty-five years he had so faith-
fully and unremittingly busied himself, he now spoke

148 LIFE OF

no word, and we are told that no stranger could have
imagined from his manner that " he ever had a friend in
field or wood." Once only, as he stood at his window,
did he allude to what must have been so constantly in
his thoughts. "I cannot see on the outside at all,"
he said to his friend Channing. "We thought our-
selves great philosophers in those wet days, when we
used to go out and sit down by the wall-sides." There
is on this point a singular and pathetic similarity between
Thoreau's last illness and that of Richard Jefferies, who
of all men was nearest to him in passionate devotion to
open-air life; but Thoreau's sterner and more r eticen t
nature would not give his thoughts the expression in
which Jefferies found relief.

It was on 6th May 1862, a beautiful spring morning,
that the end came. At eight o'clock, shortly after
enjoying the odour of a bunch of hyacinths from a friend's
c$^y$\ garden, he asked to be raised upright in his bed; his

y ">\ breathing became gradually fainter and fainter, until he

died without pain or struggle in the presence of his
mother and sister, his last audible words being " moose "
and "Indian" — the thought still intent on the scenes
that had detained it so long.

He was buried, near his brother and sister, in " Sleepy
Hollow," the quiet Concord burial-ground, close to the
spot which became the grave of Nathaniel Hawthorne
two years later. An address was given at the funeral by
Emerson, 1 and one of Thoreau's poems, " Sic Vita," was

1 Afterwards published in the Atlantic Monthly, August 1862,
and prefixed to Excursions, 1863. A few sentences were omitted,
at Sophia Thoreau's request, when the address was printed. Among
these was one in which Emerson enumerated the persons whom

My*

THOREAU. 149

read by Alcott. " While we walked in procession up to
the church," says one who was present, 1 "though the bell
tolled the forty-four years he had numbered, we could
not deem that he was dead whose ideas and sentiments
were so vivid in our souls. As the fading image of
pathetic clay lay before us, strewn with wild-flowers and
forest sprigs, thoughts of its former occupant seemed
blent with all the local landscapes. We still recall with
emotion the tributary words so fitly spoken by friendly
and illustrious lips. The hands of friends reverently
lowered the body of the lonely poet into the bosom of
the earth, on the pleasant hill-side of his native village,
whose prospects will long wait to unfurl themselves to
another observer so competent to discriminate their
features, and so attuned to their moods." His grave was
marked by a red stone, which bore no inscription but his
name and date of death. That stone is now gone. Its
successor bears the names, and dates of birth and death,
of every member of the family, except John, whose
birthday no one could recall.

Thoreau's collections of plants, Indian relics, and the
like, were bequeathed by him to the Society of Natural
History at Boston, of which he was an honorary member.
The family business of pencil-making was carried on for
some years after his death by his sister Sophia, w r ho
herself lived till 1876. The last remaining member of
the family was Miss Maria Thoreau, the sister of
Thoreau's father, who outlived her brother and her

Thoreau specially admired — viz., John Brown, the abolitionist;
Joe Polis, an Indian guide; and "one who is not known to those
here assembled," i.e., Walt Whitman.

1 W. R. Alger: Solitudes of Nature and of Man.

150 LIFE OF

brother's children, and died in Maine at an advanced
age in 1881. But though the family is thus extinct in
New England, the name of Thoreau is indelibly associated
with the scenes amidst which he lived and died ; and it
has been well remarked that "the village of Concord
is his monument, covered with suitable inscriptions
by himself." A cairn of stones marks the site of
the hut on the shore of Walden Pond, where the poet-
naturalist spent the two most memorable years of his
life, and wrote the greater part of his most memorable
volume. 1

"My greatest skill," says Thoreau himself, in words
that might stand as his epitaph, "has been to want
but little. For joy I could embrace the earth. I
shall delight to be buried in it. And then I think
of those amongst men who will know that I love
them, though I tell them not." Truly there is a love
that needs not telling — that is deepest and tenderest
untold. And those who understand this love will
understand the secret of Thoreau's story, and will never
fail to own and reverence the sincerity and heroism of
his lifel

1 The following is an extract from the journal of the greatest of the
many pilgrims who have since visited these scenes: — ft A half-hour
at Hawthorne's and Thoreau's graves. I got out and went up, of
course, on foot, and stood a long while and pondered. They lie close
together in a pleasant wooded spot well up the cemetery hill, * Sleepy
Hollow.' . . , Then to Walden Pond, that beautifully embower'd
sheet of water, and spent over an hour there. On the spot in the
woods where Thoreau had his solitary house is now quite a cairn
of stones, to mark the place ; I too carried one and deposited on
the heap." — Walt Whitman's Specimen Days in America, September
1881.

THOREAU. 151

" He kept the temple as divine

Wherein his soul abided ;
He heard the Voice within the shrine,

And followed as it guided ;
He found no bane of bitter strife,

But laws of His designing ;
He quaffed the brimming cup of Life,

And went forth unrepining." x

1 From a poem on Thoreau by S. A. Jones.

CHAPTER IX.

A DELIBERATE intent of advocating any particular
class of doctrines is more than once disclaimed by
Thoreau. He was an independent thinker, who put his
theories into practice with unusual courage, and expressed
himself in his books with unusual frankness, but he had
no preconceived designs on the opinions of his fellow-
men; he lived his life and said his say, and if he sought
to exercise any influence on others, it was by no direct
persuasion of argument or proselytism, but indirectly by
the example of his own personality. He once asked a
friend, who had entered the ministry, whether he had ever
yet in preaching been " so fortunate as to say anything."
On being answered in the affirmative, he remarked,
" Then your preaching days are over. Can you bear to
say it again?" By nature and temperament he was
averse to any elaborate "system" of philosophy or
ethics; he questioned everything, and would accept no
philosophical formula for himself, nor offer any to his
readers. This constitutional unwillingness to be tram-
melled by any intellectual tenet left its mark very
distinctly both on the substance and the form of
Thoreau's writings, and should be borne in mind, when
he is spoken of as the preacher of an ethical gospel;

LIFE OF THOREAU. 153

nevertheless, since he did in truth dwell with much
insistence on certain important truths, intellectual and
moral, which are too generally overlooked, we arc justi-
fied, with this reservation, in formulating as "doctrines"
the views which he most frequently expressed.

We have already seen that he was before everything
an idealist — his transcendentalism was not an adopted
creed, but an innate habit of mind from which he never
swerved, and which dominated all his philosophy. So
iar, it may be said, he did not differ to any remarkable
degree from other idealists, who have all more or less-
recognised and followed the guiding light of the inner
consciousness. But here we come to that distinctive
quality which sets Thoreau on a separate footing from
Emerson and other transcendentalist writers — the resolute
practicalness which shows itself as clearly in his doctrines
as in his actions. Though the ideal was always before
Mm, he had no taste for the subtleties of mere meta-
physical abstractions, but made a strong actuality^ the
basis of his reasoning : there were thus two sides to his
character and philosophy, the one the mystical and
transcendental, w r hich faced the boundless possibilities of
the future, the other the practical and terrestrial, which
was concerned with the realities of the present and the
past.

It is true that these two qualities did not always work
^mile harmoniously together; for Thoreau was not care-
itti to be systematic and verbally consistent ; as he
hfettself says, "How can I communicate with the gods,
who am a pencil-maker on earth, and not be insane ? "
But, as a rule, the successful combination of common
sense with transcendental sense is the characteristic

154 LIFE OF

feature of his doctrines; and this very dreamer and
mystic who boasted that he built his castles in the air
and then put the foundations under them, could also
assert with equal truth, in another connection, that " it
afforded him no satisfaction to commence to spring an
arch before he had got a solid foundation." His philo-
sophy of life is eminently keen-sighted, sound, and
practical.

It has been asserted that Thoreau " is Emerson
without domestic ties, or wish for them; save for a
streak of benevolence, without those of humanity." 1
But this subordination of Thoreau as a mere pupil and
follower of Emerson is not warranted by the facts of
their relationship. The greater practicalness of Thoreau
is frankly recognised by Emerson himself in a passage of
his diary. "In reading Henry Thoreau's journal," he
wrote, a year after his friend's death, "lam very sensible
of the vigour of his constitution. That oaken strength
which I noted whenever he walked or worked or sur-
veyed wood-lots, the same unhesitating hand with which
a field-labourer accosts a piece of work which I should
shun as a waste of strength, he shows in his literary
task. He has muscle, and ventures on and performs
feats which I am forced to decline. In reading him I
find the same thoughts, the same spirit that is in me,
but he takes a step beyond and illustrates by excellent
images that which I should have conveyed in a sleepy
generalisation." "The resemblance of Thoreau to
Emerson," says Mr. Conway, " was as superficial as that
of a leaf-like creature to a leaf. Thoreau was quite as
original as Emerson. He was not an imitator of any_^
1 Professor Nichol's American Literature.

THOREAU. 155 /

mortalj his thoughts and expressions are suggestions of
a Thoreau-principle at work in the universe." 1

This practical tendency in Thoreau was fostered and
strengthened by his firm belief in the freedom of the
human will. "I know of no more encouraging fact,"
he says, "than the unquestionable ability of man to
elevate his life by a conscious endeavour." His religious /
and moral creed was founded on a fixed optimistic con-
viction that nature is working to some wise and bene-
volent end; joy was for him "the condition of life, " and
despondency nothing more than a senseless and idle!
aberration. '

Inspired by this optimistic faith, Thoreau inculcates,
more strongly perhaps than any other writer, a sense of
content in one's own personality; he would have each ^
individual develop quietly according to his own capacity
and conditions. To waste no time in brooding over the
past, but to live in the present, and nourish unbounded
confidence in the future — this was the essence of his
practical philosophy; and for support in this creed, and
refreshment in the weaker moments of life, he looked to
the unfailing health and beneficence, as he considered
it, of wild nature.

This calm, optimistic nature-worship mainly deter-
mined Thoreau's attitude towards the religious sects,
whose " snappish tenacity," and faint-hearted craving for
external comfort and grace, w r ere in direct contrast to
his own absolute self-possession. " Really there is no
infidelity nowadays," he wrote in The Week, " so great
as that which prays, and keeps the Sabbath, and rebuilds
the churches. The church is a sort of hospital for men's
1 Emerson at Home and Abroad.

156 LIFE OF

souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their
bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners
in their Retreat or Sailors' Snug Harbour, where you
may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in
sunny weather. Let not the apprehension that he may
one day have to occupy a ward therein discourage the
cheerful labours of the able-souled man." It may be
imagined that the spirit of "defiant pantheism," as
Horace Greeley called it, which breathes through all
Thoreau's utterances on the subject of religion, and
especially through the magnificent passage in the chapter
on " Sunday " in The Week, must have caused him, and
still causes him, to be mistrusted and misunderstood in
so-called religious circles. It has been truly remarked
of him that " he creates as much consternation among
the saints as the sinners." Yet his unsparing candour
and incisiveness of speech ought not to blind his readers
to the fact that it was the very depth and sincerity of his
religious sentiment that caused him to set all forms and
dogmas at defiance.

What, then, is the practical outcome of Thoreau's
ethical teac hing ? In the first place, he is an earnest
and unwearied advocate of self-cult ur^anx^^df-respect.
and insists again and again on the need of preserving
our higher and nobler instincts from the contamination
of what is base, trivial, and worldly; the body must
be exercised into purity and vigour, and carefully safe-
guarded against sloth, vice, and disease, and in like
manner, from an intellectual point of view, the mind
must be kept secure from the harmful and distracting
influences of conventionality and gossip. The extreme
delicacy of Thoreau's nature — a delicacy which was

THOREAU. 157

sensitive almost to fastidiousness — may be seen in the
sharp and perhaps too arbitrary contrast which he some-
times draws between the spiritual and the animal instincts,
and especially in the tone of his remarks on the subject
of love. "The intercourse of the sexes," he says, "I
have dreamed, is incredibly beautiful, too fair to be
remembered. I have had thoughts about it, but they
are among the most fleeting and irrecoverable in my
experience. It is strange that men will talk of miracles,
revelation, inspiration, and the like, as things past while
love remains. Some have asked if the stock of men
could not be improved — if they could not be bred as
cattle. Let Love be purified, and all the rest will follow.
A pure love is thus indeed the panacea for all the ills of
the world."

The eager self-seeking restlessness of modern society,
with its ignorance or disregard of the claims of thoughtful
repose, was summed up for Thoreau in the word " busi-
ness." Nothing, in his opinion, not even crime, is so
much opposed to the poetry of life as "business," — it is
" a negation " of life itself. Yet, as has already been said,
the leisure which he advocated as essential to the well-
being of every man was very different from idleness;
indeed there have been few writers who, both in word
and deed, have exhibited the value of time more power-
fully than Thoreau. If he rejected "business " in its com-
mercial and money-making aspect, he none the less
recognised that hard work is as important a discipline
for the mind and morals as exercise is for the body, and
that those who fail to support themselves by their own
labour are doing a wrong both to themselves and others.
For the same reason he urges on students and men of

158 LIFE OF

sedentary habits the advisability of taking a share in the
simple common labours of everyday life, asserting that
" the student who secures his coveted leisure and retire-
ment by systematically shirking any labour necessary to
man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure,
defrauding himself of the experience which alone can
make leisure fruitful."

We see, then, that Thoreau's first demand is for
leisure and elbow-room, tnat each individual mind,
instead of being crushed and warped in the struggle
of life, may have space to develop its own distinctive
qualities and follow the bent of its own natural tempera-
ment. Never has there lived a more deter m ine d and
unalterable individualis t. Everything, according to his
maxims, must be examined; nothing must be taken on
trust; he was, as Emerson calls him, "a protestant a
Foutrance" and unhesitatingly rejected many customs
which are supposed to have the sanction of experience
and tradition. He declared that after living some thirty
years on this planet he had yet to hear a word of valuable
advice from his elders. When a young man of his
/acquaintance professed a desire to adopt his mode of
>life, his answer was that he would have each one find
S out and pursue his own way, and not that of his father
( or his neighbour.

It must not be supposed, however, that he wholly
ignored the possibility of wise co-operation — on the
contrary, he expressly states in Walden, when advocating
the adoption of a better system of village education, that
"to act collectively is according to the spirit of our
institutions;" and in the account of his Canadian tour,
when he describes the machine-like regularity with which

THOREAU. 159

the troops at Montreal went through their drill in the
Champ de Mars, he exclaims that a true co-operation
and harmony might be possible, " if men could combine
thus earnestly and patiently and harmoniously to some
really worthy end." But this seems to have been
nothing more than a distant anticipation; under present
conditions he considered that the best hope of society
lay in the progress and gradual perfecting of the indi-
vidual man by his own personal effort At a time when
Fourier's doctrines had obtained great hold in New
England, and when various schemes of co-operative
associations, by which society was to be entirely re-
organised and regenerated, were being eagerly discussed,
it was inevitable that so shrewd and practical a thinker
as Thoreau should — in spite of his idealism — fall back
more and more on what he considered the solid basis
of individual independence. This view is stated very
clearly in his criticism of a volume entitled The Paradise
within the Reach of All Men, in which the magical
results of co-operation had been depicted in glowing
colours —

" Alas ! this is the crying sin of the age, this want of faith in the
prevalence of a man. Nothing can be effected but by one man.
He who wants help wants everything. True, this is the condition of
our weakness, but it can never be the means of our recovery. We
must first succeed alone, that we may enjoy our success together.
We trust that the social movements which we witness indicate an
aspiration not to be thus cheaply satisfied. In this matter of
reforming the world we have little faith in corporations ; not thus
was it first formed. " 1

Closely connected with this strong individualism are
Thoreau's anarchist doctrines. He regards all estab-
1 Democratic Review > November 1843.

