OF 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
TIIOREAU: 
 HIS LIFE AND AIMS. 
 
 BY H. A. PAGE, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 LIFE OF THOMAS DE QU1NCEY, < MEMOLB OF HAWTHORNE, ETC. 
 
 
 CALIFOIA. 
 
 BOSTOTT: 
 JAMES R. OSGOOD & COMPANY, 
 
 Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood & Co. 
 1877. 
 
1 s <Mtion: 
 
 FROM ADVANCE PROOF SHEETS. 
 
A piteous lot it were to flee from man, 
 
 And not rejoice in nature 
 
 For the man, 
 
 Who in this spirit, communes with the forms 
 Of Nature, who, with understanding heart, 
 Doth know and love such objects as excite 
 No morbid passions, no disquietude, 
 No vengeance, and no hatred, needs must feel 
 The joy of that pure principle of love 
 So deeply that, unsatisfied with aught 
 Less pure and exquisite, he cannot choose 
 But seek for objects of a kindred love 
 In fellow-natures and a kindred joy." 
 
 WORDSWORTH S Excursion, 
 
 " I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple 
 and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has 
 heard of other men s lives; some such account as he would send 
 to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, 
 it must have been in a distant land to me." 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 within a few years ago the name of Thoreau 
 * stood to me for morbid sentiment, weak rebellion, 
 and contempt for society. If I met with his name in 
 general literature, it was usually with an implied pro 
 test against the main drift of his teaching and aims. 
 He had done some original things and written pure 
 .and beautiful passages, but these were chips and straws 
 cast up by a steady current of morbid and stoical 
 egotism. A particular study on which I was engaged 
 led me into frequent contact with Thoreau. I found 
 that his friends loved him, and that he loved them ; 
 that, in spite of an outer coating of stoicism and pro 
 test, he was true and tender of heart ; that, though he 
 was sometimes extreme in his expressions of dislike 
 for the artificial make-believes of modern society, he 
 loved individual men, and most that which was indi 
 vidual in them, showing the utmost patience and tolera 
 tion in his association with others ; that his love of 
 Nature and his power over animals, which were so 
 express and characteristic in him, did not lead him to 
 
viii Preface. 
 
 sour retreat from society, but rather to seek a new 
 point of relation to it, by which a return might be 
 possible and profitable; and that, in one word, the 
 common view of Thoreau was quite wrong, or at any 
 rate, needed many qualifications. I began a systematic 
 study of his writings, and gathered traces of him in 
 many out-of-the-way corners. As I gazed 
 
 "A new planet swam into my ken." 
 
 A self-sufficing but kindly and patriotic man took the 
 place of the morbid hermit. The solitary of Wai- 
 den was the first who came forth, and spoke decidedly 
 in public for John Brown, of Harper s Ferry, having 
 himself run risks by his personal efforts, and freed 
 not a few slaves. I w r anted to find a reconciling point 
 for what seemed inconsistent and exclusive. Morbid 
 hermits, stoics, or sentimentalists do not usually show 
 such a concern for weak and down-trodden fellow- 
 creatures, or so practical and ready a power to aid 
 them; and as Thoreau could do what he did, and 
 never feel as though there was any inconsistency 
 between Waldcn life and anti-slavery action, I was 
 desirous to satisfy myself, by closer scrutiny, of his 
 real aims and objects. With considerable labor and 
 time, as I have said, I did it. A very slight sketch 
 I wrote as the immediate result, in one of the Quar 
 terlies, was received so favorably spoken of in 
 
Preface. ix 
 
 The Spectator, for example, as "a new revelation," 
 and by the Scotsman as one of the "most interesting 
 studies" that I was led to believe a fuller picture 
 would be welcome to not a few. The nature-instinct 
 in Thoreau was so strong that, as I believe, it may 
 even do sonething to aid in the interpretation of cer 
 tain phenomena of so distant a period as the Middle 
 Ages. I see a kind of real likeness between this so- 
 called Stoic of America, with his unaffected love 
 for the slave, his wonderful sympathies and attractions 
 for the lower creatures, his simplicities, and his liking 
 for the labor of the hand, and that St. Francis, whose 
 life has recently been made fresh and real to us by 
 the skillful pen of Mrs. Oliphant. All I claim for 
 Thoreau is a disinterested and not a one-sided and 
 prejudiced hearing. Because he hated the hypocrisies 
 and make-shifts of our modern social life, and plainly 
 said so, do not let us therefore conclude that he was 
 only morbid and stoical; let us do him justice as the 
 patriot and reformer also ; and try to discover how it 
 was that the man who held society in such despite on 
 some accounts was so eager to purify it from the worst 
 incubus that probably ever rested upon it. It was 
 Thoreau s love of Nature that formed the basis of his 
 peculiar simplicity and dislike of what was involved, 
 doubtful, and morally tortuous : if we get to understand 
 that, much in his character which is otherwise puzzling, 
 
x Preface. 
 
 may become clear to us. Hence it is that I have set out 
 with a comparison which may be very unexpected, 
 but which may be seen to justify itself the more that 
 the reader is inclined to follow, with some degree of 
 sympathy, the facts and passages from Thoreau s writ 
 ings, which form a leading part of this volume, since 
 in the main I have tried to let the man speak for 
 himself. 
 
 It is not pretended that this is a Memoir, or that I 
 am able to present new and unpublished material. 
 I may claim, however, that the scattered materials 
 have never before been brought together in such a 
 form as they are here, and that a pretty complete biog 
 raphy will be found embodied in the book. But it 
 professes to be a Study only ; an effort to gain a con 
 sistent view of the man s character rather than an 
 exhaustive record of the facts of his life. 
 
 H. A. PAGE. 
 
THOREAU: HIS LIFE AND AIMS. 
 
 L 1 B R A K i 
 
 UN I V K US I TV c 
 C. DilSIA. 
 
THE HOUSE AT WALDEN. 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVKKSITY OF 
 
 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 
 THOREAU: 
 
 HIS LIFE AND AIMS. 
 
 I. 
 
 IS it possible that some reality underlay the legend 
 ary miracles of St. Francis of Assisi? that we in 
 our Protestant zeal sacrifice the fact in ridding our 
 selves of the adherent imaginations of a reverent popu 
 lace ? The saint, as we are told, esteemed all living 
 things his brethren, and would do them service. He 
 would have them to listen to his preaching, and they 
 listened ; the birds of the air, at his order, hushed 
 their song as he preached ; the fishes came willingly 
 into his hand, and waited for their dismissal ; the little 
 lambs parted from the flock at his call, and came to 
 him, to furnish a most prevailing illustration of his 
 text ; the very wolf was subdued and docile under his 
 word and the charm of his love and authority. Mira 
 cle, say the Catholic devotees ; all wild invention, say 
 l 
 
2 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 the Protestant dogmatists. The one will have all, the 
 other will accept of none ; and so the suggestion of 
 that harmony which once obtained between man and 
 nature, and is still prophesied in unmistakable terms 
 by certain select souls that are sent among us, is abso 
 lutely lost to both. For it is not the miraculous or 
 legendary side of the stories of St. Francis s wonderful 
 rule over the animal world that is of most abiding 
 consequence. That was the adhesive garment in which 
 it became the reverent spirit of the catholic Middle 
 Ages to array them. 
 
 We remember Mr. Freeman s warning, in speaking 
 of Edward the Confessor: "When a man is once can 
 onized," he says, "his acts and character immediately 
 JK 7 -s out of the reach of ordinary criticism. Religious 
 edification, and not historical truth, becomes the aim 
 of all who speak or write of one who has been formally 
 enrolled as an object of religious reverence."* But 
 we cautiously act on his maxim here, and discount 
 much. The essential facts which remain attest the 
 truth that sympathy and love in a favored order of 
 constitutions have power to reverse, within certain 
 limits, the stern decree of opposition between man and 
 the brutes, which the necessities, but still more the 
 cruel ravages of the former have caused. Every poet, 
 every lover of nature, has a longing desire to rise to 
 
 * "History of the Norman Conquest," vol. ii. p. 21. 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 3 
 
 this height of sympathy and sweet companionship with 
 the creatures of wood, and wild, and stre.am. Burns, 
 Cowper, Wordsworth, Shelley, not to speak of Shake 
 speare, seem to be great poets largely by virtue of it : 
 the one sang "the daisy," and grudged to disturb the 
 contented rest and industry of a field-mouse ; the other 
 found sweet content in training his hares; while the 
 third, with his meditative eye, seemed to see a soul even 
 in daffodils and simple flowers that could give him 
 
 " Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears ; " 
 
 and the fourth felt impelled to pour out the rapture of 
 his heart as he saw the skylark cleaving the upper air 
 an "unbodied joy." But with the poets, the desire 
 remains aspiration merely, else in the new delight of 
 realized bliss, they might cease their singing. There 
 is a class of chosen constitutions which realize, in greater 
 or lesser degree, what the poets sigh after. St. Francis 
 clearly was one of these. After we have stripped off 
 all the adhesions, all that may be credited to the 
 fantastic tricks of credulous reciters, willing to mag 
 nify even for the faith s sake, something still re 
 mains. He was mighty in love. "He was a man 
 overflowing with sympathy for man and beast, for 
 God s creatures wherever and however he encoun 
 tered them. Not only was every man his brother, but 
 every animal, the sheep in the fields, the birds in the 
 
4 Thoreau: Jiis Life and Aims. 
 
 brandies, the brother-ass on which he rode, the sister- 
 bees who took refuge in his kind protection. He was 
 the friend of every thing that suffered or rejoiced ; no 
 emotion went beyond his sympathy ; his heart rose to 
 see the gladness of nature, and melted over the dis 
 tresses of the smallest and meanest creature on the face 
 of the earth. And by this divine right of nature, 
 every thing trusted in him. The magnetism of the 
 heart, that power which nobody can define, but which 
 it is impossible to ignore, surrounded him like a special 
 atmosphere. That sense of security and sympathy 
 which, we all acknowledge, draws the nobler domestic 
 animals, horses and dogs, to those who love them, em 
 braced with Francis a wider circle, for he loved every 
 thing that had life : 
 
 He prayeth best who loveth best 
 
 All things both great and small ; 
 For the dear Ood who loveth us 
 
 He made and loveth all." 
 
 " Such was the unconscious creed of the prophet 
 of Assisi, and there cannot be any doubt that he 
 must have possessed in an almost unexampled degree 
 the power of attracting all creatures to him. With 
 him the sympathetic power was universal ; he meant 
 no harm on his part, and had none of that timidity 
 which most of us arc moved by in the presence of the 
 most timid of God s creatures, that fear that they 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 5 
 
 must misapprehend our intentions and set us down as 
 enemies in disguise, which make our steps stealthy, 
 and our movements treacherous among the little birds, 
 and the wild creatures of the woods and fields. We 
 cannot divest ourselves of the feeling that they must 
 suspect us. But Francis had no such feeling; his 
 sense of brotherhood was real, not fictitious ; he had 
 the courage of good intention, feared nothing and was 
 not feared."* 
 
 We read not long ago, in the account of a traveller- 
 naturalist, that in some of the primeval forests of the 
 South, rare birds, undisturbed, eyed him inquiringly, 
 without fear, when he was within a yard of the 
 branches where they sat, till, smitten with the scientific 
 passion for specimens, he knocked some of them down 
 with a stick. But after repeated recourse to the stick, 
 we are assured that, though our traveller-naturalist 
 wandered far and wide in these almost boundless for 
 ests, no more was he allowed to approach the birds he 
 most sought to reach. It was as though telegrams of 
 misery and fear had in some unknown tongue been 
 sent forth in all directions. The advent of man had 
 become an omen of evil alone. 
 
 Species would appear to vary much, however; and 
 naturalists hardly seem to render so clear reasons as 
 they might for so great differences. Professor Sir 
 
 *Mrs. Oliphant s " St. Francis of Assisi," pp. 118, 119. 
 
6 Thorean : his Life and Aims. 
 
 Wyville Thomson, Bart., for example, says, in writing 
 of the Falkland Islands : 
 
 " The Government House is very like a Shetland or 
 Orkney manse, stone-built, slated, and grey, without 
 the least shelter. In the square grass paddock, sur 
 rounded by a low wall, between the house and the 
 shore, a very ornamental flock of upland geese were 
 standing and preening their feathers the first time we 
 called there. This tamcncss of the sea-birds is still 
 more remarkable in the Falkland Islands, and a strange 
 
 O 
 
 contrast to their extreme wildness in the Straits of 
 Magellan ; there we stalked the kelp-goose ( Clcephaya 
 antarctica) and the steamer-duck {Mivropterus 
 cinereus} day after day, with great labor and but little 
 success, finding great difficulty in getting even within 
 long range of them ; while in the Falklands the same 
 species were all about, standing on the shore within 
 stone-throw, or diving and fishing quietly within a few 
 yards of the boats. I was told that they are not now 
 nearly so tame, however, as they were some years ago. 
 Almost every evening we met some one coming into 
 the settlement with a string of upland geese for the 
 pot; and I suppose it is beginning to dawn upon the 
 poor birds that their new neighbors are not so harm 
 less as they look. Very likely it may take some gen 
 erations of experience to make them thoroughly wary, 
 and the difference between the birds of the islands and 
 
Thoreau : his Life, and Aims. 7 
 
 those of the straits may probably be that, while the 
 former have been safe in their primeval solitude up to 
 within a recent period, the latter have been selecting 
 themselves for ages on their capacity for eluding the 
 craft of hungry Patagonians and Fuegians." 
 
 Dr. Darwin tells us, in the introduction to his valu 
 able work, "Plants and Animals under Domestica 
 tion :" "At the Galapagos Archipelago I pushed with 
 the muzzle of my gun hawks from a branch, and held 
 out a pitcher of water for other birds to alight on and 
 drink. Quadrupeds and birds which have seldom been 
 disturbed by man, dread him no more than do our 
 English birds the cows or horses grazing in the fields." 
 
 What we are now chiefly concerned to remark is, 
 that such instances may be taken to attest the fact of 
 the existence of an era of greater harmony between man 
 and nature than we have practical knowledge of. It 
 has found a vague record in the mythologies of most 
 nations. One of our own poets has powerfully sung 
 of it as a Paradise Lost, a paradise, lot us hope, that 
 may in part be restored : 
 
 " I m truly sorry man s dominion 
 Has broken Nature s social union, 
 And justifies that ill opinion 
 
 AVhich makes thee startle 
 At me, thy poor, earth-born companion, 
 
 And fellow-mortal." 
 
 And as if to keep the tradition alive and in fullest 
 
8 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 force, every now and then God still sends among us a 
 man or woman with a peculiar, if a limited gift of 
 reconcilement, only great enough to prove that, in the 
 earlier days, the myths might have had a foundation 
 in fact, that Orpheus is really no fable. 
 
 Mr. Cotton, a clergyman, the son of a late Gover 
 nor of the Bank of England, took bees, in the first 
 place, out to Australia, and afterwards to the islands 
 of the South Pacific. His behavior to his bees was 
 the wonder of all who were in the ships with him. 
 He would call them by certain sounds, and they came 
 to him, covered him as he lay, and he would actually 
 handle and fondle them in such a fashion as would 
 have been to another very dangerous. Then, when he 
 wished to relieve himself of them, he gathered them 
 together as one would a mass of loose worsted into a 
 ball, took the mass near to the hive, and at a given 
 sound or signal, they flew apart and retired to their 
 proper home. 
 
 Then there was Bisset, that wonderful Scotchman, 
 whose success in training and making tractable pigs, 
 turtles, and gold-fish* amply proved that there lies in 
 
 *Bisset s success with cats and dogs and monkeys only surpassed 
 in some degree what others had accomplished before him ; but it 
 stirs something like incredulity when we read of his success with 
 turtles and gold-fishes, and we only recover faith when we find 
 the facts attested. "In the course of six months teaching, ho 
 made a turtle fetch and carry like a dog ; and having chalked tho 
 floor and blackened its claws, could direct it to trace out any 
 
, 
 
 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 9 
 
 -, 
 most animals undeveloped possibilities of education 
 
 and companionship for man, and whose experience 
 presented but a new version of that of M. du Rouil, 
 of whose wonderful dogs and his relations to them Mr. 
 Hamerton has given such a striking and touching 
 account in the closing section of his " Chapters on 
 Animals." We confess that our curiosity respecting 
 the history of these dogs after the death of the master 
 who had developed such marvellous powers in them 
 almost made us address Mr. Hamerton on the sub 
 ject, and we only refrained from doing so when we 
 thought that no doubt he had already been troubled 
 by questions on that point. 
 
 Mr. Hamerton, in the course of a very interesting 
 section of his volume on animals, thus refers to the 
 late Mr. AVaterton, and to the well-known "birds 
 friend" in the Tuileries gardens: 
 
 " The wild bird is not looked upon as a creature to 
 be treated with more hospitality than a wolf; every 
 body fires at him as at some noxious vermin. Even 
 the scientific naturalist adds yearly to the long cata 
 logue of destruction, to supply his dissecting-room with 
 
 given name in the company. His confidence even led him to try 
 experiments on a gold-fish. . . . In the course of twelve months, 
 he made the pig an animal usually supposed the most obstinate 
 and perverse in nature become most tractable." Bisset was a 
 native of Perth ; and, having trained many animals, and exhibited 
 their performances in Edinburgh, London, Dublin, and other 
 places, died in 1783. 
 
10 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 bodies, and his glass cases with stuffed skins. And so 
 it comes to pass that the wild birds of civilized coun 
 tries are becoming every year more rare, and we arc 
 all as ignorant about them as people must be who have 
 nothing but books of science, without that personal 
 familiarity which alone makes knowledge alive. The 
 late Mr. "VVaterton, the naturalist, gave a fair exam 
 ple in his gentle hospitality. Hound his house, in 
 Yorkshire, was a great space of land, with wood and 
 water, encircled by a protecting wall ; within that space 
 no gun was ever fired, it was the guarded paradise of 
 the birds. In their assurance of perfect peace they 
 did not shun man s friendly observation. Without 
 our stupid destructiveness, there might bo many such 
 bird Edens as that. The birds do not avoid us natur 
 ally. It has always been noted by voyagers that in 
 lands hitherto uninhabited and unvisited by man, they 
 sat quietly within gunshot, looking at their strange 
 visitors with undismayed curiosity. If men had treated 
 them kindly, they might have been our friends. Did 
 the reader ever happen to meet with the well-known 
 birds friend in the garden of the Tuileries, an old 
 man, whose life had been saddened by the loss of 
 those he loved, and who sought consolation in his soli 
 tude, and found it in the friendship of little bird;;? 
 They flew about his head, not as the bird in llubcns :; 
 picture of his sonn, vhich is held by a piece of string, 
 
Thoreau : his T^ife and Aims. 11 
 
 but bound by no thread except the invisible one of 
 their gratitude, and affection, and expectation. Not 
 entirely disinterested or unselfish in their love, yet it . 
 was full of trust, and that trust quite a personal and 
 peculiar one, for it was given to him alone. A minute 
 before ho came into the garden they were wild birds 
 still, and when he had gone home they returned to their 
 lofty trees ; but whilst he walked there in the afternoon, 
 they went and talked with him as if he had been their 
 father, settling on his shoulders and his arms, and 
 picking the crumbs close to his careful feet. They 
 must have wondered at his absence when he died; 
 and even now, though things are so changed since 
 then, and the Palace is a blackened ruin, and it seems 
 as if centuries had passed, I believe that the little 
 sparrows and finches still remember their old friend, 
 and would make a fluttering cloud of gladness about 
 his head if he could come from the cemetery where he 
 sleeps, and revisit the chestnut shades." 
 
 Then there was Mr. Ilarey with his horses; and 
 each of us has known some one who had more than 
 ordinary power of attracting or managing this or that 
 class of animals. Madame Sand, one of the most cele 
 brated of French writers, declared herself to possess 
 this power over birds, and described it as hereditary 
 in her family. Its possessors cannot analyze the 
 power nor account for. it; it is native, imderived, like 
 
12 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 the gift of singing or the power of pleasing children. 
 The greatest of all later instances is the American, 
 Thoreau. When we read of many of his experiences, 
 we could believe ourselves to be contemplating a 
 modern St. Francis. It is true that in many ways they 
 differed. Thoreau appeared to be contemptuous of 
 authority, and could hardly, we fancy, at any period have 
 been a Catholic ; he was more of a pantheist than we 
 could wish; but, then, we find that a certain suggestion 
 of pantheism underlies the idea of the brotherhood of 
 man and brute, and insinuates itself unconsciously into 
 the utterances even of St. Francis. So, in spite of a 
 striking divergence in the circumstances, we find the 
 points of contact or likeness are more prevailing than 
 are the points of difference. We shall perhaps be 
 better able, after studying Thoreau, to distinguish for 
 ourselves between fact and legend in the life of Francis ; 
 while the flavor which the saint s love of nature im 
 parted to his spiritual fervor will illustrate some ten 
 dencies in the American. Not seldom the best way 
 to resolve the difficulty and darkness of a remote life 
 is by looking reverently at the reality of a kindred 
 life lived near at hand. 
 
 We have often felt it to be little less than amusing 
 to see how ecclesiastical writers of a certain order have 
 been put to it in dealing with St. Francis and his 
 recorded doings with the animals. Their reverence 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 13 
 
 for the man was in odd contrast with the rationalistic 
 tone of thought which colored all their views on this 
 point, and which they could ill escape from. They 
 became lamely apologetic. Even so sympathetic a 
 biographer as Principal Tulloch, of St. Andrews, is 
 all wide-awake lest he should commit himself, and he 
 only glances shyly and unsteadily at this aspect of the 
 matter** Had he known that within the memory of 
 hundreds of men still living, nearly all that is credited 
 to St. Francis was actually done by a solitary in the 
 woods of Walden, we are persuaded that the very 
 reverend and worthy Principal might have put a 
 somewhat bolder face upon it, and not allowed his 
 ultra-rationalist propensity to triumph quite so far as 
 it has done. 
 
 It is, at all events, with a dim hope of this kind 
 that we have made such an apparently wide and, it 
 may be, unexpected circuit to introduce Thoreau to 
 English readers more fully than he has yet been. If 
 his life and rare capability should be found to shed 
 any light whatsoever upon an old but unique biog 
 raphy, does it not claim and deserve such attention as 
 we can bestow upon it ? If a life, spent for the most 
 part amid the bustle and fervor of American city strife, 
 can illuminate in any degree one of the puzzles of the 
 Middle Ages, we shall not misspend our tune in the 
 endeavor to read its main outlines aright. 
 
 * " Good Words," 1877, p. 449 . 
 
14 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 Over and above all this it may be said that Thoreau s 
 life, liberally read, might be taken to show that love 
 of nature, even though allied to mysticism, is a safer 
 road for human nature than that laid open by rational 
 ism and its allies. 
 
 HENRY DAVID THOREAU was born at Concord, 
 Massachusetts, in 1817. He was the youngest son of 
 a French immigrant, who was by trade a lead-pencil 
 maker, and had achieved such a measure of success in 
 his adopted country as enabled him to aim at giving 
 his sons a thoroughly good education. Henry was sent 
 to Harvard University while still young, and gradu 
 ated in 1837; but he achieved little or no distinction 
 either at school or college. He had his own ways 
 of looking at and doing things, and, as is not seldom 
 the case with genius, he was somewhat slow at working 
 his way to the end of a set problem, though having 
 once done so, it was more than mastered. He would 
 not fall into regular studies, and did not attract the 
 masters. Nor did he make friends of his fellow stu 
 dents, but lived a somewhat solitary life. On leaving 
 college, he and an elder brother kept an academy at 
 Concord for a year or two ; and then he was noticeable 
 for his love of rambling abroad in his spare hours, 
 collecting specimens of natural history. He was un- 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 15 
 
 like the sentimentalist, especially in his capacity of 
 attachment to locality, for at no place but Concord 
 did ho ever make a permanent home, however much 
 he loved to wander. The most important event of 
 this period was a journey to the White Mountains 
 with his brother John, which seemed to awaken in him 
 new capacities of knowledge and pleasure. 
 
 Of the school teaching he at length got wearied, and 
 then applied himself to his .father s craft, obtaining 
 certificates for having made a better pencil than any 
 then in use. There is a characteristic story told that 
 he and his father, to show the excellence of their work, 
 resolved to make as good a pencil out of paste as those 
 sawed from black lead in London. The result was 
 accomplished, and the certificate was obtained, Tho 
 reau himself claiming a good share of the success, as 
 he found the means to cut the plates. But more char 
 acteristic than all, perhaps, is the fact that, when he 
 was congratulated on fortune s door being thus thrown 
 wide open to him, he declared that ho would not make 
 another pencil, as he did not wish to do again what he 
 had done once. At this his friends were, of course, 
 greatly disappointed ; but he stood firm and adventured 
 on other industries, doing also a considerable amount 
 of travel and observation during the next few years. 
 
 His mathematical knowledge, and a natural faculty 
 for mensuration, sharpened by his habit of ascertaining 
 
16 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 the sizes and distances of the objects which interested 
 him, leading naturally to an intimate knowledge of the 
 country about Concord, had caused him to drift into the 
 regular profession of land surveyor. His great accu 
 racy and skill in this work soon found him all the em 
 ployment that he wanted. The farmers, no less than 
 his townsmen, learned to respect and admire him, 
 though at first they had thought of him only as an odd, 
 unaccountable kind of person. They discovered that 
 he knew more of their lands than they themselves did, 
 and this was a kind of superiority they could appre 
 ciate. They came to trust and to love him, too, for 
 genuine qualities of mind and character, an appre 
 ciation and affection which he fully returned. 
 
 His first book, written during this time, grew out of 
 a voyage on the Concord and Merrimac rivers, which 
 he made in 1839, with his brother John, who sympa 
 thized with him in many of his tastes, but who died* 
 early, and whose death Thoreau deeply lamented. He 
 makes it a special matter of congratulation that they 
 had built their own boat, a circumstance which, as 
 he fancied, gave such an air of unity and interest as 
 inspired kindred feelings to those of the earliest explor 
 ers. He thus describes it : 
 
 " Our boat, which had cost us a week s labor in the 
 spring, was in form like a fisherman s dory, fifteen feet 
 long by three arid a half in breadth at the widest part, 
 
Thorcau : his Life and Aims. 17 
 
 painted green below, with a border of blue, with 
 reference to the two elements in which it was to spend 
 its existence. It had been loaded the evening before 
 at our door, half a mile from the river, with potatoes 
 and melons, from a patch which we had cultivated, and 
 a few utensils ; and was provided with wheels, in order 
 to be rolled around falls, as well as with two sets of 
 oars, and several slender poles for shoving in shallow 
 places, and also two masts, one of which served for a 
 tent pole at night ; for a buffalo s skin was to be our 
 bed, and a tent of cotton cloth our roof. It was 
 strongly built, but heavy, and hardly of better model 
 than usual. If rightly made, a boat would be a sort 
 of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements, 
 related by one half its structure to some swift and 
 shapely fish, and by the other to some strong-winged 
 and graceful bird. The fish shows where there should 
 be the greater breadth of beam and depth in the hold ; 
 its fins direct where to set the oars, and the tail gives 
 some hint for the form and position of the rudder. 
 The bird shows how to rig and trim the sails, and what 
 form to give the prow that it may balance the boat, 
 and divide the air and water best. These hints we 
 had but partially obeyed. But the eyes, though they 
 are no sailors, will never be satisfied with any model, 
 however fashionable, which docs not answer all the 
 requisitions of art. However, as art is all of a ship 
 
18 Thoreau : his Life and Alms. 
 
 but the wood, and yet the wood alone will rudely serve 
 the purpose of a ship, so our boat being of wood gladly 
 availed itself of the old law that the heavier shall float 
 the lighter, and though a dull water-fowl, proved a suf 
 ficient buoy for our purpose. 
 
 Were it the will of Heaven, nn o.ner bow 
 Were vessel safe enough the seas to plow." 
 
 " Some village friends stood upon a promontory 
 lower down the stream to wave us a last farewell; 
 but we, having already performed these rites, with ex 
 cusable reserve, as bents those who are embarked on 
 unusual enterprises, who behold but speak not, silently 
 glided past the iirm lands of Concord, both peopled 
 cape and lovely summer meadow, with steady sweeps. 
 And yet we did unbend so far as to let our guns speak 
 for us, when at length we had swept out of sight, and 
 thus left the woods to ring again with their echoes; 
 and, it may be, many russet-clad children, lurking in 
 these broad meadows with the bittern and the wood 
 cock and the rail, though wholly concealed by brakes 
 and hard-hack and meadow-sweet, heard our salute that 
 afternoon." 
 
 The account of this week s excursion is full of pic 
 turesque description, as it could not fail to be ; but 
 it likewise contains many wise reflections, and some - 
 fine criticisms of our great authors, Chaucer in par- 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 10 
 
 ticular. Nor is it devoid of scientific interest, though, 
 as yet, he seems more inclined to muse and to make 
 holiday than to do serious work. There is none of the 
 severity of settled purpose about the man or the book. 
 He is gathering materials, but he can afford to make 
 a pastime of his researches, and riot to bustle about it. 
 This passage affords us a genial glimpse of the brothers 
 as they go, quietly observing and thinking, and stimu 
 lating each other : 
 
 " We rowed for some hours between glistening banks 
 before the sun had dried the grass and leaves, or the 
 day had established its character. Its serenity at last 
 seemed the more profound and secure from the dense- 
 ness of the morning s fog. The river became swifter, 
 and the scenery more pleasing than before. The banks 
 were steep and clayey for the most part, and trickling 
 with water; and where a spring oozed out a few feet 
 above the river, the boatmen had cut a trough out of 
 a slab with their axes, and placed it so as to receive 
 the water and fill their jugs conveniently. Sometimes 
 this purer and cooler water, bursting out from under a 
 pine or a rock, was collected into a basin close to the 
 edge of, and level with, the river, a fountain-head of 
 the Merrimac. So near along life s stream are the 
 fountains of innocence and youth, making fertile its 
 sandy margin; and the voyageur w r ill do well to 
 replenish his vessels often at these uncontaimnatcd 
 
20 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 sources. Some youthful spring, perchance, still emp 
 ties with tinkling music into the oldest river, even 
 when it is falling into the sea ; and we imagine that its 
 music is distinguished by the river gods from the gen 
 eral lapse of the stream, and falls sweeter on their ears 
 in proportion as it is nearer to the ocean. As the 
 evaporations of the river feed thus the unexpected 
 springs which filter through its banks, so perchance 
 our aspirations fall back again in springs on the mar 
 gin of life s stream to refreshen and purify it. The 
 yellow and tepid river may float his scow, and cheer 
 his eye with its reflections and its ripples, but the boat 
 man quenches his thirst at -this small rill alone. It is 
 this purer and cooler element that chiefly sustains his 
 life." 
 
 So they go from point to point, mingling the enjoy 
 ments of literature with those of nature ; and thus they 
 
 celebrate their return to their home and its duties : 
 
 " With a bending sail we glided rapidly by Tyngs- 
 boro and Chelmsford, each holding in one hand half 
 of a tart country apple-pie which we had purchased 
 to celebrate our return, and in the other a fragment of 
 the newspaper in which it had been wrapped, devour 
 ing these with divided relish and learning the news 
 which had transpired since we sailed. The river here 
 opened into a broad and straight reach of great length, 
 which we bounded merrily over before a smacking 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 21 
 
 breeze, with a devil-may-care look in our faces, and 
 our boat a white bone in its mouth, and a speed which 
 greatly astonished some scow-boatmen whom we met. 
 The wind in the horizon rolled like a flood over valley 
 and plain, and every tree bent to the blast, and the 
 mountains like schoolboys turned their cheeks to it. 
 They were great and current motions, the flowing 
 sail, the running stream, the waving tree, the roving 
 wind. The north wind stepped readily into the har 
 ness which we had provided, and pulled us along with 
 good will. Sometimes we sailed as gently and steadily 
 as the clouds overhead, watching the receding shores 
 and the motions of our sail ; the play of its pulse, so 
 like our own lives, so thin and yet so full of life, so 
 noiseless when it labored hardest, so noisy and impa 
 tient when least effective ; now bending to some gen 
 erous impulse of the breeze, and then fluttering and 
 flapping with a kind of human suspense. It was the 
 scale on which the varying temperature of distant 
 atmospheres was graduated, and it was some attraction 
 for us that the breeze it played with had been out of 
 doors so long. Thus we sailed, not being able to fly, 
 but, as next best, making a long furrow in the fields 
 of the Merrimac towards our home, with our wings 
 spread, but never lifting our keel from the watery 
 trench, gracefully flowing homeward with our brisk 
 and willing team, wind and stream, pulling together, 
 
22 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 the former yet a wild steer, yoked to her more sedate 
 fellow. It was very near flying, as when the duck 
 rushes through the water with an impulse of the wings, 
 throwing the spray about her before she can rise." 
 
 His " Walk to Wachusett," which was undertaken 
 in 1843, has a value beyond its scientific references. 
 It yields an additional proof that, unlike the egotist or 
 solitary, he could easily make himself at homo with 
 the common people, and met with the heartiest hospi 
 tality wherever he went. It cost him nothing to 
 enter into their ways ; and he never had aught but a 
 pleasant word for them now or at any later period. 
 The following account of this walk to Wachusett is 
 given as much for its significant closing words of 
 gratitude as for its admirable description and scientific 
 thought : 
 
 " As we went on our way late in the afternoon, we 
 refreshed ourselves by bathing our feet in every rill 
 that crossed the road, and anon, as we were able to 
 walk in the shadows of the hills, recovered our morn 
 ing elasticity. Passing through Sterling, we reached 
 the banks of the Stillwater, in the western part of the 
 town, at evening, where is a small village collected. 
 We fancied that there was already a certain western 
 look about this place, a smell of pines and roar of 
 water, recently confined by damn, belying its name, 
 which were exceedingly grateful. When the first 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 23 
 
 inroad lias boon made, a few acres leveled, and a few 
 houses erected, the forest looks wilder than ever. Left 
 to herself, Nature is always more or less civilized, and 
 delights in a certain refinement ; but where the axe 
 has encroached upon the edge of the forest, the dead 
 and unsightly limbs of the pine, which she had con 
 cealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed to 
 sight. This village had, as yet, no post-office, nor any 
 settled name. In the small villages which we entered, 
 the villagers gazed after us, with a complacent, almost 
 compassionate look, as if we were just making our 
 debut in the world at a late hour. Nevertheless, 
 did they seem to say, come and study us, and learn 
 men and manners. So is each one s world but a 
 clearing in the forest, so much open and enclosed 
 ground. The landlord had not yet .returned from the 
 field with his men, and the cows had yet to be milked. 
 But we remembered the inscription on the wall of the 
 Swedish inn, You will find at Trolhatc excellent 
 bread, meat, and wine, provided you bring them with 
 you, and were contented. But I must confess it did 
 somewhat disturb our pleasure, in this withdrawn spot, 
 to have our own village newspaper handed us by our 
 host, as if the greatest charm the country offered to 
 the traveller was the facility of communication with 
 the town. Let it recline on its own everlasting hills, 
 
24 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 and not be looking out from their summits for some 
 petty Boston or New York in the horizon. 
 
 " At intervals we heard the murmuring of water, 
 and the slumberous breathing of crickets throughout 
 the night ; and left the inn the next morning in the gray 
 twilight, after it had been hallowed by the night air, 
 and when only the innocent cows were stirring, with a 
 kind of regret. It was only four miles to the base of the 
 mountain, and the scenery was already more pictur 
 esque. Our road lay along the course of the Still- 
 water, which was brawling at the bottom of a deep 
 ravine, iilled with pines and rocks, tumbling fresh 
 from the mountains, so soon, alas ! to commence its 
 career of usefulness. At first a cloud hung between 
 us and the summit, but it was soon blown away. As 
 we gathered the raspberries, which grew abundantly 
 by the roadside, we fancied that that action was con 
 sistent with a lofty prudence, as if the traveller who 
 ascends into a mountainous region should fortify him 
 self by eating of such light ambrosial fruits as grow 
 there, and drinking of the springs which gush out 
 from the mountain sides, as he gradually inhales the 
 subtler and purer atmosphere of those elevated places, 
 thus propitiating the mountain gods by a sacrifice of 
 their own fruits. The gross products of the plains 
 and valleys are for such as dwell therein ; but it seemed 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 25 
 
 to us that the juices of this berry had relation to the 
 thin air of the mountain tops. 
 
