* AMERICAN MEN OF LETTERS * 
 
 FHOREAU 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 , 
 
 Class 
 
j&tn of letters 
 
 HENKY D. THOREAU 
 

 
SUmmom fl^cn of ttetterg. 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 BY 
 
 F. B. SANBORN. 
 
 REVISED EDITION. 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 (&e 0iter?itie l^re^, Carabribge 
 
Copyright, 1882, 
 BY F. B. SANBORN. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
30S 
 
 MUCH do they wrong our Henry wise and kind, 
 
 Morose who name thee, cynical to men, kv I -. 
 
 Forsaking manners civil and refined 
 
 To build thyself m Walden woods a den, 
 
 Then flout society, flatter the rude hind. 
 
 We better knew thee, loyal citizen ! 
 
 Thou, friendship s all-adventuring pioneer, 
 
 Civility itself wouldst civilize : 
 
 Whilst braggart boors, wavering twixt rage and fear, 
 
 Slave hearths lay waste, and Indian huts surprise, 
 
 And swift the Martyr s gibbet would uprear: 
 
 Thou hail dst him great whose valorous emprise 
 
 Orion s blazing belt dimmed in the sky, 
 
 Then bowed thy unrepining head to die. 
 
 A. BRONSON ALCOTT. 
 CONCORD, January, 1882 > 
 
 213373 
 
PKEFACE 
 
 WHEN, in 1879, 1 was asked by my friend 
 Charles Dudley Warner to write the bio 
 graphy of Thoreau which follows, I was by 
 no means unprepared. I had known this 
 man of genius for the last seven years of his 
 too short life ; had lived in his family, and 
 in the house of his neighbor across the way, 
 Ellery Channing, his most intimate friend 
 outside of that family ; and had assisted 
 Channing in the preparation and publication 
 of his " Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist," the 
 first full biography which appeared. Not 
 very long after Thoreau s death Channing 
 had written me these sentences, with that in 
 sight of the future which he often displayed : 
 
 " That justice can be done to our deceased 
 brother by me, of course I do not think. But to 
 you and to me is intrusted the care of his imme 
 diate fame. I feel that my part is not yet done, 
 and cannot be without your aid. My little sketch 
 must only serve as a note and advertisement that 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 such a man lived, that he did brave work, 
 which must yet be given to the world. In the 
 midst of all the cold and selfish men who knew 
 this brave and devoted scholar and genius, why 
 should not you be called on to make some sacri 
 fices, even if it be to publish my sketch ? " 
 
 This I was ready to do in 1864 ; and it 
 was through my means that the volume, then 
 much enlarged by Channing, was published 
 in 1873, and again, with additions and cor 
 rections, in 1902. 
 
 I had also the great advantage of hearing 
 from the mother and sister of Henry the af 
 fectionate side of his domestic life, which 
 indeed I had witnessed, both in his health 
 and in his long mortal illness. From Emer 
 son, who had a clear view of Thoreau s in 
 tellect and his moral nature, I derived many 
 useful suggestions, though not wholly agree 
 ing with him in some of his opinions. In 
 March, 1878, after hearing Emerson read a 
 few unpublished notes on Thoreau, made 
 years before, I called on him one evening, 
 and thus entered the event in my journal : 
 
 " I was shown several of Thoreau s early pa 
 pers ; one a commentary on Emerson s Sphinx, 
 and another f.-om his own translation of * The 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 Seven Against Thebes, written at William Em 
 erson s house on Staten Island in 1843. Of this 
 episode in Thoreau s life (his tutorship for six 
 months of William Emerson s three sons), Emer 
 son told me that his brother and Henry were not 
 men that could get along together : * each would 
 think whatever the other did was out of place. 
 This was said to imply that Thoreau s poem The 
 Departure could not have been written on his 
 leaving Castleton in Staten Island. I had shown 
 Emerson these verses (first printed by me, at 
 Sophia Thoreau s wish, in the Boston < Common 
 wealth of 1863), whereupon he said: 
 
 " * I think Thoreau had always looked forward 
 to authorship as his work in life, and finding that 
 he could write prose well, he soon gave up writing 
 verse, in which he was not willing to be patient 
 enough to make the lines smooth and flowing. 
 These verses are smoother than he usually wrote ; 
 but I have now no recollection of seeing them be 
 fore, nor of any circumstances in which they may 
 have been written. Alluding to Judge Hoar s 
 marked dislike of Thoreau, Emerson said, l There 
 was no bow in Henry ; he never sought to please 
 his hearers or his friends. Thomas Cholmonde- 
 ley, the nephew of Scott s friend Richard Heber, 
 meeting Henry at dinner at Emerson s, to whom 
 Cholmondeley had letters in 1854, and expressing 
 to his host tlie wish to see more of him, Emerson 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 said he told the Englishman, * If you wish to see 
 Thoreau, go and board at his mother s house ; she 
 will be glad to take you in, and there you can meet 
 him every day. He did so, added Emerson, 
 and you know the result. . . . This led to fur 
 ther mention of Mrs. Thoreau, who, Emerson said, 
 was a person of sharp and malicious wit, of 
 whose sayings he read me some instances from 
 his Journals. Among these was her remark to 
 Mrs. Emerson, Henry is very tolerant ; add 
 ing Mr. Emerson has been talking so much with 
 Henry that he has learnt Henry s way of thinking 
 and talking. Emerson went on to me : 
 
 " < I had known Henry slightly when in college ; 
 the scholarship from which he drew an income 
 while there (a farm at Pullen Point in Chelsea) 
 was the one that I and my brothers, William and 
 Edward, had enjoyed while we were at college. 
 But my first intimate acquaintance with Henry 
 began after his graduation in 1837. Mrs. Brown, 
 my wife s sister, who then boarded with the Tho 
 reau family in the Parkman house, where the Li 
 brary now stands, used to bring me his verses 
 (the " Sic Vita " and others), and tell me of his 
 entries in his Journal. Here is the Index to my 
 Journals, in which Thoreau s name appears per 
 haps fifty times, perhaps more. " 
 
 Thus far my Journal of 1878. 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 I was myself introduced to Thoreau by 
 Emerson, March 28, 1855, in the Concord 
 Town Hall, one evening, just before a lecture 
 there by Emerson. From that time until 
 Henry s death, May 6, 1862, I saw him 
 every few days, unless he or I was away from 
 Concord, and for more than two years I dined 
 with him daily at his mother s table, in the 
 house opposite to Ellery Channing s. I thus 
 came to know all the surviving members of 
 his kindred, his eccentric uncle, Charles 
 Dunbar, his two aunts on each side, Jane 
 and Maria Thoreau, and Louisa and Sophia 
 Dunbar (both older than Mrs. Thoreau), and 
 the descendants in Maine of his aunt Mrs. 
 Billings, long since dead. His sister Helen 
 and his brother John I never knew, but 
 learned much about them from their mother 
 and sister ; for neither Henry nor his father 
 often spoke of them. Sophia also placed in 
 my hands after Henry s death several of his 
 poems, which I printed in the " Common 
 wealth," and Emerson gave me other manu 
 scripts of Thoreau which had lodged with 
 him while he was editing the " Dial." He 
 had urged Sophia to leave all the MSS. with 
 me, but her pique against Channing at the 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 time prevented this, she knowing him to 
 be intimate with me. 
 
 With all this preparation, I received from 
 Mr. Blake, to whom Sophia had bequeathed 
 them in 1876, the correspondence of Thoreau 
 and his college essays, with some other pa 
 pers of Henry s and his own, but without the 
 replies from the family to Henry s affection 
 ate letters. Even his own to his mother and 
 sisters had been withheld from publication 
 by Emerson in 1865, when a small collection 
 of Thoreau s Letters and Poems was edited 
 by Emerson. This omission Sophia regret 
 ted, as she told me ; and finding them now in 
 my hands, though I made use of their con 
 tents in writing the biography, I withheld 
 them from full publication, foreseeing that I 
 should probably have occasion to edit the 
 letters in full at some later time ; and I made 
 but sparing use of the early essays. 
 
 On the other hand, I perceived that the 
 character and genius of Thoreau could not be 
 well understood unless some knowledge was 
 had of the Conaord farmers, scholars, and citi 
 zens, among whom he had spent his days, and 
 who have furnished a background for that 
 scene of authorship which the small town of 
 
PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 Concord has presented for now more than sev 
 enty years. Therefore, having access to the re 
 cords and biographies of the Concord " Social 
 Circle," then in preparation for the public, 
 and to many other records of the past in New 
 England, I sketched therefrom the character 
 of our interesting community, which gave 
 color and tone to the outlines of this thought 
 ful scholar s career. But I held back for the 
 " Familiar Letters" the more intimate details 
 of Thoreau s self-devoted life, and did not 
 draw heavily on the thirty-odd volumes of 
 the Journals, to which, at Worcester, Mr. 
 Blake gave me free access. It was then his 
 purpose to bring out these Journals much 
 earlier and more fully than was done, until 
 Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. published 
 their admirable edition in fourteen volumes, 
 a few years ago, after Mr. Blake s death. 
 
 The success of my biography, written un 
 der these limitations, has more than justified 
 reasonable expectations. It was popular 
 from the first, and is still widely read, and 
 called for by a generation of readers quite 
 distinct from those for whom it was originally 
 written. Since the spring of 1882, when it 
 published, many details of Thoreau s life 
 
XIV PREFACE. 
 
 and that of his ancestors have become known 
 by an examination of his copious manuscripts, 
 of the papers of his Loyalist ancestors, and 
 his father s relatives in the island of Jersey ; 
 and by the publication of some twenty-five 
 volumes from Thoreau s own hand. He 
 never employed an amanuensis, and he seems 
 to have carefully preserved the large mass of 
 his manuscripts which accumulated during 
 his literary life of some twenty-five years. 
 The exceptions to this remark were the cop 
 ies of his earlier verses, which he told me, in 
 his last illness, he had destroyed, because 
 they did not meet Emerson s approval, and 
 those pages of his Journals which he had 
 issued in printed books or magazine articles. 
 Fragments of his youthful verses were kept, 
 however, by some of his family, and still 
 exist. From all these sources many things 
 have come to light concerning his ancestry 
 and the minor events of his life, which I hope 
 eventually to give the world in a final bio 
 graphy that will serve as a sequel to this one. 
 The greatly enhanced reputation which Tho- 
 reau now enjoys, as compared with his fame 
 in 1882, seems to warrant a detail which was 
 not then needful, and which even the "Famil- 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 iar Letters " does not furnish. Much mis 
 conception of his character and the facts of 
 his life still prevails ; and singular statements 
 have been made in text-books, as to his origin 
 and training. One authority described Tho- 
 reau as descended from " farmer folk " in 
 Connecticut, who were recent immigrants 
 from France. So far as I know, not a single 
 ancestor of his ever dwelt in Connecticut ; 
 they were all merchants ; and though his 
 Thoreau ancestors spoke French, or a patois 
 of it, in Jersey, there is no evidence that any 
 of them had lived in France for more than 
 five centuries. 
 
 This initial authentic biography, with its 
 few errors corrected, now comes forth in a 
 new edition, which will long be found useful, 
 in the manner indicated, and I hope, may be 
 received as the earlier edition has been, with 
 all the favor which its modest aim deserves. 
 
 F. B. S. 
 
 Concord, Mass., October 8, 1909. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. Page 
 
 BIRTH AND FAMILY l 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 32 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 CONCORD AND ITS FAMOUS PEOPLE 63 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE EMBATTLED FARMERS 97 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE TRANSCENDENTAL PERIOD 124 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 EARLY ESSAYS IN AUTHORSHIP 148 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS ... * 174 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE WALDEN HERMITAGE 201 
 
XV111- CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 HORACE IN THE ROLE OF MJSCENAS 216 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 IN WOOD AND FIELD 242 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 PERSONAL TRAITS AND SOCIAL LIFE . . . . .261 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 POET, MORALIST, AND PHILOSOPHER 284 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY 297 
 
HENEY D. THOEEATJ. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BIRTH AND FAMILY. 
 
 THERE died in a city of Maine, on the 
 river Penobscot, late in the year 1881, the 
 last member of a family which had been 
 planted in New England a little more than 
 a hundred years before, by a young trades 
 man from the English island of Jersey, and 
 had here produced one of the most charac 
 teristic American and New English men of 
 genius whom the world has yet seen. This 
 lady, Miss Maria Thoreau, was the last 
 child of John Thoreau, the son of Philip 
 Thoreau and his wife, Marie le Galais, who, 
 a hundred years ago, lived in the parish of 
 St. Helier, in Jersey. This John Thoreau 
 was born in that parish, and baptized there 
 in the Anglican church, in April, 1754 ; he 
 emigrated to New England about 1773, 
 
2 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 and in 1781 married in Boston Miss Jane 
 Burns, the daughter of a Scotchman of 
 some estate in the neighborhood of Stirling 
 Castle, who had emigrated earlier to Mas 
 sachusetts, and had here married Sarah 
 Orrok, the daughter of David Orrok, a Mas 
 sachusetts Quaker. Jane (Burns) Thoreau, 
 the granddaughter of David Orrok, and the 
 grandmother of Henry David Thoreau, died 
 in Boston, in 1796, at the age of forty-two. 
 Her husband, John Thoreau, Sr., removed 
 from Boston to Concord, in 1800, lived in a 
 house on the village square, and died there 
 in 1801, His mother, Marie le Galais, out 
 lived him a few weeks, dying at St. Helier, 
 in 1801. Maria Thoreau, granddaughter 
 and namesake of Marie le Galais, died in 
 December, 1881, in Bangor, Maine. 
 
 From the recollections of this "aunt 
 Maria," who outlived all her American rel 
 atives by the name of Thoreau, Henry 
 Thoreau derived what information he pos 
 sessed concerning his Jersey ancestors. In 
 his journal for April 21, 1855, he makes 
 this entry : 
 
 " Aunt Maria has put into my hands to-day 
 for safe-keeping three letters from Peter Thoreau 
 
BIRTH AND FAMILY. 3 
 
 (her uncle), directed to Miss Elizabeth Thoreau, 
 Concord, near Boston/ and dated at Jersey, re 
 spectively, July 1, 1801, April 22, 1804, and 
 April 11, 1806; also a Vue de la mile de St. 
 HelierJ accompanying the first letter. The first 
 is in answer to one from my aunt Elizabeth, an 
 nouncing the death of her father (my grandfa 
 ther). He states that his mother (Marie (le Ga- 
 lais) Thoreau) died June 26, 1801, the day before 
 he received aunt Elizabeth s letter, though not 
 till after he had heard from another source of 
 the death of his brother, which was not commu 
 nicated to his mother. * She was in the seventy- 
 ninth year of her age, he says, and retained her 
 memory to the last. She lived with my two sis 
 ters, who took the greatest care of her. He 
 says that he had written to my grandfather about 
 his oldest brother (who died about a year be 
 fore), but had got no answer, had written that 
 he left his children, two sons and a daughter, in 
 a good way : * The eldest son and daughter are 
 both married and have children ; the youngest is 
 about eighteen. I am still a widower. Of four 
 children I have but two left, Betsey and Pe 
 ter; James and Nancy are both at rest. He 
 adds that he sends * a view of our native town. 
 
 " The second of these letters is sent by the 
 hand of Captain John Harvey, of Boston, then at 
 Guernsey. On the 4th of February, 1804, he 
 
4 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 had sent aunt Elizabeth a copy of the last letter 
 he had written (which was in answer to her sec 
 ond), since he feared she had not received it., 
 He says that they are still at war with the French ; 
 that they received the day before a letter from 
 her uncle and aunt Le Cappelain of London ; 
 complains of not receiving letters, and says, Your 
 aunts, Betsey and Peter join with me, etc. Ac 
 cording to the third letter (April 11, 1806), he 
 had received by Capt. Touzel an answer to that 
 he sent by Capt. Harvey, and will forward this 
 by the former, who is going via Newfoundland 
 to Boston. He expects to go there every year ; 
 several vessels from Jersey go there every year. 
 His nephew had told him, some time before, that 
 he met a gentleman from Boston, who told him 
 he saw the sign * Thoreau and Hayse there, and 
 he therefore thinks the children must have kept 
 up the name of the firm. Your cousin John is a 
 lieutenant in the British service ; he has already 
 been in a campaign on the Continent ; he is very 
 fond of it. Aunt Maria thinks the correspond 
 ence ceased at Peter s death, because he was the 
 one who wrote English." 
 
 These memoranda indicate that the grand 
 father of Henry Thoreau was the younger 
 son of a family of some substance in Jer 
 sey, which had a branch in London and a 
 
BIRTH AND FAMILY. 5 
 
 grandson in the army that fought under 
 Wellington against Napoleon ; that the 
 American Thoreau engaged in trade in 
 Boston, with a partner, and carried on busi 
 ness successfully for years ; and that there 
 was the same pleasant family feeling in the 
 English and French Thoreaus that we shall 
 see in their American descendants. Miss 
 Maria Thoreau, in answer to a letter of 
 mine, some years ago, sent me the follow 
 ing particulars of her ancestry, some of 
 which repeat what is above stated by her 
 nephew : 
 
 "BANGOR, March 18, 1878. 
 " MR. SANBORN. 
 
 " Dear Sir, In answer to your letter, I 
 regret that I cannot find more to communicate. 
 I have no earlier record of my grandparents, 
 Philippe Thoreau and Marie Le Gallais, than 
 a certificate of their baptism in St. Helier, Jer 
 sey, written on parchment in the year 1773. 
 I do not know what their vocation was. My 
 Father was born in St. Helier in April, 1754, 
 and was married to Jane Burns in Boston, in 
 1781. She died in that city in the year 1796, 
 aged forty-two years. My sister Elizabeth con 
 tinued my Father s correspondence with his 
 brother, Uncle Peter Thoreau, at St. Helier, for 
 
6 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 a number of years after Father s decease, and in 
 one of his letters he speaks of the death of grand 
 mother, Marie Le Gallais, as taken place so near 
 the time intelligence reach d them of Father s 
 death, in 1801, it was not communicated to her. 
 Father removed to Concord in 1800, and died 
 there, of consumption. I do not know at what 
 time he emigrated to this country, but have been 
 told he was shipwreck d on the passage, and suf 
 fered much. I think he must have left a large 
 family circle, as Uncle Peter in his letters refers 
 to aunts and cousins, two of which, aunts Le Cap- 
 pelain and Pinkney, resided in London, and a 
 cousin, John Thoreau, was an officer in the Brit 
 ish army. 
 
 " Soon after Father s arrival in Boston, prob 
 ably, he open d a store on Long Wharf, as docu 
 ments addressed to John Thoreau, merchant, 
 appear to signify, and one subsequently pur 
 chased * on King Street, afterward called State 
 Street. And now I will remark in passing that 
 Henry s father was bred to the mercantile line, 
 and continued in it till failure in business ; when 
 he resorted to pencil-making, and succeeded so 
 well as to obtain the first medal at the Salem 
 Mechanics Fair. I think Henry could hardly 
 compete with his father in pencil-making, any 
 more than he, with his peculiar genius and hab 
 its, would have been willing to spend much time 
 
BIRTH AND FAMILY 1 
 
 in such craft. His father left no will, but a 
 competency, at least, to his family, and what 
 was done relative to the business after his death 
 was accomplished by his daughter Sophia. I 
 mention this to rectify Mr. Page s mistake relat 
 ing to Henry. 
 
 " And now, as I have written all I can glean 
 of Father s family, I will turn to the maternal 
 side, of which it appears, in religious belief, they 
 were of the Quaker persuasion. But I was sorry 
 to see, by good old great-great-grandfather Til- 
 let s will, that slavery was tolerated in those days 
 in the good State of Massachusetts, and handed 
 down from generation to generation. My great- 
 grandmother (Tillet) married David Orrok ; her 
 daughter, Sarah Orrok, married Mr. Burns, a 
 Scotch gentleman. At what time he came to 
 this country, or married, I cannot ascertain, 
 but have often been told, to gain the consent 
 to it of grandmother s Quaker parents, he was 
 obliged to doff his rich apparel of gems and ruf 
 fles, and conform to the more simple garb of his 
 Quaker bride. On a visit to his home in Scot 
 land he died, in what year is not mentioned. 
 Before my father s decease, a letter was received 
 from the executor of grandfather s estate, dated 
 Stirling, informing him there was property left 
 to Jane Burns, his daughter in America, * well 
 worth coming after. But Father was too much 
 
8 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 out of health to attend to the getting it ; and the 
 letter, subsequently put into a lawyer s hands 
 by Brother, then the only heir, was lost. 
 
 "It has been said I inherit more of the traits 
 of my foreign ancestry than any of my family, 
 which pleases me. Probably the vivacity of the 
 French and the superstition of the Scotch may 
 somewhat characterize me, which it is to be 
 hop d the experience of an octogenarian may 
 suitably modify. But this is nothing, here nor 
 there. And now that I have written all that is 
 necessary, and perhaps more, I will close, with 
 kind wishes for health and happiness. Yours 
 respectfully, MARIA THOREAU." 
 
 It would be hard to compress more fam 
 ily history into a short letter, and yet leave 
 it so sprightly in style as this. Of the four 
 children of Maria Thoreau s brother John 
 and Cynthia D unbar, John, Helen, Henry, 
 and Sophia, the two eldest, John and 
 Helen, were said to be " clear Thoreau," 
 and the others, Henry and Sophia, " clear 
 Dunbar ; " though in fact the Thoreau 
 traits were marked in Henry also. Let us 
 see, then, who and what were the family of 
 Henry Thoreau s mother, Cynthia Dunbar, 
 who was born in Keene, N. H., in 1787. 
 She was the daughter of Rev. Asa Dunbar, 
 
BIRTH AND FAMILY, 9 
 
 who was born at Bridgewater, Mass., in 
 1745 ; graduated at Harvard College in 
 1767 (a classmate of Sir Thomas Bernard 
 and Increase Sumner) ; preached for a 
 while at Bedford, near Concord, in 1769, 
 when he was "a young candidate, newly 
 begun to preach ; " settled in Salem in 1772 ; 
 resigned his pastorate in 1779; and re 
 moved to Keene just at the close of the 
 Revolution, where he became a lawyer, and 
 died, a little upwards of forty-two, in 1787. 
 He married before 1775, Miss Mary Jones, 
 the daughter of Col. Elisha Jones, of Wes- 
 ton, a man of wealth and influence in his 
 town, who died in 1776. Mrs. Mary 
 (Jones) Dunbar long outlived the husband 
 of her youth ; in middle life she married 
 a Concord farmer, Jonas Minott, whom she 
 also outlived ; and it was in his house that 
 her famous grandson was born in July, 
 1817. Mrs. Minott was left a widow for 
 the second time in 1813, when she was 
 sixty-five years old, and in 1815 she sent a 
 petition to the Grand Lodge of Masons in 
 Massachusetts, which was drawn up and 
 indorsed by her pastor, Dr. Ripley, of Con 
 cord, and which contains a short sketch 
 
10 HENRY D. TH ORE ALT. 
 
 of Henry Thoreau s maternal grandfather, 
 from whom he is said to have inherited 
 many qualities. Mrs. Minott s petition sets 
 forth " that her first husband, Asa D unbar, 
 Esq., late of Keene, N. H., was a native 
 of Massachusetts ; that he was for a number 
 of years settled in the gospel ministry at 
 Salem ; that afterwards he was a counselor- 
 at-law ; that he was Master of a Lodge of 
 Free and Accepted Masons at Keene, where 
 he died ; that in the cause of Masonry he 
 was interested and active; that through 
 some defection or misfortune of that Lodge 
 she has suffered loss, both on account of 
 what was due to him and to her, at whose 
 house they held their meetings ; that in the 
 settlement of the estate of her late husband, 
 Jonas Minott, Esq., late of Concord, she 
 has been peculiarly unfortunate, and be 
 come very much straitened in the means of 
 living comfortably ; that being thus re 
 duced, and feeling the weight of cares, of 
 years, and of widowhood to be very heavy, 
 after having seen better days, she is in 
 duced, by the advice of friends, as well as 
 her own exigencies, to apply for aid to 
 the benevolence and charity of the Masonic 
 
BIRTH AND FAMILY. 11 
 
 fraternity." At the house of this decayed 
 gentlewoman, about two years after the 
 date of this petition, Henry Thoreau was 
 born. She lived to see him running about, 
 a sprightly boy, and he remembered her 
 with affection. One of his earliest recol 
 lections of Concord was of driving in a 
 chaise with his grandmother along the 
 shore of Walden Pond, perhaps on the way 
 to visit her relatives in Weston, and think 
 ing, as he said afterward, that he should 
 like to live there. 
 
 Ellery Channing, whose life of his friend 
 Henry is a mine of curious information on 
 a thousand topics, relevant and irrelevant, 
 and who often traversed the " old Virginia 
 road" with Thoreau before the house in 
 which he was born was removed from its 
 green knoll to a spot further east, where 
 it now stands, thus pictures the brown 
 farm-house and its surroundings : " It was 
 a perfect piece of our old New England 
 style of building, with its gray, unpainted 
 boards, its grassy, unfenced door-yard. The 
 house is somewhat isolate and remote from 
 thoroughfares ; on the Virginia road, an 
 old-fashioned, winding, at length deserted 
 
12 HE NET D. THOREAU. 
 
 pathway, the more smiling for its forked 
 orchards, tumbling walls, and mossy banks. 
 About it are pleasant sunny meadows, deep 
 with their beds of peat, so cheering with its 
 homely, hearth-like fragrance ; and in front 
 runs a constant stream through the centre 
 of that great tract sometimes called Bed 
 ford levels, the brook a source of the 
 Shawsheen River." (This is a branch of 
 the Merrimac, as Concord River is, but 
 flows into the main stream through Ando- 
 ver, and not through Billerica and Lowell, 
 as the Concord does.) The road on which 
 it stands, a mile and a half east of the 
 Fitchburg railroad station, and perhaps a 
 mile from Thoreau s grave in the village 
 cemetery, is a by-path from Concord to 
 Lexington, through the little town of Bed 
 ford. The farm-house, with its fields and 
 orchard, was a part of Mrs. Minott s " wid 
 ow s thirds," on which she was living at 
 the date of her grandson s birth (July 12, 
 1817), and which her son-in-law, John 
 Thoreau, was " carrying on " for her that 
 year. 
 
 Mrs. Minott, a few years before Dr. Rip- 
 ley s petition in her behalf, came near hav- 
 
BIRTH AND FAMILY. 13 
 
 ing a more distinguished son-in-law, Daniel 
 Webster, who, like the young Dunbars, was 
 New Hampshire born, and a year or two 
 older than Mrs. Minott s daughter, Louisa 
 Dunbar. He had passed through Dart 
 mouth College a little in love with two or 
 three of the young ladies of Hanover, and 
 had returned to his native town of Salis 
 bury, N. H., when he met in Boscawen, 
 near by, Miss Louisa, who, like Miss Grace 
 Fletcher, whom he married a few years 
 afterward, was teaching school in one of the 
 New Hampshire towns. Miss Dunbar made 
 an impression on Webster s heart, always 
 susceptible, and, had the fates been propi 
 tious, he might have called Henry Thoreau 
 nephew in after years; but the silken tie 
 was broken before it was fairly knit. I sus 
 pect that she was the person referred to by 
 one of Webster s biographers, who says, 
 speaking of an incident that occurred in 
 January, 1805: "Mr. Webster, at that time, 
 had no thought of marrying; he had not 
 even met the lady who afterward became 
 his wife. He had been somewhat interested 
 in another lady, who is occasionally referred 
 to in his letters, written after he left col- 
 
14 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 lege, but who was not either of those whom 
 he had known at Hanover. But this affair 
 never proceeded very far, and he had en 
 tirely dismissed it from his mind before he 
 went to Boston in 1804." In January, 1806, 
 about the time of his father s death, Web 
 ster wrote to a college friend, "I am not 
 married, and seriously am inclined to think 
 I never shall be," though he was then a 
 humble suitor to Grace Fletcher. 
 
 Louisa D unbar was a lively, dark-haired, 
 large-eyed, pleasing young lady, who had 
 perhaps been educated in part at Boscawen, 
 where Webster studied for college, and af 
 terwards was a school-teacher there. She 
 received from him those attentions which 
 young men give to young ladies without 
 any very active thoughts of marriage ; but 
 he at one time paid special attentions to 
 her, which might have led to matrimony, 
 perhaps, if Webster had not soon after fal 
 len under the sway of a more fascinating 
 school-teacher, Miss Grace Fletcher, of Hop- 
 kinton, N. H., whom he first saw at the 
 door of her little school-house in Salisbury, 
 not far from his own birthplace. A Con 
 cord matron, a neighbor and friend of the 
 
BIRTH AND FAMILY. 15 
 
 Dunbars and Thoreaus, heard the romantic 
 story from Webster s own lips forty years 
 afterward, as she was driving with him 
 through the valley of the Assabet : how he 
 was traveling along a New Hampshire road 
 in 1805, stopped at a school-house to ask 
 a question or leave a message, and was 
 met at the door by that vision of beauty 
 and sweetness, Grace Fletcher herself, to 
 whom he yielded his heart at once. From 
 a letter of Webster s to this Concord friend 
 (Mrs. Louisa Cheney) I quote this descrip 
 tion of his native region, which has never 
 been printed : 
 
 "FRANKLIN, N. H., September 29, 45. 
 
 "DEAR MRS. CHENEY, You are hardly ex 
 pecting to hear from me in this remote region of 
 the earth. Where I am was originally a part of 
 Salisbury, the place of my birth ; and, having 
 continued to own my father s farm, I sometimes 
 make a visit to this region. The house is on the 
 west bank of Merrimac River, fifteen miles 
 above Concord (N. H.), in a pleasant valley, 
 made rather large by a turn in the stream, and 
 surrounded by high and wooded hills. I came 
 here five or six days ago, alone, to try the effect 
 of the mountain air upon my health. 
 
 " This is a very picturesque country. The hills 
 
16 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 are high, numerous, and irregular, some with 
 wooded summits, and some with rocky heads as 
 white as snow. I went into a pasture of mine 
 last week, lying high up on one of the hills, and 
 had there a clear view of the White Mountains 
 in the northeast, and of Ascutney, in Vermont, 
 back of Windsor, in the west ; while within these 
 extreme points was a visible scene of mountains 
 and dales, lakes and streams, farms and forests. 
 I really think this region is the true Switzerland 
 of the United States. 
 
 " I am attracted to this particular spot by very 
 strong feelings. It is the scene of my early 
 years ; and it is thought, and I believe truly, 
 that these scenes come back upon us with re 
 newed interest and more strength of feeling as 
 we find years running over us. White stones, 
 visible from the window, and close by, mark the 
 grave of my father, my mother, one brother, and 
 three sisters. Here are the same fields, the same 
 hills, the same beautiful river, as in the days of 
 my childhood. The human beings which knew 
 them now know them no more. Few are left 
 with whom I shared either toil or amusement in 
 the days of youth. But this is melancholy and 
 personal, and enough of it. One mind cannot 
 enter fully into the feelings of another in regard 
 to the past, whether those feelings be joyous or 
 melancholy, or, which is more commonly the case, 
 
BIRTH AND FAMILY. 17 
 
 partly both. I am, dear Mrs. Cheney, yours 
 truly, DANIEL WEBSTER." 
 
 No doubt the old statesman was think 
 ing, as he wrote, not only of his father, 
 Captain Ebenezer Webster (" with a com 
 plexion," said Stark, under whom he fought 
 at Bennington, u that burnt gunpowder 
 could not change "), of his mother and his 
 brethren, but also of Grace Fletcher, and 
 echoing in his heart the verse of Words 
 worth : 
 
 " Among thy mountains did I feel 
 
 The joy of my desire ; 
 And she I cherished turned her wheel 
 
 Beside a cottage fire. 
 Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed, 
 
 The bowers where Lucy played ; 
 And thine, too, is the last green field 
 
 That Lucy s eyes surveyed." 
 
 It was no such deep sentiment as this which 
 Louisa Dunbar had inspired in young Web 
 ster s breast; but he walked and talked 
 with her, took her to drive in his chaise up 
 and down the New Hampshire hills, and 
 no doubt went with her to church and to 
 prayer-meeting. She once surprised me by 
 confiding to me (as we were talking about 
 Webster in the room where Henry Thoreau 
 2 
 
 * 
 
t 
 
 18 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 afterwards died, and where there hung 
 then an engraving by Rowse of Webster s 
 magnificent head) " that she regarded Mr. 
 Webster, under Providence, as the means 
 of her conversion." Upon my asking how, 
 she said that, in one of their drives, per 
 haps in the spring of 1804, he had spoken 
 to her so seriously and scripturally on the 
 subject of religion that her conscience was 
 awakened, and she soon after joined the 
 church, of which she continued through life 
 a devout member. Her friendship for Mr. 
 Webster also continued, and in his visits to 
 Concord, which were frequent from 1843 to 
 1849, he generally called on her, or she was 
 invited to meet him at the house of Mr. 
 Cheney, where, among social and political 
 topics, Webster talked with her of the old 
 days at Boscawen and Salisbury. 
 
 Cynthia Dunbar, the mother of Henry 
 Thoreau, was born in Keene, N. H., in 
 1787, the year that her father died. Her 
 husband, John Thoreau, who was a few 
 months younger than herself, was born in 
 Boston. When Henry Thoreau first vis 
 ited Keene, in 1850, he made this re 
 mark : " Keene Street strikes the traveler 
 
BIRTH AND FAMILY. 19 
 
 favorably ; it is so wide, level, straight, 
 and long. I have heard one of my relatives 
 who was born and bred there [Louisa 
 Dunbar, no doubt] say that you could see 
 a chicken run across it a mile off." His 
 mother hardly lived there long enough to 
 notice the chickens a mile off, but she occa 
 sionally visited her native town after her 
 marriage in 1812, and a kinswoman (Mrs. 
 Laura Dunbar Ralston, of Washington, D. 
 C.), now living, says, " I recollect Mrs. 
 Thoreau as a handsome, high-spirited wom 
 an, half a head taller than her husband, 
 accomplished, after the manner of those 
 days, with a voice of remarkable power and 
 sweetness in singing." She was fond of 
 dress, and had a weakness, not uncommon 
 in her day, for ribbons, which her austere 
 friend, Miss Mary Emerson (aunt of R. W. 
 Emerson), once endeavored to rebuke in a 
 manner of her own. In 1857, when Mrs. 
 Thoreau was seventy years old, and Miss 
 Emerson eighty-four, the younger lady 
 called on the elder in Concord, wearing 
 bonnet-ribbons of a good length and of a 
 bright color, perhaps yellow. During the 
 call, in which Henry Thoreau was the sub- 
 
20 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 ject of conversation, Miss Emerson kept 
 her eyes shut. As Mrs. Thoreau and her 
 daughter Sophia rose to go, the little old 
 lady said, " Perhaps you noticed, Mrs. 
 Thoreau, that I closed my eyes during your 
 call. I did so because I did not wish to 
 look on the ribbons you are wearing, so un 
 suitable for a child of God and a person of 
 your years." 
 
 In uttering this reproof, Miss Emerson 
 may have had in mind the clerical father 
 of Mrs. Thoreau, Rev. Asa Dunbar, whom 
 she was old enough to remember. He was 
 settled in Salem as the colleague of Rev. 
 Thomas Barnard, after a long contest which 
 led to the separation of the First Church 
 there, and the formation of the Salem 
 North Church in 1772. The parishioners 
 of Mr. Dunbar declared their new minister 
 * admirably qualified for a gospel preacher," 
 and he seems to have proved himself a 
 learned and competent minister. But his 
 health was infirm, and this fact, as one 
 authority says, "soon threw him into the 
 profession of the law, which he honor 
 ably pursued for a few years at Keene." 
 Whether he went at once to Keene on leav- 
 
BIRTH AND FAMILY. 21 
 
 ing Salem in 1779 does not appear, but he 
 was practicing law there in 1783, and was 
 also a leading Freemason. His diary for a 
 few years of his early life a faint fore 
 shadowing of his grandson s copious jour 
 nals is still in existence, and indicates 
 a gay and genial disposition, such as Mrs. 
 Thoreau had. His only son, Charles Dun- 
 bar, who was born in February, 1780, and 
 died in March, 1856, inherited this gaiety 
 of heart, but also that lack of reverence 
 and discipline which is proverbial in New 
 England for " ministers sons and deacons 
 daughters." His nephew said of him, u He 
 was born the winter of the great snow, and 
 he died in the winter of another great snow, 
 a life bounded by great snows." At the 
 time of Henry Thoreau s birth, Mrs. Tho- 
 reau s sisters, Louisa and Sarah, and their 
 brother Charles were living in Concord, or 
 not far off, and there Louisa D unbar died 
 a few years before Mrs. Thoreau. Her 
 brother Charles, who was two years older 
 than Daniel Webster, was a person widely 
 known in New Hampshire and Massachu 
 setts, and much celebrated by Thoreau in 
 his journals. At the time of his death, J 
 
22 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 find the following curious entries, in Tho- 
 reau s journal for April 3, 1856 : 
 
 " People are talking about my uncle Charles. 
 George Minott [a sort of cousin of the Thoreaus] 
 tells how he heard Tilly Brown once asking 
 him to show him a peculiar inside lock in wrest 
 ling. * Now, don t hurt me, don t throw 
 me hard. He struck his antagonist inside his 
 knees with his feet, and so deprived him of his 
 legs. Edmund Hosmer remembers his tricks in 
 the bar-room, shuffling cards, etc. ; he could do 
 anything with cards, yet he did not gamble. He 
 would toss up his hat, twirling it over and over, 
 and catch it on his head invariably. He once 
 wanted to live at Hosmer s, but the latter was 
 afraid of him. Can t we study up something ? 
 he asked. Hosmer asked him into the house, 
 and brought out apples and cider, and uncle 
 Charles talked. < You ! said he, I burst the 
 bully of Haverhill. He wanted to wrestle, 
 would not be put off. * Well, we won t wrestle 
 in the house/ So they went out to the yard, and 
 a crowd got round. * Come, spread some straw 
 here, said uncle Charles, I don t want to 
 hurt him/ He threw him at once. They tried 
 again ; he told them to spread more straw, and 
 he ( burst him. Uncle Charles used to say that 
 he had n t a single tooth in his head. The fact 
 
BIRTH AND FAMILY. 23 
 
 was they were all double, and I have heard that 
 he lost about all of them by the time he was 
 twenty-one. Ever since I knew him he could 
 swallow his nose. He had a strong head, and 
 never got drunk ; would drink gin sometimes, 
 but not to excess. Did not use tobacco, except 
 snuff out of another s box, sometimes ; was very 
 neat in his person ; was not profane, though vul 
 gar." 
 
 This was the uncle who, as Thoreau said 
 in " Walden," " goes to sleep shaving him 
 self, and is obliged to sprout potatoes in a 
 cellar Sundays in order to keep awake and 
 keep the Sabbath." He was a humorous, 
 ne er-do-weel character, who, with a little 
 property, no family, and no special regard 
 for his reputation, used to move about 
 from place to place, a privileged jester, ath 
 lete, and unprofessional juggler. One of 
 his tricks was to swallow all the knives and 
 forks and some of the plates at the tavern 
 table, and then offer to restore them if the 
 landlord would forgive him the bill. I re 
 member this wortby in his old age, an 
 amusing guest at his brother-in-law s table, 
 where his nephew plied him with questions. 
 We shall find him mentioned again, in con- 
 
24 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 nection with Daniel Webster s friendship 
 for the Dunbar family. 
 
 Thoreau s mother had this same inces 
 sant and rather malicious liveliness that in 
 Charles Dunbar took the grotesque form 
 above hinted at. She was a kindly, shrewd 
 woman, with traditions of gentility and sen 
 timents of generosity, but with sharp and 
 sudden flashes of gossip and malice, which 
 never quite amounted to ill-nature, but 
 greatly provoked the prim and commonplace 
 respectability that she so often came in 
 contact with. Along with this humorous 
 quality there went also an affectionate ear 
 nestness in her relation with those who de 
 pended on her, that could not fail to be 
 respected by all who knew the hard condi 
 tions that New England life, even in a fa 
 vored village like Concord, then imposed 
 on the mother of a family, where the out 
 ward circumstances were not in keeping 
 with the inward aspiration. 
 
 " Who sings the praise of woman in our clime ? 
 I do not boast her beauty or her grace : 
 Some humble duties render her sublime, 
 She, the sweet nurse of this New England race, 
 The flower upon the country s sterile face ; 
 The mother of New England s sons, the pride 
 Of every house where those good sons abide." 
 