160 LIFE OF

j lished government as, at best, a necessary evil, which
we must tolerate as we can during the present tran-
sitional phase of human society, in the belief that the
ultimate condition of mankind will be, like the primitive,
one of individual liberty. Politics he set aside as
" unreal, incredible, and insignificant." " Blessed are the
young," was his new version of the Beatitudes, "for
they do not read the President's Message." For the
same reasons he expressed a strong dislike of the* general
tone of the American press, which he considered, with a
few exceptions, to be venal and time-serving. In at
least two of his essays, the "Plea for Captain John
Brown" and "Slavery in Massachusetts," this feeling
finds an outlet in a fierce philippic against the hireling
journals which did not scruple to use their utmost
influence in the service of the slave-holding party.
~> Yet here too, as elsewhere, there is a danger of ex-
n aggerating the extent of Thoreau's lack of sympathy
with contemporary modes of thought. It is true he
preaches anarchism and civil disobedience; yet, under a
rough exterior, he loved his country well, and in his
peculiar way was perhaps as patriotic a citizen as any
to be found in Massachusetts. He admits that the
American Government, though not an ideal one, is
good enough when viewed from a lower than the ideal
standpoint, and more than once expresses his own
desire to be a peaceable and law-abiding citizen. More-
over, in spite of his contempt for politics and politicians,
he does not deny that " countless reforms are called for,"
and shows that he is aware that the condition of the
working classes is destined to be the paramount question
of the age. But all his social doctrines point finally to

THOREAU, 161

this end — that the path must be left clear for the free
development of individual character.

"There will never be a really free and enlightened State," he
says, " until the State comes to recognise the individual as a higher
and independent power, from which all its own power and authority
are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with
imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men,
and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbour; which
even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose, if a few
were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by
it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbours and fellow-men. A
State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as
fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect
and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet any-
where seen." 1

Society then is to be reformed, according to Thoreau's
doctrine, by individual ^ ejfort, and the gosp el which he
preaches to the individual is that of s im plicity. Simpli-
fication of life (by which is meant a questioning, and
perhaps rejection, of the various artificial " comforts "
and luxuries, and a dependence only on the actual
necessaries — food, shelter, clothing, and fuel) is re-
peatedly advocated by Thoreau, from his own practical
experience, as lending strength, courage, and self-reliance
to the individual character, and so, in proportion to the
extent of its practice, to the State. It must be repeated
that this doctrine, however strange and unpalatable it
may be to the popular mood, is not that of an ascetic.
The simplicity which Thoreau inculcates does not, like
asceticism, renounce the luxuries of life by way of a
religious penance, but because it is convinced that life,

1 " Resistance to Civil Government, " JEsthetic Papers, Boston,
1849.

II

162 ^ LIFE OF

on the whole, is healthier and happier without them.
What he urges is not that men should deny themselves
certain comforts while they still believe them to be
comforts, but that in each case they sho uld test the
truth b y p ractical experienc e, and not continue to regard
as necessaries many things which a day's trial would
prove to be superfluous and perhaps actually harmful.
This distinction between a natural taste and an acquired
habit is a vital one, yet it is generally overlooked by the
opponents of Thoreau's philosophy. He laughs at the
absurdity of those writers who talk of the usefulness of
" artificial wants " in drawing out the resources of nature,
since every artificial want must of necessity bring with
it its own Nemesis of proportionally increased toil;
whereas, on the~contrary, the practice of hardihood and
frugality is productive of health, independence, and
restfulness both to body and mind. In a word, the
simplicity which he preaches is based not on the repres-
sion, but rather on the better gratification, of the true
pleasure s of .existence. Which is the more enjoyable to
indulge — the spiritual instinct or the sensual ? Let each
man make his own choice; but let him at least be sure
that he is r eally following his own tastes, and not merely
conforming to the dictates of custom and tradition: "
""""The chaTjpToften made against Tnoreau, that he is in
opposition to the course of modern progress, and prefers
savagery to civilisation, is only tenable on a very short-
sighted and perfunctory view of the meaning of his
gospel. He himself notes in his diary that his lectures
used to call forth such inquiries as " Would you have us
return to the savage state?" — a misconception of his
meaning which was doubtless rendered more general

THOREAU. 163

by his brevity of speech, epigrammatic tone, and char-
acteristic unwillingness to explain himself. But a careful
study of his writings as a whole, and of Walden in parti-
cular, can leave us in no doubt as to his true position on
this point. He expressly states his belief that civilisation
is a real advance in the condition of mankind, and that
the farmer displaces the Indian "because he redeems
the meadow, and so makes himself stronger and in some
respects more natural." But, while making this admis-
sion, he points out what is too often overlooked by com-
fortable statisticians, that, though the majority of civilised
men are better situated than the savage, there is a
minority which is not so. He asserts, then, that the
problem to which we should apply ourselves is how "to
combine the hardiness of the savage with the intellectual-
ness of the^ civilised man." When he inveighs against
the numerous follies, and defects, and diseases observable
in civilisation, he does so, not because he doubts or
denies its superiority to the savage state, but because
(to quote his own words) he wishes " to show at what a
sacrifice this advantage is at present obtained, and to
suggest that we may possibly so live as to secure all the
advantage without suffering any of the disadvantage." x
In the same connection it should be noted that
Thoreau exhibits no reactionary feeling against the
strides made by science and modern mechanical inven-
tion, however strongly he may protest against the un-
necessary desecration of natural scenery. He descants
on the enterprise, courage, and alertness of commerce,
which goes steadily on its path undismayed and un-
hindered by the obstacles of climate and season, and
declares that it cheered him in his Walden hermitage

/

164 LIFE OF

when he heard the train rattle past each morning on its
road to Boston. All he desiderates is a worthier object
as the end and aim of so much toil and industry. Nor
was he, as some have supposed, an enemy to art, though
he may have been, as Emerson says, " insensible to some
fine traits of culture." He did not wish to banish
ornament from our dwellings, except such as is external
and superficial, a mere conventional and fashionable
appendage, instead of what it should be, a simple and
natural growth.

It may here be worth while to inquire how far these
principles of individualism and simplicity were meant by
Thoreau to be applied, and how far they were j rightly
applicable, to the social question of his time. There is
no indication whatever in any of his writings that he
intended his doct r i nes to be understood, directly and
literally, as containing a panacea for human ills; he
did not wish his fellow-beings to leave their towns and
villages in order to live in shanties, nor was he under
the impression, as some of his critics would have us
believe, that the inhabitants of crowded cities were free
to march out and live in blissful seclusion in some neigh-
bouring wood. Thoreau, whatever the limitations of
his genius may have been, was a shrewd and clear-
sighted man; and if any of his readers find themselves
attributing to him such ineptitudes as those just men-
tioned, they may feel assured that the misunderstanding
is on their own side, and that by lack of sympathy they
have failed to grasp his true meaning. It should be
remembered that he wrote primarily and immediately
for his own fellow-citizens of Concord and a limited
New England audience; and, further, that the social

THOREAU. 165 /"

problem was far less difficult and complex at that time
in New England than it is now after a lapse of thirty or
forty years. Extreme poverty was a rare exception and
not a normal condition among the peasantry of Concord;
there was more elbow-room and opportunity for indi-
vidual effort than in an English country town, so that
an example such as that set by Thoreau was not by any
means the impossibility which it would have been in
other places and under other circumstances. As a

-matter of fact, he seldom recommended his own way
of living to his neighbours or fellow-tqwnsmen, .being

K convinced that jeach , JSan. JfSH?t J&3PS .. l 1 J § .Q w Ii ^career ;
though in one or two cases, as in the conversation with
a thriftless Irish labourer, recorded in Walden, we find
him pointing out the advantages of a frugal diet, since
those who can dispense with tea, coffee, butter, milk,
and flesh-meat can also spare themselves the heavy
labour which is required to purchase these unnecessary
"comforts." But in so far as Thoreau addressed his
doctrines to the general public, it was distinctly not with
the intent of persuading them to live as he did, but f &
in the hope of stimulating independent thought by the
force of his example and admonition, and of drawing
attention to those simple common-sense principles
without which there can be no lasting health or con-
tentment either for individual or community.

Mr. Stevenson has remarked of Thoreau that in his
whole works one can find no trace of pity. If it were
possible at all to maintain this assertion, it could only be
in the limited sense that he dwells usually on the iniquity
of the wrong-doer rather than on the feelings of the
sufferer; he does not, for instance, express his pity for

*

166 LIFE OF

the slave (though we know from the accounts already
quoted how strong his pity was), but he shows it in a
more practical form by his attitude towards the slave-
holder. It is true that, with his characteristic dislike of
system, he disclaims any distinct theory of compassion,
while his optimistic belief in the beneficence of nature
prevents him from repining at the mere existence of
suffering and wrong. Nevertheless, Thoreau is himself
one of the humanest of writers, and has contributed to the
literature of humanitarianism some of its most striking
protests. His detestation of war was shown in his refusal
to pay the poll-tax at the time when the United States
made an unjustifiable attack on Mexico^ He declares
| fighting to be "a damnable business," and at variance
I with the will and conscience of those compelled to
I engage in it — "soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal,
powder-monkeys, and all." Of his opinions concerning
slaveholding it is not necessary to say more; but there
is a remarkable saying of his about John Brown which
deserves to be quoted in this connection. Noting the
fact that Brown had not received a college education,
but had studied Liberty in " the great University of the
West," he adds : "Such were his humanities, and not any
study of grammar. He would have left a Greek accent
slanting the wrong way, and righted up a falling man/
It would be well if all our professors and students of
iiierce humaniores would lay this admirable sentiment to
heart. /

Humanity to animals was one of the most conspicuous /
virtues in Thoreau's character, and is constantly,
indirectly, advocated in his writings. His conception of
the animal races has been described as " a sort of mystic^/

J

THOREAU. 167

evolution." Thus he regards the foxes as "rudimental
burrowing men, still standing on their defence, awaiting
their transformation ; " while the dog is to the fox as the
white man to the red. The horse appears to him as a
human being in a humble state of existence, and the
human way in which the oxen behave when loosed from
the yoke at evening affects him pathetically. The wild
shaggy moose in the Maine forests are " moose-men, clad
in a sort of Vermont gray or homespun," and he expresses
respect even for the skunk, for its suggested resemblance
to one of the human aborigines of the country. In-
dividuality is recognised and respected by him in the
non-human no less than the human races ; he complains
of man's " not educating the horse, not trying to develop
his nature, but merely getting work out of him." It was
this sense of brotherhood, as I have already remarked,
which gave Thoreau his extraordinary power over beasts
and birds ; and his singular humanity to animals is due
to the same source. During the greater part of his life^
he was a vegetarian in practice, and in Walden has made '
profession of his faith in the humanities of diet.

His position as a naturalist was strongly influenced by
the same humane sentiments. His methods were not
those of the anatomist and man of science ; he held that
"nature must be viewed humanly to be viewed at all,
that is, her scenes must be associated with humane
affections ; " she was to him a living entity, to be loved
and reverenced, and not a subject for cold and unim-
passioned observation. Accordingly, in his remarks on
nature and natural history there is a decided prevalence
of that peculiarly introspective and moralising mood,
characteristic of the poet^naturalist as distinct from the

'V

168 LIFE OF

scientist, which seeks to transmute the mere facts and
results of external observation into symbolical thoughts
\ and images which may illustrate the life of man. It is
\ this human self-consciousness that differentiates Thoreau
from the naturalist and observer pure and simple, such
as Gilbert White. It has been remarked by Mr. John
Burroughs that it was super-natural rather than natural
history that Thoreau studied, and that he made no
discoveries of importance in the scientific field because
he looked through nature instead of at he r, and was
" more intent on the natural history of his own thought
than on that of the bird."

It is no doubt true that Thoreau's keenness of vision
was generally in proportion to the interest of the subject
with which he had to deal ; he saw what he already had
in mind. His observations, however, are not the less
important because they differ from those acquired by
the ordinary method; on the contrary, they are more
valuable on that account, inasmuch as the poet is higher
and rarer than the naturalist. Nathaniel Hawthorne
has recorded how Thoreau was enabled by this inner
faculty to see the water-lily as few others could see it ;
"he has beheld beds of them unfolding in due suc-
cession as the sunrise stole gradually from flower to
flower — a sight not to be hoped for, unless when a poet
adjusts his inward eye to a proper focus with the outward
organ." This idealist quality constitutes the peculiar pro-
perty of Thoreau's teaching on the subject of nature \
but that it did not disqualify him from doing good service
as a scientific observer may be gathered from the remark-
able tribute which has been paid to him by one of
Darwin's interpreters: —

THOREAU. 169

/ " Like no one else, he knew the meaning of every note and
[ movement of bird and beast, and fish and insect. Born out of due
, time, just too early for the great change in men's views of nature
which transferred all interest in outer life from the mere dead
things one sees in museums to their native habits and modes of
living, he was yet in some sort a vague and mystical anticipatory
precursor of the modern school of functional biologists. . . . Page
after page of his diary notes facts about the pollen showers of pine-
trees, the fertilisation of skunk-cabbage, the nesting of birds, the
preferences of mink or musk-rat, the courtship of butterflies, all of
a piece with those minute observations on which naturalists now-
adays build their most interesting theories." 1

The conclusion of our view of Thoreau's doctrines
thus brings us back to the contention with which we
started. He was an ^idealist who .looked through the
outer husk and surface of life, and saw the true reality in
what to most men is but a vision and a dream. He had
in large measure what Emerson calls " the philosopher's
perception of identity"; the phenomena of time and
space did not affect him — Walden Pond was to him an
Atlantic Ocean, a moment was eternity. The means on
which he relies for the correction of popular delusions
are the independence of the individual mind, and those
simple, practical modes of living which alone can keep a
man independent. Finally, for all his asperity of tone
in the reproof of what he considered to i5e blameworthy,
he was a firm believer in the gradual progress and
ultimate renovation of mankind, being convinced that
improvement is "the only excuse for reproduction." It
was no cynical or misanthropic faith that found ex-
pression in his writings.

1 Grant Allen, Fortnightly Review ', May 1888.

CHAPTER X.

T^HE lack of system which is noticeable in Thoreau's
character may be traced in the style of his writings
as plainly as in his philosophical views. He was not
careful as to the outer form and finish of his works, for
he believed that the mere literary contour is of quite
secondary importance in comparison with the inner
animating spirit; let the worthiness of the latter once be
assured, and the former will fall naturally into its proper
shape. Furthermore, although, as we have seen, writing
was more and more recognised by him as his profession
in his later years, he was at all times conscious of a fuller
and higher calling than that of the literary man — as he
valued nature before art, so he valued life before litera-
ture. He both preached and practised a combination of
literary work and manual; of the pen and of the spade;
of the study and of the open sky. He protested against
that tendency in our civilisation which carries division of
labour to such an extent that the student is deprived of
healthy out-door work, while the labourer is deprived
of opportunity for self-culture. He imagines the case of
"some literary professor, who sits in his library writing
a treatise on the huckleberry, while hired huckleberry-
pickers and cooks are engaged in the task of preparing
him a pudding of the berries. A book written under

LIFE OF THOREAU. 171

such conditions will be worthless. " There will be none
of the spirit of the huckleberry in it. I believe in a
different kind of division of labour, and that the professor
should divide himself between the library and the huckle-
berry field." His opinions on the subject of literary
style are clearly stated in The Week y and are no doubt
in great measure a record of his own practice :

"Can there be any greater reproach than an idle learning?
Learn to split wood at least. The necessity of labour and conver-
sation with many men and things to the scholar is rarely well
remembered; steady labour with the hands, which engrosses the
attention also, is unquestionably the best method of removing
palaver and sentimentality out of one's style, both of speaking and
writing. If he has worked hard from morning till night, though
he may have grieved that he could not be watching the train of his
thoughts during that time, yet the few hasty lines which at evening
record his day's experience will be more musical and true than his
freest but idle fancy could have furnished. Surely t he writer is to
address a w orld of lab jOjLirers ? and such therefore must be his own
disciplin es^ He will not idly dance at his "work whoTms^wooct to
cut and cord before nightfall in the short days of winter, but every
stroke will be husbanded, and ring soberly through the wood ; and
so will the strokes of that scholar's pen, which at evening record the
story of the day, ring soberly, yet cheerily, on the ear of the reader,
long after the echoes of his axe have died away."