 " In due time we began to ascend the mountain, 
 passing first through a grand sugar-maple wood which 
 bore the marks of the auger, then a denser forest, 
 which gradually became dwarfed till there were no 
 trees whatever. We at length pitched our tent on 
 the summit. It is but nineteen hundred feet above 
 the village of Princeton, and three thousand above 
 the level of the sea; but by this slight elevation it is 
 infinitely removed from the plain, and when we reached 
 it, we felt a sense of remoteness, as if we had travelled 
 into distant regions, to Arabia Petrea, or the farthest 
 east. A robin upon a staff was the highest object in 
 sight. Swallows were flying about us, and the che- 
 wink and cuckoo were heard near at hand. The sum 
 mit consists of a few acres, destitute of trees, covered 
 with bare rocks, interspersed with blueberry bushes, 
 raspberries, gooseberries, strawberries, moss, and a fine 
 wiry grass. The common yellow lily and dwarf- 
 cornel grow abundantly in the crevices of the rocks. 
 This clear space, which is gently rounded, is bounded 
 a few feet lower by a thick shrubbery of oaks, with 
 maples, aspens, beeches, cherries, and occasionally a 
 mountain-ash intermingled, among which we found the 
 bright blueberries of the Solomon s seal, and the fruit 
 of the pyrola. From the foundation of a wooden 
 
26 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 observatory, which was formerly erected on the highest 
 point, forming a rude, hollow structure of stone, a 
 dozen feet in diameter, and five or six in height, we 
 could see Monadnock, in simple grandeur, in the 
 north-west, rising nearly a thousand feet higher, still 
 the far blue mountain, though with an altered pro 
 file. The first day the weather was so hazy that it was 
 in vain we endeavored to unravel the obscurity. It 
 was like looking into the sky again, and the patches 
 of forest here and there seem to flit like clouds over a 
 lower heaven. As to voyagers of an aerial Polynesia, 
 the earth seemed like a larger island in the ether ; on 
 every side, even as low as we, the sky shutting down, 
 like an unfathomable deep around it, a blue Pacific 
 island, where who knows what islanders inhabit ? and 
 as we sail near its shores we see the waving of trees, 
 and hear the lowing of kine. 
 
 " We read Virgil and Wordsworth in our tent, with 
 new pleasure there, while waiting for a clearer atmos 
 phere, nor did the weather prevent our appreciating 
 the simple truth and beauty of Peter Bell : 
 
 And he had lain beside his asses 
 On lofty Cheviot hills: 
 
 And he had trudged through Yorkshire dales, 
 Among the rocks and winding scars ; 
 Where deep and IOAV the hamlets lie 
 Beneath their little patch of sky 
 And little lot of stars. 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 27 
 
 Who knows but this hill may one day be a Helvellyn, 
 or even a Parnassus, and the muses haunt here, and 
 other Homers frequent the neighboring plains 
 
 Not unconcerned Wachusett rears his head 
 Above the field, so late from Nature won, 
 
 "With patient brow reserved, as one who read 
 New annals in the history of man. 
 
 " The blueberries which the mountain afforded, added 
 to the milk we had brought, made our frugal supper, 
 while for entertainment the even-song of the wood- 
 thrush rung along the ridge. Our eyes rested on no 
 painted ceiling nor carpeted hall, but on skies of 
 Nature s painting, and hills and forests of her em 
 broidery. Before sunset, we rambled along the ridge 
 to the north, while a hawk soared still above us. It 
 was a place where gods might wander so solemn and 
 solitary, and removed from all contagion with the 
 plain. As the evening came on, the haze was con 
 densed in vapor, and the landscape became more dis 
 tinctly visible, and numerous sheets of water were 
 brought to light. 
 
 Et jam suinma procul villarum culmina fumant, 
 Majoresque cadunt altis do montibus umbrae. 
 
 And now the tops of the villas smoke afar off, 
 
 And the shadows fall longer from the high mountains. 
 
 " As we stood on the stone tower while the sun was 
 setting, we saw the shades of night creep gradually 
 over the valleys of the cast, and the inhabitants went 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 into their houses, and shut their doors, while the moon 
 silently rose up, and took possession of that part. And 
 then the same scene was repeated on the west side, as 
 far as Connecticut and the Green Mountains, and the 
 sun s rays fell on us two alone, of all New England 
 
 111011. 
 
 " It was the night but one before the full of the 
 moon, so bright that we could sec to read distinctly by 
 moonlight, and in the evening strolled over the sum 
 mit without danger. There was, by chance, a fire 
 blazing on Monadnock that night, which lighted up 
 the whole western horizon, and, by making us aware of 
 a community of mountains, made our position seem 
 less solitary. But at length the wind drove us to the 
 shelter of our tent, and we closed its door for the night, 
 and fell asleep. 
 
 ("It was thrilling to hear the wind roar over the 
 rocks, at intervals when we waked, for it had grown 
 quite cold and windy. The night was in its elements, 
 simple even to majesty in that bleak place, a bright 
 moonlight and a piercing wind. It was at no time 
 darker than twilight within the tent, and we could 
 easily see the moon through its transparent roof as 
 we lay; for there was the moon still above us, with 
 Jupiter and Saturn on either hand, looking down on 
 Wachusett, and it was a satisfaction to know that they 
 were our fellow-travellers still, as high and out of our 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 129 
 
 reach as our own destiny. Truly the stars were given 
 for a consolation to man. We should not know but our 
 life were fated to be always grovelling, but it is per 
 mitted to behold them, and surely they are deserving 
 of a fair destiny. We see laws which never fail, of 
 whose failure we never conceived ; and their lamps burn 
 all the night, too, as well as day, so rich and lavish is 
 that nature which can afford this superfluity of light. 
 " The morning twilight began as soon as the moon 
 had set, and we arose and kindled our fire, whose 
 blaze might have been seen for thirty miles around. 
 As the daylight increased it was remarkable how rap 
 idly the wind went down. There was no dew on the 
 summit, but coldness supplied its place. When the 
 dawn had reached its prime, we enjoyed the view of a 
 distant horizon line, and could fancy ourselves at sea, 
 and the distant hills the waves in the horizon, as seen 
 from the deck of a vessel. The cherry-birds flitted 
 around us, the nut-hatch and flicker were heard among 
 the bushes, the titmouse perched within a few feet, 
 and the song of the wood-thrush again run along the 
 ridge. At length we saw the sun rise up out of the 
 sea, and shine on Massachusetts; and from this mo 
 ment the atmosphere grew more and more transparent 
 till the time of our departure, and we began to realize 
 the extent of the view, and how the earth, in some 
 degree, answered to the heavens in breadth, the white 
 
30 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 villages to the constellations in the sky. There was 
 little of the sublimity and grandeur which belong to 
 mountain scenery, but an immense landscape to pon 
 der on a summer s day. We could see how ample 
 and roomy is nature. As far as the eye could reach, 
 there was little life in the landscape ; the few birds 
 that flitted past did not crowd. The travellers on the 
 remote highways, which intersect the country on every 
 side, had no fellow-travellers for miles before or behind. 
 On every side, the eye ranged over successive circles 
 of towns, rising one above another, like the terraces of 
 a vineyard, till they were lost in the horizon. Wachu- 
 sctt is, in fact, the observatory of the State. There 
 lay Massachusetts, spread out before us in its length 
 and tTrcadth, like a map. There was the level horizon, 
 which told of the sea on the east and south, the well- 
 known hills of New Hampshire on the north, and the 
 misty summits of the Hoosac and Green Mountains, 
 first made visible to us the evening before, blue and 
 unsubstantial, like some bank of clouds which the 
 morning wind would dissipate, on the north-west and 
 Avest. These last distant ranges, on which the eye 
 rests unwearied, commence with an abrupt boulder in 
 the north, beyond the Connecticut, and travel south 
 ward, with three or four peaks dimly seen. But Mo- 
 nadnock, rearing its masculine front in the north 
 west, is the grandest feature. As we beheld it, we 
 
TJioreau : his Life and Aims. 31 
 
 knew that it was the height of land between the two 
 rivers, on this side the valley of the Merrimac, on that 
 of the Connecticut, fluctuating with their blue seas of 
 air, these rival vales, already teeming with Yankee men 
 along their respective streams, born to what destiny 
 who shall tell ? Watatic and the neighboring hills in 
 this State and in New Hampshire arc a continuation 
 of the same elevated range on which we were stand 
 ing. But that New Hampshire bluff, that promon 
 tory of a State, lowering day and night on this our 
 State of Massachusetts, will longest haunt our dreams. 
 
 " We could, at length, realize the place mountains 
 occupy on the land, and how they come into the gen 
 eral scheme of the universe. f 
 
 " When first we climb their summits and observe 
 their lesser irregularities we do not give credit to the 
 comprehensive intelligence which shaped them; but 
 when afterward we behold their outlines in the horizon, 
 we confess that the hand which moulded their oppo 
 site slopes, making one to balance the other, worked 
 round a deep centre, and was privy to the plan of the 
 universe. So is the least part of nature in its bear 
 ings referred to all space. These lesser mountain 
 ranges, as well as the Alleghanies, run from the 
 north-east to south-west, and parallel with these moun 
 tain streams are the more fluent rivers, answering to 
 the general direction of the coast, the bank of the 
 
32 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 great ocean stream itself. Even the clouds, with their 
 thin bars, fall into the same direction by preference, 
 and such even is the course of the prevailing winds, and 
 the migration of men and birds. A mountain-chain 
 
 O 
 
 determines many things for the statesman and philoso 
 pher. The improvements of civilization 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 land, through their thin atmos 
 phere, the follies of the plain are refined and purified; 
 and as many species of plants do not scale their sum 
 mits, so many species of folly no doubt do not cross 
 the Alleghanics ; it is only the hardy mountain plant 
 that creeps quite over the ridge, and descends into the 
 valley beyond. 
 
 " We get a dim notion of the flight of birds, espe 
 cially of such as fly high in the air, by having ascended 
 a mountain. We can now see what landmarks moun 
 tains are to their migrations; how the Catskills and 
 Highlands have hardly sunk to them when Wachu- 
 sett and Monadnock open a passage to the north-east ; 
 how they are guided, too, in their course by the rivers 
 and valleys ; and who knows but by the stars, as well as 
 the mountain ranges, and not by the petty landmarks 
 which we use. The bird whose eye takes in the 
 Green Mountains on the one side, and the ocean on 
 the other, need not be at a loss to find its way. 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 33 
 
 " At noon we descended the mountain, and, having 
 returned to the abodes of men, turned our faces to the 
 east again ; measuring our progress, from time to time, 
 by the more ethereal hues which the mountain assumed. 
 Passing swiftly through Stillwater and Sterling, as 
 with a downward impetus, we found ourselves almost 
 at home again in the green meadows of Lancaster, so 
 like our own Concord, for both are watered by two 
 streams which unite near their centres, and have many 
 other features in common. There is an unexpected 
 refinement about this scenery ; level prairies of great 
 extent, interspersed with elms and hop-fields and groves 
 of trees, give it almost a classic appearance. This it 
 will be remembered, was the scene of Mrs. Howland- 
 son s capture, and of other events in the Indian wars, 
 but from this July afternoon, and under that mild 
 exterior, those times seemed as remote as the irruption 
 of the Goths. They were the dark ago of New Eng 
 land. On beholding a picture of a New England vil 
 lage as it then . appeared, with a fair open prospect, 
 and a light on trees and river, as if it were broad noon, 
 we find we had not thought the sun shone in those 
 days, or that men lived in broad daylight then. Y r e 
 do not imagine the sun shining on hill and valley dur 
 ing Philip s war, nor on the war-path of Paugus, or 
 Standish, or Church, or Lovcll, with serene summer 
 weather, but a dim twilight or night did those events 
 
 3 
 
34 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 transpire in. They must have fought in the shade of 
 their own dusky deeds. 
 
 " At length, as we plodded along the dusty roads, 
 our thoughts "became as dusty as they; all thought 
 indeed stopped, thinking broke down, or proceeded 
 only passively in a sort of rhythmical cadence of the 
 confused material of thought, and we found ourselves 
 mechanically repeating some familiar measure which 
 timed with our tread ; some verse of the Robin Hood 
 ballads, for instance, which one can recommend to 
 travel by. 
 
 Swearers are swift, say<l lyttle John, 
 
 As the wind blows over the hill ; 
 For if it be never so loud this night, 
 Tomorrow it may be still. 
 
 And so it went up hill and down till a stone inter 
 rupted the line, when a new verse .was chosen. 
 
 His shoote it was but loosely shot, 
 Yet flewe not the arrowe in vaine, 
 
 For it met one of the sheriffe s men, 
 And William-a-Trent was slaine. 
 
 "There is, however, this consolation to the most 
 way-worn traveller, upon the dustiest road, that the 
 path his feet describe is so perfectly symbolical of 
 human life, now climbing the hills, now descending 
 into the vales. From the summits he beholds the 
 heavens and the horizon, from the vales he looks up 
 to the heights again. He is treading his old lessons 
 
TJioreau : his Life and Aims. 35 
 
 still, and though he may be very weary and travel- 
 worn, it is yet sincere experience. 
 
 " Leaving the Nashua, we changed our route a lit 
 tle, and arrived at Stillriver village, in the western 
 part of Harvard, just as the sun was setting. From 
 this place, which lies to the northward, upon the wes 
 tern slope of the same range of hills on which we had 
 spent the noon before, in the adjacent town, the pros 
 pect is beautiful, and the grandeur of the mountain 
 outlines unsurpassed. There was such a repose and 
 quiet here at this hour, as if the very hill-sides were 
 enjoying the scene, and we passed slowly along, look 
 ing back over the country we had traversed; and 
 listening to the evening song of the robin, we could 
 not help contrasting the equanimity cf nature with the 
 bustle and impatience of man. His words and actions 
 presume always a crisis near at hand, but she is for 
 ever silent and unpretending. 
 
 -^" And now that we have returned to the desultory 
 life of the plain, let us endeavor to import a little of 
 that mountain grandeur into it. We will remember 
 within what walls we lie, and understand that this level 
 life too has its summit, and why from the mountain top 
 the deepest valleys have a tinge of blue ; that there is 
 elevation in every hour, as no part of the earth is so 
 low that the heavens may not be seen from, and we 
 
36 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 have only to stand on the summit of our hour to com 
 mand an uninterrupted horizon, j) 
 
 "We rested that night at Harvard, and the next 
 morning, while one bent his stops to the nearer village 
 of Groton, the other took his separate and solitary way 
 to the peaceful meadows of Concord; but lot him not 
 forget to record the brave hospitality of a farmer and 
 his wife, who generously entertained him at their 
 board, though the poor wayfarer could only congratu 
 late the one on the continuance of hay weather, and 
 silently accept the kindness of the other. Refreshed 
 by this instance of generosity, no less than by the sub 
 stantial viands set before him, he pushed forward with 
 new vigor, and reached the banks of the Concord before 
 the sun had climbed many degrees into the heavens." 
 
 His taste for a wild life was not completely sat 
 isfied by these occasional adventures, and his love of 
 nature and of natural history studies suggested a closer 
 association. For years, when not travelling, he had 
 been an almost daily visitor at Walden wood, the 
 bulk of his surveying work lying in it or near to it. 
 The pleasure his roamings in the woods had afforded him 
 was of so pure and inspiring a kind that he was drawn 
 to seek opportunities to carry out his studies of nature 
 yet more consistently and steadily. So he took a great 
 resolve, and in March of 1845 began the building of 
 his house in Vv r alden wood, which, as often happens, 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 37 
 
 Jaecause it has somewhat of an outre look, has occupied 
 a wholly disproportionate place in the general notion 
 of Thoreau. " By the middle of April it was framed 
 and ready for raising," and by the 4th of July, not 
 without significance either, being Independence Day, 
 
 he went into occupation. lie had purchased the 
 boards of an Irishman s shanty, and exults as he looks 
 on his finished work, that " there is some of the same 
 fitness in a man s building his own house that there is 
 in a bird s building. its own nest." 
 
 And a right trim little abode it was, with its one 
 cheerful window and detached offices, if we may at all 
 credit the frontispiece of his first work, " Waldcn." He 
 can exult in the fact that by habit men can do with 
 but little shelter, and vastly admires the Penobscot 
 Indians, who have nothing but a thin tent between 
 them and the snow, and do not suffer by it. Thus he 
 finds that savage life attains in one primitive principle 
 the equality which modern societies vainly yearn for, 
 
 the poorest having as good a shelter as the highest ! 
 Yet his hatred of waste and shiftlessness was as nota 
 ble as these other traits. He says in one place, 
 " There is none so poor that he need sit on a pumpkin. 
 That is shiftlessncss. There are plenty of such chairs 
 as I like best to be had for the taking of them away." 
 And it is very odd to observe, amid his apparent indif 
 ference to wealth and self-interest, the really Yankee 
 
Thoreau : his T^lfe and Aims. 
 
 way in wliicli he exults in "being able to provide for 
 himself with his own hands, so checkmating nature as 
 to have a balance over. His statement of accounts of 
 the cost of the Waldcn hut is full of unconscious hu 
 mor. He recalls, with natural complacency, that at 
 Cambridge College the student pays for his room one 
 dollar eighty-seven and a half cents each year more 
 than his house had cost him, and has thereupon some 
 quaint reflections on true education. He congratu 
 lates himself on the absence of all baggage, traps, 
 as, he says, the popular slang calls it, and avows his 
 conviction that " to maintain one s self on this earth is 
 not a hardship, but a pastime, if we will live simply 
 and wisely," as the pursuits of the "simple nations 
 are still the sports of the artificial." ) He himself tells 
 us, when speaking of his book " Waldcn : " " When I 
 wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, 
 I lived alone in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, 
 in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of 
 Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned 
 my living by the labor of my hands only." Ho devoted 
 a certain time each week to the work of surveying for 
 the farmers near by ; all the rest was devoted to obser 
 vation and study. 
 
 "My house was on the side of a hill, immediately 
 on the edge of the larger wood, in the midst of a young 
 forest of pitch pines and hickories, and half a dozen 
 
Thoreau: his Life^ind Aims/ f A 39 
 
 \ f t fm "V 
 
 rods from the pond, to vfhiclf ji marrow TO&Spath led 
 down the hill. In my front yarcT^y thp strawnerjry, 
 blackberry, and life-everlasting, johnswort,.A)?ld golden * ] 
 rod, shrub oaks, and sand cherry, blueberry and gfo/ii 1 
 nut. Near the end of May, the sand cherry 
 pumila ) adorned the sides of the path with its del 
 catc flowers arranged in umbels cylindrically about its 
 short stems, which last, in the fall, weighed down with 
 good sized and handsome cherries, fell over in wreaths 
 like rays on every side. I tasted them out of compli 
 ment to nature, though they were scarcely palatable. 
 The sumach (rhus ylabrci) grew luxuriantly about 
 the house, pushing up through the embankment which 
 I had made, and growing five or six feet the iirst sea 
 son. Its broad pinnate tropical leaf was pleasant though 
 strange to look on. The large buds, suddenly push 
 ing out late in the spring from dry sticks which had 
 seemed to be dead, developed themselves as by 
 magic into graceful green and tender boughs, an inch 
 in diameter ; and sometimes, as I sat at my window, so 
 heedlessly did they grow and tax their weak joints, I 
 heard a fresh and tender bough suddenly fall like a 
 fan to the ground, when there was not a breath of air 
 stirring, broken off by its own weight. In August 
 the large masses of berries, which, when in ilower, had 
 attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed their 
 
40 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again 
 bent down and broke the tender limbs." 
 
 Nevertheless, he has some difficulties and adven 
 tures ; and must indenture himself for a short while 
 to the stern task-mistress, Experience, before he can 
 feel himself fully free to fraternize with Nature : 
 
 "As I had little aid from horses or cattle, or hired 
 men or boys, or improved implements of husbandry, 
 I was much slower, and became much more intimate 
 with my beans than usual. But labor of the hands, 
 even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is per 
 haps never the worst form of idleness. It has a con 
 stant and imperishable moral, and to the scholar it 
 yields a classic result. A very agricola laboriosus 
 was I to travellers bound westward through Lincoln 
 and Wayland to nobody knows where; they sitting 
 at their case in gigs, with elbows on knees, and reins 
 loosely hanging in festoons ; I the home-staying, labo 
 rious native of the soil. But soon my homestead was 
 out of their sight and thought. It was the only open 
 and cultivated field for a great distance on cither side 
 of the road ; so they made the most of it ; and some 
 times the man in the field heard more of travellers 
 gossip and comment than was meant for his car: 
 Beans so late ! peas so late! for I continued to 
 plant when others had begun to hoe, the ministerial 
 husbandman had not suspected it. Corn, my boy, 
 
 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 41 
 
 for fodder; corn for fodder. * Does he live there ? 
 asks the black bonnet of the gray coat ; and the hard- 
 featured farmer reins up his grateful dobbin to inquire 
 what you are doing where he sees no manure in the fur 
 row, and recommends a little chip dirt, or any little 
 waste stuff, or, it may be, ashes or plaster. But here 
 were two acres and a half of furrows, and only a hoe 
 for cart and two hands to draw it, there being an 
 aversion to other carts and horses, and chip dirt far 
 away. Fellow-travellers as they rattled by compared it 
 aloud with the fields which they had passed, so that I 
 came to know how I stood in the agricultural world. 
 This was one field not in Mr. Colcman s report. And, 
 by the way, who estimates the value of the crop which 
 Nature yields in the still wilder fields unimproved by 
 man ? The crop of English hay is carefully weighed, 
 the moisture calculated, the silicates and the potash; 
 but in all dells and pond holes in the woods and pas 
 tures and swamps grows a rich and various crop only 
 unrcaped by man. Mine was, as it were, the connect 
 ing link between wild and cultivated fields ; as some 
 states are civilized, and others half-civilized, and others 
 savage or barbarous, so my field was, though not in a 
 bad sense, a half -cultivated field. They were beans 
 cheerfully returning to their wild and primitive state 
 that I cultivated, and my hoe played the JRanz des 
 Vetches for them/ 
 
42 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 Even the baking of bread is not so simple as it had 
 seemed, but he takes his own lino and learns even 
 where he appears to lose : 
 
 "Bread I at iirst made of pure Indian meal and 
 salt, genuine hoc-cakes, which I baked before my fire 
 out of doors on a shingle or the end of a stick of tim 
 ber sawed off in building my house ; but it was wont 
 to get smoked and to have a piny flavor. I triced 
 flour also; but have at last found a mixture of rye 
 and Indian meal most convenient and agreeable. In 
 cold weather it was no little amusement to bake sev 
 eral small loaves of this in succession, tending and 
 turning them as carefully as an Egyptian his hatching 
 eggs. They were a real cereal fruit which I ripened, 
 and they had to my senses a fragrance like that of 
 other noble fruits, which I kept in as long as possible 
 by wrapping them in cloths. I made a study of the 
 ancient and indispensable art of bread-making, con 
 sulting such authorities as offered, going back to the 
 primitive days and first invention of the unleavened 
 kind, when from the wildncss of nuts and meats men 
 first reached the mildness and refinement of this diet, 
 and travelling gradually down in my studies through 
 that accidental souring of the dough which, it is sup 
 posed, taught the leavening process, and through the 
 various fermentations thereafter, till I came to food 
 
 o * 
 
 sweet, wholesome bread, the staff of life. Leaven. 
 
Thoreau : Jus Life and Aims. 43 
 
 which some deem the soul of bread, the spiritus which 
 fills its cellular tissue, which is religiously preserved 
 like the vestal fire, some precious bottle-full, I sup 
 pose, first brought over in the Mayflower did the busi 
 ness for America, and its influence is still rising-, 
 swelling, spreading, in cerealian billows over the 
 land, this seed I regularly and faithfully procured 
 from the village, till at length one morning I forgot 
 the rules, and scalded my yeast, by which accident I 
 discovered that even this was not indispensable, for 
 my discoveries were not by the synthetic but analytic 
 process, and I have gladly omitted it since, though 
 most housewives earnestly assured me that .safe and 
 wholesome bread without yeast might not be, and 
 elderly people prophesied a speedy decay of the vital 
 forces. Yet I find it not to be an essential ingredient, 
 and, after going without it for a year, am still in the 
 land of the living ; and I am glad to escape the trivial- 
 ness of carrying a bottleful in my pocket, which would 
 sometimes pop and discharge its contents to my dis 
 comfiture. It is simpler and more respectable to omit 
 it. Man is an animal who, more than any other, 
 can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances. 
 Neither did I put any sal-soda, or other acid or alkali, 
 into my bread. It would seem that I made it accord 
 ing to the recipe which Marcus Porcius Cato gave 
 about two centuries before Christ : Panem depsticium 
 
44 Thoreau: Ms Life and Aims. 
 
 sic facito. Manus mortariumque bene lavato. Farj- 
 nam in mortarium indito, aqua) paulatim addito, 
 subigitoque pulclirc. Ubi bene subegeris, delingito, 
 coquitoque sub testu. Which I take to mean, 
 Make kneaded bread thus. Wash your hands and 
 trough well. Put the meal into the trough, add water 
 gradually, and knead it thoroughly. When you have 
 kneaded it well, mould it, and bake it under a cover, 
 that is, in a baking-kettle. Not a word about leaven. 
 But I did not always use this staff of life. At one 
 time, owing to the emptiness of my purse, I saw none 
 of it for more than a month." 
 
 Having now but few human companions, in the 
 shape of occasional visitors, Emerson, one of his 
 nearest neighbors, amongst tjiem, he honestly tried 
 what the lower creatures could do for him. And soon 
 he and they were on the most intimate terms. The 
 fishes came, as it seemed, into his hand if he but 
 dipped it in the stream $ the mice would come and 
 playfully eat out of his fingers, and the very mole 
 paid him friendly visits; sparrows alighted on his 
 shoulder at his call , phoebes built in his shed ; and 
 the wild partridge with her brood came and fed quietly 
 beneath his window as he sat and looked at them. 
 He himself, has thus celebrated his first domestic com 
 panions in Walden : 
 
 " The mice which haunted my house were not the 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 45 
 
 common ones, which are said to have been introduced 
 into the country, but a wild native kind not found in 
 the village. I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, 
 and it interested him much. When I was building, 
 one of these had its nest underneath the house, and 
 before I had laid the second floor, and swept out the 
 shavings, would come out regularly at lunch time and 
 pick up the crumbs at my feet. It probably had never 
 seen a man before ; and it soon became quite familiar, 
 and would run over my shoes and up my clothes. It 
 could readily ascend the sides of the room by short 
 impulses, like a squirrel, which it resembled in its 
 motions. At length, as I leaned with my elbow on 
 the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, and along 
 my sleeve, and round and round the paper which held 
 my dinner, while I kept the latter close, and dodged 
 and played at bo-peep with it; and when at last I 
 held still a piece of cheese between my thumb and 
 finger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and 
 afterward cleaned its face and paws, like a fly, and 
 walked away. 
 
 "A. phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robin for 
 protection in a pine which grew against the house. 
 In June the partridge (Tetrao umbellas), which is 
 so shy a bird, led her brood past my windows, from 
 the woods in the rear to the front of my house, cluck 
 ing and calling to ^them like a hen, and in all her 
 
40 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 behavior proving herself the hen of the woods. The 
 young suddenly disperse on your approach, at a signal 
 from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them 
 away ; and they so exactly resemble tho dried leaves 
 and twigs that many a traveller has placed his foot in 
 the midst of a brood, and heard the whir of the old 
 bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls and mewing, 
 or seen her trail her wings to attract his attention, 
 without suspecting their neighborhood. The parent 
 will sometimes roll and spin round before you in such 
 a deshabille, that you cannot, for a few moments, detect 
 what kind of creature it is. The young squat still 
 and flat, often running their heads under a leaf, and 
 mind only their mother s directions given from a dis 
 tance, nor will your approach make them run again 
 and betray themselves. You may even tread on them, 
 or have your eyes on them for a minute, without dis 
 covering them. I have held them in my open hand at 
 such a time, and still their only care, obedient to their 
 mother and their instinct, was to squat there without 
 fear or trembling. So perfect is t^iis instinct that 
 once, when I had laid them on the leaves again, and 
 one accidentally fell on its side, it was found with the 
 rest in exactly the same position ten minutes afterwards. 
 They are not callow like the young of most birds, but 
 more fully developed and precocious even than chickens. 
 The remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 47 
 
 open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelli 
 gence seems reflected in them. They suggest not 
 merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by 
 experience. Such an eye was not born when the bird 
 was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects. The woods 
 do not yield such another gem. The traveller does not 
 often look into such a limpid well. The ignorant or 
 reckless sportsman often shoots the parent at such a 
 time, and leaves these innocents to fall a prey to some 
 prowling beast or bird, or gradually mingle with the de 
 caying leaves which they so much resemble. It is said 
 that when hatched by a hen they will directly disperse 
 on some alarm, and so are lost, for they never hear the 
 mother s call which gathers them again. These were 
 my hens and chickens. 
 
 "It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and 
 free, though secret, in the woods, and still sustain 
 themselves in the neighborhood of towns, suspected by 
 hunters only. How retired the otter manages to live 
 here ! He grows to be four feet long, as big as a 
 small boy, perhaps without any human being getting 
 a glimpse of him. I formerly saw the raccoon in the 
 woods behind where my house is built, and probably 
 still heard their whinnering at night. Commonly I 
 rested an hour or two in the shade at noon, after plant 
 ing, and ate my lunch, and read a little by a spring 
 which was the source of a swamp and of a brook, ooz- 
 
48 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 ing from under Blister s Hill, half a mile from my 
 field. The approach to this was through a succession 
 of descending grassy hollows full of young pitch pines 
 into a larger wood about the swamp. Here, in a very 
 secluded and shaded spot, under a spreading white- 
 pine, there was yet a clean firm sward to sit on. I 
 had dug out the spring and made a well of clear gray 
 water, where I could dip up a pailful without soiling 
 it, and thither I went for this purpose almost every 
 day in midsummer, when the pond was warmest. 
 Thither, too, the wood-cock led her brood, to probe the 
 mud for worms, flying but a foot above them down 
 the bank, while they ran in a troop beneath ; but at 
 last, spying me, she would leave her young and circle 
 round and round me, nearer and nearer till within four 
 or five feet, pretending broken wings and legs, to 
 attract my attention, and get off her young, who would 
 already have taken up their march, with faint wiry 
 peep, single file through the swamp, as she directed. 
 Or I heard the peep of the young when I could not 
 see the parent bird. There, too, the turtle-doves sat 
 over the spring, or fluttered from bough to bough of 
 the soft white pines over my head ; or the red squirrel, 
 coursing down the nearest bough, was particularly 
 familiar and inquisitive. You only need sit still long 
 enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all 
 its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns." 
 
Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 49 
 
 Ho draws his brute friends towards him as if by 
 secret magnetic attractions, and never seems to fail in 
 the long run in finding what he seeks. One of his 
 friends has given an almost ludicrous account of his 
 helpless endeavors to free himself from the society of 
 a squirrel of a peculiar species which he had taken for 
 a time in order to observe its habits and mode of 
 movement. More than once he conveyed the little 
 creature to the tree from which he had taken it, but 
 it immediately returned to his hand, sat there, and 
 declined to betake itself to its old haunts, at length 
 hiding its head in the folds of his waistcoat ; a demon 
 stration that he could not resist. He therefore marched 
 his pet back to the hut. 
 
 This is quite as marvellous and quite as touching 
 as some of the stories told of St. Francis. One day, 
 we read a live leveret was brought to him. His gen 
 tle heart was moved to pity, and he said, "Little 
 brother leveret, come to me ; " and although he desired 
 the creature to escape, it always returned and nestled 
 in the cloak of the loving Father. The same story is 
 told of a wild rabbit. "It still returned," says his 
 biographer, Bonaventura, "into the Father s bosom, 
 as if it had some hidden sense of the pitifulness of 
 his heart." 
 
 "Thoreau s intimacy with animals," says another 
 friend, "suggested what Thomas Fuller records of 
 
 oo 
 4 
 
50 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 Butler, the apiologist, that cither he had told the 
 bees things, or the bees had told him. " And this 
 friend avouches that "snakes coiled round his leg; 
 that fishes swam into his hand, and he took them out 
 of the water;" that he "pulled the woodchuck out of 
 its hole by the tail, and took the foxes under his pro 
 tection from the hunters." Nathaniel Hawthorne, in 
 one of his Note-books, tells us that his first hint of 
 Donatello, in " The Marble Faun," was derived from 
 these attractions and half-animal instincts of Thoreau. 
 
 And the more intimate Thoreau grows with his 
 brute friends the more his respect and love for them 
 rises. He writes, "If we take the age into account, 
 may there not be a civilization going on among brutes 
 as well as men ? They seem to me to be rudimental, 
 burrowing men, still standing on their defence, await 
 ing their transformation." 
 
 We are fully aware that not a few will be inclined 
 summarily to dismiss our claims for some special sym 
 pathetic power in Thoreau by saying that his influence 
 was simply magnetic ; and will remind us that in their 
 youth they had "tickled trout," and so on. To this 
 we should be inclined to reply that, if magnetic attrac 
 tion accounts for anything in Thoreau, sympathy and 
 patience and spiritual discernment count for far more. 
 The power to tickle trout is not uncommon, but 
 Thoreau s affinities and friendships with animals were 
 
T/toreau : his Life and Aims. 51 
 
 not limited to that achievement; he himself claimed 
 that it was a fully realized and active sense of brother 
 hood that gave him any command he had over the 
 lower creatures. 
 
 Notice too how entirely different is Thoreau s feel 
 ing for the dumb creatures from that which animates 
 the common pet-keeper, who almost seems to aim at 
 destroying the true brute nature, and the dim rudi 
 mentary humanity along with it, in order to make them 
 little less than snobs. Thoreau, instead of being 
 in reactionary divorce from man, loves the animals 
 because they are manlike, and seem to yearn toward 
 human forms. And to him even inanimate nature 
 looks man ward in its constancies, if in nothing else. 
 What a glimpse this passage from Mr. Channing gives 
 us of the man : 
 
 " Thoreau named all the birds without a gun, a 
 weapon he never used in mature years. He neither 
 killed nor imprisoned any. animal, unless driven by 
 acute needs. He brought home a flying squirrel, to 
 study its mode of flight, but quickly carried it back 
 to the wood. lie possessed true instincts of topo 
 graphy, and could conceal choice things in the bush 
 and find them again ; unlike Gall, who commonly lost 
 his locality and himself, as ho tells us, when in the 
 wood, master as he was in playing on the organ. If 
 Thoreau nocded -a box i:i his walk, lie would strip a 
 
52 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 piece of Tbircli bark off the tree, fold it, when cut 
 straightly, together, and put his tender lichen or "brit 
 tle creature therein." 
 
 And, naturally nothing afforded him more delight 
 than to observe the graceful prudence of animals. 
 The shifts to which he had often to put himself to 
 achieve this knowledge without cruelty perhaps did 
 more than aught else to develop in him his wonderful, 
 half-animal sagacities. Mr. Emerson says : 
 
 " It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him. 
 He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and passed 
 through it freely by paths of his own. Under his arm 
 he carried an old music-book to press plants; in his 
 pocket his diary and pencil, a spy-glass for birds, micro 
 scope, jack-knife, and twine. . . . The naturalist 
 waded into the pool for the water-plants, and his 
 strong legs were no insignificant part of his armor. 
 On this day he looked for the menyanthes and detected 
 it across the wide pool; and, on examination of the 
 floret, declared that it had been in flower five days. 
 He drew out of his breast-pocket a diary, and read the 
 names of all the plants that should bloom that day, 
 whereof he kept account as a banker does when his 
 notes fall due : The Cypripcdium not due till tomor 
 row. He thought that, if waked up from a trance in 
 this swamp, he could tell by the plants what time of 
 the year it was within two days. The redstart was 
 
Thoreau : his T^ife and Aims. 53 
 
 flying about, and presently the fine grosbeaks, whoso 
 brilliant scarlet makes the rash gazer wipe his eye, 
 and whose fine clear note Thoreau compared to that 
 of a tanager which has got rid of its hoarseness. Pres 
 ently he heard a note which he called that of the 
 night-warbler, a bird he had never identified, had been 
 in search of twelve years, which always, when he saw 
 it, was in the act of diving down into a tree or bush, 
 and which it was vain to seek; the only bird that 
 sings indifferently by night and by day. I told him 
 he must beware of finding and booking it, lest life 
 should have nothing more to show him. He said, 
 What you seek in vain for half your life, one day 
 you come full upon all the family at dinner. You 
 seek it like a dream, and as soon as you find it, you 
 become its prey. His power of observation seemed 
 to indicate additional senses. lie saw as with a micro 
 scope, heard as with an car-trumpet, and his memory 
 was a photographic register of all he saw and heard. 
 He once remarked that by night every dwelling-house 
 gives out a bad air, like a slaughter-house. . . . 
 And yet none knew better than he that it is not the 
 fact that imports but the impression or effect of tho 
 fact on the mind. . . . His interest in the flower 
 or the bird lay very deep in his mind, was connected 
 with Nature, and the meaning of Nature was never 
 attempted to be defined by him. . . . Our natur- 
 
54 Thorcau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 alist had perfect magnanimity; lie had no secrets; he 
 would carry you to the heron s haunt, cr even to his 
 most prized botanical swamp, possibly knowing that 
 you could never find it again, yet willing to take his 
 risks. . . . He could pace rods more accurately 
 than another man could measure them with rod and 
 chain. He could find his way in the woods at night 
 better by his feet than by his eyes. He knew every 
 track in the snow and on the ground, and what crea 
 ture had taken the path in the snow before him." 
 
 We have this further hint of a point in his method 
 from another hand : 
 
 "He ascended such hills as Monadnock or Saddlo- 
 back Mountains by his own path, and would lay down 
 his map on the summit and draw a line to the point 
 lie proposed to visit 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." 
 