BIRTH AND FAMILY. 25 
 
 Her husband was a grave and silent, but 
 inwardly cheerful and social person, who 
 found no difficulty in giving his wife the 
 lead in all affairs. The small estate he 
 inherited from his father, the first John 
 Thoreau, was lost in trade, or by some 
 youthful indiscretions, of which he had his 
 quiet share ; and he then, about 1823, turned 
 his attention to pencil-making, which had 
 by that time become a lucrative business in 
 Concord. He had married in 1812, and he 
 died in 1859. He was a small, deaf, and 
 unobtrusive man, plainly clad, and " mind 
 ing his own business;" very much in con 
 trast with his wife, who was one of the 
 most unceasing talkers ever seen in Con 
 cord. Her gift in speech was proverbial, 
 and wherever she was the conversation fell 
 largely to her share. She fully verified 
 the Oriental legend, which accounts for the 
 greater loquacity of women by the fact 
 that nine baskets of talk were let down from 
 heaven to Adam and Eve in their garden, 
 and that Eve glided forward first and se 
 cured six of them. Old Dr. Ripley, a few 
 years before his death, wrote a letter to his 
 son, towards the end of which he said, with 
 
26 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 courteous reticence, " I meant to have filled 
 a page with sentiments. But a kind neigh 
 bor, Mrs. Thoreau, has been here more than 
 an hour. This letter must go in the mail 
 to-day." Her conversation generally put a 
 stop to other occupations ; and when at her 
 table Henry Thoreau s grave talk with oth 
 ers was interrupted by this flow of speech 
 at the other end of the board, he would 
 pause, and wait with entire and courteous 
 silence, until the interruption ceased, and 
 then take up the thread of his own dis 
 course where he had dropped it ; bowing to 
 his mother, but without a word of comment 
 on what she had said. 
 
 Dr. Ripley was the minister of Concord 
 for half a century, and in his copious man 
 uscripts, still preserved, are records concern 
 ing his parishioners of every conceivable 
 kind. He carefully kept even the smallest 
 scrap that he ever wrote, and among his pa 
 pers I once found a fragment, on one side of 
 which was written a pious meditation, and 
 on the other a certificate to this effect : " Un 
 derstanding that Mr. John Thoreau, now of 
 Chelmsford, is going into business in that 
 place, and is about to apply for license to 
 
BIRTH AND FAMILY. 27 
 
 retail ardent spirits, I hereby certify that I 
 have been long acquainted with him, that 
 he has sustained a good character, and now 
 view him as a man of integrity, accustomed 
 to store-keeping, and of correct morals." 
 There is no date, but the time was about 
 1818. Chelmsford is a town ten miles north 
 of Concord, to which John Thoreau had re 
 moved for three years, in the infancy of 
 Henry. From Chelmsford he went to Bos 
 ton in 1821, but was successful in neither 
 place, and soon returned to Concord, where 
 he gave up trade and engaged in pencil- 
 making, as already mentioned. 
 
 From that time, about 1823, till his 
 death in 1859, John Thoreau led a plod 
 ding, unambitious, and respectable life in 
 Concord village, educating his children, as 
 sociating with his neighbors on those terms 
 of equality for which Concord is famous, 
 and keeping clear, in a great degree, of the 
 quarrels, social and political, that agitated 
 the village. Mrs. Thoreau, on the other 
 hand, with her sister Louisa and her sisters- 
 in-law, Sarah, Maria, and Jane Thoreau, 
 took their share in the village bickerings. 
 In 1826, when Dr. Lyman Beecher, then of 
 
28 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 Boston, Dr. John Todd, then of Groton, and 
 other Calvinistic divines succeeded in making 
 a schism in Dr. Ripley s parish, and draw 
 ing off Trinitarians enough to found a sepa 
 rate church, the Thoreaus generally seceded, 
 along with good old Deacon White, whose 
 loss Dr. Ripley bewailed. This contention 
 was sharply maintained for years, and was 
 followed by the antimasonic and antisla- 
 very agitation. In the latter Mrs. Thoreau 
 and her family engaged zealously, and their 
 house remained for years headquarters for 
 the early abolitionists and a place of refuge 
 for fugitive slaves. The atmosphere of 
 earnest purpose, which pervaded the great 
 movement for the emancipation of the 
 slaves, gave to the Thoreau family an eleva 
 tion of character which was ever afterward 
 perceptible, and imparted an air of dignity 
 to the trivial details of life. By this time, 
 too, I speak of the years from 1836 on 
 ward till the outbreak of the civil war, 
 the children of Mrs. Thoreau had reached 
 an age and an education which made them 
 noteworthy persons. Helen, the oldest 
 child, born in 1812, was an accomplished 
 teacher. John, the elder son, born in 1814 
 
BIRTH AND FAMILY. 29 
 
 was one of those lovely and sunny natures 
 which infuse affection in all who come 
 within their range ; and Henry, with his 
 peculiar strength and independence of soul, 
 was a marked personage among the few 
 who would give themselves the trouble to 
 understand him. Sophia, the youngest 
 child, born in 1819, had, along with her 
 mother s lively and dramatic turn, a touch 
 of art ; and all of them, whatever their ac 
 cidental position for the time, were superior 
 persons. Living in a town where the an 
 cient forms survived in daily collision or in 
 friendly contact with the new ideas that 
 began to make headway in New England 
 about 1830, the Thoreaus had peculiar op 
 portunities, above their apparent fortunes, 
 but not beyond their easy reach of capacity, 
 for meeting on equal terms the advancing 
 spirit of the period. 
 
 The children of the house, as they grew 
 up, all became school-teachers, and each 
 displayed peculiar gifts in that profession. 
 But they were all something more than 
 teachers, and becoming enlisted early in the 
 antislavery cause, or in that broader service 
 of humanity which " plain living and high 
 
30 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 thinking " imply, they gradually withdrew 
 from that occupation, declining the op 
 portunities by which other young persons, 
 situated as they then were, rise to worldly 
 success, and devoting themselves, within lim 
 its somewhat narrow, to the pursuit of lofty 
 ideals. The household of which they were 
 loving and thoughtful members (let one be 
 permitted to say who was for a time do 
 mesticated there) had, like the best families 
 everywhere, a distinct and individual exist 
 ence, in which each person counted for 
 something, and was not a mere drop in the 
 broad water-level that American society 
 tends more and more to become. To meet 
 one of the Thoreaus was not the same as to 
 encounter any other person who might hap 
 pen to cross your path. Life to them was 
 something more than a parade of preten 
 sions, a conflict of ambitions, or an inces 
 sant scramble for the common objects of 
 desire. They were fond of climbing to the 
 hill-top, and could look with a broader and 
 kindlier vision than most of us on the com 
 motions of the plain and the.; mists of the 
 valley. Without wealth, or power, or social 
 prominence, they still held a rank of their 
 
BIRTH AND FAMILY. 31 
 
 own, in scrupulous independence, and with 
 qualities that put condescension out of the 
 question. They could have applied to 
 themselves, individually, and without hau 
 teur, the motto of the French chevalier : 
 
 " Je suis ni roi, ni prince aussi, 
 Je suis le seigneur de Coucy." 
 
 " Nor king, nor duke ? Your pardon, no ; 
 I am the master of Thoreau." 
 
 They lived their life according to their 
 genius, without the fear of man or of " the 
 world s dread laugh," saying to Fortune 
 what Tennyson sings : 
 
 " Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown, 
 With that wild wheel we go not up nor down ; 
 Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great. 
 Smile, and we smile, the lords of many lands ; 
 Frown, and we smile, the lords of our own hands, 
 For man is man, and master of his fate." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 
 
 CONCORD, the Massachusetts town in 
 which Thoreau was born, is to be distin 
 guished from the newer but larger town of 
 the same name which became the capital 
 of New Hampshire about the time the first 
 American Thoreau made his appearance in 
 " old Concord." The latter, the first inland 
 plantation of the Massachusetts Colony, was 
 bought of the Indians by Major Willard, a 
 Kentish man, and Rev. Peter Bulkeley, a 
 Puritan clergyman from the banks of the 
 Ouse in Bedfordshire, and was settled un 
 der their direction in 1635. Mr. Bulkeley, 
 from whom Mr. Emerson and many pf the 
 other Concord citizens of Thoreau s day 
 were descended, was the first minister of 
 the town, which then included the present 
 towns of Concord, Acton, Bedford, Carlisle, 
 and Lincoln ; and among his parishioners 
 were the ancestors of the principal families 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 33 
 
 that now inhabit these towns. Concord it 
 self, the centre of this large tract, was 
 thought eligible for settlement because of 
 its great meadows on the Musketaquid or 
 Meadow River. It had been a seat of the 
 Massachusetts Indians, and a powerful Sa 
 chem, Tahattawan, lived between its two 
 rivers, where the Assabet falls into the 
 slow-gliding Musketaquid. Thoreau, the 
 best topographer of his birthplace, says : 
 "It has been proposed that the town should 
 adopt for its coat of arms a field verdant, with the 
 Concord circling nine times round. I have read 
 that a descent of an eighth of an inch in a mile is 
 sufficient to produce a flow. Our river has prob 
 ably very near the smallest allowance. But 
 wherever it makes a sudden bend it is shallower 
 and swifter, and asserts its title to be called a 
 river. For the most part it creeps through broad 
 meadows, adorned with scattered oaks, where the 
 cranberry is found in abundance, covering the 
 ground like a mossbed. A row of sunken dwarf 
 willows borders the stream on one or both sides, 
 while at a greater distance the meadow is skirted 
 with maples, alders, and other fluviatile trees, 
 overrun with the grape-vine, which bears fruit in 
 its season, purple, red, white, and other grapes." 
 
 From these river-grapes, by seedling cul- 
 3 
 
34 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 tivation, a Concord gardener, in Thoreau s 
 manhood, bred and developed the Concord 
 grape, which is now more extensively grown 
 throughout the United States than any 
 other vine, and once adorned, in vineyards 
 large and small, the hillsides over which 
 Thoreau rambled. The uplands are sandy 
 in many places, gravelly and rocky in oth 
 ers, and nearly half the township is now 
 covered, as it has always been, with woods 
 of oak, pine, chestnut, and maple. It is a 
 town of husbandmen, chiefly, with a few 
 mechanics, merchants, and professional men 
 in its villages ; a quiet region, favorable to 
 thought, to rambling, and to leisure, as well 
 as to that ceaseless industry by which New 
 England lives and thrives. Its population 
 in 1909 approaches 5,000, but at Thoreau s 
 birth it did not exceed 2,000. There are 
 few great estates in it, and little poverty ; 
 the mode of life has generally been plain 
 and simple, and was so in Thoreau s time 
 even more than now. When he was born, 
 and for some years afterward, there was but 
 one church, and the limits of the parish and 
 the township were the same. At that time 
 Vt was one of the two shire towns of the 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 35 
 
 great county of Middlesex, Cambridge, 
 thirteen miles away, being the other. It 
 was therefore a seat of justice and a local 
 centre of trade, attracting lawyers and 
 merchants to its public square much more 
 than of late years. 
 
 Trade in Concord then was very different 
 from what it has been since the railroad 
 began to work its revolutions. In the old 
 days, long lines of teams from the upper 
 country, New Hampshire and Vermont, 
 loaded with the farm products of the inte 
 rior, stopped nightly at the taverns, espe 
 cially in the winter, bound for the Boston 
 market, whence they returned with a cargo 
 for their own country. If a thaw came on, 
 or there was bad sleighing in Boston, the 
 drivers, anxious to lighten their loads, would 
 sell and buy in the Concord public square, 
 to the great profit of the numerous trad 
 ers, whose little shops stood around or near 
 it. Then, too, the hitching-posts in front 
 of the shops had full rows of wagons and 
 chaises from the neighboring towns fast 
 ened there all day long ; while the owners 
 looked over goods, priced, chaffered, and 
 beat down by the hour together the calicoes, 
 
36 HENRY D. TROREAU. 
 
 sheetings, shirtings, kerseymeres, and other 
 articles of domestic need, bringing in, 
 also, the product of their own farms and 
 looms to sell or exchange. Each " store " 
 kept an assortment of " West India goods," 
 dry goods, hardware, medicines, furniture, 
 boots and shoes, paints, lumber, lime, and 
 the miscellaneous articles of which the vil> 
 lage or the farms might have need ; not to 
 mention a special trade in New England 
 rum and old Jamaica, hogsheads of which 
 were brought up every week from Boston 
 by teams, and sold or given away by the 
 glass, with an ungrudging hand. A little 
 earlier than the period now mentioned, 
 when Colonel Whiting (father of the late 
 eminent lawyer, Abraham Lincoln s right- 
 hand adviser in the law of emancipation, 
 William Whiting, of Boston) was a lad 
 in Concord village, " there were five stores 
 and three taverns in the middle of the 
 town, where intoxicating liquors were sold 
 by the glass to any and every body; and 
 it was the custom, when a person bought 
 even so little as fifty cents worth of goods, 
 to offer him a glass of liquor, and it was 
 generally accepted." Such was the town 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 37 
 
 when John Thoreau, the Jerseyman, came 
 there to die in 1800, and such it remained 
 during the mercantile days of John Tho 
 reau, his son, who was brought up in a 
 house on the public square, and learned the 
 business of buying and selling in the store 
 of Deacon White, close by. Pencil-mak 
 ing, the art by which he earned his modest 
 livelihood during Henry Thoreau s youth, 
 was introduced into Concord about 1812 
 by William Munroe, whose son has in la 
 ter years richly endowed the small free li 
 brary from which Thoreau drew books, and 
 to which he gave some of his own. In this 
 handicraft, which was at times quite profit 
 able, the younger Thoreaus assisted their 
 father from time to time, and Henry ac 
 quired great skill in it ; even to the extent, 
 says Mr. Emerson, of making as good a 
 pencil as the best English ones. " His 
 friends congratulated him that he had now 
 opened his way to fortune. But he replied 
 that he should never make another pencil. 
 1 Why should I ? I would not do again 
 what I have done once. Thoreau may 
 have said this, but he afterward changed his 
 inind, for he went on many years, at inter- 
 
38 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 vals, working at his father s business, which, 
 in time grew to be mainly the preparation 
 of fine- ground plumbago for electro typing. 
 This he supplied to various publishers, and 
 among others to the Harpers, for several 
 years. But what he did in this way was 
 incidental, and as an aid to his father, his 
 mother, or his sister Sophia, who herself 
 carried on the business for some time after 
 the death of Henry in 1862. It was the 
 family employment, and must be pursued 
 by somebody. 
 
 Perpetuity, indeed, and hereditary trans 
 mission of everything that by nature and 
 good sense can be inherited, are among the 
 characteristics of Concord. The Hey wood 
 family has been resident in Concord for two 
 hundred and fifty years or so, and in that 
 time has held the office of town clerk, in 
 lineal succession from father to son, for one 
 hundred years at least. The grandson of 
 the first John Heywood filled the office 
 (which is the most responsible in town, and 
 generally accompanied by other official 
 trusts) for eighteen years, beginning in 
 1781 ; his son held the place with a slight 
 interregnum for thirteen years ; his nephew, 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 39 
 
 Dr. Abiel Heywood, was town clerk from 
 1796 to 1834 without a break, and Dr. Hey- 
 wood s son, Mr. George Heywood, was the 
 town clerk for thirty-odd years after March, 
 1853. 
 
 Of the dozen ministers" who, since 1635, 
 have preached in the parish church, five 
 were either Bulkeleys or Emersons, de 
 scendants of the first minister, or else con 
 nected by marriage with that clerical line ; 
 and the young minister who, in the year 
 1882, accepted the pastorate of Rev. Peter 
 Bulkeley, is a descendant, and bears the 
 same name. Mr. Emerson himself, the great 
 clerk of Concord, which was his lay parish 
 for almost half a century after he ceased to 
 preach in its pulpit, counted among his an 
 cestors four of the Concord pastors, whose 
 united ministry covered a century; while 
 his grandmother s second husband, Dr. 
 Ripley, added a half century more to the 
 family ministry. For this ancestral claim, 
 quite as much as for his gift of wit and 
 eloquence, Mr. Emerson was chosen, in 
 1835, to commemorate by an oration the 
 two hundredth aniversary of the town set 
 tlement. In this discourse he said : 
 
40 HENRY D. TEOREAU* 
 
 "I have had much opportunity of access to 
 anecdotes of families, and I believe this town to 
 have been the dwelling-place, in all times since 
 its planting, of pious and excellent persons, who 
 walked meekly through the paths of common 
 life, who served God and loved man, and never 
 let go their hope of immortality. I find our an 
 nals marked with a uniform good sense. I find 
 no ridiculous laws, no eavesdropping legislators, 
 no hanging of witches, no ghosts, no whipping of 
 Quakers, no unnatural crimes. The old town 
 clerks did not spell very correctly, but they con 
 trived to make pretty intelligible the will of a 
 free and just community." 
 
 Into such a community Henry Thoreau, 
 a free and just man, was born. Dr. Hey- 
 wood, above-named, was the first town 
 clerk he remembered, and the one who en 
 tered on the records the marriage of his 
 father and mother, and the birth of all the 
 children. He cried the banns of John Tho- 
 reau and Cynthia D unbar in the parish 
 meeting-house ; and he was the last clerk 
 who made this Sunday outcry. 
 
 He thus proclaimed his own autumnal 
 nuptials in 1822, when he married for the 
 first time at the age of sixty-three. The 
 banns were cried at the opening of the 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 41 
 
 service, and this compelled the town clerk 
 to be a more regular attendant in the meet 
 ing-house than his successors have found 
 necessary. Dr. Heywood s pew was about 
 half-way down the broad aisle, and in full 
 view of the whole congregation, whether 
 in the " floor pews " or " up in the galler 
 ies." Wearing his old-fashioned coat and 
 small-clothes, the doctor would rise in his 
 pew, deliberately adjust his spectacles, and 
 look about for a moment, .in order to make 
 sure that his audience was prepared ; then 
 he made his proclamation with much em 
 phasis of voice and dignity of manner. 
 There was a distinction, however, in the 
 manner of "publishing the banns" of the 
 white and the black citizens ; the former be 
 ing "cried" in the face of the whole congre 
 gation, and the latter simply " posted " in 
 the meeting-house porch, as was afterwards 
 the custom for all. Dr. Heywood, from a 
 sense of justice, or some other proper mo 
 tive, determined on one occasion to " post" 
 a white couple, instead of giving them the 
 full benefit of his sonorous voice ; but, either 
 because they missed the eclat of the usual 
 proclamation, or else felt humiliated at be- 
 
42 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 ing "posted like niggers in the porch," 
 they brought the town clerk to justice forth 
 with, and he was forced for once to yield to 
 popular outcry, and join in the outcry him 
 self. After publishing his own banns, and 
 just before the wedding, he for the first 
 time procured a pair of trousers, having 
 worn knee-breeches up to that time, as Col 
 onel May (the father-in-law of Mr. Alcott) 
 and others had thought it proper to wear 
 them. When Dr. Heywood told his wag 
 gish junior, Squire Brooks, of the purchase, 
 and inquired how young gentlemen put 
 their trousers on, his legal neighbor advised 
 him that they were generally put on over 
 the head. 
 
 Dr. Heywood survived amid "this age 
 loose and all unlaced," as Marvell says, un 
 til 1839, having practiced medicine, more 
 or less, in Concord for upward of forty 
 years, and held court there as a local jus 
 tice for almost as long. Dr. Isaac Hurd, 
 who was his contemporary, practiced in 
 Concord for fifty-four years, and in all sixty- 
 five years ; and Dr. Josiah Bartlett, who 
 accompanied and succeeded Dr. Hurd, prac 
 ticed in Concord nearly fifty-eight years- 
 while the united medical service of himself 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 43 
 
 and his father, Dr. Josiah Bartlett of 
 Charlestown, was one hundred and two 
 years. 
 
 Dr. Bartlett himself was one of the most 
 familiar figures in Concord through Tho- 
 reau s life-time, and for fifteen years after. 
 To him have been applied, with more truth, 
 I suspect, than to " Mr. Robert Levet, a 
 Practiser in Physic," those noble lines of 
 Dr. Johnson on his humble friend : 
 
 " Well tried through many a varying year, 
 
 See Levet to the grave descend, 
 Officious, innocent, sincere, 
 
 Of every friendless name the friend." 
 
 He said more than once that for fifty years 
 no severity of weather had kept him from 
 visiting his distant patients, sometimes 
 miles away, except once, and then the 
 snow was piled so high that his sleigh upset 
 every two rods ; and when he unharnessed 
 and mounted his horse, the beast, flounder 
 ing through a drift, slipped him off over his 
 crupper. He was a master of the horse, 
 and encouraged that proud creature to do 
 his best in speed. One of .his neighbors 
 mentioned in his hearing a former horse of 
 Dr. Bartlett s, which was in the habit of 
 
i4 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 running away. " By faith ! " said the doc 
 tor (his familiar oath), " I recollect that 
 horse ; he was a fine traveler, but I have 
 no remembrance that he ever ran away." 
 When upwards of seventy, he was looking 
 for a new horse. The jockey said, " Doc 
 tor, if you were not so old, I have a horse 
 that would suit you." " Hm ! " growled the 
 doctor, " don t talk to me about old. Let s 
 see your horse ; " and he bought him, and 
 drove him for eight years. He practiced 
 among the poor with no hope of reward, 
 and gave them, besides, his money, his 
 time, and his influence. One day a friend 
 saw him receiving loads of firewood from a 
 shiftless man to whom he had rendered 
 gratuitous service in sickness for twenty 
 years. " Ah, doctor ! you are getting some 
 of your back pay." " By faith ! no ; the 
 fellow is poor, so I paid him for his wood, 
 and let him go." 
 
 Dr. Bartlett did not reach Concord quite 
 in season to assist at the birth of Henry 
 Thoreau ; but from the time his parents 
 brought him back to his native town from 
 Boston, in 1823, to the day of Sophia Tho- 
 reau s death, in 1876, he might have sup 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 45 
 
 plied the needed medical aid to the family, 
 and often did so. The young Henry dwelt 
 in his first tabernacle on the Virginia road 
 but eight months, removing then to a 
 house on the Lexington road, not far from 
 where Mr. Emerson afterwards established 
 his residence, on the edge of Concord vil 
 lage. In the mean time he had been bap 
 tized by Dr. Ripley in the parish church, at 
 the age of three months ; and his mother 
 boasted that he did not cry. His aunt, 
 Sarah Thoreau, taught him to walk when 
 he was fourteen months old, and before he 
 was sixteen months he removed to Chelms- 
 ford, "next to the meeting-house, where 
 they kept the powder, in the garret," as was 
 the custom in many village churches of 
 New England then. Coming back to Con 
 cord before he was six years old, he soon 
 began to drive his mother s cow to pasture, 
 barefoot, like other village boys ; just as 
 Emerson, when a boy in Boston, a dozen 
 years before, had driven his mother s cow 
 where now the fine streets and halls are. 
 Thoreau, like Emerson, began to go to 
 school in Boston, where he lived for a year 
 or more in Pinckney Street. But he re- 
 
46 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 turned to Concord in 1823, and, except for 
 short visits or long walking excursions, he 
 never left the town again till he died, in 
 1862. He there went on with his studies 
 in the village schools, and fitted for Har 
 vard College at the "Academy," which 
 Squire Hoar, Colonel Whiting, Squire 
 Brooks, and other magnates of the town 
 had established about 1820. This private 
 school was generally very well taught, and 
 here Thoreau himself taught for a while in 
 after years. In his boyhood it had become 
 a good place to study Greek, and in 1830, 
 when perhaps Henry Thoreau was one of 
 its pupils, Mr. Charles Emerson, visiting 
 his friends in Concord, wrote thus of what 
 he saw there : "Mr. George Bradford and 
 I attended the Exhibition yesterday at the 
 Academy. We were extremely gratified. 
 To hear little girls saying their Greek 
 grammar and young ladies read Xenophon 
 was a new and very agreeable entertain 
 ment." Thoreau must have been begin 
 ning his Greek grammar about that time, 
 for he entered college in 1833, and was 
 then proficient in Greek. He must also 
 have gone, as a boy, to the " Concord Ly- 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 47 
 
 ceum," where he afterwards lectured every 
 winter. Concord, as the home of famous 
 lawyers and active politicians, was always a 
 place of resort for political leaders, and 
 Thoreau might have seen and heard there 
 all the celebrated congressmen and govern 
 ors of Massachusetts, at one time and an 
 other. He could remember the visit of 
 Lafayette to Concord in 1824, and the semi 
 centennial celebration of the Concord Fight 
 in 1825. In 1830 he doubtless looked for 
 ward with expectation for the promised 
 lecture of Edward Everett before the Ly 
 ceum, concerning which Mr. Everett wrote 
 as follows to Dr. Ripley (November 3, 
 1830) : 
 
 " I am positively forbidden by my physician to 
 come to Concord to-day. To obviate, as far as 
 possible, the inconvenience which this failure 
 might cause the Lyceum, I send you the lecture 
 which I should have delivered. It is one which 
 I have delivered twice before ; but my health 
 has prevented me from preparing another. Al 
 though in print, as you see, it has not been pub 
 lished. I held it back from publication to ena 
 ble me, with propriety, to deliver it at Concord. 
 Should you think it worth while to have it read 
 
48 HENRY D, THOREAU. 
 
 to the meeting, it is at your service for that pur 
 pose ; and, should this be done, I would suggest, 
 as it is one hour and three quarters long, that 
 some parts should be omitted. For this reason 
 I have inclosed some passages in brackets, which 
 can be spared without affecting the context." 
 
 It would hardly occur to a popular lec 
 turer now to apologize because he had de 
 livered his lecture twice before, or to send 
 the copy forward, when he could not him 
 self be there to read it. 
 
 Mr. Emerson began to lecture in the 
 Concord Lyceum before 1834, when he 
 came to reside in the town. In October of 
 that year he wrote to Dr. Ripley, declining 
 to give the opening lecture, but offering to 
 speak in the course of the winter, as he did* 
 During its first half century he lectured near 
 ly a hundred times in this Lyceum, reading 
 there, first and last, nearly all the essays he 
 published in his lifetime, and many that 
 have since been printed. Thoreau gave 
 his first lecture there in April, 1838, and 
 afterwards lectured nearly every year for 
 more than twenty years. On one occasion, 
 very early in his public career, when the 
 expected lecturer of the Lyceum failed to 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 49 
 
 come, as Mr. Everett had failed, but had 
 not been thoughtful enough to send a sub 
 stitute, Henry Thoreau and Mr. Alcott 
 were pressed into the service, and spoke 
 before the audience in duet, and with opin 
 ions extremely heretical, both being ardent 
 radicals and " come-outers." A few years 
 after this (in 1843), Wendell Phillips made 
 his first appearance before the Concord Ly 
 ceum, and spoke in a manner which Tho 
 reau has described in print, and which led 
 to a sharp village controversy, not yet quite 
 forgotten on either side. 
 
 But to return to the childhood and youth 
 of Thoreau. When he was three or four 
 years old, at Chelmsford, on being told that 
 he must die, as well as the men in the New 
 England Primer, and having the joys of 
 heaven explained to him, he said, as he 
 came in from " coasting," that he did not 
 want to die and go to heaven, because he 
 could not carry his sled to so fine a place ; 
 for, he added, " the boys say it is not shod 
 with iron, and not worth a cent." At the 
 age of ten, says Channing, " he had the 
 firmness of the Indian, and could repress 
 his pathos, and had such seriousness that 
 
 4 
 
50 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 he was called * judge. " As an example of 
 childish fortitude, it is related that he car 
 ried his pet chickens for sale to the tavern- 
 keeper in a basket ; whereupon Mr. Wesson 
 told him to stop a minute, and, in order 
 to return the basket promptly, took the 
 darlings out, and wrung their necks, one by 
 one, before the boy s eyes, who wept in 
 wardly, but did not budge. Having a 
 knack at whittling, and being asked by a 
 schoolmate to make him a bow and arrow, 
 young Henry refused, not deigning to give 
 the reason, that he had no knife. " So 
 through life," says Channing, " he steadily 
 declined trying or pretending to do what 
 he had no means to execute, yet forbore 
 explanations." He was a sturdy and kindly 
 playmate, whose mirthful tricks are yet re 
 membered by those who frolicked with him, 
 and he always abounded with domestic af 
 fection. While in college he once asked 
 his mother what profession she would have 
 him choose. She said, pleasantly, " You 
 can buckle on your knapsack, dear, and 
 roam abroad to seek your fortune;" but 
 the thought of leaving home and forsaking 
 Concord made the tears roll down his 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 51 
 
 cheeks. Then his sister Helen, who was 
 standing by, says Channing, " tenderly put 
 her arm around him and kissed him, say 
 ing, No, Henry, you shall not go ; you 
 shall stay at home and live with us. " And 
 this, indeed, he did, though he made one oi) ^/c 
 two efforts to seek his fortune for a time 
 elsewhere. 
 
 His reading had been wide and constant 
 while at school, and after he entered college 
 at the age of sixteen. His room in Cam 
 bridge was in Hollis Hall ; his instructors 
 were such as he found there, but in rheto 
 ric he profited much by the keen intelli 
 gence of Professor Channing, an uncle of 
 his future friend and x biographer, Ellery 
 Channing. I think he also came in contact, 
 while in college, with that singular poet, 
 Jones Very, of Salem. He was by no 
 means unsocial in college, though he did 
 not form such abiding friendships as do 
 many young men. He graduated in 1837. 
 His expenses at Cambridge, which were 
 very moderate, compared with what a poor 
 scholar must now pay to go through college, 
 were paid in part by his father, in part by 
 his aunts and his elder sister, Helen, who 
 
52 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 had already begun to teach school ; and for 
 the rest he depended on his own efforts and 
 the beneficiary funds of the college, in 
 which he had some little share. I have 
 understood that he received the income of 
 the same modest endowment which had 
 been given to William and Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson when in college, some years be 
 fore ; and in other ways the generous thought 
 of that most princely man, Waldo Emerson, 
 was not idle in his behalf, though he knew 
 Thoreau then only as the studious son 
 of a townsman, who needed a friend at 
 court. What Mr. Emerson wrote to Josiah 
 Quincy, who was then president of Har 
 vard College, in behalf of Henry Thoreau 
 does not appear, except from the terms of 
 old Quincy s reply; but we may infer it. 
 Thoreau had the resource of school-keeping 
 in the country towns, during the college 
 vacation and the extra vacation that a poor 
 scholar could claim ; and this brought him, 
 in 1835, to an acquaintance with that elder 
 scholar, Brownson, who afterwards became 
 a Catholic doctor of theology. He left col 
 lege one winter to teach school at Canton, 
 near Boston, where he was examined by 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 53 
 
 Rev. Orestes A. Brownson, then a Prot 
 estant minister in Canton. He studied Ger 
 man and boarded with Mr.Brownson while 
 he taught the school. In 1836, he records 
 in his journal that he " went to New York 
 with father, peddling." In his senior year, 
 1836-87, he was ill for a time, and lost rank 
 with his instructors by his indifference to 
 the ordinary college motives for study. 
 This fact, and also that he was a benefici 
 ary of the college, further appears from the 
 letter of President Quincy to Mr. Emerson, 
 as follows : 
 
 " CAMBRIDGE, 25th June, 1837. 
 " MY DEAR SIR, Your view concerning Tho- 
 reau is entirely in consent with that which I en 
 tertain. His general conduct has been very sat 
 isfactory, and I was willing and desirous that 
 whatever falling off there had been in his scholar 
 ship should be attributable to his sickness. He 
 had, however, imbibed some notions concerning 
 emulation and college rank which had a natural 
 tendency to diminish his zeal, if not his exertions. 
 His instructors were impressed with the convic 
 tion that he was indifferent, even to a degree that 
 was faulty, and that they could not recommend 
 him, consistent with the rule by which they are 
 usually governed in relation to beneficiaries. I 
 
54 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 have always entertained a respect for and interest 
 in him, and was willing to attribute any apparent 
 neglect or indifference to his ill health rather than 
 to wilf illness. I obtained from the instructors the 
 authority to state all the facts to the Corporation, 
 and submit the result to their discretion. This I 
 did, and that body granted twenty-Jive dollars, 
 which was within ten, or at most fifteen, dollars of 
 any sum he would have received, had no objec 
 tion been made. There is no doubt that, from 
 some cause, an unfavorable opinion has been en 
 tertained, since his return after his sickness, of 
 his disposition to exert himself. To what it has 
 been owing may be doubtful. I appreciate very 
 fully the goodness of his heart and the strictness 
 of his moral principle ; and have done as much 
 for him as, under the circumstances, was possible. 
 Very respectfully, your humble servant, 
 
 "JOSIAH QUINCT. 
 
 " Rev. R. W. EMERSON." 
 
 It is possible the college faculty may 
 have had other grounds of distrust in Tho- 
 reau s case. On May 30, 1836, his class 
 mate Peabody wrote him the following let 
 ter from Cambridge, Thoreau being then 
 at home, for some reason, from which we 
 may infer that the sober youth was not 
 averse to such deeds as are there related : 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 55 
 
 " The Davy Club got into a little trouble, the 
 week before last, from the following circum 
 stance : H. W. gave a lecture on Pyrotechny, 
 and illustrated it with a parcel of fireworks he 
 had prepared in the vacation. As you may im 
 agine, there was some slight noise on the occa 
 sion. In fact, the noise was so slight that Tutor 
 B. heard it at his room in Holworthy. This 
 worthy boldly determined to march forth and 
 attack the rioters. Accordingly, in the midst 
 of a grand display of rockets, etc., he stepped 
 into the room, and, having gazed round him in 
 silent astonishment for the space of two minutes, 
 and hearing various cries of Intrusion ! Throw 
 him over ! Saw his leg off ! < Pull his wool ! 
 etc., he made two or three dignified motions with 
 his hand to gain attention, and then kindly ad 
 vised us to * retire to our respective rooms. 
 Strange to say, he found no one inclined to follow 
 this good advice, and he accordingly thought fit 
 to withdraw. There is, as perhaps you know, a 
 law against keeping powder in the college build 
 ings. The effect of Tutor B. s intrusion was 
 evident on the next Monday night, when H. W. 
 and B. were invited to call and see President 
 Quincy ; and owing to the tough reasoning of 
 Tutor B., who boldly asserted that * powder was 
 powder/ they were each presented with a public 
 admonition. 
 
56 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 " We had a miniature volcano at Webster s 
 lecture, the other morning [this was Professor 
 Webster, afterwards hanged for the murder of 
 Dr. Parkman], and the odors therefrom sur 
 passed all ever produced by Araby the Blest. 
 Imagine to yourself all the windows and shutters 
 of the lecture-room closed, and then conceive 
 the delightful scent produced by the burning of 
 nearly a bushel of sulphur, phosphoretted hydro 
 gen, and other still more pleasant ingredients. 
 As soon as the burning commenced, there was a 
 general rush to the door, and a crowd collected 
 there, running out every half minute to get a 
 breath of fresh air, and then coming in to see the 
 volcano. l No noise nor nothing. Bigelow and 
 Dr. Bacon manufactured some laughing gas, 
 and administered it on the Delta. It was much 
 better than that made by Webster. Jack Weiss 
 took some, as usual ; Wheeler, Jo Allen, and Hil- 
 dreth each received a dose. Wheeler proceeded 
 to dance for the amusement of the company, Jo 
 jumped over the Delta fence, and Sam raved 
 about Milton, Shakespeare, Byron, etc. lie took 
 two doses ; it produced a great effect on him. 
 He seemed to be as happy as a mortal could de 
 sire ; talked with Shakespeare, Milton, etc., and 
 seemed to be quite at home with them." 
 
 The persons named were classmates of 
 Thoreau : one of them afterward Rev. John 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 57 
 
 Weiss ; Wheeler was of Lincoln, and died 
 early in Germany, whither he went to study ; 
 Samuel Tenney Hildreth was a brother of 
 Richard Hildreth, the historian, and also 
 died young. The zest with which his class 
 mate related these pranks to Thoreau seems 
 to imply in his correspondent a mind too 
 ready towards such things to please the 
 learned faculty of Cambridge. 
 
 Mr. Quincy s letter was in reply to one 
 which Mr. Emerson had written at the re 
 quest of Mrs. Thoreau, who feared her son 
 was not receiving justice from the college 
 authorities. Thoreau graduated without 
 much distinction, but with a good name 
 ainong his classmates, and a high reputation 
 for general scholarship. When he went to 
 Maine, in May, 1838, to see if there was 
 not some school for him to teach there, he 
 took with him this certificate from his pas 
 tor, Dr. Ripley : 
 
 "CONCORD, May 1, 1838. 
 
 " To THE FRIENDS OF EDUCATION, The 
 undersigned very cheerfully hereby introduces to 
 public notice the bearer, Mr. David Henry Tho 
 reau, as a teacher in the higher branches of 
 useful literature. He is a native of this town, 
 
58 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 and a graduate of Harvard University. He is 
 well disposed and well qualified to instruct the 
 rising generation. His scholarship and moral 
 character will bear the strictest scrutiny. He is 
 modest and mild in his disposition and govern 
 ment, but not wanting in energy of character and 
 fidelity in the duties of his profession. It is pre 
 sumed his character and usefulness will be appre 
 ciated more highly as an acquaintance with him 
 shall be cultivated. Cordial wishes for his suc 
 cess, reputation, and usefulness attend him, as an 
 instructor and gentleman. 
 
 " EZRA RIPLET, 
 
 " Senior Pastor of the First Church in 
 Concord, Mass. 
 
 " N. B. It is but justice to observe here that 
 the eyesight of the writer is much impaired" 
 
 Accompanying this artless document is a 
 list of clergymen in the towns of Maine, 
 Portland, Belfast, Camden, Kennebunk, 
 Castine, Ellsworth, etc., in the hand 
 writing of the good old pastor, signifying 
 that as young Thoreau traveled he should 
 report himself to these brethren, who might 
 forward his wishes. But even at that early 
 date, I suspect that Thoreau undervalued 
 the " D. D. s " in comparison with the 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 59 
 
 " chickadedees," as he plainly declared in 
 his later years. Another certificate, in a 
 firmer hand, and showing no token of im 
 paired eyesight, was also carried by Tho- 
 reau in this first visit to Maine. It was 
 this : 
 
 " I cordially recommend Mr. Henry D. Tho- 
 reau, a graduate of Harvard University in August, 
 1837, to the confidence of such parents or guard 
 ians as may propose to employ him as an instruc 
 tor. I have the highest confidence in Mr. Tho- 
 reau s moral character, and in his intellectual 
 ability. He is an excellent scholar, a man of 
 energy and kindness, and I shall esteem the town 
 fortunate that secures his services. 
 
 "R. WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 s CONCORD, May 2, 1838." 
 
 The acquaintance of Mr. Emerson with his 
 young townsman had begun perhaps a year 
 before this date, and had advanced very fast 
 toward intimacy. It originated in this way : 
 A lady connected with Mr. Emerson s fam 
 ily was visiting at Mrs. Thoreau s while 
 Henry was in college, and the conversation 
 turned on a lecture lately read in Concord 
 by Mr. Emerson. Miss Helen Thoreau sur 
 prised the visitor by saying, " My brother 
 
60 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 Henry has a passage in his diary containing 
 the same things that Mr. Emerson has said." 
 This remark being questioned, the diary 
 was produced, and, sure enough, the thought 
 of the two passages was found to be very 
 similar. The incident being reported to 
 Mr. Emerson, he desired the lady to bring 
 Henry Thoreau to see him, which was soon 
 done, and the intimacy began. It was to 
 this same lady (Mrs. Brown, of Plymouth) 
 that Thoreau addressed one of his earliest 
 poems, the verses called " Sic Vita," in 
 the " Week on the Concord and Merrimac, v 
 commencing : 
 
 I am a parcel of vain strivings, tied 
 By a chance bond together." 
 
 These verses were written on a strip of 
 paper inclosing a bunch of violets, gath 
 ered in May, 1837, and thrown in at Mrs. 
 Brown s window by the poet-naturalist. 
 They show that he had read George Her 
 bert carefully, at a time when few persons 
 did so , and in other ways they are charac 
 teristic of the writer, who was then not quite 
 twenty years old. 
 
 It may be interesting to see what old 
 Quincy himself said, in a certificate, about 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 61 
 
 his stubbornly independent pupil. For the 
 same Maine journey Cambridge furnished 
 the Concord scholar -with this document: 
 
 " HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, 
 March 26, 1838. 
 
 "To WHOM IT MAY CONCERN, I certify that 
 Henry D. Thoreau, of Concord, in this State of 
 Massachusetts, graduated at this seminary in Au 
 gust, 1837 ; that his rank was high as a scholar 
 in all the branches, and his morals and general 
 conduct unexceptionable and exemplary. He is 
 recommended as well qualified as an instructor, 
 for employment in any public or private school 
 or private family. JOSIAH QUINCY, 
 
 " President of Harvard University" 
 
 It seems that there was question, at this 
 time, of a school in Alexandria, near Wash 
 ington (perhaps the Theological Seminary 
 for Episcopalians there), in which young 
 Thoreau might find a place; for on the 
 12th of April, 1838, President Quincy 
 wrote to him as follows : 
 
 "Sin, The school is at Alexandria ; the stu 
 dents are said to be young men well advanced in 
 ye knowledge of ye Latin and Greek classics; 
 the requisitions are, qualification and a person 
 who has had experience in school keeping. Sal- 
 
62 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 ary $600 a year, besides washing and Board ; 
 duties to be entered on ye 5th or 6th of May. 
 If you choose to apply, I will write as soon as I 
 am informed of it. State to me your experience 
 in school keeping. Yours, 
 
 " JOSIAH QUINCY." 
 