Such were, in fact, the conditions under which Thoreau
wrote many of the pages of the journal from which his
own essays were constructed; and, whatever may be
thought of the force of his general principle, there can be
no doubt that in his particular case the result was very
felicitous. It was his pleasure and his determination
that his writing should be redolent of the open-air
scenery by which it was primarily inspired. "I trust,"

172 LIFE OF

he says of The Week (and the same may be said of all
his volumes), " it does not smell so much of the study
f and library, even of the poet's attic, as of the fields and
[ woods; that it is a hypsethral or unroofed book, lying
j open under the ether, and permeated by it, open to all
weathers, not easy to be kept on a shelf." In this way
[ Thoreau added a new flavour to literature by the un-
V ^v*-^ Y studied freshness and wildness of his tone, and succeeded

>v rt,U l vVV best where he made least effort to be successful. "It is

iw^i^K *' on ly out °f ^ e fulness of thinking," says Mr. R. L.

iyjr*^ Stevenson, "that expression drops perfect like a ripe

fruit; and when Thoreau wrote so nonchalantly at his
desk, it was because he had been vigorously active
during his walk." Even Mr. ^Lowell, a far less friendly
critic, is compelled, on this point, to express his admira-
tion. "With every exception, there is no writing
comparable with Thoreau's in kind that is comparable
with it in degree, where it is best. His range was
narrow, but to be a master is to be a master. There are
sentences of his as perfect as anything in the language,
and thoughts as clearly crystallised; his metaphors and
images are always fresh from the soil."

This success, although naturally and unconsciously
attained, had of course been rendered possible in the
first instance by an honest course of study; for Thoreau,
like every other master of literary expression, had passed
through his strict apprenticeship of intellectual labour.
Though comparatively indifferent to modern languages,
he was familiar with the best classical writers of Greece
and Rome, and his style was partly formed on models
drawn from one of the great eras in English literature,
the post-Elizabethan period. It is a noticeable fact that

THOREAU. 173

" mother-tongue" was a word which he loved to use even
in his college days; and the homely native vigour of his
own writings was largely due to the sympathetic industry
with which he had laboured in these quiet but fertile
fields. Nor must it be supposed, because he did not
elaborate his w T ork according to the usual canons, that
he was a careless or indolent writer — on the contrary,
it was his habit to correct his manuscripts with unfailing
diligence. He deliberately examined and re-examined
eachsenten^e of his journal before admitting it into the
essays which he sent to the printer, finding that a certain
lapse of time was necessary before he could arrive at
a satisfactory decision. His absolute sincerity showed
itself as clearly in the style of his writing as in the
manner of his life. " The one great rule of composition
— and if I were a professor of rhetoric I should insist
on this — is to speak the truth. This first, this second,
this third."

In his choice of subjects it was the common that
most often enlisted his sympathy and attention. " The
theme," he says, "is nothing; the life is everything.
Give me simple, cheap, and homely themes. I omit
the unusual — the hurricanes and earthquakes, and de-
scribe the common. This has the greatest charm, and
is the true theme of poetry. Give me the obscure life,
the cottage of the poor and humble, the work-days of
the world, the barren fields." But while he took these
as the subjects for his pen, he so idealised and trans-
formed them by the power of his imagination as to
present them in aspects altogether novel and unsus-
pected ; it being his delight to bring to view the latent
harmony and beauty of all existent things, and thus

174 LIFE OF

indirectly to demonstrate the unity and perfection of
nature.

Numerous passages might be quoted from Thoreau's
works which exhibit these picturesque and suggestive
qualities. He had a poet's eye for all forms of beauty,
moral and material alike, and for the subtle analogies
that exist between the one class and the other — in a
word, he was possessed of a most vivid and quickening
imagination. His images and metaphors are bold,
novel, and impressive — as when, to take but a couple
of instances, he alludes to the lost anchors of vessels
wrecked off the coast of Cape Cod as " the sunken faith
and hope of mariners, to which they trusted in vain ; "
or describes the autumnal warmth on the sheltered
side of Walden as " the still glowing embers which the
summer, like a departing hunter, had left." And, with
all his simplicity and directness of speech, he has an
unconscious, almost mystic, eloquence which stamps
him unmistakably as an inspired writer, a man of true
and rare genius; so that it has been well said of him
that "he lived and died to transfuse external nature
into human words." In this respect his position among
prose-writers is unique; no one, unless it be Richard
Jefferies, can be placed in the same category with him.

In so far as he studied the external form of his
writings, the aim and object which Thoreau set before
him may be summed up in one word — concentration;
He avows his delight in sentences which are " concen-
trated and nutty." The distinctive feature of his own
literary style could not have been more accurately de-
scribed. The brief, barbed, epigrammatic sentences
which bristle throughout his writings, pungent with

THOREAU. 175

shrewd wisdom and humour, are the appropriate
expression of his keen thrifty nature; there is not a
superfluous word or syllable, but each passage goes
straight to the mark, and tells its tale, as the work of a
man who has some more urgent duty to perform than to
adorn his pages with artificial tropes and embellishments.
He is fond of surprising and challenging his readers by
the piquancy and strangeness of his sayings, and his
use of paradox is partly due to the same desire to
stimulate and awaken curiosity, partly to his wayward
and contradictory nature. The dangers and demerits
of a paradoxical style are sufficiently obvious ; and no
writer has ever been less careful than Thoreau to safe-
guard himself against misunderstandings on this score.
He has consequently been much misunderstood, and will
always be "so, save where the reader brings to his task
a certain amount of sympathy and kindred sense of
humour.

To those who are not gifted with the same sense of
the inner identity which links together many things that
are externally unlike, some of Thoreau's thoughts and
sayings must necessarily appear to be a fair subject for
ridicule. Yet that he should have been charged with
possessing no " humour " would be inexplicable, save for
the fact that the definitions of that quality are so various
and so vague. Broad wit and mirthful genial humour
he certainly had not, and he confessedly disliked writings
in which there is a conscious and deliberate attempt to
be amusing. He found Rabelais, for instance, intolerable;
" it may be sport to him," he says, " but it is death to us;
a mere humorist, indeed, is a most unhappy man, and
his readers are most unhappy also." But though he

/

176 LIFE OF

would not or could not recognise humour as a distinct
and independent quality, and even attempted, as we are
told, to eliminate what he considered " levity " from some
of his essays, he none the less enjoyed keenly — and him-
self unmistakably exhibited — the quiet, latent, unobtru-
sive humour which is one of the wholesome and saving
principles of human life. / //Among Thoreau's own writings,
Walden is especially pervaded by this subtle sense of
humour, grave, dry, pitl^ sentent ious, almost s aturnin e
in its tone, yet perhaps for thatvery reason the more
racy and suggestive to those readers who have the faculty
for appreciating it.

It has been remarked that it is impossible to classify
Thoreau — "he cannot be called a man of science, he
cannot be called a poet, he cannot even be called a
prose poet." 1 If classification of any kind be desirable
in the case of such a protestant and free-lance, he should
probably be called an essayist with a strong didactic
tendency. He could not, as his friend Channing
observes, "mosaic" his essays, but preferred to give
himself free play by throwing them into the narrative \
and autobiographical form. The Week and Walden, *
the two volumes which were published in his lifetime,
are both framed on this principle, a more or less slight
record of personal experience being made the peg on
■-*" Which fo"Tiahg"a great deal of ethical moralising and
/speculation. Apart from all question of the value of

\ the opinions advanced, the charm of those books lies
mainly in their intellectual alertness, keen spiritual
insight, and brilliant^tBu^ri eisr-eHjictare 4fia?xip^^"

/ Few authors have createcTsuch a rich store* of terse
""^ l Atkenceum, October 1882.

THOREAU. \y\ll

felicitous juocjjae^ms, or have drawn such vivid and
sympathetic sketches of natural scenery. Numerous
examples of his laconic incisive utterances have already
been incidentally quoted. Here is a characteristic open-
air picture of a bright breezy day on the Concord river,
where he spent so much of his time —

"Many waves are there agitated by the wind, keeping nature
fresh, the spray blowing in your face, reeds and rushes waving;
ducks by the hundred, all uneasy in the surf, in the raw wind, just
ready to rise, and now going off with a clatter and a whistling like
riggers straight for Labrador, flying against the stiff gale with
reefed wings, or else circling round first with all their paddles
briskly moving, just over the surf, to reconnoitre you before they
leave these parts ; gulls wheeling overhead ; musk-rats swimming
for dear life, wet and cold, with no lire to warm them by that you
know of, their laboured homes rising here and there like haystacks;
and countless mice and moles and winged titmice along the sunny
windy shore ; cranberries tossed on the waves and heaving up on
the beach, their little red skiffs beating about among the alders ; —
such healthy natural tumult as proves the last day is not yet at
hand. And there stand all around the alders and birches and oaks
and maples full of glee and sap, holding in their buds until the
paters subside."

Here, too, to show the more human side of Thoreau's
genius, is one of the picturesque character-sketches which
are far from uncommon in his writings —

" I can just remember an old brown-coated man who was the
Walton of this stream, who had come over from Newcastle, Eng-
land, with his son — the latter a stout and hearty man who had lifted
an anchor in his day. A straight old man he was, who took his
way in silence through the meadows, having passed the period of
communication with his fellows ; his old experienced coat, hanging
long and straight and brown as the yellow-pine bark, glittering
with so much smothered sunlight, if you stood near enough, no
work of art but naturalised at length. I often discovered him

12

178 LIFE OF

unexpectedly amid the pads and the gray willows when he moved,
fishing in some old country method — for youth and age then went
a-fishing together — full of incommunicable thoughts, perchance
about his own Tyne and Northumberland. He was always to be
seen in serene afternoons haunting the river, and almost rustling
with the sedge ; so many sunny hours in an old man's life, entrap-
ping silly fish ; almost grown to be the sun's familiar ; what need
had he of hat or raiment any, having served out his time, and seen
through such thin disguises. I have seen how his coeval fates
rewarded him with the yellow perch, and yet I thought his luck
was not in proportion to his years; and I have seen when, with
slow steps and weighed down with aged thoughts, he disappeared
with his fish under his low-roofed house on the skirts of the village.
I think nobody else saw him ; nobody else remembers him now, for
he soon after died, and migrated to new Tyne streams. His fishing
was not a sport, not solely a means of subsistence, but a sort of
solemn sacrament and withdrawal from the world, just as the aged
read their Bibles."

Those of Thoreau's shorter essays which deal with
natural history and outdoor life are to be found reprinted
in Excursions, a volume published the year after his
death, with the well-known prefatory memoir by Emerson.
These Excursions have been described as "landscapes in
/ miniature, embracing every feature of New England
\-summers and winters." 1 There is a wild, racy, inde-
finable charm about them which is all their own; they
are by no means well "finished " and rounded off, when
viewed from an artistic — or shall we say artificial —
standpoint; for Thoreau here loves to gossip on without
regard to the laws of essay-writing, and will not deny
himself the pleasure of quoting largely, when the whim
takes him, from his favourite poets, or from the old
prose chroniclers who wrote of the places which he
1 Professor Nichol's American Literature,

THOREAU. 179

visited, nor will he spare the minutest details which
concern his own experiences. Yet the final effect is
altogether delightful; and no reader who has once
caught and appreciated the rare mystic flavour of these
wildlings of literature could ever regret that they were
not subjected to the conventional pruning. They can
no more be taken to the literary market and weighed
in the critical balance than their prototype the "wild
apple," which furnished Thoreau with some of his
choicest themes.

The " Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers," which were
first included in the Yankee in Canada volume, and
afterwards in the Miscellanies, are more direct and
didactic in aim than the Excursions. Some of
Thoreau's most brilliant and pungent sayings are to
be found in these essays, of which the very best are
the " Plea for John Brown," the most impassioned of
all his writings, and " Life without Principle," which
conveys in brief form the substance of his protest against
the follies of modern society.

The original source which provided material for all
these essays and volumes was the daily journal, which
was kept by Thoreau with great fulness and regularity
from 1837, the year when he left college, to a short time
before his death in 1862, and amounted in all to no less
than thirty large volumes. This diary formed a complete
chronicle of his outward and inward life, and was not a
mere collection of chance jottings, but a private auto-
biography, written throughout with the utmost serious-
ness and devotion, useful not only as a record of facts
and thoughts, but also as a means of stimulating further
meditations.

180 LIFE OF

We have seen, in the story of Thoreau's life, how his
daily walks were not, as with most men, a time of leisure
and recreation, but an essential part of his day's work
and of his duties as poet-naturalist. He went to hill-top,
or forest, or swamp, or river-bank, not as an aimless
wanderer seeking to while away an afternoon, but as
an inspector going his rounds; and he paid his visits
deliberately and on principle to such animals, birds,
nests, trees, or flowers as he happened to have under
observation. He took notes on the spot, even when he
walked, as was frequently the case, in the night-time;
and on his return home he expanded these notes into
graphic descriptions, interspersed with appropriate medi-
tations, which sometimes, in the earlier volumes of the
journal, took the form of verse. His notes on natural
history constitute a large portion of the diary, and are
often tinged with that tone of mysticism which so largely
dominated his character.

From this journal Thoreau drew freely when preparing
his essays or lectures, as the case might be; but, before
being given to the world, every passage and sentence
underwent further careful revision. After his death
the unpublished manuscripts and diaries remained for
fourteen years in the charge of his sister Sophia, who,
at her death in 1876, bequeathed them to her brother's
friend and correspondent, Mr. Blake. 1 Portions of the
journal have since been edited by Mr. Blake in four

1 Soon after Thoreau's death there was a talk of publishing the
complete journal, but Sophia Thoreau could not make up her mind
to it, and the plan was dropped. In 1866 she wrote to a friend :
" These papers are very sacred to me, and I feel inclined to defer
giving them to the public for the present."

THOREAU. , lbf"

volumes, under the titles of Early Spring in Massachusetts,
Summer, Autumn, and Winter, various passages, written
in different years, being grouped together according to the
days on which they were written, so as to give a connected
picture of the seasons. This arrangement was apparently
foreshadowed by Thoreau, who makes a note in his
journal of " a book of the seasons, each page of which
should be written in its own season and out of doors, or
in its own locality, wherever it may be." The years
represented in these volumes are mostly between 1850
and i860, the Walden period having presumably been
almost exhausted by Thoreau himself. It has been
noticed by a writer in the Academy, 1884, that the pub-
lished journal contains no dates between 10th April and
1 st June. This deficiency is, however, to some extent
supplied by the extracts given in the Atlantic Monthly
in 1878 under the titles "April Days" and "May Days."
A volume of Thoreau's Letters was edited by Emerson
in 1865. He was not what is known as a "regular"
correspondent, and the number of his extant letters is
not very great. " Not to have written a note for a year,"
he said, "is with me a very venial o ffence. Some are
accustomed to write many letters, others very few; I am
one of the last." The letters included in the volume of
1865 are, as a rule, much more severely transcendental
in tone than the essays and diaries — "abominably
didactic," Channing called them — and their seriousness
is seldom relieved by the keen humour of Walden, It
seems that Emerson, in selecting them, made it his
object to exhibit a "perfect piece of stoicism," and
therefore inserted only a few of the domestic letters,
which showed the other and tenderer side of Thoreau's

182 ZIIE OF

character — an arrangement which was justly described
by Sophia Thoreau as not quite fair to her brother.
This one-sided impression has now been corrected by
the volume of Familiar Letters, edited by Mr, Sanborn
in 1894, which gives a far wider and fairer idea of the
scope of Thoreau's character.

Last in the list of Thoreau's writings there remains
to be considered his poetry. Strictly speaking, he can
hardly be called a poet at all, for, though he had a
large gift of the poetic inspiration, he lacked the lyrical
fire and melodious utterance which are at least equally
indispensable to the creation of a true poem; his verses
are therefore interesting less for their own intrinsic
value than for the light they indirectly throw on his
personality and genius. The description which Emerson
gave of his own poetic talent may be applied iotidetn
verbis to that of Thoreau. " I am born a poet — of a low
class without a doubt, yet a poet. My singing, be sure,
is very husky, and is for the most part in prose. Still,
I am a poet in the sense of a perceiver and dear lover
of the harmonies that are in the soul and in matter,
and specially of the correspondence between these and
those."