 Mr. Channing thus aptly supplements Mr. Emer 
 son s report : 
 
 "Alpine and sea plants he admired, besides those 
 of his own village ; of the latter, he mostly attended 
 willows, golden-rods, asters, polygonums, sedges, and 
 grasses; fungi and lichens he somewhat affected. He 
 
Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 55 
 
 was accustomed to date the day of tlie month by the 
 appearance of certain flowers, and thus visited special 
 plants for a series of years, in order to form an aver 
 age ; as his white-thorn by Tarbell s Spring, Good 
 for tomorrow, if not for today. The bigness of noted 
 trees, the number of rings, the degree of branching by 
 which their age may be drawn; the larger forests, 
 such as that princely Inches Oak- Wood, in West 
 Acton, or Wetherbee s patch, he paid attention to." 
 Another of Thoreau s trusted friends gives us this 
 glimpse of him in congenial circumstances; that is, 
 amongst the children and students who, in spite of 
 what some critics would have us to regard as his mor 
 bidity and bruscjueness and repulsive bluntncss, came 
 great distances to spend their holiday with him in his 
 retreat : 
 
 ( " Sometimes I have gone with Thoreau and his 
 young comrades for an expedition on the river, to 
 gather, it may be, water-lilies. Upon such excursions, 
 his resources for our entertainment were inexhausti 
 ble, lie would tell stories of the Indians who once 
 dwelt thereabout, until the children almost looked to 
 see a red man skulking with his arrow on the shore ; 
 and every plant or flower on the bank or in the water, 
 and every iish, turtle, frog, lizard about us, was trans 
 formed by the wand of his knowledge from the low 
 form into which the spell of our ignorance had reduced 
 
56 Thorcau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 it into a mystic beauty. One of his surprises was to 
 thrust his head softly into the water, and as softly 
 raise up before our astonished eyes a largo bright fish, 
 which lay as contentedly in his hand as if they were 
 old acquaintances. If the fish had also dropped a 
 penny from its mouth, it could not have been a more 
 miraculous proceeding to us. We could not then 
 get his secret from him. 
 
 And indeed the secret, as we guess, was not a com 
 municable one under any conditions. That he raised 
 the fish before the eyes of the astonished group was a 
 fact, but a full explanation of it would probably have 
 been more hard for Thoreau than the feat itself. 
 
 " One of the weapons with which he conquered all 
 obstacles in science was patience," says Emerson. He 
 knew how to sit immovable as part of the rock he 
 rested on, until the bird, the reptile, the fish, which 
 had retired from him should come back, and resume 
 its habits, nay, moved by curiosity, should come to 
 him and watch him." The incident of his "Walden 
 life which pleased him most, and which he was wont 
 to repeat with some pride to his more intimate friends, 
 was that, after he had been two or three months in 
 the woods, the wild birds ceased to be afraid of him, 
 and would come and perch upon his shoulder, and 
 sometimes upon his spade, when he was digging in the 
 little patch that supplied him with potatoes. Ho 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 57 
 
 deemed the honor thus bestowed upon him by the 
 birds to be greater than anything an emperor could 
 have conferred, if he had elevated him to a dukedom. 
 
 Thoreau s main purpose was to exhibit the points 
 where animal instinct and resource meet human affec 
 tion and virtue to illustrate each other. ) The follow 
 ing is certainly well worth quoting in this light : 
 
 "Man conceitedly names the intelligence and in 
 dustry of animals instinct, and overlooks their wisdom 
 and fitness of behavior. I saw where the squirrels 
 had carried off the ears of corn, more than twenty rods 
 from the corn-field, to the woods. A little further on, 
 beyond Hubbard s Brook, I saw a gray squirrel, with 
 an ear of yellow corn a foot long, sitting on the fence 
 fifteen rods from the field. He dropped the corn but 
 continued to sit on the rail, where I could hardly see 
 him, it being of the same color with himself, which 
 I have no doubt he was well aware of. He next 
 went to a red maple, where his policy was to conceal 
 himself behind the stem, hanging perfectly still there 
 till I passed, his fur being exactly the color of the 
 bark. When I struck the tree and tried to frighten 
 him, he knew better than to run to the next tree, there 
 being no continuous row by which he might escape ; 
 but he merely fled higher up, and put so many leaves 
 between us that it was difficult to discover him. When 
 I threw up a stick to frighten him, he disappeared 
 
58 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 entirely, though I kept the best watch I could and 
 stood close to the foot of the tree. 
 
 " They are wonderfully cunning ! " 
 
 Busy men and women dwellers in cities, people 
 of society, who make the lower creatures practically 
 serviceable do undoubtedly, in their passion for 
 discipline and order in horses, dogs, and the rest, 
 come to regard animal life as something so dependent 
 on human character and effort as to deprive it of all 
 real individual interest. " I have often thought," says 
 Mr. Hamerton, " in noticing the stupid and cruel way 
 in which animals - are treated, the almost constant 
 habit of using them merely as things, and not as 
 if they had the feelings and character of individual 
 beings, that we have other servants besides human 
 ones, who deserve more consideration than they get." 
 Against this tendency Thoreau testified, just as he 
 testified unremittingly to the sacredncss of human indi 
 viduality. Science itself as generally understood 
 does not help us here, but rather comes in to confirm 
 the artificial notion by absorbing the individual in the 
 class, the species, the genus, the order. An over- 
 pressed and over-cultivated social life, leaning on sci 
 ence, thus finally inflicts injury on itself by narrowing 
 its sources of true interest, and owes gratitude to the 
 men who honestly recall it to Nature, to the Words- 
 worths, the Bewicks, the Thoreaus, the Blackburns. 
 
Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 59 
 
 A face-to-face and daily intercourse with her, in seek 
 ing traces of the dim human instincts which she seems 
 to shroud so strangely even in her most worthless pro 
 ductions, is a supremely healthy occupation or pas 
 time, since it develops sympathy in enforcing the 
 idea that some ordinances of Nature that man deems 
 harsh may, after all, have a reference to wise and 
 beautiful races other than human. And this has the 
 best concurrence of Scripture. " Not a sparrow falls 
 to the ground without His permission." With Thoreau 
 animals were rudimentary men ; and their human 
 aspect was that preeminently in which their individu 
 ality stood revealed. On this ground it was that he 
 based their riglit to freedom, to toleration, and to a 
 healthier regard in their domesticated condition. Very 
 significant in this light is a noble passage on the horse, 
 the reader will see that the whole soul of Thoreau 
 speaks in it : 
 
 " I saw a man a few days since working by the 
 river with a horse carting dirt, and the horse and his 
 relations to him struck me as very remarkable. There 
 was the horse, a mere animated machine, though his 
 tail was brushing off the flies, his whole condition sub 
 ordinated to the man s, with no tradition (perhaps no 
 instinct) in him of a time when he was wild and free, 
 completely humanized. No contract had been made 
 with him that he should have the Saturday afternoons 
 
60 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 or the Sundays, or any holidays, his independence 
 never being recognized ; it being now quite forgotten, 
 both by man and horse that the horse was ever free. 
 For I am not aware that there are any wild horses 
 known surely not to be descended from tame ones. 
 He was assisting that man to pull down that bank and 
 spread it over the meadow, only keeping off the flies 
 with his tail, and stamping and catching a mouthful 
 of grass or leaves from time to tune on his own 
 account : all the rest for man. It seemed hardly worth 
 while that he should be animated for this. It was 
 plain that the man icas not educating the horse, 
 not trying to develop his nature, but merely getting 
 work out of him. 
 
 Extremes are counted worst of all. 
 
 The mass of animated matter seemed more completely 
 the servant of man than any inanimate. For slaves 
 have their holidays ; a heaven is conceded to them 
 (such as it is) ; but to the horse none. Now and for 
 ever he is man s slave. The more I considered, the 
 more the man seemed akin to the horse, only his 
 will was the stronger of the two / for a little further 
 on I saw an Irishman shovelling, who evidently was 
 as much tamed as the horse. He had stipulated that 
 a certain amount of his independence be recognised ; 
 and yet he was really but a little more independent, 
 What is a horse bat an animal that has lost its 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 61 
 
 liberty? and has man got any more liberty for 
 having robbed the horse f or has he just lost as 
 much of his own^ and become more like the horse 
 he has robbed? Is not the other end of the "bridle, 
 too, coiled around his neck? Hence stable "boys, 
 jockeys, and all that class that are daily transported 
 by fast horses. There he stood with his oblong, square 
 figure (his tail mostly sawed off), seen against the 
 water, brushing off the flies with his stump braced 
 back, while the man was filling the cart. 
 
 The ill that s wisely feared is half withstood, 
 He will redeem our deadly, drooping state. 
 
 " I regard the horse as a human being in a humble 
 state of existence. Virtue is not left to stand alone. 
 He who practices it will have neighbors." 
 
 Any one who knows animals knows that a horse has 
 as much individuality as a man. And the more we 
 know even of inferior animals, the more distinct docs 
 their individuality become for us. It was from this 
 point of view that Thoreau always wrote of the domes 
 tic animals, regretful of the despite done to that which 
 is special in them. Never, perhaps, were the claims 
 of the horse, and indirectly of all the domestic ani 
 mals, more powerfully put than in the passage we have 
 just given, in which we have disclosed to us clearly the 
 point at which, with Thoreau, the mystery of man s life 
 touched that of animal life, and raised it up to nearly 
 
62 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 equal interest, only, however, to increase tenfold the 
 meaning and wonder of that to which it is allied. 
 
 With Thoreau, as with St. Francis, as we have said, 
 the sympathy felt for animals is constantly justified by 
 a reference to a dim but real brotherhood. The brute 
 creatures are undeveloped men; they await their 
 transformation, stand on their defence ; and it is very 
 easy to see that inseparably bound up with this view, 
 there are certain elements of mysticism common to 
 the early saint and the American hut-builder. Nay, 
 there is more that is common to them, the capability 
 to deal decisively with authority when it conflicts with 
 interior development, as seen in St. Francis s revolt 
 against his parent s wishes for him, and the excessive 
 honesty which would not tolerate the appearance of 
 virtue or of self denial where it did not exist. We 
 read of St. Francis : 
 
 " When he was sick and ill he was counselled by 
 one of the brethren to have a fox s skin sewn inside 
 his frock, to ease him a little with its warmth and soft 
 ness. Francis was too reasonable even in his asceti 
 cism to refuse so natural a comfort; but he had 
 another put outside that he might not have the reputa 
 tion of greater severity than he actually practised." 
 
 This is precisely as we should have expected Thoreau 
 to act had he ever been advised to assume any secret 
 comfort, lie would, like St. Francis, have set up an 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 63 
 
 unmistakable outward sign of the hidden fact; for the 
 oppenrance of dishonesty or the affectation of virtue 
 was hateful to him. 
 
 A further likeness might well be found in the faith 
 both had in the reforming and purifying power of use 
 ful daily work : 
 
 " The lukewarm," said St. Francis, " and those who 
 do not work sincerely and humbly, will be rejected 
 by Grod. I desire that all my brethren should labor 
 at useful occupations, that we may be less of a burden 
 to the people, and also that we may be less subject to 
 maladies of the heart and tongue, and may not be 
 tempted to evil thoughts or evil speaking. Those who 
 cannot work, let them learn to work. As for the profit 
 of the work, it must not remain at the disposal of the 
 earner but at the will of the superior." 
 
 It was whilst Thoreau was still resident at Walden, 
 in 1846, that he made his first journey to the back 
 woods of Maine, which he followed up by two 
 visits, the second in 1853 and the third in 1857. 
 The record of these visits he has given in his volume 
 " The Maine Woods," which is characterised by all his 
 grace of style, his eye for beautiful pictures, and his 
 faculty of finding points of interest in the Indians 
 whose society and aid he had sought. Indeed, it was 
 
64 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 chiefly with the view of extending his knowledge of 
 the Indians and their arts that these journeys to the 
 Maine woods were undertaken. His ready sympathy 
 with them, and his management of them, is specially 
 noticeable. Their natural reserve was overcome so far 
 that they readily let him into most of their methods so 
 far as they were themselves able to explain them, 
 which was not always the case, as we shall immedi 
 ately see. Thus he describes his first introduction to 
 those who were to be his guides in the wilderness : 
 " The next morning we drove along through a high 
 and hilly country, in view of Cold-stream Pond, a 
 beautiful lake four or five miles long, and came into 
 the Houlton road again, here called the Military road, 
 at Lincoln, forty-five miles from Bangor, where there 
 is quite a village for this country, the principal one 
 above Oldtown. Learning that there were several 
 wigwams here on one of the Indian islands, we left 
 our horse and wagon and walked through the forest 
 half a mile to the river, to procure a guide to the 
 mountain. It was not until considerable search that 
 we discovered their habitations, small huts, in a 
 retired place, where the scenery was unusally soft and 
 beautiful, arid the shore skirted with pleasant meadows 
 and graceful elms. We paddled ourselves across to 
 the island-side in a canoe, which we found on the 
 shore. Near where we landed sat an Indian girl ten 
 
/ . 
 
 Thoreau: his Life ari$ jAims. 
 
 , n A A 
 
 or twelve years old, on a rock hi t]i<j water in t 
 washing and humming, or moaning a scta^tfpan while. * 
 It was an aboriginal strain. A salmon-spear/ fhade, 
 wholly of wood, lay oh the shore, such as they might, J 
 have used before white men came. It had an elastic 
 piece of wood fastened to one side of its point, which 
 slipped over and closed upon the fish, somewhat like 
 the contrivance for holding a bucket at the end of a 
 well-pole. As we walked up to the nearest house, 
 we were met by a sally of a dozen wolfish-looking 
 dogs, which may have been lineal descendants from 
 the ancient Indian dogs, which the first voyageurs 
 describe as their wolves. I suppose they were. The 
 occupant soon appeared, with a long pole in his hand, 
 with which he beat off the dogs, while he parleyed 
 with us, a stalwart, but dull and greasy-looking fel 
 low, who told us in his sluggish way in answer to our 
 questions, as if it were the first serious business he had 
 to do that day, that there were Indians going up 
 river, he and one other today, before noon. And 
 who was the other? Louis Neptune, who lives in 
 the next house/ * Well let us go over and see Louis 
 together. The same doggish reception, and Louis 
 Neptune makes his appearance, a small wiry man, 
 with puckered and wrinkled face, yet he seemed the 
 chief man of the two ; the same as I remembered, who 
 had accompanied Jackson to the mountain in 1837. 
 
66 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 The same questions were put to Louis, and tlie same 
 information obtained, while the other Indian stood by. 
 It appeared that they were going to start by noon, 
 with two canoes, to go up Chesuncock to hunt moose, 
 to be gone a month. Well, Louis, suppose you get 
 to the Point (to the Five Islands just below Matter 
 warn Reach) to camp ; we walk upon the West Branch 
 tomorrow four of us, and wait for you at the dam, 
 on this side. You overtake us to-morrow or next day, 
 and take us into your canoes. AYe stop for you, you 
 stop for us. We pay you for your trouble. Ye ! 
 replied Louis; maybe you carry some provisions for 
 all, some pork, some bread, and so pay? lie said, 
 We sure get some moose. And when I asked if he 
 thought Pomola would let us go up, he answered that 
 we must plant one bottle of rum on the top; he had 
 planted a good many; and when he looked again they 
 were all gone. He had been up two or three times; 
 he had planted letter, English, German, French, etc. 
 These men were slightly clad in shirt and pantaloons, 
 like laborers with us in warm weather. They did not 
 invite us into their houses, but met us outside. So 
 we left the Indians, thinking ourselves lucky to have 
 secured such guides and companions." 
 
 His picture of the primitive wilderness is, as we 
 think the reader will admit, penetrated by the very 
 spirit of the forest : 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. C7 
 
 " What is most striking in the Maine Wilderness is 
 the continuousness of the forest, with fewer open inter 
 vals of glades than you imagined. Except the few 
 burnt lands, the narrow intervals of 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. 
 The aspect of the country, indeed, is universally stern 
 and savage, excepting the distant views of the forest 
 from hills, and the lake prospects, which are mild and 
 civilizing in a degree. The lakes are something which 
 you are unprepared for ; they lie up so high, exposed 
 to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine 
 fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue 
 mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel 
 of the first water, so anterior, so superior to all the 
 changes that are to take place on their shores, even 
 now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be. 
 These are not the artificial forests of an English king, 
 a royal preserve merely. Here prevail no forest laws 
 but those of nature. The aborigines have never been 
 dispossessed, nor Nature disforested. 
 
 "It is a country full of evergreen trees, of mossy 
 silver birches and watery maples, the ground dotted 
 with insipid, small red berries, and strewn with damp 
 and moss-grown rocks, a country diversified with inuu- 
 
68 Thoreau: his T^ife and Aims. 
 
 mcrablc lakes and rapid streams, peopled with trout, 
 and various species of leucisci, with salmon, shad, 
 and pickerel and other fishes; the forest resounding 
 at rare intervals with the note of the chickadee, the 
 blue jay, and the wood-pecker, the scream of the fish- 
 hawk and the eagle, the laugh of the loon, and the 
 whistle of ducks along the solitary streams j at night, 
 with the hooting of owls and howling of wolves; 
 in summer, swarming with myriads of black flics and 
 mosquitoes, more formidable than wolves to the white 
 man. Such is the home of the moose, the bear, the 
 caribou, the wolf, the beaver, and the Indian. Who 
 shall describe the inexpressible tenderness and immor 
 tal life of the grim forest, where Nature, though it be 
 mid-winter, is ever in her spring, where the moss- 
 growing 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, ex 
 cept by a few tinkling, lisping birds and trickling rills ? 
 "What a place to live, what a place to die and be 
 buried in ! There certainly men would live for ever, 
 and laugh at death and the grave. There they could 
 have no such thoughts as are associated with the vil 
 lage graveyard, that make a grave out of those 
 moist evergreen hammocks ! 
 
 Die and be buried who will, 
 
 I mean to live here still; 
 
 My nature grows evermore young, 
 
 The primitive pines among." 
 
Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 69 
 
 He watches for the impressions produced by the 
 leading sounds of the forest, and records with real 
 poetic skill the most striking of them, as in this para 
 graph: 
 
 " In the middle of the night, as indeed each time 
 that we lay on the shore of a lake, we heard the voice 
 of the loon, loud and distinct, from far over the lake. 
 It is a very wild sound, quite in keeping with the 
 place and circumstances of the traveller, and very 
 unlike the voice of a bird. I could lie awake for 
 hours listening to it, it is so thrilling. "When camp 
 ing in such a wilderness as this, you are prepared to 
 hear sounds from some of its inhabitants which will 
 give voice to its wildness, some idea of bears, 
 wolves, or panthers runs in your head naturally ; and 
 when this note is first heard very far off at midnight, 
 as you lie with your ear to the ground, the forest 
 being perfectly still about you, you take it for granted 
 that it is the voice of a wolf or some other wild beast, 
 for only the last part is heard when at a distance, 
 you conclude that it is a pack of wolves baying the 
 moon, or, perchance, cantering after a moose. Strange 
 as it may seem, the mooing of a cow on a mountain 
 side comes nearest to my idea of the voice of a bear ; 
 and this bird s note resembled that. It was the un 
 failing and characteristic sound of these lakes. We 
 were not so lucky as to hear wolves howl, though that 
 
70 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 is an occasional serenade. Some friends of mine, who 
 two years ago went up the Caucomgomoc River, were 
 serenaded by wolves while moose-hunting by moon 
 light. It was a sudden burst as if a hundred demons 
 had broke loose, a startling sound enough, which, if 
 any, would make your hair stand on end ; and all was 
 still again. It lasted but a moment, and you d have 
 thought there were twenty of them, when probably 
 there were only two or three. They heard it twice 
 only, and they said that it gave expression to the 
 wilderness which it lacked before. . . . This of 
 the loon I do not mean its laugh, but its looning 
 is a long-drawn call, as it were, something singularly 
 human to my ear, boo-boo-ooooo, like the halooing of 
 a man, in a very high key, having thrown his voice 
 into his head." 
 
 The abundance of life in the wilderness is also cele 
 brated, and accounts of hunting and fishing are elo 
 quently given. He prefers fishing to hunting, and 
 furnishes this account of the latter : 
 
 " We had been told by McCauslin that here we 
 should find trout enough ; so, while some prepared the 
 camp, the rest fell to fishing. Seizing the birch poles 
 which some party of Indians or white hunters had left 
 on the shore, and baiting our hooks with pork and with 
 trout, as soon as they were caught, we cast our lines 
 into the mouth of the Aboljacknagcsic, a clear, swift, 
 
Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 71 
 
 shallow stream, which came in from Ktaadn. In 
 stantly a shoal of white chivin (Leueinci pulchelli) , 
 silvery roaches, cousin-trout, or what not, large and 
 small, prowling thereabouts, fell upon our bait, and 
 one after another were landed amidst the bushes. Anon 
 their cousins, the true trout, took their turn, and alter 
 nately the speckled trout and the silvery roaches swal 
 lowed the bait as fast as we could throw in; and the 
 finest specimens of both that I have ever seen, the 
 largest one weighing three pounds, were heaved upon 
 the shore, though at first in vain, to wriggle down 
 into the water again, for we stood in the boat. But 
 soon we learned to remedy this evil ; for one who had 
 lost his hook stood on the shore to catch them as they 
 fell in a perfect shower around him, sometimes wet 
 and slippery, full in his face and bosom, as his arms 
 were outstretched to receive them. While yet alive, 
 before their tints had faded, they glistened like the 
 fairest flowers, the product of primitive rivers; and 
 he could hardly trust his senses, as he stood over them, 
 that these jewels should have swung away in the 
 Aboljacknagesic waters for so long, so many dark ages, 
 these bright fluviatile flowers seen of Indians only, 
 made beautiful, the Lord only knows why, to swim 
 there ! I could understand better for this the truth 
 of mythology, the fables of Proteus, and all those beau 
 tiful sea-monsters, how all history, indeed, put to a 
 
72 Thoreau : his T^ife and Aims. 
 
 terrestrial use is mere history, but put to a celestial 
 is mythology always. . . 
 
 " In the night I dreamed Ibadly of trout fishing; and 
 when at length I woke, it seemed a fable that this 
 painted fish swam so near my couch, and rose to our 
 hooks the last evening, and I doubted if I had not 
 dreamed it all. So I rose before the dawn to test its 
 truth, while my companions were still sleeping. There 
 stood Ktaadn with distinct and cloudless outline in the 
 moonlight ; and the rippling of the rapids was the only 
 sound to break the stillness. Standing on the shore, 
 I once more cast my line into the stream, and found 
 the dream to be real, and the fable true. The speckled 
 trout and silvery roach, like flying fish, sped swiftly 
 through the moonlight air, describing bright arcs on 
 the dark side of Ktaadn, until moonlight, now fading 
 into daylight, brought satiety to my mind and the mind 
 of my companions, who had joined me." 
 
 With Joe, his favorite, he goes on special adven 
 tures, and then, in favorable moments, gains his confi 
 dence, as we find in this passage : 
 
 " I asked him how he guided himself in the woods. 
 Oh, said he, I can tell a good many ways. When 
 I pressed him further, he answered, Sometimes I 
 lookum side hill, and he glanced toward a high hill 
 or mountain on the eastern shore, great difference 
 between the north and the south, sec where the sun 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 73 
 
 has shone most. So trees, the large limbs bend 
 towards south. Sometimes I lookum locks (rocks). 
 I asked what he saw on the rocks, but he did not 
 describe anything in particular, answering vaguely, 
 in a mysterious or drawling tone. Bare locks on 
 lake shore, great difference between N. S. E. W. side, 
 can tell what le sun has shone on. Suppose, 
 said I, that I should take you in a dark night right 
 up here into the middle of the woods a hundred miles, 
 set you down, and turn you round quickly twenty 
 times, could you steer straight to Oldtown ? Oh, 
 yes, said he, have done pretty much same thing. 
 I will tell you. Some years ago I met an old white 
 hunter at Millinocket; very good hunter. He said 
 he could go anywhere in the woods. He wanted to 
 hunt with me that day, so we start. We chase a moose 
 all the forenoon, round and round, till middle of after 
 noon, when we kill him. Then I said to him, Now 
 you go straight to camp. Do n t go round and round 
 where we ve been, but go straight. He said, I 
 can t do that, I don^t know where I am. Where 
 you think camp ? I asked. He pointed so. Then I 
 laugh at him. I take the lead, and go right off the 
 other way, cross our tracks many times, straight camp. 
 How do you do that ? asked I. Oh, I can t tell 
 you, he replied; great difference between me and 
 white man. 
 
74 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 "It appeared as if the sources of information were 
 so various that he did not give a distinct, conscious 
 attention to any one, and so could not really refer to 
 any when questioned about it, but he found his way 
 very much as an animal does. Perhaps what is com 
 monly called instinct in the animal in this case is 
 merely a sharpened and educated sense. . . . The 
 white hunter, with whom I talked in the stage, knew 
 some of the resources of the Indian. He said he 
 steered by the wind, or by the limbs of hemlock, which 
 were largest on the north side ; also, sometimes when 
 he knew there was a lake near, by firing his gun, and 
 listening to hear the distance and direction of the echo 
 from it." 
 
 The Indian plan of crossing lakes in a canoe he 
 thus indicates, as well as the method of carrying 
 canoes, in which he is particularly interested, and 
 enthusiastically praises : 
 
 " The following will suffice for a common experience 
 in crossing lakes in a canoe. As the forenoon advanced, 
 the wind increased. The last bay which we crossed, 
 before reaching the desolate pier at the north-east 
 carry, was two or three miles over, and the wind was 
 south-westerly. After going a third of the way, the 
 waves had increased so as occasionally to wash into 
 the canoe, and we knew that it was worse and worse 
 ahead. At first we might have turned about, but 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims, 75 
 
 were not willing to. It would have been of no use to 
 follow the course of the shore, for not only the distance 
 would have been much greater, but the waves ran still 
 higher there on account of the great sweep the wind 
 had. At any rate, it would have been dangerous now 
 to alter our course, because the waves would have 
 struck us at an advantage. It will not do to meet 
 them at right-angles, for then they will wash in both 
 sides; but you must take them quartering. So the 
 Indian stood up in the canoe, and exerted all his skill 
 and strength for a mile or two, while I paddled right 
 along in order to give him more steerage way. For 
 more than a mile he did not allow a single wave to 
 strike the canoe as it would, but turned it quickly 
 from tliis side to that, so that it would always be on 
 or near the crest of a wave when it broke, where all 
 its force was spent, and we merely settled down with 
 it. At length I jumped out on to the end of the pier, 
 against which the waves were dashing violently, in 
 order to lighten the canoe and catch it at the landing, 
 which was not much sheltered ; but, just as I jumped, 
 we took in two or three gallons of water. I remarked 
 to the Indian, You managed that well ; to which he 
 replied : Vcr few men do that. Great many waves ; 
 when I look out for one, another come quick. " 
 
 "While the Indian went to get cedar bark, etc., to 
 carry his canoe with, we cooked dinner on the shore, 
 
76 Thoreau : Iiis Life and Aims. 
 
 at this end of the carry, in the midst of a sprinkling 
 rain. 
 
 " Ho prepared his canoe for carrying in this wise : 
 he took a cedar shingle or splint eighteen inches long 
 and four or five wide, rounded at one end, that the 
 corners might not "be in the way, and tied it with cedar 
 bark by two holes, made midway, near the edge on 
 each side, to the middle cross-bar of the canoe. When 
 the canoe was lifted upon his head, bottom up, this 
 shingle, with its rounded end uppermost, distributed 
 the weight over his shoulders and head ; while a band 
 of cedar bark, tied to the cross-bar on each side of the 
 shingle, passed round his breast, and another longer 
 one, outside of the last, - round his forehead ; also a 
 band on each side rail served to steer the canoe and 
 keep it from rocking. He thus carried it with his 
 shoulders, head, breast, forehead, and both hands, as 
 if the upper part of his body were all one hand to 
 clasp and hold it. If you know of a better way, I 
 should like to hear of it. A cedar tree furnished all 
 the gear in this case as it had the woodwork of the 
 canoe." 
 
 The sight of so many and varied woods suggests a 
 reflection : 
 
 "How far men go for material for their houses! 
 The inhabitants of the most civilized cities, in all 
 ages, send into far, primitive forests, beyond the bounds 
 
Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 77 
 
 of their civilization, where the moose, and the bear, and 
 savage dwell, for their pine boards for ordinary use. 
 And, on the other hand, the savage soon receives from 
 cities iron arrow-points, hatchets, and guns, to point 
 his savageness with. 
 
 " The solid and well-defined fir-tops, like sharp and 
 regular spear-heads, black against the sky, gave a 
 peculiar, dark, and sombre look to the forest. The 
 spruce tops have a similar but more rugged outline, 
 their shafts also merely feathered below. The firs 
 were somewhat oftener regular and dense pyramids. 
 I was struck by this universal spiring upwards of the 
 forest evergreens. The tendency is to slender spiring 
 tops, while they are narrower below. Not only the 
 spruce and fir, but even the arbor vitse and white pine, 
 unlike the soft, spreading second growth, of which I 
 saw none, all spire upwards, lifting a dense spear-head 
 of cones spiral, also to the light and air, at any 
 rate, while their branches struggle after as they may, 
 as Indians lift the ball over the heads of the crowd in 
 their desperate game. In this they resemble grasses, 
 as also palms somewhat. The hemlock is commonly 
 a tent-like pyramid from the ground to its summit." 
 
 He saw the manufacture of the bark canoes, and 
 tried his hand not unsuccessfully at managing one in 
 the rapids. The Indian relics he had lighted on in his 
 own haunts made him very curious; but he never 
 
78 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 found any one who could initiate him into the secret 
 of the making of the stone arrow-heads; and in his 
 last days, when a young friend was setting out for the 
 Rocky Mountains, Thoreau s charge to him was to 
 find an Indian who could teach him that, saying, "It 
 is well worth a visit to California to learn it." 
 
 And yet it is not too much to say that Thoreau s 
 general tendency was rather to undervalue the knowl 
 edge that diverts the mind from what lies nearest at 
 hand. In the midst of his severe idealism, which led 
 him to find little value in the object save as it stood 
 in relation to some law, there lay an intense realism, 
 which may be taken for egotism, unless it is seen in 
 relation to the quality which Mr. Emerson signalizes 
 in this paragraph : 
 
 " He noted what repeatedly befell him, that, after 
 receiving from a distance a rare plant, he would pres 
 ently find the same in his own haunts. And those 
 pieces of good luck which happen only to good players 
 happened to him. One day, walking with a stranger, 
 who inquired where Indian arrow-heads could be 
 found, he replied, Everywhere, and, stooping for 
 ward, picked one on the instant from the ground. 
 
 I think his fancy for referring everything to 
 the meridian of Concord did not grow out of any igno 
 rance or depreciation of other longitudes or latitudes 
 but was rather a playful expression of his convictions 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 79 
 
 of the indifferency of all places, and that the best 
 place for each is where he stands. He expressed it 
 once in this wise : I think nothing is to be hoped 
 from you if this bit of mould under your feet is not 
 sweeter to you to eat than any other in this world. . . 
 He returned Kane s Arctic Voyage to a friend of whom 
 he had borrowed it with the remark that most of the 
 phenomena noted might be observed in Concord. "* 
 When once we have come to understand this, such 
 passages as the following do not distract or vex us : 
 
 * Thoreau himself had a theory on the subject, which in moro 
 than one point coincided with the view which Professor William 
 son has given as explanatory of the appearance of certain Arctic 
 plants at comparatively low levels in Yorkshire. Professor AVil- 
 liamson says, " The only explanation I can suggest supposes that 
 at a later period, when the sub-alpine mountains of the Lake dis 
 trict, and of Scotland, had emerged sufficiently high to reveal the 
 deep gorges descending their flanks, these gorges were filled with 
 glaciers, large masses of which broke away from time to time, and 
 floated southwards and eastwards, as is well known to have been 
 the case. These floating icebergs were unquestionably the instru 
 ments in spreading over eastern Yorkshire some of its more super 
 ficial drifts and gravels, which originally belonged to the moraines 
 of the glaciers whence the icebergs were detached. I can only 
 conclude that when the period arrived at which some of the 
 uplands of eastern Yorkshire appeared above the waters, some 
 stray icebergs had become stranded upon these newly risen lands 
 and conveyed to them along with these moraine rubbish some of 
 the seeds of the plants in question. How it is that they have sur 
 vived the increasing warmth of the atmosphere, and the gradual 
 disappearance of all the sub-alpine conditions which usually seem 
 necessary to their healthy life, I am unable to understand, but 
 that they have succeeded in acclimatizing themselves is an obvious 
 fact." 
 
80 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 " The eye which can appreciate the naked and abso 
 lute "beauty of scientific truth is far more rare than 
 that which is attracted by a moral one. Few detect 
 the morality in the former or the science in the latter. 
 
 . . He is not a true man of science who does 
 not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to 
 learn something by behavior as well as by application. 
 It is childish to rest in mere coincidences, or of par 
 tial and extraneous laws. . . . The fact which 
 interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The 
 purest science is still biographical. Nothing will dig 
 nify and elevate science while it is sundered from the 
 moral life of its devotee, and he professes another 
 religion than it teaches. 
 
 " My friends mistake when they communicate facts 
 to me with so much pains. Their presence, even 
 their exaggerations and loose statements, are 
 equally good facts for me! I have no respect for 
 facts except when I would use them, and for the most 
 part I am independent of those which I hear, and can 
 afford to be inaccurate, or in other words, to substi 
 tute more present and pressing facts in their place." 
 It is not at all likely that Thoreau had in his mind 
 that remarkable passage near the close of the Fourth 
 Book of the "Excursion;" but any one who will 
 thoughtfully read that passage will see how near he 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 81 
 
 had come to the experience out of which Wordsworth 
 wrote : 
 
 " Trust me that, for the instructed, time will come 
 When they shall meet no object but may teach 
 Some acceptable lesson to their minds 
 Of human suffering or human joy. 
 For them shall all things speak of man. They read 
 Their duties in all forms; and general laws 
 And local accidents, shall tend alike 
 To rouse, to urge; and, with the will, confer 
 The ability to spread the blessings wide 
 Of true philanthropy. The light of love 
 Kot failing, perseverance from their steps 
 Departing not, they shall at length obtain 
 The glorious habit by which sense is made 
 Subservient still to moral purposes, 
 Auxiliar to divine. That change shall clothe 
 The naked spirit, ceasing to deplore 
 The burthen of existence. Science then 
 Shall lie a precious visitant; and then, 
 And only then, be worthy of her name." 
 
 In all his journeys, Thoreau s pride was to show 
 himself independent of the encumbrances which most 
 men deem necessary. So that these words, written 
 with special reference to his trip to Canada, which he 
 undertook in 1850, and which he has described in his 
 book, " A Yankee in Canada," may be taken to apply 
 to them all : 
 
 "My pack, in fact, was soon made, for I keep a 
 short list of those articles which, from frequent expe 
 rience, I have found indispensable to the foot traveller; 
 and, when I am about to start, I have only to consult 
 
82 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 to be sure that nothing is omitted, and, what is more 
 important, nothing superfluous inserted. Most of my 
 fellow-travellers carried carpet-bags, or valises. Some 
 times one had two or three tremendous yellow valises 
 in his clutch, at each hitch of the cars, or if we were 
 going to have another rush for seats ; and when there 
 was a rush in earnest and there were not a few I 
 would see my man in the crowd, with two or three 
 affectionate lusty fellows pressing close, the strap along 
 each side of his arm, between his shoulder and his 
 valises, which held them tight to his back. I could 
 not help asking in my mind, What so great cause for 
 showing Canada to those valises, when perhaps your 
 very nieces had to stay at home for want of an escort ? 
 I should have liked to be present when the custom 
 house officer came aboard of him, and asked him to 
 declare upon his honor if he had anything but wear 
 ing apparel in them. Even the elephant carries but 
 a small trunk on his journeys. The perfection of 
 travelling is to travel without baggage. After con 
 siderable reflection and experience, I have concluded 
 that the best bag for a foot-traveller is made with a 
 handkerchief, or, if he study appearances, a piece of 
 stiff brown paper, well tied up, with a fresh piece 
 within to put outside when the first is torn. That is 
 good for both town and country, a bundle which 
 you can carry literally under your arm, and which 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 83 
 
 will shrink and swell with its contents. I never found 
 the carpet-bag of equal capacity, which was not a 
 bundle of itself. We styled ourselves the Knights of 
 the Umbrella and the Bundle ; for wherever we went, 
 whether to Notre Dame or Mount Royal, or the Champ- 
 de-Mars, to town mayors or the bishop s palace, to 
 the citadel, with a bare-legged Highlander for our 
 escort, or to the Plains of Abraham, to dinner or to 
 bed, the umbrella and the bundle went with us ; for 
 we wished to be ready to digress at any moment. We 
 made our haven nowhere in particular, but every 
 where where our umbrella and bundle were. It would 
 have been an amusing circumstance if the mayor of 
 one of those cities had politely asked us where we were 
 staying. We could only have answered that we were 
 staying with his Honor for the time being. I was 
 amused when, after our return, some green ones inquired 
 if we found it easy to get accommodated ; as if wo 
 went abroad to get accommodated, when we can get 
 that at home!" 
 