 We now know that Thoreau offered him 
 self for the place; and we know that his 
 journey to Maine was fruitless. He did, in 
 fact, teach the town grammar school in Con 
 cord for a few weeks in 1837, and in July, 
 1838, was teaching, at the Parkman house, 
 in Concord. He had already, as we have 
 seen, though not yet twenty-one, appeared 
 as a lecturer before the Concord Lyceum. 
 It is therefore time to consider him as a cit 
 izen of Concord, and to exhibit further the 
 character of that town. 
 
 Note. The Tutor mentioned on page 55 was Francis 
 Bowen, afterward professor at Harvard; the other " B." 
 was H. J. Bigelow, afterward a noted surgeon in Boston. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 CONCOED AND ITS FAMOUS PEOPLE. 
 
 THE Thoreau family was but newly 
 planted in Concord, to which it was alien 
 both by the father s and the mother s side. 
 But this wise town adopts readily the chil 
 dren of other communities that claim its 
 privileges, and to Henry Thoreau these 
 came by birth. Of all the men of letters that 
 have given Concord a name throughout the 
 world, he is almost the only one who was 
 born there. Emerson was born in Boston, 
 Alcott in Connecticut, Hawthorne in Salem, 
 Channing in Boston, Louisa Alcott in Ger- 
 mantown, and others elsewhere ; but Tho 
 reau was native to the soil. And since his 
 genius has been shaped and guided by the 
 personal traits of those among whom he 
 lived, as well as by the hand of God and by 
 the intuitive impulses of his own spirit, it 
 is proper to see what the men of Concord 
 have really been, It is from them we must 
 
64 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 judge the character of the town and its civil 
 ization, not from those exceptional, imported 
 persons cultivated men and women, 
 who may be regarded as at the head of so 
 ciety, and yet may have no representative 
 quality at all. It is not by the few that a 
 New England town is to be judged, but by 
 the many. Yet there were a Few and a 
 Many in Concord, between whom certain 
 distinctions could be drawn, in the face of 
 that general equality which the institutions 
 of New England compel. Life in our new 
 country had not yet been reduced to the 
 ranks of modern civilization so orderly 
 outward, so full of mutiny within. 
 
 It is mentioned by Tacitus, in his life of 
 Agricola, that this noble Roman lived as a 
 child in Marseilles ; " a place," he adds, " of 
 Grecian culture and provincial frugality, 
 mingled and well blended." I have thought 
 this felicitous phrase of Tacitus most appo 
 site for Concord as I have known it since 
 1854, and as Thoreau must have found it 
 from 1830 onward. Its people lived then 
 and since with little display, while learning 
 was held in high regard ; and the " plain 
 living and high thinking," which Words- 
 
CONCORD AND ITS FAMOUS PEOPLE. 65 
 
 worth declared were gone from England, 
 have never been absent from this New Eng 
 land town. It has always been a town of 
 much social equality, and yet of great social 
 and spiritual contrasts. Most of its inhab 
 itants have lived in a plain way for the two 
 centuries and a half that it has been inhab 
 ited ; but at all times some of them have 
 had important connections with the great 
 world of politics, affairs, and literature. 
 Rev. Peter Bulkeley, the founder and first 
 minister of the town, was a near kinsman 
 of Oliver St. John, Cromwell s solicitor- 
 general, of the same noble English family 
 that, a generation or two later, produced 
 Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, the 
 brilliant, unscrupulous friend of Pope and 
 Swift. Another of the Concord ministers, 
 Rev. John Whiting, was descended, through 
 his grandmother, Elizabeth St. John, wife 
 of Rev. Samuel Whiting, of Lynn, from this 
 same old English family, which, in its long 
 pedigree, counted for ancestors the Norman 
 Conqueror of England and some of his tur 
 bulent posterity. He was, says the epitaph 
 over him in the village burying-ground, " a 
 gentleman of singular hospitality and gen- 
 
66 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 erosity, who never detracted from the char 
 acter of any man, and was a universal lover 
 of mankind. In this character some rep 
 resentative gentleman of Concord has stood 
 in every generation since the first settle 
 ment of the little town. 
 
 The Munroes of Lexington and Concord 
 are descended from a Scotch soldier of 
 Charles IL s army, captured by Cromwell 
 at the battle of Worcester in 1651, and 
 allowed to go into exile in America. His 
 powerful kinsman, General George Munro, 
 who commanded for Charles at the battle 
 of Worcester, was, at the Restoration, made 
 commander-in-chief for Scotland. 
 
 Robert Cumming, father of Dr. John 
 Cumming, a celebrated Concord physician, 
 was one of the followers of the first Preten 
 der in 1715, and when the Scotch rebellion 
 of that year failed, Cumming, with some of 
 his friends, fled to New England, and set 
 tled in Concord and the neighboring town 
 of Stow. 
 
 Duncan Ingraham, a retired sea-captain, 
 who had enriched himself in the Surinam 
 trade, long lived in Concord, before and 
 after the Revolution, and one of his grand- 
 
CONCORD AND ITS FAMOUS PEOPLE. 67 
 
 children was Captain Marryatt, the English 
 novelist ; another was the American naval 
 captain, Ingraham, who brought away Mar 
 tin Kosta, a Hungarian refugee, from the 
 clutches of the Austrian government. 
 While Duncan Ingraham was living in 
 Concord, a hundred years ago, a lad from 
 that town, Joseph Perry, who had gone to 
 sea with Paul Jones, became a high naval 
 officer in the service of Catharine of Rus 
 sia, and wrote to Dr. Ripley from the Cri 
 mea in 1786 to inquire what had become of 
 his parents in Concord, whom he had not 
 seen or heard from for many years. The 
 stepson of Duncan Ingraham, Tilly Mer- 
 rick, of Concord, who graduated at Cam 
 bridge in 1773, made the acquaintance of 
 Sir Archibald Campbell, when captured in 
 Boston Harbor, that Scotch officer having 
 visited at the house of Mrs. Ingraham, 
 Merrick s mother, while a prisoner in Con 
 cord Jail. A few years later Merrick was 
 himself captured twice on his way to and 
 from Holland and France, whither he went 
 as secretary or attache* to our commis 
 sioner, John Adams. The first time he was 
 taken to London ; the second time to Hali- 
 
68 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 fax, where, as it happened, Sir Archibald 
 was then in command as Governor of Nova 
 Scotia. Young Merrick went presently to 
 the governor s quarters, but was refused 
 admission by the sentinel, while parleying 
 with whom, Sir Archibald heard the con 
 versation, and came forward. He at once 
 recognized his Concord friend, greeted him 
 cordially with " How do you do, my little 
 rebel? " and after taking good care of him, 
 in remembrance of his own experience in 
 Concord, procured Merrick s exchange for 
 one of Burgoyne s officers, captured at Sar 
 atoga. Returning to America after the 
 war, Tilly Merrick went into an extensive 
 business at Charleston, S. C., with the son 
 of Duncan Ingraham for a partner, and 
 there became the owner of large planta 
 tions, worked by slaves, which he after 
 wards lost through reverses in business. 
 Coming back to Concord in 1798, with the 
 remnants of his South Carolina fortune, 
 and inheriting his mother s Concord estate, 
 he married a lady of the Minott family, and 
 became a country store-keeper in his native 
 town. His daughter, Mrs. Brooks, was for 
 many years the leader of the antislavery 
 
CONCORD AND ITS FAMOUS PEOPLE. 69 
 
 party in Concord, and a close friend of the 
 Thoreaus, who at one time lived next door 
 to her hospitable house. 
 
 Soon after Mr. Emerson fixed his home 
 in Concord, in 1834, a new bond of connec 
 tion between the town and the great world 
 outside this happy valley began to appear, 
 the genius of that man whose like has 
 not been seen in America, nor in the whole 
 world in our century : 
 
 " A large and generous man, who, on our moors, 
 Built up his thought (though with an Indian tongue, 
 And fittest to have sung at Persian feasts), 
 Yet dwelt among us as the sage he was, 
 Sage of his days, patient and proudly true ; 
 Whose word was worth the world, whose heart was pure. 
 Oh, such a heart was his ! no gate or bar ; 
 The poorest wretch that ever passed his door 
 Welcome as highest king or fairest friend." 
 
 This genius, in one point of view so solitary, 
 but in another so universal and social, soon 
 made itself felt as an attractive force, and 
 Concord became a place of pilgrimage, as it 
 has remained for so many years since. 
 When Theodore Parker left Divinity Hall, 
 at Cambridge, in 1836, and began to preach 
 in Unitarian pulpits, he fixed his hopes on 
 Concord as a parish, chiefly because Emer- 
 
70 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 son was living there. It is said that he 
 might have been called as a colleague for 
 Dr. Ripley, if it had not been thought his 
 sermons were too learned for the Christians 
 of the Nine-Acre Corner and other outlying 
 hamlets of the town. In 1835-36 Mr. Al- 
 cott began to visit Mr. Emerson in Con 
 cord, and in 1840 he went there to live. 
 Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Peabody, 
 coadjutors of Mr. Alcott in his Boston 
 school, had already found their way to Con 
 cord, where Margaret at intervals resided, 
 or came and went in her sibylline way. 
 Ellery Channing, one of the nephews of Dr. 
 Channing, the divine, took his bride, a sis 
 ter of Margaret Fuller, to Concord in 1843 ; 
 and Hawthorne removed thither, upon 
 his marriage with Miss Peabody s sister 
 Sophia, in 1842. After noticing what went 
 on about him for a few years, in his seclu 
 sion at the Old Manse, Hawthorne thus de 
 scribed the attraction of Concord, in 1845 : 
 
 " It was necessary to go but a little way be 
 yond my threshold before meeting with stranger 
 moral shapes of men than might have been en 
 countered elsewhere in a circuit of a thousand 
 miles. These hobgoblins of flesh and blood were 
 
CONCORD AND ITS FAMOUS PEOPLE. 71 
 
 attracted thither by the wide-spreading influence 
 of a great original thinker, who had his earthly 
 abode at the opposite extremity of our village. 
 His mind acted upon other minds of a certain 
 constitution with wonderful magnetism, and drew 
 many men upon long pilgrimages to speak with 
 him face to face. Young visionaries, to whom 
 just so much of insight had been imparted as to 
 make life all a labyrinth around them, came to 
 seek the clew that should guide them out of their 
 self-involved bewilderment. Gray-headed theo 
 rists, whose systems, at first air, had finally im 
 prisoned them in an iron framework, traveled 
 painfully to his door, not to ask deliverance, but 
 to invite the free spirit into their own thralldom. 
 People that had lighted on a new thought, or a 
 thought that they fancied new, came to Emerson, 
 as the finder of a glittering gem hastens to a 
 lapidary to ascertain its quality and value." 
 
 The picture here painted still continued 
 to be true until long after the death of Tho- 
 reau ; and the attraction was increased at 
 times by the presence in the village of 
 Hawthorne himself, of Alcott, and of others 
 who made Concord their home or their 
 haunt. Thoreau also was resorted to by 
 pilgrims, who came sometimes from long 
 distances and at long intervals, to see and 
 talk with him. 
 
72 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 There was in the village, too, a consular 
 man, for many years the first citizen of 
 Concord, Samuel Hoar, who made him 
 self known abroad by sheer force of charac 
 ter and " plain heroic magnitude of mind." 
 It was of him that Emerson said, at his 
 death in November, 1856, 
 
 " He was a man in whom so rare a spirit of 
 justice visibly dwelt that if one had met him in 
 a cabin or in a forest he must still seem a public 
 man, answering as sovereign state to sovereign 
 state ; and might easily suggest Milton s picture 
 of John Bradshaw, that he was a consul from 
 whom the fasces did not depart with the year, 
 but in private seemed ever sitting in judgment 
 on kings. He returned from courts or con 
 gresses to sit down with unaltered humility, in 
 the church or in the town-house, on the plain 
 wooden bench, where Honor came and sat down 
 beside him." 
 
 In his house and in a few others along the 
 elm-planted street, you might meet at any 
 time other persons of distinction, beauty, or 
 wit, such as now and then glance through 
 the shining halls of cities, and, in great 
 centres of the world s civilization, like Lon 
 don or Paris, muster 
 
CONCORD AND ITS FAMOUS PEOPLE. 73 
 
 " In solemn troops and sweet societies," 
 which are the ideal of poets and fair women, 
 and the envy of all who aspire to social 
 eminence. Thoreau knew the worth of this 
 luxury, too, though, as a friend said of him, 
 " a story from a fisher or hunter was better 
 to him than an evening of triviality in shin 
 ing parlors, where he was misunderstood." 
 
 There were not many such parlors in 
 Concord, but there was and had constantly 
 been in the town a learned and social ele 
 ment, such as gathers in an old New Eng 
 land village of some wealth and inherited 
 culture. At the head of this circle which 
 fell off on one side into something like fash 
 ion and mere amusement, on another into 
 the activity of trade or politics, and rose," 
 among the women especially, into art and 
 literature and religion stood, in Thoreau s 
 boyhood and youth, a grave figure, yet with 
 something droll about him, the parish 
 minister and county Nestor, Dr. Ezra Ripley, 
 who lived and died in the " Old Manse." 
 
 Dr. Ripley was born in 1751, in Wood 
 stock, Conn., the same town in which Dr. 
 Abiel Holmes, the father of the poet 
 Holmes, was born. He entered Harvard 
 
74 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 College in 1772, came with the students to 
 Concord in 1775, when the college build 
 ings at Cambridge were occupied by Wash 
 ington and his army, besieging Boston, and 
 graduated in 1776. Among his classmates 
 were Governor Gore, Samuel Sewall, the 
 second chief-justice of Massachusetts of that 
 name, and Royal Tyler, the witty chief -jus 
 tice of Vermont. Governor Gore used to 
 say that in college he was called " Holy 
 Ripley," from his devout character. He 
 settled in Concord in 1778, and at the age 
 of twenty-nine married the widow of his 
 last predecessor, Rev. William Emerson 
 (and the daughter of his next predecessor, 
 Rev. Daniel Bliss), who was at their mar 
 riage ten years older than her husband, and 
 had a family of five children. Dr. Ripley s 
 own children were three in number : the 
 Reverend Samuel Ripley, born May 11, 
 1783 ; Daniel Bliss Ripley, born August 1, 
 1784 ; and Miss Sarah Ripley, born August 
 8, 1789. When this daughter died, not long 
 after her mother, in 1826, breaking, says 
 Mr. Emerson, " the last tie of blood which 
 bound me and my brothers to his house," 
 Dr. Ripley said to Mr. Emerson, " I wish 
 
CONCORD AND ITS FAMOUS PEOPLE. 75 
 
 you and your brothers to come to this house 
 as you have always done. You will not 
 like to be excluded ; I shall not like to be 
 neglected." He died himself in September, 
 1841. 
 
 Of Dr. Ripley countless anecdotes are 
 told in his parish, and he was the best re 
 membered person, except Thoreau himself, 
 who had died in Concord, till Emerson ; just 
 as his house, described so finely by Haw 
 thorne in his " Mosses," is still the best 
 known house in Concord. It was for a 
 time the home of Mr. Emerson, and there, 
 it is said, he wrote his first book, "Nature," 
 concerning which, when it came out anon 
 ymously, the question was asked, " Who is 
 the author of * Nature ? " The reply was, 
 of course, " God and Ralph Waldo Emer 
 son." The Old Manse was built about 1766 
 for Mr. Emerson s grandfather, then minis 
 ter of the parish, and into it he brought 
 his bride, Miss Phebe Bliss (daughter of 
 Rev. Daniel Bliss, of Concord, and Phebe 
 Walker, of Connecticut). Miss Mary Em 
 erson, youngest child of this marriage, used 
 to say " she was in arms at the battle of 
 Concord," because her mother held her up, 
 
76 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 then two years old, to see the soldiers from 
 her window ; and from his study window 
 her father saw the fight at the bridge. It 
 was the scene of many of the anecdotes, 
 told of Dr. Ripley, some of which, gathered 
 from various sources, may here be given ; it 
 was also, after his death, one of the resorts 
 of Thoreau, of Margaret Fuller, of Ellery 
 Channing, of Dr. Hedge, and of the Tran- 
 scendentalists in general. His parishioners 
 to this day associate Dr. Ripley s form "with 
 whatever was grave and droll in the old, 
 cold, unpainted, uncarpeted, square-pewed 
 meeting-house, with its four iron-gray dea 
 cons in their little box under the pulpit ; 
 with Watts s hymns ; with long prayers, 
 rich with the diction of ages; and, not less, 
 with the report like musketry from the 
 movable seats." l One of these "iron-gray 
 deacons," Francis Jarvis, used to visit the 
 Old Manse with his children on Sunday 
 evenings, and his son, Dr. Edward Jarvis, 
 thus describes another side of Dr. Ripley s 
 pastoral character : 
 
 1 Emerson s Sketch of Dr. Ripley. Hood, in his Music 
 for the Million, describes an angry man as slamming a 
 door " with a wooden damn." 
 
CONCORD AND ITS FAMOUS PEOPLE. 77 
 
 "Among the very pleasant things connected 
 with the Sabbaths in the Jarvis family were the 
 visits to Dr. Ripley in the evening. The doctor 
 had usually a small levee of such friends as were 
 disposed to call. Deacon Jarvis was fond of go 
 ing there, and generally took with him one of the 
 children and his wife, when she was able. There 
 were at these levees many of the most intelligent 
 and agreeable men of the town, Mr. Samuel 
 Hoar, Mr. Nathan Brooks, Mr. John Keyes, 
 Deacon Brown, Mr. Pritchard, Major Burr, etc. 
 These were extremely pleasant gatherings. The 
 little boys sat and listened, and remembered the 
 cheerful and instructive conversation. There 
 were discussions of religion and morals, of poli 
 tics and philosophy, the affairs of the town, the 
 news of the day, the religious and social gossip, 
 pleasant anecdotes and witty tales. All were in 
 their best humor. Deacon Jarvis [adds his son], 
 did not go to these levees every Sunday night, 
 though he would have been glad to do so, had he 
 been less distrustful. When his children, who 
 had no such scruples, asked him to go and take 
 them with him, he said he feared that Dr. Ripley 
 would not like to see him so frequently." 
 
 According to Mr. Emerson, Dr. Ripley 
 was " a natural gentleman ; no dandy, but 
 courtly, hospitable, and public spirited ; his 
 
78 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 house open to all men." An old farmer 
 who used to travel thitherward from Maine, 
 where Dr. Ripleyhad a brother settled in 
 the ministry, used to say that " no horse 
 from the Eastern country would go by the 
 doctor s gate." It was one of the listeners 
 at his Sunday evening levees, no doubt, 
 who said (at the time when Dr. Ripley was 
 preparing for his first and last journey to 
 Baltimore and Washington, in the presi 
 dency of the younger Adams) " that a man 
 who could tell a story so well was company 
 for kings and for John Quincy Adams." 
 
 When P. M., after his release from the 
 State Prison, had the effrontery to call on 
 Dr. Ripley, as an old acquaintance, as they 
 were talking together on general matters, 
 his young colleague, Rev. Mr. Frost, came 
 in. The doctor presently said, " Mr. M., 
 my brother and colleague, Mr. Frost, has 
 come to take tea with me. I regret very 
 much the causes (very well known to you), 
 which make it impossible for me to ask you 
 to stay and break bread with us." Mr. 
 Emerson, his grandson (by Dr. Ripley s 
 marriage with the widow of Rev. William 
 Einerson) relates that he once went to a 
 
CONCORD AND ITS FAMOUS PEOPLE. 79 
 
 funeral with Dr. Ripley, and heard him ad 
 dress the mourners. As they approached 
 the farm-house the old minister said that 
 the eldest son, who was now to succeed the 
 deceased father of a family in his place as 
 a Concord yeoman, was in some danger of 
 becoming intemperate. In his remarks to 
 this son, he presently said, 
 
 " Sir, I condole with you. I knew your great 
 grandfather ; when I came to this town, in 1778, 
 he was a substantial farmer in this very place, 
 a member of the church, and an excellent citi 
 zen. Your grandfather followed him, and was 
 a virtuous man. Now your father is to be car 
 ried to his grave, full of labors and virtues. 
 There is none of that old family left but you, 
 and it rests with you to bear up the good name 
 and usefulness of your ancestors. If you fail 
 Ichabod ! the glory is departed. Let us pray." 
 
 He took Mr. Emerson about with him in 
 his chaise when a boy, and in passing each 
 house he would tell the story of its family, 
 dwelling especially on the nine church- 
 members who had made a division in the 
 church in the time of his predecessor ; every 
 one of the nine having come to bad fortune 
 or a bad end. " The late Dr. Gardiner," 
 
80 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 says Mr. Emerson, "in a funeral sermon 
 on some parishioner, whose virtues did not 
 readily come to mind, honestly said, He 
 was good at fires. Dr. Ripley had many 
 virtues, and yet, even in his old age, if the 
 firebell was rung, he was instantly on horse 
 back, with his buckets and bag." He had 
 even some willingness, perhaps not equal to 
 the zeal of the Hindoo saint, to extinguish 
 the Orthodox fires of hell, which had long 
 blazed in New England, so that men might 
 worship God with less fear. But he had 
 small sympathy with the Transcendentalists 
 when they began to appear in Concord. 
 When Mr. Emerson took his friend Mr. Al- 
 cott to see the old doctor, he gave him 
 warning that his brilliant young kinsman 
 was not quite sound in the faith, and bore 
 testimony in particular against a sect of his 
 own naming, called " Egomites " (from ego 
 and mitto), who "sent themselves" on the 
 Lord s errands without any due call thereto. 
 Dr. Channing viewed the "apostles of the 
 newness " with more favor, and could par 
 don something to the spirit of liberty which 
 was strong in them. The occasional corre 
 spondence between the Concord shepherd of 
 
CONCORD AND ITS FAMOUS PEOPLE. 81 
 
 his people and the great Unitarian preacher 
 is full of interest. In February, 1839, 
 when he was eighty-eight years old and 
 weighed down with infirmities, he could 
 still lift up his voice in testimony. He 
 then wrote to Dr. Channing : -- 
 
 " Broken down with the infirmities of age, and 
 subject to fits that deprive me of reason and the 
 use of my limbs, I feel it a duty to be patient 
 and submissive to the will of God, who is too 
 wise to err, and too good to injure. My mind 
 labors and is oppressed, viewing the present state 
 of Christianity, and the various speculations, 
 opinions, and practices of the passing period. 
 Extremes appear to be sought and loved, and 
 their novelty gains attention. You, sir, appear 
 to retain and act upon the sentiment of the Latin 
 phrase, 
 
 " Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines. 
 
 "The learned and estimable Norton appears 
 to me to have weakened his hold on public opin 
 ion and confidence by his petulance or pride, his 
 want of candor and charity." 
 
 Six years earlier, Dr. Channing had writ 
 ten to Dr. Ripley almost as if replying to 
 some compliment like this, and expressed 
 
82 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 himself thus, in a letter dated January 22, 
 1833, 
 
 " I thank God for the testimony which you 
 have borne to the usefulness of my writings. 
 Such approbation from one whom I so much 
 venerate, and who understands so well the wants 
 and signs of the times, is very encouraging to 
 me. If I have done anything towards manifest 
 ing Christianity in its simple majesty and mild 
 glory I rejoice, and I am happy to have contrib 
 uted anything towards the satisfaction of your last 
 years. It would gratify many, and would do 
 good, if, in the quiet of your advanced age, you 
 would look back on the eventful period through 
 which you have passed, and would leave behind 
 you, or give now, a record of the changes you 
 have witnessed, and especially of the progress of 
 liberal inquiry and rational views in religion." 1 
 
 Dr. Ripley s prayers were precise and un- 
 doubting in their appeal for present provi- 
 
 1 At the date of this letter Dr. Ripley was not quite 
 eighty-two, and he lived to be more than ninety. Mr. 
 Alcott, who has now passed the age of eighty-two, has 
 been for years doing in some degree what Dr. Channing 
 urged the patriarch of his denomination to do, but which 
 the old minister never found time and strength for. It 
 is curious that these two venerable men, whose united 
 life in Concord covers a period of more than a century, 
 both came from Connecticut. 
 
CONCORD AND ITS FAMOUS PEOPLE. 83 
 
 dences. He prayed for rain and against the 
 lightning, " that it may not lick up our 
 spirits ; " he blessed the Lord for exemp 
 tion from sickness and insanity, " that 
 we have not been tossed to and fro until 
 the dawning of the day, that we have not 
 been a terror to ourselves and to others." 
 One memorable occasion, in the later years 
 of his pastorate, when he had consented to 
 take a young colleague, is often remembered 
 in his parish, now fifty years after its date. 
 The town was suffering from drought, and 
 the farmers from Barrett s Mill, Bateman s 
 Pond, and the Nine- Acre Corner had asked 
 the minister to pray for rain. Mr. Good 
 win (the father of Professor Goodwin, of 
 Harvard University) had omitted to do this 
 in his morning service, and at the noon in 
 termission Dr. Ripley was reminded of the 
 emergency by the afflicted farmers. He 
 told them courteously that Mr. Goodwin s 
 garden lay on the river, and perhaps he had 
 not noticed how parched the uplands were ; 
 but he entered the pulpit that afternoon 
 with an air of resolution and command. 
 Mr. Goodwin, as usual, offered to relieve 
 the doctor of the duty of leading in prayer, 
 
84 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 but the old shepherd, as Mr. Emerson says, 
 "rejected his offer with some humor, and 
 with an air that said to all the congrega 
 tion, This is no time for you young Cam 
 bridge men ; the affair, sir, is getting se 
 rious ; I will pray myself. " He did so, 
 and with unusual fervor demanded rain for 
 the languishing corn and the dry grass of 
 the field. As the story goes, the afternoon 
 opened fair and hot, but before the dwellers 
 in Nine- Acre Corner and the North Quar 
 ter reached their homes a pouring shower 
 rewarded the gray-haired suppliant, and re 
 minded Concord that the righteous are not 
 forsaken. Another of Mr. Emerson s anec 
 dotes bears on this point : 
 
 " One August afternoon, when I was in his hay- 
 field, helping him, with his man, to rake up his 
 hay, I well remember his pleading, almost re 
 proachful looks at the sky, when the thunder- 
 gust was coming up to spoil his hay. He raked 
 very fast, then looked at the cloud, and said, 
 We are in the Lord s hand, mind your rake, 
 George ! we are in the Lord s hand ; and seemed 
 to say, You know me ; this field is mine, Dr. 
 Ripley s, thine own servant. " 
 
 In his later years Dr. Ripley was much 
 
CONCORD AND ITS FAMOUS PEOPLE. 85 
 
 distressed by a schism in his church, which 
 drew off to a Trinitarian congregation sev 
 eral of his oldest friends and parishioners. 
 Among the younger members who thus se 
 ceded, seventy years ago, were the maiden 
 aunts of Thoreau, Jane and Maria, the 
 last of whom, and the last of the name in 
 America, has died recently, as already men 
 tioned. Thoreau seceded later, but not to 
 the "Orthodox" church, as much against 
 the wish of Dr. Ripley, however, as if he 
 had. In later years, Thoreau s church (of 
 the Sunday Walkers) was recognized in the 
 village gossip ; so that when I first spent 
 Sunday in Concord, and asked my landlord 
 what churches there were, he replied, " The 
 Unitarian, the Orthodox, and the Walden 
 Pond Association." To the latter he pro 
 fessed to belong^ and said its services con 
 sisted in walking on Sunday in the Walden 
 woods. Dr. Ripley would have viewed such 
 rites with horror, but they have now be 
 come common. His Old Manse, which 
 from 1842 to 1846 was occupied by Haw 
 thorne, was for twenty years (1847-1867) 
 the home of Mrs. Sarah Ripley, that sweet 
 and learned lady, and has since been the 
 
86 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 dwelling-place of her children, the grand 
 children of Dr. Ripley. Near by stands now 
 the statue of the Concord Minute-Man of 
 1775, marking the spot to which the Mid 
 dlesex farmers came 
 
 " In sloven dress and broken rank," 
 and where they stood when in unconscious 
 heroism they 
 
 " Fired the shot heard round the world," 
 
 and drove back the invading visitor from 
 their doorsteps and cornfields. 
 
 Dr. Ripley, however, seldom repelled a 
 visitor or an invader, unless he came from 
 too recent an experience in the state prison, 
 or offered to "break out" his path on a 
 Sunday, when he had fancied himself too 
 much snow-bound to go forth to his pulpit. 
 The anecdote is characteristic, if not wholly 
 authentic. One Sunday, after a severe 
 snow-storm, his neighbor, the great farmer 
 on Ponkawtassett Hill, half a mile to the 
 northward of the Old Manse, turned out 
 his ox-teams and all his men and neighbors 
 to break a path to the meeting-house and 
 the tavern. Wallowing through the drifts, 
 they had got as far as Dr. Ripley s gate, 
 
CONCORD AND ITS FAMOUS PEOPLE. 87 
 
 while the good parson, snugly blocked in 
 by a drift completely filling his avenue of 
 ash-trees, thought of nothing less than of 
 going out to preach that day. The long 
 team of oxen, with much shouting and 
 stammering from the red-faced farmer, was 
 turned out of the road and headed up the 
 avenue, when Dr. Ripley, coming to his 
 parsonage door, and commanding silence, 
 began to berate Captain B. for breaking the 
 Sabbath and the roads at one stroke, im 
 plying, if not asserting, that he did it to 
 save time and oxen for his Monday s work. 
 Angered at the ingratitude of his minister, 
 the stammering farmer turned the ten yoke 
 of cattle round in the doctor s garden, and 
 drove on to the village, leaving the parson 
 to shovel himself out and get to meeting 
 the best way he could. Meanwhile, the 
 teamsters sat in the warm bar-room at the 
 tavern, and cheered themselves with punch, 
 flip, grog, and toddy, instead of going to 
 hear Dr. Ripley hold forth ; and when he 
 had returned to his parsonage they paraded 
 their oxen and sleds back again, past his 
 gate, with much more shouting than at 
 first. This led to a long quarrel between 
 
88 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 minister and parishioner, in course of which, 
 one day, as the doctor halted his chaise in 
 front of the farmer s house on the hill, the 
 stammering captain came forward, a peck 
 measure in his hand, with which he had 
 been giving his oxen their meal, and began 
 to renew the unutterable grievance. Wax 
 ing warm, as the doctor admonished him 
 afresh, he smote with his wooden measure 
 on the shafts of the chaise, until his gentle 
 wife, rushing forth, called on the neighbors 
 to stop the fight which she fancied was 
 going on between the charioteer of the Lord 
 and the foot-soldier. 
 
 Despite these outbursts, and his habitual 
 way of looking at all things "from the 
 parochial point of view," as Emerson said 
 of him, he was also a courteous and liberal- 
 minded man, as the best anecdotes of him 
 constantly prove. He was the sovereign of 
 his people, managing the church, the schools, 
 the society meetings, and, for a time, the 
 Lyceum, as he thought fit. The lecturers, 
 as well as the young candidates for school- 
 keeping Theodore Parker, Edward Ever 
 ett, and the rest addressed themselves to 
 him, and when he met Webster, then the 
 
CONCORD AND ITS FAMOUS PEOPLE. 89 
 
 great man of Massachusetts, it was on equal 
 terms. 
 
 Daniel Webster was never a lyceum lec 
 turer in Concord, and he did not often try 
 cases there, but was sometimes consulted 
 in causes of some pecuniary magnitude. 
 When Humphrey Barrett died (whose man 
 agement of his nephew s estate will be 
 mentioned in the next chapter), his heir 
 by will (a young man without property, 
 until he should inherit the large estate be 
 queathed him), found it necessary to employ 
 counsel against the heirs-at-law, who sought 
 to break the will. His attorney went to 
 Mr. Webster in Boston and related the 
 facts, adding that his client could not then 
 pay a large fee, but might, if the cause were 
 gained, as Mr. Webster thought it would 
 be. " You may give me one hundred dollars 
 as a retainer," said Webster, " and tell the 
 young man, from me, that when I win his 
 case I shall send him a bill that will make 
 his hair stand on end." It so happened, 
 however, that Webster was sent to the Sen 
 ate, and the case was won by his partner. 
 
 In the summer of 1843, while Thoreau 
 
90 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 was living at Staten Island, Webster visited 
 Concord to try an important case in the 
 county court, which then held sessions 
 there. This was the " Wyman Trial," 
 long famous in local traditions, Webster 
 and Choate being both engaged in the case, 
 and along with them Mr. Franklin Dexter 
 and Mr. Rockwood Hoar, the latter a 
 young lawyer, who had been practicing in 
 the Middlesex courts for a few years, where 
 his father, Mr. Samuel Hoar, was the leader 
 of the bar. Judge Allen (Charles Allen of 
 Worcester) held the court, and the eminent 
 array of counsel just named was for the de 
 fense. 
 
 The occasion was a brilliant one, and 
 made a great and lasting sensation in the 
 village. Mr. Webster and his friends were 
 entertained at the houses of the chief men 
 of Concord, and the villagers crowded the 
 court-house to hear the arguments and the 
 colloquies between the counsel and the 
 court. Webster was suffering from his 
 usual summer annoyance, the " hay ca 
 tarrh," or "rose cold," which he humor 
 ously described afterward in a letter to a 
 friend in Concord : 
 
CONCORD AND ITS FAMOUS PEOPLE. 91 
 
 " You know enough of my miserable catarrh. 
 Its history, since I left your hospitable roof, is 
 not worth noting. There would be nothing 
 found in it, either of the sublime or the beauti 
 ful ; nothing fit for elegant description or a touch 
 of sentiment. Not that it has not been a great 
 thing in its way ; for I think the sneezing it has 
 occasioned has been truly transcendental. A 
 fellow-sufferer from the same affliction, who lived 
 in Cohasset, was asked, the other day, what in 
 the world he took for it ? His reply was that he 
 took eight handkerchiefs a day. And this, I 
 believe, is the approved mode of treatment; 
 though the doses here mentioned are too few for 
 severe cases. Suffice it to say, my dear lady, 
 that either from a change of air, or the progress 
 of the season, or, what is more probable, from 
 the natural progress of the disease itself, I am 
 much better than when I left Concord, and I 
 propose to return to Boston to-day, feeling, or 
 hoping, that I may now be struck off the list of 
 invalids." 
 
 Notwithstanding this affliction, Mr. Web 
 ster made himself agreeable to the ladies of 
 Concord, old and young, and even the little 
 girls, like Louisa Alcott, went to the court 
 house to see and hear him. He was present 
 at a large tea-party given by Mrs. R. W. 
 
92 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 Emerson in his honor, and he renewed his 
 old acquaintance with the Dunbars and Tho- 
 reaus. Mr. Emerson, writing to Thoreau 
 September 8, 1843, said, briefly, " You will 
 have heard of our 4 Wyman Trial, and the 
 stir it made in the village. But the Cliff 
 and Walden, which know something of the 
 railroad, knew nothing of that; not a leaf 
 nodded ; not a pebble fell ; why should I 
 speak of it to you ? " Thoreau was indeed 
 interested in it, and in the striking person 
 ality of Webster. To his mother he wrote 
 from Staten Island (August 29, 1843) : 
 
 " I should have liked to see Daniel Webster 
 walking about Concord ; I suppose the town 
 shook, every step he took. But I trust there 
 were some sturdy Concordians who were not 
 tumbled down by the jar, but represented still 
 the upright town. Where was George Minott? 
 he would not have gone far to see him. Uncle 
 Charles should have been there ; he might as 
 well have been catching cat-naps in Concord as 
 anywhere. And, then, what a whetter-up of his 
 memory this event would have been! You d 
 have had all the classmates again in alphabetical 
 order reversed, < and Seth Hunt and Bob 
 Smith and he was a student of my father s 
 and where s Put now ? and I wonder you 
 
CONCORD AND ITS FAMOUS PEOPLE. 93 
 
 if Henry s been to see George Jones yet ? A 
 little account with Stow Balcolm Bigelow 
 
 poor, miserable t-o-a-d (sound asleep). I vow 
 
 you what noise was that ? saving grace 
 and few there be. That s clear as preaching 
 Easter Brooks morally depraved how charm 
 ing is divine philosophy some wise and some 
 otherwise Heighho ! (Sound asleep again.) 
 Webster s a smart fellow bears his age well. 
 How old should you think he was ? you does 
 he look as if he were two years younger than I ? " 
 
 This uncle was Charles Dunbar, of course, 
 who was in fact two years older than Web 
 ster, and, like him, a New Hampshire man. 
 He and his sisters the mother and the 
 aunt of Henry Thoreau had known Web 
 ster in his youth, when he was a poor 
 young lawyer in New Hampshire ; and the 
 acquaintance was kept up from time to 
 time as the years brought them together. 
 Whenever Webster passed a day in Con 
 cord, as he did nearly every year from 
 1843 to 1850, he would either call on Miss 
 Dunbar, or she would meet him at tea in 
 the house of Mr. Cheney, a college classmate 
 of Mr. Emerson, whom he usually visited ; 
 and whose garden was a lovely plot, orna- 
 
94 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 mented with great elm trees, on the bank 
 of the Musketaquid. Mrs. Thoreau was 
 often included in these friendly visits ; and 
 it was of this family, as well as of the Em- 
 ersons, Hoars, and Brookses, no doubt, that 
 Webster was thinking when he sadly wrote 
 to Mrs. Cheney his last letter, less than a 
 year before his death in 1852. In this 
 note, dated at Washington, November 1, 
 1851, when he was Secretary of State under 
 Fillmore, Mr. Webster said : 
 
 " I have very much wished to see you all, and 
 in the early part of October seriously contem 
 plated going to Concord for a day. But I was 
 hindered by circumstances, and partly deterred 
 also by changes which have taken place. My 
 valued friend, Mr. Phinney (of Lexington), is 
 not living ; and many of those whom I so highly 
 esteemed, in your beautiful and quiet village, 
 have become a good deal estranged, to my great 
 grief, by abolitionism, free-soilism, transcenden 
 talism, and other notions, which I cannot (but) 
 regard as so many vagaries of the imagination. 
 These former warm friends would have no pleas 
 ure, of course, in intercourse with one of old-fash 
 ioned opinions. Nevertheless, dear Mrs. Che 
 ney, if I live to see another summer, I will make 
 a visit to your house, and talk about former 
 times and former things." 
 
CONCORD AND ITS FAMOUS PEOPLE. 95 
 
 He never came; for in June, 1852, the 
 Whig convention at Baltimore rejected his 
 name as a Presidential candidate, and he 
 went home to Marshfield to die. The tone 
 of sadness in this note was due, in part, 
 perhaps, to the eloquent denunciation of 
 Webster by Mr. Emerson in a speech at 
 Cambridge in 1851, and to the unequivocal 
 aversion with which Webster s contempo 
 rary, the first citizen of Concord, Samuel 
 Hoar, spoke of his 7th of March speech, and 
 the whole policy with which Webster had 
 identified himself in those dreary last years 
 of his life. Mr. Hoar had been sent by his 
 State in 1846 to protest in South Carolina 
 against the unconstitutional imprisonment 
 at Charleston of colored seamen from Mas 
 sachusetts ; and he had been driven by 
 force from the State to which he went as an 
 envoy. But, although Webster knew the 
 gross indignity of the act, and introduced 
 into his written speech in March, 1850, a 
 denunciation of it, he did not speak this 
 out in the Senate, nor did it appear in all 
 the authorized editions of the speech. He 
 could hardly expect Mr. Hoar to welcome 
 him in Concord after he had uttered his 
 
96 HENRY D. THOREAU, 
 
 willingness to return fugitive slaves, but 
 forgot to claim reparation for so shameful 
 an affront to Massachusetts as the Concord 
 Cato had endured. 
 
 Mr. Webster was attached to Concord 
 as most persons are who have ever spent 
 pleasant days there and used to compli 
 ment his friend on his house and garden by 
 the river side. Looking out upon his great 
 trees from the dining-room window, he 
 once said : " I am in the terrestrial par 
 adise, and I will prove it to you by this. 
 America is the finest continent on the globe, 
 the United States the finest country in 
 America, Massachusetts the best State in 
 the Union, Concord the best town in Mas 
 sachusetts, and my friend Cheney s field the 
 best acre in Concord." This was an opin 
 ion so like that often expressed by Henry 
 Thoreau, that one is struck by it. Indeed, 
 the devotion of Thoreau to his native town 
 was so marked as to provoke opposition. 
 " Henry talks about Nature," said Madam 
 Hoar (the mother of Senator Hoar, and 
 daughter of Roger Sherman of Connecticut^ 
 " just as if she d been born and brought up 
 in Concord." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE EMBATTLED FAKMEES. 
 