Thoreau's poems were mostly written from 1837 to
1847, when he was between twenty and thirty years of
age. It was his method to jot down in his journal
a stanza or two from time to time, and afterwards to
combine these scattered pieces into a connected poem,
each verse of which would thus be brief, pointed, and
sententious. He had been strongly influenced by his
early readings in the seventeenth-century school, and the
resemblance in his style to that of Herbert, Cowley, and

THOREAU. 183

other writers of that era is very striking, his poetry being
distinctly of the same gnomic order, abounding in quaint
conceits, thrifty maxims, and elaborate antitheses, with
here and there a dainty stanza or series of stanzas,
marked by deep insight and felicitous expression. His
idea of the poet's vocation is characteristic. The poet is
" no tender slip of fairy stock, but the toughest son of
earth and heaven, and by his greater strength and
endurance his fainting companions will recognise the
god in him. He will hit the nail on the head, and we
shall not know the strength of his hammer." Thus in
his poems he is less the artist than the moralist; but the
delicacy and nobility of the thought often lift the rough
unpolished lines out of the region of commonplace, and
make them pleasing and memorable. Take, for instance,
this fine piece of blank verse from the " Natural History
of Massachusetts'' (1842) —

" Within the circuit of this plodding life,
There enter moments of an azure hue,
Untarnished fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
By some meandering rivulet, which make
The best philosophy untrue that aims
But to console man for his grievances.
I have remembered when the winter came,
High in my chamber in the frosty nights,
When in the still light of the cheerful moon,
On every twig and rail and jutting spout,
The icy spears were adding to their length
Against the arrows of the coming sun, —
How in the shimmering noon of summer past
Some unrecorded beam slanted across
The upland pastures where the Johnswort grew ;
Or heard, amid the verdure of my mind,

184 LIFE OF

The bee's long smothered hum, on the blue flag

Loitering amidst the mead ; or busy rill,

Which now through all its course stands still and dumb,

Its own memorial, — purling at its play

Along the slopes, and through the meadows next,

Until its youthful sound was hushed at last

In the staid current of the lowland stream ;

Or seen the furrows shine but late upturned,

And where the fieldfare followed in the rear,

When all the fields around lay bound and hoar

Beneath a thick integument of snow.

So by God's cheap economy made rich,

To go upon my winter's task again."

Many of Thoreau's early poems found publication in
the Dial, and met with much ridicule in critical and
anti-transcendental circles; we are told that an un-
quenchable laughter, " like that of the gods at Vulcan's
limping, went up over his ragged and halting lines."
He afterwards included some of these pieces in Tte
Week and other prose volumes, preferring, after the dis-
continuance of the Dial, not to publish them separately,
but " as choruses or hymns or word-pictures, to illustrate
the movement of his thought." He told a friend during
his last illness that he had destroyed many of his verses
because Emerson did not praise them, an act which he
afterwards regretted. A large number of Thoreau's
poems may be found in The Week, and a few were
reprinted by Emerson in an appendix to the volume of
Letters; but the first collection that can at all claim to
be a representative one is that published in 1895 under
the title of Poems of Nature.

The final conclusion of the reader will probably be
that the best poetry of Thoreau's nature found expression

THOREAU. 185

in his prose. "Great prose of equal elevation," he
thinks, " commands our respect more than great verse,
since it implies a more permanent and level height, and
a life pervaded with the grandeur of the thought. The
poet only makes an irruption, like a Parthian, and is off
again, shooting while he retreats; but the prose writer
has conquered, like a Roman, and settled colonies."

CHAPTER XI.

THHUS, as we have seen, the most vigorous protest
ever raised against that artificiality in life and
literature which is one of the chief dangers of our com-
plex civilisation, proceeded not from some sleepy old-
world province, which might have been expected to be
unable to keep pace with a progressive age, but from the
heart of the busiest and most advanced nation on the
globe — it is to Yankeeland that we owe the example and
the teaching of the " Bachelor of Nature." The person-
ality of Thoreau is so singular and so unique that it
seems useless to attempt, as some have done, to draw
out any elaborate parallel between his character and that
of other social, or un-social, reformers, who have pro-
tested against some prevalent tendency in the age in
which they lived. Those who are interested in seeking
for literary prototypes may perhaps, in this case, find one
in Abraham Cowley, a member of that school of gnomic
poets with which Thoreau was so familiar, and moreover
a zealous lover of the peace and solitude of nature. He
lived in close retirement during the later years of his life,
and his death, which, like Thoreau's, was due to a cold
caught while he was botanising, is attributed by his
biographer to " his very delight in the country and the
fields, which he had long fancied above all other plea-

LIFE OF THQREAU. 187

sures." Some of Cowley's remarks in his essays on
solitude are conceived in a spirit very similar to that of
Thoreau. " The First Minister of State," he says, "has
not so much business in public as a wise man in private;
if the one has little leisure to be alone, the other has less
leisure to be in company; the one has but part of the
affairs of one nation, the other all the works of God and
nature under his consideration;" and elsewhere he ex-
presses the wish that men could " unravel all they have
woven, that w r e might have our woods and our innocence
again, instead of our castles and our policies." But
these parallels, between two men of widely different
periods and purposes, can contain nothing more than
slight and superficial resemblances. Nor, except for
his general connection with Emerson and the trans-
cendentaiists, is it more easy to match Thoreau with any
ethical writer of his own generation.

As a " poet-naturalist," however, Thoreau is distinctly
akin to Richard Jefferies and other writers of that school.
Jefferies' character was richer and more sensuous than
Thoreau's, but they had the same mystic religious tem-
perament, the same impatience of tradition and con<^
ventionality, the same passionate love of woods anck^
fields and streams, and the same gift of brilliant language \
in which to record their observations. It is curious to J
compare these modern devotees of country life with the
old-fashioned naturalists of whom Izaak Walton and
Gilbert White are the most illustrious examples. While
the honest old angler prattles on contentedly, like the
babbling streams by which he spent his days, with here
and there a pious reflection on the beneficence of .
Providence and the adaptation of means to ends, and

j

188 LIFE OF

while the kindly naturalist of Selborne devotes himself

absolutely and unreservedly to the work of chronicling

the fauna and flora of the district about which he writes,

' these later authors have brought to the treatment of

similar subjects a far deeper insight into the beauty and

pathos of nature, and a power of poetical description

which was not dreamed of by their simple yet not less

devoted predecessors. It is mainly to Thoreau in

/"America, and to Jefferies in England, that we owe the

| recognition and study of what may be called the poetrjr >

\ of natu ral history — a style of thought and writing which li

\ is pecuhaTlcTthe last thirty or forty years. The study

of nature has, of course, been from time immemorial

/ y one of the great subjects of poetry, but, so far, it was

( nature in its more general aspects; it was not till com-

^paratively recent years that there was discovered to be

/poetry also in the accurate and patient observation of

natural phenomena. We have now learnt that natural

; history, which was formerly regarded as a grave and

f meritorious study of a distinctly prosaic kind, may be

made to yield material for the most imaginative and

\ poetical reflections.

When Thoreau died in 1862, Richard Jefferies was a
boy of fourteen, busily engaged among his native Wilt-
shire Downs in laying the foundation of his wonderful
knowledge of outdoor life. £As far as I am aware, there
is no mention of Thoreau in his writings, nor any indi-
cation that he had read him; yet one is often struck
by suggestive resemblances in their manner of thought.
Take, for instance, that half-serious, half-whimsical con-
tention of Thoreau's, which has probably been more
misunderstood than any other of his sayings — that

THOREAU. 189

Concord, in its natural features, contains all the
phenomena that travellers have noted elsewhere — and
compare it with the following opinion expressed by
Jefferies: — "It has long been one of my fancies that
this country is an epitome of the natural world, and that
if any one has come really into contact with its produc-
tions, and is familiar with them, and what they mean
and represent, then he has a knowledge of all that
exists on the earth." In reading these words, one has a
difficulty in remembering that they were not written by
Thoreau.

The association of Thoreau's name with the district
in which he lived and died is likely to become closer
and closer as the years go on. Great nature-lovers, it
has been truly remarked, have the faculty of stamping
the impress of their own character on whole regions of
country, so that there are certain places which belong
by supreme and indisputable right to certain persons
who have made them peculiarly and perpetually their
own. As the Lake District is inseparably connected
with the names of the poets who dwelt and wrote there;
as the Scotch border-land owns close allegiance to Scott,
and the Ayrshire fields to Burns; and as the little
Hampshire village of Selborne is the inalienable property
of Gilbert White — so the thoughts of those who vfe
Concord turn inevitably to Thoreau. " Thoreau's affec-
tions and genius," says one of his admirers, "were so J
indissolubly bound up with this country that now he i(
gone he presents himself to my mind as one of these
local genii or deified men whom the Scandinavian /
mythology gave as guardians to the northern coasts and *•
mountains. These beings kept off murrain from they

0>

190 LIFE OF

cattle and sickness from men. They made the nights
sweet and salubrious, and the days productive. If
Thoreau had lived in the early ages of Greece, he would
have taken his place in the popular imagination along
with his favourite god Pan."

That a personality so stubbornly and aggressively
independent as Thoreau's would be a stumbling-block
to many critics, good and bad alike, might have been
» foreseen, and indeed was foreseen, from the first.
I " What an easy task it would be," said one who under-
f stood him unusually well, 1 "for a lively and not entirely
f scrupulous pen to ridicule his notions, and raise such a
cloud of ink in the clear medium as entirely to obscure
his true and noble traits ! " Just three months after these
j prophetic words were written appeared Mr. Lowell's
t well-known criticism of Thoreau in the North American
Review^ afterwards reprinted in My Study TVindozvs, an
essay which was a masterpiece of hostile innju£iidii^and
ingenious misrepresentation, written with all the clever-
ness and brilliancy of which its author was capable.
Mr. Lowell, who had been one of Thoreau's fellow-
students at Harvard University, and had held friendly
relations with him after the close of their college career,
had certainly not made the discovery of his intellectual
feebleness at the time of the publication of the Week on
the Concord River in 1849, for in that same year he
highly eulogised him in the Massachusetts Quarterly as
one of those rare persons who, in a utilitarian age, can
still feel and express the almost indefinable charm of
wild nature, and further spoke of him in a tone of much
personal friendliness. Ten years later, however, this
1 John Weiss, Christian Examiner, July 1865.

THOREAU. 191

friendly acquaintance was sharply terminated by a
difference which arose, as already mentioned, about
an article contributed by Thoreau to the Atlantic
Monthly ', then under Mr. Lowell's editorship; and we
have had it stated, on Emerson's authority, that Mr.
Lowell " never forgave Thoreau for having wounded his
self-consciousness" — presumably in a correspondence
that arose on this subject. I make no apology for
calling attention to this nexus of events, because it
furnishes the explanation of the otherwise strange
animus which underlies Lowell's article. Brilliant as
is the view obtained from My Study Windows^ it ought
to be more generally known that there is at least one
pane therein which is discoloured and distorted, and
which cannot be trusted by those literary students who
would keep an unprejudiced outlook.

"A skulker" is the phrase in which Mr. R. L. I
Stevenson summed up Thoreau's character in his essay
in Men and Books ; but as he himself admits in the
later-written preface that he had quite misread Thoreau
through lack of sufficient knowledge of his life, there is
no reason why admirers of Walden should feel disturbed
at the bestowal of that singularly inappropriate epithet.
Other critics, again, while enjoying much of Thoreau's
writing, have been haunted by a suspicion that he was
the victim of a theatrical self-consciousness, and that he
became a hermit rather to attract attention than to
avoid it. " We have a mistrust of the sincerity of the
St. Simeon Stylites," said a contemporary reviewer of
Walden^ " and suspect that they come down from the
pillars in the night-time when nobody is looking at them.
Diogenes placed his tub where Alexander would be sure

192 LIFE OF

of seeing it, and Mr. Thoreau ingenuously confesses that
he went out to dine." So inconceivable does it seem to
those who have not considered, much less practised, a
simple and frugal life, that a man should deliberately,
and for his own pleasure, abandon what they believe to
be luxuries and comforts, that critics are always dis-
covering some far-fetched and non-existent object in the
Walden experiment, while they miss its true and salutary
lessons.

I It seems scarcely necessary nowadays to rebut the

I absurd charge of " selfishness " which used once to be

I brought against Thoreau. But the charge still crops

up now and then in belated circles of thought " The

general impression of the reader," says the Church

Quarterly Review^ "is that, while the descriptions of

scenery are extremely beautiful, and the notes about

animal life and plants are most interesting, yet the man

himself is thoroughly selfish, quite out of sympathy with

men and their sufferings, barbaric, if not animal, in his

tastes, and needlessly profane."

/ Thoreau's "lack of ambition" is another point that

/ has caused him to be much misunderstood — even Emer-

/ son gave his sanction to this rather futile complaint. " I

* cannot help counting it a fault in him," he said, " that

he had no ambition. Wanting this, instead of engineering

for all America, he was the captain of a huckleberry

party. Pounding beans is good to the end of pounding

empires one of these days; but if, at the end of years, it

is still only beans!" But the obvious answer to this

criticism is that, in Thoreau's case, it was not only beans.

The chapter on " The Bean Field," in Walden, is one of

1 October 1895.

THOREAU. 193

the most imaginative and mystic in all his works — "it (
was no longer beans that I hoed," he says, " nor I that J
hoed beans " — for the object of his quest and labour was
not the actual huckleberry nor the tangible bean, but the
glorified and idealised fruit of a lifetime spent in com-
munion with nature, which imparted to his writings a
freshness and fragrance as of nature itself. In this
matter Thoreau was the wiser judge of his own powers,
and conferred a far greater benefit on the human race
by writing Walden than he could have done by engineer-
ing for all America.

After all that has been said in this book of Thoreau's
great debt to Emerson, it may, I think, be added without
prejudice or ingratitude that the common misappre-
hension of Thoreau's character must be partly traced
back to Emerson's "Biographical Sketch," and to his.
unfortunate manner of editing the Letters and Poems. *
That excessive insistence on Thoreau's "stoicism," to*
the subordination of his gentler and more affectionate
traits, has done much to postpone a general recognition
of the deep tenderness that underlay the rugged nature
and rough sayings of the author of Walden. It is said
that as Thoreau's character matured and hardened, his
friendship with Emerson grew somewhat " Roman " and
austere; and we may be permitted to doubt whether
Emerson had really gauged his friend's mind as fully as
he imagined. That Thoreau, on his side, was sensible
of Emerson's limitations, is proved by the opinion which
he expressed to a friend that Emerson would be classed
by posterity with Sir Thomas Browne — an estimate far
lower than the usual one.

And here I would hazard the suggestion (though

13

194 LIFE OF

well aware that it must at present seem fantastic) that
Thoreau's genius will eventually be at least as highly
valued as Emerson's. No sane critic could for a moment
doubt the mighty influence which Emerson's great
and beneficent intellect wielded among his contem-
poraries, or dream of comparing Thoreau with him as
a nineteenth-century power. But the class of mind
which has the most lasting hold on men's interest and
homage is not always, and not often, the same as that
which rules contemporary thought; and in the long
run the race is to the most brilliant rather than to the
most balanced of writers, to the poet rather than to the
philosopher, to h im who mo st keenly challenges the
curiosity and^magination o f hisTea^efs! Of all the
Concord group, by far the most inspired, stimulating,
and vital personality is Thoreau's; and when time has
softened down the friction caused by superficial blemishes
and misunderstandings, the world will realise that it was
no mere Emersonian disciple, but a master-mind and/~
heart of hearts who left that burning message to his ]
fellow-men.

The sum of the whole matter is, that Thoreau had a
clear and definite object before him which he followed
with inflexible earnestness, and that his very faults and
oddities subserved the main purpose of his life. "There
is a providence in his writings," says John Weiss, "which
ought to protect him from the complaint that he was not
somebody else. No man ever lived who paid more
ardent and unselfish attention to his business. If pure
minds are sent into the world upon errands, with strict
injunction not to stray by other paths, Thoreau certainly
was one of these elect. A great deal of criticism is

THOREAU. 195

inspired by the inability to perceive the function and
predestined quality of the man who passes in review.
It only succeeds in explaining the difference between
him and the critic. Such a decided fact as a man of
genius is, ought to be gratefully accepted and inter-
preted."