 In this short passage, we may say that he gathers 
 up and summarizes his impressions of Canada and its 
 people : 
 
 "To a traveller from the Old World Canada East 
 may appear like a new country, and its inhabitants like 
 colonists ; but to me, coming from New England, and 
 being a very green traveller withal, it appeared as 
 
84 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 Normandy itself, and realized much that I had heard 
 of Europe and the Middle Ages. Even the names of 
 the humble Canadian villages affected me as if they 
 had been those of the renowned cities of antiquity. 
 To be told by a habitant when I asked the name of a 
 village in sight that it is St. Fereole or St. Anne, the 
 Guardian Angel, or the Holy Joseph s or of a 
 mountain, that it was Belange or St. Ilyacinthe! 
 As soon as one leaves the States, these saintly names 
 begin. $(. John is the first town you stop at (for 
 tunately we did not see it), and thenceforward the 
 names of the mountains, and streams, and villages reel, 
 if I may so speak, with the intoxication of poetry : 
 Chambly, Longueuil, Pointe aux Trembles, Bar- 
 tholomy, etc., etc., as if it needed only a little foreign 
 accent, a few more liquids and vowels perchance in the 
 language to make or locate our ideals at once. I began 
 to dream of Provence and the Troubadours, and of 
 places and things which have no existence on the 
 earth. They veiled the Indian and the primitive for 
 est, and the woods towards Hudson s Bay were only as 
 the forests of France and Germany. I could not at 
 once bring myself to believe that the inhabitants who 
 pronounced daily those beautiful, and to me signifi 
 cant, words lead as prosaic lives as we of New Eng 
 land. In short, the Canada which I saw was not 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 85 
 
 merely a place for railroads to terminate in, and for 
 criminals to run to. 
 
 "When I asked a man if there were any falls on 
 the Riviere au Chien for I saw that it came over 
 the same high bank with the Montmorcncy and St. 
 Anne he answered that there were. How far I I 
 inquired. Trois quatres lieue. How high ? Je 
 pense, quatre-vingt-dix pieds ^ that is, ninety feet. 
 We turned aside to look at the falls of the Riviere du 
 Saut d la Puce, half a mile from the road, which 
 before we had passed in our haste and ignorance, and 
 we pronounced them as beautiful as any that we saw ; 
 yet they seemed to make no account of them there, 
 and when first we inquired the way to the falls, directed 
 us to Montmorcncy, seven miles distant. It was evi 
 dent that this was the country for waterfalls; that 
 every stream that empties into the St. Lawrence, for 
 some hundreds of miles, must have a great fall or cas 
 cade on it, and in its passage through the mountains 
 was for a short distance a small Sagucnay, with its 
 upright walls. This fall of La Puce, the least remark 
 able of the four which we visited in this vicinity, we 
 had never heard of till we came to Canada, and yet, 
 so far as I know, there is nothing of the kind in New 
 England to be compared to it. Most travellers in 
 Canada would not hear of it, though they might go 
 so near as hear it. Since my return I find that in the 
 
86 Thoreau: his Life and. Aims. 
 
 topographical description of the country mention is 
 made of two or three romantic falls on this stream, 
 though we saw and heard of but this one. Ask the 
 inhabitants respecting any stream, if there is a fall 
 on it, and they will perchance tell you of something as 
 interesting as Bashpish or the Catskill, which no traveller 
 has ever seen, or, if they have not found it, you may 
 possibly trace up the stream and discover it yourself. 
 Falls there are a drug, and we became quite dissatis 
 fied in respect to them. We had too much of them. 
 Besides those which I have referred to, there arc a 
 thousand other falls on the St. Lawrence and its tribu 
 taries which I have not seen or heard of ; and above all 
 there is one which I have heard of called Niagara, so 
 
 55 
 
 that I think this river must be the most remarkable for 
 its falls of any in the world. 
 
 / " At a house near the western boundary of Chateau 
 Richer, whose master was said to speak a very little 
 English, having recently lived at Quebec, we got lodg 
 ing for the night. As usual we had to go down alone 
 to get round to the south side of the house where the 
 door was, away from the road ; for these Canadians 
 houses have no front door, properly speaking. Every 
 part is for the use of the occupant exclusively, and no 
 part lias reference to the traveller or to travel. Every 
 New England house, on the contrary, has a front and 
 a principal door opening to the great world, though it 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 87 
 
 may be on the cold side, for it stands on the highway 
 of nations, and the road which runs by it comes from 
 the Old World and goes to the far West ; but the Cana 
 dian s door opens into his back yard and farm alone, 
 and the road which runs behind his house leads only 
 from the church of one saint to that of another. We 
 found a large family hired men, wife, and children 
 just eating their supper. They prepared some for us 
 afterwards. The hired men were a merry crew of 
 short, black-eyed fellows, and the wife a thin-faced, 
 sharp-featured French-Canadian woman. Our host s 
 English staggered us rather more than any French we 
 had heard yet ; indeed we found that even .we spoke 
 better French than he did English, and we concluded 
 that a less crime would be committed, on the whole, if 
 we spoke French with him, and in no respect aided 
 or abetted his attempts to speak English. We had a 
 long and merry chat with the family this Sunday even 
 ing in their spacious kitchen. While my companions 
 smoked a pipe and parlez-voused with one party, I 
 parlezed and gesticulated with another. The whole 
 family was enlisted, and I kept a little girl writing 
 what was otherwise unintelligible. The geography 
 getting obscure, wo called for chalk, and the greasy, 
 oiled table-cloth having been wiped, for it needed 
 no French, but only a sentence from the universal 
 language of looks on my part to indicate that it needed 
 
88 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 it, we drew the St. Lawrence, with its parishes, 
 thereon, and thenceforward went on swimmingly, by 
 turns handling the chalk and committing to the table 
 cloth what would otherwise have been left in a limbo 
 of unintelligibility. This was greatly to the entertain 
 ment of all parties. I was amused to hear how much 
 use they made of the word oid in conversation with 
 one another. After repeated single insertions of it, 
 one would suddenly throw back his head at the same 
 time with his chair, and exclaim rapidly, Old! oui! 
 oui ! oui ! like a Yankee driving pigs. Our host 
 told us that the farms thereabouts were generally two 
 acres, or three hundred and sixty feet wide by one and 
 a half leagues (?), or a little more than four and a 
 half of our miles deep. This use of the word acre as 
 long measure arises from the fact that the French acre 
 or arpent, the arpent of Paris, makes a square of ten 
 perches of eighteen feet each on a side, a Paris foot 
 being equal to LOG 57 5 English feet. He said that 
 the wood was cut off about one mile from the river. 
 The rest was bush, and beyond that the Queen s 
 bush. Old as the country is, each land-holder bounds 
 on the primitive forest, and fuel bears no price. As I 
 had forgotten the French for sickle, they went out in 
 the evening to the barn and got one, and so clenched 
 the certainty of our understanding one another. Then, 
 wishing to learn if they used the cradle, and not know- 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 89 
 
 ing any French word for this instrument, I set up some 
 knives and forks on the blade of the sickle to repre 
 sent one, at which they all exclaimed that they knew 
 and had used it. When snells were mentioned they 
 went out in the dark and plucked some. They were 
 pretty good. They said they had three kinds of plums 
 growing wild, blue, white, and red, the two former 
 much alike and the best. Also they asked me if I 
 would have des pommes, some apples, and got me 
 some. They were exceedingly fair and glossy, and it 
 was evident that there was no worm in them ; but they 
 were as hard almost as a stone, as if the season was 
 too short to mellow them. We had seen no soft and 
 yellow apples by the road side. I declined eating one, 
 much as I admired it, observing that it would be good 
 dans les printemps, in the spring. In the morn 
 ing when the mistress had set the eggs a-frying, she 
 nodded to a thick-set jolly-looking fellow, who rolled 
 up his sleeves, seized the long-handled griddle, and 
 commenced a series of revolutions and evolutions with 
 it, ever and anon tossing its contents into the air, 
 where they turned completely topsy-turvy and came 
 down t other side up ; and this he repeated till they 
 were done. That appeared to be his duty when 
 eggs were concerned. I did not chance to witness this 
 performance, but my companion did, and he pronounced 
 it a masterpiece in its way. This man s farm, with 
 
90 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 the "buildings, cost seven hundred pounds; some 
 smaller ones two hundred." \ 
 
 Though to the end Thoreau remained a true natural 
 ist and lover of the lower "brethren/ he abandoned 
 Walden, as we have hinted, when he believed he had 
 fully served his purpose with it, having resided there 
 two years and two months. Not long after his return 
 his father died, and then, in spite of the protest he 
 had made, he returned to the lead-pencil making, at 
 the call of duty, devoting himself to it with persistent 
 assiduity. He had his own mill, and discovered 
 remarkable punctuality and prudence, providing for 
 those who were thus so far made dependent upon him. 
 
 But it was his delight, as we have seen, still to go 
 on excursions here and there when he had leisure ; 
 and sometimes he would organize parties for adventures 
 in regions somewhat distant. Mr. Channing gives us 
 this little glimpse of his last excursion to the White 
 Mountains, in July, 1858, when a friendly coinci 
 dence happened : 
 
 " Two of his friends thought they might chance 
 upon him there; and, though he dreamed little of 
 seeing them, he left a note at the Mountain-house, 
 which said where he was going, and told them, if they 
 looked, they would see the smoke of his fire. This 
 came to be true, the brush taking the flame, and a 
 smoke rising to be seen all over the valley. Meantime 
 
Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 91 
 
 Thoreau, in leaping from one mossy rock to another 
 (after nearly sliding down the snow-crust on the side 
 of Tuckerman s Ravine, and saved "by digging his 
 nails into the snow), had fallen and severely sprained 
 his foot. Before this he had found the Arnica mottis, 
 a plant famous for its healing properties; but he pre 
 ferred the ice-cold water of the mountain stream, into 
 which he boldly plunged his tortured limb, to reduce 
 the swelling, had the tent spread, and then, the rain 
 beginning to come down, so came his two friends down 
 the mountain as well, their outer integuments decimated 
 with their tramp in the scrub. They had seen the 
 smoke, and here they were in this little tent made for 
 two, the rain falling all the while, and five full-grown 
 men to be packed in for five days and nights, Thoreau 
 unable to move on ; but he sat and entertained them 
 heartily. He admired the rose-colored linnacas lining 
 the side of the narrow horse-track through the fir- 
 scrub and the leopard-spotted land below the mount 
 ains. He had seen the pines in Fitzwilliam in a 
 primeval wood-lot, and their singular beauty made 
 such an impression that I was forced to turn aside 
 and contemplate them. They were so round and per 
 pendicular that my eyes slid off. " 
 
 From earliest years, the thought of the complicity 
 of his country in the great sin of slavery had depressed 
 
92 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 him, and latterly had done much to render him unduly 
 depreciatory of parties and politicians, though he paid 
 his uniform tribute of respect to the anti-slavery party. 
 When at "Walden he had, by his personal assistance, 
 aided more than one slave toward the North star. 
 His convictions on that point only deepened with the 
 years. When he was followed to the forest for some 
 taxes which he regarded as unjust, and which he refused 
 to pay, and went to jail on account of, it is character 
 istic that he deems himself henceforth absolved from 
 any other than - passive obedience to a State which 
 bought and sold men like chattels at its Congress 
 doors. He had a firm faith that it needed only ONE 
 valiant -man to break, the devil s bonds in which his 
 country had bound herself. The man who was nearest 
 the right was already, he held, in a majority of one, 
 and his decisive testimony would finally be crowned 
 with success. "I know this well," he says, "that if 
 one thousand, if ,one hundred, if ten men whom I 
 could name, if ten honest men only, ay, if one 
 UONEST nmn in this State of Massachusetts, ceas 
 ing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from 
 this co-partnership, and be locked up in the county 
 jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in 
 America." 
 
 When, in 1841, Anthony Burns a runaway slave, 
 was recovered and sent back by the State of Massa- 
 
Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 93 
 
 chusetts, it wholly unfitted him, stoic though ho is 
 said to have "been, for any work. Ho could not rest 
 till he had said his say ; and in his speech on the occa 
 sion occurred this passage : 
 
 f" The effect of a good government is to make life 
 more valuable, of a bad one to make it less valuable. 
 We can afford that railroad and all merely material 
 stock should lose some of its value ; for that only com 
 pels us to live more simply and economically; but 
 suppose that the value of life itself should be dimin 
 ished ! How can we make a less demand on man and 
 nature, how live more economically in respect to virtue, 
 and all noble qualities, than we do. I have lived for 
 the last month and I think that every man in Massa 
 chusetts capable of the sentiment of patriotism must 
 have had a similar experience with the sense of 
 having suffered a vast and indefinite loss. I did not 
 know at first what ailed me. At last it occurred to 
 me that what I had lost was a country. I had never 
 respected the Government near which I lived, but I 
 had foolishly thought that I might manage to live 
 here, minding my private affairs, and forget it. For 
 my part, my old 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 has deliberately sent back an 
 innocent man Anthony Burns to slavery. I dwelt 
 
94 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 before, perhaps, in the illusion that my life passed 
 somewhere only letween heaven and hell ; but now I 
 cannot persuade myself that I do not dwell wholly 
 withmliQll. . . . Life itself being worthless, all things 
 with it which minister to it are worthless. I feel that 
 to some extent the State has fatally interfered with 
 my lawful business. I am surprised to see men going 
 about their business as if nothing had happened. I 
 say to myself, Unfortunately, they have not heard 
 the news. I am surprised that the man I have just 
 met on horseback should be so earnest to overtake his 
 newly-bought cows running away since all property 
 is insecure, and if they do not run away again, they 
 may be taken from him when he gets them. Fool ! 
 docs he not know that Ms seed corn is worth less tliis 
 year, that all beneficent harvests fail as you approach 
 the empire of hell ? No prudent men will build a 
 store-house under these circumstances, or engage in 
 any peaceful enterprise which it requires a long time 
 to accomplish. Art is as long as ever, but life is 
 more interrupted and less available for a man s proper 
 pursuits. It is not an era of repose. We have used 
 up all our inherited freedom. If we would save our 
 lives, we must fight for them. ) 
 
 "I walk toward one of our ponds; but what signi 
 fies the beauty of Nature when men are base ? We 
 walk to the lakes to see our serenity reflected in them; 
 
Thorcau : his Life and Aims. 95 
 
 wlien we arc not serene, we go not to them. Who 
 can be serene in a country where both the ruler and 
 the ruled are without principle? The remembrance 
 of my country spoils my walk. My thoughts arc mur 
 der to the State, and involuntarily go plotting, against 
 her. 
 
 " But it chanced the other day that I scented a 
 white water-lily, and a season I had waited for had 
 arrived. It is the emblem of purity. It bursts up 
 so pure and fair to the eye, and so sweet to the scent, 
 as if to show us what purity and sweetness reside in, 
 and can be extracted from, the slime and muck of 
 the earth. I think I have plucked the first one that 
 has opened for a mile. What confirmation of our 
 hopes is in the fragrance of this flower ! I shall not 
 so soon despair of the world for it, notwithstanding 
 slavery, and the cowardice and want of principle of 
 Northern men. It suggests what kind of laws have 
 prevailed longest and widest, and still prevail, and 
 that the tune may come when men s deeds shall smell 
 as sweet. Such is the odor which the plant emits. 
 If Nature can compound this fragrance still annually, 
 I shall believe her still young and full of vigor, her 
 integrity and genius unimpaired, and that there is 
 virtue even in man, too, who is fitted to perceive and 
 love it. It reminds me that Nature has been partner 
 to no Missouri Compromise. I scent no compromise in. 
 
06 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 the fragrance of the water-lily. It is not a NympTiea 
 Douglasii. In it the sweet, and pure, and inno 
 cent are wholly sundered from the obscene and bale 
 ful. I do not scent in this the time-serving irresolu 
 tion of a Massachusetts governor, nor of a Boston 
 mayor. So behave that the cdor of your actions may 
 enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere, that 
 when we behold or scent a flower we may not be 
 reminded how inconsistent your deeds are with it ; for 
 all odor is but one form of advertisement of a moral 
 quality, and if fair actions had not been performed, the 
 lily would not smell sweet. The foul slime stands for 
 the sloth and vice of man, the decay of humanity ; 
 the fragrant flower that springs from it for the purity 
 and courage which are immortal. 
 
 " Slavery and servility have produced no sweet- 
 scented flower annually, to charm the senses of men, 
 for they have no real life ; they are merely a decay 
 ing and a death, offensive to all healthy nostrils. We 
 do not complain that they live, but that they do not 
 get buried. Let the living bury them ; even they are 
 good for manure." 
 
 In 1854, he addressed the people of Framingham 
 in words of the same tenor : 
 
 "Three years ago, just a week after the authorities 
 of Boston assembled to carry back a perfectly inno 
 cent man, and one whom they know to be . innocent, 
 
Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 97 
 
 into slavery, the inhabitants of Concord caused the 
 bells to be rung and the cannons to be fired, to cele 
 brate their liberty, and the courage and love of liberty 
 of their ancestors who fought at the bridge. As if 
 those three millions had fought for the right to be 
 free themselves, but to hold in slavery three million 
 others. Now-a-days, men wear a fool s-cap, and call 
 it a liberty-cap. I do not know but there are some 
 who, if they were tied to a whipping-pest, and could 
 get but one hand free, would use it to ring the bells, 
 and fire the cannon to celebrate their victory. So 
 some of my townsmen took the liberty to ring and 
 fire. That was the extent of their freedom; and 
 when the sound of the bells died away, their liberty 
 died away also; when the powder was all expended, 
 their liberty went also with the smoke. The joke 
 could be no broader if the inmates of the prisons were 
 to subscribe for all the powder to be used in such 
 salutes, and hire the jailers to do the firing and ring 
 ing for them, while they enjoyed it through the grat 
 ing. . . . 
 
 "Much has been said about American slavery, but 
 I think that we do not even yet realize what slavery 
 is. If I were seriously to propose to Congress to 
 make mankind into sausages, I have no doubt that 
 most of the members would smile at my proposition; 
 and if any believed me to be in earnest, they would 
 
98 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 think that I proposed something much worse than Con 
 gress had ever done. But if any one of them will 
 tell me that to make a man into a sausage would be 
 much worse would be any worse than to make 
 him into a slave, than it was to enact the Fugitive 
 Slave Law, I will accuse him of foolishness, of intel 
 lectual incapacity, of making a distinction without a 
 difference. The one is just as sensible a proposition 
 as the other. 
 
 " I do not wish to believe that the courts were made 
 for fair weather, and for very civil cases merely ; but 
 think of leaving it to any court in the land to decide 
 whether more than three millions of people in this 
 case, a sixth part of a nation have a right to be 
 freemen or not ? . . . The law will never make 
 men free; it is men who have got to make the law 
 free. They are the lovers of law and order who 
 observe the law when the Government breaks it. . 
 . . Whoever can discern truth has received his 
 commission from a higher source than the chiefest jus 
 tice in the world who can discern only law. He it is 
 that delivers sentence. He finds himself constituted 
 judge of the judge." 
 
 Nor docs he leave his audience with only general 
 denunciation. He has practical suggestions though 
 they are not of a kind to recommend him to the able 
 
 editors who have so much to do with accelerating or 
 
 o 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 99 
 
 retarding that less fine sort of greatness, which results 
 mainly from the publicity of the newspapers. 
 
 "Among measures to be adopted, I would suggest 
 to make as earnest and vigorous an assault on the 
 Press as has already been made, and with effect, on 
 the Church. The Church has much improved within 
 a few years ; but the Press is, almost without excep 
 tion, corrupt. I believe that in this country the Press 
 exerts a greater and a more pernicious influence than 
 the Church did in its worst period in the Middle Ages. 
 We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of 
 politicians. TV 7 e do not care for the Bible, but we do 
 care for the newspaper. At any meeting of politi 
 cians like that at Concord the other evening, for 
 instance, how impertinent it would be to quote from 
 the Bible ! how pertinent to quote from a newspaper 
 or from the Constitution ! The newspaper is a bible 
 which we read every morning and every afternoon, 
 standing and sitting, riding and walking. It is a bible 
 which every man carries in his pocket, which lies on 
 every table and counter, and which the mail and 
 thousands of missionaries are continually dispersing. 
 It is in short the only book which America has printed, 
 and which America reads. So wide is its influence. 
 The editor is a preacher whom you voluntarily sup 
 port. Your tax is commonly one cent daily, and it 
 costs nothing for pew-hire. But how many of these 
 
100 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 preachers preach the truth ? I repeat the testimony 
 of many an intelligent foreigner, as well as my own 
 convictions, when I say that probably no country was 
 ever ruled by so mean a class of tyrants as, with a 
 few noble exceptions, are the editors of the periodical 
 press in this country. And as they live and rule only 
 by their servility, and appealing to the worse, and not 
 the better, nature of man, the people who read them 
 are in the condition of the dog that returns to his 
 vomit." 
 
 After this we can the more easily believe that "he 
 detected paltering as readily in dignified and pros 
 perous persons as in beggars, and with equal scorn. 
 Such dangerous frankness," we are told, was in his 
 dealing, "that his admirers called him that terrible 
 Thoreau, as if he spoke when silent, and was still 
 present when he had departed." 
 
 And when Captain John Brown with whose hon 
 est puritanism of doctrine Thoreau would have had 
 little sympathy justified his puritan doctrines by his 
 actions, and approved himself the ONE man, with the 
 majority behind him, for whom Thoreau had waited, 
 he accepted him as a true transcendcntalist. 
 
 We here insert some of John Brown s utterances, to 
 show how his words and his actions harmonized : 
 
 "I believe in the Golden Rule, sir, and the Decla 
 ration of Independence. I think they both mean the 
 
Thoreau : his TAfe and Aims. 101 
 
 same tiling ; and ib is better that a whol^ generation 
 should pass off the face of the earth men, women, 
 and children by a violent death, than that one jot 
 of either should fail in this country. 
 
 "It is nothing to die in a good cause, "but an eter 
 nal disgrace to sit still in the presence of the barbari 
 ties of American da very. 
 
 " An old man should have more care to end life 
 well than to live long. 
 
 " Duty is the voice cf God, and a man is neither 
 worthy of a good home here, or a heaven, that is not 
 willing to be in peril for a good cause. 
 
 "The loss of my family and the trouble in Kansas 
 have shattered my constitution, and I am nothing in 
 the world but to defend the right, and that, by God s 
 help, I have done and will do." 
 
 When John Brown was arrested in October, 1859, 
 after having bravely laid the first spark to the train 
 that was at last effectually to blow up the slave-hold 
 ing interest, Thoreau, notwithstanding his dislike of 
 platforms, felt himself called on to say what he thought. 
 He sent notices to most houses in Concord that he 
 would speak in a public hall on the condition and 
 character of John Brown, on Sunday evening, and 
 invited all to come. The Republican Committee, the 
 Abolitionist Committee, sent him word that it was 
 premature and not advisable. He replied, " I did not 
 
102 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 send to you for advice, but to announce that I am to 
 speak." The hall was "filled at an early hour by 
 people of all parties, and his earnest eulogy of the 
 hero was heard by all respectfully, by many with a 
 sympathy that surprised themselves." Yv r e extract 
 here one of the most memorable passages, which almost 
 looks like a prophecy : 
 
 " I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead 
 not for his life, but his character, his immortal life ; 
 and so it becomes your cause wholly, and not his in 
 >the least. ... I see now that it was necessary 
 that the bravest and humanest man in the country 
 should be hung. Perhaps he saw it himself. I almost 
 fear that I may yet hear of his deliverance, doubt 
 ing if a prolonged life, if any life, can do as much 
 good as his death." 
 
 And he recalls with delight some of the impres 
 sions produced on him by his meeting with John Brown 
 some time before : 
 
 "I noticed that he did not overstate anything, but 
 spoke within bounds. I remember particularly how 
 he referred to what his family had suffered in Kansas, 
 without even giving the least vent to his pent-up fire. 
 . . . When I expressed surprise that he could live 
 in Kansas at all with a price set on his head, and so 
 large a number, including the authorities, exasperated 
 against him, he accounted for it by saying, It is per- 
 
Thoreau : his 
 
 la Life c(n<J\Aims. / 103 
 / ^ 
 
 fcctly well understood that I ^illwt/be^taken,^ Much 
 of the time he had to skulk in swamp^ suffering tfcm 
 sickness, which was the consequence 
 
 poverty and from sickness, 
 
 of exposure, befriended only by Indians and a 
 whites. But though it might be known that he 
 lurking in a particular swamp, his foes commonly 
 not care to go in after him. lie could even come out* 
 into a town where there were more Border Ruffians 
 than Free State men, and transact some business, with 
 out delaying long, and yet not be molested; for, said 
 he, No little handful of men were willing to under 
 take it, and a large body could not be got together in 
 season. " 
 
 And after John Brown had been hung, Thoreau 
 wrote in July, 1860: 
 
 " For my own part, I commonly attend more to 
 nature than to man, but any affecting human event 
 may blind our eyes to natural objects. I was so 
 absorbed in him as to be surprised whenever I detected 
 the routine of the natural world surviving still, or met 
 persons going about their affairs indifferent. It ap 
 peared strange to me that the little dipper should be 
 still diving quietly in the river, as of yore ; and it sug 
 gested that this bird might continue to dive here when 
 Concord should be no more. 
 
 "I felt that he, a prisoner in the midst of his ene 
 mies, and under sentence of death, if consulted as to 
 
104 Thoreau : his J^ife and Aims. 
 
 liis next step cr resource, could answer more wiselj^ 
 than all his countrymen beside. He best understood 
 his position ; he contemplated it most calmly. Com 
 paratively, all other men, North and South, were beside 
 themselves. Our thoughts could not revert to any 
 greater, or wiser, or better man with whom to contrast 
 him, for he, then and there, was above them all. The 
 man this country was about to hang appeared the 
 greatest and best in it. ... Nothing could his 
 enemies do but it redounded to his infinite advantage, 
 that is, to the advantage of his cause. They did 
 not hang him at once, but reserved him to preach to 
 them. They did not hang his four followers with him ; 
 that scene was still postponed ; and so his victory was 
 prolonged and completed. . . . 
 
 " On the day of his translation I heard, to be sure, 
 that he was hung, but I did not know what that 
 meant ; I felt no sorrow on that account ; but not for 
 a day or two did I even hear that ho wa-s dead, and 
 not after any number of days shall I believe it. Of 
 all the men who were said to be my contemporaries, 
 it seemed to me that John Brown was the only one 
 who had not died. I never hear of a man named 
 Brown now and I hear of them pretty often, I 
 never hear of any particular brave and earnest man, 
 but my first thought is of John Brown, and what rela 
 tion he may be to him. I meet him at every turn. lie 
 
T/ioreau : his Life and Aims. 105 
 
 is moro alivo than ho ever was. He has earned immor-- 
 tality. He i;j not confined to North Elba nor to Kan 
 sas. He is no longer working in secret. He works 
 in public, in the clearest light that shines in the land." 
 
 Amid all the concern and grief caused him by the 
 conduct of Northern statesmen in their unwise playing 
 into the hands of the slave-holders, by which, they 
 could only stave off the evil and intensify the crisis 
 that was inevitable, he endeavored to pursue his scien 
 tific studies, still making excursions here and there. 
 The most notable of these was, perhaps, his great 
 tour to Minnesota and the West, in 1800, when he 
 exulted in finding the crab apple, and in making friends 
 with the Indians there, who interested him vastly. In 
 November of 1860 he took a severe cold, through expos 
 ing himself while counting the rings on trees, and 
 when there was snow on the ground. A bronchial 
 affection set in, which caused him great pain. This 
 he bore uncomplainingly, with a stoical fortitude, 
 touched with such tenderness, as made his last days 
 truly typical of his life. Mr. "VV. E. Channing, who 
 was often with him then, bears witness to the spirit 
 that characterized him : 
 
 "With an unf altering trust in God s mercies, and 
 never deserted by his good genius, he bravely bore 
 
106 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 the pains of his terrible malady, working steadily at 
 his papers to the last. His patience was unfailing. He 
 knew not aught save resignation ; and ho did mightily 
 cheer those whose strength was less. As long as he 
 could possibly sit up, he insisted on his chair at the 
 family table, and said, It would not be social to take 
 my meals alone. And on hearing an organ in the 
 streets, playing some old tune of his childood he should 
 never hear again, the tears fell from his eyes, and he 
 said, Give him some money, give him some money. 
 
 He was retired as noontide dew, 
 
 Or fountain in a noonday grove; 
 And you must love him ere to you 
 
 He would seem worthy of your love. 
 The outward shows of sky and earth, 
 
 Of hill and valley he has viewed; 
 And impulses of deeper birth 
 
 Have come to him in solitude. " 
 
 He lingered on thus till the following spring, and 
 died on the morning of the 8th of May, 1861. Mr. 
 Alger, who has freely criticised him, has well said : 
 
 " His interior life, with the relations of thoughts and 
 things, was intensely tender and true, however sorely 
 ajar he may sometimes have been with persons and 
 with the ideas of persons. If he was sour, it was on 
 a store of sweetness ; if sad, on a fund of gladness. 
 
 " While we walked in procession up to the church, 
 though the bell tolled the forty-four years he had 
 numbered, we could not deem that Itc was dead whose 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 107 
 
 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 land 
 scapes. 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 pros 
 pects will long wait to unfurl themselves to another 
 observer so competent to discriminate their features, 
 and so attuned to their moods. And now that it is too 
 late for any further boon amidst his darling haunts 
 below 
 
 There will yet his mother yield 
 A pillow in her greenest field, 
 Nor the pure flowers scorn to cover 
 The clay of their departed lover. " 
 
 i. 
 
108 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE retreat to Waldcn has led to much misunderstand 
 ing, to the charge that Thoreau was a morbid egotist, 
 a sentimentalist, a solitary; a charge which has been 
 boldly repeated, recently, by high authorities, who 
 should have known better,. Nothing could well be 
 further from the truth. He was not always logically 
 consistent in his utterances, and, indeed, did not aim 
 at being so ; but, amid all 4iis brusquerie, we detect 
 the note of real interest in humanity and in human 
 affairs. Only, you must not bore him with minor 
 details of tap-room gossip, or with the news of the 
 cliques. It was, indeed, against cliquerie and all 
 forms of false and half-hearted association that he had 
 taken up his parable ; and when he retired to Wal- 
 dcn he almost tells in his own words that he uncon 
 sciously acted on the axiom of Goethe, " When I need 
 to recruit my strength I must retire into solitude." 
 But neither with Thoreau nor with Goethe could that 
 solitude be a period of inertia, of weak self-pity, or of 
 brooding discontent ; it must have its own activities, 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 109 
 
 its own interests with a genuine restoring cliarm caught 
 from Nature. Were this missed, all was missed. The 
 Waldcn episode is not seen truly until it is viewed in 
 relation to the whole scope and purpose of Thoreau s 
 life. What led him to Walden -determined his atti 
 tude to human institutions ; and the same experiment, 
 in a less striking form, .was carried- on to the end. 
 Thoreau went to.Walden not to escape men, but to 
 prepare himself for them, -and, as far as he could, for 
 the artificial conventions on which society necessarily 
 rests ; not to brood, but to act only to act in lines 
 that would enable him to stand for ever after free, 
 vigorous, independent. There is a strange, close-packed 
 realism in his writing, in large measure derived from 
 this, a realism thoroughly symptomatic of the man and 
 his character, as though he specially followed Nature 
 in her economy of seed-packing ; and it should be 
 observed that you never get a hint of the recluse, who 
 speedily falls to dreaming and vain pitying of himself. 
 There is no self-pity in Thoreau, rather a robust self- 
 sufficiency that could claim the privilege of render 
 ing manly help, though never seeking or accepting 
 any, and that loves to administer readily what Emer 
 son calls shocks of effort. But there was in him 
 nothing of the rebel proper ; he delighted above all 
 things to be at home, and to reverence, only you must 
 allow him something of- his own way. When he 
 
110 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 refused to pay taxes after Government followed him 
 to the forest, it was out of no abstract opposition or 
 dislike to society, he was the last man to act from 
 sentiment; he asserted that there was still a sphere 
 where Government had no right to follow if a man 
 could only find and fix it, and where it did despite to 
 itself by the assertion of its power. 
 
 Something is also to be said for the circumstances 
 amid which he was cast. Instead of being a solitary, 
 he was more than usually sensitive to influences oper 
 ating around him. Indeed, it is the consciousness of 
 a necessity to resist that imparts the tone which has 
 been mistaken for morbid. When the wave of tran 
 scendentalism met that of ultra-practicalism, intensi 
 fied by the expansion of territory which presented a 
 wider sphere for it to act in, and threatened to be 
 swallowed up by it, what was left for a faithful disci 
 ple but to bear his witness for the individuality which 
 he had learned to value through transcendentalism, 
 but which was now well nigh threatened with extinc 
 tion ? Thorcau s retreat to Waldcn may have a mean 
 ing in this light also. Witnesses, many and powerful, 
 transcendentalism has had ; Thoreau is its hermit, if 
 you will, but a hermit who consciously carries society 
 in all its higher interests with him. While his own 
 countrymen with fatal inconsistency have too largely 
 regarded him as a morbid solitary, we in England, if 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. Ill 
 
 we had not followed them, have erred by conceiving 
 of him as a kind of semi-wild man of the woods, with 
 no reason or order in his procedure, though now and 
 then throwing out fine thoughts, and saved from being 
 a wild man altogether only by a dash of rarer instinct, 
 which made him influential with the lower creatures, 
 but divorced him from human society, if it did not 
 even make him its enemy. Thoreau, instead of being- 
 divorced from the spirit of his day, in a special way 
 interpreted it. He would not spend time in trying or 
 experimenting with conventions, which he held had 
 been already sufficiently tested ; he would go to the 
 heart of Nature and try to learn for himself some new 
 law there, or at least to see the old laws in direct and 
 clear relation to his own spirit. As others tried it in 
 various forms of association, so he in his convention 
 with Nature, the one experiment, as he held it, being 
 just as valuable as the other. Democracy in a new 
 country must ever be as hard on individuality as aris 
 tocracy in an old one : the problem is to maintain that 
 intact, and do no despite to others in the process. The 
 very presence of society limits your freedom of action ; 
 it may be well to learn freedom apart, that even the 
 self-control due to society may have real value in it, 
 and not be automatic merely. Mechanical arrange 
 ments are the death of all true society : let us learn 
 
112 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 to dispense with them, or to consider them at least 
 non-essential. 
 
 There is a social and moral regeneration, for the 
 want of which it may be said that, at certain crises, 
 the world becomes inert and sick. For this disease 
 there may be many medicines : socialism may contri 
 bute its quota of relief; and practical political reforms 
 rightly directed may do a little. Let us one and all 
 be true to ourselves first, said Thoreau, and cherish 
 whatever instincts and impulses are sent to us direct 
 from Nature. Then we may return to practical and 
 social life, pure if not strong, with a capacity as of 
 genius, to relieve ourselves from the tyranny of social 
 pre-occupations and self-occupying thoughts, of which 
 thousands daily die, or doom themselves to a living 
 death, strangled as if by Lilliputian cords. He believed 
 I with his whole soul, like Wordsworth, in the fountains 
 that are within. Returning thus to the demands of 
 busy life, he held that we should have capacities of 
 enjoyment and service more than doubled, fitted to 
 be at once true citizens, true to ourselves, faithful 
 reformers, very jealous of what is accepted merely by 
 authority or for its newness ; ready to return on the 
 simplest principles of right and to defend them. In 
 this way Thoreau, the morbid solitary, quite consist 
 ently became the champion of John Brown, of Har 
 per s Ferry. Many were much disappointed when 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 113 
 
 Thoreau did what they would have clamorously 
 praised in any other public man. Thoreau was con 
 sistent, and their insight had been at fault. He waged 
 a war with the power of mere wealth and perverted 
 authority, whether in the North or in the South, and 
 was at a crisis on the side of humanity because he 
 reasoned that, in the last resort, the cause of humanity 
 and the cause of individuality were identical. The 
 teeming wealth of a new and illimitable country must 
 ever, in the outset, oppose itself to the assertion of the 
 individual genius, and essay (if we may speak so) to 
 break it down to its own level, as the trees, growing 
 freely yet closely together in the forest, preserve and 
 foster each other, but^i^e very much of one size and 
 all alike in form. Society in such conditions in no 
 slight measure exists by the very reaction it breeds, 
 for it is quite impossible to calculate the benefit to 
 American life of the inconsistent deference practically 
 paid by its professed Republican members to royalty 
 and aristocracy in every form. V Hawthorne, Emerson, 
 and Thoreau have all used this reaction in favor of 
 true progress and brotherhood, as against the almighty 
 dollar and spread-eagleism. Hawthorne s works, are 
 they not in essence a protest against every kind of Re 
 publican levelling down ? He sought, in the puritan 
 sentiment which was supplied to American history 
 with its relations to old English life, for traditions that 
 
114 Thoreau : Jils Life and Aims. 
 
 recalled the inherited mysteries and dooms of life, 
 breeding distinctions, and from that root what a tree 
 grew up in the atmosphere of his quaint genius! 
 Emerson, again, found compensating forces in the 
 solitude and the occupations possible only in a coun 
 try which is new, and not yet pressed for breathing 
 space ; and Thoreau, perhaps more than either, in the 
 testimony which a real retirement from society could 
 render to the highest idea of individuality, as the 
 foundation stone of a truly cultured and progressive 
 society. 
 