 IT was not the famous lawyers, the godly 
 ministers, the wealthy citizens, nor even the 
 learned ladies of Concord, who interested 
 Henry Thoreau specially, but the sturdy 
 farmers, each on his hereditary acres, bat 
 tling with the elements and enjoying that 
 open-air life which to Thoreau was the only 
 existence worth having. As his best biog 
 rapher, Ellery Channing, says : " He came 
 to see the inside of every farmer s house 
 and head, his pot of beans, and mug of hard 
 cider. Never in too much hurry for a dish 
 of gossip, he could sit out the oldest fre 
 quenter of the bar-room, and was alive from 
 top to toe with curiosity." 
 
 Concord, in our day, and still more in 
 Thoreau s childhood, was dotted with fre 
 quent old farm-houses, of the ample and 
 picturesque kind that bespeaks antiquity 
 and hospitality. In one such he was born, 
 
 7 
 
98 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 though not one of the oldest or the best. 
 He was present at the downfall of several 
 of these ancient homesteads, in whose date 
 and in the fortunes of their owners for suc 
 cessive generations, he took a deep interest ; 
 and still more in their abandoned orchards 
 and door-yards, where the wild apple tree 
 and the vivacious lilac still flourished. 
 
 To show what sort of men these Concord 
 farmers were in the days when their his 
 torical shot was fired, let me give some an 
 ecdotes and particulars concerning two of 
 the original family stocks, the Hosmers, 
 who first settled in Concord in 1635, with 
 Bulkeley and Willard, the founders of the 
 town ; and the Barretts, whose first ances 
 tor, Humphrey Barrett, came over in 1639. 
 James Hosmer, a clothier from Hawkhurst 
 in Kent, with his wife Ann (related to Ma 
 jor Simon Willard, that stout Kentishman, 
 Indian trader and Indian fighter, who bought 
 of the Squaw Sachem the township of Con 
 cord, six miles square), two infant daugh 
 ters, and two maid-servants, came from 
 London to Boston in the ship " Elizabeth," 
 and the next year built a house on Concord 
 Street, and a mill on the town brook. 
 
THE EMBATTLED FARMERS 99 
 
 From him descended James Hosmer, who 
 was killed at Sudbury in 1658, in an Indian 
 fight, Stephen, his great-grandson, a famous 
 surveyor, and Joseph, his great-great-grand 
 son, one of the promoters of the Revolu 
 tion, who had a share in its first fight at 
 Concord Bridge. Joseph Hosmer was the 
 son of a Concord farmer, who, in 1743, 
 seceded from the parish church, because 
 Rev. Daniel Bliss, the pastor, had said in a 
 sermon (as his opponents averred), " that it 
 was as great a sin for a man to get an estate 
 by honest labor, if he had not a single aim 
 at the glory of God, as to get it by gaming 
 at cards or dice." What this great-grand 
 father of Emerson did say, a century before 
 the Transcendental epoch, was this, as he 
 declared : " If husbandmen plow and sow 
 that they may be rich, and live in the pleas 
 ures of this world, and appear grand before 
 men, they are as far from true religion in 
 their plowing, sowing, etc., as men are that 
 game for the same purpose." Thomas Hos 
 mer, being a prosperous husbandman, per 
 haps with a turn for display, took offense, 
 and became a worshipper at what was called 
 the "Black Horse Church," a seceding 
 
100 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 conventicle which met at the tavern with 
 the sign of the Black Horse, near where 
 the Concord Library now stands. Joseph 
 Hosmer, his boy, was known at the village 
 school as " the little black colt," a lad 
 of adventurous spirit, with dark eyes and 
 light hair, whose mother, Prudence Hos 
 mer, would repeat old English poetry until 
 all her listeners but her son were weary. 
 When he was thirty-nine years old, married 
 and settled, a farmer and cabinet-maker, 
 there was a convention in the parish church 
 to consider the Boston Port Bill, the doings 
 of General Gage in Boston, and the advice 
 of Samuel Adams and John Hancock to re 
 sist oppression. Daniel Bliss, the leading 
 lawyer and leading Tory in Concord, eldest 
 son of Parson Bliss, and son-in-law of Col 
 onel Murray, of Rutland, Vt., the chief 
 Tory of that region, made a speech in this 
 convention against the patriotic party. He 
 was a graceful and fluent speaker, a hand 
 some man, witty, sarcastic, and popular, 
 but with much scorn for the plain people. 
 He painted in effective colors the power 
 of the mother country and the feebleness 
 of the colonies ; he was elegantly dressed, 
 
THE EMBATTLED FARMERS. 101 
 
 friendly in his manner, but discouraging to 
 the popular heart, and when he sat down, a 
 deep gloom seemed to settle on the assem 
 bly. His brother-in-law, Parson Emerson, 
 an ardent patriot, if present, was silent. 
 From a corner of the meeting-house there 
 rose at last a man with sparkling eyes, 
 plainly dressed in butternut brown, who be 
 gan to speak in reply to the handsome 
 young Tory, at first slowly and with hesi 
 tation, but soon taking fire at his own 
 thoughts, he spoke fluently, in a strain 
 of natural eloquence, which gained him the 
 ear and applause of the assembly. A del 
 egate from Worcester, who sat near Mr. 
 Bliss, noticed that the Tory was discom 
 posed, biting his lip, frowning, and pound 
 ing with the heel of his silver-buckled shoe. 
 "Who is the speaker?" he asked of Bliss. 
 " Hosmer, a Concord mechanic," was the 
 scornful reply. " Then how does he come 
 by his English ? " "Oh, he has an old 
 mother at home, who sits in her chimney- 
 corner and reads and repeats poetry all day 
 long;" adding in a moment, "He is the 
 most dangerous rebel in Concord, for he 
 has all the young men at his back, and 
 
102 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 where he leads the way they will surely 
 follow." 
 
 Four months later, in April, 1775, this 
 Concord mechanic made good the words of 
 his Tory townsman, for it was his speech to 
 the minute-men which goaded them on to 
 the fight. After forming the regiment as 
 adjutant, he addressed them, closing with 
 these words : " I have often heard it said 
 that the British boasted they could march 
 through our country, laying waste every 
 village and neighborhood, and that we 
 would not dare oppose them, and I be 
 gin to believe it is true" Then turning to 
 Major Buttrick, who commanded, and look 
 ing off from the hill-side to the village, from 
 which a thick smoke was rising, he cried, 
 " Will you let them burn the town down ? " 
 whereupon the sturdy major, who had no 
 such intention, ordered his men to march ; 
 and when, a few minutes later, the British 
 fired on his column of companies, the Acton 
 men at the head, he sprang from the ground 
 shouting, " Fire, fellow-soldiers, for God s 
 sake fire ! " and discharged his own piece 
 at the same instant. The story has often 
 been told, but will bear repetition. Tho- 
 
THE EMBATTLED FARMERS. 103 
 
 reau heard it in 1835 from the lips of Emer 
 son, as he pronounced the centennial dis 
 course in honor of the town s settlement 
 and history ; but he had read it and heard 
 it a hundred times before, from his earliest 
 childhood. Mr. Emerson added, after de 
 scribing the fight : 
 
 " These poor farmers who came up, that day, 
 to defend their Dative soil, acted from the sim 
 plest instincts ; they did not know it was a deed 
 of fame they were doing. These men did not 
 babble of glory ; they never dreamed their chil 
 dren would contend which had done the most. 
 They supposed they had a right to their corn and 
 their cattle, without paying tribute to any but 
 their own governors. And as they had no fear 
 of man, they yet did have a fear of God. Cap 
 tain Charles Miles, who was wounded in the pur 
 suit of the enemy, told my venerable friend (Dr. 
 Kipley), who sits by me, * that he went to the 
 services of that day with the same seriousness 
 and acknowledgment of God, which he carried to 
 church. " 
 
 Humphrey Barrett, fifth in descent from 
 the original settler, was born in 1752, on 
 the farm his ancestors had owned ever since 
 1640, and was no doubt in arms at Concord 
 Fight in 1775. His biographer says : 
 
104 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 " Some persons slightly acquainted with him 
 in the latter part of his life, judged him to be un 
 social, cold, and indifferent, but those most ac 
 quainted with him knew him to be precisely the 
 reverse. The following acts of his life make ap 
 parent some traits of his character. A negro, by 
 the name of Caesar Robbins, had been in the habit 
 of getting all the wood for his family use for 
 many years from Mr. Barrett s wood-lot near by 
 him ; this being done with the knowledge and 
 with the implied if not the express consent of the 
 owner. Mr. Barrett usually got the wood for 
 his own use from another part of his farm ; but 
 on one occasion he thought he would get it from 
 the lot by Caesar s. He accordingly sent two 
 men with two teams, with directions to cut only 
 hard wood. The men had been gone but a few 
 hours when Cassar came to Mr. Barrett s house, 
 his face covered with sweat, and in great agita 
 tion, and says, Master Barrett, I have come to 
 let you know that a parcel of men and teams 
 have broke into our wood-lot, and are making 
 terrible destruction of the very best trees, and 
 unless we do something immediately I shall be 
 ruined. Mr. Barrett had no heart to resist this 
 appeal of Caesar s ; he told him not to be alarmed, 
 for he would see that he was not hurt, and would 
 put the matter right. He then wrote an order 
 to his men to cut no more wood, but to come di 
 
THE EMBATTLED FARMERS. 105 
 
 rectly home with their teams, and sent the order 
 by Caesar." l 
 
 The biographer of Mr. Barrett, who was, 
 also his attorney and legal adviser, goes on 
 to say : 
 
 " A favorite nephew who bore his name, and 
 whose guardian he was, died under age in 1818, 
 leaving a large estate, and no relatives nearer 
 than uncle and aunt and the children of de 
 ceased aunts. Mr. Barrett believed that the 
 estate in equity ought to be distributed equally 
 between the uncle and aunt and the children 
 of deceased aunts by right of representation. 2 
 And although advised that such was not the 
 law, he still insisted upon having the question 
 carried before the Supreme Court for decision ; 
 
 1 This princely anecdote is paralleled, in its way, by 
 one told of Gershom Bradford, of Duxbury, son of Colo 
 nel Gam. Bradford, the friend of Washington and Kos- 
 ciusko, but himself a plain Old Colony farmer. Once 
 walking in his woods, he saw a man cutting down a fine 
 tree ; he concealed himself that the man might not see 
 him, and went home. When asked why he did not stop 
 the trespasser, he replied, " Could not the poor man have 
 a tree ? " Gershom Bradford was a descendant of Gov 
 ernor Bradford, the Pilgrim, and uncle of Mrs. Sarah 
 Ripley, of Concord. 
 
 2 This would, of course, diminish his own share, as 
 the law then stood, from one half the estate to one fourth, 
 or less. 
 
106 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 and when the court decided against his opinion, 
 he carried out his own views of equity by dis 
 tributing the portion that fell to him according to 
 his opinion of what the law ought to be. After 
 he had been fully advised that the estate would 
 be distributed in a manner he thought neither 
 equitable nor just, he applied to the writer to 
 make out his account as guardian ; furnishing the 
 evidence, as he believed, of the original amount 
 of all his receipts as such guardian. I made the 
 account, charging him with interest at six per 
 cent, on all sums from the time of receipt till the 
 time of making the account. Mr. Barrett took 
 the account for examination, and soon returned 
 it with directions to charge him with compound 
 interest, saying that he believed he had realized 
 as much as that. I accordingly made the account 
 conform to his directions. He then wished me 
 to present this account to the party who claimed 
 half the estate, and ask him to examine it with 
 care and see if anything was omitted. This was 
 done, and no material omission discovered, and 
 no objection made. Mr. Barrett then said that 
 he had always kept all the property of his 
 ward in a drawer appropriated for the purpose ; 
 that he made the amount of property in the 
 drawer greater than the balance of the account ; 
 and (handing to me the contents of the drawer \ 
 he wished me to ascertain the precise sum to 
 
THE EMBATTLED FARMERS. 107 
 
 which it amounted. I found that it exceeded the 
 balance of the account by $3,221.59. He then 
 told me, in substance, that he was quite unwilling 
 to have so large an amount of property go where 
 it was in danger of being distributed inequitably, 
 and particularly as he was confident he had dis 
 closed every source from which he had realized 
 any property of his ward, and also the actual 
 amount received ; but, as he knew not how it got 
 into the drawer, and had intended all the prop 
 erty there to go to his nephew, he should not feel 
 right to retain it, and therefore directed me to 
 add it to the amount of the estate, which was 
 done." 1 
 
 Conceive a community in which such char 
 acters were common, and imagine whether 
 the claim of King George and the fine gen 
 tlemen about him, to tax the Americans 
 without their own consent would be likely to 
 succeed ! I find in obscure anecdotes like 
 this sufficient evidence that if John Hamp- 
 den had emigrated to Massachusetts when 
 he had it in mind, he would have found 
 
 1 "These facts," says his biographer, whom I knew 
 well, " show clearly, I think, not only that his love of 
 right was stronger than his love of money, but that he 
 would rather make any sacrifice of property than leave 
 a doubt in his own mind whether justice had been done 
 to others." 
 
108 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 men like himself tilling their own acres in 
 Concord. The Barretts, from their name, 
 may have been Normans, but, like Hamp- 
 den, the Hosmers were Saxons, and held 
 land in England before William the Con 
 queror. When Major Hosmer, who was 
 adjutant, and formed the line of the regi 
 ment that returned the British fire at 
 Concord Bridge, had an estate to settle 
 about 1785, the heir to which was supposed 
 to be in England, he emploj^ed an agent, 
 who was then visiting London, to notify the 
 heir, and also desired him to go to the 
 Heralds Office and ascertain what coat-of- 
 arms belonged to any branch of the Hosmer 
 family. When the agent (who may have 
 been Mr. Tilly Merrick, of Concord, John 
 Adams s attache* in Holland), returned to 
 America, after reporting his more important 
 business to Major Hosmer, he added, 
 
 " I called at the Heralds Office in London, 
 and the clerk said, * There was no coat-of-arms 
 for you, and, if you were an Englishman you 
 would not want one ; for (he said) there were Hos 
 mers in Kent long before the Conquest ; and at the 
 battle of Hastings, the men of Kent were the van 
 guard of King Harold. " 
 
THE EMBATTLED FARMERS. 109 
 
 If Major Hosmer s ancestors failed to 
 drive back the invaders then, their descend 
 ants made good the failure in Concord seven 
 centuries later. 
 
 Thoreau s favorite walk, as he tells us, 
 the pathway toward Heaven, was along 
 the old Marlborough road, west and south 
 west from Concord village, through deep 
 woods in Concord and in Sudbury. To 
 reach this road he passed by the great Hos- 
 mer farm-house, built by the old major 
 already mentioned, in 1760 or thereabout, 
 and concerning which there is a pretty 
 legend that Thoreau may have taken with 
 him along the Marlborough road. In 1758, 
 young Jo. Hosmer, " the little black colt," 
 drove to Marlborough one autumn day with 
 a load of furniture he had made for Jon 
 athan Barnes, a rich farmer, and town clerk 
 in thrifty Marlborough. He had received 
 the money for his furniture, and was stand 
 ing on the doorstep, preparing to go home, 
 when a young girl, Lucy Barnes, the daugh 
 ter of the house, ran up to him and said, 
 * Concord woods are dark, and a thunder 
 storm is coming up ; you had better stay 
 all night." " Since you ask me, I will," 
 
110 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 was the reply, and the visit was often re 
 peated in the next few months. But when 
 he asked farmer Jonathan for his daughter, 
 the reply was, 
 
 " Concord plains are barren soil. Lucy had 
 better marry her cousin John, whose father will 
 give him one of the best farms in Marlborough, 
 with a good house on it, and Lucy can match 
 his land acre for acre." 
 
 Joseph returned from that land of Egypt, 
 and like a wise youth took the hint, and 
 built a house of his own, planting the elm 
 trees that now overshadow it, after a hun 
 dred and twenty years. After the due in 
 terval he went again to Marlborough, and 
 found Lucy Barnes in the September sun 
 shine, gathering St. Michael s pears in her 
 father s garden. Cousin John was married, 
 by this time, to another damsel. Miss Lucy 
 was bent on having her own way and her 
 own Joseph ; and so Mr. Barnes gave his 
 consent. They were married at Christmas, 
 1761 ; and Lucy came home behind him on 
 his horse, through the same Concord woods. 
 She afterwards told her youngest son, with 
 Borne pique : 
 
 " When my brother Jonathan was married, and 
 
THE EMBATTLED FARMERS. Ill 
 
 went to New Hampshire, twenty couples on 
 horseback followed them to Haverhill, on the 
 Merrimac, but when your father and I were 
 married, we came home alone through these dark 
 Concord woods." 1 
 
 The son of this lively Lucy Hosmer, Rufns 
 Hosmer, of Stow, was a classmate, at Cam 
 bridge, of Washington Allston, the late 
 Chief Justice Shaw, and Dr. Charles Low 
 ell, father of Lowell the poet. They grad 
 uated in 1798, and Dr. Lowell afterwards 
 wrote : 
 
 " I can recall with peculiar pleasure a vacation 
 passed in Concord in my senior year, which 
 Loammi Baldwin, Lemuel Shaw, Washington 
 Allston, and myself spent with Rufus Hosmer at 
 his father s house. I recall the benign face of 
 Major Hosmer, as he stood in the door to receive 
 us, with his handsome daughter-in-law (the wife 
 of Capt. Cyrus Hosmer) on his arm. There 
 was a charming circle of young people then liv 
 ing in Concord, and we boys enjoyed this very 
 
 1 Lucy Barnes, daughter of Jonathan and Rachel 
 Barnes of Marlborough, was born July 7, 1742, married 
 Joseph Hosmer, of Concord, December 24, 1761, and 
 died in Concord, , . Her brother was Rev. 
 
 Jonathan Barnes, born in 1749, graduated at Harvard 
 College, in 1770, and settled as a minister in Hillsborough, 
 N. H., where he died in 1805. 
 
112 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 much ; but we liked best of all to stay at home 
 and listen to the Major s stories. It was very 
 pleasant to have a rainy day come for this, and 
 hard to tell which seemed the happier, he or we." 
 
 Forty years afterward, in 1838, Dr. Low 
 ell s son, James Russell Lowell, coming 
 under college discipline, was sent to Con 
 cord to spend a similar summer vacation, 
 and wrote his class poem in that town. 
 
 Major Hosmer died in 1821, at the age 
 of eighty-five. Mr. Samuel Hoar, long the 
 leader of the Middlesex County bar, who 
 knew him in his later life, once said, 
 
 " In two respects he excelled any one I have 
 ever known ; he was more entirely free from 
 prejudice, and also the best reader of men. So 
 clear was his mind and so strong his reasoning 
 power, that I would have defied the most elo 
 quent pleader at the bar to have puzzled him, no 
 matter how skillfully he concealed the weak 
 points of the case. I can imagine him listening 
 quietly, and saying in his slow way, It s a pity 
 so many fine words should be wasted, for, you 
 see, the man s on the wrong side. " 
 
 Another old lawyer of Concord, who 
 first saw Major Hosmer when he was a 
 child of ten, and the Major was sixty years 
 old, said, 
 
THE EMBATTLED FARMERS. 113 
 
 v 
 
 " I then formed an opinion of him in two re 
 spects that I never altered : First, that he had 
 the handsomest eyes I ever saw ; second, those 
 eyes saw the inside of my head as clearly as they 
 did the outside." 
 
 He was for many years sheriff of the 
 county, and it was the habit of the young 
 lawyers in term-time to get round his chair 
 and ask his opinion about their cases. Such 
 wa his knowledge of the common law, and 
 so well did he know the judges and jury 
 men, that when he said to Mr. Hoar, " I 
 fear you will lose your case," that gentle 
 man said, " from that moment I felt it lost, 
 for I never knew him to make a wrong 
 guess." He was a Federalist of the old 
 school, and in his eyes Alexander Hamilton 
 was the first man in America. His son 
 held much the same opinion of Daniel 
 Webster. 
 
 Near by Major Hosmer s farm-house 
 stood the old homestead and extensive farm 
 buildings of the Lee family, who at the be 
 ginning of the Revolution owned one of the 
 two or three great farms in Concord. This 
 estate has been owned and sold in one par 
 cel of about four hundred acres ever since 
 
114 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 it was first occupied by Henry Woodhonse 
 about 1650. It lies between the two rivers 
 Assabet and Musketaquid, and includes 
 Nahshawtuc, or Lee s Hill, on which, in 
 early days, was an Indian village. The 
 Lees inherited it from the original owner, 
 and held it for more than one hundred 
 years, though it narrowly escaped confis 
 cation in 1775, its owner being a Tory. 
 Early in the present century it fell,, by 
 means of a mortgage, into the hands of 
 " old Billy Gray " (the founder of the for 
 tunes that for two or three generations have 
 been held in the Gray family of Boston), 
 was by him sold to Judge Fay, of Cam 
 bridge, and by him, in 1822, conveyed to 
 his brother-in-law, Joseph Barrett, of Con 
 cord, a distant cousin of the Humphrey 
 Barrett, mentioned elsewhere. Joseph Bar 
 rett had been one of Major Hosmer s depu 
 ties, when the old yeoman was sheriff, but 
 now turned his attention to farming his 
 many acres, and deserves mention here as 
 one of the Concord farmers of two genera 
 tions after the battle, among whom Henry 
 Thoreau grew up. Indeed, the Lee Farm 
 was one of his most accustomed haunts, 
 
THE EMBATTLED FARMERS. 115 
 
 since the river flowed round it for a mile 
 or two, and its commanding hill-top gave 
 a prospect toward the western and north 
 western mountains, Wachusett and Monad- 
 noc chief among the beautiful brotherhood, 
 whom Thoreau early saluted with a dithy- 
 rambic verse : 
 
 11 With frontier strength ye stand your ground, 
 With grand content ye circle round, 
 (Tumultuous silence for all sound), 
 Ye distant nursery of rills, 
 Monadnoc and the Peterhoro hills ; 
 
 But special I remember thee, 
 Wachusett, who, like me, 
 Standest alone without society; 
 Thy far blue eye 
 A remnant of the sky." 
 
 Lee s Hill (which must be distinguished 
 from Lee s Cliff, three miles further up the 
 main river), was the centre of this farm, 
 and almost of the township itself, and Squire 
 Barrett, while he tilled its broad acres (or 
 left them untilled), might be called the 
 centre of the farmers of his county. He 
 was for some years president of the Mid 
 dlesex Agricultural Society (before which, 
 in later years, Emerson, and Thoreau, and 
 Agassiz gave addresses), and took the prize 
 
116 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 in the plowing-match at its October cattle- 
 show, holding his own plow, and driving 
 his oxen himself. Descending from the 
 committee-room in dress coat and ruffled 
 shirt, he found his plow-team waiting for 
 him, but his rivals in the match already 
 turning their furrows. Laying off his coat, 
 and fortifying himself with a pinch of mac- 
 caboy, while, as his teamster vowed, " that 
 nigh-ox had his eye on the Squire from the 
 time he hove in sight, ready to start the 
 minute he took the plow-handles," then 
 stepping to the task, six feet and one inch 
 in height, and in weight two hundred and 
 fifty pounds, the Squire began, and before 
 the field was plowed he had won the pre 
 mium. He was one of the many New Eng 
 land yeomen we have all known, who gave 
 the lie to the common saying about the stur 
 dier bulk and sinew of our beer-drinking 
 cousins across the water. Squire Barrett 
 could lift a barrel of cider into a cart, and 
 once carried on his shoulders, up two flights 
 of stairs, a sack containing eight bushels of 
 Indian corn, which must have weighed more 
 than four hundred pounds. He was a good 
 horseman, an accomplished dancer, and in 
 
TEE EMBATTLED FARMERS. 117 
 
 the hayfield excelled in the graceful sweep 
 of his scythe and the flourish of his pitch 
 fork. 
 
 In course of time (1840) Mr. Alcott, 
 with his wife (a daughter of Colonel May, 
 of Boston), and those daughters who have 
 since become celebrated, came to live in the 
 Hosmer cottage not far from Squire Bar 
 rett s, and under the very eaves of Major 
 Hosmer s farm-house, to which in 1761 came 
 the fair and willful Lucy Barnes. The 
 portly and courtly Squire, who knew Colo 
 nel May, came to call on his neighbors, and 
 had many a chat with Mrs. Alcott about her 
 Boston kindred, the Mays, Sewalls, Salis- 
 burys, etc. His civility was duly returned 
 by Mrs. Alcott, who, when Squire Barrett 
 was a candidate for State Treasurer in 1845, 
 was able, by letters to her friends in Bos 
 ton, to give, him useful support. He was 
 chosen, and held the office till his death in 
 1849, when Thoreau had just withdrawn 
 from his Walden hermitage, and was pub 
 lishing his first book, " A Week on the 
 Concord and Merrimack." 
 
 Thoreau s special friend among the far 
 mers was another character, Edmund Hos- 
 
118 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 mer, a scion of the same prolific Hosmer 
 stock, who died in 1881. Edmund Hosmer, 
 with Mr. Alcott, George Curtis and his 
 brother Burrill, and other friends, helped 
 Thoreau raise the timbers of his cabin in 
 1845, and was often his Sunday visitor in 
 the hermitage. Of him it is that mention 
 is made in " Walden," as follows : 
 
 " On a Sunday afternoon, if I chanced to be 
 at home, I heard the crunching of the snow, made 
 by the step of a long-headed farmer, who from 
 far through the woods sought my house, to have 
 a social crack ; one of the few of his vocation 
 who are < men on their farms ; who donned a 
 frock instead of a professor s gown, and is as ready 
 to extract the moral out of church or state as to 
 haul a load of manure from his barn-yard. We 
 talked of rude and simple times, when men sat 
 about large fires in cold, bracing weather, with 
 clear heads ; and when other dessert failed, we 
 tried our teeth on many a nut which wise squir 
 rels have long since abandoned, for those which 
 have the thickest shells are commonly empty." 
 
 Edmund Hosmer, who was a friend of 
 Mr. Emerson also, and of whom George 
 Curtis and his brother hired land which 
 they cultivated for a time, has been cele- 
 
THE EMBATTLED FARMERS. 119 
 
 brated in prose and verse by other Concord 
 authors. I suppose it was he of whom 
 Emerson wrote thus in his apologue of 
 Saadi, many years ago : 
 
 " Said Saadi, When I stood before 
 Hassan the camel-driver s door, 
 I scorned the fame of Timour brave, 
 Timour to Hassan was a slave. 
 In every glance of Hassan s eye 
 I read rich years of victory. 
 And I, who cower mean and small 
 In the frequent interval 
 When wisdom not with me resides, 
 Worship Toil s wisdom that abides. 
 I shunned his eyes the faithful man s, 
 I shunned the toiling Hassan s glance." 
 
 Edmund Hosmer was also, in George 
 Curtis s description of a conversation at Mr. 
 Emerson s house in 1845, " the sturdy far 
 mer neighbor, who had bravely fought his 
 way through inherited embarrassments to 
 the small success of a New England hus 
 bandman, and whose faithful wife had seven 
 times merited well of her country." And 
 it may be that he was Ellery Channing s 
 
 " Spicy farming sage, 
 
 Twisted with heat and cold and cramped with age, 
 Who grunts at all the sunlight through the year, 
 And springs from bed each morning with a cheer. 
 
120 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 Of all his neighbors he can something tell, 
 T is had, whate er, we know, and like it well ! 
 The bluebird s song he hears the first in spring, 
 Shoots the last goose bound south on freezing wing." 
 
 Hosmer might have sat, also, for the more 
 idyllic picture of the Concord farmer, 
 which Charming has drawn in his " New 
 England " : 
 
 " This man takes pleasure o er the crackling fire, 
 His glittering axe subdued the monarch oak; 
 He earned the cheerful blaze by something higher 
 Than pensioned blows. he owned the tree he stroke, 
 And knows the value of the distant smoke, 
 When he returns at night, his labor done, 
 Matched in his action with the long day s sun." 
 
 Near the small farm of Edmund Hosmer, 
 when Mr. Curtis lived with him and some 
 times worked on his well-tilled acres, lay 
 a larger farm, which, about the beginning 
 of Thoreau s active life, was brought from 
 neglect and barrenness into high cultivation 
 by Captain Abel Moore, another Concord 
 farmer, and one of the first, in this part of 
 the country, to appreciate the value of our 
 bog -meadows for cultivation by ditching 
 and top-dressing with the sand which Na 
 ture had so thoughtfully ridged up in hills 
 close by. Under the name of "Captain 
 
THE EMBATTLED FARMERS. 121 
 
 Hardy," Emerson celebrated this achieve 
 ment of his townsman, upon which the hun 
 dreds who in summer strolled to the School 
 of Philosophy in Mr. Alcott s orchard, gazed 
 with admiration, bettered as it had been 
 by the thirty years toil and skill bestowed 
 upon it since by Captain Moore s son and 
 grandson. Emerson said : 
 
 " Look across the fence into Captain Hardy s 
 land. There s a musician for you who knows 
 how to make men dance for him in all weathers, 
 all sorts of men, Paddies, felons, farmers, 
 carpenters, painters, yes, and trees, and grapes, 
 and ice, and stone, hot days, cold days. Beat 
 that true Orpheus lyre if you can. He knows 
 how to make men sow, dig, mow, and lay stone 
 wall ; to make trees bear fruit God never gave 
 them, and foreign grapes yield the juices of 
 France and Spain, on his south side. He saves 
 every drop of sap, as if it were his blood. See 
 his cows, his horses, his swine ! And he, the 
 piper that plays the jig they all must dance, biped 
 and quadruped, is the plainest, stupidest harle 
 quin, in a coat of no colors. His are the woods, 
 the waters, hills, and meadows. With one blast 
 of his pipe he danced a thousand tons of gravel 
 from yonder blowing sand-heap to the bog-mead 
 ow, where the English grass is waving over 
 
122 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 thirty acres ; with another, he winded away sixty 
 head of cattle in the spring, to the pastures of 
 Peterboro on the hills." 
 
 Such were and are the yeomen of Con 
 cord, among whom Thoreau spent his days, 
 a friend to them and they to him, though 
 each sometimes spoke churlishly of the 
 other. He surveyed their wood-lots, laid 
 out their roads, measured their fields and 
 pastures for division among the heirs when 
 a husbandman died, inspected their riv 
 ers and ponds, and exchanged informa 
 tion with them concerning the birds, the 
 beasts, insects, flowers, crops, and trees. 
 Their yearly Cattle Show in October was 
 his chief festival, one of the things he re 
 gretted, when living on the edge of New 
 York Bay, and sighing for Fairhaven and 
 White Pond. Without them the landscape 
 of his native valley would not have been so 
 dear to his eyes, and to their humble and 
 perennial virtues he owed more inspiration 
 than he would always confess. 
 
 He read in the crabbed Latin of those 
 old Roman farmers, Cato, Varro, and musi 
 cally-named Columella, and fancied the 
 farmers of Concord were daily obeying 
 
THE EMBATTLED FARMERS. 123 
 
 Cato s directions, who in turn was but re 
 peating the maxims of a more remote antiq 
 uity. 
 
 " I see the old, pale-faced farmer walking be 
 side his team, with contented thoughts," he says, 
 " for the five thousandth time. This drama every 
 day in the streets ; this is the theatre I go to. 
 . . . Human life may be transitory and full of 
 trouble, but the perennial mind, whose survey 
 extends from that spring to this, from Columella 
 to Hosmer, is superior to change. I will iden 
 tify myself with that which did not die with Colu 
 mella, and will not die with Hosmer." 
 
 Note. The account of " Captain Hardy " was copied 
 by Channing from Emerson s Journal into the first bio 
 graphy of Thoreau, without the name of the author ; and 
 so was credited by me to Thoreau in a former edition of 
 this book. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE TRANSCENDENTAL PERIOD. 
 
 ALTHOUGH Henry Thoreau would have 
 been, in any place or time of the world s 
 drama, a personage of note, it has already 
 been observed, in regard to his career and his 
 unique literary gift, that they were affected, 
 and in some sort fashioned by the influ 
 ences of the very time and place in which he 
 found himself at the opening of life. It was 
 the sunrise of New England Transcendent 
 alism in which he first looked upon the 
 spiritual world ; when Carlyle in England, 
 Alcott, Emerson, and Margaret Fuller in 
 Massachusetts, were preparing their con 
 temporaries in America for that modern 
 Renaissance which has been so fruitful, for 
 the last forty years, in high thought, vital 
 religion, pure literature, and great deeds. 
 And the place of his birth and breeding, 
 the home of his affections, as it was the 
 Troy, the Jerusalem, and the Rome of his 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL PERIOD. 125 
 
 imagination, was determined by Providence 
 to be that very centre and shrine of Tran 
 scendentalism, the little village of Concord, 
 which would have been saved from oblivion 
 by his books, had it no other title to re 
 membrance. Let it be my next effort, then, 
 to give some hint not a brief chronicle 
 of that extraordinary age, not yet ended 
 (often as they tell us of its death and epi 
 taph), now known to all men as the Tran 
 scendental Period. We must wait for after- 
 times to fix its limits and determine its dawn 
 and setting ; but of its apparent beginning 
 and course, one cycle coincided quite closely 
 with the life of Thoreau. He was born in 
 July, 1817, when Emerson was entering 
 college at Cambridge, and Carlyle was 
 wrestling " with doubt, fear, unbelief, mock 
 ery, and scoffing, in agony of spirit," at 
 Edinburgh. He died in May, 1862, when 
 the distinctly spiritual and literary era 
 of Transcendentalism had closed, its years 
 of preparation were over, and it had en 
 tered upon the conflict of political regen 
 eration, for which Thoreau was constantly 
 sounding the trumpet. In these forty-five 
 years, a longer period than tte age of Per- 
 
126 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 icles, or of the Medici, or of Queen Eliza 
 beth, New England Transcendentalism 
 rose, climbed, and culminated, leaving re 
 sults that, for our America, must be com 
 pared with those famous eras of civiliza 
 tion. Those ages, in fact, were well-nigh 
 lost upon us, until Channing, Emerson, Tho- 
 reau, Margaret Fuller, and their fellowship, 
 brought us into communication with the 
 Greek, the Italian, and the noble Eliza 
 bethan revivals of genius and art. We had 
 been living under the Puritan reaction, 
 modified and politically fashioned by the 
 more humane philosophy of the eighteenth 
 century, while the freedom-breathing, but 
 half -barbarizing influences of pioneer life in 
 a new continent, had also turned aside the 
 full force of English and Scotch Calvinism. 
 It is common to trace the so-called Tran 
 scendentalism of New England to Carlyle 
 and Coleridge and Wordsworth in the 
 mother-country, and to Goethe, Richter, and 
 Kant in Germany; and there is a certain 
 outward affiliation of this sort, which can 
 not be denied. But that which in our spir 
 itual soil gave root to the foreign seeds thus 
 wafted hither ward, was a certain inward 
 
TEE TRANSCENDENTAL PERIOD. 127 
 
 tendency of high Calvinism and its coun 
 terpart, Quakerism, always welling forth in 
 the American colonies. Now it inspired 
 Cotton, Wheelwright, Sir Harry Vane, and 
 Mistress Anne Hutchinson, in Massachu 
 setts ; now William Penn and his quaint 
 brotherhood on the Delaware; now Jon 
 athan Edwards and Sarah Pierpont, in 
 Connecticut; and, again, John Woolman, 
 the wandering Friend of God and man, in 
 New Jersey, Nicholas Oilman, the convert 
 of Whitefield, in New Hampshire, and Sam 
 uel Hopkins, the preacher of disinterested 
 benevolence, in Rhode Island, held forth 
 this noble doctrine of the Inner Light. It 
 is a gospel peculiarly attractive to poets, 
 so that even the loose-girt Davenant, who 
 would fain think himself the left-hand son 
 of Shakespeare, told gossiping old Aubrey 
 that he believed the world, after a while, 
 would settle into one religion, " an ingeni 
 ous Quakerism," that is, a faith in divine 
 communication that would yet leave some 
 scope for men of wit like himself. How 
 truly these American Calvinists and Qua 
 kers prefigured the mystical part of Concord 
 philosophy, may be seen by a few of their 
 sayings. 
 
128 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 Jonathan Edwards, in 1723, when he was 
 twenty years old, and the fair saint of his 
 adoration was fifteen, thus wrote in his 
 diary what he had seen and heard of Sarah 
 Pierpont : 
 
 " There is a young lady in New Haven who 
 is beloved of that Great Being who made and 
 rules the world ; and there are certain seasons 
 in which this Great Being, in some way or other 
 invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with 
 exceeding sweet delight, and she hardly cares for 
 anything except to meditate on Him. Therefore, 
 if you present all the world before her, with the 
 richest of its treasures, she disregards -it, and 
 cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or 
 affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her 
 mind, and a singular purity in her affections ; is 
 most just and conscientious in all her conduct ; 
 and you could not persuade her to do anything 
 wrong or sinful, if you would give her all the 
 world, lest she should offend this Great Being. 
 She will sometimes go about from place to place 
 singing sweetly, and seems to be always full of 
 joy and pleasure, and no one knows for what. 
 She loves to be alone walking in the fields and 
 groves, and seems to have some one invisible al 
 ways conversing with her." 
 
 Nicholas Oilman, the parish minister of 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL PERIOD. 129 
 
 little Durham, in New Hampshire, being 
 under concern of mind for his friend White- 
 field, and the great man of New England, 
 at that time, Sir William Pepperell, just 
 setting forth for the capture of Louisburg 
 wrote to them in March, 1745, to Sir 
 William thus : 
 
 " Do you indeed love the Lord ? do you make 
 the Lord your Guide and Counselor in ye affair ? 
 If you have a Soul, great as that Hero David of 
 old, you will ask of the Lord, and not go till he 
 bid you : David would not. If you are sincerely 
 desirous to know and do your duty in that and 
 every other respect, and seek of God in Faith, 
 you shall know that, and everything else needful, 
 one thing after another, as fast as you are pre 
 pared for it. But God will, doubtless, hum 
 ble such as leave him out of their Schemes, as 
 though his Providence was not at all concerned 
 in the matter whereas his Blessing is all in 
 all." 
 
 To Whitefield, Oilman wrote in the same 
 vein, on the same day : 
 
 " Are you sufficiently sure that his call is from 
 
 above, that he was moved by the Holy Ghost to 
 
 this Expedition ? Would it be no advantage to 
 
 his Estate to win the place ? May he not have a 
 
 9 
 
130 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 prospect of doubling his Wealth and Honours, if 
 crowned with Success? What Demonstration 
 has he given of being so entirely devoted to the 
 Lord ? He has a vast many Talents, is it an 
 easy thing for so Wise a man to become a Fool 
 for Christ ? so great a man to become a Little 
 Child ? so rich a man to crowd in at the Strait 
 Gate of Conversion, and make so little noise ? 
 ... If you see good to encourage the Expedition, 
 be fully satisfy d the project was formed in 
 Heaven. Was the Lord first consulted in the 
 affair ? Did they wait for his Counsell ? " 
 
 John Woolman, the New Jersey Quaker 
 (born in 1720, died in 1772), said, 
 
 " There is a principle which is pure, placed in 
 the human mind, which, in different places and 
 ages hath had different names; it is, however, 
 pure, and proceeds from God. It is deep and 
 inward, confined to no forms of religion, nor ex 
 cluded from any, when the heart stands in per 
 fect sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root 
 and grows, they become brethren. That state in 
 which every motion from the selfish spirit yield- 
 eth to pure love, I may acknowlege with grati 
 tude to the Father of Mercies, is often opened 
 before me as a pearl to seek after." 1 
 
 1 The resemblance between some of John Woolman a 
 utterances and those of Henry Thoreau has been noticed 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL PERIOD. 131 
 
 That even the pious egotism and the 
 laughable vagaries of Transcendentalism 
 had their prototype in the private medita 
 tions of the New England Calvinists, is well 
 known to such as have studied old diaries 
 of the Massachusetts ministers. Thus, a 
 minister of Maiden (a successor of the aw 
 ful Michael Wigglesworth, whose alleged 
 poem, " The Day of Doom," as Cotton 
 Mather thought, might perhaps " find our 
 children till the Day itself arrives "), in his 
 diary for 1735, thus enters his trying ex 
 periences with a " one-horse Shay," whose 
 short life may claim comparison with that 
 of the hundred-year master-piece of Dr. 
 Holmes s deacon : 
 
 "January 31. Bought a shay for 27 10s. 
 The Lord grant it may be a comfort and blessing 
 to my family. 
 
 by Whittier, who says of the New Jersey Quaker, " From 
 his little farm on the Kancocas he looked out with a 
 mingled feeling of wonder and sorrow upon the hurry 
 and unrest of the world ; he regarded the merely rich man 
 with unfeigned pity. With nothing of his scorn, he had 
 all of Thoreau s commiseration for people who went 
 about, bowed down with the weight of broad acres and 
 great houses on their backs." The " scorn" of Thoreau 
 and the " pity/ of Woolman, sprang from a common 
 root, however. 
 
132 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 "March, 1735. Had a safe and comfortable 
 journey to York. 
 
 "April 24. Shay overturned, with my wife 
 and I in it, yet neither of us much hurt. Blessed 
 be our gracious Preserver ! Part of the shay, as 
 it lay upon one side, went over my wife, and yet 
 she was scarcely anything hurt. How wonder 
 ful the preservation ! 
 