That Thoreau's doctrines, no less than his character,
have their shortcomings and imperfections, few will be
disposed to deny. He could not realise, or perhaps
did not care to realise, the immense scope and com-
plexity of the whole social problem; he had scarcely
the data or opportunities for doing so; and in any case
his intensely individualistic nature would probably have
incapacitated him. We therefore cannot look to himj
for any full and satisfactory solution of the difficulties by:
which our modern civilisation is surrounded, but it
would be a great error to conclude that we are not to
look to him at all. If it is true that the deadlock!
resulting from the antagonism of labour and capital
can never be relieved without external legislation, it is
equally true that there can be no real regeneration of
society without the self-improvement of the individual
man ; it is idle to assert that the one or the other must
come first — both are necessary, and the two must be
carried on side by side. In Thoreau the social instinct
was deficient or undeveloped; but, on the other hand,
he has set forth the gospel of the higher intellectual
individualism with more force and ability than any
modern writer; if it be but a half-truth that he preaches,
it is none the less a half-truth of the utmost moment and
significance. "As to Thoreau," says Edward Carpenter,
in England's Ideal, a volume worthy to rank with

196 LIFE OF

/ Walden in the literature of plain living and high

( thinking, "the real truth about him is that he was a

'■ , thorough economist. He reduced life to its simplest *■

j terms, and having, so to speak, labour in his right hand

and its reward in his left, he had no difficulty in seeing

>what was worth labouring for and what was not, and no

hesitation in discarding things which he did not think

worth the time or trouble of production."

We have seen that he was not, like Emerson, a

philosopher of wide far-reaching sympathies and cautious

judicial temperament, but rather a prophet and monitor

— outspoken, unsparing, irreconcilable. He addressed

\ himself to the correction of certain popular tendencies

\ which he perceived to be mischievous and delusive, and

\ preached what may be comprehensively termed a gospel

\ of simplicity, in direct antagonism to the prevailing tone

j of a self-indulgent and artificial society. Who will

\ venture to say that the protest was not needed then —

that it is not still more needed now? "The years

which have passed," says a well-known writer, 1 "since

Thoreau came back out of Walden wood, to attend

to his father's business of pencil-making, have added

more than the previous century to the trappings and

baggage of social life, which he held, and taught by

precept and example, that men would be both better

and happier for doing without. And while we succumb

and fall year by year more under the dominion of these

trappings, and life gets more and more overlaid with one

kind and another of upholsteries, the idea of something

simpler and nobler probably never haunted men's minds

more than at this time." Herein lies the strength of

1 Mr. T. Hughes, Academy, 17 th November 1877.

THOREAU.

197

/

Thoreau's position, that the very excess of the evilj
which turns our supposed comforts into discomforts and
our luxuries into burdens, must at last induce us to
listen to the voice of sobriety^and reason.

As to the manner in which Thoreau expresses his
convictions nothing more need here be said, except that
his style is justly adapted to his sentiments. His " knock*
down blows at current opinion " are likened by Mr. R. L.
Stevenson to the "posers" of a child, "which leave the
orthodox in a kind of speechless agony." " They know
the thing is nonsense — they are sure there must be an
answer, yet somehow they cannot find it." We may
shrewdly doubt whether the conclusive answer will ever
be forthcoming; but it is something that people should
be at ail aroused from the complacent lethargy of custom
and tradition. Thoreau is thus seen to have a quicken-
ing, stimulating, and, at times, exasperating effect as an
ethical teacher; it is no part of his object to prophesy
smooth things, to deal tenderly with the weaknesses of
his readers, or even to explain those features of his
doctrine which, from their novelty or unpopularity, are
most likely to be misunderstood. This being so, his
character and writings were certain to prove as distasteful
to some readers as they are attractive to others; if he is
a good deal misapplied at present, time will set that
right. ^ .

In conclusion, we see in Thoreau the extraordinary
product of an extraordinary era — his strange, self-centred,
solitary figure, unique in the annals of literature, chal-
lenges attention by its originality, audacity, and inde-
pendence. He had, it has been well remarked, "a
constitutional No in him"; he renounced much that

;

**m

198 LIFE OF

other men held dear, and set his heart on objects which
to the world seemed valueless; it was part of his mission
to question, to deny, to contradict. But his genius was
not only of the negative and destructive order. In an
age when not one man in a thousand had a real sympaFhy

f with nature, he attained to an almost miraculous acquaint-

fance with her most cherished secrets; in an age of
pessimism, when most men, as he himself expresses it,
" lead lives of quiet desperation," he was filled with an
absolute confidence in the justice and benevolence of his
destiny; in an age of artificial complexity, when the ideal
is unduly divorced from the practical, and society stands
in false antagonism to nature, he, a devout pantheist,
saw everywhere simplicity, oneness, relationship. JLCL ,

ihis view, God was not to be considered apart from they/
material world, nor was man to be set above and aloof ^ *
■rom the rest of creation and the lower forms of lifej^^
. e tracked everywhere the same divine intelligence —
V inanimate" nature there was none, since all was

/instinct with the same universal spirit. It was his
I purpose, in a word, " to civilise nature with the highest
^ \ intuitions of the mind, which show her simplicity to

\testless and artificial men."

This ideal he pursued, as we have seen, with a rare
courage, sincerity, and self-devotion. Whether he sue*
ceeded or failed in his endeavour is a question which
time alone can fully answer. His example and doctrines
were coldly and incredulously received during his life-
time by most of those with whom he came in contact,
and his comparatively early death cut him off, in the
prime of his vigour, from reaping the harvest he had
sown with such patience and assiduity; so far his career,

TBOREAU. 199

like that of most idealists, must be confessed a failure.
But these are not the tests by which idealists, least of ail
Thoreau, can be judged. For he enjoyed, in the firstT^
place, that priceless and inalienable success which con-^3
sists in perfect serenity of mind and contentment withS
one's own fortunes. " If the day and night/' he says in
Wedded "are such that you greet them with joy, and
life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented
herbs — is more elastic, starry, and immortal — that is
your success." And, secondly, he had the assurance^
which is seldom denied to a great man, that the true >
value of his work would ultimately be recognised and^
appreciated. During the period that has passed since
his death his fame has steadily increased both in
America and England, and is destined to increase
yet further.

l The blemishes and mannerisms of Thoreau's character
are written on its surface, easy to be read by the in-
different passer-by who may miss the strong and sterling
faculties that underlie them. His lack of geniality, his \
rusticity, his occasional littleness of tone and temper, his
impatience of custom, degenerating sometimes into in- ,;'
justice, his too sensitive self-consciousness, his trick of )
over-statement in the expression of his views — these \
were incidental failings which did not mar the essential j
nobility of his nature. We shall do wisely in taking
him just as he is, neither shutting our eyes to his defects
nor greatly deploring their existence, but remembering
that in so genuine and distinctive an individuality the^
"faults" have their due place and proportion no less than \
the "virtues." Had he added the merits he lacked to
those which he possessed, had he combined the social \

200

LIFE OF THOREAU.

with the individual qualities, had he been more catholic
in his philosophy and more guarded in his expression,
then we might indeed have admired him more, but
should scarcely have loved him so well, for his character,
whal £y_er it g ained in fulness, wo uld have missed the
peculiar freshness ancl
^attraction-

which are now its chief

-whatever else he might have been, he would
not have been Thoreau.

INDEX.

A.

Abolition, Thoreau's zeal for,
22, 77> 78, 113, 114, 138-
141, 166

Academy at Concord, Thoreau's
connection with, 23, 30

^Esthetic Papers^ Thoreau's
contribution to, 106, 161

Agassiz, Louis, correspondence
with Thoreau, 80, 81

Aitteon, Joe, Indian hunter,
129

Alcott, Amos Bronson, a pro-
minent transcendentalist, 32,
43, 44, 78; his "conversa-
tions " at Concord, 45 ; inti-
macy with Thoreau, 47, 67,
68, 76, 105, 113, 116, 117,
119, 120; colony at Fruit-
lands, 62, 64 ; refusal to pay
poll-tax, 79; quoted, 120,
121, 146, 149

Alger, W. R., his account of
Thoreau's funeral, 149

"Allegash and East Branch,"
third excursion to Maine
Woods, 129

Allen, Grant, his article on
Thoreau quoted, 169

Anarchism, Thoreau's advocacy

OI » I S9» x 6°; his refusal to

pay taxes, 79, 80
Animals, Thoreau's sympathy

with, 72, 101, 169
" Anti-Slavery and Reform

Papers," 179
" April Days," 181
Arrow-heads, collection of, 97,

149
Artificiality and nature, n, 12,

65> 157, 158, 186
Assabet River, 16, 17
Atlantic Monthly^ Thoreau's

contributions to, 125, 129,

136, 143, 181; change of

editors, 145, 191
Autumn, 181

B.

"Bachelor of Nature," name
applied to Thoreau, 40, 67,
186

Blake, Harrison G, O., of
Worcester, Mass., no; his
reminiscences of Thoreau,
no, in, ii2; Thoreau's
letter to, quoted, 117, 133;
edits the journal, 180

202

INDEX.

Boston, Thoreau's visits to, 14,
105, in, 112, 140

Boston Miscellany, Thoreau's
contribution to, 56

Boston Natural History Society,
102, in; Thoreau's bequest
to, 149

Brook Farm community, 61, 65

" Brooklawn," New Bedford,
Thoreau's visit to, 120

Brown, John, the abolitionist,
Thoreau's acquaintance with,
119; Thoreau's admiration
for, 1 38- 141 ; death, 139, 166

Brown, Mrs., of Plymouth,
introduces Thoreau to Emer-
son, 37, 42

Brownson, Rev. O., 24

Burns, Anthony, 114

Burroughs, John, quoted, 141

C.

Cambridge (Mass.), Thoreau's
visits to, 1 1 1

Canada, Thoreau's visits to,
108, 126, 127; A Yankee in
Canada, 179

Cape Cod, Thoreau's visit to,
108, 124, 125

"Cape Cod" volume, 125, 126

Carlyle, 31 ; Emerson's letter
to, 61 ; Thoreau's admiration
for, 96; Thoreau's essay on,
106

Carpenter, Edward, his Eng-
land 's Ideal quoted, 195, 196

Channing, William Ellery, the
poet, description of Thoreau,
26, 27, 31, 43, 57, 86, 87,
102, 131, 132 ; friendship

with Thoreau, 47, 48, 53, ?6,

99, 108, 113, 116, 124, 126,
133, 134, 146, 148

Channing, W. H., 43; meets
Thoreau at New York, 6o, 62

Chappaqua, Thoreau's visit toi
117

" Chesuncook," paper in the
Atlantic Monthly, 129, 136

Children, Thoreau's sympathy
with, 92, 93, 147

Cholmondeley, Thomas, Tho-
reau's English friend, his gift
to Thoieau, 95, 115, 116

" Civil Disobedience," essay
quoted, 78, 106, 114

Civilisation, Thoreau's attitude
towards, 11, 12, 161- 165

Classical studies, Thoreau's
mastery of, 23, 95, 172

Clough, Arthur Hugh, meets
Thoreau, quoted, 112, 113

Cohasset, Thoreau's visit to, 49,
124

Communities in New England,
Thoreau's view of, 61, 62

Concord, Massachusetts, Tho-
reau's birthplace, 12, 13; its
traditions, inhabitants, sce-
nery, etc., 14-18, 24; Tho-
reau's devotion to, 29, 94,
103, 108, 189 ; the centre of
the transcendentalist move-
ment, 33, 38, 44-48 ; Thoreau
returns to, 82, 99, 109

Concord River, 14, 16, 19, 54,
63. 66, 97 '» 98. 177

Conway, Moncure D., descrip-
tion of Thoreau quoted, 86,

100, 113, 154
Co-operation, Thoreau's views

on, 61, 62, 159

INDEX.

203

Cowley, Abraham, 37 ; com-
pared with Thoreau, 186, 187

Curtis, George William, assists
in raising Thoreau's hut, 68 ;
quoted, 99, 144

D.

Democratic Review* Thoreau's
contributions to, 61 ; quoted,

159

" Departure," the, 58

Via?, the, organ of transcen-
dentalists, 38, 39, 43 ; change
of editors, 55; its discon-
tinuance, 61, 106, 107, no,
184

Diaries, Thoreau's, 28, 33, 37 >
quoted, 63, 74, 82, 88, 90,
102, 109, 114, 132, 135, 136,
147, 154, 162, 171, 173, 179;
portions of published, 180,
181, 182

Doctrines, Thoreau's, 156, 169,
170, 195-198

Dunbar, Charles, Thoreau's
uncle, 13

Dunbar, Cynthia. See Thoreau,
Mrs.

E.

Early Spring in Massachusetts,
181

Emerson, Dr. E. W., quoted,
46, 53» 83, 134

Emerson, R. W., assists Tho-
reau at Harvard, 24, 30,
3 2 » 37> 39 > quoted, 40; his
friendship with Thoreau, 42,
43, 48 ; effects of his presence
at Concord, 44, 45 ; his in-
fluence on Thoreau, 51-53,
184; edits Dial, 55; Tho-

reau's letters to, 58, 60;
letter to Carlyle quoted, 61,
62, 67, 76, 79, 88, 91, 99,
105, no, ii2, 116, 119, 134,
136, 148; compared to Tho-
reau, 153, 154, 193, 194;
writes memoir to Exmrsions,
178; edits Thoreau's letters,
181, 193; quoted, 182

Emerson, Mrs., 44, 51, 105

Emerson, Waldo, 47, 51

Emerson, Judge, Thoreau's
tutorship in his family, 58-
64

Essays, Thoreau's, 178- 181

Evening Post, the New York,
article on Thoreau's country
quoted, 17, 18

Excursions made by Thoreau,
41, 55, 56, 122-133

Excursions, 178

Excursions to Canada, 127

F.

Familiar Letters, Thoreau's,
published, 182

Fields, James, editor of Atlantic
Monthly, 145

Fire Island, New York, scene
of Margaret Fuller's death,
in

Fitchburg Railway, construction
of, 75

Flint's Pond, Thoreau's visit to,
62

Fourier, his doctrines in New
England, 60, 62, 159

" Fruitlands," Alcott's experi-
ment at, 62, 64

Fuller, Margaret, transcen-
dentalism edits Dial, 43, 45;
quoted, 47 ; resigns editorship

204

INDEX.

of Dial, 55, 60, 62, 63.
death, 111

G.

Graham's Magazine, Thoreau's
contributions to, 96, 106

Greeley, Horace, editor of the
Tribune, friendship with
Thoreau, 60, 62, 106, 117,
156

H.

Harvard University, Thoreau's
residence at, 23-29, 37

Haskins, Rev. D. G. , Thoreau's
class-mate, quoted, 25, 51,
52

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, at Con-
cord, 41, 45, 48, 52 ; quoted,
53, 54, 168; at Salem, m ;
returns to Concord, 113;
buried near Thoreau, 148

Herbert, George, his poems
studied by Thoreau, 37

Higginson, Colonel Wentworth,
77; quoted, 96, 144; Tho-
reau's letter to, quoted, 130,

131
Hoar, Edward, describes Tho-
reau, 91, 131 ; travels with
Thoreau, 132
Hoar, Elizabeth, 45
Hoar, Samuel, 16
Hollowell Farm, the, 63
Hosmer, Edmund, friendship

with Thoreau, 68, 76
Hosmer, Joseph, quoted, 72,

73>76, 112
Huckleberry picking, 93
Hughes, T., quoted, 196

I.

Indians, Thoreau's interest in,
97, 135, I43> H5» 148, 162,
163

J.

JefTeries, Richard, compared
with Thoreau, 148, 174, 187,
188, 189

Jones, Dr. S. A., article on
Thoreau quoted, 20, 21, 77,

151

Journal, Thoreau's. See Diaries

K.

c ' Ktaadn and the Maine Woods,"
128 ; quoted, 128, 129

Lafayette, at Concord, 15

Land-surveying, Thoreau's oc-
cupation, 36, 106, 112

Lectures, Thoreau's, 36, 37,
106, in, 112, 139, 142, 162

Letters, Thoreau's, published
and unpublished, 136-138,
182, 184

Liberator, the, quoted, 140

" Life without Principle," essay
on, 179

Lowell, J. R., his criticism of
transcendentalists, 32, 43 ;
criticism of Thoreau's shanty
life quoted, S3, 98 ; criticisms
of Thoreau, 144, 172; criti-
cism in My Study Windows,
190, 191

Lyceum at Concord, Thoreau's
lectures at, 37

INDEX.