 It was not civilization, as has been very stupidly 
 said, that he was at odds with. It was the special 
 evils induced by civilization which, he held, could be 
 cured by a general or even an extensive return to sim 
 plicity of life and habit. He looked at the savages, 
 and he saw that among them the poorest enjoyed as 
 good a shelter as the richest, and that none were starv 
 ing while others were in luxury. Then he looked first 
 at the city palace, and next at the squalid disease- 
 breeding cellars that lay wide around it on the right 
 and on the left, and he inquired whether "we might 
 not, with a little more wit, use the -accumulated mate 
 rial so as to become richer than the richest now arc, 
 and to make our civilization a blessing." Therefore 
 he did not creep into a wigwam, or try to wear skins 
 in Walden, but built a house there of boards and 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 115 
 
 shingle, wood and bricks. He delights to think that 
 he practised the generous course of " giving his fellow- 
 men an interest in his enterprise," by borrowing an 
 axe to hew down the tall, arrowy white pines for tim 
 ber. " The owner of the axe, as he released his hold 
 on it, said that it was the apple of his eye ; but I 
 returned it sharper than I received it," the true idea 
 of reciprocity on which society is primarily founded. 
 In the beginning of May, when he was ready to set up 
 the frame of the house, it was with the help of some 
 acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occa 
 sion for neighborliness than from necessity. He 
 listens to the sound of the Sunday bells, " faint and 
 sweet, a melody worth importing into the wilderness," 
 and is soothed to a mood of worship and brothcrliness. 
 He hears the scream of the locomotive, softened down 
 by distance, and reflects that commerce, truly pursued, 
 is healthy, and recommends itself by enterprise and 
 bravery; is unexpectedly coniidcnt and serene, alert, 
 adventurous, and unwearied. It brings the palm leaf, 
 the sight of which makes him feel a citizen of the 
 world. " I sec men," he exclaims, " every day go 
 about their business with more or less courage or con 
 tent, doing more even than they suspect, and perchance 
 better employed than they could have consciously de 
 vised." Nor did society fail him. " As for men, they 
 will hardly fail one anywhere. I had more visitors 
 
11G Thoreau hi,; TAfe and Aims. 
 
 while I lived in tlic woods than at any other period of 
 my life : I mean that I had some. I met several there 
 under more favorable circumstances than I could any 
 where else. But fewer came to sec me upon trivial 
 business. In this respect my company was winnowed 
 by my mere distance from town. I had withdrawn so 
 far within the great ocean of solitude into which the 
 rivers of society empty that, for the most part, so far as 
 my needs were concerned, only the finest sediment was 
 deposited around me. Besides, there were wafted 
 to me evidences of unexplored and uncultivated 
 continents on either side." 
 
 And thus, as he confesses, he gains discoveries in 
 Man, as in Nature, by his ability to view them from 
 a new stand-point. He found the downright sense and 
 naturalness of the farmer refreshing to his spirit, 
 " like the sweetness of a nut, like the toughness of 
 hickory." Nay, he avows his indebtedness in words 
 that, coming from such a man, seem high-pitched : 
 
 " He, too, is a redeemer for me. How .superior 
 actually to the faith he professes ! He is not an office 
 seeker. What an institution, what a revelation is a 
 man ! We want foolishly to think the creed a man 
 professes a more significant fact than the man ho is." 
 
 He rejoices in fit visitors at fit times; all are wel 
 come, save, indeed, the man who affectedly pretends 
 to enjoyment of Nature and the woods when his pre- 
 
Thoreau: his Life and Alms. 117 
 
 occupation is ill-concealed and betrays him. Heartily 
 he writes about a different kind of visitors : 
 
 " Children come a-berrying, railroad men taking a 
 Sunday morning walk in clean shirts, fishermen and 
 hunters, poets and philosophers ; in short, all honest 
 pilgrims, who came out to the woods for freedom s sake 
 and really left the village and town behind, I was 
 ready to greet with Welcome, Englishmen, wel 
 come, Englishmen ! for I had had communication 
 with that race." 
 
 Several of his visitors and neighbors he celebrates ; 
 but there is one in especial, a true Homeric or 
 Paphlagonian man whom he sets before us with such 
 impartial, healthy, and loving touches, so absolutely 
 suited to the subject, as to rebut forever the charge of 
 Mr. Lowell in the North American Review that 
 he had no humor < 
 
 " Who should come to my lodge this morning but a 
 true Homeric or Paphlagonian man, he had so suita 
 ble and poetic a name that I am sorry I cannot print 
 it here, a Canadian, a wood chopper and post maker 
 who can hole fifty posts in a day, who made his last 
 supper on a woodchuck which his dog caught. He, too, 
 has heard of Homer, and, if it were not for books, 
 would not know what to do rainy days, though, per 
 haps, he has not read one wholly through for many 
 rainy seasons. Some priest who could pronounce the 
 
118 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 Greek itself taught him to read his verse in the Testa 
 ment, in his native parish far away ; and now I must 
 translate to him, while he holds the book, Achilles 
 reproof to Patroclus for his sad countenance, Why 
 are you in tears, Patroclus, like a young girl ? 
 
 Or, have you alone heard some news from Phthia? 
 They say that Menoetius lives yet, son of Actor, 
 And Felons lives, son of ^Eacus, among the Myrmidons, 
 Either of whom having died, we should greatly grieve. 
 
 He says, That s good. lie has a great bundle of 
 white-oak bark under his arm, for a sicJc man, 
 gathered this Sunday morning. 1 1 suppose there s 
 no harm in going after such a thing today, says he. 
 To him Homer was a great writer, though what his 
 writing was about he did riot know. A more simple 
 and natural mail it would be hard to find. Vice and 
 disease, which cast such a sombre hue over the world, 
 seemed to have hardly any existence for him. He was 
 about twenty-eight years old, and had left Canada 
 and his father s house a dozen years before, to work 
 in the States, and earn money to buy a farm with at 
 last, perhaps in his native county. He was cast in 
 the coarsest mould, a stout but sluggish body, yet 
 gracefully carried, with a thick sun-burnt neck, dark 
 bushy hair, and dull ^leepy blue eyes, which were 
 occasionally lit up with expression. He wore a flat 
 gray cloth cap, a dingy wool-colored great coat, and 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 119 
 
 cowhide boots. lie was a great consumer of meat, 
 usually carrying his dinner to liis work, a couple of 
 miles past my house, for he chopped all summer, 
 in a tin pail ; cold meats, often cold woodchucks, and 
 coffee in a stone bottle, which dangled by a string 
 from his belt ; and sometimes he offered me a drink. 
 He came along early, crossing my bean-field, though 
 without anxiety or haste to get to his work, such as 
 Yankees exhibit. He was n t agoing to huii himself. 
 He did n t care if he only earned his board. Frequently 
 he would leave his dinner in the bushes, when his dog 
 had caught a woodchuck by the way, and go back a 
 mile and a half to dress it, and leave it in the cellar of 
 the house where he boarded, after deliberating first 
 for half an hour whether he could not sink it in the 
 pond safely till nightfall, loving to dwell long upon 
 these themes. Pie would say, as he went by in the 
 morning, How thick the pigeons are ! If working 
 every day were not my trade, I could get all the meat 
 I should want by hunting, pigeons, woodchucks, 
 rabbits, partridges, by gosh ! I could get all I should 
 want for a week in one day ! 
 
 " He was a skillful chopper, and indulged in some 
 nourishes and ornaments in his art. He cut his trees 
 level, and close to the ground, that the sprouts which 
 came up afterward might be more vigorous, and a 
 sled might slide over the stumps ; and instead of leav- 
 
120 Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 
 
 ing a whole tree to support Ms corded wood, he would 
 pare it away to a slender stake or splinter, which you 
 could break off with your hand at last. 
 "Ho interested me because he was so quiet and 
 solitary, and so happy withal, a well of good humor 
 and contentment which overflowed at his eyes. His 
 mirth was without alloy. Sometimes I saw him at 
 his work in the woods, felling trees, and he would 
 greet me with a laugh of inexpressible satisfaction, 
 and a salutation in Canadian French, though he spoke 
 English as well. When I approached him he would 
 suspend his work, and, with half suppressed mirth, lie 
 along the trunk of a pine which he had felled, and, 
 peeling off the inner bark, roll it up into a ball, and 
 chew it while he laughed and talked. Such an exu 
 berance of animal spirits had he that he sometimes 
 tumbled down and rolled on the ground with laughter 
 at anything that made him think, and tickled him. 
 Looking round upon the trees, he would exclaim, 
 By George ! I can enjoy myself well enough here 
 chopping; I want no better sport. Sometimes, when 
 at leisure, he amused himself all day in the woods with 
 a pocket pistol, firing salutes to himself at regular 
 intervals as he walked. In the winter he had a fire 
 by which, at noon, he warmed his coffee in a kettle ; 
 and as he sat on a log to cat his dinner, the chicadees 
 would sometimes come round and alight on his arm 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 121 
 
 and peck at the potato in his fingers ; and he said 
 that he liked to have the little fellers about him. 
 
 " In him the animal man chiefly was developed, 
 In physical endurance and contentment he was cousin 
 to the pine and the rock. I asked him once if he was 
 not sometimes tired at night after working all day; 
 and he answered, with a sincere and serious look, 
 Gorrappit, I never was tired in my life. But the 
 intellectual and what is called spiritual man in him 
 were slumbering as in an infant. He had been instructed 
 only in that innocent and ineffectual way in which the 
 Catholic priests teach the aborigines, by which the 
 pupil is never educated to the degree of consciousness, 
 but only to the degree of trust and reverence ; and a 
 child is not made a man, but kept a child. When 
 Nature made him, she gave him a strong body and 
 contentment for his portion, and propped him on every 
 side with reverence and reliance, that he might live 
 out his three score years and ten a child. He was so 
 genuine and unsophisticated that no introduction would 
 serve to introduce him, more than if you introduced a 
 woodchuck to your neighbor. He had got to find him 
 out as you did. He would not play any part. Men 
 paid him wages for work, and so helped to feed and 
 clothe him : but he never exchanged opinions with 
 them. He was so simply and naturally humble 
 if he can be called humble who never aspires that 
 
122 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 humility was no distinct quality in him, nor could he 
 conceive of it. Wiser men were demigods to him. 
 If you told him that such a one was coming, he did 
 as if he thought that anything so grand would expect 
 nothing of himself, but take all the responsibility on 
 itself, and let him be forgotten still. He never heard 
 the sound of praise. He particularly reverenced the 
 writer and the preacher. Their performances were 
 miracles. When I told him that I wrote considerably, 
 he thought for a long time that it was merely the 
 handwriting which I meant, for he could write a remark 
 ably good hand himself. I sometimes found the name 
 of his native parish handsomely written in the snow 
 by the highway, with the proper French accent, and 
 knew that he had passed. I asked him if he ever 
 wished to write his thoughts. He said that he had read 
 and written letters for those who could not, but he 
 never tried to write thoughts, no, he could not, ho 
 could not tell what to put first ; it would kill him ; 
 and then there was spelling to be attended to at the 
 same time ! 
 
 * I heard that a distinguished wise man and reformer 
 asked him if he did not want the world to be changed ; 
 but he answered with a chuckle of surprise in his Cana 
 dian accent, not knowing that the question had ever 
 been entertained before, No, I like it well enough. 
 
 O 
 
 It would have suggested many things to a philosopher 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 123 
 
 to have had dealings with him. To a stranger he 
 appeared to know nothing of things in general; yet 
 I sometimes saw in him a man whom I had not seen 
 before, and I did not know whether he was as wise as 
 Shakespeare or as simply ignorant as a child, whether 
 to suspect him of a fine poetic consciousness or of stu 
 pidity. A townsman told me that when he met him 
 sauntering through the village in his small, close-fitting 
 cap, and whistling to himself, he reminded him of a 
 prince in disguise. 
 
 " His only books were an almanac and an arithmetic, 
 in which last he was considerably expert. The former 
 was a sort of cyclopaedia to him, which he supposed to 
 contain an abstract of human knowledge, as indeed it 
 docs to a considerable extent. I loved to sound him 
 on the various reforms of the day, and he never failed 
 to look at them in the most simple and practical light. 
 He had never heard of such things before. Could he 
 do without factories? I asked. He had worn the 
 home-made Vermont gray, he said, and that was good. 
 Could he dispense with tea or coffee ? Did this country 
 afford any beverage beside water? He had soaked 
 hemlock leaves in water and drank it, and thought 
 that was better than water in warm weather. When 
 I asked him if he could do without money, he showed 
 the convenience of money in such a way as to suggest 
 and coincide with the most philosophical accounts of 
 
124 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 the origin of this institution, and the very derivation! 
 of the word pecunia. If an ox were his property, 
 and he wished to get needles and thread at the store, 
 he thought it would be inconvenient and impossible 
 soon to go on mortgaging some portion of the creature 
 each time to that account. He could defend many 
 institutions better than any philosopher, because, in 
 describing them as they concerned him, he gave the 
 true reason for their prevalence, and speculation had 
 not suggested to him any other. At another time, 
 hearing Plato s definition of a man, a biped with 
 out feathers, and that one exhibited a cock plucked 
 and called it Plato s man, he thought it an important 
 difference that the Jcnees bent the wrong way. He 
 would sometimes exclaim, How I love to talk ! By 
 George, I could talk all day! I asked him once, 
 when I had not seen him for many months, if he had 
 got a new idea this summer. Good Lord ! said he ; 
 a man that has to work as I do, if he docs not forget 
 the ideas he has had, he will do* well. Maybe the 
 man you hoe with is inclined to race ; then, by gorry, 
 your mind must be there; you think of weeds. He 
 would sometimes ask me first, on such occasions, if I 
 had made any improvement. One winter day I asked 
 him if he was always satisfied with himself, wishing to 
 suggest a substitute within him for the priest without, 
 and some higher motive for living. Satisfied ! said 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 125 
 
 he, some men are satisfied with one thing, and some 
 with another. One man, perhaps, if he has got enough, 
 will be satisfied to sit all day with his back to the fire 
 and his belly to the table, by George ! Yet, I never, 
 by any maneuvering, could get him to take the spirit 
 ual view of things; the highest that he appeared to 
 conceive of was a simple expediency, such as you 
 might expect an animal to appreciate ; and this, practi 
 cally, is true of most men. If I suggested any improve 
 ment in his mode of life, he merely answered, without 
 expressing any regret, that it was too late. Yet he 
 thoroughly believed in honesty and the like virtues. 
 
 " There was a certain positive originality, however 
 slight, to be detected in him; and I occasionally ob 
 served that he was thinking for himself and express 
 ing his own opinion, a phenomenon so rare that 
 I would walk ten miles any day to observe it, 
 and it amounted to the reorganization of many 
 of the institutions of society. Though he hesitated, 
 and perhaps failed to express himself distinctly, he 
 always had a presentable thought behind. Yet his 
 thinking was so primitive and immersed in his animal 
 life that, though more promising than a merely learned 
 man s, it rarely ripened to anything which can be 
 reported. He suggested that there might be men of 
 genius in the lowest grades of life, however perma 
 nently humble and illiterate, who take their own view 
 
126 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 always, or do not pretend to see at all; who are as 
 bottomless as Walden Pond was thought to be, though 
 they may be dark and muddy." 
 
 The following picture of Baker Farm will, no 
 doubt, be taken to illustrate the same characteris 
 tics : 
 
 " I set out one afternoon to go a-iishing to Fair- 
 Haven, through the woodg, to eke out my scanty fare 
 of vegetables. My way led through Pleasant Meadow, 
 an adjunct of the Baker Farm, that retreat of which 
 a poet has since sung, beginning 
 
 Thy entry is a pleasant field, 
 
 Which some mossy fruit trees yield 
 
 Partly to a ruddy brook, 
 
 By gliding musquash undertook, 
 
 And mercurial trout, 
 
 Darting about. 
 
 I thought of living there before I went to Walden. I 
 hooked the apples, leaped the brook, and scared 
 the musquash and the trout. It was one of those after 
 noons which seem indefinitely long before one, in which 
 many events may happen, a large portion of our natu 
 ral life, though it was already half spent when I 
 started. By the way there came up a shower, which 
 compelled me to stand half an hour under a pine, pil 
 ing boughs over my head, and wearing my handker 
 chief for a shed ; and when at length I had made one 
 cast over the pickerel-weed, standing up to my middle 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 127 
 
 in water, I found myself suddenly in tlic shadow of 
 a cloud, and the thunder began to rumble with such 
 emphasis that I could do no more than listen to it. 
 The gods must be proud, thought I, with such forked 
 flashes to rout a poor unarmed fisherman. So I made 
 haste for shelter to the nearest hut, which stood half a 
 mile from any road, but so much the nearer to the 
 pond, and had long been uninhabited : 
 
 And hero a poet builded, 
 
 In the completed years, 
 For behoM a trivial cabin. 
 
 That to destruction steers. 
 
 So the Muse fables. But therein, as I found, dwelt 
 now John Field, an Irishman, and his wife, and sev 
 eral children, from the broad-faced boy who had assisted 
 his father at his work, and now came running to his 
 side from the bog to escape the rain, to the wrinkled, 
 Sibyl-like, cone-headed infant that sat upon its fath 
 er s knee as in the palaces of nobles, and looked out 
 from its home in the midst of wet and hunger inquisi 
 tively upon the stranger, with the privilege of infancy, 
 not knowing but it was the last of a noble line, and 
 the hope and cynosure of the world, instead of John 
 Field s poor starveling brat. There we sat together 
 under that part of the roof which leaked the least, 
 while it showered and thundered without. I had sat 
 there many times of old before the ship was built that 
 
128 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 floated this family to America. An honest, hard 
 working, but shiftless man plainly was John Field; 
 and his wife, she too was brave to cook so many suc 
 cessive dinners in the recesses of that lofty stove ; 
 with round greasy face and bare breast, still thinking 
 to improve her condition one day; with the never- 
 absent mop in one hand, and yet no effects of it visi 
 ble anywhere. The chickens, which had also taken 
 shelter here from the rain, stalked about the room like 
 members of the family, too humanized, methought, to 
 roast well. They stood and looked in my eye or 
 pecked at my shoe significantly. Meanwhile my host 
 told me his story, how hard he worked bogging for 
 a neighboring farmer, turning up a meadow with a 
 spade or bog-hoe at the rate of ten dollars an acre and 
 the use of the land with manure for one year, and his 
 little broad-faced son worked cheerfully at his father s 
 side the while, not knowing how poor a bargain the 
 latter had made. I tried to help him with my expe 
 rience, telling him that ho was one of my nearest 
 neighbors, and that I too, who came a-fishing here, 
 and looked like a loafer, was getting my living like 
 himself; that I lived in a tight, light, and clean house, 
 which hardly cost more than the annual rent of such 
 a ruin as his commonly amounts to; and how, if he 
 chose, he might in a month or two build himself a pal 
 ace of his own ; that I did not use tea, nor coffee, nor 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 129 
 
 butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so did not have 
 to work to get them ; again, as I did not work hard, 
 I did not have to eat hard, and it cost me but a trifle 
 for my food ; but as he began with tea, and coffee, and 
 butter, and milk, and beef, he had to work hard to pay 
 for them, and when he had worked hard he had to eat 
 hard again to repair the waste of his system, and so 
 it was as broad as it was long ; indeed, it was broader 
 than it was long, for he was discontented and wasted 
 his life into the bargain ; and yet he had rated it as a 
 gain in coming to America, that here you could get 
 tea, and coffee, and meat every day. But the only 
 true America is that country where you are at liberty 
 to pursue such a mode of life as may enable you to 
 do without these, and where the State does not endeavor 
 to compel you to sustain the slavery and war and other 
 superfluous expenses which directly or indirectly result 
 from the use of such things. For I purposely talked 
 to him as if he were a philosopher, or desired to be 
 one. I should bo glad if all the meadows on the 
 earth were left in a wild state, if that were the conse 
 quence of men s beginning to redeem themselves. A 
 man will not need to study history to find out what is 
 best for his own culture. But, alas ! the culture of 
 an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a 
 sort of moral bog hoe. I told him that, as he worked 
 so hard at bogging, he required thick boots and stout 
 
130 T/ioreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 clothing, which yet were soon soiled and worn out, 
 but I wore light shoes and thin clothing, which cost 
 not half so much, though he might think that I was 
 dressed like a gentleman (which, however, was not 
 the case), and in an hour or two, without labor, but 
 as a recreation, I could, if I wished, catch as many 
 fish as I should want for two days, or earn enough 
 money to support me a week. If he and his family 
 would live simply, they might all go a hucklebcrrying 
 in the summer for their amusement. John heaved a 
 sigh at this, and his wife stared with arms akimbo, 
 and both appeared to be wondering if they had capi 
 tal enough to begin such a course with, or arithmetic 
 enough to carry it through. It was sailing by dead 
 reckoning to them, and they saw not clearly how to 
 make their port so ; therefore, I suppose they still 
 take life bravely, after their fashion, face to face, giv 
 ing it tooth and nail, not having skill to split its mas 
 sive columns with any fine entering wedge, and route 
 it in detail; thinking to deal with it roughly, as one 
 should handle a thistle. But they fight at an over 
 whelming disadvantage, living, John Field, alas! 
 without arithmetic, and failing so. 
 
 " Do you ever fish? I asked. Oh, yes, I catch 
 a mess now and then when I am lying by ; good perch 
 I catch. What s your bait? I catch shiners 
 with fish worms, and bait the perch with them. You d 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 131 
 
 better go now, John, said his wife, with glistening and 
 hopeful face ; but John demurred. 
 
 " The shower was now over, and a rainbow above 
 the eastern woods promised a fair evening; so I took 
 my departure. When I had got without I asked for 
 a dish, hoping to get sight of the well bottom, to com 
 plete my survey of the premises ; but there, alas ! are 
 shallows and quicksands, and rope broken withal, and 
 bucket irrecoverable. Meanwhile, the right culinary 
 vessel was selected, water was seemingly distilled, and 
 after consultation and long delay passed out to the 
 thirsty one, not yet suffered to cool, not yet to settle. 
 Such gruel sustains life here, I thought; so, shutting 
 my eyes, and excluding the motes by a skillfully 
 directed under-current, I drank to genuine hospitality 
 the heartiest draught I could. I am not squeamish in 
 such cases when manners are concerned. 
 
 "As I was leaving the Irishman s roof after the 
 rain, bending my steps again to the pond, my haste 
 to catch pickerel, wading in retired meadows, in sloughs 
 and bog holes, in forlorn and savage places, appeared 
 for an instant trivial to me who had been sent to 
 school and college. But as I ran down the hill toward 
 the reddening west, with the rainbow over my shoulder, 
 and some faint tinkling sounds borne to my ear through 
 the cleansed air, from I know not what quarter, my 
 Good Genius seemed to Kay, Go fish and hunt far 
 
132 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 and wido day by day, farther and wider, and rest 
 thee by many brooks and hearth sides without misgiv 
 ing. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. 
 Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adven 
 tures. Let the noon find thce by other lakes, and the 
 night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are 
 no larger fields than these, no worthier games than 
 may here be played. Grow wild according to thy 
 nature, like these sedges and brakes, which will never 
 become English hay. Let the thunder rumble ; what 
 if it threaten ruin to farmers crops ? that is not its 
 errand to thee. Take shelter under the cloud, while 
 they flee to carts and sheds. Let not to get a living 
 be thy trade, but thy sport. Enjoy the land, but own 
 it not. Through want of enterprise and faith men are 
 where they are, buying and selling, and spending their 
 lives like serfs. 
 "0 Baker Farm! 
 
 Landscape where the richest element 
 la a little sunshine innocent. * * 
 
 No one run3 to revel 
 On thy rail-fenced lea. * * 
 
 Debate with no man hast thott, 
 
 With questions art never perplexed, 
 As tame at the first sight as now, 
 In thy plain russet gabardine dressed. * * 
 
 * Come ye who love, 
 And ye who hate 
 Children of the Holy Dove, 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 133 
 
 And Guy Faux of the State, 
 And hang conspiracies 
 From the tough rafters of the trees. 
 
 "Men come tamely home at night only from the 
 next field or street, where their household echoes haunt, 
 and their life pines because it breathes its own breath 
 over again; their shadows morning and evening reach 
 farther than their daily steps. We should come home 
 from far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries 
 every day with new experiences and character. 
 
 "Before I had reached the pond some fresh impulse 
 had brought out John Field, with altered mind, letting 
 go bogging ere this sunset. But he, poor man, dis 
 turbed only a couple of fins while I was catching a 
 fair string, and he said it was his luck ; but when we 
 changed seats in the boat luck changed seats too. 
 Poor John Field ! I trust he does not read this, unless 
 he will improve by it, thinking to live by some 
 derivative old-country mode in this primitive new coun 
 try, to catch perch with shiners. It is good bait 
 sometimes, I allow. With his horizon all his own, yet 
 he a poor man, born to be poor, with his inherited 
 Irish poverty or poor life, his Adam s grandmother and 
 boggy ways, not to rise in this world, he nor his pos 
 terity, till their wading, webbed, bog-trotting feet get 
 talfjria to their heels." 
 
 His character of the landlord, generalized from 
 observation and contact with many specimens of the 
 
134 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 class, may be cited here, as it might in itself suffice to 
 render nugatory henceforth the charges of asceticism, 
 morbidity, and lack of humor and healthy sympathy : 
 "Who has not imagined to himself a country inn, 
 where the traveller shall really feel in, and at home, 
 and at his public house, who was before at his private 
 house ; whose host is indeed a /tost, and a lord of the 
 land, a self appointed brother of his race; called to 
 this place, besides, by all the winds of heaven and his 
 good genius, as truly as the preacher is called to preach ; 
 a man of such universal sympathies, and so broad and 
 genial a human nature, that he would fain sacrifice 
 the tender but narrow ties of private friendship to a 
 broad, sunshiny, fair-weather-and-foul friendship for 
 his race ; who loves men, not as a philosopher, with 
 philanthropy, nor as an overseer of the poor, with 
 charity, but by a necessity of his nature, as he loves 
 dogs and horses; and, standing at his open door from 
 morning till night, would fain see more and more of 
 them come along the highway, and is never satiated. 
 To him the sun and moon are but travellers, the one by 
 day and the other by night ; and they, too, patronize 
 his house. To his imagination all things travel save 
 his sign-post and himself ; and though you may be his 
 neighbor for years, he will show you only the civilities 
 of the road. But on the other hand, while nations 
 and individuals are alike selfish and exclusive, he 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 135 
 
 loves all men equally ; and if he treats his nearest 
 neighbor as a stranger, since he has invited all nations 
 to share his hospitality, the farthest travelled is in 
 some measure kindred to him who takes him into^the 
 bosom of his family. 
 
 "He keeps a house of entertainment at the sign of 
 the Black Horse or the Spread Eagle, and is known 
 far and wide, and his fame travels with increased 
 radius every year. All the neighborhood is in his 
 interest, and if the traveller ask how far to a tavern, 
 he receives some such answer as this: Well, sir, 
 there s a house about three miles from here, where 
 they haven t taken down their sign yet; but it s only 
 ten miles to Slocum s, and that s a capital house both 
 for man and beast. At three miles he passes a cheer 
 less barrack, standing desolate behind its sign post, 
 neither public nor private, and has glimpses of a dis 
 contented couple who have mistaken their calling. 
 At ten miles see where the tavern stands, really an 
 entertaining prospect, so public and inviting that 
 only the rain and snow do not enter. It is no gay 
 pavilion, made of bright stuffs, and furnished with 
 nuts and gingerbread, but as plain and sincere as a 
 caravansary; located in no Tarrytown, where you 
 receive only the civilities of commerce, but far in the 
 fields it exercises a primitive hospitality, amid the 
 fresh scent of new hay and raspberries, if it be summer 
 
136 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 time, and the tinkling of cowbells from invisible pas 
 tures ; for it is a land flowing with milk and honey, 
 and the newest milk courses in a broad, deep stream 
 across the premises. 
 
 " In these retired places the tavern is first of all a 
 house, elsewhere, last of all, or never, and warms 
 and shelters its inhabitants. It is as simple and sin 
 cere in its essentials as the caves in which the first 
 men dwelt, but it is also as open and public. The 
 traveller steps across the threshold, and lo ! he, too, is 
 master, for he only can be called proprietor of the 
 house here who behaves with most propriety in it. 
 The landlord stands clear back in nature, to my imag 
 ination, with his axe and spade, felling trees and rais 
 ing, potatoes with the vigor of a pioneer; with Pro 
 methean energy making nature yield her increase to 
 supply the wants of so many; and ho is not so ex 
 hausted nor of so short a stride but that he comes for 
 ward even to the highway to this wide hospitality and 
 publicity. Surely, he has solved some of the problems 
 of life. He comes in at his back door, holding a log, 
 fresh cut for the hearth, upon his shoulder with one 
 hand, while he greets the newly arrived traveller with 
 the other. 
 
 "Here at length we have free range, as not in pal 
 aces, nor cottages, nor temples, and intrude nowhere. 
 All the secrets of housekeeping arc exhibited to the 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 137 
 
 eyes of men, above and below, before and behind. 
 This is the necessary way to live, men have confessed, 
 in these days, and shall he skulk and hide ? and why 
 should we have any serious disgust at kitchens? Per 
 haps they are the holiest recess of the house. There 
 is the hearth, after all, and the settle, and the fagots, 
 and the kettle, and the crickets. We have pleasant 
 reminiscences of these.- They are the heart, the left 
 ventricle, the very vital part of the house. Here the 
 real and sincere life which we meet in the streets was 
 actually fed and sheltered. Here burns the taper 
 that cheers the lonely traveller by night, and from 
 this hearth ascend the smokes that populate the valley 
 to his eyes by day. On the whole, a man may not 
 be so little ashamed of any other part of his house, 
 for here is his sincerity and earnest, at least. It may 
 not be here that the besoms are plied most, it is not 
 here that they need to be, for dust will not settle on 
 the kitchen floor more than in nature. 
 
 "Hence it will not do for the landlord to possess 
 too fine a nature. He must have health above the 
 common accidents of life, subject to no modern fash 
 ionable diseases ; but no taste, rather a vast relish or 
 appetite. His sentiments on all subjects will be deliv 
 ered as freely as the wind blows ; there is nothing pri 
 vate or individual in them, though still original, but 
 they are public, and of the hue of the heavens over 
 
138 Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 
 
 his house, a certain out-of-door obviousness and trans 
 parency not to "be disputed. What he does, his man 
 ners are not to "be complained of, though abstractly 
 offensive, for it is what man does, and in him the race 
 is exhibited. When he eats, he is liver and bowels, 
 and the whole digestive apparatus to the company, 
 and so all admit the thing is done. He must have no 
 idiosyncrasies, no particular bent or tendencies to this 
 or that, but a general, uniform, and healthy develop 
 ment, such as his portly person indicates, offering him 
 self equally on all sides to men. He is not one of 
 your peaked and inhospitable men of genius, with par 
 ticular tastes, but, as we said before, has one uniform 
 relish, and taste which never aspires higher than a 
 tavern sign, or the cut of a weather cock. The man 
 of genius, like a dog with a bone, or the slave who 
 has swallowed a diamond, or a patient with the gravel, 
 sits afar and retired, off the road, hangs out no sign 
 of refreshment for man and beast, but says, by all 
 possible hints and signs, I wish to be alone good 
 bye farewell. But the landlord can afford to live 
 without privacy. He entertains no private thought, 
 he cherishes no solitary hour, no Sabbath day, but 
 thinks, enough to assert the dignity of reason, and 
 talks, and reads the newspaper. What he does not 
 tell to one traveller, ho tells to another. He never 
 wants to be alone, but sleeps, wakes, eats, drinks, 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 139 
 
 sociably, still remembering his race. lie walks abroad 
 through the thoughts of men, and the Iliad and Shake 
 speare are tame to him, who hears the rude but homely 
 incidents of the road from every traveller. The mail 
 might drive through his brain in the midst of his most 
 lonely soliloquy without disturbing his equanimity, 
 provided it brought plenty of news and passengers. 
 There can be no />ro-fanity where there is no fane 
 behind, and the whole world may see quite round him. 
 Perchance his lines have fallen to him in dustier places, 
 and he has heroically sat down where two roads meet, 
 or at the Four Corners, or the Five Points, and his 
 life is sublimely trivial for the good of men. The 
 dust of travel blows ever in his eyes, and they pre 
 serve their clear, complacent look. The hourlics and 
 half-hourlics, the dailies and weeklies, whirl on well- 
 worn tracks, round and round his house, as if it were 
 the goal in the stadium, and still he sits within in 
 unruffled serenity, with no show of retreat. His neigh 
 bor dwells timidly behind a screen of poplars and 
 willows, and a fence with sheaves of spears at regular 
 intervals, or defended against the tender palms of 
 visitors by sharp spikes, but the traveller s wheels 
 rattle over the door-step of the tavern, and ho cracks 
 his whip in the entry. He is truly glad to see you, 
 and sincere as the bull s-eye over the door. The trav 
 eller seeks to find, wherever he goes, some one who 
 
140 Thoreau : Ids Life, and A-bns. 
 
 will stand in this broad and catholic relation to him, 
 who will be an inhabitant of the land to him a stranger, 
 and represent its human nature, as the rock stands 
 for its inanimate nature ; and this is he. As his crib 
 furnishes provender for the traveller s horse, and his 
 larder provisions for his appetite, so his conversation 
 furnishes the necessary aliment to his spirits. He 
 knows very well what a man wants, for he is a man 
 himself, and, as it were, the farthest travelled, though 
 he has never stirred from his door. He understands 
 his needs and destiny. He would be well fed and 
 lodged, there can be no doubt, and have the transient 
 sympathy of a cheerful companion, and of a heart which 
 always prophesies fair weather. And, after all, the 
 greatest men even want much more of the sympathy 
 which every honest fellow can give than that which 
 the great only can impart. If he is not the most 
 upright, let us allow him this praise, that he is the 
 most downright of men. He has a hand to shake and 
 to be shaken, and takes a sturdy and unquestionable 
 interest in you, as if he had assumed the care of you ; 
 but if you will break your neck, he will even give 
 you the best advice as to the method. 
 
 " The great poots have not been ungrateful to their 
 landlords. Mine host of the Tabard Inn, in the Pro 
 logue to the Canterbury Tales, was an honor to his 
 profession : 
 
/ ^^/> v 
 
 Thoreau: his Lifefan&tyims. Ity 
 
 A semely man our Hoste was with sjllc, "* -/|* ^ r 
 For to hail boon an marsli;a v in an^ll^B. .. 4 
 
 A large man he was, with, eyen stepe ;"*/ /i\ 
 
 A fairer burgeis is ther nou in Chepc : f ^ * 
 
 Bold of his speche, and wise, and well ytaught, < J y l . 
 
 And of manhood him lacked righte naught. 
 
 Eke thereto, was he right a mery man, 
 
 And after souper plaien he began, 
 
 And spake of mirthe amonges other thingea, 
 
 Whan that we hadden made our reckoninges. 
 
 He is a true house-band, and the centre of the-company, 
 of greater fellowship and practical social talent than 
 any. He it is that proposes that each shall tell a tale 
 to wile away the time to Canterbury, and leads them 
 himself, and concludes with his own talc : 
 
 Now by my fader s soule that is ded, 
 But ye be mery, smiteth of my hed ; 
 Hold up your hoiides withouten more speche. 
 
 " If we do not look up to the landlord, we look 
 round for him on all emergencies, for he is a man of 
 iniinite experience, who unites hands with wit. He is 
 a more public character than a statesman, a publican, 
 and not consequently a sinner; and surely he, if any, 
 should be exempted from taxation and military duty. 
 
 "Talkino- with our host is next best and instructive 
 
 o 
 
 to talking with one s self. It is a more conscious 
 soliloquy, as it were, to speak generally, and try what 
 we would say provided we had an audience. He has 
 indulgent and open cars and does not require petty 
 
142 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 and particular statements. Heigho! exclaims the 
 traveller. Them s my sentiments, thinks mine host, 
 and stands ready for what may come next, expressing 
 the purest sympathy by his demeanor. Hot as blazes ! 
 says the other. Hard weather, sir, not much stir 
 ring nowadays/ says he. He is wiser than to contra 
 dict his guest in any case ; he lets him go on, he lets 
 him travel. 
 
 "The latest sitter leaves him standing far in the 
 night, prepared to live right on, while suns rise and 
 set, and his good night has as brisk a sound as his 
 good morning ; and the earliest riser finds him tast 
 ing his liquors in the bar ere flies begin to buz, with a 
 countenance fresh as the morning star over the sanded 
 floor, and not as one who had watched all ni^ht for 
 
 O 
 
 travellers. And yet, if beds be the subject of conversa 
 tion, it will appear that no man has been a sounder 
 sleeper in his time. 
 
 " Finally, as for his moral character, we do not hesi 
 tate to say that he has no grain of vice or meanness in 
 him, but represents just that degree of virtue which all 
 men relish without being obliged to respect. He is a 
 good man, as his bitters are good, an unquestionable 
 goodness. Not what is called a good man, good to 
 be considered, as a work of art in galleries and muse 
 ums, but a good fellow, that is good to be associated 
 with. Who ever thought of the religion of an inn- 
 
Thoreau : -his Life and Aims. 143 
 
 keeper, whether ho was joined to the church, par 
 took of the sacrament, said his prayers, feared God, or 
 the like? No doubt he has had his experience, has 
 felt a change, arid is a firm believer in the persever 
 ance of the saints. In this last, we suspect, docs the 
 peculiarity of his religion consist. But he keeps an 
 inn, and not a conscience. How many fragrant chari 
 ties and sincere social virtues are implied in this daily 
 offering of himself to the public. He cherishes good 
 will to all, and gives the wayfarer as good and honest 
 advice to direct him on his road as the priest." 
 