 " May 5. Went to the Beach with three of 
 the children. The Beast being frighted, when 
 we were all out of the shay, overturned and broke 
 it. I desire (I hope I desire it) that the Lord 
 would teach me suitably to repent this Providence, 
 to make suitable r-emarks on it, and to be suita 
 bly affected with it. Have I done well to get 
 me a shay ? Have I not been proud or too fond 
 of this convenience ? Do I exercise the faith in 
 the divine care and protection which I ought to 
 do ? Should I not be more in my study, and less 
 fond of diversion ? Do I not withhold more than 
 is meet from pious and charitable uses ? 
 
 "May 15. Shay brought home ; mending cost 
 30 shillings. Favored in this beyond expecta 
 tion. 
 
 "May 16. My wife and I rode to Rumney 
 Marsh. The Beast frighted several times." 
 
 At last this divine comedy ends with the 
 pathetic conclusive line, 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL PERIOD. 133 
 
 "June 4. Disposed of my shay to the Rev. 
 Mr. White." 
 
 I will not pause to dwell on the laugh 
 able episodes and queer characteristic feat 
 ures of the Transcendental Period, though 
 such it had in abundance. They often 
 served to correct the soberer absurdity with 
 which our whole country was slipping un 
 consciously down the easy incline of national 
 ruin and dishonor, from which only a 
 bloody civil war could at last save us. Tho- 
 reau saw this clearly, and his political ut 
 terances, paradoxical as they seemed in the 
 two decades from 1840 to 1860, now read 
 like the words of a prophet. But there are 
 some points in the American Renaissance 
 which may here be touched on, so much 
 light do they throw on the times. It was 
 a period of strange faiths and singular apoca 
 lypses that of Charles Fourier being one. 
 In February, 1843, Mr. Emerson, writing 
 to Henry Thoreau from New York, where 
 he was then lecturing, said : 
 
 " Mr. Brisbane has just given me a faithful 
 hour and a half of what he calls his principles, 
 and he shames truer men by his fidelity and zeal ; 
 and already begins to hear the reverberations of 
 
134 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 his single voice from most of the States of the 
 Union. He thinks himself sure of W. H. Chan- 
 ning here, as a good Fourierist. I laugh incred 
 ulous whilst he recites (for it seems always as if 
 he was repeating paragraphs out of his master s 
 book) descriptions of the self-augmenting potency 
 of the solar system, which is destined to contain 
 one hundred and thirty-two bodies, I believe, 
 and his urgent inculcation of our stellar duties* 
 But it has its kernel of sound truth, and its in 
 sanity is so wide of the New York insanities that 
 it is virtue and honor." 
 
 This was written a few months before 
 Thoreau himself went to New York, and it 
 was while there that he received from his 
 friends in Concord and in Harvard, the 
 wondrous account of Mr. Alcott s Paradise 
 Regained at Fruitlands ; where in due time 
 Thoreau made his visit and inspected that 
 Garden of Eden on the Coldspring Brook. 
 
 If Mr. Brisbane had his " stellar duties " 
 and inculcated them in others, the Brook 
 Farmers of 1842-43 had their planetary mis 
 sion also ; namely, to cultivate the face of 
 the planet they inhabited, and to do it with 
 their own hands, as Adam and Noah did. 
 Of the Brook Farm enterprise much has 
 been written, and much more will be ; but 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL PERIOD. 135 
 
 concerning the more individual dream of 
 Thoreau s friends at " Fruitlands," less is 
 known ; and I may quote a few pages con 
 cerning it from Thoreau s correspondence. 
 While Thoreau was at Staten Island in 
 1843, Mr. Emerson wrote to him often, giv 
 ing the news of Concord as a Transcend 
 ental capital. In May of that year we 
 have this intelligence : 
 
 " Ellery Charming is well settled in his house, 
 and works very steadily thus far, and our inter 
 course is very agreeable to me. Young Ball (B. 
 W.) has been to see me, and is a prodigious 
 reader and a youth of great promise, born, too, 
 in the good town. Mr. Hawthorne is well, and 
 Mr. Alcott and Mr. Lane are revolving a pur 
 chase in Harvard of ninety acres." 
 
 This was " Fruitlands," described in the 
 " Dial " for 1843, and which Charles Lane 
 himself describes in a letter soon to be cited. 
 In June, 1843, Mr. Emerson again sends 
 tidings from Concord, where the Fitchburg 
 railroad was then building : 
 
 " The town is full of Irish, and the woods of 
 engineers, with theodolite and red flag, singing 
 out their feet and inches to each other from sta 
 tion to station. Near Mr. Alcott s (the Hosmer 
 
136 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 cottage) the road is already begun. From Mr. 
 A. and Mr. Lane at Harvard we have yet heard 
 nothing. They went away in good spirits, hav 
 ing sent 4 Wood Abram and Lamed, and Will 
 iam Lane before them with horse and plow, a 
 few days in advance, to begin the spring work. 
 Mr. Lane paid me a long visit, in which he was 
 more than I had ever known him gentle and 
 open ; and it was impossible not to sympathize 
 with and honor projects that so often seem with 
 out feet or hands. They have near a hundred 
 acres of land which they do not want, and no 
 house, which they want first of all. But they 
 account this an advantage, as it gives them the 
 occasion they so much desire, of building after 
 their own idea. In the event of their attracting 
 to their company a carpenter or two, which is not 
 impossible, it would be a great pleasure to see 
 their building, which could hardly fail to be 
 new and beautiful. They have fifteen acres of 
 woodland, with good timber." 
 
 Then, passing in a moment from " Fruit- 
 lands" to Concord woods, Thoreau s friend 
 writes : 
 
 " Ellery Channing is excellent company, and 
 we walk in all directions. He remembers you 
 with great faith and hope, thinks you ought not 
 to see Concord again these ten years ; that you 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL PERIOD. 137 
 
 ought to grind up fifty Concords in your mill ; 
 and much other opinion and counsel he holds in 
 store on this topic. Hawthorne walked with me 
 yesterday afternoon, and not until after our re 
 turn did I read his * Celestial Railroad/ which has 
 a serene strength we cannot afford not to praise, 
 in this low life. I have letters from Miss Fuller 
 at Niagara. She found it sadly cold and rainy at 
 the Falls." 
 
 Not so with Mr. Alcott and Mr. Lane in 
 the first flush of their hopes at Fruitlands. 
 On the 9th of June, the date of the let 
 ter just quoted being June 7, Mr. Lane 
 writes to Thoreau : 
 
 " DEAR FRIEND, The receipt of two accept 
 able numbers of the Pathfinder reminds me 
 that I am not altogether forgotten by one who, if 
 not in the busy world, is at least much nearer to 
 it externally than I am. Busy indeed we all 
 are, since our removal here ; but so recluse is our 
 position, that with the world at large we have 
 scarcely any connection. You may possibly have 
 heard that, after all our efforts during the spring 
 had failed to place us in connection with the 
 earth, and Mr. Alcott s journey to Oriskany and 
 Vermont had turned out a blank, one after 
 noon in the latter part of May, Providence sent 
 to us the legal owner of a slice of the planet ir 
 
138 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 this township (Harvard), with whom we have 
 been enabled to conclude for the concession of 
 his rights. It is very remotely placed, nearly three 
 miles beyond the village, without a road, sur 
 rounded by a beautiful green landscape of fields 
 and woods, with the distance filled up by some 
 of the loftiest mountains in the State. The views 
 are, indeed, most poetic and inspiring. You have 
 no doubt seen the neighborhood ; but from these 
 very fields, where you may at once be at home and 
 out, there is enough to love and revel in for sym 
 pathetic souls like yours. On the estate are 
 about fourteen acres of wood, part of it extremely 
 pleasant as a retreat, a very sylvan realization, 
 which only wants a Thoreau s mind to elevate it 
 to classic beauty. 
 
 " I have some imagination that you are not so 
 happy and so well housed in your present posi 
 tion as you would be here amongst us ; although 
 at present there is much hard manual labor, 
 so much that, as you perceive, my usual hand 
 writing is very greatly suspended. We have 
 only two associates in addition to our own fami 
 lies ; our house accommodations are poor and 
 scanty ; but the greatest want is of good female 
 aid. Far too much labor devolves on Mrs. Al- 
 cott. If you should light on any such assistance, 
 it would be charitable to give it a direction this 
 way. We may, perhaps, be rather particulai 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL PERIOD. 139 
 
 about the quality ; but the conditions will pretty 
 well determine the acceptability of the parties 
 without a direct adjudication on our part. For 
 though to me our mode of life is luxurious in the 
 highest degree, yet generally it seems to be 
 thought that the setting aside of all impure diet, 
 dirty habits, idle thoughts, and selfish feelings, 
 is a course of self-denial, scarcely to be encoun 
 tered or even thought of in such an alluring 
 world as this in which we dwell. 
 
 "Besides the busy occupations of each suc 
 ceeding day, we form, in this ample theatre of 
 hope, many forthcoming scenes. The nearer little 
 copse is designed as the site of the cottages. 
 Fountains can be made to descend from their gran 
 ite sources on the hill-slope to every apartment if 
 required. Gardens are to displace the warm graz 
 ing glades on the south, and numerous human 
 beings, instead of cattle, shall here enjoy exist 
 ence. The farther wood offers to the naturalist 
 and the poet an exhaustless haunt ; and a short 
 cleaning of the brook would connect our boat 
 with the Nashua. Such are the designs which 
 Mr. Alcott and I have just sketched, as, resting 
 from planting, we walked round this reserve. 
 
 " In your intercourse with the dwellers in the 
 great city, have you alighted on Mr. Edward Pal 
 mer, who studies with Dr. Beach, the Herbalist ? 
 He will, I think, from his previous nature-love, 
 
140 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 and his affirmations to Mr. Alcott, be animated 
 on learning of this actual wooing and winning of 
 Nature s regards. We should be most happy to 
 see him with us. Having become so far actual, 
 from the real, we might fairly enter into the 
 typical, if he could help us in any way to types 
 of the true metal. We have not passed away 
 from home, to see or hear of the world s doings, 
 but the report has reached us of Mr. W. H. 
 Channing s fellowship with the Phalansterians, 
 and of his eloquent speeches in their behalf. 
 Their progress will be much aided by his acces 
 sion. To both these worthy men be pleased to 
 suggest our humanest sentiments. While they 
 stand amongst men, it is well to find them acting 
 out the truest possible at the moment. 
 
 " Just before we heard of this place, Mr. Al 
 cott had projected a settlement at the Cliffs on 
 the Concord River, cutting down wood and build 
 ing a cottage ; but so many more facilities were 
 presented here that we quitted the old classic 
 town for one which is to be not less renowned. 
 As far as I could judge, our absence promised 
 little pleasure to our old Concord friends ; but at 
 signs of progress I presume they rejoiced with, 
 dear friend, Yours faithfully, 
 
 " CHARLES LANE." 
 
 Another Palmer than the Edward here 
 mentioned became an inmate of "Fruit- 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL PERIOD. 141 
 
 lands," and, in course of time its owner; 
 the abandoned paradise, which was held by 
 Mr. Lane and Mr. Alcott for less than a 
 year, is now the property of his son. Mr. 
 Lane, after a time, returned to England and 
 died there ; Mr. Alcott to Concord, where, 
 in 1845, he aided Thoreau in building his 
 hut by Walden. Mr. Channing (the nephew 
 and biographer of Dr. Channing) contin 
 ued his connection with the " Phalansteri- 
 ans " in New Jersey until 1849 or later, for 
 in that year Fredrika Bremer found him 
 dwelling and preaching among them, at the 
 "North American Phalanstery," to which 
 he had been invited from his Unitarian par 
 ish in Cincinnati, about the time that Brook 
 Farm was made a community, and before 
 Mr. Alcott s dream had taken earthly shape 
 at " Fruitlands." The account given by 
 Miss Bremer of the terms upon which Mr. 
 Channing was thus invited to New Jersey, 
 show what was the spirit of Transcenden 
 talism then, on its social side. They said to 
 him, 
 
 " Come to us, be our friend and spiritual 
 shepherd, but in perfect freedom. Follow your 
 own inspiration, preach, talk to us, how and 
 
142 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 when it appears best to you. We undertake to 
 provide for your pecuniary wants ; live free from 
 anxiety, how, and where you will ; but teach us 
 how we should live and work ; our homes and 
 our hearts are open to you." 
 
 It was upon such terms as this, honorable 
 alike to those who gave and those who re 
 ceived, that much of the intellectual and 
 spiritual work of the Transcendental revival 
 was done. There was another and an un 
 social side to the movement also, which Mr. 
 Emerson early described in these words, 
 that apply to Thoreau and to Alcott at one 
 period : 
 
 " It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the 
 coarsest observer, that many intelligent and relig 
 ious persons withdraw themselves from the com 
 mon labors and competitions of the market and 
 the caucus, and betake themselves to a solitary 
 and critical way of living, from which no solid 
 fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation. 
 They hold themselves aloof; they feel the dis 
 proportion between themselves and the work 
 offered them, and they prefer to ramble in the 
 country and perish of ennui, to the degradation 
 of such charities and such ambitions as the city 
 can propose to them. They are striking work 
 and crying out for somewhat worthy to do. 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL PERIOD. 143 
 
 They are lonely ; the spirit of their writing and 
 conversation is lonely ; they repel influences ; 
 they shun general society ; they incline to shut 
 themselves in their chamber in the house ; to live 
 in the country rather than in the town ; and to 
 find their tasks and amusements in solitude. They 
 are not good citizens, not good members of so 
 ciety ; unwillingly they bear their part of the 
 public and private burdens ; they do not willingly 
 share in the public charities, in the public re 
 ligious rites, in the enterprise of education, of 
 missions, foreign or domestic, in the abolition of 
 the slave trade, or in the temperance society. 
 They do not even like to vote. The philanthro 
 pists inquire whether Transcendentalism does not 
 mean sloth ; they had as lief hear that their 
 friend is dead, as that he is a Transcendentalist ; 
 for then is he paralyzed, and can do nothing for 
 humanity." 
 
 It was this phase of Transcendentalism 
 that gave most anxiety to Thoreau s good 
 old pastor, Dr. Ripley, who early foresaw 
 what immediate fruit might be expected 
 from this fair tree of mysticism, this 
 " burning bush " which had started up, all 
 at once, in the very garden of his parson 
 age. I know few epistles more pathetic in 
 their humility and concern for the future, 
 
144 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 than one which Dr. Ripley addressed to Dr. 
 Cbanning in February, 1839, after hearing 
 and meditating on the utterances of Alcott, 
 Emerson, Thoreau, George Ripley, and the 
 other u apostles of the newness," who dis 
 turbed with their oracles the quiet air of 
 his parish. He wrote : 
 
 " Denied, as I am, the privilege of going from 
 home, of visiting and conversing with enlightened 
 friends, and of reading even ; broken down with 
 the infirmities of age, and subject to fits that de 
 prive me of reason and the use of my limbs, I 
 feel it a duty to be patient and submissive to the 
 will of God, who is too wise to err, and too good 
 to injure. Some reason is left, my mental 
 powers, though weak, are yet awake, and I long 
 to be doing something for good. The contrast 
 between paper and ink is so strong, that I can 
 write better than do anything else. In this way 
 I take the liberty to express to you a few 
 thoughts, which you will receive as well-meant 
 and sincere. . . . 
 
 " We may certainly assume that whatever is 
 unreasonable, self-contradictory, and destitute of 
 common sense, is erroneous. Should we not be 
 Jikely to find the truth, in all moral subjects, 
 were we to make more use of plain reason and 
 common sense ? I know that our modern spec- 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL PERIOD. 145 
 
 ulators, Transcendentalists, or, as they prefer to 
 be called, Realists, presume to follow Reason in 
 her purest dictates, her sublime and unfrequented 
 regions. They presume, by her power, not only 
 to discover what is truth, but to judge of revealed 
 truth. But is not their whole process marred by 
 leaving out common sense, by which mankind are 
 generally governed ? That superiority which 
 places a man above the power of doing good to 
 his fellow-men seems to me not very desirable. 
 I honor most the man who transcends others in 
 capacity and disposition to do good, and whose 
 daily practice corresponds with his profession. 
 Here I speak of professed Christians. I would 
 not treat with disrespect and severe censure men 
 who advance sentiments which I may neither ap 
 prove nor understand, provided their authors be 
 men of learning, piety, and holy lives. The spec 
 ulations and novel opinions of such men rarely 
 prove injurious. Nevertheless, I would that 
 their mental endowments might find a better 
 method of doing good, a more simple and in 
 telligible manner of informing and reforming 
 their fellow-men. . . . 
 
 " The hope of the gospel is my hope, my con 
 solation, support and rejoicing. Such is my state 
 of health that death is constantly before me ; no 
 minute would it be unexpected. I am waiting 
 in faith and hope, but humble and penitent for 
 10 
 
146 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 my imperfections and faults. The prayer of the 
 publican, God be merciful to me a sinner ! is 
 never forgotten. I have hoped to see and con 
 verse with you, but now despair. If you shall 
 think I use too much freedom with you, charge 
 it to the respect and esteem which are cherished 
 for your character by your affectionate friend 
 and brother, E. KIPLEY. 
 
 " CONCORD, February 26, 1839." 
 
 At this time Dr. Ripley was almost 
 eighty-eight, and he lived two years longer, 
 to mourn yet more pathetically over the 
 change of times and manners. "It was 
 fit," said Emerson, " that in the fall of 
 laws, this loyal man should die." But the 
 young men who succeeded him were no 
 less loyal to the unwritten laws, and from 
 their philosophy, which to the old theolo 
 gian seemed so misty and unreal, there flow 
 ered forth, in due season, the most active 
 and world- wide philanthropies. Twenty 
 years after this pastoral epistle, there came 
 to Concord another Christian of the antique 
 type, more Puritan and Hebraic than Dr. 
 Ripley himself, yet a Transcendentalist, 
 too, and JOHN BKOWN found no lack 
 of practical good-will in Thoreau, Alcott, 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL PERIOD. 147 
 
 Emerson, and the other Transcendentalists. 
 The years had " come full circle," the Sibyl 
 had burnt her last prophetic book, and the 
 new aeon was about to open with the down 
 fall of slaver j. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 EARLY ESSAYS IN AUTHOESHIP. 
 
 IT has been a common delusion, not yet 
 quite faded away, that the chief Transcend- 
 entalists were but echoes of each other, 
 that Emerson imitated Carlyle, Thoreau 
 and Alcott imitated Emerson, and so on to 
 the end of the chapter. No doubt that the 
 atmosphere of each of these men affected 
 the others, nor that they shared a common 
 impulse communicated by what Matthew 
 Arnold likes to call the Zeitgeist, the 
 ever-felt spirit of the time. In the most 
 admirable of the group, who is called by 
 preeminence "the Sage of Concord," the 
 poet Emerson, there has been an out- 
 breathing inspiration as profound as that of 
 the Zeitgeist himself; so that even Haw 
 thorne, the least susceptible of men, found 
 himself affected as he says, " after living 
 for three years within the subtle influence 
 of an intellect like Emerson s." But, in 
 
EARLY ESSAYS IN AUTHORSHIP. 149 
 
 fact, Thoreau brought to his intellectual 
 tasks an originality as marked as Emer 
 son s, if not so brilliant and star-like a 
 patience far greater than his, and a proud 
 independence that makes him the most sol 
 itary of modern thinkers. I have been 
 struck by these qualities in reading his yet 
 unknown first essays in authorship, the 
 juvenile papers he wrote while in college, 
 from the age of seventeen to that of twenty, 
 before Emerson had published anything ex 
 cept his first little volume, u Nature," and 
 while Thoreau, like other young men, was 
 reading Johnson and Goldsmith, Addison 
 and the earlier English classics, from Mil 
 ton backward to Chaucer. Let me there 
 fore quote from these papers, carefully 
 preserved by him, with their dates, and 
 sometimes with the marks of the rhetorical 
 professor on their margins. Along with 
 these may be cited some of his earlier verses, 
 in which a sentiment more purely human 
 and almost amatory appears, than in the 
 later and colder, if higher flights of his 
 song. 
 
 The earliest writings of Thoreau, placed 
 in my hands by his literary executor, Mr. 
 
150 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 Harrison Blake of Worcester, are the first 
 of his Cambridge essays, technically called 
 " themes " and " forensics." These began 
 several years before his daily journals were 
 kept, namely, in 1834; and it is curious 
 that one of them, dated January 17, 1835, 
 but written in 1834, recommends " keeping 
 a private journal or record of our thoughts, 
 feelings, studies, and daily experience." 
 This is precisely what Thoreau did from 
 1837 till his death ; and it may be interest 
 ing to see what reasons the boy of seventeen 
 advanced for the practice. He says : 
 
 "As those pieces which the painter sketches 
 for his own amusement, in his leisure hours, are 
 often superior to his most elaborate productions, 
 so it is that ideas often suggest themselves to us 
 spontaneously, as it were, far surpassing in beauty 
 those which arise in the mind upon applying our 
 selves to any particular subject. Hence, could a 
 machine be invented which would instantaneously 
 arrange upon paper each idea as it occurs to us, 
 without any exertion on our part, how extremely 
 useful would it be considered ! The relation be 
 tween this and the practice of keeping a journal 
 is obvious. ... If each one would employ a 
 certain portion of each day in looking back upon 
 
EARLY ESSAYS IN AUTHORSHIP. 151 
 
 the time which has passed, and in writing down 
 his thoughts and feelings, in reckoning up his 
 daily gains, that he may be able to detect what 
 ever false coins may have crept into his coffers, 
 and, as it were, in settling accounts with his 
 mind, not only would his daily experience be 
 greatly increased, since his feelings and ideas 
 would thus be more clearly defined, but he 
 would be ready to turn over a new leaf (having 
 carefully perused the preceding one) and would 
 not continue to glance carelessly over the same 
 page, without being able to distinguish it from a 
 new one." 
 
 This is ingenious, quaint, and mercantile, 
 bespeaking the hereditary bent of his fam 
 ily to trade and orderly accounts ; but what 
 follows in the same essay is more to the 
 purpose, as striking the key-note of Tho- 
 reau s whole after-life. He adds : 
 
 " Most of us are apt to neglect the study of 
 our own characters, thoughts, and feelings, and, 
 for the purpose of forming our own minds, look 
 to others, who should merely be considered as dif 
 ferent editions of the same great work. To be 
 sure, it would be well for us to examine the va 
 rious copies, that we might detect any errors ; 
 yet it would be foolish for one to borrow a work 
 which he possessed himself, but had not perused." 
 
152 HENRY D. THOREA&. 
 
 The earliest record of the day s observa 
 tions which I find is dated a few months 
 later than this (April 20, 1835), when 
 Henry Thoreau was not quite eighteen, and 
 relates to the beauties of nature. The first 
 passage describes a Sunday prospect from 
 the garret window of his father s house, 
 (afterwards the residence of Mr. William 
 Munroe, the benefactor of the Concord Li 
 brary), on the main street of the village. 
 He writes : 
 
 " T was always my delight to monopolize the 
 little Gothic window which overlooked the kitch 
 en-garden, particularly of a Sabbath afternoon ; 
 when all around was quiet, and Nature herself 
 was taking her afternoon nap, when the last 
 peal of the bell in the neighboring steeple, 
 Swinging slow with sullen roar/ 
 
 had left the vale to solitude and me and the 
 very air scarcely dared breathe, lest it should dis 
 turb the universal calm. Then did I use, with 
 eyes upturned, to gaze upon the clouds, and, al 
 lowing my imagination to wander, search for flaws 
 in their rich drapery, that I might get a peep 
 at that world beyond, which they seem intended 
 to veil from our view. Now is my attention en 
 gaged by a truant hawk, as, like a messenger 
 
EARLY ESSAYS IN AUTHORSHIP. 153 
 
 from those ethereal regions, he issues from the 
 bosom of a cloud, and, at first a mere speck in 
 the distance, comes circling onward, exploring 
 every seeming creek, and rounding every jutting 
 precipice. And now, his mission ended, what 
 can be more majestic than his stately flight, as 
 he wheels around some towering pine, enveloped 
 in a cloud of smaller birds that have united to 
 expel him from their premises." 
 
 The second passage, under the same date, 
 seems to describe earlier and repeated visits, 
 made by his elder brother John and him 
 self, to a hill which was always a favorite 
 resort of Thoreau s, Fairhaven Cliffs, over 
 looking the river-bay, known as " Fairha 
 ven," a mile or two up the river from Con 
 cord village toward Sudbury : 
 
 " In the freshness of the dawn my brother and 
 I were ever ready to enjoy a stroll to a certain 
 cliff, distant a mile or more, where we were wont 
 to climb to the highest peak, and seating our 
 selves on some rocky platform, catch the first ray 
 of the morning sun, as it gleamed upon the 
 smooth, still river, wandering in sullen silence 
 far below. The approach to the precipice is by 
 no means calculated to prepare one for the glo 
 rious denouement at hand. After following for 
 some time a delightful path that winds through 
 
154 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 the woods, occasionally crossing a rippling brook, 
 and not forgetting to visit a sylvan dell, whose 
 solitude is made audible by the unwearied tink 
 ling of a crystal %pring, you suddenly emerge 
 from the trees upon a flat and mossy rock, which 
 forms the summit of a beetling crag. The feel 
 ings which come over one on first beholding this 
 freak of nature are indescribable. The giddy 
 height, the iron-bound rock, the boundless horizon 
 open around, and the beautiful river at your feet, 
 with its green and sloping banks, fringed with 
 trees and shrubs of every description, are calcu 
 lated to excite in the beholder emotions of no 
 common occurrence, to inspire him with noble 
 and sublime emotions. The eye wanders over 
 the broad and seemingly compact surface of the 
 slumbering forest on the opposite side of the 
 stream, and catches an occasional glimpse of a 
 little farm-house, * resting in a green hollow, and 
 lapped in the bosom of plenty ; while a gentle 
 swell of the river, a rustic, and fortunately rather 
 old-looking bridge on the right, with the cloud- 
 like Wachusett in the distance, give a finish and 
 beauty to the landscape, that is rarely to be met 
 with even in our own fair land. This interest 
 ing spot, if we may believe tradition, was the fa 
 vorite haunt of the red man, before the axe of 
 his pale-faced visitor had laid low its loftier hon 
 ors, or his < strong water had wasted the energies 
 of the race." 
 
EARLY ESSAYS IN AUTHORSHIP. 155 
 
 Here we have a touch of fine writing, 
 natural in a boy who had read Irving and 
 Goldsmith, and exaggerating a little the 
 dimensions of the rocks and rills of which 
 he wrote. But how smooth the flow of de 
 scription, how well-placed the words, how 
 sure and keen the eye of the young observ 
 er ! To this mount of vision did Thoreau 
 and his friends constantly resort in after 
 years, and it was on the plateau beneath 
 that Mr. Alcott, in 1843, was about to cut 
 down the woods and build his Paradise, 
 when a less inviting fate, as he thought, 
 beckoned his English friend Lane and him 
 self to " Fruitlands," in the distant town 
 of Harvard. At some time after this, per 
 haps while Thoreau was encamped at Wai- 
 den with his books and his flute, Mr. Emer 
 son sent him the following note, which 
 gives us now a glimpse into that Arca 
 dia : 
 
 " Will you not come up to the Cliff this P. M., 
 at any hour convenient to you, where our ladies 
 will be greatly gratified to see you? and the 
 more, they say, if you will bring your flute for 
 the echo s sake, though now the wind blows. 
 
 R. W. E. 
 
 " Monday, 1 o clock P. M." 
 
156 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 It does not appear that Thoreau wrote 
 verses at this time, though he was a great 
 reader of the best poetry, of Milton very 
 early, and with constant admiration and 
 quotation. Thus, in a college essay of 1835, 
 on " Simplicity of Style," he has this pas 
 sage concerning the Bible and Milton : 
 
 " The most sublime and noblest precepts may 
 be conveyed in a plain and simple strain. The 
 Scriptures afford abundant proof of this. What 
 images can be more natural, what sentiments of 
 greater weight and at the same time more noble 
 and exalted than those with which they abound ? 
 They possess no local or relative ornament which 
 may be lost in a translation ; clothed in what 
 ever dress, they still retain their peculiar beau 
 ties. Here is simplicity itself. Every one allows 
 this, every one admires it, yet how few attain 
 to it ! The union of wisdom and simplicity is 
 plainly hinted at in the following lines of Mil 
 ton : 
 
 " Suspicion sleeps 
 
 At Wisdom s gate, and to Simplicity 
 
 Resigns her charge/ " 
 
 Early in 1837 Thoreau wrote an elabo 
 rate paper, though of no great length, on 
 Milton s " L Allegro " and " II Penseroso," 
 with many quotations, in course of which 
 he said : 
 
EARLY ESSAYS IN AUTHORSHIP. 157 
 
 " These poems place Milton in an entirely new 
 and extremely pleasing light to the reader, who 
 was previously familiar with him as the author 
 of * Paradise Lost alone. If before he ven 
 erated, he may now admire and love him. The 
 immortal Milton seems for a space to have put 
 on mortality, to have snatched a moment 
 from the weightier cares of Heaven and Hell, to 
 wander for a while among the sons of men. . . . 
 I have dwelt upon the poet s beauties and not so 
 much as glanced at his blemishes. A pleasing 
 image, or a fine sentiment loses none of its 
 charms, though Burton, or Beaumont and Fletch 
 er, or Marlowe, or Sir Walter Raleigh, may have 
 written something very similar, or even in an 
 other connection, may have used the identical 
 word, whose aptness we so much admire. That 
 always appeared to me a contemptible kind of 
 criticism which, deliberately and in cold blood, 
 can dissect the sublimest passage, and take pleas 
 ure in the detection of slight verbal incongrui 
 ties ; when applied to Milton, it is little better 
 than sacrilege." 
 
 The moral view taken by the young col 
 legian in these essays is quite as interesting 
 as the literary opinions, or the ease of his 
 style. In September, 1835, discussing pun 
 ishments, he says : 
 
158 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 " Certainty is more effectual than severity of 
 punishment. No man will deliberately cut his 
 own fingers. Some have asked, * Cannot reward 
 be substituted for punishment? Is hope a less 
 powerful incentive to action than fear ? When 
 a political pharmacopoeia has the command of 
 both ingredients, wherefore employ the bitter in 
 stead of the sweet ? This reasoning is absurd. 
 Does a man deserve to be rewarded for refraining 
 from murder ? Is the greatest virtue merely 
 negative ? or does it rather consist in the per 
 formance of a thousand e very-day duties, hidden 
 from the eye of the world ? " 
 
 In an essay on the effect of story-telling, 
 written in 1836, he says : 
 
 " The story of the world never ceases to inter 
 est. The child enchanted by the melodies of 
 Mother Goose, the scholar pondering the tale 
 of Troy divine, and the historian breathing the 
 atmosphere of past ages, all manifest the same 
 passion, are alike the creatures of curiosity. The 
 same passion for the novel (somewhat modified, 
 to be sure), that is manifested in our early days, 
 leads us, in after-life, when the sprightliness andl 
 credulity of youth have given way to the reserve 
 and skepticism of manhood, to the more serious, 
 though scarcely less wonderful annals of the 
 world. The love of stories and of story-telling 
 
EARLY ESSAYS IN AUTHORSHIP. 159 
 
 cherishes a purity of heart, a frankness and can 
 dor of disposition, a respect for what is generous 
 and elevated, a contempt for what is mean and 
 dishonorable, and tends to multiply merry com 
 panions and never-failing friends." 
 
 In March, 1837, in an essay on the source 
 of our feeling of the sublime, Thoreau 
 says : 
 
 " The emotion excited by the sublime is the 
 most unearthly and god-like we mortals experi 
 ence. It depends for the peculiar strength with 
 which it takes hold on and occupies the mind, 
 npon a principle which lies at the foundation of 
 that worship which we pay to the Creator him 
 self. And is fear the foundation of that wor 
 ship ? Is fear the ruling principle of our relig 
 ion ? Is it not rather the mother of superstition ? 
 Yes, that principle which prompts us to pay an 
 involuntary homage to the infinite, the incompre 
 hensible, the sublime, forms the very basis of our 
 religion. It is a principle implanted in us by 
 our Maker, a part of our very selves ; we can 
 not eradicate it, we cannot resist it ; fear may be 
 overcome, death may be despised ; but the infinite^ 
 the sublime seize upon the soul and disarm it. 
 We may overlook them, or rather fall short of 
 them ; we may pass them by, but, so sure as we 
 meet them face to face, we yield." 
 
160 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 Speaking of national characteristics, he 
 says : 
 
 " It is not a little curious to observe how man, 
 the boasted lord of creation, is the slave of a 
 name, a mere sound. How much mischief have 
 those magical words, North, South, East, and 
 West caused ! Could we rest satisfied with one 
 mighty, all-embracing West, leaving the other 
 three cardinal points to the Old World, methinks 
 we should not have cause for so much apprehen 
 sion about the preservation of the Union." 
 
 (This was written in February, 1837.) 
 Before he had reached the age of nineteen 
 he thus declared his independence of for 
 eign opinion, while asserting its general 
 sway over American literature, in 1836 : 
 
 " We are, as it were, but colonies. True, we 
 have declared our independence, and gained our 
 liberty, but we have dissolved only the political 
 bands which connected us with Great Britain ; 
 though we have rejected her tea, she still sup 
 plies us with food for the mind. The aspirant 
 to fame must breathe the atmosphere of foreign 
 parts, and learn to talk about things which the 
 homebred student never dreamed of, if he would 
 have his talents appreciated or his opinion re 
 garded by his countrymen. Ours are authors oi 
 
EARLY ESSAYS IN AUTHORSHIP. 161 
 
 the day, they bid fair to outlive their works ; 
 they are too fashionable to write for posterity. 
 True, there are some amongst us, who can con 
 template the babbling brook, without, in imagi 
 nation, polluting its waters with a mill-wheel ; 
 but even they are prone to sing of skylarks and 
 nightingales perched on hedges, to the neglect of 
 the homely robin-redbreast and the straggling 
 rail-fences of their own native land." 
 
 So early did he take this position, from 
 which he never varied. 
 
 In May, 1837, we find another note of 
 his opening life, in an essay on Paley s 
 " Common Reasons." He says : 
 
 " Man does not wantonly rend the meanest tie 
 that binds him to his fellows ; he would not stand 
 aloof, even in his prejudices, did not the stern 
 demands of truth require it. He is ready enough 
 to float with the tide, and when he does stem the 
 current of popular opinion, sincerity, at least, 
 must nerve his arm. He has not only the burden 
 of proof, but that of reproof to support. We 
 may call him a fanatic, an enthusiast ; but these 
 are titles of honor ; they signify the devotion 
 and entire surrendering of himself to his cause. 
 So far as my experience goes, man never seri 
 ously maintained an objectionable principle, doc 
 trine, or theory ; error never had a sincere de 
 ll 
 
162 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 fender ; her disciples were never enthusiasts. 
 This is strong language, I confess, but I do not 
 rashly make use of it. We are told that * to err 
 is human, but I would rather call it inhuman, if 
 I may use the word in this sense. I speak not 
 of those errors that have to do with facts and oc 
 currences, but rather, errors of judgment." 
 
 Here we have that bold generalization 
 and that calm love of paradox which mark 
 his later style. The lofty imagination was 
 always his, too, as where this youth of nine 
 teen says in the same essay : 
 
 " Mystery is yet afar off, it is but a cloud in 
 the distance, whose shadow, as it flits across the 
 landscape, gives a pleasing variety to the scene. 
 But as the perfect day approaches, its morning 
 light discovers the dark and straggling clouds, 
 which at first skirted the horizon, assembling as 
 at a signal, and as they expand and multiply, 
 rolling slowly onward to the zenith, till, at last, 
 the whole heavens, if we except a faint glimmer 
 ing in the East, are overshadowed." 
 
 What a confident and flowing movement 
 of thought is here ! like the prose of Milton 
 or Jeremy Taylor, but with a more re 
 strained energy. 
 
 " Duty," writes the young moralist in another 
 
EARLY ESSAYS IN AUTHORSHIP. 163 
 
 essay of 1837, "is one and invariable; it re 
 quires no impossibilities, nor can it ever be dis 
 regarded with impunity ; so far as it exists, it is 
 binding ; and, if all duties are binding, so as on 
 no account to be neglected, how can one bind 
 stronger than another ? " " None but the highest 
 minds can attain to moral excellence. With by 
 far the greater part of mankind religion is a 
 habit ; or rather habit is religion. However par 
 adoxical it may seem, it appears to me that to 
 reject religion is the first step towards moral ex 
 cellence ; at least no man ever attained to the 
 highest degree of the latter by any other road. 
 Could infidels live double the number of years 
 allotted to other mortals, they would become 
 patterns of excellence. So, too, of all true poets, 
 they would neglect the beautiful for the true." 
 I suspect that Thoreau s first poems 
 date from the year 1836-37, since the 
 "big red journal," in which they were 
 copied, was begun in October, 1837. The 
 verses entitled, "To the Maiden in the 
 East," were by no means among the first, 
 which date from 1836 or earlier ; but near 
 these in time was that poem called " Sympa 
 thy," which was the first of his writings to ap 
 pear in Mr. Emerson s " Dial." These last 
 were addressed, we are told, to Ellen Sewall, 
 
164 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 with whom, the legend says, both Henry 
 and John Thoreau were in love. Few of 
 these poems show any imitation of Mr. 
 Emerson, whose own verses at that time 
 were mostly unpublished, though he some 
 times read them in private to his friends. 
 But like most of Thoreau s verses, these in 
 dicate a close familiarity with the Eliza 
 bethan literature, and what directly followed 
 it, in the time of the Stuarts. The measure 
 of "Sympathy" was that of Davenant s 
 " Gondibert," which Thoreau, almost alone 
 of his contemporaries, had read ; the thought 
 was above Davenant, and ranged with Ra 
 leigh and Spenser. These verses will not 
 soon be forgotten : 
 
 "Lately, alas! I knew a gentle boy, 
 
 Whose features all were cast in Virtue s mould, 
 As one she had designed for Beauty s toy, 
 
 But after manned him for her own stronghold. 
 
 " Say not that Caesar was victorious, 
 
 With toil and strife who stormed the House of 
 
 Fame; 
 
 In other sense this youth was glorious, 
 Himself a kingdom wheresoe er he came. 
 
 Eternity may not the chance repeat, 
 But I must tread my single way alone, 
 
EARLY ESSAYS IN AUTHORSHIP. 165 
 
 In sad remembrance that we once did meet, 
 And know that bliss irrevocably gone. 
 
 The spheres henceforth my elegy shall sing, 
 
 For ele^y has other subject none; 
 Each strain of music in my ears shall ring 
 
 Knell of departure from that other one. 
 
 " Is t then too late the damage to repair ? 
 
 Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp hath reft 
 The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare, 
 But in my hands the wheat and kernel left. 
 
 " If I but love that virtue which he is, 
 
 Though it be scented in the morning air, 
 Still shall we be dearest acquaintances, 
 Nor mortals know a sympathy more rare." 
 
 The other poem seems to have been writ 
 ten later than the separation of which that 
 one so loftily speaks ; and it vibrates with 
 a tenderer chord than sympathy. It be 
 gins, 
 
 " Low in the eastern sky 
 Is set thy glancing eye," 
 
 and then it goes on with the picture of 
 lover-like things, the thrushes and the 
 flowers, until, he says, 
 
 " The trees a welcome waved, 
 And lakes their margin laved, 
 When thy free mind 
 To my retreat did wind." 
 
166 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 Then comes the Persian dialect of high 
 love : 
 
 " It was a summer eve, 
 The air did gently heave, 
 While yet a low-hung cloud 
 Thy eastern skies did shroud ; 
 The lightning s silent gleam 
 Startling my drowsy dream, 
 Seemed like the flash 
 Under thy dark eyelash. 
 
 " I 11 be thy Mercury, 
 Thou, Cytherea to me, 
 Distinguished by thy face 
 The earth shall learn my place. , 
 As near beneath thy light 
 Will I outwear the night, 
 With mingled ray 
 Leading the westward way." 
 
 " Let us," said Hafiz, " break up the tire 
 some roof of heaven into new forms," 
 and with as bold a flight did this young 
 poet pass to his " stellar duties." Then 
 dropping to the Concord meadow again, 
 like the tuneful lark, he chose a less celes 
 tial path 
 
 " Of gentle slope and wide, 
 As thou wert by my side ; 
 I 11 walk with gentle pace, 
 And choose the smoothest place, 
 
EARLY ESSAYS IN AUTHORSHIP. 167 
 
 And careful dip the oar, 
 And shun the winding shore, 
 And gently steer my boat 
 Where water-lilies float, 
 And cardinal flowers 
 Stand in their sylvan bowers/ 
 
 A frivolous question has sometimes been 
 raised whether the young Thoreau knew 
 what love was, like the Sicilian shepherd, 
 who found him a native of the rocks, a lion s 
 whelp. With his poet-nature, he early 
 gathered this experience, and passed on; 
 praising afterwards the lion s nature in the 
 universal god: 
 
 " Implacable is Love, 
 Foes may be bought or teased 
 
 From their hostile intent, 
 But he goes unappeased 
 
 Who is on kindness bent. 
 