205

Lyceum, Salem, Thoreau lectures
at, in

M.

Maine, Thoreau's visits to, 31,

80, 97, 108, 128-130
"Maine Woods," 130, 136,

167
Mann, Horace, accompanies

Thoreau to Minnesota, 143
" May Days," 181
Merrimac River, Thoreau's week

on, 41, 49, 54
Minnesota, Thoreau's visit to,

143, 144

Minott, Mrs., Thoreau's grand-
mother, 14

Miscellanies, 179

Mississippi, the, Thoreau's visit
to, 143

Monadnock, mountain seen from
Concord, 17; ascent of, 131,

133

Montreal, Thoreau's visit to its

cathedral, 126, 127
Mountains, Thoreau's love of,

56, 131, 132
Music, Thoreau's love of, 89,

147
Musketaquid River. See Con-
cord River

N.

Nature and civilisation, n, 12,
61 ; Thoreau's nature- worship,
22, 27, 28, 29, 49, 57> 62-65,
70, 71, 81, 98, 128, 129, 189;
the "Bachelor of Nature,"
40, 186

Natural history, Thoreau's know-
ledge of, 28, 81, 99, 100, 102,

103, 169, 180, 198; essays
on, 178 ; his peculiar position
among naturalists, 102, 103,
167, 168; the "poet-natural-
ist," 102

Natural History Society of
Boston, 102, in; Thoreau's
bequest to, 149

" Natural History of Massachu-
setts," 55; quoted, 183, 184

New Bedford, Thoreau's visits
to, 120, 144

New York, Thoreau's visits to,
60

P.

Parker, Theodore, writes in

Dial, 43
Pencil- making, Thoreau's occu-
pation, 34, 36, 112, 138, 149
" Plea for Captain John Brown,"

141, 160, 179
Poems, Thoreau's, 37, 42, 148,

182-185
Poems of Nature , 184
"Poet-naturalist," the, 87, 102,

180, 187, 188
Polis, Joe, Indian guide, 130
Portraits of Thoreau, Sy f 144
Putnam's Magazine^ Thoreau's

contributions to, 108, 125 ;

quoted, 126, 127

Quarles, studied by Thoreau, y]

R.

Red Journal^ Thoreau's diary,

37
" Resistance to Civil Govern-
ment," 161

206

INDEX,

Ricketson, Daniel, of New
Bedford, his friendship with
Thoreau, 116, 120, 144; de-
scription of Thoreau, 121 ;
Thoreau's letter to, quoted,
136-138

Ripley, Dr. Ezra, Unitarian
pastor of Concord, 15, 16,

24> 30> 33> 43> 44, 45

Ripley, George, transcendenta-
lism 32, 43, 60, 62

Ruskin, Thoreau's view of, 96

S.

Salem, Thoreau's visits to, 1 1 1
Sanborn, Frank B., friendship
for Thoreau, 117; introduces
him to John Brown, 119, 139,
143 ; edits Familiar Letters
of Thoreau, 182
Sewall, Ellen, Thoreau's love

for, 38, 39
•' Sic Vita," poem, 37, 42, 148
Simplicity of living advocated
by Thoreau, 35, 61, 83, 84,
122-124, 161-165, 169, 196;
misunderstood by critics, 82-

85, 90, 190-193

Sioux Indians, gathering of, 143

Slavery. See Abolition

fc Slavery in Massachusetts,"
114, 139, 160

Slaves, fugitive, assisted by
Thoreau, 77, 113

Sleepy Hollow, Concord burial-
place, 148

Society, when disliked by Tho-
reau, 57, 91 ; when enjoyed
by him, 57, 75, 92

St. Helier, Jersey, birthplace of
Thoreau's grandfather, 12

St. Paul's, Minnesota, Thoreau's
visit to, 143

Staten Island, Thoreau's stay
on, 58, 59, 64

Stevenson, R. L., his remarks
on Thoreau, 40, 165, 172; his
essay on Thoreau in Men and
Books, 191, 197

Stoicism of Thoreau's nature,
89, 181, 193

Style, Thoreau's view of, 170-
173, 174, 175, 178, 182, 183,
197

Summer ", 1 81

Surveying, Thoreau's occupa-
tion, 36, 106, 112

" Sympathy," poem on, 39, 43

T.

Thoreau, Helen, elder sister of
Henry, 22, 29, 42; death,
no

Thoreau, Henry David, birth
and parentage, 12, 13 ; child-
hood, 18-20; influence of
heredity and association, 20-
22 ; educated at Concord and
Harvard College, 23-29; be-
comes a schoolmaster, 30, 31;
resigns his post, 31 ; affected
by transcendentalist move-
ment, 31-34; secedes from
the church, 33 ; question of
a profession, 34-36 ; the study
of wild nature, 35 ; pencil-
making, land surveying, litera-
ture, 34, 36-37; early love,
38-40; a week's boating ex-
cursion, 41 ; introduced to
Emerson, 42 ; the Dial and
the transcendentalists, 43-48 ;

INDEX.

207

resides in Emerson's family,
46; friendship with Alcott,
Margaret Fuller, Ellery Chan-
ging, 47-49; death of his
brother John, 48, 49; how
far influenced by Emerson,
5 I "53 > acquaintance with
Hawthorne, 53-55; contribu-
tions to the Dial, 55 ; the
"Walk to Wachusett," 55,
56; predilection for solitude,
57; tutorship in Staten Island,
58-64; friendships made in
New York, 60; Individualism,
62 ; plan of retirement to the
woods, 62-65; building and
furnishing his hut, 67-69;
his two years at Walden, 70-
82 ; arrested for refusal to
pay poll-tax, 78, 79; leaves
Walden, 82 ; criticisms on
his life there, 82-85; his
personality, S6-94 ; literary
tastes, 95-97 ; sympathy with
Indians, 97 ; love of Nature,
98-104; second residence at
Emerson's, 105 ; lives at
home, 105 ; publication of
The Week, 106-107; friend-
ship with Harrison Blake,
1 10 ; life at Concord, hi;
surveying and lecturing, 112;
meets A. H. Clough and M.
D. Conway, 112, 113; oc-
cupied with question of slavery,

113, 114; publishes Walden,

114, 115; friendship with
Thos. Cholmondeley, Daniel
Ricketson, F. B. Sanborn,
116, 117; meets Walt Whitman
and John Brown, 11 8, 119;
visit to New Bedford, 120;

excursions to Cape Cod,
Canada, Maine Woods, etc.,
122-133 \ signs of ill-health,
134-136; death of his father,
136- 138; his "Plea for John
Brown," 138-141; fatal illness
begins, 142, 143; visit to
Minnesota, 143, 144; the
civil war, 144; his last winter,
144-148; death and funeral,
148, 149; his dress, 72, 87,
123; death, 72, 89, 165;
appearance, 24, 25, 86, 87,
116; physique, 134; fitness
of body and mind, 88; in-
dustry, 34, 70, 71, 145; dis-
like of system, 62, 152, 171 ;
humanity, 166 ; humour, 92 ;
imagination, 168; delicacy of
mind, 89; love of children,
93, 147 J love of music, 89,
147 J his doctrines, 156, 169
170, 195-198; style, 170;
final estimate of his genius,
195-200

Thoreau, John, grandfather of
Henry, emigrated from Jersey,
12, 143

Thoreau, John, father of
Henry, 12; character, 20, 21 ;
skill in pencil-making, 34,
109 ;. death, 136

Thoreau, John, elder brother of
Henry, 22, 29 ; love for Ellen
Sewall, 38, 40, 41, 46; death,
48

Thoreau, Maria, last surviving
member of the family in New
England, 23, 38, 79, 149

Thoreau, Mrs. {nee Cynthia
Dunbar), 13; character, 21, 79,
109, 138, 145, 146

208

INDEX.

Thoreau, Sophia, younger sister

of Henry, 22, 105, 120, 138,

145, 149, 180, 182
Transcendentalism, its influence

on Thoreau, 31-34, 61-65
Transcendentalists of Concord,

32, 43-48, 51-55, 61-65
Tuckerman's Ravine, on Mount

Washington, 132

U.

Union Magazine, Thoreau's con-
tribution to, 108, 128

Vegetarianism practised by
Thoreau, 72

W.

Wachusett, mountain in Massa-
chusetts, 17; the "Walk to
Wachusett," 56

Walden Pond, Thoreau's asso-
ciations with, 17, 19, 6^, 64,
112, 150

Walden Woods, Thoreau's her-
mitage in, 64, 67-82, 98,
101

Walden, 63, 74, 76, 82, 94, 95 ;
published, 114, 115, 158, 163,
165, 167, 176, 191, 192, 199

Walton, Izaak, Thoreau com-
pared with, 55, 187

Washington, Mount, ascent of,
132

Week on the Concord and Merri-
mac Rivers, 38, 41, 49, 59,
74, 90i 95, 100; published,
106, 107, no, 115, 184;
quoted, 122, 123, 155, 156,
171, 172, 176

Weiss, Rev. John, fellow-col-
legian of Thoreau, quoted,
24, 25, 52, 190, 194

Wheeler, Stearns, 28; Tho-
reau's visit to, 62

White, Gilbert, the naturalist,
Thoreau compared with, 55,
168, 187, 188, 189

White Mountains of New Hamp-
shire, Thoreau's visits to, 17,
41, 132

White Pond, the, 17, 66

Whitman, Walt, Thoreau's meet-
ing with and impressions of,
118; his description of Tho-
reau's grave quoted, 150

" Wild Apples," 143

Winter, 181

"Winter Walk," 55; quoted,

74

Y.

Yankee in Canada, 179

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

BY
JOHN P. ANDERSON

{British Museum),

I. Works.
II. Selections.
HI. Contributions to Magazines.

IV. Appendix—

Biography, Criticism, etc,
Magazine Articles.

V. Chronological List oj

Works.

I. WORKS.

A Week on the Concord and

Merrimack Rivers. Boston,

1849, 12mo.
Another edition. Boston,

1862, 12mo.
New and revised edition.

Boston, 1867, 16mo.
Another edition. With a Pre-
fatory Note by Will H. Dircks.

London [1889], 12mo.
-Riverside edition. Yol. i.

Boston and New York, 1894,

12mo.
Walden; or, Life in the Woods.

Boston, 1854, 12mo.
Re-issued in 1864.
Another edition. Edinburgh,

1884, 8vo.

Another edition. With an

Introductory Note by Will H.

Dircks. London, 1886, 12mo.

Part of the " Camelot Series."

Another edition. 2 vols.

Boston, 1889, 12mo.

Part of the *' Riverside Aiding
Series."

Riverside edition, vol. ii.

Boston and New York, 1894,
8vo.

Another edition. With an

Introductory Note by Will H.
Dircks. London [1895], 8vo.

Excursions. Boston, 1863, 12ino,
[Edited by R. W. Emerson and
Sophia Thoreau, with a bio-
graphical sketch by the former.]

Riverside edition, vol. ix.

Boston and New York, 1894,
8vo.

11

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

The Maine Woods. Boston, 1864,

12mo.
Riverside edition, vol. iii.

Boston and New York, 1894,

8vo.
Cape Cod. [Edited by Sophia

Thoreau and William Ellery

Channing.] Boston, 1865,

12mo.
Another edition. London,

1865, 12mo.
Another edition. Boston,

1892, 8vo.
—Riverside edition, vol. iv.

Boston and New York, 1894,

8vo.
Letters to Various Persons.

[Edited by R. W. Emerson.]

Boston, 1865, 12mo.
A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-
Slavery and Reform Papers.

[Edited by Sophia Thoreau

and William Ellery Channing.]

Boston, 1866, 12mo.
Early Spring in Massachusetts.

From the Journal of Henry D.

Thoreau. [Edited by H. G. 0.

Blake.] Boston, 1881, 12mo.
—Riverside edition, vol. v.

Boston and New York, 1894,

8vo.
Summer: From the Journal of

Henry D. Thoreau. Edited by

H. G. O. Blake. Boston, 1884,

12mo.
Another edition. London,

1884, 8vo.
Riverside edition, vol. vi.

Boston and New York, 1894,

8vo.
Winter: From the Journal of

Henry D. Thoreau. Edited by

H. G. 0. Blake. Boston, 1888,

12mo.
- Riverside edition, vol. viii.

Edited by H. G. 0. Blake.

Boston and New York, 1894,

8vo.

Autumn: From the Journal of
Henry D. Thoreau. Edited by
H. G. 0. Blake. Boston, 1892,
12mo.

Riverside edition, vol. vii.

Edited by H. G. O. Blake.
Boston and New York, 1894,
8vo.

Miscellanies. With a biographical
sketch, by Ralph Waldo Emer-
son, and a general index to the
writings. Boston and New
York, 1894, 8vo.
Vol. x. of the Riverside edition.

Familiar Letters of Henry David
Thoreau. Edited, with an
Introduction and Notes, by F.
B. Sanborn. Boston and New
York, 1894, 8vo.
Vol. xi. of the Riverside edition.

II. SELECTIONS.

The Succession of Forest Trees,
Wild Apples, and Sounds. With
a biographical sketch by Ralph
Waldo Emerson. Boston, 1887,
8vo.

No. 27 of the "Riverside litera-
ture Series." The first two papers
and Emerson's sketch are from
Excursions; the third paper is
from Walden.

Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers
by Henry D. Thoreau. Selected
and edited by H. S. Salt. Lon-
don, 1890, 8vo.

Essays and other Writings of
Henry Thoreau. Edited, with
a Prefatory Note, by Will H.
Dircks. London [1891], 8vo.
Part of the " Camelot Series."

Thoreau's Thoughts. Selections
from the Writings of Henry
David Thoreau. Edited by H.
G. 0. Blake. [With a biblio-
graphy.] Boston and New
York, 1894, 12mo.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

in

Selections from Thoreau. Edited,

with an introduction, by H. S.

Salt. London, 1895, 8vo.
Poems of Nature. Edited by

H. S. Salt and F. B. Sanborn.

London, Boston and New York,

1895, 8vo.

III. CONTRIBUTIONS TO

MAGAZINES, Etc.

Dial, vol. i., 1840. — Sympathy,
" Lately alas ! I knew a gentle
boy," pp. 71, 72; reprinted in A
Week on the Concord and Merri-
mack Elvers,

Aulus Persius Flaccus, pp.

117-121 ; reprinted in A Week
on the Concord and Merrimack
Rivers.

—Stanzas, "Nature doth have
her dawn each day ; " reprinted
in A Week on the Concord and
Merrimack Rivers.

Vol. ii., 1841.— Sic Vita, " I

am a parcel of vain strivings
tied," p. 81 ; reprinted in A
Week on the Concord and Merri-
mack Rivers.

Friendship, "Let such pure

hate still under-prop," pp. 204,
205 ; reprinted in A Week on the
Concord and Merrimack Rivers.

. Vol. iii., 1842. — Natural

History of Massachusetts, pp.
19-40 ; reprinted in Excursions.

*> Stanzas, "Great God, I ask

Thee for no meaner pelf," pp.
79, 80 ; reprinted in A Yankee
in Canada.

. The Black Knight, " Be sure

your fate," p. 180; reprinted in
Riverside edition, vol. x.

— ~ The Inward Morning,
" Packed in my mind lie all the
clothes," p. 198; reprinted in
A Week on the Concord and
Merrimack Rivers.

Free Love, "My love must

be as free," p. 19;? ; reprinted
in A Week on the Concord and
Merrimack Rivers.

The Poet's Delay, "In vain

I see the morning rise," p. 200 ;
reprinted in A Week on the
Concord and Merrimack Rivers.

Rumours from an iEolian

Harp, p. 200 ; repiinted in A
Week on the Concord and
Merrimack Rivers.

The Moon, "The fuli-oibed

moon with unchanging ray,"
p. 222 ; reprinted in Riverside
edition, vol. x.