 There is humor, too, in the account of that poor 
 inoffensive pauper who figures among his visitors at 
 Waldcn, declaring with effusive honesty that he is 
 deficient in intellect, always was, and the Lord made 
 him so ; no loss than in that of the bores, of whom he 
 declares : 
 
 " These are the folks that worry the man 
 That lives in the house that I built." 
 
 Nor should the picture of the drunken Dutchman at 
 Patchogue be forgotten for its humorous touches. 
 
 As he walked along the woodpaths, picking the 
 varied berries that adorn nature s untrimmed hedges, 
 men were not thrust from his thoughts ; his imagina 
 tion was ever finding symbols for a truer and deeper 
 union of man and nature. The simplest hint sufficed : 
 
 "Along the wood paths wines of all kinds and 
 
144 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 qualities, of noblest vintages, are bottled up in the 
 skins of countless berries, for the taste of men and ani 
 mals. To men they seem offered not so much for 
 food as for sociality, that they may pic-nic with 
 nature. Diet drinks, cordial wines we pluck and eat 
 in remembrance of her ; the not-i orbidden fruits which 
 no serpent tempts us to taste." 
 
 If Thoreau was an egotist, a stoic, disgusted with 
 society and escaping, from it, does he not admirably 
 recover tone at.. the touch of genuine human nature? 
 To Jiim, too, had come the utter weariness of frivolity 
 and interchange of compliments that mean nothing, 
 
 the greetings where no kincTness is, of which 
 Wordsworth expressed such horror; the sad repul 
 sion from life in its manifold disguises, and from indi 
 vidual character in its duplicities and perversities; 
 
 the hopeless desire to escape into some solitude 
 apart, which has been the craving, at one time or 
 other, of the greater and tenderer souls in all ages. 
 Some, in a fever of despair, have finally escaped into 
 fixed cynicism and hate, venturing no more or desiring 
 no more, to climb up and to gaze, as it were, through 
 the narrow prison bars if perchance another heart 
 would for a moment reveal itself in sympathy and 
 helpfulness ; some, again, have settled down on the 
 lees, and, hopelessly accepting t^ie world as it is, have 
 made it an instrument to work with, and to rise up 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 145 
 
 by, to a more dreary isolation still ; and some, by 
 faithful converse with Nature, have found a restoring 
 charm by which they have been able to fortify them 
 selves, the sweet belief that in every man, however 
 muffled and concealed by sophistications, there lies the 
 unsophisticated man with possibilities of late unfold 
 ing and renewal. Thoreau was pre-eminently such. 
 He believed in the unsophisticated man, and was un 
 wearied in the search after him. What if such should 
 be his meaning in this fine passage, a bit of experi 
 ence disguised in parable ? 
 
 " I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle 
 dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travel 
 lers I have spoken concerning them, describing their 
 tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met 
 one or two who had heard the hound and the tramp of 
 the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a 
 cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as 
 if they had lost them themselves." 
 
 Thus ho figures naively the ideal for which he seeks. 
 But he embodies his thought in plainest words also : 
 " If within the copljisticated man there is not an unso 
 phisticated one, then he is but one of the devil s 
 angels. As wo grow old we live more coarsely, we 
 relax a little in our disciplines, and to some extent 
 cease to obey our finest instincts.". But he never lost 
 faith, he persisted in his search ; and when he " helped 
 10 
 
146 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 a runaway slave on the way to the North star," he 
 confessed that it stirred a finer thrill in him than even 
 the reading of Homer. The simple and unaffected 
 revelation of genuine and honest impulse he welcomed 
 wherever he could find it. But he always wished to 
 take the straitest road, and to shun by-paths, to use 
 which was altogether against his -principle.* lie cele 
 brates, with the finest enthusiasm, the manner in which 
 his simplicity and self-chosen poverty protected him, 
 precisely as St. Francis might have done six centuries 
 before : 
 
 " I was never molested by any person. ... I 
 had no lock or bolt but for the desk which held my 
 papers, nor even a nail put over my latch or windows. 
 I never fastened the door night or day, though I was 
 to be absent several days ; not even when I spent a 
 fortnight in the woods of Maine. And yet my house 
 was more respected than if it had been surrounded by 
 a file of soldiers. The tired rambler could rest and 
 warm himself by my fire, the literary amuse himself 
 with the few books on my table, or the curious by 
 opening my closet door see what was left of my 
 dinner, and what prospect I had of a supper. Yet, 
 though many people of every class came this way to 
 the pond, I suffered no serious inconvenience from 
 these sources, and I never missed anything but one 
 small book a volume of Homer, which, perhaps, 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 147 
 
 was improperly gilded, and this I trust a soldier of our 
 camp has found by this time. I am convinced that, 
 if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thiev 
 ing and robbery would be unknown." 
 
 But the evil lies precisely here, that men will, by 
 the excitements of unreal pleasure and thirst for fame 
 or gain, unfit themselves for his society, and for shar 
 ing his delights. Therefore he condemns society for 
 the demands it thus makes on that which is sacred to 
 the individual. Surely, the note of sincerity sounds 
 clearly through this passage : 
 
 " Most men, even in this comparatively free country, 
 through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied 
 with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse 
 labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked 
 by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too 
 clumsy, and tremble too much for that. . . . The 
 laboring man has no time to be anything but a ma 
 chine. How can he remember well his ignorance 
 which his growth requires who has so often to use 
 his knowledge ? We should feed and clothe him gra 
 tuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials 
 before we judge of him. The finest qualities of our 
 nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only 
 by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat 
 ourselves nor one another thus tenderly." 
 
 He would have given his fullest and most unquali- 
 
148 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 fied assent to Mr. Matthew Arnold s suggestive verses 
 in " Obermann Once More" : 
 
 " But we, brought forth and reared in hours 
 
 Of change, alarm, surprise 
 What (shelter tc grow ripe is ours? 
 What leisure to grow wise? 
 
 Like children bathing on the shore, 
 
 Buried a wave beneath, 
 The second wave succeeds before 
 
 We have had time to breathe." 
 
 Only, for himself, Thoreau escaped from the crowd, 
 from the wave,, from the change, the alarm, the sur 
 prise, to find the " leisure to grow wise," if some would 
 say he failed to find the " shelter to grow ripe." 
 
 The morbid or sentimental temper is quite alien 
 from all this. It effects a desire for simplicity and 
 solitude ; but it shrinks from the touch of rude natures. 
 It loves them not. It is, at basis, full of self-pity, 
 and is subject to reactions. Steady, agreeable, self- 
 sufficing effort is strange to it. It dotes on the opinion 
 of those whom it professes to hold in slight esteem. 
 It is capricious, touchy, seldom associated with healthy 
 frankness of speech. It is the poor slave of a sympa 
 thy which yet it would fain appear to set aside and 
 despise. Brusqueness it dislikes ; and it is now affect 
 edly subdued and now violent. It regards no supe 
 rior ; but is mock-humble in self-revelation, and is at 
 the very antipodes of hero-worship. The sentimental- 
 
Thoreau : his T^ife and Aims. 149 
 
 ist is his own hero, and to find another were to yield 
 up his claims and character. Rousseau shows us all 
 this in fullest measure. He is the typical sentiment 
 alist, morbid, concerned with himself as subject; 
 if he ever objectifies his own mind, it is at once to 
 admire and to pity himself in it. How different is all 
 this from Thoreau, who escaped from the very influ 
 ences which Rousseau courted, intent only on reach 
 ing those truer laws of human relation, of which all 
 social customs and legislative enactments are but the 
 symbols, and without contact with which they wither 
 and die, like flowers cut from their roots in the earth. 
 Ilousseau confessed to a " delight in the world of im 
 agination, and a disgust with the real world, that gave 
 rise to that love of solitude which never left him. 
 This disposition, apparently so misanthropic and so 
 melancholy, he thought in reality proceeded from a 
 heart all too fond, too loving, too tender ; a heart which, 
 failing to find real beings with whom to sympathize, 
 was fain to feed on fictions."- " The beings of my 
 imagination," he wrote,"" disgust me with all the soci 
 ety I have left." 
 
 Thoreau did not much regard the beings of imagi 
 nation, and certainly his retreat from society was not 
 due to their fascinations. He had considerable humor, 
 but little phantasy, and loved those traits that told of 
 the honest earth, and revealed the links between the 
 
150 Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 
 
 human and the brute. These were lost through the 
 pressure of mechanical and artificial conventions, and 
 life was sacrificed. Whatever of worth there was in 
 man could best unfold itself amid freedom from such 
 restraints ; and therefore he waged war against all 
 social conventions, however honored, that tended to 
 make men machines, and to efface those natural 
 instincts which rendered possible the enjoyments that 
 in more primitive times were shared by all alike. But 
 here he is not alone. Nearly all the poets and think 
 ers, to whom humanity owes most, have been subject 
 to the same thought and influence, and not all of 
 them have wrought it out to such clear and practical 
 issues as he did. 
 
 Thus we sec how Thoreau, the so-called egotist and 
 morbid solitary, could become the faithful champion 
 of Captain John Brown. That heroic spirit had stood 
 between the laws and the spirit of the law, in view of 
 which the Fathers of American Independence had 
 drawn up their famous Declaration and the Constitu 
 tion; and, instead of Thoreau being untrue to any 
 particular deliverance, his action on John Brown s 
 behalf simply illumined and reconciled all that had 
 before seemed contradictory in his utterances. 
 
 Thoreau went to the woods, as he says, because he 
 wished to live deliberately, and to front only the essen 
 tial facts of life, and see if he could learn what it had 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 151 
 
 to teach. In great measure he realized what he 
 desired. The following passage exhibits his own view 
 of his purposes : 
 
 "It would be some advantage to live a primitive 
 and frontier life, though in the midst of an out 
 ward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross 
 necessaries - of life, and what methods have been taken 
 to obtain them ; or .even to look over the old day- I 
 books of the merchants, to see what it was that men 
 most commonly bought at the stores, what they stored ; 
 that is, what are the grossest groceries. For the im 
 provements of ages have had but little influence on 
 the essential law of man s existence ; as our skeletons 
 probably are not to be distinguished from those of 
 our ancestors. . . . Most of the luxuries, and 
 many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only 
 not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the ele 
 vation of mankind. "With respect to luxuries and 
 comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple 
 and meagre life than the poor. . . . The lux 
 uriously rich are not simply kept comfortablv warm, 
 but unnaturally hot ; they are cooked, of course d la 
 mode. fOf a life of luxury the fruit is luxury. There ^ 
 are nowadays professors of philosophy, but no philoso- ( 
 phers. Xet it is admirable to profess because it was j 
 once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not 
 merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a 
 
152 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to 
 its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, mag 
 nanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems 
 of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The 
 success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a 
 courtier-like success. They make shift to live merely 
 by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are 
 in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men." 
 
 Elsewhere he exclaims : 
 
 " We underpin our houses with granite ; what of 
 our habits, our lives ? They rest on a rotten structure, 
 and we all confess it. I often accuse my finest acquain 
 tance of an immense frivolity; for, while there are 
 manners and compliments we do not meet, we do not 
 teach one another the lessons of honesty and sincerity 
 that the brutes do, or of steadiness and solitude that 
 the rocks do. The fault is commonly mutual, how 
 ever ; for we do not habitually demand any more o^ 
 each other." 
 
 And yet he is resolutely economic, combines with 
 his transcendental manner of viewing things a rigor 
 ous economical practice which would please Mr. Car- 
 lyle. He never throws a thing away till he has tried it R 
 for every purpose he can think of. His economic hints, 
 indeed, have sometimes a special value, at once com 
 mercial and physiological. At one place, for example, 
 he says: 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 153 
 
 " Every New Englander might easily raise all his 
 own breadstuff s in this land of rye and Indian corn, 
 and not depend on distant or fluctuating markets for 
 them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and inde 
 pendence that, in Concord, fresh , and sweet meal is 
 rarely sold in the shops, and hominy and corn, in a 
 still coarser form, are hardly used by any. For the 
 most part, the farmer gives to his cattle and hogs the 
 grain of his own producing, and buys flour which 
 is, at least, no more wholesome at greater cost, at 
 the store." 
 
 But these inferior economies he himself would be the 
 first to denounce were they followed for themselves 
 alone, and for what he thinks the mad whim of accu 
 mulation merely. He values his savings, because by 
 them he can purchase higher pleasures. He works 
 with his hand for one day a week, and rejoices in his 
 wages, because with them he can command the leisure 
 to observe and meditate and study for the other six. 
 If you earn money and nothing else by your work, he 
 holds that you are neither happy nor fortunate. In 
 his essay on " Life without Principle " he writes : " To 
 have done anything by which you earned money 
 merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the 
 laborer gets no more than the wages which his em 
 ployer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. . . 
 . . Those services which the community will most 
 
154 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render. You 
 are paid for "being something less than a man. The 
 State does not commonly reward a genius any more 
 wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have 
 to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must have 
 his pipe of wine, and perhaps another poet is called 
 away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. As for 
 my own business, even that kind of surveying which 
 I could do with most satisfaction, my employers do 
 not want. They would prefer that I should do my 
 work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. 
 When I observe that there are different ways of sur 
 veying, my employer commonly asks which will give 
 him the most land, not which is most correct. I once 
 invented a rule for measuring cord-wood, and tried to 
 introduce it in Boston ; but the measurer there told 
 me that the sellers did not wish to have their wood 
 measured correctly, that he was already too accurate 
 for them, and therefore they commonly got their wood 
 measured in Charlestown before crossing the bridge. 
 . . . If a man walk in the woods for love of them 
 half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a 
 loafer ; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, 
 shearing off those woods and making earth bald before 
 her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterpris 
 ing citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests 
 but to cut them down ! 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims, 155 
 
 "If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons 
 to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me 
 there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust 
 that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of 
 pottage. I wish to suggest that a man may be very 
 industrious and yet not spend his time well. There is 
 no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the 
 greater part of his life getting his living. You must 
 get your living by loving, else your life is at least half 
 a failure. As it is said of the merchants that ninety- 
 seven in a hundred fail, so the life of men generally, 
 tried by this standard, is a failure, and bankruptcy 
 
 may be surely prophesied The ways in 
 
 which most men get their living, that is, live, are 
 mere make-shifts, and a shirking of the real business of 
 life, chiefly because they do not know, but partly 
 because they do not mean better. " 
 
 His was a protest against all the artificialities 
 through which men become hypocrites to gain some 
 immediate end ; and, like Thackeray, he was apt at 
 finding out the weak point, only, instead of prolong 
 ing observation for purposes of art, he was consistent, 
 and said he would have none of it. 
 
 He held that continual compliance unnerved men 
 in general, acting on them precisely as certain kinds of 
 artificial life act on animals, and rendering them tor- 
 
156 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 pid, unequal to face the open air, and incapable of 
 true and genuine attachments : 
 
 " If you seek the warmth of affection from a similar 
 motive to that from which cats and dogs and slothful 
 persons hug the fire, because your temperature is lost 
 through sloth, you arc on the downward road. Better 
 the cold affection of the sun, reflected from fields of 
 ice and snow, or his warmth in some still wintry dell. 
 Warm your body by healthful exercise, not by cower 
 ing over a stove. Warm your spirit by performing 
 independently noble deeds, not by ignobly seeking the 
 sympathy of your fellows who are no better than 
 yourself." 
 
 The greatest danger to society itself, in his idea, 
 lay in the increase of this artificializing and hot-bed 
 process. Even to exist, it must be continually recruited 
 and strengthened by fresh streams poured into it. 
 Whenever society in a crisis has needed regeneration, 
 it has come, if it has come at all, from those who had 
 been despised or reckoned contemptible under its degen 
 erate form. In his essay on " Civil Disobedience " he 
 mourns that men serve the State merely as machines, 
 not with their souls, but with their bodies; that a 
 judge who draws his pension and pronounces unjust 
 judgment on the innocent is but like a miserable 
 wretch who, in his last extreme of need, sells himself 
 to be shot at. And yet how sane and clear he is on 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 157 
 
 the practical reserves and compromises that may con 
 sist with conscience. His reformers are men with no 
 reserves. He says: 
 
 "It is not a man s duty, as a matter of course, to 
 dovote himself to the eradication of any, even the most 
 enormous, wrong, he may still properly have other 
 concerns to engage him ; but it is his duty, at least, 
 to wash his hands of it ; and, if he give it no thought 
 longer, not to give it practically his support. If I 
 devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I 
 must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them 
 sitting upon other men s shoulders. I must get off him 
 first that he may pursue his contemplations." 
 
 And as he did not retire to Walden to escape men, 
 but to learn the secrets of essential relationship, so 
 he escaped from the atmospheric of the circulating 
 library to read in a truer mood, and in the light of a 
 simpler experience, the few great books which circu 
 late round the world. It would indeed be wholly 
 wrong to leave on the reader s mind an impression 
 that in this respect his interests narrowed as he got 
 more and more en rapport with nature. The great 
 masterpieces, ancient and modern, he held in truest 
 regard. Indeed, it has been urged against him as a 
 fault, that he allowed himself to be too, directly influ 
 enced by Carlyle and by Emerson. Considering the 
 keen social instinct, the passion for dealing directly 
 
158 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 with the minds and sympathies of men, which informs 
 the writings of both, causing them in a special way to 
 rank as social and moral reformers, this is an odd 
 charge to raise at the same time that Thoreau is blamed 
 for morbidity and lack of interest in ordinary human 
 concerns. The variety of his interests, indeed, sur 
 prises one who comes fresh from the perusal of these 
 criticisms to his books. He did not forget his classics 
 even ; and though he had an utter horror of pedantry 
 and dry facts, one of his works begun at Walden, and 
 finished immediately after his return from it, was a 
 prose translation of the " Prometheus Bound," which 
 was published in the Dial, in 1849, and which, as 
 Professor Felton urges, has peculiar merits of its own. 
 
 "To read well," he says, "that is, to read true 
 books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that 
 will task the reader more than any exercise which the 
 customs of the day esteem. Books must be read as 
 deliberately as they were written." A large and 
 liberal simplicity and escape from pre-occupation is 
 essential to it. So, at Walden, he had Homer before 
 him, but he read only a page or two at a time ; for 
 he says, " the works of the great poets have only 
 been read for most part as the multitude read the 
 stars, at most, astrologically, not astronomically." 
 
 Of fine sayings his own books are literally full. 
 No more dainty fancy, or power of exactly presenting 
 
Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 159 
 
 the image of what lay in his own mind, has any recent 
 writer possessed in greater measure. And a sudden 
 humor, like summer lightning, often plays over his 
 writings. We could easily fill many pages ; let these 
 few sentences suffice : 
 
 " The keeping of bees is like the directing of sun 
 beams." (" Paradise [to be] Regained.") 
 
 " I say beware of all enterprises that require new 
 clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes." 
 
 " You must have stout legs to get noticed at all by 
 Carlyle lie indicates a depth which he neg 
 lects to fathom." 
 
 " The man who goes alone can start today ; but he 
 who travels with another must wait till that other is 
 ready, and it may be a long time before they get off." 
 
 " The youth gets together his materials to build a 
 bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple 
 on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man con 
 cludes to build a wood shed with them." 
 
 "The blue bird carries the sky on his back." 
 
 "The tanager flies through the green foliage as if 
 he would ignite the leaves." 
 
 "If I wish for a horse hair for my compass sight, I 
 must go to the stable ; but the hair bird, with her 
 sharp eyes, goes to the road." 
 
 " Nature made ferns for pure leaves, to show what 
 she could do in that line." 
 
160 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 " JSTo tree lias so fair a bole and so handsome an 
 instep as the beech." 
 
 "How did these beautiful rainbow tints get into the 
 shell of the fresh-water clam, buried in the mud at 
 the bottom of our dark river ? " 
 ^ "Of what significance the things you can forget ? " 
 
 i" How can we expect a harvest of thought who have 
 ot had a seed time of character?" 
 
 " Only he can be trusted with gifts who can present 
 a face of bronze to expectations." 
 
 "What is called eloquence in the forum is com 
 monly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator 
 yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and 
 speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear 
 him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his 
 occasion, and who would be distracted by the event 
 and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the 
 intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who 
 can understand him." 
 
 " The art of composition is as simple as the discharge 
 of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an 
 infinitely greater force behind them. . . . We seem 
 to have forgotten that the expression, a liberal educa 
 tion, originally meant among the Romans one worthy 
 of free men ; while the learning of trades and pro 
 fessions by which to get your livelihood merely was 
 considered worthy of slaves only. But taking a 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 161 
 
 hint from the word, I would go a step farther, and 
 say, that it is not the man of wealth, or science, or 
 literature, who in a true sense is liberally educated, 
 but only the earnest sm&free man." 
 
 " Nothing is so difficult as to help a friend in mat 
 ters which do not require the aid of friendship, but 
 only a cheap and trivial service, if your friendship 
 wants the basis of a thorough, practical acquaintance. 
 I stand in the friendliest relation, on social and spirit 
 ual grounds, to one who does not perceive what prac 
 tical skill I have, but when he seeks my assistance in 
 such matters, is wholly ignorant of that one whom he 
 deals with : does not use my skill, which in such mat 
 ters is much greater than his, but only my hands. 
 I know another who, on the contrary, is remarkable 
 for his discrimination in this respect ; who knows how 
 to make use of the talents of others, when he does 
 not possess the same ; knows when not to look after 
 or oversee, and stops short at his man. It is a rare 
 pleasure to serve him, which all laborers know. I 
 am not a little pained by the other kind of treatment. 
 It is as if, after the friendliest and most ennobling 
 intercourse, your friend should use you as a hammer, 
 and drive a nail with your head, all in good faith; 
 notwithstanding that you are a tolerable carpenter, 
 as well as his good friend, and would use a hammer 
 cheerfully in his service. The want of perception is 
 
162 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 a defect which all the virtues of the heart cannot sup 
 ply. ... I have a friend who wishes me to see that 
 to be right which I know to be wrong. But if friend 
 ship is to rob me of my eyes, if it is to darken the 
 day, I will have none of it. It should be expansive 
 and inconceivably liberalizing in its effects. True 
 friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not 
 depend on darkness and ignorance. A want of dis 
 cernment cannot be an ingredient in it." 
 
 In the essay on walking he says : 
 
 " We arc but faint-hearted crusades; even the walk 
 ers nowadays undertake no persevering world s-end 
 enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours, and come 
 round again at evening to the old hearth-side from 
 which we set out. Half of the walk is but retracing 
 our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walks, 
 perchance, in the spirit of stirring adventure, never to 
 return, prepared to send back our embalmed hearts 
 only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. ... If 
 you have paid your debts and made your will, and 
 settled all your affairs, and are a free man, then you 
 are ready for a walk." 
 
 In his poems there is often a rarity and chastity of 
 expression and a quality such as we seldom meet 
 with. Of their general character this may be said. 
 They have the freshness of flowers with the earth still 
 at their roots, though with a purity that recalls the 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 163 
 
 skies, they seem inspired by real occasions, and are 
 far from affectedly finished. He is very free in his 
 way of treating old metres or inventing new ones, 
 having actually come close on anticipating Walt Whit 
 man s peculiar movements, which he relieves by irregu 
 larly recurrent rhymes. For reasons easily guessed, 
 however, we prefer to give here one or two cast on 
 models more like those we are familiar with. Our 
 first specimen is 
 
 A FANCY. 
 
 [I have seen a bunch of violets in a glass case, tied loosely with 
 a straw, which reminded me of myself. It is but thin soil where 
 we stood; I have put my roots in a richer than this.] 
 
 I am a parcel of vain strivings tied 
 
 By a chance band together, 
 Dangling this way and that, their links 
 Were made too loose and wide, 
 Methinks, 
 
 For milder weather. 
 
 A bunch ot violets without their roots, 
 
 And sorrel intermixed, 
 Encircled by a wisp of straw 
 Once coiled about their shoots 
 The law 
 
 By which I m fixed. 
 
 A nosegay which I ve clutched from out 
 
 Those fair Elysian fields, 
 With weeds and broken stems, in haste, 
 Doth make the rabble rout 
 That waste 
 
 The day he yields. 
 
164 Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 
 
 And here I bloom for a short hour unseen, 
 
 Drinking my juices up, 
 "With no root in the land 
 To keep my branches green, 
 But stand 
 
 In a bare cup. 
 
 Some tender buds were left upon my stem 
 
 In mimicry of life ; 
 But, ah! the children will not know 
 Till time has withered them 
 The woe 
 
 "With which they re rife. 
 
 But now I see I was not plucked for nought, 
 
 And after in Life s vase 
 Of glass set white I might survive, 
 But by a kind hand brought 
 Alive 
 
 To a strange place. 
 
 That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours, 
 
 And by another year, 
 Such as God knows, with freer air, 
 More fruits and fairer flowers 
 Will bear, 
 
 "While I droop here. 
 
 The next shall be- 
 
 WINTER. 
 
 "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; 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 1G5 
 
 Methinks the summer still is nigh, 
 
 And lurkcth underneath, 
 As that same meadow-mouse doth lie 
 
 Snug in that last year s heath. 
 
 And if perchance the chickadee 
 
 Lisp a faint note anon, 
 The snow is summer s canopy, 
 
 Which she herself put on. 
 
 Fair blossoms deck the cheerful trees, 
 
 And dazzling fruits depend, 
 The north wind sighs a summer breeze, 
 
 The nipping frosts to fend, 
 
 Bringing glad tidings unto me, 
 
 The while I stand all ear, 
 Of a serene eternity, 
 
 Which need not winter fear. 
 
 Out on the silent pond straightway 
 
 The restless ice doth crack, 
 And pond sprites merry gambols play 
 
 Amid the deafening rack. 
 
 Eager I hasten to the vale, 
 
 As if I heard brave news, 
 How nature held high festival, 
 
 Which it were hard to lose. 
 
 I gambol with my neighbor ice, 
 
 And sympathizing 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. 
 
 There is a bright little song to 
 
166 Thoreatv his Life and Aims. 
 
 PEXXICHOOK STREAM. 
 
 Salmon brook, 
 
 Pennichook, 
 Ye sweet waters of my brain, 
 
 When shall I look, 
 
 Or cast the hook, 
 In your waves again ? 
 
 Silver eels, 
 
 Wooden creels, 
 These the baits that still allure, 
 
 And dragon fly 
 
 That floated by, 
 May they still endure. 
 
 The next is more pensive, if more suggestive, in 
 striking a deeper note of experience : 
 
 MY DAWX. 
 
 Xature doth have her dawn each day, 
 
 But mine are far between : 
 Content I cry, for sooth to say, 
 
 Mine brightest are, I ween ! 
 
 For when my sun doth deign to rise, 
 
 Though it be her noontide, 
 Her fairest field in shadow lies, 
 
 Nor can my light abide. 
 
 Sometimes I bask me in her day, 
 
 Conversing with my mate; 
 But if we interchange one ray 
 
 Forthwith her heats abate. 
 
 Through this discourse I climb and see, 
 
 As from some eastern hill, 
 A brighter morrow rise to me 
 
 Than lieth in her skill. 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 167 
 
 As t were two summer days in one, 
 
 Two Sundays come together, 
 Our rays united make one sun 
 
 "With fairest summer weather." 
 
 The following amplifies and reinforces one of the 
 ideas developed in the above : 
 
 DEED AND FAME. 
 
 "Away! away! away! away! 
 
 Ye have not kept your secret well, 
 I will abide that other day, 
 Those other lands ye tell. 
 
 Has time no leisure left for these 
 
 The acts that ye rehearse ? 
 Is not eternity a lease 
 
 For better deeds than verse ? 
 
 T is sweet to hear of heroes dead, 
 
 To know them still alive, 
 But sweeter if we earn their bread, 
 
 And in us they survive. 
 
 Our life should feed the springs of fame 
 
 With a perennial wave, 
 As ocean feeds the babbling founts 
 
 Which find in it their grave. 
 
 Ye skies, drop gently round my breast, 
 
 And be my corslet blue. 
 Ye earth, receive my lance in rest, 
 
 My faithful charger you. 
 
 Ye stars, my spear heads in the sky, 
 
 My arrow tips ye are, 
 I see the routed foemen fly, 
 
 My bright spears fixed are. 
 
 Give me an angel for n, foe, 
 Fix now the placa and time, 
 
168 Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 
 
 And straight to meet him I will go 
 Above the starry clime ; 
 
 And with our clashing buckler s clang 
 
 The heavenly spheres shall ring, 
 "While bright the northern lights shall hang 
 
 Beside our tourneying. 
 
 And if she lose her champion true, 
 
 Tell Heaven not despair, 
 For I will be her champion new, 
 
 Her fame I will repair." 
 
 The appendices to Ms books, especially those to 
 the Maine Wood, specifying and naming every tree, 
 shrub, and animal he met with, will be valuable to 
 students. 
 
 Some deductions have to be made from the mere 
 style of his speech, which is now and then too extreme. 
 He was so intent on putting forcibly the idea that was 
 fresh from his experience that it sometimes seemed to 
 throw other expressions out of relation ; and the only 
 reconciling point is to be found by a reference to 
 what he did. We find Mr. Channing writing : 
 
 " In one or two of his later articles expressions crept 
 in which might lead the reader to suspect him of mo- 
 roseness, or that his old trade of school-master stuck 
 to him. He rubbed out as perfectly as he could the 
 more humorous part of these articles, originally a 
 relief to their sterner features, and said, I cannot 
 bear the levity, I find. To which it was replied that 
 it was hoped he would spare them, even to the puns ; 
 
Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 169 
 
 for he sometimes indulged. As when a farmer drove 
 up with a strange pair of long-tailed ponies, his com 
 panion asked whether such a person would not carry 
 a Colt s revolver to protect him in the solitude, Thor 
 eau replied that he did not know about that, but he 
 saw he had a pair of revolving colts before him. As 
 to laughing, no one did that more or better. One was 
 surprised to see him dance, he had been well taught, 
 and was a vigorous dancer; and any one who ever 
 heard him sing Tom Bowling will agree that in 
 time and in tone he answered, and went far beyond, 
 all expectation." 
 
 On this particular point of humor it needs but to 
 be said that what humor he had was of quite a differ 
 ent order from that of the " Biglow Papers;" but the 
 critic who could read Thore*au and not discover trace 
 of the self -restraint that had been exercised in relation 
 to it, and the possibility of the gentlest fun flowing 
 from sympathy with genuine traits and contradictions 
 in human character, wherein lies the source of humor, 
 may certainly be recommended, with safety, to read 
 him again. 
 
 Too much has been made of Waldcn as a separate 
 episode. His experiment could have been carried on 
 anywhere. Waldcn was an accident : he still carried 
 forward his enterprise after he had left Walden, and 
 applied his principles in manufacture, in politics, in 
 
170 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 anti-slavery agitation. It was several years after lie 
 had left Walden that he wrote : 
 
 " I am often reminded that if I had bestowed on 
 me the wealth of Croesus, my aims must be still the 
 same, and my -means essentially the same." 
 
 He tells us at the same time plainly, " It is not for 
 a man to put himself in opposition to society, but 
 to maintain himself in whatever attitude he finds him 
 self through obedience to the laws of. his own being, 
 which will never be one of opposition to a just govern 
 ment. I left the woods 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. It is remarkable how easily and insen 
 sibly we fall into a particular route and make a beaten 
 track for ourselves. ... I had not lived there 
 a week before my feet wore a path from my door to 
 the pond side. ... I learned this, at least, by my 
 experiment, that if one advances confidently in the 
 direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life 
 which he has imagined, he will meet with a success 
 unexpected in common hours. He will put some things 
 behind, will pass an invisible boundary; the old laws 
 will be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a 
 more liberal sense. 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. 
 
Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 171 
 
 nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in - 
 the air, your work need not "be lost; that is where 
 they should be. Now put the foundations under 
 them." 
 
 Which as distinctly indicates, as words of man could, 
 that Thoreau never regarded the Walden life as final 
 or permanent, but only as a preparation for return to 
 other forms of life and activity. 
 
 It is beyond measure laughable to find that some of 
 the men who are most severe on Thoreau for his stoi 
 cism and his retreat^ to Walden are also most severe 
 on him for his earnest anti-slavery effort, ;. They 
 blame him in one breath for being uninterested in 
 society and his fellow-men, nay, even disgusted with 
 them, and for being too. earnest and too much con 
 cerned about them; for being at once a denouncer of 
 philanthropy, and a philanthropist ; for setting himself 
 against gossip, and yet becoming an agitator. It is 
 evident that Thoreau himself perceived some relations 
 which they have missed, else, with his keen sense of 
 inconsistency, he must have become his own laugh 
 ing stock. And, assuredly, no manjwould have laughed 
 more heartily than Thoreau at such deliverances as 
 the following had he lived to read them, unless, 
 perchance, it may be Mr. Emerson who does still live 
 to read them, and who must laugh a very sardonic 
 
172 Thoreau : his Life and Aims, 
 
 laugh indeed, as of one who is praised at his dear dead 
 friend s expense : 
 
 " Thoreau was, or is, one of the admirers or disci 
 ples of Mr. Emerson, a man worthy of all the respect 
 and admiration which have been showered upon his 
 name in his own country and in England, and of 
 another philosopher, whom Mr. Emerson used to call 
 the Purple Plato, , who had taken it into his head 
 that men were too highly civilized, that we none of us 
 did justice to the primitive savageness of our nature ; 
 that we were all too much beholden to artificial aids 
 for our comfort and happiness ; and that we ran the 
 imminent risk of losing many of the best qualities of 
 our human nature our wa-tchfulness, our self-respect, 
 our self-reliance, and our independence of mind and 
 body by too thick and close companionship with one 
 another, and our dependence upon paid and other help, 
 for offices which required no help, or which could be 
 altogether dispensed with, with great advantage to our 
 physical and mental health. Thoreau, it appears, went 
 out from Boston in Massachusetts, disgusted, or fancy 
 ing that he was disgusted, with the trammels and habits 
 of civilized life, longing to be free of fine clothes and 
 of ceremony, to build his own wigwam among the trees, 
 if he required a wigwam, to produce from the 
 soil all that was necessary for the sustenance of life, to 
 hunt his own game, sew his own fig loaves together as 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 173 
 
 Adam and Eve did, and generally to be independent 
 of the aid or companionship of his fellow-men. lie 
 carried out his idea to a large extent, and his book 
 Waldon contained the history of his experiment, 
 written in very choice English, and not only full of 
 rare experience of solitary life but of admirable de 
 scription of scenery and the habits of animals." 
 
 On the contrary, Thoreau never tried to rid himself / 
 of society or to be independent of human companion 
 ship, lie only found out a characteristically better 
 way than we imagine the writer of the above has yet 
 found out of being not at home to those whom he did 
 not want to see. His intimate friends give us very 
 different testimony. Mr. Charming assures us 
 
 " Those who loved him never had reason to regret 
 it. He made no useless professions, never asked one 
 of those questions which destroy all relation ; but he 
 was on the spot at the time, and had so much of hu 
 man life in his keeping that he could spare a breathing 
 
 place for a friend He served his friends 
 
 sincerely and practically. In his own home he was 
 one of those characters who may be called household 
 treasures ; always on the spot with skillful eye and 
 hand to raise the best melons in the garden, plant the 
 orchard with the choicest trees, act as extempore me 
 chanic ; fond of the pets, the sister s flowers, or sacred 
 
174 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 tabby ; kittens being his favorites, he would play 
 with them by the half hour. 
 
 " A great comfort in him, he was eminently reliable. 
 No whim of coldness, no absorption of his time by 
 public or private business, deprived those to whom ho 
 belonged of his kindness and affection. He was at the 
 mercy of no caprice : of a reliable will and uncompro 
 mising sternness in his moral nature, he carried the 
 same qualities into his relation with others, and gave 
 them the best he had without stint." 
 
 And so Thoreau throughout life, by consistent labor 
 and self denial, justified these words which he wrote 
 near the close : 
 
 "My greatest skill 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 among men 
 who will know that I love them though I tell them not." 
 