 " There s nothing in the world, I know, 
 
 That can escape from Love, 
 For every depth it goes below, 
 And every height above." 
 
 The Red Journal of five hundred and 
 ninety-six long pages, in which the early 
 verses occur, was the first collection of Tho- 
 reau s systematic diarizing. It ran on from 
 October, 1837, to June, 1840, and was sue- 
 
168 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 ceeded by another journal of three hundred 
 and ninety-six pages, which was finished 
 early in 1841. He wrote his first lecture 
 (on Society) in March, 1838, and read it 
 before the Concord Lyceum in the Free 
 masons Hall, April 11, 1838. In the De 
 cember following he wrote a memorable es 
 say on " Sound and Silence," and in Feb 
 ruary, 1840, wrote his " first printed paper 
 of consequence," as he says, on " Aulus Per- 
 sius Flaccus." The best of the early verses 
 seem to have been written in 1836-41. His 
 contributions to the "Dial," which he helped 
 edit, were taken from his journals, and ran 
 through nearly every number from July, 
 1840, to April, 1844, when that magazine 
 ceased. 
 
 For these papers he received nothing but 
 the thanks of Emerson and the praise of a 
 few readers. Miss Elizabeth Peabody, in 
 February, 1843, wrote to Thoreau, that 
 " the regular income of the ( Dial does not 
 pay the cost of its printing and paper ; yet 
 there are readers enough to support it, if 
 they would only subscribe ; and they will 
 subscribe, if they are convinced that only 
 by doing so can they secure its continu- 
 
EARLY ESSAYS IN AUTHORSHIP. 169 
 
 ance." They did not subscribe, and in the 
 spring of 1844 it came to an end. 
 
 In 1842 Thoreau took a walk to Wachu- 
 sett, his nearest mountain, and the journal 
 of this excursion was printed in the " Boston 
 Miscellany " of 1843. In it occurred the 
 verses, written at least as early as 1841, in 
 which he addresses the mountains of his 
 horizon, Monadnoc, Wachusett, and the Pe 
 terborough Hills of New Hampshire. These 
 verses were for some time in the hands of 
 Margaret Fuller, for publication in the 
 " Dial," if she saw fit, but she returned 
 them with the following characteristic let 
 ter, the first addressed by her to Tho 
 reau : 
 
 " [CONCORD] 18^ October, 1841. 
 " I do not find the poem on the mountains im 
 proved by mere compression, though it might be 
 by fusion and glow. Its merits to me are, a 
 noble recognition of Nature, two or three manly 
 thoughts, and, in one place, a plaintive music. 
 The image of the ships does not please me orig 
 inally. It illustrates the greater by the less, and 
 affects me as when Byron compares the light on 
 Jura to that of the dark eye of woman. I can 
 not define my position here, and a large class of 
 readers would differ from me. As the poet goes 
 on to 
 
170 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 " Unhewn primeval timber, 
 For knees so stiff, for masts so limber." 
 
 he seems to chase an image, already rather forced, 
 into conceits. 
 
 " Yet, now that I have some knowledge of the 
 man, it seems there is no objection I could make 
 to his lines (with the exception of such offenses 
 against taste as the lines about the humors of the 
 eye, as to which we are already agreed), which I 
 would not make to himself. He is healthful, 
 rare, of open eye, ready hand, and noble scope. 
 He sets no limits to his life, nor to the invasions 
 of nature ; he is not willfully pragmatical, cau 
 tious, ascetic, or fantastical. But he is as yet a 
 somewhat bare hill, which the warm gales of 
 Spring have not visited. Thought lies too de 
 tached, truth is seen too much in detail ; we can 
 number and mark the substances imbedded in 
 the rock. Thus his verses are startling as much 
 as stern ; the thought does not excuse its con 
 scious existence by letting us see its relation with 
 life ; there is a want of fluent music. Yet what 
 could a companion do at present, unless to tame 
 the guardian of the Alps too early ? Leave him 
 at peace amid his native snows. He is friendly ; 
 he will find the generous office that shall educate 
 him. It is not a soil for the citron and the rose, 
 but for the whortleberry, the pine, or the heather. 
 
 " The unfolding of affections, a wider and 
 
EARLY ESSAYS IN AUTHORSHIP. 171 
 
 deeper human experience, the harmonizing influ 
 ences of other natures, will mould the man and 
 melt his verse. He will seek thought less and 
 find knowledge the more. I can have no advice 
 or criticism for a person so sincere ; but, if I 
 give my impression of him, I will say, He says 
 too constantly of Nature, she is mine. She is 
 not yours till you have been more hers. Seek 
 the lotus, and take a draught of rapture. Say 
 not so confidently, all places, all occasions are 
 alike. This will never come true till you have 
 found it false. 
 
 " I do not know that I have more to say now ; 
 perhaps these words will say nothing to you. If 
 intercourse should continue, perhaps a bridge 
 may be made between two minds so widely 
 apart ; for I apprehended you in spirit, and you 
 did not seem to mistake me so widely as most of 
 your kind do. If you should find yourself in 
 clined to write to me, as you thought you might, 
 I dare say, many thoughts would be suggested to 
 me ; many have already, by seeing you from day 
 to day. Will you finish the poem in your own 
 way, and send it for the * Dial ? Leave out 
 
 "And seem to milk the sky/ 
 
 The image is too low ; Mr. Emerson thought so 
 too. 
 "Farewell! May truth be irradiated by 
 
172 HENRY D. THOREAV. 
 
 Beauty ! Let me know whether you go to \>he 
 lonely hut, 1 and write to me about Shakespeare, 
 if you read him there, I have many thoughts 
 about him, which I have never yet been led to 
 express. MARGARET F, 
 
 "The penciled paper Mr. E. put into my 
 hands, I have taken the liberty to copy it. 
 You expressed one day my own opinion, that 
 the moment such a crisis is passed, we may speak 
 of it. There is no need of artificial delicacy, of 
 secrecy ; it keeps its own secrets ; it cannot be 
 made false. Thus you will not be sorry that I 
 have seen the paper. Will you not send me some 
 other records of the good week ? " 
 
 "Faithful are the wounds of a friend." 
 This searching criticism would not offend 
 Thoreau ; nor yet the plainness with which 
 the same tongue told the faults of a prose 
 paper perhaps "The Service," which 
 Margaret rejected in this note : 
 
 " [CONCORD] 1st December (1841). 
 "I am to blame for so long detaining your 
 manuscript. But my thoughts have been so en 
 gaged that I have not found a suitable hour to re 
 read it as I wished, till last night. This second 
 reading only confirms my impression from the 
 1 The HolloweU Place, no doubt. 
 
EARLY ESSAYS IN AUTHORSHIP. 173 
 
 6rst. The essay is rich in thoughts, and I should 
 be pained not to meet it again. But then, the 
 thoughts seem to me so out of their natural order, 
 that I cannot read it through without pain. I 
 never once feel myself in a stream of thought, but 
 seem to hear the grating of tools on the mosaic. 
 It is true, as Mr. Emerson says, that essays not to 
 be compared with this have found their way into 
 the * Dial. But then, these are more unassum 
 ing in their tone, and have an air of quiet good- 
 breeding, which induces us to permit their pres 
 ence. Yours is so rugged that it ought to be 
 commanding." 
 
 These were the years of Thoreau s ap 
 prenticeship in literature, and many were 
 the tasks and mortifications he must endure 
 before he became a master of the writer s 
 art. 
 
CHAPTER VH. 
 
 FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 
 
 " MARGARET FULLER," says William 
 Henry Charming, " was indeed The Friend ; 
 this was her vocation." It was no less the 
 vocation of Thoreau, though in a more 
 lofty, unvarying, and serene manner. 
 
 "Literally," says the friend who best knew 
 him, " his views of friendship were high and 
 noble. Those who loved him never had the least 
 reason to regret it. He made no useless profes 
 sions, never asked one of those questions that 
 destroy all relation ; but he was on the spot at 
 the time, and had so much of human life in his 
 keeping to the last, that he could spare a breath 
 ing-place for a friend. He meant friendship, and 
 meant nothing else, and stood by it without the 
 slightest abatement ; not veering as a weather 
 cock with each shift of a friend s fortune, nor 
 like those who bury their early friendships, in 
 order to make room for fresh corpses." 
 
 It is, therefore, impossible to sketch him 
 
FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 175 
 
 by himself. He could have said, with El- 
 lery Charming, 
 
 " band of Friends, ye breathe within this space, 
 And the rough finish of a humble man 
 By your kind touches rises into art." 
 
 His earliest companion was his brother 
 John, "a flowing generous spirit," as one 
 described him, for whom his younger 
 brother never ceased to grieve. Walking 
 among the Cohasset rocks and looking at 
 the scores of shipwrecked men from the 
 Irish brig St. John, in 1849, he said, " A 
 man can attend but one funeral in his life, 
 can behold but one corpse." With him it 
 was the funeral of John Thoreau in Febru 
 ary, 1842. They had made the voyage of 
 the Concord and Merrimac together, in 
 1839 ; they had walked and labored to 
 gether, and invented Indian names for one 
 another from boyhood. John was " Sachem 
 Hopeful of Hopewell," a sunny soul, al 
 ways serene and loving. When publishing 
 his first book, in 1849, Henry dedicated it 
 to this brother, with the simple verse 
 
 " Where er thou sail st who sailed with me, 
 Though now thou climbest loftier mounts, 
 And fairer rivers dost ascend, 
 Be thou my Muse, my Brother John." 
 
176 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 John Thoreau s death was singular and 
 painful ; his brother could not speak of it 
 without physical suffering, so that when he 
 related it to his friend Ricketson at New 
 Bedford, he turned pale and was forced to 
 go to the door for air. This was the only 
 time Mr. Ricketson ever saw him show deep 
 emotion. His sister Sophia once said : 
 
 " Henry rarely spoke of dear John ; it pained 
 him too much. He sent the following verses 
 from Staten Island in May, 1843, the year after 
 John s death, in a letter to Helen. You will see 
 that they apply to himself : " 
 
 " Brother, where dost thou dwell ? 
 
 What sun shines for thee now ? 
 Dost thou, indeed, fare well, 
 As we wished here below 1 
 
 "What season didst thou find? 
 
 T was winter here. 
 Are not the Fates more kind 
 Than they appear ? 
 
 " Is thy brow clear again, 
 
 As in thy youthful years ? 
 And was that ugly pain 
 The summit of thy fears ? 
 
 " Yet thou wast cheery still ; 
 
 They could not quench thy fire ; 
 Thou didst abide their will, 
 And then retire. 
 
FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 177 
 
 "Where chiefly shall I look 
 
 To feel thy presence near ? 
 
 Along the neighboring brook 
 
 May I thy voice still hear ? 
 
 " Dost thou still haunt the brink 
 
 Of yonder river s tide ? 
 And may I ever think 
 
 That thou art by my side ? 
 
 " What bird wilt thou employ 
 
 To bring me word of thee ? 
 For it would give them joy, 
 
 T would give them liberty, 
 To serve their former lord 
 
 With wing and minstrelsy. 
 
 " A sadder strain mixed with their song, 
 
 They ve slowlier built their nests ; 
 Since thou art gone 
 Their lively labor rests. 
 
 " Where is the finch, the thrush 
 
 I used to hear ? 
 Ah, they could well abide 
 The dying year. 
 
 "Now they no more return, 
 
 I hear them not ; 
 They have remained to mourn ; 
 Or else forgot." 
 
 Before the death of his brother, Thoreau 
 had formed the friendship with Ellery 
 12 
 
178 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 Channing, that was in some degree to re 
 place the daily intimacy he had enjoyed 
 with John Thoreau. This man of genius, 
 and of the moods that sometimes make 
 genius an unhappy boon, was a year younger 
 than Thoreau when he came, in 1843, to 
 dwell in Concord with his bride, a younger 
 sister of Margaret Fuller. They lived first 
 in a cottage near Mr. Emerson s, Thoreau 
 being at that time an inmate of Mr. Emer 
 son s household; afterwards, in 1843, Mr. 
 Channing removed to a hill-top some miles 
 away, then to New York in 1844-45, then 
 to Europe for a few months, and finally to 
 a house on the main street of the village, 
 opposite the last residence of the Thoreau 
 family, where Henry lived from 1850 till 
 his death in 1862. In the garden of Mr. 
 Channing s house, which lay on the river, 
 Thoreau kept his boat, under a group of 
 willows, and from that friendly harbor all 
 his later voyages were made. At times 
 they talked of occupying this house to 
 gether. 
 
 " I have an old house and a garden patch," 
 said Channing, " you have legs and arms, and we 
 both need each other s companionship. These 
 
FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 179 
 
 miserable cracks and crannies which have made 
 the wall of life look thin and fungus-like, will 
 be cemented by the sweet and solid mortar of 
 friendship." 
 
 They did in fact associate more closely 
 than if they had lived in the same house. 
 
 At the age of thirty-seven, when contem 
 plating a removal from the neighborhood 
 of his friend Thoreau, this humorous man 
 of letters thus described himself and his 
 tastes to another friend : 
 
 " I am a poet, or of a poetical temper or mood, 
 with a very limited income both of brains and of 
 moneys. This world is rather a sour world. But 
 as I am, equally with you, an admirer of Cowper, 
 why should I not prove a sort of unnecessary ad 
 dition to your neighborhood possibly ? I may 
 leave Concord, and my aim would be to get a 
 small place, in the vicinity of a large town, with 
 some land, and, if possible, near to some one per 
 son with whom I might in some measure frater 
 nize. Come, my neighbor ! thou hast now a new 
 occupation, the setting up of a poet and literary 
 man, one who loves old books, old garrets, old 
 wines s old pipes, and (last not least) Cowper, 
 We might pass the winter in comparing variorum 
 editions of our favorite authors, and the summer in 
 walking and horticulture- This is a grand scheme 
 
180 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 of life. All it requires is the house of which I 
 spake. I think one in middle life feels averse 
 to change, and especially to local change. The 
 Lares and Penates love to establish themselves, 
 and desire no moving. But the fatal hour may 
 come, when, bidding one long, one last adieu to 
 those weather-beaten Penates, we sally forth with 
 Don Quixote, once more to strike our lances into 
 some new truth, or life, or man." 
 
 This hour did come, and the removal 
 was made for a few months or years, dur 
 ing which the two friends met at odd inter 
 vals, and in queer companionship. But the 
 " sweet and solid mortar of friendship " was 
 never broken, though the wall of life came 
 to look like a ruin. When, in Thoreau s 
 last illness, Channing, in deep grief, said 
 " that a change had come over the dream 
 of life, and that solitude began to peer out 
 curiously from the dells and wood-roads," 
 Thoreau whispered, " with his foot on the 
 step of the other world," says Channing, 
 " It is better some things should end." Of 
 their earlier friendship, and of Channing s 
 poetic gift, so admirable, yet so little ap 
 preciated by his contemporaries, this men. 
 tion occurs in a letter written by Thoreau 
 In March, 1856 : 
 
FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 181 
 
 " I was surprised to hear the other day that 
 Charming was in X. When he was here last 
 (in December, I think), he said, like himself, in 
 answer to my inquiry where he lived, < that he 
 did not know the name of the place ; so it has 
 remained in a degree of obscurity to me. I am 
 rejoiced to hear that you are getting on so bravely 
 with him and his verses. He and I, as you know, 
 have been old cronies, 
 
 " Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill, 
 Together both, ere the high lawns appeared 
 Under the opening eyelids of the morn, 
 We drove afield, and both together heared/ etc. 
 
 " But O, the heavy change, now he is gone. 
 The Channing you have seen and described is 
 the real Simon Pure. You have seen him. 
 Many a good ramble may you have together! 
 You will see in him still more of the same kind 
 to attract and to puzzle you. How to serve him 
 most effectually has long been a problem with his 
 friends. Perhaps it is left for you to solve it. 
 I suspect that the most that you or any one 
 can do for him is to appreciate his genius, 
 to buy and read, and cause others to buy and 
 read his poems. That is the hand which he 
 has put forth to the world, take hold of that. 
 Review them if you can, perhaps take the risk 
 of publishing something more which he may 
 write. Your knowledge of Cowper will help 
 
182 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 you to know Charming. He will accept sympa 
 thy and aid, but he will not bear questioning, un 
 less the aspects of the sky are particularly aus 
 picious. He will ever be * reserved and enig 
 matic/ and you must deal with him at arm s 
 length. I have no secrets to tell you concerning 
 him, and do not wish to call obvious excellences 
 and defects by far-fetched names. Nor need I 
 suggest how witty and poetic he is, and what 
 an inexhaustible fund of good-fellowship you will 
 find in him." 
 
 In the record of his winter visitors at 
 Walden, Thoreau had earlier made mention 
 of Channing, who then lived on Ponkaw- 
 tasset Hill, two or three miles away from 
 the hermitage. 
 
 " He who came from farthest to my lodge," 
 says Thoreau, " through deepest snows and most 
 dismal tempests, was a poet. A farmer, a hun 
 ter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher may 
 be daunted, but nothing can deter a poet, for he 
 is actuated by pure love. Who can predict his 
 comings and goings ? His business calls him out 
 at all hours ; even when doctors sleep. We 
 made that small house ring with boisterous mirth, 
 and resound with the murmur of much sober 
 talk, making amends then to Walden vale for 
 the long silences. At suitable intervals there 
 
FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 183 
 
 were regular salutes of laughter, which might 
 have been referred indifferently to the last ut 
 tered or the forthcoming jest." 
 
 In his " Week," as Thoreau floats down 
 the Concord, past the Old Manse, he com 
 memorates first Hawthorne and then Chan- 
 ning, saying of the latter, 
 
 " On Ponkawtasset, since, with such delay, 
 Down this still stream we took our meadowy way, 
 A poet wise hath settled whose fine ray 
 Doth faintly shine on Concord s twilight day. 
 Like those first stars, whose silver beams on high, 
 Shining more brightly as the day goes by, 
 Most travelers cannot at first descry, 
 But eyes that wont to range the evening sky." 
 
 These were true and deserved compli 
 ments, but they availed little (no more than 
 did the praises of Emerson in the " Dial," 
 and of Hawthorne in his " Mosses ") to 
 make Channing known to the general read 
 er. Some years after Thoreau s death, 
 when writing to another friend, this neg 
 lected poet said : 
 
 " Is there no way of disabusing S. of the lik 
 ing he has for the verses I used to write ? You 
 probably know he is my only patron, but that 
 is no reason he should be led astray. There is no 
 other test of the value of poetry, but its popular- 
 
184 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 ity. My verses have never secured a single 
 reader but S. He really believes, I think, in 
 those so-called verses ; but they are not good, 
 they are wholly unknown and unread, and always 
 will be. Mediocre poetry is worse than nothing, 
 and mine is not even mediocre. I have pre 
 sented S. with the last set of those little books 
 there is, to have them bound, if he will. He can 
 keep them as a literary curio, and in his old age 
 amuse himself with thinking, How could ever I 
 have liked these ? " 
 
 Yet this self-disparaging poet was lie who 
 wrote, 
 
 " If my bark sinks, t is to another sea," 
 
 and who cried to his companions, 
 
 " Ye heavy-hearted mariners 
 
 Who sail this shore, 
 Ye patient, ye who labor, 
 
 Sitting at the sweeping oar, 
 And see afar the flashing sea-gulls play 
 On the free waters, and the glad bright day 
 Twine with his hand the spray, 
 From out your dreariness, 
 From your heart-weariness, 
 I speak, for I am yours 
 On these gray shores." 
 
 It is he, also, who has best told, in prose 
 and verse, what Thoreau was in his charac 
 ter and his literary art. In dedicating to 
 
FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 185 
 
 his friend Henry, the poem called " Near 
 Home," published in 1858, Channing thus 
 addressed him : 
 
 " Modest and mild and kind, 
 Who never spurned the needing from thy door 
 (Door of thy heart, which is a palace-gate) ; 
 Temperate and faithful, in whose word the world 
 Might trust, sure to repay ; unvexed by care, 
 Unawed by Fortune s nod, slave to no lord, 
 Nor coward to thy peers, long shalt thou live ! 
 Not in this feeble verse, this sleeping age, 
 But in the roll of Heaven, and at the bar 
 Of that high court where Virtue is in place, 
 There thou shalt fitly rule, and read the laws 
 Of that supremer state, writ Jove s behest, 
 And even old Saturn s chronicle ; 
 Works ne er Hesiod saw, types of all things, 
 And portraitures of all whose golden leaves, 
 Roll back the ages doors, and summon up 
 Unsleeping truths, by which wheels on Heaven s prime." 
 
 In these majestic lines, suggestive of 
 Dante, of Shakespeare, and of Milton, yet 
 fitting, by the force of imagination, to the 
 simplicity and magnanimity that Thoreau 
 had displayed, one reads the secret of that 
 character which made the Concord recluse 
 first declare to the world the true mission of 
 John Brown, whose friend he had been for 
 a few years. Of Alcott and of Hawthorne, 
 of Margaret Fuller and Horace Greeley, 
 
186 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 he had been longer the friend ; and in the 
 year before he met Brown he had stood face 
 to face with Walt Whitman in Brooklyn. 
 Mr. Alcott s testimony to Thoreau s worth 
 and friendliness has been constant. 
 
 " If I were to proffer my earnest prayer to the 
 gods for the greatest of all human privileges," he 
 said one day, after returning from an evening 
 spent at Walden with Thoreau, " it should be for 
 the gift of a severely candid friend. To most, the 
 presence of such is painfully irksome ; they are 
 lovers of present reputation, and not of that ex 
 altation of soul which friends and discourse were 
 given to awaken and cherish in us. Intercourse 
 of this kind I have found possible with my friends 
 Emerson and Thoreau ; and the evenings passed 
 in their society during these winter months have 
 realized my conception of what friendship, when 
 great and genuine, owes to and takes from its 
 objects." 
 
 Not less emphatic was Thoreau s praise 
 of Mr. Alcott, after these long winter even 
 ings with him in the hut : 
 
 " One of the last of the philosophers," he 
 writes in "Walden," "Connecticut gave him 
 to the world, he peddled first her wares, after 
 wards, as he declares, his brains. These he ped 
 
FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 187 
 
 dies still, prompting God and disgracing man, 
 bearing for fruit his brain only, like the nut its 
 kernel. I think he must be the man of the most 
 faith of any alive. His words and attitude always 
 suppose a better state of things than other men 
 are acquainted with, and he will be the last man 
 to be disappointed as the ages revolve. He has 
 no venture in the present. But though compar 
 atively disregarded now, laws unsuspected by 
 most will take effect, and masters of families and 
 rulers will come to him for advice. A true friend 
 of man ; almost the only friend of human prog 
 ress. He is perhaps the sanest man and has the 
 fewest crotchets of any I chance to know, the 
 same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. Of yore 
 we had sauntered and talked, and effectually put 
 the world behind us ; for he was pledged to no 
 institution in it, freeborn, ingenuus. Great 
 Looker ! great Expecter ! to converse with 
 whom was a New England Night s Entertain 
 ment. Ah ! such discourse we had, hermit and 
 philosopher, and the old settler I have spoken of, 
 we three, it expanded and racked my little 
 house." 
 
 Nor did Thoreau participate in such dis 
 course at Walden alone, but frequented Mr. 
 Alcott s conversations at Mr. Emerson s 
 house in Concord, at Hawthorne s in Sa- 
 
188 HENRY V. THOREAU. 
 
 lem, at Marston Watson s in Plymouth, 
 at Daniel Ricketson s in New Bedford, and 
 once or twice in Boston and New York. 
 With Mr. Alcott and Alice Carey, Tho- 
 reau visited Horace Greeley at Chappaqua, 
 in 1856, and with Mr. Alcott alone he 
 called on Walt Whitman in Brooklyn the 
 same year. 
 
 Between Hawthorne and Thoreau, Ellery 
 Channing was perhaps the interpreter, for 
 they had not very much in common, though 
 friendly and mutually respectful. The boat 
 in which Thoreau made his voyage of 1839, 
 on the Concord and Merrimac, came after 
 wards into Hawthorne s possession, and 
 was the frequent vehicle for Channing and 
 Hawthorne as they made those excursions 
 which Hawthorne has commemorated. 
 Channing also has commemorated those 
 years when Hawthorne spent the happiest 
 hours of his life in the Old Manse, to which 
 he had removed soon after his marriage in 
 1842 : 
 
 " There in the old gray house, whose end we see 
 Half peeping through the golden willow s veil, 
 Whose graceful twigs make foliage through the year, 
 My Hawthorne dwelt, a scholar of rare worth, 
 The gentlest man that kindly nature drew; 
 
FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 189 
 
 New England s Chaucer, Hawthorne fitly lives. 
 
 His tall, compacted figure, ably strung 
 
 To urge the Indian chase or guide the way, 
 
 Softly reclining neath the aged elm, 
 
 Like some still rock looked out upon the scene, 
 
 As much a part of nature as itself." 
 
 In July, 1860, writing to his sister So 
 phia, among the New Hampshire moun 
 tains, Thoreau said : 
 
 " Mr. Hawthorne has come home. I went to 
 meet him the other evening (at Mr. Emerson s), 
 and found that he had not altered, except that he 
 was looking pretty brown after his voyage. He 
 is as simple and childlike as ever." 
 
 This was upon the return of Hawthorne 
 from his long residence abroad, in Eng 
 land, Portugal, and Italy. Thoreau died 
 two years before Hawthorne, and they are 
 buried within a few feet of each other in 
 the Concord cemetery, their funerals hav 
 ing proceeded from the same parish church 
 near by. 
 
 Of Thoreau s relations with Emerson, 
 this is not the place to speak in full ; it 
 was, however, the most important, if not 
 the most intimate, of all his friendships, 
 and that out of which the others mainly 
 
190 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 grew. Their close acquaintance began in 
 1837. In the latter part of April, 1841, 
 Thoreau became an inmate of Mr. Emer 
 son s house, and remained there till, in the 
 spring of 1843, he went for a few months 
 to be the tutor of Mr. William Emerson s 
 sons at Staten Island. In 1840, while 
 teaching school in Concord, Thoreau seems 
 to have been fully admitted into that circle 
 of which Emerson, Alcott, and Margaret 
 Fuller were the leaders. In May, 1840, 
 this circle met, as it then did frequently, 
 at the house of Mr. Emerson, to converse 
 on "the inspiration of the Prophet and 
 Bard, the nature of Poetry, and the causes 
 of the sterility of Poetic Inspiration in our 
 age and country." Mr. Alcott, in his diary, 
 has preserved a record of this meeting, and 
 some others of the same kind. It seems 
 that on this occasion Thoreau being not 
 quite twenty-three years old, Mr. Alcott 
 forty-one, Mr. Emerson thirty-seven, and 
 Miss Fuller thirty all these were pres 
 ent, and also Jones Very, the Salem poet, 
 Dr. F. H. Hedge, Dr. C. A. Bartol, Dr. 
 Caleb Stetson, and Robert Bartlett of 
 Plymouth. Bartlett and Very were grad 
 
FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 191 
 
 nates of Harvard a year before Thoreau, 
 and afterwards tutors there ; indeed, all the 
 company except Alcott were Cambridge 
 scholars, for Margaret Fuller, without en 
 tering college, had breathed in the learned 
 air of Cambridge, and gone beyond the stu 
 dents who were her companions. I find no 
 earlier record of Thoreau s participation in 
 these meetings ; but afterward he was often 
 present. In May, 1839, Mr. Alcott had 
 held one of his conversations at the house 
 of Thoreau s mother, but no mention is 
 made of Henry taking part in it. At a 
 conversation in Concord in 1846, one April 
 evening, Thoreau came in from his Walden 
 hermitage, and protested with some vehe 
 mence against Mr. Alcott s declaration that 
 Jesus " stood in a more tender and intimate 
 nearness to the heart of mankind than any 
 character in life or literature." Thoreau 
 thought he " asserted this claim for the fair 
 Hebrew in exaggeration " ; yet he could say 
 in the " Week," " It is necessary not to be 
 Christian to appreciate the beauty and sig 
 nificance of the life of Christ." 
 
 This earliest of his volumes, like most of 
 his writings, is a record of his friendships, 
 
192 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 and in it we find that high-toned, paradox 
 ical essay on Love and Friendship, which 
 has already been quoted. To read this lit 
 erally, as Channing says, " would be to ac 
 cuse him of stupidity ; he gossips there of 
 a high, imaginary world." But its tone is 
 no higher than was the habitual feeling of 
 Thoreau towards his friends, or that senti 
 ment which he inspired in them. In Mr. 
 Alcott s diary for March 16, 1847, he writes, 
 two years before the " Week " was made 
 public : 
 
 " This evening I pass with Thoreau at his her 
 mitage on Walden, and he reads me some pas 
 sages from his manuscript volume, entitled * A 
 Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers. 
 The book is purely American, fragrant with the 
 life of New England woods and streams, and could 
 have been written nowhere else. Especially am 
 I touched by his sufficiency and soundness, his 
 aboriginal vigor, as if a man had once more 
 come into Nature who knew what Nature meant 
 him to do with her, Virgil, and White of Sel- 
 borne, and Izaak Walton, and Yankee settler all 
 in one. I came home at midnight, through the 
 woody snow-paths, and slept with the pleasing 
 dream that presently the press would give me 
 two books to be proud of Emerson s Poems, 
 and Thoreau s < Week. " 
 
FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 193 
 
 This high anticipation of the young au 
 thor s career was -fully shared by Emerson 
 himself, who everywhere praised the genius 
 of Thoreau ; and when in England in 1848, 
 listened readily to a proposition from Dr. 
 Chapman the publisher, for a new magazine 
 to be called " The Atlantic," and printed at 
 the same time in London and in Boston, 
 whose chief contributors in England should 
 be Froude, Garth Wilkinson, Arthur Hugh 
 Clough, and perhaps Carlyle ; and in New 
 England, Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, the 
 Channings, Theodore Parker, and Elliott 
 Cabot. The plan came to nothing , but it 
 may have been some reminiscence of it 
 which, nine years afterward, gave its name 
 to that Boston magazine, the " Atlantic 
 Monthly." Mr. Emerson s letter was dated 
 in London, April 20, 1848, and said : 
 
 " I find Chapman very anxious to publish a 
 journal common to Old and New England, as 
 was long ago proposed. Froude and Clough and 
 other Oxonians would gladly conspire. Let the 
 Massachusetts Quarterly give place to this, and 
 we should have two legs, and bestride the sea. 
 Here I know so many good-minded people that 
 I am sure will gladly combine. But what do I, 
 13 
 
194 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 or does any friend of mine in America care for a 
 journal ? Not enough, I fear, to secure an ener 
 getic work on that side. I have a letter from 
 Cabot lately and do write him to-day. T is cer 
 tain the Massachusetts Quarterly Review will 
 fail, unless Henry Thoreau, and Alcott, and 
 Channing and JNewcome, the fourfold visages, fly 
 to the rescue. I am sorry that Alcott s editor, 
 the Dumont of our Bentham, the Baruch of our 
 Jeremiah, is so slow to be born." 
 
 In 1846, before Mr. Emerson went abroad, 
 we find Thoreau (whose own hut beside 
 Walden had been built and inhabited for a 
 year) sketching a design for a lodge which 
 Mr. Emerson then proposed to build on the 
 opposite shore. It was to be a retreat for 
 study and writing, at the summit of a ledge, 
 with a commanding prospect over the level 
 country, towards Monadnoc and Wachusett 
 in the west and northwest. For this look 
 out Mr. Alcott added a story to Thoreau s 
 sketch ; but the hermitage was never built, 
 and the plan finally resulted in a rustic sum 
 mer-house, erected by Alcott with some aid 
 from Thoreau, in Mr. Emerson s garden, in 
 1847-48. 1 
 
 1 In building this quaint structure, Thoreau was so 
 
FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 195 
 
 Humbler friends than poets and philos 
 ophers sometimes shared the companionship 
 of these brethren in Concord. In Febru 
 ary, 1847, Mr. Alcott, who was then a 
 woodman, laboring on his hillside with his 
 own axe, where afterwards Hawthorne wan 
 dered and mused, thus notes in his diary an 
 incident not unusual in the town : 
 
 " Our friend the fugitive, who has shared now 
 a week s hospitalities with us (sawing and piling 
 my wood), feels this new trust of Freedom yet 
 unsafe here in New England, and so has left us 
 this morning for Canada. We supplied him 
 with the means of journeying, and bade him God 
 speed to a freer land. His stay with us has 
 given image and a name to the dire entity of 
 slavery." 
 
 It was this slave, no doubt, who had 
 lodged for a while in Thoreau s Walden 
 hut. 
 
 My own acquaintance with Thoreau did 
 not begin with our common hostility to 
 slavery, which afterwards brought us most 
 closely together, but sprang from the ac- 
 
 averse to Mr. Alcott s plan of putting up and tearing down 
 with no settled design of form on paper, that he with 
 drew his mechanic hand, so skillful in all carpenter work. 
 
196 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 cident of my editing for a few weeks the 
 " Harvard Magazine," a college monthly, in 
 1854-55, in which appeared a long review 
 of "Walden" and the "Week." In ac 
 knowledgment of this review, which was lau 
 datory and made many quotations from his 
 two volumes, Thoreau, whom I had never 
 seen, called at my room in Holworthy Hall, 
 Cambridge, in January, 1855, and left there 
 in my absence, a copy of the " Week " with 
 a message implying it was for the writer 
 of the magazine article. It so happened 
 that I was in the College Library when 
 Thoreau was calling on me, and when he 
 came, directly after, to the Library, some 
 one present pointed him out to me as the 
 author of " Walden." I was then a senior 
 in college, and soon to go on my winter 
 vacation ; in course of which I wrote to 
 Thoreau from my native town, as fol 
 lows : 
 
 " HAMPTON FALLS, N. H., Jan y 30th, 55. 
 " MY DEAR SIR, I have had it in mind to 
 write you a letter ever since the day when you 
 visited me, without my knowing it, at Cambridge. 
 I saw you afterward at the Library, but refrained 
 from introducing myself to you, in the hope that 
 
FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 197 
 
 I should see you later in the day. But as I did 
 not, will you allow me to seek you out, when 
 next I come to Concord? 
 
 " The author of the criticism in the Harvard 
 Magazine is Mr. Morton of Plymouth, a friend 
 and pupil of your friend, Marston Watson, of 
 that old town. Accordingly I gave him the book 
 which you left with me, judging that it belonged 
 to him. He received it with delight, as a gift of 
 value in itself, and the more valuable for the 
 sake of the giver. 
 
 11 We who at Cambridge look toward Concord 
 as a sort of Mecca for our pilgrimages, are glad 
 to see that your last book finds such favor with 
 the public. It has made its way where your name 
 has rarely been heard before, and the inquiry, 
 * Who is Mr. Thoreau ? proves that the book has 
 in part done its work. For my own part, I thank 
 you for the new light it shows me the aspects of 
 Nature in, and for the marvelous beauty of your 
 descriptions. At the same time, if any one should 
 ask me what I think of your philosophy, I 
 should be apt to answer that it is not worth a 
 straw. Whenever again you visit Cambridge, 
 be assured, sir, that it would give me much pleas 
 ure to see you at my room. There, or in Con 
 cord, I hope soon to see you ; if I may intrude 
 %o much on your time. 
 
 " Believe me always, yours very truly, 
 
 " F. B. SANBORN." 
 
198 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 This note, which I had entirely forgotten, 
 and of which I trust my friend soon forgave 
 the pertness, came to me recently among his 
 papers; with one exception, it is the only 
 letter that passed between us, I think, in 
 an acquaintance of more than seven years. 
 Some six weeks after its date, I went to 
 live in Concord, and happened to take 
 rooms in Mr. Channing s house, just across 
 the way from Thoreau s. I met him more 
 than once in March, 1855, but he did not 
 call on my sister and me until the llth of 
 April, when I made the following brief 
 note of his appearance : 
 
 " To-night we had a call from Mr. Thoreau, 
 who came at eight and stayed till ten. He talked 
 about Latin and Greek which he thought 
 ought to be studied and about other things. 
 In his tones and gestures he seemed to me to 
 imitate Emerson, so that it was annoying to listen 
 to him, though he said many good things. He 
 looks like Emerson, too, coarser, but with 
 something of that serenity and sagacity which E. 
 has. Thoreau looks eminently sagacious like 
 a sort of wise, wild beast. He dresses plainly, 
 wears a beard in his throat, and has a brown 
 complexion." 
 
FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 199 
 
 A month or two later my diary expanded 
 this sketch a little, with other particu 
 lars : 
 
 " He is a little under size, with a huge Emer 
 sonian nose, bluish gray eyes, brown hair, and 
 a ruddy weather-beaten face, which reminds me 
 of some shrewd and honest animal s some re 
 tired philosophical woodchuck or magnanimous 
 fox. He dresses very plainly, wears his collar 
 turned over like Mr. Emerson " [we young col 
 legians then wearing ours upright], " and often 
 an old dress-coat, broad in the skirts, and by no 
 means a n t. He walks about with a brisk, rus 
 tic air, and never seems tired." 
 
 Notwithstanding the slow admiration that 
 these trivial comments indicated, our friend 
 ship grew apace, and for two years or more 
 I dined with him almost daily, and often 
 joined in his walks and river voyages, or 
 swam with him in some of our numerous 
 Concord waters. In 1857 I introduced 
 John Brown to him, then a guest at my 
 house ; and in 1859, the evening before 
 Brown s last birthday, we listened together 
 to the old captain s last speech in the Con 
 cord Town Hall. The events of that year 
 and the next brought us closely together, 
 andTfound Rim tne stanchest of friends. 
 
200 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 This chapter might easily be extended 
 into a volume, so long was the list of his 
 companions, and so intimate and perfect his 
 relation with them, at least on his own 
 side. 
 
 "A truth-speaker he," said Emerson at his 
 funeral, * capable of the most deep and strict 
 conversation ; a physician to the wounds of any 
 soul ; a friend, knowing not only the secret of 
 friendship, but almost worshipped by those few 
 persons who resorted to him as their confessor 
 and prophet, and knew the deep value of his 
 mind and great heart. His soul was made for 
 the noblest society ; he had in a short life ex 
 hausted the capabilities of this world ; where- 
 ever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, 
 wherever there is beauty, he will find a home." 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE WALDEN HEKMITAGE. 
 
 IT is by his two years encampment on 
 the shore of a small lake in the Walden 
 -woods, a mile south of Concord village, that 
 Thoreau is best known to the world ; and 
 the book which relates how he lived and 
 what he saw there is still, as it always was, 
 the most popular of his writings. Like all 
 his books, it contains much that might as 
 well have been written on any other sub 
 ject ; but it also describes charmingly the 
 scenes and events of his sylvan life, his 
 days and nights with Nature. He spent 
 two years and a half in this retreat, though 
 often coming forth from it. 
 
 The localities of Concord which Thoreau 
 immortalized were chiefly those in the 
 neighborhood of some lake or stream, 
 though it would be hard to find in that 
 well-watered town, especially in spring 
 time, any place which is not neighbor either 
 
202 HENRY D. THOSE AU. 
 
 to the nine-times circling river Musketa* 
 quid, to the swifter Assabet, 
 
 " That like an arrowe clear 
 Through Troy rennest aie downward to the sea," 
 
 to Walden or White Pond, to Bateman s 
 Pond, to the Mill Brook, the Sanguinetto, 
 the Nut-Meadow, or the Second Division 
 Brook. All these waters and more are re 
 nowned again and again in Thoreau s books. 
 Like Icarus, the ancient high-flyer, he tried 
 his fortune upon many a river, fiord, stream 
 let, and broad sea, 
 
 " Where still the shore his brave attempt resounds." 
 
 He gave beauty and dignity to obscure 
 places by his mention of them ; and it is 
 curious that the neighborhood of Walden, 
 now the most romantic and poetical region 
 of Concord, associated in every mind with 
 this tender lover of Nature, and his wor 
 ship of her, was anciently a place of 
 dark repute, the home of pariahs and law 
 less characters, such as fringed the sober 
 garment of many a New England village in 
 Puritanic times. 
 
 Close by Walden is Brister s Hill, where, 
 in the early days of emancipation in Massa- 
 
THE WALDEN HERMITAGE. 203 
 
 chusetts, the newly freed slaves of Concord 
 magnates took up their abode, 
 
 " The wrathful kings on cairns apart," 
 
 as Ossian says. Here dwelt Cato Ingraham, 
 freedman of Squire Duncan Ingraham, 
 who, when yet a slave in his master s back 
 yard, on the day of Concord fight, was 
 brought to a halt by the fierce Major Pit- 
 cairn, then something the worse for Squire 
 Ingraham s wine, and ordered to " lay down 
 his arms and disperse," as the rebels at 
 Lexington had been six hours earlier. Here 
 also abode Zilpha, a black Circe, who spun 
 linen, and made the Walden Woods resound 
 with her shrill singing : 
 
 " Dives inaccessos ubi Solis filia lucos 
 Assiduo resonat cantu, tectisque superbis 
 Urit odoratam nocturna in lumina cedrum, 
 Arguto tenues percurrens pectine telas." 
 