To the Maiden in the East,

" Low in the Eastern sky," pp.
222-224 ; reprinted in A Week
on the Concord and Merrimack
Rivers.

The Summer Rain, "My

books I'd fain cast off, 1 cannot
read," pp. 22*, 225; reprinted
in A Week on the Concord and
Merrimack Rivers.

The Laws of Menu, selected

by Thoreau, pp. 331-340.

The Prometheus Bound, a

translation, pp. 363-386 ; re-
printed in Riverside edition,
vol. x.

Anacreon, eleven poems tians-

lated, pp. 484-490 ; reprinted
in A Week on the Concord and
Merrimack Rivers.

Sayings of Confucius, selected,

pp. 493, 494.

To a Stray Fowl, " Poor bird !

destined to lead thy life," p.
£05 ; reprinted in Riverside
edition, vol. x.

Orpines, i. Smoke ; ii. Haze,

pp. 505, 506 ; reprinted in
Letters to Various Persons.

Dark Ages, pp. 527-529 ;

reprinted in A Week on the
Concord and Merrimack Rivets.

IV

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Friendship. From Chaucer's

"Romaunt of the Kose," pp.
529-531.

7ol. iv., 1843. — Ethnical

Scriptures. Chinese four books,
selected by Thoreau, pp. 205-
210.

A Winter Walk, pp. 211-223;

reprinted in Excursions,

Homer, Ossian, Chaucer, pp.

290-303, reprinted in A Week
on the Concord and Merrimack
Rivers,,

Pindar, note and translations,

pp. 379-390 ; reprinted in River-
side edition, vol. x.

The Preaching of Buddha,

selections, pp. 391-404.

Ethnical Scriptures. Hermes

Trismegistus, selections, pp.
402-404.

Herald of Freedom, pp. 507-

512 ; reprinted in A Yankee in
Canada,

Fragments of Pindar, pp. 513,

514; reprinted in Riverside
edition, vol. x.

The Boston Miscellany, 1843. —
A Walk to Wachusett, vol. Hi.,
p. 51 ; reprinted in Excursions,

The Democratic Review, 1843.^-
The Landlord, vol. xiii., pp.
427-480; reprinted in Excur-
sions.

Paradise (to be) Regained,

vol. xiii., pp. 451-463; re-
printed in A Yankee in Canada.

The Liberator. — Wendell Phillips
before the Concord Lyceum,
March 28, 1845 ; reprinted in
A Yankee in Canada,

Slavery in Massachusetts, an

address delivered (July 4) at the
Anti-Slavery Celebration at
Framingham, July 21, 1854;
reprinted in A Yankee in
Canada,

The Last Days of John Brown,

Read (July 4) at North Elba,
N.Y., July 27, 1860.

Graham's Magazine, 1845. —
Thomas Carlyle and his Works,
vol. xxx., pp. 145, 238; re-
printed in A Yankee in Canada.

The Union Magazine, 1845. — «
Ktaadn and the Maine Woods r
vol. iii., Dp. 29, 73, 132, 177,
216 ; reprinted in The Maine
Woods.

JEsthctie Papers* 1849. — Resist-
ance to Civil Government, pp.
189-211; reprinted in A Yankee-
in Canada,

Putnam's Magazine, 1853-55. —
An Excursion to Canada, vol. i.,
pp. 54-59, 179-184,321-329; re-
printed in A Yankee in Canada.

Cape Cod, vol. v., pp. 632-

640; vol. vi M pp. 59-66, 157-
164 ; reprinted in Cape Cod.

The New York Tribune, I860.—
The Succession of Forest Trees-
(read before the Middlesex
Agricultural Society, Concord r
Sept. 1860) ;, reprinted in Ex-
cursions.

Echoes of Harper's Ferry % by
James Redpath, I860.— A Plea*
for Captain John Brown, read
to the citizens of Concord,
Mass., Oct. 30, 1859, pp. 16-42;
reprinted in A Yankee iw
Canada.

Remarks at Concord on the

day of the Execution of John
Brown (Dec. 2, 1860), pp. 439-
445 ; reprinted in Riverside-
edition, vol. x.

Atlantic Monthly, 1858-93. —
Chesuncook, vol. ii., 1858, pp,
2-12, 224-233, 305-317; re-
printed in The Maine Woods.

Walking, vol. ix., 162, pp.

657-674; reprinted in Excur-
sions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Autumnal Tints, vol. x.,

1862, pp. 385402; reprinted
in Excursions.

Wild Apples, vol. x., 1862,

pp. 513-526 ; reprinted in Ex-
cursions.

Life without Piinciple, vol.

xii., 1863, pp. 484-495; re-
printed in A Yankee in
Canada.

Night and Morning, vol. xii.,

1863, pp. 579-583 ; reprinted in
Excursions.

The Wellfleet Oysterman,

vol. xiv., 1864, pp. 470-478;
reprinted in Cape Cod.

The Highland Light, vol.

xiv., 1864, pp. 649-659; re-
printed in Cape Cod.

• April Days, vol. xii., 1878,

pp. 445-454; reprinted in River-
side edition, vol. v.

May Days, vol. xii., 1878,

pp. 567-576 ; reprinted in
Riverside edition, vol. ix.

Days in June, vol. xii., 1878,

pp. 711-719 ; reprinted in River-
side edition, vol. v.

Winter Days, vol. lv., 1885,

pp. 79-88 ; reprinted in River-
side edition, vol. viii.

The Boston Commonwealth, 1863.
Poems. — Inspiration, vol. i.,
No. 42; The Funeral Bell, vol.
i., No. 44 ; Travelling: Greece,
vol. i., No. 47 ; The Departure,
vol. i., No. 52; The Fall of
the Leaf, vol. ii., No. 58 ;
Independence, vol. ii., No. 61;
Ihe Soul's Season, vol. ii., No.
62.

IV. APPENDIX.

BlOGEAPHY, CEITICISM, ETC.

Alcott, A. Bronson. — Concord
Davs. Boston, 1872, 8vo.

Thoreau, pp. 11-20; Walden Pond,
pp. 259-264.

Sonnets and Canzonets.

Boston, 1882, 8vo.
Thoreau, Sonnet xiv., p. 121.
Alger, William R.— The Solitudes

of Nature and of Man. Boston,

1867, 8vo.
Thoreau, pp. 329-338.
Allibone, S. Austin. — A critical

dictionary of English Litera-
ture, etc. London, 1871. 8vo.
Thoreau, vol. iii., pp. 2406,'2407.
Barton, W. G.— Thoreau, Flagg,

and Burroughs. {Essex Institute ,

Historical Collections, vol. xxii.,

pp. 53-80.) Salem, Mass., 1885,

8vo.
Beers, Henry A. — An outline

sketch of American Literature.

New York, 1887, 12mo.
Numerous references to Thoreau.
Besant, Walter. — The Eulogy of

Richard JefTeries. London,

1888, 8vo.
Reference to Thoreau, pp. 221-

225.
Brown, John. — The Life and

Letters of John Brown. Edited

by F. B. Sanborn. London,

1885, 8vo.
Numerous references to Thoreau.
Burroughs, John. — Indoor

Studies. Boston, 1889, 8vo.
Henry D. Thoreau, pp. 1-42.
Channing, William Ellery. —

Thoreau: the poet-naturalist.

Boston, 1873, 8vo.
Conway, Moncure Daniel. —

Emerson at Home and Abroad.

Boston, 1882, 8vo.
Thoreau, pp. 279-289.
Cooke, George Willis. — Ralph

Waldo Emerson : his life,

writings, and philosophy.

London, 1882, 8vo.
Numerous references to Thoreau.
Critic. — Essays from " The

Critic." Boston, 1882, 12mo.
Thoreau's Wildness, by John

Burroughs, pp. 9-18; Thoreau's

unpublished poetry, by F. B.

Sanborn, pp. 71-78,

VI

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Homes
New

Curtis, George William. -
of American Authors,
York, 1857, 8vo.
Thoreau, pp. 247, 248, 250, 251.
From the Easy Chair. Lon-
don, 1892, 12mo.

Thoreau and my Lady Cavaliere,
pp. 62-73.
Duyckinck, Evert A., and George
L. — Cyclopaedia of American
Literature. 2 vols. Phila-
delphia, 1877, 8vo.

Henry David Thoreau, vol. it, pp.
601-604.
Ellis, Havelock.— The New Spirit.
London, 1890, 8vo.
Thoreau, pp. 90-99.
Emerson, Edward Waldo.— Emer-
son in Concord: a Memoir
written for the " Social Circle"
in Concord, Massachusetts.
London, 1883, 8vo.
Numerous references to Thoreau.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. — Lectures
and Biographical Sketches.
London, 1884, 8vo.

Thoreau, pp. 419-452; prefixed
also to Thoreau's Excursions.

Encyclopaedia Britannica. — En-
cyclopaedia Britannica, 9th
edition. Edinburgh, 1888, 4to.
Henry D. Thoreau, by William
Sharp, vol. 23, pp. 313, 314.

Essays. — Essays from " The
Critic/' Boston, 1882, 8vo.

Thoreau's Wildness. By John
Burroughs, pp. 9-18. Thoreau's

unpublished poetry.
Sanborn, pp. 71-78.

By F. B.

Flagg, Wilson.— The Woods and
By-ways of New England.
Boston, 1872, 8vo.
Thoreau, pp. 392-396.

Halcyon Days. Boston,

1881, 8vo.
Thoreau, pp. 164-168.
Garnett, Richard.— Life of Ralph
Waldo Emerson. London, 1888,
8vo.
Thoreau, pp. 157-159.
Graham, P. Anderson. — Nature

in Books; some Studies in
Biography. London, 1891, 8vo.
The Puilosophy of Idleness
(Henry David Thoreau), pp. 66-93.
Griswold, R. W. — Prose Writers
of Ameiica. Philadelphia [1870],
8vo.
Thoreau, p. 657.
Haskins, David Greene. — Ralph
Waldo Emerson ; his maternal
ancestors, etc. London [1887],
8vo.
Henry D. Thoreau, pp. 119-122.
Hawthorne, Julian. — Nathaniel
Hawthorne and his wife : a
biography. 2 vols. London,
' 1885, 8vo.

References to Thoreau.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. — Passages*
from the American Note-Books.
2 vols. Boston, 1868, 8vo.

References to Thoreau, vol ii., pp,
96-99, 110-113, 123.

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth.—
Short Studies of American
Authors. Boston, 1888, 8vo.
Thoreau, pp. 22-31.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell.— Ameri-
can Men of Letters, Ralph
Waldo Emerson. Boston, 1885,
8vo.
Numerous references to Thoreau.

Hubert, Philip G. — Liberty and a
Living. New York, 1889, 8vo.
Thoreau, pp. 171-190.

James, Henry. — Hawthorne.
(English Men of Letters.)
London, 1879, 8vo.
Thoreau, pp. 96-99.

Jones, Samuel Arthur. — Thoreau:
a Glimpse. Ann Arbor, Mich.,
1890, 8vo.
Privately printed.

Bibliography of Henry David

Thoreau, with an outline of his
life. Compiled and chrono-
logically arranged by S. A.
Jones. New York, 1894, 8vo.

Lowell, James Russell. A Fable

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

vn

for Critics. [New York] 1848,
8vo.
Tb >au, p. 32.

ifry Study Windows. Second

edition. London, 1871, 8vo.
Thoreau, pp. 145-156.

Nichol, John. — American Litera-
ture: an historical sketch.
Edinburgh, 1882, 8vo.
Henry D. Thoreau, pp. 313-321.

Page, H. A., i.e. A. H. Japp. —
Thoreau, his Life and Aims.
London, 1878, 8vo.

Richardson, Charles F. — American
Literature, 1607-1885. 2 vols.
New York, 1887-89, 8vo.
[References to Thoreau.

Salt, H. S. — Literary Sketches.
London, 1888, 8vo.

Henry D. Thoreau, pp. 124-166.
Appeared originally in Temple Bar,
Nov. 1886.

The Life of Henry David

Thoreau. London, 1890, 8vo.

Sanborn, F. B. — American Men
of Letters. Henry D. Thoreau.
Boston, 1882, 8vo.

The Genius and character of

Emerson; lectures at the Con-
cord School of Philosophy.
Boston, 1885, 8vo.
References to Thoreau.

Scudder, Horace E. — American
Prose. Boston, 1880, 8vo.
Henry David Thoreau, pp. 296-301.

Stedman, Edmund Clarence. — A
Library of American Literature.
New York, 1891, 8vo.
Thoreau, vol. xi., p. 594.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. — Fami-
liar Studies of Men and Books.
London, 1882, 8vo.

Henry David Thoreau : his char-
acter and opinions, pp. 129-171; a
reprint of article in Ctornhill, June
1880.

Stewart, George. — Thoreau; the
Hermit of Walden. A paper
read before the Society, March
2nd, 1882. {Trans, of the
Literary and EisU Soc of Quebec,

No. 16, 1882, pp. 121-151.)
Quebec, 1882, 8vo.
Triggs, Oscar L. — Browning and
Whitman. London, 1893, 8vo.
Thoreau, pp. 35-37.
Underwood, Francis H. — The
Builders of American Literature.
First Series. London, 1893,
8vo.
Henry David Thoreau, pp. 213-216.
Welsh, Alfred H. — Development
of English Literature and
Language. 2 vols. Chicago,
1882, 8vo.
Thoreau, vol. ii. pp. 409-414.
Woodbury, Charles J. — Talks with
Ralph Waldo Emerson. London,
1890, 8vo.
Thoreau, pp. 76-95.
Wilson, James Grant, and Fiske,
John.— Appleton's Cyclopsedia
of American Biography. 6 vols.
New York, 1887-89, 8vo.
Thoreau, vol. vi,, pp. 100, 101.
Wolfe, Theodore F. — Literary
Shrines ; the haunts of some
famous American authors.
Philadelphia, 1895, 8vo.
Numerous references to Thoreau.

Magazine Articles, Etc.

Thoreau, Henry David. — Atlantic
Monthly, by R. W. Emerson,
vol. 10, 1862, pp. 239-249.—
Boston Commonwealth, vol. 1,
No. 33, 1863.— Monthly Re-
ligious Magazine, by W. R.
Alger, vol. 35, 1865, p. 382.—
Christian Examiner, by J.
Weiss, vol. 79, 1865, pp. 96-117.
— Fraser's Magazine, by Mon-
cure D. Conway, vol. 73, 1866,
pp. 447-465 ; same article,
Eclectic Magazine, vol. 4 N.S.,
1866, pp. 180-195. — Every
Saturday, by J. R. Lowell,
vol. 10, 1870, p. 166.— British
Quarterly Review, by Dr. A.

Vlll

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Thoreau, Henry David.

1L Japp, vol. 59, 1874, pp.
181-194; same article, Littell's
Living Age, vol. 120, pp. 643-
650, and Eclectic Magazine, vol.
19 N.S., pp. 305-312.— Harper's
New Monthly Magazine, by
Miss H. R. Hudson, vol. 51,
1875, pp. 28-31.— Dublin Uni-
versity Magazine, by M. Collins,
vol. 90, 1877, pp. 610-621.—
Harvard Register (with por-
trait), by F. B. Sanborn, vol.
3, 1881, pp. 214-217.— Century
(with portrait), by J. Bur-
roughs, vol.2 N.S., 1882, pp.
368-379.— Dial (Chicago),, by
H. N. Powers, vol. 3, 1882,
pp % 70, 71. — Spectator, vol. 56,
1883, pp. 239, 240; vol. 56,
1885, pp. 122, 123.— Temple
Bar, by H. S. Salt, vol. 78,
1386, pp. 369-383 ; same article
in Critic, vol. 8 N.S., pp. 276-
278, 289-291; and Eclectic Maga-
zine, vol. 45 N.S., pp. 89-98.—
Welcome, by A. H. Japp, vol. 14,
1887, pp. 652-656.— Academy,
by W. Lewin, October 25, 1890,
pp. 357, 358. — Chautauquan, by
John Burroughs, vol. 9, 1889,
pp. 530-533.— Good Words, by
F. H. Underwood, vol. 29, 1888,
pp. 445-452. — Belgravia, vol.
81, 1893, pp. 375-383.— Labour
Prophet (with portrait), by John
Trevor, vol. 2, 1893, p. 190.—
Lippincott's Magazine, by C. C.
Abbott, June 1895, pp. 852-855.
—Great Thoughts, by W. J.
Jupp, January 19 and 26, 1895,
pp. 256-258, 268, 287.