 Thoreau was a naturalist because he was primarily 
 a poet, and hence the fitness of the title given him 
 by Mr. Channing of Poet-Naturalist. He held things 
 by inner affinities rather than by hard classifications. 
 Instincts and habits were ever of more account with 
 him than the mere organs and functions whose expres 
 sions he held that these were, and nothing more. Yet 
 he was observant of these also, and was seldom out in 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 175 
 
 a matter of fact or calculation. Correctness in details, 
 surprising patience, and a will that nothing could 
 defeat or embarrass, held in closest union with fine 
 imagination, without sense of contradiction, this was ^ 
 his first characteristic. His_grand quality wasj>yjnpa- v^V 
 thy. He came to everything with the poet s feeling, 
 the poet s heart, the poet s eye. To observe was his 
 joy. What pictures he can draw of wholly uninterest 
 ing places and things ! What loving rapture he falls 
 into over the commonest appearances ! What new 
 metaphors he finds lurking in ordinary sylvan occur 
 rences ! The common ongoings of nature were to him 
 a mighty parable, and he sat some part of it to ade 
 quate music, to which we may listen with delight, and 
 learn wisdom. And as he brought sympathy with 
 him towards every person lie met and every object he 
 examined, so he demanded it in those he encountered, 
 though he had an utter horror of false professions of it. 
 Therefore, like a Scotchman in this, he was prone to 
 hide it under brusqueness till you knew him. But, ; 
 as flowers expand in the sun, his soul expanded in the 
 glow of innocent delights till even his senses seemed 
 transfigured and benignantly endowed with special 
 sensibilities and attractions. He was fond of children, 
 and had unusual tact with them, as is attested by 
 every one who attended his parties. " Hermit and 
 stoic as he was," says Emerson, " he was really fond 
 
176 Thorcau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 of sympathy and threw himself heartily and child-like 
 into the company of young people whom he loved and 
 whom he delighted to entertain, as he only could, with 
 the varied and endless anecdotes of his experience in 
 field and river. And he was always ready to lead a 
 huckleberry party or a search for chestnuts and grapes." 
 )Yet he is always self-restrained and self-respecting. 
 He can make a poem out of the most ordinary object, ! 
 event, or incident, but he will be the last to celebrate ; 
 it as such; and, while some men seek a climax, he 
 despised rhetoric and all conscious aims at effect. This 
 passage on telegraph posts may be taken as a speci 
 men of his finest vein, showing his keen interest in all 
 that concerned human progress : 
 
 "What a recipe for preserving wood, to fill its 
 pores with music ! How this wild tree from the forest, 
 stripped of its bark and set up here, rejoices to trans 
 mit this music. When no melody proceeds from the 
 wire, I hear the hum within the entrails of the wood, 
 the oracular tree, rejoicing, accumulating the prophetic 
 fury. The resounding wood, how much the ancients 
 would have made of it ! To have had a harp on so 
 great a scale, girding the very earth, and played on 
 by the winds of every latitude and longitude, and that 
 harp were (so to speak) the manifest blessing of 
 Heaven on a work of man s. Shall we not now add 
 a tenth Muse to those immortal Nine, and consider 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 177 
 
 that this invention was most divinely honored and 
 distinguished upon which the Muse has thus conde 
 scended to smile, this magic medium of communi 
 cation to mankind ? To read that the ancients stretched 
 a wire round the earth, attaching it to trees of the 
 forest, on which they sent messages by one named 
 Electricity, father of Lightning and Magnetism, swifter 
 far than Mercury, the stern commands of war and 
 news of peace ; and that the winds caused this wire 
 to vibrate so that it emitted harp-like and jEolian 
 music in all the lands through which it passed, as if 
 to express the satisfaction of God in the invention ! 
 And this is fact, and yet we have attributed the instru 
 ment to no Grod. I hear the sound of the wood work 
 ing terribly within. When I put my ear to it, anon it 
 swells into a clear tone, which seems to concentrate 
 in the core of the tree, for all the sound seems to pro 
 ceed from the wood. It is as if you had entered some 
 world-cathedral, resounding to some vast organ. The 
 fibre of all things have their tension and are strained 
 like the strings of a lyre. I feel the very ground 
 tremble underneath my feet as I stand near the post. 
 The wire vibrates with great force, as if it would strain 
 and rend the wood. What an awful and fateful 
 music it must be to the worms in the wood! No 
 better vermifuge were needed. As the wood of an 
 old crcmona, its every fibre, perchance, harmoniously 
 12 
 
178 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 tempered, and educated to resound melody, has brought 
 a great price ; so, methinks, these telegraph posts 
 should Lear a great price with musical-instrument 
 makers. It is prepared to be the material of harps 
 for ages to come, as it were^put a-soak, a-season- 
 ing, in music" 
 
 In this remarkable passage it is not evident how 
 keen Thoreau s instincts were for the points at which 
 nature and human civilization meet each other with 
 wonderful and secret but apparently long-prepared 
 adaptations. The tree taken from the forest, stripped 
 of its leaves, of its bark even, standing there, straight, 
 bare, gaunt, and clear against the sunset light, what 
 beauty could have lain in it for the mere naturalist ? 
 It was a relic which even his comparative anatomy 
 could not have effectually reclothed and set in its 
 place again. But Thoreau, because he was a poet, 
 and a lover of man and man s progress, reclothes it 
 with leaves of promise and prophesy, fairer and 
 more divine than those it had borne but for a season. 
 He is rapt in the imagination of its possibilities; for 
 now, like the reed which the great god Pan took from 
 the bed of the river, and tore and cut, and pulled the 
 pith out of, it breathes a music that hints of the sighs 
 and tears, the joys, the aspirations, the loves and long 
 ings of men. How could a morbid hermit, who 
 had escaped, in disgust and aversion, not merely 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 179 
 
 from cities, and their vices, their chicanery and their 
 craft, but from the very fellowship of men, have writ 
 ten that ? The telegraph is civilization s epitome, 
 all men are represented in it, mystically but not less 
 individually, in its possibility of conveying the record 
 of what lies realest in their thoughts and purposes; 
 and this hermit could celebrate it; hear its pro 
 phetic music, and write a poem upon it. Nothing, 
 indeed, that has been written shows more of penetra 
 tion into modern progress and scientific law, as it 
 bears on human well-being, on one side it might 
 seem pliilistinic, indeed ; but how choice, how ele 
 vated, how touched with the- imagination that rarities, 
 spiritualizes, and raises altogether above the touch of 
 earth and the profit of the present moment ! If it 
 celebrates the last material or scientific conquest of 
 the century, could even Mr. Matthew Arnold find 
 fault with it, as with the self-celebrations of Mr. 
 Bright, Mr. Roebuck and the rest, over our pro 
 gress ? That idea of what the ancients would have 
 made of it, and their attribution of it to some god, is 
 full of Thoreau s character, and Mr. Matthew Arnold 
 would accept it gladly, we firmly believe, as just and 
 adequate. 
 
 As a piece of elevated noble natural description, 
 with lights of true poetry interfusing it, scarce any 
 thing could be finer than this picture of a snowfall: 
 
180 Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 
 
 "Did you ever admire the steady, silent, windless 
 fall of the snow in some lead-colored sky, silent 
 save the little ticking of the flakes as they touched 
 the twigs ? It is chased silver, moulded over the 
 pines and oak leaves. Soft shades hang like cur 
 tains along the closely draped wood-paths. Frozen 
 apples become little cider-vats. The old, crooked 
 apple trees, frozen stiff in the pale, shivering sun 
 light, that appears to be dying of consumption, gleam 
 forth like the heroes of one of Dante s cold hells : we 
 would mind any change in the mercury of the dream. 
 The snow crunches under the feet; the chopper s axe 
 rings funereally through the tragic air. At early 
 morn the frost on button-bushes and willows was sil 
 very, and every stem and minutest twig and filamen 
 tary weed came up a silver thing, while the cottage 
 smoke rose salmon-colored into that oblique day. At 
 the base of ditches were shooting crystals, like the 
 blades of an ivory-handled penknife, and rosettes and 
 favors fretted of silver on the flat ice. The little cas 
 cades in the brook were ornamented with transparent 
 shields, and long candelabrums and spermaceti-col 
 ored fools caps and plated jellies and white globes, 
 with the black water whirling along transparently 
 underneath. The sun comes out, and all at a glance, 
 rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and emeralds start into 
 intense life on the angles of the snow crystals." 
 
Thoreau: his Life and Aims, 181 
 
 Again, see how Thoreau, in a kind of implied pro 
 test against a too hard scientific prescription for man s 
 development from lower to higher, can wrap up his 
 doctrine in humor. The following could as little have 
 come from the mere hermit as the other but for a 
 elightly different reason : 
 
 "As the woodclmck dines chiefly on crickets, he 
 will not be at much expense in seats for his winter 
 quarters. Since the anatomical discovery that the 
 thymoid gland, whose use in man is nihil, is for the 
 purpose of promoting digestion during the hibernat 
 ing jollifications of the woodchuck, we sympathize less 
 at the retreat. Darwin, who hibernates in science, 
 cannot yet have heard of this use of the above gland, 
 or he would have derived the human race from our 
 woodchuck, instead of landing him flat on the Simia- 
 dce, or monkey." 
 
 "Nature," he says in another place, "has taken 
 more care than the fondest parent for the education 
 and refinement of her children. Consider the silent 
 influence which flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher 
 in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I 
 walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise Pur 
 veyor has been there before me ; my most delicate 
 experience is typified there. I am struck with the 
 pleasing friendships and unanimities of nature, MS 
 when the lichen on the trees takes the form of their 
 
182 Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 
 
 leaves. In the most stupendous scenes you will see 
 delicate and fragile features, as slight wreaths of vapor, 
 dewlines, feathery sprays, which suggest a high refine 
 ment, a noble blood and breeding, as it were. It is 
 not hard to account for elves and fairies ; they repre 
 sent this light grace, this ethereal gentility. Bring a 
 spray from the wood, or a crystal from the brook, and 
 place it on your mantel-shelf, and your household 
 ornaments will seem plebeian beside its nobler fashion 
 and bearing. It will wave superior there, as if used 
 to a more refined and polished circle. It has a salute 
 and a response to all your enthusiasm and heroism." 
 He notes the face of the heavens, and exults in a 
 fine sunset, as Turner might have done. Nay, he 
 paints a subtle Turner word picture, as in this pas- 
 
 " We had a remarkable sunset one day last Novem 
 ber. I was walking in a meadow, the source of a 
 nmall brook, when the sun at last, just before setting, 
 after a cold gray day, reached a clear stratum in the 
 horizon, and the softest, brightest morning sunlight 
 fell on the dry grass and on the stems of the trees in 
 the opposite horizon, and on the leaves of the shrub 
 oaks on the hill side, while our shadows stretched long 
 over the meadow eastward, as if we were the only 
 motes in its beams. It was such a light as we could 
 not have imagined a moment before, and the air also 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 183 
 
 i 
 
 was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to 
 make a paradise of that meadow. When we reflected 
 that this was not a solitary phenomenon, never to hap 
 pen again, but that it would happen for ever and ever 
 an infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reas 
 sure the latest child that walked there, it was more 
 glorious still. 
 
 " The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no 
 house is visible, with all the glory and splendor that 
 it lavishes on cities, and, perchance, as it has never 
 set before , where there is but a solitary marsh hawk 
 to have his wings gilded by it, or only a musquash 
 looks out from his cabin, and there is some little black- 
 veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just beginning 
 to meander, winding slowly round a decaying stump. 
 We walked in so pure and bright a light, gilding the 
 withered grass and leaves, so softly and serenely bright, 
 I thought I had never bathed in such a golden flood, 
 without a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side of 
 every wood and rising ground gleamed like the bound 
 ary of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed 
 like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening." 
 He is like Charles Kingslcy in his respect for the 
 east wind, and almost worships Winter, as the great 
 purifier and health-bringer. He is robust; has no 
 weakness for artificial warmth, or the dull repose that 
 comes of it. 
 
184 Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 
 
 " The wonderful purity of Nature at this season is 
 a most pleasing fact. Every decayed stump and moss- 
 grown stone and rail, and the dead leaves of autumn, 
 are concealed by a clean napkin of snow. In the bare 
 fields and tinkling woods, see what virtue survives. 
 In the coldest and bleakest places, the warmest chari 
 ties still maintain a foothold. A cold and searching 
 wind drives away all contagion, and nothing can with 
 stand it but what has a virtue in it ; and accordingly 
 whatever we meet with in cold and bleak places, as 
 the tops of mountains, we respect for a sort of sturdy 
 innocence, a Puritan toughness. All things besides 
 seem to be called in for shelter, and what stays out 
 must be part of the original frame of the universe, and 
 of such valor as Clod himself. It is invigorating to 
 breathe the cleansed air. Its greater fineness and 
 purity are visible to the eye, and we would fain stay 
 out long and late, that the gales may sigh through us, 
 too, as through the leafless trees, and fit us for the win 
 ter, as if we hoped so to borrow some pure and 
 steadfast virtue, which will stead us in all seasons. 
 
 " There is a slumbering subterranean fire in Nature 
 which never goes out, and which no cold can chill. 
 It finally melts the great snow, and in January or 
 July is only buried under a thicker or thinner cover 
 ing. In the coldest day it flows somewhere, and the 
 snow melts around every tree. This field of winter 
 
Thoreau : Jus Life and Aims. 185 
 
 rye, which sprouted late in the fall, and now speedily 
 dissolves the snow, is where the fire is very thinly cov 
 ered. We feel warmed by it. In the winter, warmth 
 stands for all virtue, and we resort in thought to a 
 trickling rill, with its bare stones shining in the sun, 
 and to warm springs in the woods, with as much eager 
 ness as rabbits and robins. The steam which rises 
 from swamps and pools is as dear and domestic as 
 that of our own kettle. What fire could ever equal 
 the sunshine of a winter s day, when the meadow mice 
 come out by the wallsides, and the chickadee lisps in 
 the defiles of the wood? The warmth comes directly 
 from the sun, and is not radiated from the earth, as 
 in summer ; and when we feel his beams on our backs 
 as we are treading some snowy dell, we are grateful 
 as for a special kindness, and "bless the sun which has 
 followed us into that by-place. 
 
 " This subterranean fire has its altar in each man s 
 breast, for in the coldest day, and on the bleakest hill, 
 the traveller cherishes a warmer fire within the folds 
 of his cloak than is kindled on any hearth. A healthy 
 man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in 
 winter summer is in his heart. There is the south. 
 Thither have all birds and insects migrated, and 
 around the warm springs in his breast are gathered 
 the robin and the lark. 
 
 " At length, having reached the edge of the woods, 
 
186 Thoreau : hi* Life and Aims. 
 
 and shut out the gadding town, we enter within their 
 covert as we go under the roof of a cottage, and cross 
 its threshold, all ceiled and banked up with snow. 
 They are glad and warm still, and as genial and cheery 
 in winter as in summer. As we stand in the midst of 
 the pines, in the flickering and checkered light which 
 straggles but little way into their maze, we wonder if 
 the towns have ever heard their simple story. It 
 seems to us that no traveller has ever explored them, 
 and notwithstanding the wonders which science is 
 elsewhere revealing every day, who would not like to 
 hear their annals ? Our humble villages in the plain 
 are their contribution. We borrow from the forest 
 the boards which shelter and the sticks which warm 
 us. How important is their evergreen to the winter, 
 that portion of the summer which does not fade, the 
 permanent year, the unwithered grass. Thus simply, 
 and with little expense of altitude, is the surface of 
 the earth diversified. What would human life be 
 without forests, those natural cities? From the tops 
 of mountains they appear like smooth shaven lawns, 
 yet whither shall we walk but in this taller grass ? 
 
 "In this glade, covered with bushes of a year s 
 growth, see how the silvery dust lies on every seared 
 leaf and twig, deposited in such infinite and luxurious 
 forms as by their very variety atone for the absence 
 of color. Observe the tiny tracks of mice around 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 187 
 
 every stem, and the triangular tracks of the rabbit. 
 A pure clastic heaven hangs over all, as if the impuri 
 ties of the summer sky, refined and shrunk by the 
 chaste winter s cold, had been winnowed from the 
 heavens upon the earth. 
 
 " Nature confounds her summer distinctions at this 
 season. The heavens seem to be nearer the earth. 
 The elements are less reserved and distinct. Water 
 turns to ice, rain to snow. The day is but a Scandi 
 navian night. The winter is an Arctic summer. 
 
 " How much more living is the life that is in Nature, 
 the furred life which still survives the stinging nights, 
 and, from amidst fields and woods covered with frost 
 and snow, sees the sun rise. 
 
 The foodless wilds 
 Pour forth their brown inhabitants. 
 
 The gray squirrel and rabbit are brisk and playful in 
 the remote glens, even on the morning of the cold 
 Friday. Here is our Lapland and Labrador, and for 
 our Esquimaux and Knistenaux, Dogribbcd Indians, 
 Novazemblaites, and Spitzbergeners, are there not the 
 ice cutter and wood chopper, the fox, muskrat, and 
 mink? 
 
 " Still, in the midst of the Arctic day, we may 
 trace the summer to its retreats, and sympathize with 
 some contemporary life. Stretched over the brooks, 
 in the midst of the frost-bound meadows, we may 
 
188 Thoreau: his Life mid Aims. 
 
 observe the submarine cottages of the caddice worms, 
 the larvse of the Plicipenncs ; their small cylindrical 
 cases built around themselves, composed of flags, 
 sticks, grass, and withered leaves, shells, and pebbles, 
 in form and color like the wrecks which strew the bot 
 tom, now drifting along over the pebbly bottom, 
 now whirling in tiny eddies and dashing down steep 
 falls, or sweeping rapidly along with the current, or 
 else swaying to and fro at the end of some grass 
 blade or root. Anon they will leave their sunken 
 habitations, and, crawling up the stems of plants, or 
 the surface, like gnats, as perfect insects henceforth, 
 nutter over the surface of the water, or sacrifice their 
 short lives in the flame of our candles at evening. 
 Down yonder little glen the shrubs are drooping under 
 their burden, and the red alder-berries contrast with 
 the white ground. Here are the marks of a myriad 
 feet which have already been abroad. The sun rises 
 as proudly over such a glen as over the valley of the 
 Seine or the Tiber, and it seems the residence of a pure 
 and self -sub sistent valor, such as they never witnessed, 
 which never knew defeat nor fear. Here reign the 
 simplicity and purity of a primitive age, and a health 
 and hope far remote from towns and cities. Stand 
 ing quite alone, far in the forest, while the wind is 
 shaking down snow from the trees, and leaving the 
 only human tracks behind us. we find our reflections 
 
Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 189 
 
 of a richer variety than the life of cities. The chick 
 adee and nuthatch are more inspiring society than 
 statesmen and philosophers, and we shall return to 
 these last as to more vulgar companions. In this lonely 
 glen, with its brook draining the slopes, its creased 
 ice and crystals of all hues, where the spruces and 
 hemlocks stand up on either side, and the rush and 
 sere wild oats in the rivulet itself, our lives are more 
 serene and worthy to contemplate. 
 
 " As the day advances, the heat of the sun is 
 reflected by the hill-sides, and we hear a faint but 
 sweet music, where flows the rill released from its 
 fetters, and the icicles are melting on the trees ; and 
 the nuthatch and partridge are heard and seen. The 
 south wind melts the snow at noon, and the bare 
 ground appears with its withered grass and leaves, 
 and we are invigorated by the perfume which exhales 
 from it as by the scent of strong meats. 
 
 "Let us go into this deserted woodman s hut and 
 see how he has passed the long winter nights and the 
 short and stormy days. For here man has lived under 
 this south hill-side, and it seems a civilized and public 
 spot. We have such associations as when the traveller 
 stands by the ruins of Palmyra or Ilecatompolis. 
 Singing birds and flowers perchance have begun to 
 appear here, for flowers as well as weeds follow in the 
 footsteps of man. These hemlocks whispered over his 
 
100 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 head, these hickory logs were his fuel, and these pitch- 
 pine roots kindled his fire ; yonder fuming rill in the 
 hollow, whose thin and airy vapor still ascends as 
 busily as ever, though he is far off now, was his well. 
 These hemlock boughs and the straw upon this raised 
 platform were his bed, and this broken dish held his 
 drink. But he has not been here this season, for the 
 phoebes built their nest upon this shelf last summer. I 
 find some embers left, as if he had but just gone out, 
 where he baked his pot of beans ; and while at evening 
 he smoked his pipe, whose stemlcss bowl lies in the 
 ashes, chatted with his only companion, if perchance 
 he had any, about the depth of the snow on the mor 
 row, already falling fast and thick without, or disputed 
 whether the last sound was the screech of an owl, or the 
 creak of a bough, or imagination only ; and through 
 this broad chimney throat, in the late winter evening, 
 ere he stretched himself upon the straw, he looked up 
 to learn the progress of the storm, and seeing the bright 
 stars of Cassiopeia s chair shining brightly down upon 
 him fell contentedly asleep. 
 
 " See how many traces from which we may learn 
 the chopper s history. From this stump we may guess 
 the sharpness of his axe, and from the slope of the 
 stroke on which side he stood, and whether he cut 
 down the tree without going round it or changing 
 hands ; and from the flexure of the splinters we may 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 191 
 
 know which way it fell. This one chip contains 
 inscribed on it the whole history of the wood-chopper 
 and of the world. On this scrap of paper, which held 
 his sugar or salt, perchance, or was the wadding of his 
 gun, sitting on a log in the forest, with what interest 
 we read the tattle of cities, of those larger huts, empty 
 and to let, like this, in High streets and Broadways. 
 The eves are dripping on the south side of this simple 
 roof, while the titmouse li^ps in the pine, and the genial 
 warmth of the sun around the door is somewhat kind 
 and human. 
 
 " After two seasons this rude dwelling does not 
 deform the scene. Already the birds resort to it to 
 build their nests, and you may track to its door the 
 feet of many quadrupeds. Thus, for a long time, 
 Nature overlooks the encroachment and profanity of 
 man. The wood still cheerfully and unsuspiciously 
 echoes the strokes of the axe that fells it, and while 
 they are few and seldom they enhance its wildness, 
 and all the elements strive to naturalize the sound. 
 
 " Now our path begins to ascend gradually to the top 
 of this high lull, from whose precipitous south side we 
 can look over the broad country, of forest and field 
 and river, to the distant snowy mountains. See yon 
 der thin column of smoke curling up through the 
 woods from some invisible farm house, the standard 
 raised over some rural homestead. There must be a 
 
192 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 wanner and more genial spot there below, as where we 
 detect the vapor from a stream forming a cloud above 
 the trees. What fine relations are established between 
 the traveller who discovers this airy column from some 
 eminence in the forest and him who sits below. Up 
 goes the smoke as silently and naturally as the vapor 
 exhales from the leaves, and as busy disposing itself 
 in wreaths as the housewife on the hearth below. It 
 is a hieroglyphic of man s life, and suggests more inti 
 mate and important things than the boiling of a pot. 
 Where its fine column rises above the forest like an 
 ensign some human life has planted itself, and such 
 is the beginning of Rome, the establishment of the 
 arts, and the foundation of empires, whether on the 
 prairies of America or the steppes of Asia. 
 
 " And now we descend again to the brink of this 
 woodland lake which lies in the hollow of the hills, as 
 if it were their expressed juice, and that of the leaves, 
 which are annually steeped in it. Without outlet or 
 inlet to the eye, it has still its history, in the lapse of 
 its waves, in the rounded pebbles on the shore, and in 
 the pines which grow down to its brink. It has not 
 been idle, though sedentary, but, like Abu Musa, 
 teaches that sitting still at home is the heavenly way ; 
 the going out is the way of the world. Yet in its 
 evaporation it travels as far as any. In summer it is 
 the earth s liquid eye, a mirror in the breast of Nat- 
 
Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 193 
 
 ure. The sins of the wood are washed out in it. See 
 how the woods form an amphitheatre about it, and it is 
 an arena for all the genialness of nature. All trees 
 direct the traveller to its brink, all paths seek it out, 
 birds fly to it, quadrupeds flee to it, and the very 
 ground inclines towards it. It is Nature s saloon, 
 where she has sat down to her toilet. Consider her 
 silent economy and tidiness ; how the sun comes with 
 his evaporation to sweep the dust from its surface each 
 morning, and a fresh surface is constantly welling up ; 
 and annually, after whatever impurities have accumu 
 lated herein, its liquid transparency appears again in 
 the spring. In summer a hushed music seems to sweep 
 across its surface. But now a plain sheet of snow 
 conceals it from our eyes, except where the wind has 
 swept the ice bare, and the sere leaves are gliding 
 from side to side, tacking and veering on their tiny voy 
 ages. Here is one just keeled up against a pebble on 
 shore, a dry beach leaf, rocking still, as if it would 
 start again. A skillful engineer, methinks, might 
 project its course since it fell from the parent stem. 
 Here are all the elements for such a calculation. Its 
 present position, the direction of the wind, the level of 
 the pond, and how much more is given. In its scarred 
 edges and veins is its log rolled up. 
 
 "We fancy ourselves in the interior of a larger 
 house. The surface of the pond is a deal table or 
 
 13 
 
194 Thoreau : Jds Life and Aims. 
 
 sanded floor, and the woods rise abruptly from its 
 edge, like the walls of a cottage. The lines set to 
 catch pickerel through the ice look like a larger culi 
 nary preparation, and the men stand about on the white 
 ground like pieces of forest furniture. The actions of 
 these men, at a distance of half a mile over the ice and 
 snow impress us as when we read the exploits of Alex 
 ander in history. They seem not unworthy of the 
 scenery and as momentous as the conquest of king 
 doms. 
 
 " Again we have wandered through the arches of 
 the wood, until from its skirts we hear the distant 
 booming of ice from yonder bay of the river, as if it 
 were moved by some other and subtler tide than 
 oceans know. To me it has a strange sound of home, 
 thrilling as the voice of one s distant and noble kin 
 dred. A mild summer sun shines over forest and 
 lake, and though there is but one green leaf for many 
 rods, yet nature enjoys a serene health. Every sound 
 is fraught with the same mysterious assurance of 
 health, as well now the creaking of the boughs in 
 January, as the soft sough of the wind in July." 
 
 This is how he accounts for the transportation of 
 pine seeds : 
 
 " In all the pines, a very thin membrane, in appear 
 ance much like an insect s wing, grows over and 
 around the seed, and independent of it, while the 
 
Thoreau : Ms Life and Aims. 195 
 
 latter is being developed within its base. Indeed, 
 this is often perfectly developed, though the seed is 
 abortive, Nature being, you would say, more sure to 
 provide the means of transporting the seed than to 
 provide the seed to be transported. In other words, 
 a beautiful thin sack is woven around the seed, with 
 a handle to it such as the wind can take hold of, and 
 it is then committed to the wind, expressly that it may 
 transport the seed and extend the range of the spe 
 cies ; and this it does as effectually as when seeds 
 are sent by mail in a different kind of sack from the 
 patent office. There is a patent office at the seat of 
 government of the universe, whose managers are as 
 much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody 
 at Washington can be, and their operations are infi 
 nitely more extensive and regular. 
 
 " There is, then, no necessity for supposing that the 
 pines have sprung up from nothing, and I am aware 
 that I am not at all peculiar in asserting that they 
 come from seeds, though the mode of their propaga 
 tion by Nature has been but little attended to. They 
 are very extensively raised from the seed in Europe, 
 and are beginning to be here. 
 
 " When you cut down an oak wood, a pine wood 
 will not at once spring up there unless there are, or 
 have been, quite recently, seed-bearing pines near 
 enough for the seeds to be blown from them. But, 
 
196 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 adjacent to a forest of pines, if you prevent other 
 crops from growing there, you will surely have an 
 extension of your pine forest, provided the soil is 
 suitable. 
 
 " As for the heavy seeds and nuts which are not 
 furnished with wings, the notion is still a very com 
 mon one that, when the trees which bear these spring 
 up where none of their kind were noticed before, they 
 have come from seeds or other principles spontaneously 
 generated there in an unusual manner, or which have 
 lain dormant in the soil for centuries, or perhaps been 
 called into activity by the heat of a burning. I do 
 not believe these assertions, and I will state some of 
 the ways in which, according to my observation, such 
 forests are planted and raised. 
 
 " Every one of these seeds, too, will be found to 
 be winged or legged in another fashion. Surely, it 
 is not wonderful that cherry trees of all kinds are 
 widely dispersed, since their fruit is well known to be 
 the favorite food of various birds. Many kinds aro 
 called bird cherries, and they appropriate many more 
 kinds which are not so called. Eating cherries is a 
 bird-like employment, and unless we disperse the 
 seeds occasionally, as they do, I shall think that the 
 birds have the best right to them. See how artfully 
 the seed of a cherry is placed in order that a bird 
 may be compelled to transport it, in the very midst 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 197 
 
 of a tempting pericarp, so that the creature that would 
 devour this must commonly take the stone also into 
 its mouth or bill. If you ever ate a cherry, and did 
 not make two bites of it, you must have perceived it, 
 right in the centre of the luscious morsel, a large 
 earthy residuum left on the tongue. We thus take 
 into our mouths cherry stones as big as peas, a dozen 
 at once, for Nature can persuade us to do almost any 
 thing when she would compass her ends. Some wild 
 men and children instinctively swallow these, as the 
 birds do when in a hurry, it being the shortest way to 
 get rid of them. Thus, though these seeds are not 
 provided with vegetable wings, nature has impelled 
 the thrush tribe to take them into their bills and fly 
 away with them; and they are winged in another 
 sense, and more effectually than the seeds cf pines, 
 for these are carried even against the wind. The con 
 sequence is that cherry trees grow not only here but 
 there. The same is true of a great many other seeds." 
 
 And he finds also the agencies of animals in the 
 transportation of seeds, and thus signalizes it: 
 
 " As I walk amid hickories, even in August, I 
 hear the sound of green pig nuts falling from time to 
 time, cut off by the chickadee over my head. In the 
 fall I noticed on the ground, either within or in the 
 neighborhood of oak woods, on all sides of the town, 
 stout oak twigs three or four inches long, bearing half 
 
198 Thoreau : his -Life and Aims. 
 
 a dozen empty acorn cups, which twigs have been 
 gnawed off by squirrels, on both sides of the nuts, in 
 order to make them more portable. The jays scream 
 and the red squirrels scold while you are clubbing 
 and shaking the chestnut trees, for they are there on 
 the same errand, and two of a trade never agree. I 
 frequently see a red or gray squirrel cast down a green 
 chestnut bur, as I am going through the woods, and I 
 used to think, sometimes, that they were cast at me. 
 In fact, they are so busy about it, in the midst of the 
 chestnut season, that you cannot stand long in the 
 woods without hearing one fall. A sportsman told 
 me that he had, the day before, that was in the 
 middle of October, seen a green chestnut bur dropt 
 on our great river meadow, fifty rods from the nearest 
 wood, and much further from the nearest chestnut 
 tree, and lie could not tell how it came there. Occa 
 sionally, when chestnutting in midwinter, I find thirty 
 or forty nuts in a pile, left in its gallery just under 
 the leaves, by the common wood mouse (inus leuco- 
 pus). 
 
 " But especially, in the winter, the extent to which 
 this transportation and planting of nuts is carried on 
 is made apparent by the snow. In almost every 
 wood you will see where the red or gray squirrels 
 have pawed down through the snow in a hundred 
 places, sometimes two feet deep, and almost always 
 
Thoreau : his Life, * and A.iyis. ryu / 
 
 v // *($, 
 
 directly to a nut or a pine-cone, as direrc^ as if t&ev. 
 had started from it and bored upward, v^ich vou ^ 
 and I could not have done. It would be difficujfe^or 
 us to find one before the snow falls. Commonly, no 
 doubt, they had deposited them there in the fall. 
 You wonder if they remember the localities, or dis 
 cover them by the scent. The red squirrel commonly 
 has its winter abode in the earth under a thicket of 
 evergreens, frequently under a small clump of ever 
 greens in the midst of a deciduous wood. If there 
 are any nut-trees, which still retain their nuts, stand 
 ing at a distance without the wood, their paths often 
 lead directly to and from them. We, therefore, need 
 not. suppose an oak standing here and there in the 
 wood in order to seed it, but if a few stand within 
 twenty or thirty rods of it, it is sufficient. 
 
 "I think that I may venture to say that every 
 white-pine cone that falls to the earth naturally in 
 this town, before opening and losing its seeds, and 
 almost every pitch-pine one that falls at all, is cut 
 off by a squirrel, and they begin to pluck them long 
 before they are ripe, so that when the crop of white- 
 pine cones is a small one, as it commonly is, they cut 
 off thus almost every one of these before it fairly 
 ripens. I think, moreover, that their design, if I may 
 so speak, in cutting them off green, is, partly, to pre 
 vent their opening and losing their seeds, for these 
 
200 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 are the ones for which they dig through the snow, 
 and the only white-pine cones which contain anything 
 then. I have counted in one heap, within a diameter 
 of four feet, the cores of 239 pitch-pine cones which 
 had been cut off and stripped by the red squirrel the 
 previous winter. 
 
 " The nuts thus left on the surface, or buried just 
 beneath it, are placed in the most favorable circum 
 stances for germinating. I have sometimes wondered 
 how those which merely fell on the surface of the 
 earth got planted ; but, by the end of December, I 
 find the chestnut of the same year partially mixed 
 with the mould, as it were, under the decaying and 
 mouldy leaves, where there is all the moisture and 
 manure they want, for the nuts fall first. In a plen 
 tiful year a large proportion of the nuts are thus cov 
 ered loosely an inch deep, and are, of course, somewhat 
 concealed from squirrels. One winter, when the crop 
 had been abundant, I got, with the aid of a rake, 
 many quarts of these nuts as late as the tenth of Jan 
 uary, and though some bought at the store the same 
 day were more than half of them mouldy, I did not 
 find a single mouldy one among these which I picked 
 from under the wet and mouldy leaves, where they 
 had been snowed on once or twice. Nature knows 
 how to pack them best. They were still plump and 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 201 
 
 tender. Apparently, they do not heat there, though 
 wet. In the spring they were all sprouting. 
 
 "Loudon says that when the nut [of the common 
 walnut of Europe] is to be preserved through the 
 winter for the purpose of planting in the following 
 spring, it should be laid in a rot-heap, as soon as gath 
 ered, with the husk on; and the heap should be 
 turned over frequently in the course of the winter. 
 
 "Here, again, he is stealing Nature s thunder/ 
 How can a poor mortal do otherwise ? for it is she 
 that finds fingers to steal with, and the treasure to be 
 stolen. In the planting of the seeds of most trees, 
 the best gardeners do no more than follow Nature, 
 though they may not know it. Generally, both large 
 and small ones are most sure to germinate and succeed 
 best, when only beaten into the earth with the back 
 of a spade, and then covered with leaves or straw. 
 These results to which planters have arrived remind 
 us of the experience of Kane and his companions at 
 the North, who, when learning to live in that climate, 
 were surprised to find themselves steadily adopting 
 the customs of the natives, simply becoming Esqui 
 maux. So, when we experiment in planting forests, 
 we find ourselves at last doing as Nature does. Would 
 it not be well to consult with Nature in the outset? 
 for she is the most extensive and experienced planter 
 of us all, not excepting the Dukes of Athol. 
 
202 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 " In short, they who have not attended particularly 
 to this subject are but little aware to what an extent 
 quadrupeds and birds are employed, especially in the 
 fall, in collecting, and so disseminating and planting 
 the seeds of trees. It is the almost constant employ 
 ment of the squirrels at that season, and you rarely 
 meet with one that has not a nut in its mouth, or is 
 not just going to get one. One squirrel hunter of this 
 town told me that he knew of a walnut tree which 
 bore particularly good nuts, but that on going to gather 
 them one fall, he found that he had been anticipated 
 by a family of a dozen red squirrels. He took out of 
 the tree, which was hollow, one bushel and three 
 pecks by measurement, without the husks, and they 
 supplied him and his family for the winter. It would 
 be easy to multiply instances of this kind. How com 
 monly in the fall you see the cheek-pouches of the 
 striped squirrel distended by a quantity of nuts ! 
 This species gets its scientific name Tamias, or the 
 steward, from its habit of storing up nuts and other 
 seeds. Look under a nut tree a month after the nuts 
 have fallen, and see what proportion of sound nuts to 
 the abortive ones and shells you will find ordinarily. 
 They have been already eaten, or dispersed far and 
 wide. The ground looks like a platform before a 
 grocery, where the gossips of the village sit to crack 
 nuts and less savory jokes. You have come, you 
 
Thoreau : his Life, and Aims. 203 
 
 would say, after the feast was over, and are presented 
 with the shells only. 
 
 " Occasionally, when threading the woods in the 
 fall, you will hear a sound as if some one had broken 
 a twig, and looking up see a jay pecking at an acorn, 
 or you will see a flock of them at once about it, in the 
 top of an oak, and hear them break them off. They 
 then fly to a suitable limb, and placing the acorn under 
 one foot, hammer away at it busily, making a sound 
 like a woodpecker s tapping, looking round from time 
 to time to see if any foe is approaching, and soon 
 reach the meat, and nibble at it, holding up their 
 heads to swallow, while they hold the remainder very 
 firmly with their claws. Nevertheless, it often drops 
 to the ground before the bird has done with it. I 
 can confirm what Wm. Bartram wrote to Wilson, the 
 ornithologist, that The jay is one of the most useful 
 agents in the economy of nature for disseminating 
 forest trees and other nuciferous and hard seeded 
 vegetables of which they feed. Their chief employ 
 ment during the autumnal season is foraging to supply 
 their winter stores. In performing this necessary- 
 duty they drop abundance of seed in their flight over 
 fields, hedges, and by fences, where they alight to 
 deposit them in the post-holes, etc. It is remarkable 
 what numbers of young trees rise up in fields and 
 pastures after a wet winter and spring. These birds 
 
204 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 alone are capable, in a few years time, to replant all 
 the cleared lands/ 
 
 "I have noticed that squirrels also frequently drop 
 their nuts in open land, which will still further account 
 for the oaks and walnuts which spring up in pastures, 
 for, depend on it, every new tree comes from a seed. 
 When I examine the little oaks, one or two years old, 
 in such places, I invariably find the empty acorn from 
 which they sprung. 
 