 But some paroled English prisoners in the 
 War of 1812, burnt down her proud abode, 
 with its imprisoned cat and dog and hens, 
 while Zilpha was absent. Down the road 
 towards the village from Cato s farm and 
 Zilpha s musical loom and wheel, lived 
 Brister Freeman, who gave his name to 
 the hill, Scipio Brister, " a handy ne- 
 
204 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 gro," once the slave of Squire Cummings, 
 but long since emancipated, and in Tho- 
 reau s boyhood set free again by death, and 
 buried in an old Lincoln graveyard, near 
 the ancestor of President Garfield, but still 
 nearer the unmarked graves of British gren 
 adiers, who fell in the retreat from Concord. 
 With this Scipio Africanus Brister Liber- 
 tinus, in the edge of the Walden Woods, 
 " dwelt Fenda, his hospitable wife, who 
 told fortunes, yet pleasantly large, round, 
 and black, such a dusky orb as never 
 rose on Concord, before or since," says 
 Thoreau. Such was the African colony on 
 the south side of Concord village among 
 the woods, while on the northern edge of 
 the village, along the Great Meadows, there 
 dwelt another colony, headed by Caesar Rob- 
 bins, whose descendants still flit about the 
 town. Older than all was the illustrious 
 Guinea negro, John Jack, once a slave on 
 the farm which is now the glebe of the Old 
 Manse, but who purchased his freedom 
 about the time the Old Manse was built in 
 1765-66. He survives in his quaint epi 
 taph, written by Daniel Bliss, the young 
 Tory brother of the first mistress of the 
 
THE WALDEN HERMITAGE. 205 
 
 manse (Mrs. William Emerson, grand 
 mother of Emerson, the poet) : 
 
 " God wills us free, Man wills us slaves, 
 I will as God wills : God s will be done. 
 
 Here lies the body of 
 
 JOHN JACK, 
 
 A native of Africa, who died 
 
 March, 1773, aged about sixty years. 
 
 Though born in a land of slavery, 
 
 He was born free ; 
 Though he lived in a land of liberty, 
 
 He lived a slave ; 
 
 Till by his honest though stolen labors 
 
 He acquired the source of slavery 
 
 Which gave him his freedom ; 
 
 Though not long before 
 
 Death the grand tyrant 
 
 Gave him his final emancipation, 
 
 And put him on a footing with kings. 
 
 Though a slave to vice, 
 
 He practised those virtues 
 
 Without which kings are but slaves." 
 
 This epitaph, and the anecdote already 
 given concerning Caesar Robbins, may illus 
 trate the humanity and humor with which 
 the freedmen of Concord were regarded, 
 while an adventure of Scipio Brister s, in 
 
206 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 his early days of freedom, may show the 
 mixture of savage fun and contempt that 
 also followed them, and which some of their 
 conduct may have deserved. 
 
 The village drover and butcher once had 
 a ferocious bull to kill, and when he had 
 succeeded with some difficulty in driving 
 him into his slaughter-house, on the Wai- 
 den road, nobody was willing to go in and 
 kill him. Just then Brister Freeman, from 
 his hill near Walden, came along the road, 
 and was slyly invited by the butcher to go 
 into the slaughter-house for an axe, being 
 told that when he brought it he should have 
 a job to do. The unsuspecting freedman 
 opened the door and walked in ; it was shut 
 behind him, and he found the bull drawn up 
 in line of battle before him. After some 
 pursuit and retreat in the narrow arena, 
 Brister spied the axe he wanted, and began 
 attacking his pursuer, giving him a blow 
 here or there as he had opportunity. His 
 employers outside watched the bull-fight 
 through a hole in the building, and cheered 
 on the matador with shouts and laughter. 
 At length, by a fortunate stroke, the Afri 
 can conquered, the bull fell, and his slayer 
 
THE WALDEN HERMITAGE. 207 
 
 threw down the axe and rushed forth un 
 hurt. But his tormentors declared " he was 
 no longer the dim, sombre negro he went 
 in, but literally white with terror, and what 
 was once his wool straightened out and 
 standing erect on his head." Without wait 
 ing to be identified, or to receive pay for 
 his work, Brister, affrighted and wrathful, 
 withdrew to the wooded hill and to the 
 companionship of his fortune-telling Fenda, 
 who had not foreseen the hazard of her 
 spouse. 
 
 It was along the same road and down 
 this hill, passing by the town " poor-farm " 
 and poor-house, the last retreat of these 
 straggling soldiers of fortune, that Tho- 
 reau went toward the village jail from his 
 hermitage, that day in 1846, when the town 
 constable carried him off from the shoe 
 maker s to whose shop he had gone to get 
 a cobbled shoe. His room-mate in jail for 
 the single night he slept there, was intro 
 duced to him by the jailer, Mr. Staples (a 
 real name), as " a first-rate fellow and a 
 clever man," and on being asked by Tho- 
 reau why he was in prison, replied, " Why, 
 they accuse me of burning a barn, but I 
 
208 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 never did it." As near as Thoreau could 
 make out, he had gone to bed in a barn 
 when drunk, and smoked his pipe there. 
 Such were the former denizens of the Wai- 
 den woods votaries of Bacchus and Apol 
 lo, and extremely liable to take fire upon 
 small occasion, like Giordano Bruno s 
 sonneteer, who, addressing the Arabian 
 Phenix, says, 
 
 " Tu bruci n un, ed io in ogni loco, 
 lo da Cupido, hai tu da Febo ilfoco" 
 
 It seems by the letter of Margaret Fuller 
 in 1841 (cited in chapter VI.), that Tho 
 reau had for years meditated a withdrawal 
 to a solitary life. The retreat he then had 
 in view was, doubtless, the Hollowell Farm, 
 a place, as he says, " of complete retire 
 ment, being about two miles from the vil 
 lage, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, 
 and separated from the highway by a broad 
 field." The house stood apart from the 
 road to Nine-Acre Corner, fronting the 
 Musketaquid on a green hill-side, and was 
 first seen by Thoreau as a boy, in his ear 
 liest voyages up the river to Fairhaven 
 Bay, "concealed behind a dense grove of 
 red maples, through which I heard the 
 
THE WALDEN HERMITAGE. 209 
 
 house-dog bark." This place Thoreau once 
 bought, but released it to the owner, whose 
 wife refused to sign the deed of sale. In 
 his Walden venture he was a squatter, using 
 for his house-lot a woodland of Mr. Emer 
 son s, who, for the sake of his walks and his 
 wood-fire, had bought land on both sides of 
 Walden Pond. 
 
 How early Thoreau formed his plan of 
 retiring to a hut among these woods, I have 
 not learned ; but in a letter written to him 
 March 5, 1845, by his friend Channing, a 
 passage occurs concerning it ; and it was in 
 the latter part of the same month that Tho 
 reau borrowed Mr. Alcott s axe and went 
 across the fields to cut the timber for his 
 cabin. Channing writes : 
 
 " I see nothing for you in this earth but that 
 field which I once christened * Briars ; go out 
 upon that, build yourself a hut, and there begin 
 the grand process of devouring yourself alive. I 
 see no alternative, no other hope for you. Eat 
 yourself up ; you will eat nobody else, nor any 
 thing else. Concord is just as good a place as 
 any other ; there are, indeed, more people in the 
 streets of that village than in the streets of this." 
 [He was writing from the Tribune Office, in 
 
 14 
 
210 HENRY D. THOREAff. 
 
 New York.] " This is a singularly muddy town ; 
 muddy, solitary, and silent. I saw Teufelsdrockh 
 a few days since ; he said a few words to me 
 about you. Says he, That fellow Thoreau 
 might be something, if he would only take a 
 journey through the Everlasting No, thence for 
 the North Pole. By G , said the old clothes- 
 bag, warming up, * I should like to take that fel 
 low out into the Everlasting No, and explode him 
 like a bombshell ; he would make a loud report ; 
 it would be fun to see him pick himself up. 
 He needs the Blumine flower business; that 
 would be his salvation. He is too dry, too com 
 posed, too chalky, too concrete. Does that exe 
 crable compound of sawdust and stagnation L. 
 still prose about nothing? and that nutmeg- 
 grater of a Z. yet shriek about nothing ? Does 
 anybody still think of coming to Concord to live ? 
 I mean new people ? If they do, let them be 
 ware of you philosophers. " 
 
 Of course, this imaginary Teufelsdrockh, 
 like Carlyle s, was the satirical man in the 
 writer himself, suggesting the humorous 
 and contradictory side of things, and glan 
 cing at the coolness of Thoreau, which his 
 friends sometimes found provoking. In his 
 own person Channing adds : 
 
 " I should be pleased to hear from Kamchatka 
 
THE WALDEN HERMITAGE. 211 
 
 occasionally; my last advices from the Polar 
 Bear are getting stale. In addition to this I find 
 that my corresponding members at Van Diemen s 
 Land have wandered into limbo. I hear occa 
 sionally from the World ; everything seems to 
 be promising in that quarter ; business is flourish 
 ing, and the people are in good spirits. I feel 
 convinced that the Earth has less claims to our 
 regard than formerly ; these mild winters deserve 
 severe censure. But I am well aware that the 
 Earth will talk about the necessity of routine, 
 taxes, etc. On the whole it is best not to com 
 plain without necessity." 
 
 It is well to read this shrewd humor, 
 uttered in the opposite sense from Thoreau s 
 paradoxical wit in his " Walden," as an in 
 troduction or motto to that book. For 
 Thoreau has been falsely judged from the 
 wit and the paradox of " Walden," as if he 
 were a hater of men, or foolishly desired all 
 mankind to retire to the woods. As Chan- 
 ning said, soon after his friend s death, 
 
 " The fact that our author lived for a while 
 alone in a shanty, near a pond, and named one 
 of his books after the place where it stood, has 
 led some to say he was a barbarian or a misan 
 thrope. It was a writing-case ; here in this 
 wooden inkstand he wrote a good part of his 
 
212 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 famous Walden, and this solitary woodland 
 pool was more to his Muse than all oceans of the 
 placet, by the force of imagination. Some have 
 fancied, because he moved to Walden, he left his 
 family. He bivouacked there and really lived 
 at home, where he went every day." 
 
 This last is not literally true, for he was 
 sometimes secluded in his hut for days to 
 gether ; but he remained as social at Wal 
 den as he had been while an inmate of Mr. 
 Emerson s family in 1841-43, or again in 
 1847-48, after giving up his hermitage. He, 
 in fact, as he says himself, 
 
 " Went to the woods because he wished to live 
 deliberately, to front only the essential facts of 
 life, and see if he could not learn what it had to 
 teach, and not, when he came to die, discover 
 that he had not lived." 
 
 In another place he says he went to 
 Walden to " transact some private busi 
 ness," and this he did to good purpose. He 
 edited there his " Week," some portions of 
 which had appeared in the " Dial " from 
 1840 to 1844, but which was not published 
 as a volume until 1849, although he had 
 made many attempts to issue it earlier. It 
 was at Walden, also, that he wrote his essay 
 
THE WALDEN HERMITAGE. 213 
 
 on Carlyle, which was first published in 
 " Graham s Magazine," at Philadelphia, in 
 1847, through the good offices of Horace 
 Greeley, of which we shall hear more in the 
 next chapter. 
 
 Thoreau s hermit life was not, then, 
 merely a protest against the luxury and the 
 restraints of society, nor yet an austere 
 discipline such as monks and saints have 
 imposed upon themselves for their souls 
 good. " My purpose in going to Walden 
 was not to live cheaply, nor to live dearly 
 there, but to transact some private business 
 with the fewest obstacles." He lived a 
 life of labor and study in his hut. Emer 
 son says, " as soon as he had exhausted the 
 advantages of that solitude, he abandoned 
 it." He had edited his first book there ; 
 had satisfied himself that he was fit to be 
 an author, and had passed his first exami 
 nations ; then he graduated from that gym 
 nasium as another young student might 
 from the medical college or the polytechnic 
 school. " I left the woods for as good a 
 reason as I went there." His abandoned 
 hut was then taken by a Scotch gardener, 
 Hugh Whelan by name, who removed it 
 
214 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 some rods away, to the midst of Thoreau s 
 bean-field, and made it his cottage for a few 
 years. Then it was bought by a farmer, 
 who put it on wheels and carried it three 
 miles northward, toward the entry of the 
 Estabrook Farm on the old Carlisle road, 
 where it stood till after Thoreau s death, 
 a shelter for corn and beans, and a favorite 
 haunt of squirrels and blue jays. The 
 wood-cut representing the hermitage in the 
 first edition of " Walden," is from a sketch 
 made by Sophia Thoreau, and is more ex 
 act than that given in Page s " Life of Tho 
 reau," but in neither picture are the trees 
 accurately drawn. 
 
 On the spot where Thoreau lived at Wal 
 den there is now a cairn of stones, yearly 
 visited by hundreds, and growing in height 
 as each friend of his muse adds a stone from 
 the shore of the fair water he loved so 
 well. 
 
 "Beat with thy paddle on the boat 
 Midway the lake, the wood repeats 
 The ordered blow ; the echoing note 
 Is ended in thy ear ; yet its retreats 
 Conceal Time s possibilities ; 
 And in this Man the nature lies 
 Of woods so green, 
 And lakes so sheen, 
 And hermitages edged between. 
 
THE WALDEN HERMITAGE. 215 
 
 " And I may tell you that the Man was good, 
 Never did his neighbor harm, 
 Sweet was it where he stood, 
 Sunny and warm; 
 Like the seat beneath a pine 
 That winter suns have cleared away 
 With their yellow tine, 
 Red-cushioned and tasseled with the day." 
 
 The events and thoughts of Thoreau s 
 life at Walden may be read in his book of 
 that name. As a protest against society, 
 that life was ineffectual, as the commu 
 nities at Brook Farm and Fruitlands had 
 proved to be ; and as the Fourierite phalan 
 steries, in which Horace Greeley interested 
 himself, were destined to be. In one. sense, 
 all these were failures ; but in Thoreau s 
 case the failure was slight, the discipline 
 and experience gained were invaluable. He 
 never regretted it, and the Walden episode 
 in his career has made him better known 
 than anything else. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 HOEACE IN THE ROLE OF M^CENAS. 
 
 IN a letter to his sister Sophia, July 21, 
 1843, written from Mr. William Emerson s 
 house at Staten Island, Thoreau says : 
 
 " In New York I have seen, since I wrote last, 
 Horace Greeley, editor of the Tribune, who is 
 cheerfully in earnest at his office of all work, 
 a hearty New Hampshire boy as one would wish 
 to meet, and says, * Now be neighborly. He 
 believes only or mainly, first in the Sylvania As 
 sociation, somewhere in Pennsylvania; and sec 
 ondly, and most of all, in a new association, to 
 go into operation soon in New Jersey, with which 
 he is connected." 
 
 This was the " Phalanstery " at which 
 W. H. Channing afterward preached. A 
 fortnight later, Thoreau writes to Mr. Em 
 erson : 
 
 " I have had a pleasant talk with W. H. Chan* 
 ning ; and Greeley, too, it was refreshing to meet. 
 They were both much pleased with your criti- 
 
HORACE IN THE ROLE OF MAECENAS. 217 
 
 cism on Carlyle, but thought that you had over 
 looked what chiefly concerned them in the book, 
 its practical aims and merits." 
 
 This refers to the notice of Carlyle s 
 " Past and Present," in the " Dial " for 
 July, 1843, and shows that Mr. Greeley 
 was a quick reader of that magazine, as 
 Thoreau always was of the "New York 
 Tribune." From this time onward a 
 warm friendship continued between Tho 
 reau and Greeley, and many letters went 
 to and fro, which reveal the able editor in 
 the light of a modern Maecenas to the au 
 thor of the Musketaquid Georgics. 
 
 No letters seem to have passed between 
 them earlier than 1846; and in 1844-45 
 Thoreau must have known the " Tribune " 
 editor best through his newspaper, and 
 from the letters of Margaret Fuller, Ellery 
 Channing, and other common friends, who 
 saw much of him then, admired and laughed 
 at him, or did both by turns. Miss Fuller, 
 who had gone to New York to write for the 
 " Tribune," and to live in its Editor s family, 
 wrote : 
 
 " Mr. Greeley is a man pf genuine excellence, 
 honorable, benevolent, and of an uncorrupted dis- 
 
218 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 position. He is sagacious, and, in his way, of 
 even great abilities. In modes of life and man 
 ners, he is a man of the people, and of the 
 American people. With the exception of my 
 own mother, I think him the most disinterestedly 
 generous person I have ever known." 
 
 There was a laughable side even to these 
 fine traits, and there were eccentricities of 
 dress and manner, which others saw more 
 keenly than this generous woman. Ellery 
 Channing, whose eye no whimsical or 
 beautiful object ever escaped, in the letter 
 of March, 1845, already cited, thus signaled 
 to Thoreau the latest news of his friend : 
 
 " Mumbo Jumbo is recovering from an attack 
 of sore eyes, and will soon be out, in a pair of 
 canvas trousers, scarlet jacket, and cocked hat. 
 I understand he intends to demolish all the re 
 maining species of Fetichism at a meal. I think 
 it is probable it will vomit him." 
 
 Thoreau wrote an essay on Carlyle in 
 1846, and in the summer of that year sent 
 it to Mr. Greeley, with a request that he 
 would find a place for it in some magazine. 
 To this request, which Mr. Greeley himself 
 had invited, no doubt, he thus replied : 
 
HORACE IN THE ROLE OF MAECENAS. 219 
 
 "August 16, 1846. 
 
 " MY DEAR THOREAU, Believe me when I 
 say that I mean to do the errand you have asked 
 of me, and that soon. But I am not sanguine of 
 success, and have hardly a hope that it will be 
 immediate, if ever. I hardly know a work that 
 would publish your article* all at once, and l to be 
 continued are words shunned like a pestilence. 
 But I know you have written a good thing about 
 Carlyle, too solidly good, I fear, to be profit 
 able to yourself, or attractive to publishers. 
 Did st thou ever, O my friend ! ponder on the 
 significance and cogency of the assurance, Ye 
 cannot serve God and Mammon, as applicable to 
 literature, applicable, indeed, to all things what 
 soever ? God grant us grace to endeavor to serve 
 Him rather than Mammon, that ought to suf 
 fice us. In my poor judgment, if anything is 
 calculated to make a scoundrel of an honest man, 
 writing to sell is that very particular thing. 
 
 " Yours heartily, HORACE GREELET. 
 
 " Remind Ralph Waldo Emerson and wife of 
 my existence and grateful remembrance." 
 
 On the 30th of September Mr. Greeley 
 again wrote, saying, 
 
 "I learned to-day, through Mr. Griswold, 
 former editor of Graham s Magazine, that your 
 lecture is accepted, to appear in that magazine. 
 
220 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 Of course it is to be paid for at the usual rate, as 
 I expressly so stated when I inclosed it to Gra 
 ham. He has not written me a word on the 
 subject, which induces me to think he may have 
 written you. 1 Please write me if you would have 
 me speak further on the subject. The pay, how 
 ever, is sure, though the amount may not be 
 large, and I think you may wait until the article 
 appears, before making further stipulations on 
 the subject." 
 
 From the tenor of this I infer that Tho- 
 reau had written to say that he might wish 
 to read his " Thomas Carlyle " as a lecture, 
 and desired to stipulate for that before it 
 was printed. He might be excused for 
 some solicitude concerning payment, from 
 his recent experience with the publishers of 
 the " Boston Miscellany," which had printed, 
 in 1843, his " Walk to Wachusett." At 
 the very time when Thoreau, in New York, 
 was making Greeley s acquaintance, Mr. 
 Emerson, in Boston, was dunning the Mis 
 cellaneous publishers, and wrote to Tho 
 reau (July 20, 1843) : 
 
 " When I called on , their partner, in their 
 
 absence, informed me that they could not pay 
 1 No such letter appears. 
 
HORACE IN THE ROLE OF MAECENAS. 221 
 
 you, at present, any part of their debt on account 
 of the Boston Miscellany. After much talk 
 ing all the promise he could offer was, " that 
 within a year it would probably be paid, a 
 probability which certainly looks very slender. 
 The very worst thing he said was the proposition 
 that you should take your payment in the form 
 of Boston Miscellanies ! I shall not fail to re 
 fresh their memory at intervals." 
 
 But I cannot learn that anything came 
 of it. Mr. Greeley, as we shall see, was a 
 more successful collector. On the 26th of 
 October, 1846, he continued the adventures 
 of the wandering essay as follows : 
 
 " MY FRIEND THOREAU, I know you think 
 it odd that you have not heard further, and, per 
 haps blame my negligence or engrossing cares, 
 but, if so, without good reason. I have to-day 
 received a letter from Griswold, in Philadelphia, 
 who says : The article by Thoreau on Carlyle 
 is in type, and will be paid for liberally. * Lib 
 erally is quoted as an expression of Graham s. 
 I know well the difference between a publisher s 
 and an author s idea of what is liberally ; but 
 I give you the best I can get as the result of 
 three letters to Philadelphia on this subject. 
 
 " Success to you, my friend ! Remind Mr. and 
 
222 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 Mrs. Emerson of my existence, and my lively 
 remembrance of their various kindnesses. 
 " Yours, very busy in our political contest, 
 " HORACE GREELEY.* 
 
 It would seem that " Griswold " (who was 
 Rufus W. Griswold, the biographer of 
 Poe) and " Graham " (who was George 
 R. Graham, the magazine publisher of Phil 
 adelphia), did not move so fast either in 
 publication or in payment as they had led 
 Mr. Greeley to expect ; and also that Tho- 
 reau became impatient and wrote to his 
 friend that he would withdraw the essay. 
 Whereupon Mr. Greeley, under date of Feb 
 ruary 5, 1847, wrote thus : 
 
 " MY DEAR THOREAU, Although your letter 
 only came to hand to-day, 1 attended to its sub 
 ject yesterday, when I was in Philadelphia, on 
 my way home from Washington. Your article 
 is this moment in type, and will appear about 
 the 20th inst., as the leading article in Graham s 
 Magazine for next month. Now don t object 
 to this, nor be unreasonably sensitive at the de 
 lay. It is immensely more important to you 
 that the article should appear thus (that is, if you 
 have any literary aspirations) than it is that you 
 should make a few dollars by issuing it in some 
 
HORACE IN THE RdLE OF MAECENAS. 223 
 
 other way. As to lecturing, you have been at 
 perfect liberty to deliver it as a lecture a hun 
 dred times, if you had chosen, the more the 
 better. It is really a good thing, and I will see 
 that Graham pays you fairly for it. But its ap 
 pearance there is worth far more to you than 
 money. I know there has been too much delay, 
 and have done my best to obviate it. But I 
 could not. A magazine that pays, and which it 
 is desirable to be known as a contributor to, is 
 always crowded with articles, and has to postpone 
 some for others of even less merit. I do this 
 myself with good things that I am not required 
 to pay for. 
 
 " Thoreau, do not think hard of Graham. Do 
 not try to stop the publication of your article. It 
 is best as it is. But just sit down and write a 
 like article about Emerson, which I will give 
 you $25 for, if you cannot do better with it ; 
 then one about Hawthorne at your leisure, etc., 
 etc. I will pay you the money for each of these 
 articles on delivery, publish them when and 
 how I please, leaving to you the copyright ex 
 pressly. In a year or two, if you take care not 
 to write faster than you think, you will have the 
 material of a volume worth publishing, and 
 then we will see what can be done. There is a 
 text somewhere in St. Paul my Scriptural 
 reading is getting rusty, which says, Look 
 
224 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 not back to the things which are behind, but 
 rather to those which are before, etc. Com 
 mending this to your thoughtful appreciation, I 
 am, yours, etc. HORACE GREELEY." 
 
 The Carlyle essay did appear in two 
 numbers of "Graham s Magazine" (March 
 and April, 1847), but alas, no payment 
 came to hand. After waiting a year longer, 
 Thoreau wrote to Greeley again (March 31, 
 1848), informing him of the delinquency of 
 Griswold and Graham. At once, his friend 
 replied (April 3), " It saddens and sur 
 prises me to know that your article was not 
 paid for by Graham ; and, since my honor 
 is involved in the matter, I will see that you 
 are paid, and that at no distant day." Ac 
 cordingly on the 17th of May, 1848, he 
 writes again as follows : 
 
 " DEAR FRIEND THOREAU, I trust you 
 have not thought me neglectful or dilatory with 
 regard to your business. I have done my very 
 best, throughout, and it is only to-day that I have 
 been able to lay my hand on the money due you 
 from Graham. I have been to see him in Phila 
 delphia, but did not catch him in his business 
 office ; then I have been here to meet him, and 
 been referred to his brother, etc. I finally found 
 
HORACE IN TEE RdLE OF MAECENAS. 225 
 
 the two numbers of the work in which your arti 
 cle was published (not easy, I assure you, for he 
 has them not, nor his brother, and I hunted them 
 up, and bought one of them at a very out-of-the- 
 way place), and with these I made out a regular 
 bill for the contribution ; drew a draft on G. R. 
 Graham for the amount, gave it to his brother 
 here for collection, and to-day received the money. 
 Now you see how to get pay yourself, another 
 time; I have pioneered the way, and you can 
 follow it easily yourself. There has been no 
 intentional injustice on Graham s part ; but he is 
 overwhelmed with business, has too many irons 
 in the fire, and we did not go at him the right 
 way. Had you drawn a draft on him, at first, 
 and given it to the Concord Bank to send in for 
 collection, you would have received your money 
 long since. Enough of this. I have made Gra 
 ham pay you $75, but I only send you $50, for, 
 having got so much for Carlyle, I am ashamed to 
 take your < Maine Woods for $25." 
 
 This last allusion is to a new phase of 
 the queer patronage which the good Msece- 
 nas extended to our Concord poet. In his 
 letter of March 31, 1848, Thoreau had of 
 fered Greeley, in compliance with his sug 
 gestion of the previous year, a paper on 
 "Ktaadn and the Maine Woods," which 
 
 15 
 
226 HENRY D. THOREAV. 
 
 afterwards appeared in the " Union Mag 
 azine." On the 17th of April Greeley 
 writes : 
 
 " I inclose you $25 for your article on Maine 
 Scenery, as promised. I know it is worth more, 
 though I have not yet found time to read it ; but 
 I have tried once to sell it without success. It 
 is rather long for my columns, and too fine for 
 the million ; but I consider it a cheap bargain, 
 and shall print it myself, if I do not dispose of 
 it to better advantage. You will not, of course, 
 consider yourself under any sort of obligation to 
 me, for my offer was in the way of business, 
 and I have got more than the worth of my 
 money." 
 
 On the 17th of May he adds : 
 
 " I have expectations of procuring it a place 
 in a new magazine of high character that will 
 pay. I don t expect to get as much for it as 
 for Carlyle, but I hope to get $50. If you are 
 satisfied to take the $25 for your * Maine 
 Woods, say so, and I will send on the money ; 
 but I don t want to seem a Jew, buying your 
 articles at half price to speculate upon. If you 
 choose to let it go that way, it shall be so ; but 
 I would sooner do my best for you, and send you 
 the money." 
 
HORACE IN THE ROLE OF MAECENAS. 227 
 
 On the 28th of October, 1848, he writes : 
 " I break a silence of some duration to inform 
 you that I hope on Monday to receive payment 
 for your glorious account of i Ktaadn and the 
 Maine Woods, which I bought of you at a 
 Jew s bargain, and sold to the Union Maga 
 zine. I am to get $75 for it, and, as I don t 
 choose to exploiter you at such a rate, I shall 
 insist on inclosing you $25 more in this letter, 
 which will still leave me $25 to pay various 
 charges and labors I have incurred in selling 
 your articles and getting paid for them, the 
 latter by far the more difficult portion of the 
 business." 
 
 In the letter of April 17, 1848, Mr. 
 Greeley had further said : 
 
 " If you will write me two or three articles in 
 the course of the summer, I think I can dispose 
 of them for your benefit. But write not more 
 than half as long as your article just sent me, 
 for that is too long for the magazines. If that 
 were in two, it would be far more valuable. 
 What about your book (the * Week ) ? Is any 
 thing going on about it now? Why did not 
 Emerson try it in England ? I think the How- 
 itts could get it favorably before the British 
 public. If you can suggest any way wherein I 
 can put it forward, do not hesitate, but command 
 
228 EENRT D. THOREAU. 
 
 In the letter of May 17th, he reiterates 
 the advice to be brief : 
 
 " Thoreau, if you will only write one or two 
 articles, when in the spirit, about half the length 
 of this, I can sell it readily and advantageously. 
 The length of your papers is the only imped 
 iment to their appreciation by the magazines. 
 Give me one or two shorter, and I will try to coin 
 them speedily." 
 
 May 25th he returns to the charge, when 
 sending the last twenty-five dollars for the 
 " Maine Woods " : 
 
 " Write me something shorter when the spirit 
 moves (never write a line otherwise, for the hack 
 writer is a slavish beast, /know), and I will sell 
 it for you soon. I want one shorter article from 
 your pen that will be quoted, as these long arti 
 cles cannot be, and let the public know something 
 of your way of thinking and seeing. It will do 
 good. What do you think of following out your 
 thought in an essay on The Literary Life ? 
 You need not make a personal allusion, but I 
 know you can write an article worth reading on 
 that theme, when you are in the vein." 
 
 After a six months interval (November 
 19, 1848), Greeley resumes in a similar 
 strain : 
 
HORACE IN THE ROLE OF MAECENAS. 229 
 
 " FRIEND THOREAU, Yours of the 17th re 
 ceived. Say we are even on money counts, and 
 let the matter drop. I have tried to serve you, 
 and have been fully paid for my own disburse 
 ments and trouble in the premises. So we will 
 move on. 
 
 " I think you will do well to send me some 
 passages from one or both of your new works to 
 dispose of to the magazines. This will be the 
 best kind of advertisement, whether for a pub 
 lisher or for readers. You may write with an 
 angel s pen, yet your writings have no mercan 
 tile money value till you are known and talked 
 of as an author. Mr. Emerson would have been 
 twice as much known and read, if he had written 
 for the magazines a little, just to let common 
 people know of his existnce. I believe a chapter 
 from one of your books printed in Graham, or 
 6 The Union/ will add many to the readers of the 
 volume when issued. Here is the reason why 
 British books sell so much better among us than 
 American, because they are thoroughly adver 
 tised through the British reviews, magazines, and 
 journals which circulate or are copied among us. 
 However, do as you please. If you choose to 
 send me one of your manuscripts I will get it 
 published, but I cannot promise you any con 
 siderable recompense ; and, indeed, if Munroe 
 will do it, that will be better. Your writings are 
 
230 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 in advance of the general mind here ; Boston is 
 nearer their standard. I never saw the verses 
 you speak of. Wont you send them again ? I 
 have been buried up in politics for the last six 
 weeks. Kind regards to Emerson. It is doubt 
 ful about my seeing you this season." 
 
 Here the letters ceased for a time. " Mun- 
 roe did it," that is, a Boston bookseller 
 published Thoreau s " Week," which was 
 favorably reviewed by George Ripley in 
 the " Tribune," by Lowell in the " Massa 
 chusetts Quarterly," and by others else 
 where ; but the book did not sell, and in 
 volved its author in debt for its printing. 
 To meet this he took up surveying as a bus 
 iness, and after a time, when some payment 
 must be made, he asked his friend Greeley 
 for a loan. In the interval, Margaret Ful 
 ler had written from Europe those remark 
 able letters for the "Tribune," had married 
 in Italy, sailed for home in 1850, and died 
 on the shore of Fire Island, near New York, 
 whither Thoreau went with her friends to 
 learn her fate, and recover the loved re 
 mains. This was in July, 1850, and he no 
 doubt saw Mr. Greeley there. A year and 
 a half later, when he was seeking oppor- 
 
HORACE IN THE ROLE OF MAECENAS. 231 
 
 tunities to lecture, he wrote to Mr. Greeley 
 again, in February, 1852, offering himself 
 to lecture in a course at New York, which 
 the "Tribune" editor had some interest in. 
 The reply was this : 
 
 " NEW YORK, February 24, 1852. 
 "Mr FRIEND THOREAU, Thank you for 
 your remembrance, though the motto you sug 
 gest is impracticable. The People s Course is 
 full for the season ; and even if it were not, your 
 name would probably not pass ; because it is not 
 merely necessary that each lecturer should con 
 tinue well the course, but that he shall be known 
 as the very man beforehand. Whatever draws 
 less than fifteen hundred hearers damages the 
 finances of the movement, so low is the admis 
 sion, and eo large the expense. But, Thoreau, 
 you are a better speaker than many, but a far 
 better writer still. Do you wish to swap any of 
 your * wood-notes wild for dollars ? If yea, and 
 you will sell me some articles, shorter, if you 
 please, than the former, I will try to coin them 
 for you. Is it a bargain ? Yours, 
 
 " HORACE GREELEY." 
 
 Thoreau responded at once with some 
 manuscripts (March 5), and was thus ad 
 dressed, March 18, by his friend : 
 
232 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 " I shall get you some money for the articles 
 you sent me, though not immediately. As to 
 your long account of a Canadian tour, I don t 
 know. It looks unmanageable. Can t you cut 
 it into three or four, and omit all that relates to 
 time ? The cities are described to death ; but I 
 know you are at home with Nature, and that she 
 rarely and slowly changes. Break this up, if 
 you can, and I will try to have it swallowed 
 and digested." 
 
 A week later he sent a letter from the 
 publisher, Sartain, accepting the articles for 
 a low price, 1 and adds : " If you break up 
 
 1 That is to say, a low price compared with what is 
 now paid. As the letter courteously states some matters 
 that have now become curious, it may be given : 
 
 " PHILADELPHIA, March 24, 1852. 
 "DEAR SIR, I have read the articles of Mr. Tho- 
 reau forwarded by you, and will be glad to publish them 
 if our terms are satisfactory. We generally pay for 
 prose composition per printed page, and would allow 
 him three dollars per page. We do not pay more than 
 four dollars for any that we now engage. I did not 
 suppose our maximum rate would have paid you (Mr. 
 Greeley) for your lecture, and therefore requested to 
 know your own terms. Of course, when an article is 
 unusually desirable, we may deviate from rule ; I now 
 only mention ordinary arrangement. I was very sorry 
 not to have your article, but shall enjoy the reading of it 
 in Graham. Mr. T. might send us some further contri- 
 
HORACE IN THE ROLE OF MAECENAS. 233 
 
 your Excursion to Canada into three or 
 four articles, I have no doubt I could get it 
 published on similar terms." April 3, 1852, 
 he returns to a former proposition, that Tho- 
 reau shall write about Emerson as he did 
 six years before on Carlyle. 
 
 " FRIEND THOREAU, I wish you to write me 
 an article on Ralph Waldo Emerson, his Works 
 and Ways, extending to one hundred pages, 
 or so, of letter sheet like this, to take the form 
 of a review of his writings, but to give some idea 
 of the Poet, the Genius, the Man, with some 
 idea of the New England scenery and home in 
 fluence, which have combined to make him what 
 he is. Let it be calm, searching, and impartial ; 
 nothing like adulation, but a just summing up of 
 what he is and what he has done. I mean to get 
 this into the Westminster Review, but if not 
 acceptable there, I will publish it elsewhere. I 
 will pay you fifty dollars for the article when de 
 livered ; in advance, if you desire it. Say the 
 word, and I will send the money at once. It is 
 perfectly convenient to do so. Your Carlyle 
 article is my model, but you can give us Emerson 
 
 butions, and shall at least receive prompt and courteous 
 decision respecting them. Yours truly, 
 
 "JOHN SARTAIN." 
 
 It seems sad so candid and amiable a publisher should 
 not have succeeded. 
 
234 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 better than you did Carlyle. I presume he would 
 allow you to write extracts for this purpose from 
 his lectures not yet published. I would delay the 
 publication of the article to suit his publishing 
 arrangements, should that be requested. 
 
 "Yours, HORACE GREELEY." 
 
 To this request, as before, there came a 
 prompt negative, although Thoreau was 
 then sadly in need of money. Mr. Greeley 
 wrote, April 20 : 
 
 " I am, rather sorry you will not do the 
 * Works and Ways, but glad that you are able 
 to employ your time to better purpose. But 
 your Quebec notes have n t reached me yet, and 
 I fear the good time is passing. They ought 
 to have appeared in the June number of the 
 monthlies, but now cannot before July. If you 
 choose to send them to me all in a lump, I will try 
 to get them printed in that way. I don t care 
 about them if you choose to reserve, or to print 
 them elsewhere ; but I can better make a use for 
 them at this season that at any other." 
 
 They were sent, and offered to the 
 " Whig Review," and to other magazines , 
 but on the 25th of June, Mr. Greeley 
 writes : 
 
 " I have had only bad luck with your manu 
 
HORACE IN THE ROLE OF MAECENAS. 235 
 
 script. Two magazines have refused it on the 
 ground of its length, saying that articles To be 
 continued are always unpopular, however good. 
 I will try again." 
 
 It seems that the author had relied upon 
 money from this source, and a week or two 
 later he asks his friend to lend him the ex 
 pected seventy-five dollars, offering security, 
 with mercantile scrupulosity. Promptly 
 came this answer : 
 
 "NEW YORK, July 8, 1852. 
 " DEAR THOREAU, Yours received. I was 
 absent yesterday. I can lend you the seventy- 
 five dollars, and am very glad to do it. Don t 
 talk about security. I am sorry about your MSS., 
 which I do not quite despair of using to your ad 
 vantage. Yours, HORACE GREELEY." 
 
 The " Yankee in Canada," as it is now 
 called (the record of Thoreau s journey 
 through French Canada in September, 
 1850, with Ellery Channing), was offered 
 to u Putnam s Magazine " by Mr. Greeley> 
 and begun there, but ill-luck attended it. 
 Before it went the paper on " Cape Cod," 
 which became the subject of controversy, 
 first as to price, and then as to its tone to 
 wards the people of that region. This will 
 
236 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 explain the letters of Mr. Greeley that fol 
 low : 
 
 " NEW YORK, November 23, 1852. 
 " MY DEAR THOREAU, I have made no 
 bargain none whatever with Putnam con 
 cerning your MSS. I have indicated no price 
 to them. I handed over the MS. because I 
 wished it published, and presumed that was in 
 accordance both with your interest and your 
 wishes. And I now say to you, that if he will 
 pay you three dollars per printed page, I think 
 that will be very well. I have promised to write 
 something for him myself, and shall be well satis 
 fied with that price. Your Canada is not so 
 fresh and acceptable as if it had just been written 
 on the strength of a last summer s trip, and I hope 
 you will have it printed in Putnam s Monthly/ 
 But I have said nothing to his folks as to price, 
 and will not till I hear from you again. Very 
 probably there was some misapprehension on 
 the part of C. I presume the price now offered 
 you is that paid to writers generally for the 
 < Monthly/ As to Sartain, I know his (Union) 
 Magazine has broken down, but I guess he will 
 pay you. I have seen but one of your articles 
 printed by him, and I think the other may be re* 
 claimed. Please address him at once." 
 
HORACE IN THE ROLE OF MAECENAS. 237 
 
 YORK, January 2, 1853. 
 
 " FRIEND THOREAU, I have yours of the 
 29th, and credit you $20. Pay me when and in 
 such sums as may be convenient. I am sorry 
 you and C. cannot agree so as to have your 
 whole MS. printed. It will be worth nothing 
 elsewhere after having partly appeared in Put 
 nam s. I think it is a mistake to conceal the au 
 thorship of the several articles, making them all 
 (so to speak) editorial; but if that is done, don t 
 you see that the elimination of very flagrant her 
 esies (like your defiant Pantheism) becomes a 
 necessity ? If you had withdrawn your MSS., on 
 account of the abominable misprints in the first 
 number, your ground would have been far more 
 tenable. 
 
 " However, do what you will. Yours, 
 
 "HORACE GREELEY." 
 
 Thoreau did what he would, of course, and 
 the article in Putnam came to an abrupt 
 end. The loan made in July, 1852, was 
 paid with interest on the 9th of March, 
 1853, as the following note shows : 
 
 "NEW YORK, March 16, 1853. 
 
 " DEAR SIR, I have yours of the 9th, inclos 
 
 ing Putnam s check for $59, making $79 ie all 
 
 you have paid me. I am paid in full, and this 
 
 letter is your receipt in full. I don t want any 
 
238 EENEY D. THOREAU. 
 
 pay for my services, whatever they may have 
 been. Consider me your friend who wished to 
 serve you, however unsuccessfully. Don t break 
 with C. or Putnam." 
 
 A year later, Thoreau renewed his sub 
 scription to the " Weekly Tribune," but 
 the letter miscarried. In due time came 
 this reply to a third letter : 
 
 "March 6, 1854. 
 