An American Diogenes.

Chambers's Journal, vol. 8,
1858, pp. 330-332.

An American Rousseau.

Saturday Review, Vol. 18,
1864, pp. 694, 695.

Thoreau, Henry David.

and his Biographers, Lippin

cott's Magazine, by S. A. Jones,
vol. 48, 1891, pp. 224-228.

and his Books. Harvard

Magazine, by Edwin Morton,
vol. 1, 1855, p. 87, etc.

and his Works. Inlander, by

S, A. Jones, vol. 4, 1894, p. 234.

and Kew England Transcen-
dentalism. Catholic World, by
J. V. O'Conor, vol. 27, 1878, pp.
289-300.

and Thomas Cholmondeley.

Atlantic Monthly, by F. B.
Sanborn, vol. 72, 1893, pp. 741-
756.

Anti-Slavery and Reform

Papers. Lippincott's Magazine,
by H. S. Salt, vol. 46, 1890, pp.
277-283.

a Rural Humbug. Knicker-
bocker, vol. 45, 1855, pp. 235-
241.

Autumn. Vassar Miscellany,

vol. 22, 1892, p. 92.

Cape Cod. Boston Common-
wealth, vol. 3, No. 30, 1865.

(Manning's Life of. Nation,

vol. 18, 1874, pp. 29, 30.

Character and Opinions of.

Cornhill Magazine, by R. L.
Stevenson, vol. 41, 1880, pp.
665-682; same article, Eclectic
Magazine, vol. 95, pp. 257-270,
and Littell's Living Age, vol.
146, pp. 179-190.

Correspondence with Emerson.

Atlantic Monthly, by F. B.
Sanborn, vol. 69, 1892, pp. 577-
596, 736-753.

Days and Nights in Concord.

Scribner's Monthly, by W. E.
Channing, vol. 16, 1878, pp.
721-728.

Excursions. Boston Common-
wealth, vol. 2, No. 60, 1863.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

IX

Tboreau, Henry David.

* A Faithful Lover of Nature.

Frank R. Leslie's Popular
Monthly, by W. Lincoln J.
Adams, vol. 33, 1892, p. 574.

* Flute (Poem). Atlantic

Monthly, by Louisa M. Alcott,
vol. 12, 1863, pp. 280, 281.

The Forrester. Atlantic

Monthly, by A. B. Alcott,
vol. 9, pp. 443445.

A Glimpse. Unitariau, by

S. A. Jones, vol. 5, February-
April.

Gospel of Simplicity. Pater-
noster Review, by H. S. Salt,
vol. 1, 1891, pp. 461-468.

— Inheritance of. Inlander, by
S. A. Jones, vol. 3, 1892, p.
199.

Letters to Various Persons.
Atlantic Monthly, by T. W.
Higginson, vol. 16, 1865, pp.
504, 505. — North American
Review, by J. R. Lowell, vol.
101, 1865, pp. 597-608.

. Life of, by H. S. Salt.

Spectator, by A. H. Japp,
Oct. 18, 1890, pp. 526, 527.—
Animal World, Dec. 1890. pp.
186, 187.

The Maine Woods. Boston

Commonwealth, vol. 3, No. 30,
1864.— Atlantic Monthly, by
T. W. Higginson, vol. 14, 1864,
pp. 386, 387.

•——Nature Notes. Selborne
Society's Journal, by J. L.
Otter, vol. 1, 1890, p. 185.

New Estimate of. Penn
Monthly, by W. S. Kennedy,
vol. 11, pp. 794, etc.

• Page's Life of. Academy, by

Thomas Hughes, Nov. 17, 1877,
pp. 462, 463.

■—Philosophy at Concord.
Nation, Sept. 2, 1880, pp.
164-166.

Thoreau, Henry David.

Pity and Humour of (from

the Spectator). Littell's Living
Age, vol. 146, 1880, pp. 190,
191.

Poems of Nature. Seribner's

Magazine, by F. B. Sanborn,
March 1895, pp. 352-355.—
Saturday Review, Jan. 18,
1896; Star, Jan. 23, 1896, by
Richard Le Gallienne.

Poetry of. Lippincott's

Magazine, by J. Benton, vol.
37, 1886, pp. 491-500. — Art
Review, by H. S. Salt, May
1890, pp. 153-155.

Portrait of, by Himself.

Literary World (Boston),
March 26, 1881.

Portraits of, with a Beard.

Critic, vol. 1, 1881, p. 95.

Sanborn's Life of. Nation,

by A. G. Sedgwick, vol. 35,
1882, pp. 34, 35. — Literary
World (Boston), vol. 13, 1882,
pp. 227, 228. — Athenaeum,
Oct. 28, 1882, pp. 558-560.—
Academy, by J. Purves, Oct.
14, 1882, pp. 271, 272.— Ameri-
can, by T. A. Janvier, vol. 4,
1882, p. 218.

Selections from, H. S. Salt's.

Academy, by Walter Lewin,
May 4, 1895, p. 377.

Some Recollections and Inci*

dents concerning. Concord
Freeman, by Joseph Hosmer,
October 1880.

Study of. Eclectic Magazine

(from the Academy), by Thomas
Hughes, vol. 27 N.S., 1878,
pp. 114-116.

Summer. Academy, by

Walter Lewin, Sept. 27, 1884,
pp. 193, 194.— Literary World
(Boston), July 12, 1884, p. 223.
—The Nation, vol. 39, 1884,
pp. 98-99.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Thoreau, Henry David.

Sunday at Concord. Fort-
nightly Review, by Grant
Allen, vol. 43 N.S., 1888, pp.
675-690.

Ten Volumes of. New Eng-

lander, by Joshua W. Caldwell,
vol. 55, 1891, pp. 404-424.

Unpublished Poetry of (with
portrait). Critic, by F. B.
Sanborn, March 26, 1881, pp.
75, 76.

Visit to Walden Pond. Natural
Food, by Hector Waylen, July
1895, pp. 438, 439.

— - Walden. Putnam's Monthly,
by C. F. Briggs, vol. 4, 1854,

Thoreau, Henry David,
pp. 443-448. — Boston Common*
wealth, vol. 1, No. 56, 1863.

Walden Pond. Boston

Commonwealth, vol. 3, No.
47, 1865.

Week on the Concord, Massa-
chusetts Quarterly Review,
by J. R. Lowell, vol. 3, 1849,
pp. 40-51. — Saturday Review,
August 17, 1889, pp. 195, 196.

Wildness of. Critic, by J.

Burroughs, March 26, 1881,
p. 74.

Works of. New Englander,

by J. W. Caldwell, vol. 55,
1891, pp. 404-424.

V. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS.

A Week on the Concord and

Merrimack Rivers
Walden ; or, Life in the

Woods ....

Excursions
The Maine Woods
Cape Cod ....
Letters to Various Persons
A Yankee in Canada
Early Spring in Massa-
chusetts ; From the

Journal of Henry D.

1849

Thoreau
Summer: From the

1881

1854

Journal of Henry D.

Thoreau

1884

Winter : From the Journal

1863

of Henry D. Thoreau .

1888

1864

Autumn : From the

1864

Journal of Henry D.

1865

Thoreau , . .

1892.

1866

Miscellanies

1894

Familiar Letters

1894

Poems of Nature

189&

WALTER SCOTT PRESS, FELLING, NEWCASTLE-ON-TOB.

A UTHORISED VERSION.
Crown Zvo, Cloth, Price 6s.

PEER GYNT: A Dramatic Poem.

BY HENRIK IBSEN.

Translated by William and Charles Archer.

This Translation, though unrhymed, preserves throughout the
various rhythms of the original.

"la Brand the hero is an embodied protest against the
poverty of spirit and half-heartedness that Ibsen rebelled against
in his countrymen. In Peer Gynt the hero is himself the
embodiment of that spirit. In Brand the fundamental anti-
thesis, upon which, as its central theme, the drama is constructed,
is the contrast between the spirit of compromise on the one
hand, and the motto ' everything or nothing ' on the other.
And Peer Gynt is the very incarnation of a compromising dread
of decisive committal to any one course. In Brand the problem
of self-realisation and the relation of the individual to his sur-
roundings is obscurely struggling for recognition, and in Peer
Gynt it becomes the formal theme upon which all the fantastic
variations of the drama are built up. In both plays alike the
problems of heredity and the influence of early surroundings
are more than touched upon ; and both alike culminate in the
doctrine that the only redeeming power on earth or in heaven
is the power of love. "—Mr. P. H. Wicksteed.

London: Walter Scott, Limited, Paternoster Square.

BOOKS OF FAIRY TALES.

Crown 8vo, Cloth Elegant, Price 3s. 6d.£er VoL

ENGLISH FAIRY AND OTHER
FOLK TALES.

Selected and Edited, with an Introduction,

By EDWIN SIDNEY HARTLAND.

With Twelve Full- Page Illustrations by Charles E. Brock.

SCOTTISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES.

Selected and Edited, with an Introduction^

By Sir GEORGE DOUGLAS, Bart.

With Twelve Full-Page Illustrations by James Torrance.

IRISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES.

Selected and Edited, with an Introduction,

By W. B. YEATS.

With Twelve Ftdl-Tay Illustrations by James Torrance.

Loudon •• Waltlr Scott, Li jilted, Paternoster Squara.

NEW EDITION IN NEW BINDING.

In the new edition there are added about forty reproductions
in fac-simile of autographs of distinguished singers and instru-
mentalists, including Sarasate, Joachim, Sir Charles Halle,
Stavenhagen, Henschel, Trebelli, Miss Macintyre, Jean
Gerardy, etc.

Quarto ', cloth elegant, gilt edges, emblematic design on cover, 6s,
May also be had in a variety of Fancy Bindings.

The Music of the Poets

A MUSICIANS' BIRTHDAY BOOK.

Edited by Eleonore D'Esterre Keeling.

This is a unique Birthday Book. Against each date are given
the names of musicians whose birthday it is, together with a
verse -quotation appropriate to the character of their different
compositions or performances. A special feature of the book
consists in the reproduction in fac-simile of autographs, and
autographic music, of living composers. The selections of verse
(from before Chaucer to the present time) have been made with
admirable critical insight. English verse is rich in utterances
of the poets about music, and merely as a volume of poetry
about music this book makes a charming anthology. Three
sonnets by Mr. Theodore Watts, on the "Fausts" of Berlioz,
Schumann, and Gounod, have been written specially for this
volume. It is illustrated with designs of various musical in-
struments, etc. ; autographs of Rubenstein, Dvorak, Greig,
Mackenzie, Villiers Stanford, etc., etc.

"To musical amateurs this will certainly prove the most
attractive birthday book ever published." — Manchester
Cttardian.

LONDON : Walter Scott, Ltd., Paternoster Square.

Crown 8vo, Cloth Elegant, in Box, Price 2s, 6d.
THE

CULT OF BEAUTY:

A MANUAL OF PERSONAL HYGIENE.
By C. J. S. THOMPSON.

[Extract from Preface.]

Too much care cannot be taken of the exterior of the human body, on
which the general health so largely depends. The most recent discoveries
in science go to prove that cleanliness, with proper attention to bodily
exercise, is the greatest enemy to disease and decay. Quackery has never
been more rampant than it is to-day, and advertised secret preparations
for beatitifying the person meet us at every turn. It is with the object
of showing how Beauty may be preserved and aided on purely hygienic
principles, that this work has been written, the greatest secret of Beauty
being Health,

CONTENTS—
Chapter I.— THE SKIN. Chapter II.— THE HANDS.

Chapter III.— THE FEET. Chapter IV.— THE HAIR.

Chapter V— THE TEETH. Chapter VI.— THE NOSE.

Chapter VII.— THE EYE. Chapter VIIL— THE EAR.

"'Quackery/ says Mr. Thompson, 'was never more rampant than it is
to-day' with regard to 'aids in beautifying the person.' His little book
is based on purely hygienic principles, and comprises recipes for toilet
purposes which he warrants are 'practical and harmless.' These are
virtues in any book of health and beauty, and Mr. Thompson's advice
and guidance are, we find, not wanting in soundness and common-sense."
-—Saturday Review.

London : Walter Scott, Limited, Paternoster Square.

The BOOK OF THE SEASON

Square 8vo, Paper Cover, Price if-

THE GULLY QF BLUEMANSDYKE,

And Other Stories.

By A. CONAN DOYLE,

Author of "Micah Clarke," "The White Company,"
*' Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," &c.

"Capital experiments in the short sensational tale." — Scots-
man.

"Full of interest, and, though widely diversified in their
objects, are equally characterised by power of vivid narration
and strength in the delineation of striking character- types.*'
— Scottish Leader.

" If the happy . . . purchaser will choose a boisterous night
and, after all the rest of the household have retired to rest, will
make up the fire and take his pipe and sit down to read *The
Gully of Bluemansdyke,' 'My Friend the Murderer,' and
'The Silver Hatchet,' he will wish he had not. Experto
crede. " — Sheffield Independent.

" A better collection of short stories has seldom, if ever, been
put together." — Times of India.

London : Walter Scott, Limited, Paternoster Square.

The Canterbuiy Poets.

Edited by William Sharp. In Shilling Volumes.

Cloth, Bed Edges, Is.
Qotb, Uncut Edges, Is.

I

Red Roan, Gilt Edges, 2j. 6d^
Pad. Morocco, Gilt Edge3, 53.

THE FOLLOWING ARE PUBLISHED:—

CHRISTIAN YEAR

COLERIDGE

LONGFELLOW

CAMPBELL

SHELLEY

WORDSWORTH

BLAKE

WHITTIER

POE

CHATTERTON

BURNS. Songs

BURNS. Poems

MARLOWE

KEATS

HERBERT

HUGO

COWPER

SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS, etc.

EMERSON

SONNETS OF THIS CENTURY

WHITMAN

SCOTT. Lady of the Lake, etc.

SCOTT. Marmion, etc.

PRAED

HOGG

GOLDSMITH

LOVE LETTERS, etc

SPENSER

CHILDREN OF THE POETS

JONSON

BYRON. Miscellaneous

BYRON. Don Juan

THE SONNETS OF EUROPE

RAMSAY

DOBELL

POPE

HEINE

BEAUMONT & FLETCHER

BOWLES, LAMB, etc.

SEA MUSIC

EARLY ENGLISH POETRY

HERRICK

BALLADES AND RONDEAUS

IRISH MINSTRELSY

MILTON'S PARADISE LOST

JACOBITE BALLADS

DAYS OF THE YEAR

AUSTRALIAN BALLADS

MOORE

BORDER BALLADS

SONG-TIDE

ODES OF HORACE

OSSIAN

FAIRY MUSIC

SOUTHEY

CHAUCER

GOLDEN TREASURY

POEMS OF WILD LIFE

PARADISE REGAINED

CRABBE

DORA GREENWELL

FAUST

AMERICAN SONNETS

LANDOR'S POEMS

GREEK ANTHOLOGY

HUNT AND HOOD

HUMOROUS POEMS

LYTTON'S PLAYS

GREAT ODES

MEREDITH'S POEMS

IMITATION OF CHRIST

Uncle Toby's Birthday Book

PAINTER-POETS

WOMEN POETS

LOVE LYRICS

American Humorous Verse

MINOR SCOTCH LYRICS

CAVALIER LYRISTS

GERMAN BALLADS

SONGS OF BERANGER

RODEN NOEL'S POEMS

SONGS OF FREEDOM

CANADIAN POEMS

CONTEMPORARY SCOTTISH VERSE

POEMS OF NATURE
CRADLE SONGS
BALLADS OF SPORT
MATTHEW ARNOLD

LONDON; Walter Scott, Ltd., Paternoster Square.

V

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
GRADUATE LIBRARY

DATE DUE

Form 95 84

UNIV. v^r ,*lCH.
U BR ADV.

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

3 9015 01211 6573

DO NOT REMOVE

OR
MUTILATE CARD