 " So far from the seed having lain dormant in the 
 soil since oaks grew there before, as many believe, it 
 is well known that it is difficult to preserve the vitality 
 of acorns long enough to transport them to Europe ; 
 and it is recommended in London s Arboretum, as 
 the safest course, to sprout them in pots on the voyage. 
 The same authority states that very few acorns of 
 any species will germinate after having been kept a 
 year, that bcechmast only retains its vital properties 
 one year, and the black walnut seldom more than 
 six months after it has ripened. I have frequently 
 found that in November almost every acorn left on 
 the ground had sprouted or decayed. What with 
 frost, drouth, moisture, and worms, the greater part 
 are soon destroyed. Yet it is stated by one botani 
 cal writer that acorns that have lain for centuries, on 
 being ploughed up, have soon vegetated/ 
 
 " Mr. George B. Emerson, in his valuable Report 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 205 
 
 on the Trees and Shrubs of this State (Massachu 
 setts), says of the pines: The tenacity of life of the 
 seeds is remarkable. They will remain for many years 
 unchanged in the ground, protected by the coolness 
 and deep shade of the forest above them. But when 
 the forest is removed, and the warmth of the sun 
 admitted, they immediately vegetate. Since he does 
 not tell us on what observation his remark is founded, 
 I must doubt its truth. Besides, the experience of 
 nurserymen makes it the more questionable. 
 
 " The stories of wheat raised from seed buried with 
 an ancient Egyptian, and of raspberries raised from 
 seed found in the stomach of a man in England, who 
 is supposed to have died sixteen or seventeen hundred 
 years ago, are generally discredited, simply because 
 the evidence is not conclusive. 
 
 " Several men of science, Dr. Carpenter among 
 them, have used the statement that beach plums sprang 
 up in sand which was dug up forty miles inland in 
 Maine, to prove that the seed had lain there a very 
 Ions: time, and some have inferred that the coast has 
 
 o 
 
 receded so far. But it seems to me necessary to 
 their argument to show, first, that beach plums grow 
 only on a beach. They are not uncommon here, 
 which is about half that distance from the shore ; and 
 I remember a dense patch a few miles north of us, 
 twenty-five miles inland, from which the fruit was 
 
206 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 annually carried to market. How much further inland 
 they grow, I know not. Dr. Chas. T. Jackson speaks 
 of finding beach plums (perhaps they were this 
 kind) more than one hundred miles inland in Maine." 
 
 His close observation of the wildest animals implies 
 a kind of real brotherhood, a patient self -identifying 
 sympathy, as rare amongst naturalists as any other 
 class. A passage on the muskrat and the fox may be 
 cited in this light : 
 
 " Frequently, in the morning or evening, a long 
 ripple is seen in the still water, where a muskrat is 
 crossing the stream, with only its nose above the sur 
 face, and sometimes a green bough in its mouth to 
 build its house with. "When it finds itself observed, 
 it will dive and swim five or six rods under water, and 
 at length conceal itself in its hole, or the weeds. It 
 will remain under water for ten minutes at a time, 
 and on one occasion has been seen, when undisturbed, 
 to form an air bubble under the ice, which contracted 
 and expanded as it breathed at leisure. When it 
 suspects danger on shore, it will stand erect like a 
 squirrel, and survey its neighborhood for several min 
 utes, without moving. 
 
 " In the fall, if a meadow intervene between their 
 burrows and the stream, they erect cabins of rnud and 
 grass, three or four feet high, near its edge. These 
 are not their breeding places, though young are some- 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 207 
 
 times found in late freshets, but rather their hunting 
 lodges, to which they resort in the winter with their 
 food, and for shelter. Their food consists chiefly of 
 flags and fresh-water muscles, the shells of the latter 
 being left in large quantities around their lodges in 
 the spring. 
 
 " The Penobscot Indian wears the entire skin of a 
 muskrat, with the legs and tail dangling, and the 
 head caught under his girdle, for a pouch, into which 
 he puts his fishing tackle and essences to scent his 
 traps with. 
 
 " The bear, wolf, lynx, wild-cat, deer, beaver, and 
 marten have disappeared ; the otter is rarely if ever 
 seen here at present; and the mink is less common 
 than formerly. 
 
 " Perhaps of all our untamed quadrupeds, the fox 
 has obtained the widest and most familiar reputation, 
 from the time of Pilpay and ^Esop to the present day. 
 His recent tracks still give variety to a winter s walk. 
 I tread in the steps of the fox that has gone before 
 me by some hours, or which perhaps I have started, 
 with such a tiptoe of expectation, as if I were on the 
 trail of the spirit itself which resides in the wood, and 
 expected soon to catch it in its lair. I am curious to 
 know what has determined its graceful curvatures, 
 and how surely they were coincident with the fluctua 
 tions of some mind. I know which way a mind wended, 
 
208 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 what horizon it faced, by the setting of these tracks, 
 and whether it moved slowly or rapidly, by their 
 greater or less intervals and distinctness; for the 
 swiftest step leaves yet a lasting trace. Sometimes you 
 will see the trails of many together, and where they 
 have gambolled and gone through a hundred evolu 
 tions, which testify to a singular listlessness and lei 
 sure in nature. 
 
 " When I see a fox run across the pond in the snow, 
 with the carelessness of freedom, or at intervals trace 
 his course in the sunshine along the ridge of a hill, I 
 give up to him sun and earth as to their true proprie 
 tor. He does not go in the sun, but it seems to fol 
 low him, and there is a visible sympathy between him 
 and it. Sometimes, when the snow lies light, and but 
 five or six inches deep, you may give chase and come 
 up with one on foot. In such a case he will show a 
 remarkable presence of mind, choosing only the safe- 
 est direction, though he may lose ground by it. Not 
 withstanding his fright, he will take no step which is 
 not beautiful. His pace is a sort of leopard canter, 
 as if he were in nowise impeded by the snow, but were 
 husbanding his strength all the while. When the 
 ground is uneven, the course is a series of graceful 
 curves, conforming to the shape of the surface. He 
 runs as though there were not a bone in his. back. 
 Occasionally dropping his muzzle to the ground for a 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 209 
 
 rod or two, and then tossing his head aloft, when sat 
 isfied of his course. When he comes to a declivity, 
 he will put his forefeet together, and slide swiftly 
 down it, shoving the snow before him. He treads so 
 softly that you would hardly hear it from any near 
 ness, and yet with such expression that it would not 
 be quite inaudible at any distance." 
 
 Surely there is a fine eye for color here, as well as 
 an instinct for that unity in which lies the proof of 
 artistic conception : 
 
 "By the twenty-fifth of September, the red maples 
 generally are beginning to be ripe. Some large ones 
 have been conspicuously changing for a week, and 
 some single trees are now very brilliant. I noticed a 
 small one, half a mile off across a meadow, against the 
 green wood-side there, a far brignter red than the 
 blossoms of any tree in summer, and more conspicu 
 ous. I have observed this tree for several autumns 
 invariably changing earlier than its fellows, just as 
 one tree ripens its fruit earlier than another. It 
 might serve to mark the season, perhaps. I should 
 be sorry, if it were cut down. I know of two or three 
 such trees in different parts of our town, which might, 
 perhaps, be propagated from, as early ripeners or Sep 
 tember trees, and their seed be advertised in the mar 
 ket, a& well as that of radishes, if we cared as much 
 about them. 
 
 14 
 
210 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 "At present these burning bushes stand chiefly 
 along the edge of the meadows, or I distinguish them 
 afar on the hill-sides here and there. Sometimes you 
 will sec many small ones in a swamp turned quite 
 crimson when all other trees around are still perfectly 
 green, and the former appear so much the brighter for 
 it. They take you by surprise, as you are going by 
 on one side, across the fields, thus early in the season, 
 as if it were some gay encampment of the red men, 
 or other foresters, of whose arrival you had not heard. 
 
 " Some single trees, wholly bright scarlet, seen 
 against others of their kind still freshly green, or 
 against evergreens, are more memorable than whole 
 groves will be by-and-by. How beautiful, when a 
 whole tree is like one great scarlet fruit full cf ripe 
 juices, every lear^from lowest limb to topmost spire, 
 all aglow, especially if you look toward the sun! 
 What more remarkable object can there be in the 
 landscape ? Visible for miles, too fair to be believed. 
 If such a phenomenon occurred but once, it would be 
 handed down by tradition to posterity, and get into 
 the mythology at last. 
 
 " The whole tree thus ripening in advance of its 
 fellows attains a singular pre-eminence, and some 
 times maintains it for a week or two. I am thrilled 
 at the sight of it, bearing aloft its scarlet standard for 
 the regiment of green-clad foresters around, and I go 
 
Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 211 
 
 half a mile out of my way to examine it. A single 
 tree becomes thus the crowning beauty of some mead 
 owy vale, and the expression of the whole surround 
 ing forest is at once more spirited for it. 
 
 "A small red maple has grown, perchance, far 
 away at the head of some retired valley, a mile from 
 any road, unobserved. It has faithfully discharged 
 the duties of a maple there, all winter and summer, 
 neglected none of his economies, but added to its 
 stature in the virtue which belongs to a maple, by a 
 steady growth for so many months, never having gone 
 gadding abroad, and is nearer heaven than it was in 
 the spring. It has faithfully husbanded its sap, and 
 afforded a shelter to the wandering bird, has long 
 since ripened its seeds and committed them to the 
 winds, and has the satisfaction of knowing, perhaps, 
 that a thousand little well-behaved maples are already 
 settled in life somewhere. It deserves well of Maple- 
 dom. Its leaves have been asking it from time to 
 time, in a whisper, When shall we redden ? And 
 now, in this month of September, tliis month of trav 
 elling, when men are hastening to the sea side, or 
 the mountains, or the lakes, this modest maple, still 
 without budging an inch, travels in its reputation, 
 runs up its scarlet flag on that hill-side, which shows 
 that it has finished its summer s work before all other 
 trees, and withdraws from the contest. At the eleventh 
 
212 Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 
 
 hour of the year, the tree which no scrutiny could 
 have detected here when it was most industrious is 
 thus, by the tint, of its maturity, by its very blushes, 
 revealed at last to the careless and distant traveller, 
 and leads his thoughts away from the dusty road into 
 those brave solitudes which it inhabits. It flashes out 
 conspicuous with all the virtue and beauty of a maple, 
 Acer ncbrum. 
 
 " Notwithstanding the red maple is the most intense 
 scarlet of any of our trees, the sugar maple has been 
 the most celebrated, and Michaux in his Sylva does 
 not speak of the autumnal color of the former. About 
 the second of October these trees, both large and 
 small, are most brilliant, though many are still green. 
 In sprout-lands they seem to vie with one another, 
 and ever some particular one in the midst of the crowd 
 will be of a peculiarly pure scarlet, and by its more 
 intense color attract our eye even at a distance, and 
 carry off the palm. A large red maple swamp, when 
 at the height of its change, is the most obviously bril 
 liant of all tangible things, where I dwell, so abundant 
 is this tree with us. It varies much both in form and 
 color. A great many are merely yellow, more scarlet, 
 others scarlet deepening into crimson, more red and 
 common. Look at yonder swamp of maples mixed 
 
Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 213 
 
 with pines at the base of a pine-clad hill, a quarter of 
 a mile off, so that you get the full effect of the bright 
 colors without detecting the imperfections of the leaves, 
 and see their yellow, scarlet, and crimson fires, of all 
 tints, mingled and contrasted with the green. Some 
 maples are yet green, only yellow or crimson-tipped 
 on the edges of their flakes, like the edges of a hazel- 
 nut bur ; some are wholly brilliant scarlet, raying out 
 regularly and finely every way bilaterally, like the 
 veins of a leaf; others, of a more irregular form, when 
 I turn my head slightly, emptying out some of its 
 carthincss and concealing the trunk of the tree, seem 
 to rest heavily flake on flako, like yellow and scarlet 
 clouds, wreath upon wreath, or like snowdrifts driving 
 through the air, stratified by the wind. It adds greatly 
 to the beauty of such a swamp at this season that, 
 even though there may be no other trees interspersed, 
 it is not seen as a simple mass of color, but different 
 trees being of different colors and hues, the outline of 
 each crescent tree top is distinct, and where one laps 
 on to another. Yet a painter would hardly venture to 
 make them thus distinct a quarter of a mile off. 
 
 "As I go across a meadow directly toward a low 
 rising ground this bright afternoon, I sec, some fifty 
 rods off toward the sun, the top of a maple swamp just 
 appearing over the sheeny russet edge of the hill, a 
 stripe apparently twenty rods long by ten feet deep, of 
 
214 Thorcau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 the most intensely brilliant scarlet, orange and yellow, 
 equal to any flowers or fruits or any tints ever painted. 
 As I advance, lowering the edge of the lull which 
 makes the firm foreground or lower frame of the pic 
 ture, the depth of the brilliant grove revealed steadily 
 increases, suggesting that the whole of the enclosed 
 valley is filled with such color. One wonders that the 
 tithingmcn and fathers of the town are not out to see 
 what the trees mean by their high colors and exuber 
 ance of spirits, fearing that some mischief is brewing. 
 I do not see what the Puritans did at this season when 
 the maples blaze out in scarlet. They certainly could 
 not have worshipped in groves then. Perhaps that is 
 what they built meeting-houses and fenced them round 
 with horse sheds for." 
 
 With Thorcau, in one word, everything is seen in 
 relation to human sentiment and fitness. He is a 
 reconciler. His groat aim is to recommend Nature to 
 man; to prove her worthy of the recommendation, 
 and so induce and enhance the idea of individuality, 
 which, in midst of all her masses and mighty generali 
 ties, she everywhere faithfully celebrates. Thoreau 
 went to Nature an individualist, and came back the 
 prophet of society, as truly reconstructed, with liberty 
 for its groundwork, but liberty which would give no 
 quarter to license of any kind. Sobriety, severity, 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 215 
 
 and self-respect, foundation of all true sociality, are 
 his motto., He himself says : * 
 
 " I think I love society as much as most, and am 
 ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for 
 the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my 
 way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possi 
 bly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room if 
 my business called me thither." 
 
 It was quite consistent with this that he should hate 
 slavery, should speak nobly and unceasingly for the 
 valiant John Brown, of Harper s Ferry. His heart 
 beat true for human rights, though he was wont to 
 speak depreciatingly of professed philanthropists, who 
 were apt to ignore broad distinctions, where he main 
 tained them, distinctions, too, which he held were 
 essential to be recognized in view at once of social 
 well-being and true individuality. In fact Thoreau 
 was a man of ready public spirit, though he declined 
 to be interested in the petty machinery of forced and 
 over-heated local politics, just as Emerson tells us 
 that he listened impatiently to news or bon mots 
 gleaned from London circles; and that though lie 
 tried to be civil, these anecdotes fatigued him. Wrapt 
 up with his apparent disregard of elegance, he had 
 with him a marked air of elegance which could consist 
 without accessories. " He was short of stature, firmly 
 built, of light complexion, serious blue eyes [rig] it 
 
21 G Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 well-opened], and a grave aspect." So says Emer 
 son, and the portrait given at the opening of the 
 Excursions justifies the words. The expression is 
 at once shrewd and spiritual, the Yankee traits really 
 there, yet refined away in earnest thought and wise 
 foresight. The eyes soft and thoughtful, yet won- 
 drously penetrating, expressive of sharp mother-wit 
 and kindliness and generosity without stint ; the nose 
 full, and yet sensitive in the nostril ; the mouth ex 
 pressive of resolution and self-respecting calmness ; 
 and the forehead a round, rising arch, bespeaking 
 fervid emotions. Such was Thoreau, one of the 
 most vigorous, independent, and true-hearted of Ameri 
 cans, who would easily have been turned into a martyr, 
 notwithstanding that he held so lightly by formulas. 
 His cutting brusqucncss, of which even his dearest 
 friends sometimes made mention, arose out of the seri 
 ousness and severity of his nature, which made him 
 abhor all triviality and vain conversation, and which, 
 combined with such keen imagination and fiery hatred 
 of wrong as characterized him, is always a main ingre 
 dient in heroism. What could be finer than his own 
 account of himself, when he was cast into the county 
 prison, because of that quarrel over the taxes, which 
 he would not pay : 
 
 "I have paid no poll tax for six years. I was put 
 into a jail once on this account, for one night ; and, 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 217 
 
 as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two 
 or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot 
 thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I 
 could not help being struck with the foolishness of that 
 institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and 
 blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it 
 should have concluded at length that this was the best 
 use to put me to, and had never thought to avail itself 
 of my services in any way. I saw that if there was a 
 stone wall between me and my townsmen there was a 
 still more difficult one to climb or break through before 
 they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a 
 moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great 
 waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all 
 my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not 
 know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who 
 are underbred. In every threat and in every compli 
 ment there was a blunder, for they thought that my 
 chief desire was to stand on the other side of that stone 
 wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously 
 they locked the door on my meditations, which followed 
 them out again without let or hindrance, and they were 
 really all that was dangerous. As they could not 
 reach me, they had resolved to punish my body ; just 
 as boys, if they cannot come at any person at whom 
 they have a grudge, will abuse his dog. 
 
 Seldom has the Puritan idea of freedom of soul 
 
218 Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 
 
 been bettor illustrated, unless perhaps by John Bun- 
 yan, in Bedford jail. Thoreau drew from his Saxon 
 ancestors, on the female side, a dash of the Puritan 
 blood, and, on a point of right, he would have fought, 
 and borne all indignity. In this case his friends came 
 to his rescue, and he went free. 
 
 But amidst his earnestness, his dignified humor 
 docs not forsake him. He lays his eye level to cir 
 cumstances, and looks along them to a fuller result. 
 Philosophic he is, and more, as the following account 
 of his jail experiences will prove : 
 
 " The night in prison was novel and interesting 
 enough ; the prisoners in their shirt-sleeves were enjoy 
 ing a chat and the evening air in the doorway when I 
 entered. But the jailor said, Come, boys, it is time to 
 lock up ; and so they dispersed, and I heard the sound 
 of their steps returning into the hollow apartments. 
 My room-mate was introduced to me by the jailor as 
 a first-rate fellow, and a clever man. When the 
 door was locked, he showed me where to hang my 
 hat, and how he managed matters there. The rooms 
 were whitewashed once a month ; and this one, at least, 
 was the whitest, most simply furnished, and probably 
 the neatest apartment in the town. He naturally 
 wanted to know where I came from, and what had 
 brought me there ; and when I had told him, I asked 
 him, in my turn, how he came there, presuming him 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 219 
 
 to be an honest man, of course ; , and as the world 
 goes, I believed he was. Why, said he, they accuse 
 me of burning a barn; but I never did it. As near 
 as I could discover, he had probably gone to bed in a 
 barn when drunk, and smoked his pipe there; and so 
 a barn was burnt. He had the reputation of being a 
 clever man, had been there some three months waiting 
 for his trial to come on, and would have to wait as 
 much longer ; but he was quite domesticated and con 
 tented, since he got his board for nothing, and thought 
 that he was well treated. 
 
 "He occupied one window, and I the other; and I 
 saw that, if one stayed there long, his principal busi 
 ness would be to look out at the window. I had soon 
 read all the tracts that were left there, and examined 
 where former prisoners had broken out, and where a 
 grate had been sawed off, and heard the history of the 
 various occupants of the room; for I found that even 
 hero there was a history and a gossip, which never 
 circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this 
 is the only house in the town where verses are com 
 posed, which are afterwards printed in circular form, 
 but not published. I was shown quite a long list of 
 verses, which were composed by some young men who 
 had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged 
 themselves by singing them. 
 
 " I pumped my fellow-prisoner as dry as I could, 
 
220 Thoreau : Jiis Life and Aims. 
 
 for fear I should never see him again; but at length 
 he showed me which was my bed, and left me to blow 
 out the lamp. 
 
 "It was like travelling into a far country, such as I 
 had never expected to behold, to lie there for one 
 night. It seemed to me that I never had 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 to see my native vil 
 lage in the light of the Middle Ages ; and our Concord 
 was turned into a Hhine stream, and visions of knights 
 and castles passed before me. They were the voices 
 of old burghers that I heard in the streets. I was an 
 involuntary spectator and auditor of whatever was done 
 and said in the kitchen of the adjacent village inn, a 
 wholly new and rare experience to me. It was a closer 
 view of my native town. I was fairly inside of it. I 
 never had seen its institutions before. This is one of 
 its peculiar institutions, for it is a shire town. I began 
 to comprehend what its inhabitants were about. 
 
 " In the morning our breakfasts were put through 
 the hole in the door, in small, oblong, square tin pans, 
 made to fit, and holding a pint of chocolate, with 
 brown bread, and an iron spoon. When they called 
 for the vessels again, I was green enough to return 
 what bread I had loft; but my comrade seized it, 
 and said that I should lay that up for a lunch or din- 
 
Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 221 
 
 ner. Soon after he was let out for haying in a neigh 
 boring field, whither he went every clay, and would 
 not be back till noon, so he bade me good day, saying 
 that he doubted if he should see me again. . . . 
 
 " It was formally the custom in our village, when 
 a poor debtor came out of jail, for his acquintances to 
 salute him, looking through their fingers, which were 
 crossed to represent the grating of a jail window, How 
 do ye do? My neighbors did not thus salute me, 
 but first looked at me, and then at one another, as if 
 I had returned from a long journey. I was put into 
 jail as I was going to the shoemaker s to get a shoe 
 which, was mended. "When I was let out the next 
 morning I proceeded to finish my errand, and having 
 put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, 
 who were impatient to put themselves under my con 
 duct ; and in half an hour for the horse was soon 
 tackled was in the midst of a huckleberry field, in 
 one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the 
 State was nowhere to be seen. 
 
 "I have never declined paying the highway tax, 
 because I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as 
 I am of being a bad subject; and, as for supporting 
 schools, I am doing my part to educate my fellow- 
 countrymen now. It was for no particular item in the 
 tax-bill that I refused to pay it. I simply wished to 
 withdraw and for a time stand apart from it effectually." 
 
222 Thoreau: his Life and Aims. 
 
 Probably ft was this quality of self-sufficience, asso 
 ciated as it was with such wonderful clearness of aim 
 and skill in finding easy means to attain the end in 
 view, which mado Mr. Emerson signalize his practical 
 ability in this regretful strain : 
 
 " Had his genius been only contemplative, ho had 
 been fitted for his life ; but with his energy and prac 
 tical ability he seemed born for a great enterprise 
 and for command ; and I so much regret the loss of 
 his rare powers of action that I cannot help counting 
 it a fault in him 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 the years it is still only 
 beans! . . ." 
 
 Thoreau has been too absolutely claimed by the 
 transccndentalists and treated as a mere disciple of 
 Emerson. This has led in large measure to his being 
 rejected all too decisively by the purely scientific 
 men, for whom, nevertheless, he has many hints that 
 are equally original and valuable. It must be admit 
 ted, however, that if he had been less of a poet, 
 he would have recommended himself better to the 
 scientific class, precisely as he would have been a bet 
 ter Emersonian, if his eye for concrete facts had been 
 less keen. He is impatient of certain forms of analysis, 
 
Thoreau : 7iis Life and Aims. 223 
 
 moro concerned to gain insight into the inner nature 
 than to anatomize and van knowledge of the mere 
 details cf .structure. 
 
 ISoth these circumstances have tended to deprive 
 Thoreau cf the credit that belongs to him. After 
 
 O 
 
 you deduct in the most exacting manner all that is 
 due to Emerson and Transcendentalism, and allow 
 that in some points he failed under the most rigid 
 reckonings of science, much remains to establish his 
 claims on our sympathy and deference. His instincts 
 were true; his patience was unbounded; he never 
 flinched from pain or labor when it lay in the way of 
 his object ; and complaint ho was never known to 
 utter oil his own account. 
 
 No hard logical line ought to be laid to his utter 
 ances in the sphere of personal opinion or liking. He 
 confessedly wrote without regard to abstract consis 
 tency. His whole life was determined by sympathy, 
 though he sometimes seemed cynical. We are fain 
 to think, indeed, that under his brusquencss there lay 
 a suppressed humorous questioning of his reader s 
 capacity and consequent right to understand him and 
 to offer sympathy. If, on this account, he may be 
 said to have sacrificed popularity, lie paid the penalty, 
 which people often pay in actual life for too consciously 
 hiding their true feelings under a veil of indifference ; 
 
224 Thoreau : his Life, and Aims. 
 
 and it is much if we find that the cynical manner sel 
 dom intruded on the real nature. 
 
 The story of Thoreau s life has a value, too, inas 
 much as we see in him how the tendency of culture, 
 and of theoretic speculation towards rationalistic indif 
 ference, and a general unconcern in the fate of others, 
 may be checked by a genuine love of Nature, and by 
 the self-denials she can prompt in the regard that she 
 conveys and enforces for the individual life and for 
 freedom. The practical lesson of a true Transcend 
 entalism, faithfully applied, must issue thus, and it 
 is the same whether we see it in St. Francis, in the 
 saintly Eckhart, in William Law or in the naturalist 
 Thoreau. All life is sanctified by the relation in which 
 it is seen to the source of life, an idea which lies 
 close to the Christian spirit, however much a fixed and 
 rationalized dogmatic relation to it may tend to dcssi- 
 cate and render bare and arid those spaces of the indi 
 vidual nature which can bloom and blossom only 
 through sympathy and emotions that ally themselves 
 with what is strictly mystical. 
 
 It was through Nature, to which he retreated, that 
 Thorea-u recovered his philanthropic interests, his 
 love of mankind, which Jie might have come near to 
 losing through the spirit of culture winch can only 
 encourage cynicism and weariness in view of artificial 
 conventions and pretexts. Thoreau would have shrunk 
 
Thorcau : his Life and Aims. 225 
 
 with loathing horror from the touch of that savant 
 who, as Agassiz seriously assures us, said to him that 
 the age of real civilization would have begun when you 
 could go out and shoot a man for scientific purposes. 
 This seems very awful when put baldly on paper : it 
 is but the necessary expression of the last result of 
 culture coldly rationalistic, of science detcrminately 
 materialistic, since both alike must operate towards 
 loosening the bonds of natural sympathy. Thorcau was 
 saved from the modern curse of culture by his inno 
 cent delights, and his reverence for all forms of life so 
 stimulated. His strong faith in the higher destiny of 
 humanity through the triumph of clearer moral aims, 
 and the apprehension of a good beyond the individual 
 or even the national interest, would have linked him 
 practically with the Christian philanthropist rather than 
 with the cultured indiffercntists or worshipper of artistic 
 beauty or knowledge for their own sakes. 
 
 In this view Thoreau, in spite of his transcendent 
 alism, or as some would say, professed pantheism, was 
 a missionary. His testimony bears in the direction of 
 shewing that the study of Nature, when pursued in 
 such a way as to keep alive individual affection and 
 the sentiments of reverence, is one that practically 
 must work in alliance with enlightened Christian con 
 ceptions, and that in a moment of real peril, when 
 cruelty and wrong and disorder else would triumph, 
 
 15 
 
226 Thoreau : his T^ife and Aims. 
 
 the true votary of nature will be on the side of the 
 Christian hero who suffers wrong to redeem the weak. 
 Thoreau thus exhibits to us one way of uplifting sci 
 ence, in relieving her from the false associations which 
 would disconnect her from common humanity and set 
 her in opposition to its strongest instincts, the science 
 falsely so called, which by baseless assumptions would 
 demoralize, materialize, and brutify, and refuse scope 
 to the exercise of the more ideal and beneficent part 
 of man because it fails to comprehend it or to cover it 
 adequately by its exacting definitions. 
 
 It would be ungrateful in us, who arc so deeply 
 indebted to Emerson for many benefits, to analyze at 
 length the deteriorating effect which his teachings 
 had, in certain directions on Thoreau. 13 ut they are 
 too outstanding to be wholly passed over without notice. 
 It is patent that Thoreau s peculiar gifts led him to 
 deal with outward things. lie was an observer, a quick- 
 eyed and sympathetic recorder of the inner life of 
 nature. Emerson s teaching developed a certain self- 
 conscious and theorizing tendency far from natural 
 to Thoreau. He is often too concerned to seek justi 
 fication for certain facts in purely ideal conceptions 
 which nevertheless have not been reduced to coherency 
 with a general scheme. He is too indifferent to the 
 ordinary scientific order, too much intent on giving us 
 a cosmology in fragments, in which paradox shall star- 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 227 
 
 tie, if it does not enlighten. Whenever Thoreau pro 
 ceeds to air abstract statements he is treading on inse 
 cure ground ; his love of Emersonian philosophy leads 
 him some strange dances. Above all, this foreign ele 
 ment is seen in the effusive egotism which constantly 
 appears when he leaves the ground of facts for general 
 disquisition. He would fain attract us by forced fresh 
 ness and by the effort to utter paradoxical and start 
 ling statements. No man could be more clear, simple, 
 direct, incisive than he is when he has a real nature- 
 object before his eye or his mind; for memory never 
 fails him. But when he is abstract and oracular, he is 
 oftentimes more puzzling than his master. When Thor 
 eau is telling his own story, what he saw, what he 
 heard, what he did, he is simply delightful. His 
 pantheism, so far as it was a conscious thing with him, 
 is not inviting ; and would often be very hard and un 
 attractive, were it not that his instincts were far truer 
 than his mind was exact on the logical side, and saved 
 him from the natural effects of such vagary and para 
 doxical assertions. But we can dissociate Thoreau s 
 merits from these adhesions. His Emersonian panthe 
 ism did not destroy his finer sensibilities and sympa 
 thies, which made him, as he certainly was, one of 
 Nature s diviners and reconcilers, a pantheist as all 
 true poets have been, as Christ himself was. Like 
 many others, he brought a double gift; but that which 
 
228 Thorcau : his T^ife and Aims. 
 
 is truest and most available is tliat of which he made 
 but little account. So it is that we believe wo can 
 detach from his writings what will serve to illustrate 
 the better side of his genius. Fitly and fully done, 
 this cannot but prove a service ; for we can ill afford 
 wholly to miss the benefit of the record of such a pe 
 culiar experience, a discerning and divining instinct, 
 on the whole wisely directed to its true purpose, and 
 revealing rare possibilities in human life, new rela 
 tionships and sources of deep joy. 
 
 It is very striking to trace out the varied ways by 
 which different minds reach an identical practical re 
 sult. The quietism of John Woolman, the Quaker, 
 would hardly have met with sympathy from Thoreau 
 in many points ; and yet how the lines of their thought 
 and mysticism, variant as they seem, meet in one point. 
 Thorcau would have sympathized with and endorsed 
 these remarkable records, which we cite with the more 
 pleasure as they will be found to illustrate the law to 
 which we were just giving expression as to the prepara 
 tion a true communion with Nature must ever give for 
 genuine philanthropic interests : 
 
 "I was early convinced in my mind," says Wool 
 man, in his journal, " that true religion consisted in 
 an inward life, wherein the heart doth love and rever 
 ence God the Creator, and learns to exercise true jus 
 tice and goodness, not only towards all men, but also 
 
Thoreau : his Life, and Aims. 229 
 
 towards "brute creatures ; that as the mind was moved 
 by an inward principle to love God as an invisible, 
 incomprehensible Being, by the same principle it was 
 moved to love Him in all His manifestations in the 
 visible world ; that as by his breath the flame of life 
 was kindled in all animal sensible creatures, to say 
 we love God as unseen, and at the same time to exer 
 cise cruelty towards the least creature moving by His 
 life, or by life derived from Him, was a contradiction 
 in itself. ... I looked upon the works of God 
 in this visible world, and an awfulncss covered me ; 
 my heart was tender and often contrite, and universal 
 love to my fellow-creatures increased in me ; this will 
 be understood by those who have trodden in the same 
 path. Some glances of real beauty may be seen in 
 their faces who dwell in true meekness." So when 
 during his brief peregrination through England he was 
 saddened by the dire development of the slave trade, 
 " under the weight of this exercise," he says, " the 
 sight of innocent birds among the branches, and sheep in 
 their pastures, who act according to the will of their 
 Creator, hath at times tended to mitigate my trouble." 
 Indeed the idea is forced upon us that all true 
 Christians, in spite of variety of dogmatic forms, must 
 be Transccndcntalists in the sense that Thorcau was. 
 They must see all life as flowing from the Source 
 of life, God manifesting Himself richly in the works 
 
230 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 of Nature, casting over all the evidences of His 
 grace, of which, the creature makes himself the con 
 scious partaker by the temporary sense of separa 
 tion in the independent effort of will towards harmo 
 nizing his immediate surroundings with this vast unity. 
 Thus in the return to Nature, his idea of God s pres 
 ence is intensified and deepened. ) 
 
 Madame Sand, at one place, writes as follows : 
 "Nature is eternally young, beautiful, bountiful. 
 She pours out beauty and poetry for all that live. 
 She pours it out on all plants, and the plants arc per 
 mitted to expand in it freely. She possesses the secret 
 of happiness, and no man has been able to take it 
 away from her. The happiest of men would he be, 
 who, possessing the science of his labor and working 
 with his hands, earning his comfort and his freedom 
 by the exercise of his intelligent force, found time to 
 live by the heart and by the brain, to understand his 
 own work, and to love the work of God. The artist 
 has satisfaction of this kind in the contemplation and 
 reproduction of nature s beauty; but when he sees 
 the affliction of those who people this paradise of earth, 
 the upright and human hearted artist feels a trouble 
 in the midst of his enjoyment. The happy day will 
 be when mind r heart, and hands shall be alive together, 
 and shall work in concert; when there shall be a har 
 mony between God s munificence and man s delight in 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 231 
 
 it. Then instead of the piteous and frightful figure 
 of Death, stepping whip in hand by the peasant s side 
 in the field, the allegorical painter will place there a 
 radiant angel, sowing with full hands the blessed 
 grain in the smoking furrow. 
 
 " And the dream of a kindly, free, poetic, laborious, 
 and simple existence for the tiller of the field is not 
 so hard to realize that it must be sent away into the 
 world of chimeras. Virgil s sweet and sad cry, 
 happy peasants, if they but knew their own blessings ! 
 is a regret ; but like all regrets, it is at the same time 
 a prediction. The day will come, when the laborer 
 may be also an artist, not in the sense of rendering 
 Nature s beauty, a matter which will be then of much 
 less importance, but in the sense of feeling it. Does 
 not this mysterious intuition of poetic beauty exist in 
 him already in the form of instinct and vague reverie." 
 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold * is quite right in founding 
 on Madame Sand s sympathy, purified and strength 
 ened by the true love of Nature, an element which 
 will give her influence in the coming time. This is, 
 in the words of Mrs. Browning, 
 
 "The True Pan 
 "Who by low creatures leads to heights of love." 
 
 "Here," says Mr. Matthew Arnold, "lies the strength 
 of George Sand, and of her second movement after 
 
 * Fortnightly Review for June, 1877. 
 
232 " Thorectu . his Life and A.ims. 
 
 the first movement of energy and revolt was over, 
 towards nature and beauty, towards the country, primi 
 tive life, the peasant. She regarded not with the sel 
 fish and solitary joy of the artist who but seeks to 
 appropriate them for his own purposes, she regarded 
 them as a treasure of immense and hitherto unknown 
 application, as a vast power of healing and delight 
 for all." 
 
 This complete brotherhood of sympathy is the bright 
 prophecy of a union as yet but dreamt of. When 
 men shall cease to define things that lie beyond the 
 intellect, and fear to debate and to dogmatize because 
 they directly realize the presences that disturb with 
 the joy of elevated thought, when Nature shall be 
 but a medium of purer communion, and all her beauty 
 and terror only bespeak undeveloped possibilities of 
 human love and fellowship, then the era of true 
 toleration shall have begun. Already we sec hints 
 and prophecies of it, travelling through enlarging 
 spaces of life far apart from each other. As the sun 
 at his first rising strikes the distant mountains, that 
 seem to be further separated from each other than 
 they really are by the dark mists that linger in the 
 valleys, which by and by shall be radiant also ; so in 
 the moral and spiritual life of man. St. Francis, in 
 the Middle Ages, speaks a word that awakes the same 
 echo in minds so diverse as those of Thoreau, Wool- 
 
Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 233 
 
 man, and Madame Sand. Nature enforces simplicity ; 
 simplicity must erase conventional distinctions or the 
 sense of them, in the line of a culture whose elements 
 are open to all ; hence a reverence for human effort 
 and human suffering, and an endeavor to unite the 
 poor and the rich, the ignorant and the learned, the 
 thinker and the worker in one bond. This is the 
 true return to Nature and simplicity, of which Rous- 
 seau presented but a perverted image of vague promise, 
 which a bankrupt society, in its despair, for a moment 
 tried to find happiness in, while it carried all its inter 
 ested artificiality along with it. This was the poison 
 that lay s at basis of that eighteenth century effort at 
 reconstruction s sincere and earnest in many respects. 
 But it claimed no real self-denial, no surrender to the 
 presences that demand escape from the jarring fetters 
 of conventionalism. In destroying one series, it but 
 created another; ; and in the effusive sensibility it sanc 
 tioned and demanded, it raised anew and in a more 
 dangerous form the very distinctions which it professed 
 to have erased. The worker, as precluded from the 
 luxury of a strained sensibility was, in the last result, 
 relegated to a class apart; equality became a senti 
 ment, a rapture, an aesthetic luxury; Rousseauism 
 returned upon itself, and ended in the very evils 
 which it began by contesting. We wait a new return 
 upon Nature and simplicity, enforcing a fuller and 
 
234 Thoreau : his Life and Aims. 
 
 more intimate sympathy of man with man ; Thoreau 
 and Madame Sand, with their kindred, are its prophets. 
 
 " The man, 
 
 Who in this spirit, communes with the forms 
 Of Nature, who, with understanding heart, 
 Doth know and love such objects as excite 
 No morbid passions, no disquietude, 
 No vengeance, and no hatred, needs must feel 
 The joy of that pure principle of love 
 So deeply, that, unsatisfied with aught 
 Less pure and exquisite, he cannot choose 
 But seek for objects of a kindred love 
 In fellow-natures and a kindred joy." 
 
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