 " DEAR SIR, I presume your first letter con 
 taining the $2 was robbed by our general mail 
 robber of New Haven, who has just been sent to 
 the State s Prison. Your second letter has prob 
 ably failed to receive attention owing to a press 
 of business. But I will make all right. You 
 ought to have the Semi-weekly, and I shall order 
 it sent to you one year on trial ; if you choose 
 to write me a letter or so some time, very well ; 
 if not, we will be even without that. 
 
 "Thoreau, I want you to do something on my 
 urgency. I want you to collect and arrange your 
 Miscellanies and send them to me. Put in 
 Ktaadn, < Carlyle, A Winter Walk, Canada/ 
 etc., and I will try to find a publisher who will 
 bring them out at his own risk, and (I hope) to 
 your ultimate profit. If you have anything new 
 to put with them, very well ; but let me have 
 about a 12mo volume whenever you can get it 
 
HORACE IN THE RdLE OF MAECENAS. 239 
 
 ready, and see if there is not something to your 
 credit in the bank of Fortune. Yours, 
 
 " HORACE GREELEY." 
 
 In reply, Thoreau notified his friend of 
 the early publication of " Walden," and was 
 thus met : 
 
 "March 23 ,1854. 
 
 " DEAR THOREAU, I am glad your * Wal 
 den is coming out. /shall announce it at once, 
 whether Ticknor does or not. I am in no hurry 
 now about your Miscellanies ; take your time, 
 select your title, and prepare your articles delib 
 erately and finally. Then, if Ticknor will give 
 you something worth having, let him have this- 
 too ; if proffering it to him is to glut your mar 
 ket, let it come to me. But take your time. I 
 was only thinking you were merely waiting when 
 you might be doing something. I referred (with 
 out naming you) to your * Walden experience 
 in my lecture on < Self-Culture, with which I 
 have had ever so many audiences. This episode 
 excited much interest, and I have been repeat 
 edly asked who it is that I refer to. 
 
 " Yours, HORACE GREELEY. 
 
 "P. S. You must know Miss Elizabeth 
 Hoar, whereas I hardly do. Now, I have offered 
 to edit Margaret s works, and I want of Eliza 
 beth a letter or memorandum of personal recol- 
 
240 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 lections of Margaret and her ideas. Can t you 
 ask her to write it for me ? H. G." 
 
 To the request of this postscript Thoreau 
 attended at once, but the " Miscellanies " 
 dwelt not in his mind, it would seem. He 
 had now become deeply concerned about 
 slavery, was also pursuing his studies con 
 cerning the Indians, and had little time for 
 the collection of his published papers. A 
 short note of April 2, 1854, closes this part 
 of the Greeley correspondence, thus : 
 
 " DEAR THOREAU, Thank you for your 
 kindness in the matter of Margaret. Pray take 
 no further trouble ; but if anything should come 
 in your way, calculated to help me, do not for 
 get. Yours, HORACE GREELEY." 
 
 In August, 1855, Mr. Greeley wrote to 
 suggest that copies of " Walden " should be 
 sent to the " Westminster Review," to " The 
 Reasoner," 147 Fleet Street, London, to 
 Gerald Massey, office of the " News," Edin 
 burgh, and to " Wills, Esq., Dickens s 
 
 Household Words," adding : 
 
 " There is a small class in England who ought 
 to know what you have written, and I feel sure 
 your publishers would not throw away copies 
 
HORACE IN THE ROLE OF MAECENAS. 241 
 
 gent to these periodicals ; especially if your 
 < Week on the Concord and Merrimac could 
 accompany them. Chapman, editor of the West 
 minster, expressed surprise that your book had 
 not been sent him, and I could find very few who 
 had read or seen it. If a new edition should be 
 called for, try to have it better known in Europe, 
 but have a few copies sent to those worthy of it, 
 at all events." 
 
 In March, 1856, Mr. Greeley opened a 
 new correspondence with Thoreau, asking 
 him to become the tutor of his children, and 
 to live with him, or near him, at Chappa- 
 qua. The proposition was made in the 
 most generous manner, and was for a time 
 considered by Thoreau, who felt a sense of 
 obligation as well as a sincere friendship to 
 wards the man who had believed in him 
 and served him so seasonably in the years 
 of his obscurity. But it resulted in noth 
 ing further than a brief visit to Mr. Greeley 
 in the following autumn, during which, as 
 Thoreau used to say, Mr. Alcott and Mr. 
 Greeley went to the opera together. 
 
 16 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 IN WOOD AND FIELD. 
 
 EXCEPT the Indians themselves, whose 
 wood-craft he never tires of celebrating, few 
 Americans were ever more at home in the 
 open air than Thoreau ; not even his friend 
 John Brown, who, like himself, suggested 
 the Indian by the delicacy of his percep 
 tions and his familiarity with all that goes 
 forward, or stands still, in wood and field. 
 Thoreau could find his path in the woods 
 at night, he said, better by his feet than 
 his eyes. 
 
 " He was a good swimmer," says Emerson, " a 
 good runner, skater, boatman, and would out 
 walk most countrymen in a day s journey. And 
 the .relation of body to mind was still finer. The 
 length of his walk uniformly made the length of 
 his writing. If shut up in the house, he did not 
 write at all." 
 
 In his last illness says Channing, 
 
 "His habit of engrossing his thoughts in a 
 
IN WOOD AND FIELD. 243 
 
 journal, which had lasted for a quarter of a cen 
 tury, his out-door life, of which he used to say, 
 if he omitted that, all his living ceased, this 
 now became so incontrovertibly a thing of the 
 past that he said once, standing at the window, 
 * I cannot see on the outside at all. We thought 
 ourselves great philosophers in those wet days 
 when we used to go out and sit down by the 
 wall-sides. This was absolutely all he was ever 
 heard ( to say of that outward world during his 
 illness, neither could a stranger in the least infer 
 that he had ever a friend in field or wood." 
 
 This out-door life began as early as he 
 could recollect, and his special attraction to 
 rivers, woods, and lakes was a thing of his 
 boyhood. He had begun to collect Indian 
 relics before leaving college, and was a 
 diligent student of natural history there. 
 Whether he was naturally an observer or > 
 not (which has been denied in a kind of 
 malicious paradox), let his life-work attest. 
 Early in 1847 he made some collections of 
 fishes, turtles, etc., in Concord for Agassiz, 
 then newly arrived in America, and I have 
 (in a letter of May 3, 1847) this account of 
 their reception : 
 
 " I carried them immediately to Mr. Agassiz, 
 
244 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 who was highly delighted with them. Some of 
 the species he had seen before, but never in so 
 fresh condition. Others, as the breams and the 
 pout, he had seen only in spirits, and the little 
 turtle he knew only from the books. I am sure 
 you would have felt fully repaid for your trouble, 
 if you could have seen the eager satisfaction with 
 which he surveyed each fin and scale. He said 
 the small mud-turtle was really a very rare spe 
 cies, quite distinct from the snapping-turtle. The 
 breams and pout seemed to please the Professor 
 very much. He would gladly come up to Con 
 cord to make a spearing excursion, as you sug 
 gested, but is drawn off by numerous and press 
 ing engagements." 
 
 On the 27th of May, Thoreau s corre 
 spondent says : 
 
 " Mr. Agassiz was very much surprised and 
 pleased at the extent of the collections you sent 
 during his absence ; the little fox he has es 
 tablished in comfortable quarters in his back 
 yard, where he is doing well. Among the fishes 
 you sent there is one, probably two, new spe 
 cies." 
 
 June 1st, in other collections, other new 
 species were discovered, much to Agassiz s 
 delight, who never failed afterward to cul- 
 
IN WOOD AND FIELD. 245 
 
 fcivate Thoreau s society when he could. 
 But the poet avoided the man of science, 
 having no love for dissection ; though he 
 recognized in Agassiz the qualities that 
 gave him so much distinction. 
 
 The paper on " Ktaadn and the Maine 
 Woods," which Horace Greeley bought " at 
 a Jew s bargain," and sold to a publisher 
 for seventy-five dollars, was the journal of 
 a visit made to the highest mountain of 
 Maine during Thoreau s second summer at 
 Walden. An aunt of his had married in 
 Bangor, Maine, and her daughters had again 
 married there, so that the young forester 
 of Concord had kinsmen on the Penobscot, 
 engaged in converting the Maine forests 
 into pine lumber. At the end of August, 
 in 1846, while his Carlyle manuscript was 
 passing from Greeley to Griswold, from 
 Griswold to Graham, and from Graham to 
 the Philadelphia type-setters, Thoreau him 
 self was on his way from Boston to Bangor; 
 and on the first day of September he started 
 with his cousin from Bangor, to explore the 
 upper waters of the Penobscot and climb 
 the summit of Ktaadn. The forest region 
 about this mountain had been explored 
 
246 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 in 1837 by Dr. Jackson, the State Geologist, 
 a brother-in-law of Mr. Emerson; but no 
 poet before Thoreau had visited these soli 
 tudes and described his experiences there. 
 James Russell Lowell did so a few yearg 
 later, and, early in the century, Hawthorne, 
 Longfellow, and Emerson had tested the 
 solitude of the Maine woods, and written 
 about them. The verses of Emerson, de 
 scribing his own experiences there (not so 
 well known as they should be), are often 
 thought to imply Thoreau, though they 
 were written before Emerson had known 
 his younger friend, whose after adventures 
 they portray with felicity. 
 
 " In unploughed Maine he sought the lumberers gang, 
 Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang; 
 He trod the unplanted forest-floor, whereon 
 The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone ; 
 Where feeds the moose and walks the surly bear, 
 And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker. 
 He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds, 
 The slight Linnaea hang its twin-born heads, 
 And blessed the monument of the man of flowers, 
 Which breathes his sweet fame through the northem 
 
 bowers. 
 
 He heard, when in the grove, at intervals 
 With sudden roar the aged pine-tree falls, 
 One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree, 
 Declares the close of its green century. 
 
IN WOOD AND FIELD. 247 
 
 Through these green tents, by eldest Nature dressed, 
 He roamed, content alike with man and beast, 
 Where darkness found him he lay glad at night ; 
 There the red morning touched him with its light. 
 Three moons his great heart him a hermit made, 
 So long he roved at will the boundless shade." 
 
 Thus much is a picture of the Maine 
 forests, and may have been suggested in 
 .part by the woodland life of Dr. Jackson 
 there while surveying the State. But what 
 follows is the brave proclamation of the 
 poet, for himself and his heroes, among 
 whom Thoreau and John Brown must be 
 counted, since it declares their creed and 
 practice, while in the last couplet the 
 whole inner doctrine of Transcendental 
 ism is set forth : 
 
 " The timid it concerns to ask their way, 
 And fear what foes in caves and swamps can stray, 
 To make no step until the event is known, 
 And ills to come as evils past bemoan. 
 Not so the wise : no timid watch he keeps 
 To spy what danger on his pathway creeps ; 
 Go where he will the wise man is at home, 
 His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome ; 
 Where his clear spirit leads him, there s his road, 
 By God s own light illumined and foreshowed." 
 
 Thoreau may have heard these verses 
 read by their author in his study, before he 
 set forth on his first journey to Maine in 
 
248 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 1838 ; they were first published in the 
 " Dial " in October, 1840, but are omitted, 
 for some reason, in a partial edition of Em 
 erson s Poems (in 1876). He never com 
 plied with this description so far as to spend 
 three months in the Maine woods, even in 
 the three campaigns which he made there 
 (in 1846, in 1853, and in 1857), for in 
 none of these did he occupy three weeks, 
 and in all but little more than a month. 
 His account of them, as now published, 
 makes a volume by itself, which his friend 
 Channing edited two years after Thoreau s 
 death, and which contains the fullest record 
 of his studies of the American Indian. It 
 was his purpose to develop these studies 
 into a book concerning the Indian, and 
 for this purpose he made endless read 
 ings in the Jesuit Fathers, in books of 
 travel, and in all the available literature of 
 the subject. But the papers he had thus 
 collected were not left in such form that 
 they could be published ; and so much of his 
 untiring diligence seems now lost, almost 
 thrown away. Doubtless his friends and 
 editors, upon call, will one day print de 
 tached portions of these studies, from en- 
 
IN WOOD AND FIELD. 249 
 
 tries in his journals, and from his common 
 place books. 
 
 In his explorations of Concord and its 
 vicinity, as well as in those longer foot- 
 journeys which he took among the moun 
 tains and along the sea-shore of New Eng 
 land, from 1838 to 1860, Thoreau s habits 
 were those of an experienced hunter, though 
 he seldom used a gun in his years of man 
 hood. Upon this point he says in " Wai- 
 den " : 
 
 " Almost every New England boy among my 
 contemporaries shouldered a fowling-piece be 
 tween the ages of ten and fourteen ; and his 
 hunting and fishing grounds were not limited, 
 like the preserves of an English nobleman, but 
 were more boundless than even those of the sav 
 age. Perhaps I have owed to fishing and hunt 
 ing, when quite young, my closest acquaintance 
 with Nature. They early introduce us to and 
 detain us in scenery with which, otherwise, at 
 that age, we should have little acquaintance. 
 Fishermen, hunters, wood-choppers, and others, 
 spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a 
 peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are 
 often in a more favorable mood for observing 
 her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philos 
 ophers or poets, even, who approach her with 
 
250 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 expectation. She is not afraid to exhibit herself 
 to them. ... I have actually fished from the 
 same kind of necessity that the first fishers did. 
 I have long felt differently about fowling, and 
 sold my gun before I went to the woods. I did 
 not pity the fishes nor the worms. As for fowl 
 ing, during the last years that I carried a gun my 
 excuse was that I was studying ornithology, and 
 sought only new or rare birds. But I am now 
 inclined to think there is a finer way of study 
 ing ornithology than this. It requires so much 
 closer attention to the habits of the birds that, if 
 for that reason only, I have been willing to omit 
 the gun. . . . We cannot but pity the boy 
 who has never fired a gun; he is no more hu 
 mane, while his education has been sadly neg 
 lected." 
 
 Emerson mentions that Thoreau preferred 
 his spy-glass to his gun to bring the bird 
 nearer to his eye, and says also of his pa 
 tience in out-door observation : 
 
 " He knew how to sit immovable, a 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." 
 
 And I have thought that Emerson had 
 
IN WOOD AND FIELD. 251 
 
 Thoreau in mind when lie described his 
 M Forester " : 
 
 " He took the color of his vest 
 From rabbit s coat or grouse s breast ; 
 For as the wood-kinds lurk and hide, 
 So walks the woodman unespied." 
 
 The same friend said of him : 
 
 " It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk 
 with him. He knew the country like a fox or 
 bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of 
 his own. Under his arm he carried an old mu 
 sic-book to press plants ; l in his pocket his diary 
 and pencil, a spy-glass for birds, microscope, 
 jack-knife, and twine. He wore straw hat, stout 
 shoes, strong gray trousers, to brave shrub-oaks 
 and smilax, and to climb a tree for a hawk s 
 or squirrel s nest. He waded into the pool for 
 the water-plants, and his strong legs were no 
 insignificant part of his armor. His intimacy 
 with animals suggested what Thomas Fuller re 
 cords of Butler the apiologist, * that either he had 
 told the bees things, or the bees had told him. 
 Snakes coiled round his leg, the fishes swam into 
 his hand, and he took them out of the water ; he 
 
 1 It was a " Primo Flauto " of his father s, who, like 
 himself, was a sweet player on the flute, and had per 
 formed with that instrument in the parish choir, before 
 the day of church-organs in Concord. 
 
252 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 pulled the woodchuck out of its hole by the tail, 
 and took the foxes under his protection from the 
 hunters. He confessed that he sometimes felt 
 like a hound or a panther, and, if born among 
 Indians, would have been a fell hunter. But, 
 restrained by his Massachusetts culture, he played 
 out the game in the mild form of botany and 
 ichthyology. His power of observation seemed 
 to indicate additional senses ; he saw as with 
 microscope, heard as with ear-trumpet, and his 
 memory was a photographic register of all he 
 saw and heard. Every fact lay in order and 
 glory in his mind, a type of the order and beauty 
 of the whole." 
 
 It was this poetic and coordinating vision 
 of the natural world which distinguished 
 Thoreau from the swarm of naturalists, and 
 raised him to the rank of a philosopher 
 even in his tedious daily observations. 
 Channing, no less than Emerson, has ob 
 served and noted this trait, giving to his 
 friend the exact title of " poet-naturalist," 
 and also, in his poem, " The Wanderer," 
 bestowing on him the queer name of Idolon, 
 which he thus explains : 
 
 I " So strangely was the general current mixed 
 / With his vexed native blood in its crank wit, 
 / That as a mirror shone the common world 
 
IN WOOD AND FIELD. 253 
 
 To this observing youth, whom noting, thence 
 I called Idolon, ever firm to mark 
 Swiftly reflected in himself the Whole." 
 
 In an earlier poem Channing had called 
 him " Rudolpho," and had thus portrayed 
 his daily and nightly habits of observa 
 tion : 
 
 " I see Rudolpho cross our honest fields 
 Collapsed with thought, and as the Stagyrite 
 At intellpctual problems, mastering 
 Day after day part of the world s concern. 
 Nor welcome dawns nor shrinking nights him menace, 
 Still adding to his list beetle and bee, 
 Of what the vireo builds a pensile nest, 
 And why the peetweet drops her giant egg 
 In wheezing meadows, odorous with sweet brake. 
 Who wonders that the flesh declines to grow 
 Along his sallow pits ? or that his life, 
 To social pleasure careless, pines away 
 In dry seclusion and unfruitful shade? 
 I must admire thy brave apprenticeship 
 To those dry forages, although the worldling 
 Laugh in his sleeve at thy compelled devotion. 
 So shalt thou learn, Rudolpho, as thou walk st, 
 More from the winding lanes where Nature leaves 
 Her unaspiring creatures, and surpass 
 In some fine saunter her acclivity." 
 
 The hint here given that Thoreau injured 
 his once robust health by his habits of out 
 door study and the hardships he imposed 
 on himself, had too much truth in it. Grow- 
 
254 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 ing up with great strength of body and 
 limb, and having cultivated his physical ad 
 vantages by a temperate youth much exer 
 cised with manual labor, in which he took 
 pleasure, Thoreau could not learn the les 
 son of moderation in those pursuits to which 
 his nature inclined. He exposed himself 
 in his journeys and night encampments to 
 cold and hunger, and changes of weather, 
 which the strongest cannot brave with im 
 punity. Mr. Edward Hoar, who traveled 
 with him in the Maine woods in 1857, a 
 journey of three hundred and twenty-five 
 miles with a canoe and an Indian, among 
 the head-waters of the Kennebec, Penob- 
 scot, and St. John s rivers, and who in 
 1858 visited the White Mountains with 
 him, remembers, with a shiver to this day, 
 the rigor of a night spent on the bare rocks 
 of Mount Washington, with insufficient 
 blankets, Thoreau sleeping from habit, 
 but himself lying wakeful all night, and 
 gazing at the coldest of full moons. It was 
 after such an experience as this on Monad- 
 noc, whither Thoreau and Channing went 
 to camp out for a week in August, I860, 
 that the latter wrote : 
 
IN WOOD AND FIELD. 255 
 
 " With the night, 
 
 Reserved companion, cool and sparsely clad, 
 Dream, till the threefold hour with lowly voice 
 Steals whispering in thy frame, * Rise, valiant youth ! 
 The dawn draws on apace, envious of thee, 
 And polar in his gait ; advance thy limbs, 
 Nor strive to heat the stones/ " 
 
 Thoreau had much scorn for weakness 
 like this, and said of his comrade, " I fear 
 that he did not improve all the night as he 
 might have done, to sleep." This was his 
 last excursion, and he died within less than 
 two years afterward. The account of it 
 which Channing has given may therefore 
 be read with interest : 
 
 " He ascended such hills as Monadnoc by his 
 own path ; would lay down his map on the sum 
 mit and draw a line to the point he proposed to 
 visit below, perhaps forty miles away on the 
 landscape, and set off bravely to make the short 
 cut. The lowland people wondered to see him 
 scaling the heights as if he had lost his way, or 
 at his jumping over their cow-yard fences, 
 asking if he had fallen from the clouds. In a 
 walk like this he always carried his umbrella ; 
 and on this Monadnoc trip, when about a mile 
 from the station (in Troy, N. H.), a torrent of 
 rain came down ; without the umbrella his books, 
 blankets, maps, and provisions would all have 
 
256 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 been spoiled, or the morning lost by delay. On 
 the mountain there being a thick soaking fog, 
 the first object was to camp and make tea. 1 He 
 spent five nights in camp, having built another 
 hut, to get varied views. Flowers, birds, lichens, 
 and the rocks were carefully examined, all parts 
 of the mountain were visited, and as accurate a 
 map as could be made by pocket compass was 
 carefully sketched and drawn out, in the five 
 days spent there, with notes of the striking 
 aerial phenomena, incidents of travel and natural 
 history. The fatigue, the blazing sun, the face 
 getting broiled, the pint-cup never scoured, shav 
 ing unutterable, your stockings dreary, having 
 taken to peat, not all the books in the world, 
 as Sancho says, could contain the adventures of 
 a week in camping. The wild, free life, the open 
 air, the new and strange sounds by night and 
 day, the odd and bewildering rocks, amid which 
 a person can be lost within a rod of camp ; the 
 strange cries of visitors to the summit ; the great 
 
 1 Thoreau says of this adventure: "After putting our 
 packs under a rock, having a good hatchet, I proceeded 
 to build a substantial house. This was done about dark, 
 and by that time we were as wet as if we had stood in a 
 hogshead of water. We then built a fire before the door, 
 directly on the site of our camp of two years ago. Stand 
 ing before this, and turning round slowly, like meat that 
 is roasting, we were as dry, if not drier than ever, after 
 a few hours, and so, at last, we turned in." 
 
IN WOOD AND FIELD. 257 
 
 Valley over to "Wachusett, with its thunder-storms 
 and battles in the cloud ; the farmers back 
 yards in Jaffrey, where the family cotton can be 
 seen bleaching on the grass, but no trace of the 
 pigmy family ; the dry, soft air all night, the 
 lack of dew in the morning ; the want of water, 
 a pint being a good deal, these, and similar 
 things make up some part of such an excur- 
 
 These excursions were common with 
 Thoreau, but less so with Channing, who 
 therefore, notes down many things that his 
 friend would not think worth recording, ex 
 cept as a part of that calendar of Nature 
 which he set himself to keep, and of which 
 his journals, for more than twenty years, 
 are the record. From these he made up 
 his printed volumes, and there may be read 
 the details that he registered. He had 
 gauges for the height of the river, noted 
 the temperature of springs and ponds, the 
 tints of the morning and evening sky, the 
 flowering and fruit of plants, all the habits 
 of birds and animals, and every aspect of 
 nature from the smallest to the greatest. 
 Much of this is the dryest detail, but every 
 where you come upon strokes of beauty, in 
 
 17 
 
258 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 a single word-picture, or in a page of idyl 
 lic description, like this of the Concord 
 heifer, which might be a poem of Theoc 
 ritus, or one of the lost bucolics of Mos 
 chus : 
 
 " One more confiding heifer, the fairest of the 
 herd, did by degrees approach, as if to take some 
 morsel from our hands, while our hearts leaped 
 to our mouths with expectation and delight. She 
 by degrees drew near with her fair limbs pro 
 gressive, making pretense of browsing; nearer 
 and nearer till there was wafted to us the bo 
 vine fragrance, cream of all the dairies that 
 ever were or will be, and then she raised her 
 gentle muzzle toward us, and snuffed an honest 
 recognition within hand s reach. I saw it was 
 possible for his herd to inspire with love the 
 herdsman. She was as delicately featured as 
 a hind ; her hide was mingled white and fawn 
 color ; on her muzzle s tip there was a white 
 spot not bigger than a daisy ; and on her side 
 turned toward me the map of Asia plain to see. 
 Farewell, dear heifer ! though thou forgettest 
 me, my prayer to heaven shall be that thou 
 may st not forget thyself. 
 
 * I saw her name was Sumach. And by the 
 kindred spots I knew her mother, more sedate 
 and matronly, with full-grown bag, and on her 
 
IN WOOD AND FIELD. 259 
 
 sides was Asia, great and small, the plains of 
 Tartary, even to the pole, while on her daughter s 
 was Asia Minor. She was not disposed to wan 
 ton with the herdsman. As I walked the heifer 
 followed me, and took an apple from my hand, 
 and seemed to care more for the hand than the 
 apple. So innocent a face I have rarely seen on 
 any creature, and I have looked in the face of 
 many heifers ; and as she took the apple from 
 my hand, I caught the apple of her eye. There 
 was no sinister expression. She smelled as sweet 
 as the clethra blossom. For horns, though she 
 had them, they were so well disposed in the right 
 place, but neither up nor down, that I do not 
 now remember she had any." 
 
 Or take this apostrophe to the " Queen 
 of Night, the Huntress Diana," which is not 
 a translation from some Greek worshipper, 
 but the sincere ascription of a New England 
 hunter of the noblest deer: 
 
 " My dear, my dewy sister, let thy rain de 
 scend on me ! I not only love thee, but I love 
 the best of thee, that is to love thee rarely. 
 I do not love thee every day commonly I love 
 those who are less than thee ; I love thee only 
 on great days. Thy dewy words feed me like the 
 manna of the morning. I am as much thy sister 
 as thy brother j thou art as much my brother as 
 
\ 
 
 260 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 my sister. It is a portion of thee and a portion 
 of me which are of kin. O my sister ! O Diana ! 
 thy tracks are on the eastern hill ; thou newly 
 didst pass that way. I, the hunter, saw them in 
 the morning dew. My eyes are the hounds that 
 pursued thee. I hear thee ; thou canst speak, I 
 cannot ; I fear and forget to answer ; I am oc 
 cupied with hearing. I awoke and thought of 
 thee ; thou wast present to my mind. How 
 earnest thou there ? Was I not present to thee, 
 likewise ? " 
 
 In such a lofty mystical strain did this 
 Concord Endymion declare his passion for 
 Nature, in whose green lap he slumbers now 
 on the hill-side which the goddess nightly 
 revisits. 
 
 " O sister of the sun, draw near, 
 With softly-moving step and slow, 
 For dreaming not of earthly woe 
 Thou seest Endymion sleeping here ! " 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 PERSONAL TKAITS AND SOCIAL LIFE. 
 
 THE face of Thoreau, once seen, could 
 not easily be forgotten, so strong was the 
 mark that genius had set upon it. The 
 portrait of him, which has been commonly 
 engraved, though, it bore some resemblance 
 at the time it was taken (by S. W. Rowse, 
 in 1854), was never a very exact likeness. 
 A few years later he began to wear his 
 beard long, and this fine silken muffler for 
 his delicate throat and lungs, was also an 
 ornament to his grave and thoughtful face, 
 concealing its weakest feature, a receding 
 chin. The head engraved for this volume is 
 from a photograph taken, in 1861, at New 
 Bedford, and shows him as he was in his 
 last years. His personal traits were not star 
 tling and commanding like, those of Webster, 
 who drew the eyes of all men wherever he 
 appeared, but they were peculiar, and dwelt 
 long in the memory. His features were 
 
262 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 prominent, his eyes large, round, and deep- 
 set, under bold brows, and full of fearless 
 meditation ; the color varying from blue to 
 gray, as if with the moods of his mind. A 
 youth who saw him for the first time, said 
 with a start, " How deep and clear is the 
 mark that thought sets upon a man s face ! " 
 And, indeed, no man could fail to recognize 
 in him that rare intangible essence we call 
 thought ; his slight figure was active with 
 it, while in his face it became contempla 
 tive, as if, like his own peasant, he were 
 " meditating some vast and sunny prob 
 lem." Channing says of his appearance: 
 
 " In height he was about the average ; in his 
 build spare, with limbs that were rather longer 
 than usual, or of which he made a longer use. 
 His features were marked ; the nose aquiline or 
 very Roman, like one of the portraits of Caesar 
 (more like a beak, as was said) ; large overhang 
 ing brows above the deepest-set blue eyes that 
 could be seen, blue in certain lights and in 
 others gray ; the forehead not unusually broad or 
 high, full of concentrated energy and purpose ; 
 the mouth with prominent lips, pursed up with 
 meaning and thought when silent, and giving out 
 When open a stream of the most varied and un- 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS AND SOCIAL LIFE. 263 
 
 usual and instructive sayings. His whole figure 
 had an active earnestness, as if he had no mo 
 ment to waste ; the clenched hand betokened 
 purpose. In walking he made a short cut, if he 
 could, and when sitting in the shade or by the 
 wall-side, seemed merely the clearer to look for 
 ward into the next piece of activity. The in ten 
 sity of his mind, like Dante s, conveyed the 
 breathing of aloofness, his eyes bent on the 
 ground, his long swinging gait, his hands perhaps 
 clasped behind him, or held closely at his side, 
 the fingers made into a fist." 
 
 It is not possible to describe him more 
 exactly. 
 
 In December, 1854, Thoreau went to 
 lecture at Nantucket, and on Ms way spent 
 a day or two with one of his correspond 
 ents, Daniel Ricketson of New Bedford, 
 reaching his house on Christmas day. His 
 host, who then saw him for the first time, 
 thus recorded his impressions : 
 
 " I had expected him at noon, but as he did 
 not arrive, I had given him up for the day. In 
 the latter part of the afternoon, I was clearing 
 off the snow, which had fallen during the day, 
 from my front steps, when, looking up, I saw a 
 man walking up the carriage-road, bearing a port 
 manteau in one hand and an umbrella in the 
 
264 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 other. He was dressed in a long overcoat of 
 dark color, and wore a dark soft hat. I had no 
 suspicion it was Thoreau, and rather supposed it 
 was a pedler of small wares." 
 
 This was a common mistake to make 
 about Thoreau. When he ran the gaunt 
 let of the Cape Cod villages, " feeling as 
 strange," he says, " as if he were in a town 
 in China," one of the old fishermen could 
 not believe that he had not something 
 to sell, as Bronson Alcott had when he 
 perambulated Eastern Virginia and North 
 Carolina in 1819-22, peddling silks and 
 jewelry. Being assured that Thoreau was 
 not peddling spectacles or books, the fisher 
 man said at last : " Well, it makes no odds 
 what it is you carry, so long as you carry 
 Truth along with you." 
 
 " As Thoreau came near me," continues Mr. 
 Ricketson, " he stopped and said, You do not 
 know me. It flashed at once on my mind that 
 the person before me was my correspondent, 
 whom in my imagination I had figured as stout 
 and robust, instead of the small and rather infe 
 rior-looking man before me. I concealed my 
 disappointment, and at once replied, I presume 
 this is Mr. Thoreau. Taking his portmanteau, 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS AND SOCIAL LIFE. 265 
 
 I conducted him to his room, already awaiting 
 him. My disappointment at his personal ap 
 pearance passed off on hearing his conversation 
 at the table and during the evening ; and rarely 
 through the years of my acquaintance with him 
 did his presence conflict with his noble powers of 
 mind, his rich conversation, and broad erudition. 
 His face was afterwards greatly improved in 
 manly expression by the growth of his beard, 
 which he wore in full during the later years of 
 his life ; but when I first saw him he had just 
 been sitting for the crayon portrait of 1854, 
 which represents him without the beard. The 
 ambrotype of him, which is engraved for your 
 volume, was taken for me by Dunshee, at New 
 Bedford, August 21, 1861, on his last visit to me 
 at Brooklawn. His health was then failing, 
 he had a racking cough, but his face, except a 
 shade of sadness in the eyes, did not show it. 
 Of this portrait, Miss Sophia Thoreau, to whom 
 I sent it soon after her brother s death, wrote me, 
 May 26, 1862 : I cannot tell you how agree 
 ably surprised I was, on opening the little box, 
 to find my own lost brother again. I could not 
 restrain my tears. The picture is invaluable to 
 us. I discover a slight shade about the eyes, ex 
 pressive of weariness ; but a stranger might not 
 observe it. I am very glad to possess a picture 
 of so late a date. The crayon, drawn eight years 
 
266 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 ago next summer, we considered good ; it be 
 trays the poet. Mr. Channing, Mr. Emerson, 
 Mr. Alcott, and many other friends who have 
 looked at the ambrotype, express much satisfac 
 tion. " 
 
 Of Thoreau s appearance then (at the 
 age of thirty-seven), Mr. Ricketson goes on 
 to say : 
 
 " The most expressive feature of his face was 
 his eye, blue in color, and full of the greatest hu 
 manity and intelligence. His head was of me 
 dium size, the same as that of Emerson, and he 
 wore a number seven hat. His arms were 
 rather long, his legs short, and his hands and 
 feet rather large. His sloping shoulders were a 
 mark of observation. But when in usual health 
 he was strong and vigorous, a remarkable pe 
 destrian, tiring out nearly all his companions in 
 his prolonged tramps through woods and marshes, 
 when in pursuit of some rare plant. In Tho- 
 reau, as in Dr. Kane, Lord Nelson, and other 
 heroic men, it was the spirit more than the tem 
 ple in which it dwelt, that made the man." 
 
 A strange mistake has prevailed as to the 
 supposed churlishness and cynical severity 
 of Thoreau, which Mr. Alcott, in one of 
 his octogenarian sonnets, has corrected, and 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS AND SOCIAL LIFE. 267 
 
 which all who knew the man would protest 
 against. 
 
 Of his domestic character Mr. Ricketson 
 writes : 
 
 " Some have accused him of being an imitator 
 of Emerson, others as unsocial, impracticable, and 
 ascetic. Now, he was none of these. A more 
 original man never lived, nor one more thor 
 oughly a personification of civility. Having been 
 an occasional guest at his house, I can assert that 
 no man could hold a finer relationship with his 
 family than he" 
 
 Channing says the same thing more 
 quaintly : 
 
 " In his own home he was one of those charac 
 ters who may be called household treasures ; al 
 ways on the spot with skillful eye and hand, to 
 raise the best melons, plant the orchard with the 
 choicest trees, and act as extempore mechanic; 
 fond of the pets, his sister s flowers or sacred 
 tabby kittens being his favorites, he would 
 play with them by the half hour." 
 
 He was sometimes given to music and 
 song, and now and then, in moments of 
 great hilarity, would dance gayly, as he 
 did once at Brooklawn, in the presence of 
 his host, Mr. Ricketson, and Mr. Alcott 9 
 
268 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 who was also visiting there. On the same 
 occasion he sung his unique song of " Tom 
 Bowline," which none who heard would 
 ever forget, and finished the evening with 
 his dance. 
 
 Hearing Mr. Ricketson speak of this 
 dance, Miss Thoreau said : 
 
 " I have so often witnessed the like, that I can 
 easily imagine how it was ; and I remember that 
 Henry gave me some account of it. I recollect 
 he said he did not scruple to tread on Mr. Al- 
 cott s toes." 
 
 Mr. Ricketson s own account is this : 
 
 " One afternoon, when my wife was playing 
 an air upon the piano, Highland Laddie, 
 perhaps, Thoreau became very hilarious, sang 
 * Tom Bowline, and finally entered upon an 
 improvised dance. Not being able to stand what 
 appeared to me at the time the somewhat ludi 
 crous appearance of our Walden hermit, I re 
 treated to my shanty, a short distance from my 
 house ; while my older and more humor-loving 
 friend Alcott remained and saw it through, much 
 to his amusement. It left a pleasant memory, 
 which I recorded in some humble lines that after- 
 tvards appeared in my Autumn Sheaf. " 
 
 After Thoreau s return home from this 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS AND SOCIAL LIFE. 269 
 
 visit, his New Bedford friend seems to have 
 sent him a copy of the words and music of 
 " Tom Bowline," which was duly acknowl 
 edged and handed over to the musical peo 
 ple of Concord for them to play and sing. 
 It is a fine old pathetic sailor-song of Dib- 
 din s, which pleased Thoreau (whose imagi 
 nation delighted in the sea), find perhaps 
 reminded him of his brother John. As 
 Thoreau sang it, the verses ran thus : 
 
 " Here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowline, 
 
 The darling of our crew ; 
 No more he 11 hear the tempest howling, 
 
 For death has broached him to. 
 His form was of the manliest beauty ; 
 
 His heart was kind and soft ; 
 Faithful, below, he did his duty, 
 
 But now he s gone aloft. 
 
 "-.Tom never from his word departed, 
 
 His virtues were so rare ; 
 His friends were many and true-hearted, 
 
 His Poll was kind and fair. 
 And then he d sing so blithe and jolly ; 
 
 Ah, many s the time and oft ! 
 But mirth is changed to melancholy, 
 
 For Tom is gone aloft. 
 
 " Yet shall poor Tom find pleasant weather 
 
 When He who all commands 
 Shall give, to call life s crew together, 
 The word to pipe all hands. 
 
270 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 Thus death, who kings and tars dispatches, 
 
 In vain Tom s life has doffed ; 
 For though his body s under hatches, 
 
 His soul is gone aloft ! " 
 
 Another of bis songs was Moore s " Ca 
 nadian Boat Song," with its chorus, 
 
 " Row brothers, row." 
 
 Mrs. W. H. Forbes, who knew him in her 
 childhood, from the age of six to that of fif 
 teen more particularly, and who first remem 
 bers him in his hut at Walden, writes me : 
 
 " The time when Mr. Thoreau was our more 
 intimate playfellow must have been in the years 
 from 1850 to 1855. He used to come in, at 
 dusk, as my brother and I sat on the rug before 
 the dining-room fire, and, taking the great green 
 rocking-chair, he would tell us stories. Those I 
 remember were his own adventures, as a child. 
 He began with telling us of the different houses 
 he had lived in, and what he could remember 
 about each. The house where he was born was 
 on the Virginia road, near the old Bedford road. 
 The only thing be remembered about that house 
 was that from its windows he saw a flock of geese 
 walking along in a row on the other side of the 
 road ; but to show what a long memory he had, 
 when he told his mother of this, she said the only 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS AND SOCIAL LIFE. 271 
 
 time he could have seen that sight was, when he 
 was about eight months old, for they left that 
 house then. Soon after, he lived in the old house 
 on the Lexington road, nearly opposite Mr. Em 
 erson s. There he was tossed by a cow as he 
 played near the door, in his red flannel dress, 
 and so on, with a story for every house. He used 
 to delight us with the adventures of a brood of fall 
 chickens, which slept at night in a tall old fash 
 ioned fig-drum in the kitchen, and as their bed 
 was not changed when they grew larger, they 
 packed themselves every night each in its own 
 place, and grew up, not shapely, but shaped to 
 each other and the drum, like figs ! 
 
 " Sometimes he would play juggler tricks for 
 us, and swallow his knife and produce it again 
 from our ears or noses. We usually ran to bring 
 some apples for him as soon as he came in, and 
 often he would cut one in halves in fine points 
 that scarcely showed on close examination, and 
 then the joke was to ask Father to break it for 
 us and see it fall to pieces in his hands. But 
 perhaps the evenings most charming were those 
 when he brought some ears of pop-corn in his 
 >ocket and headed an expedition to the garret to 
 hunt out the old brass warming-pan ; in which he 
 would put the corn, and hold it out and shake it 
 over the fire till it was heated through, and at 
 last, as we listened, the rattling changed to pop- 
 
272 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 ping. When this became very brisk, he would 
 hold the pan over the rug and lift the lid, and a 
 beautiful fountain of the white corn flew all over 
 us. It required both strength and patience to hold 
 out the heavy warming-pan at arm s length so 
 long, and no one else ever gave us that pleasure. 
 " I remember his singing Tom Bowline to us, 
 and also playing on his flute, but that was earlier. 
 In the summer he used to make willow whistles, 
 and trumpets out of the stems of squash leaves, and 
 onion leaves. When he found fine berries dur 
 ing his walks, he always remembered us, and 
 came to arrange a huckleberrying for us. He 
 took charge of the hay rigging with the load of 
 children, who sat on the floor which was spread 
 with hay, covered with a buffalo-robe ; he sat 
 on a board placed across the front and drove, 
 and led the frolic with his jokes and laughter as 
 we jolted along, while the elders of the family 
 accompanied us in a * carryall. Either he had 
 great tact and skill in managing us and keeping 
 our spirits and play within bounds, or else he be 
 came a child in sympathy with us, for I do not 
 remember a check or reproof from him, no mat 
 ter how noisy we were. He always was most 
 kind to me and made it his especial care to es 
 tablish me in the * thickest places, as we used to 
 call them. Those sunny afternoons are bright 
 memories, and the lamb-kill flowers and sweet 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS AND SOCIAL LIFE. 273 
 
 4 everlasting, always recall them and his kind 
 care. Once in awhile he took us on the river 
 in his boat, a rare pleasure then ; and I remem 
 ber one brilliant autumn afternoon, when he took 
 us to gather the wild grapes overhanging the 
 river, and we brought home a load of crimson 
 and golden boughs as well. He never took us 
 to walk with him, but sometimes joined us for a 
 little way, if he met us in the woods on Sunday 
 afternoons. He made those few steps memorable 
 by showing us many wonders in so short a space : 
 perhaps the only chincapin oak in Concord, so 
 hidden that no one but himself could have dis 
 covered it or some remarkable bird, or nest, or 
 flower. He took great interest in my garden of 
 wild flowers, and used to bring me seeds, or 
 roots, of rare plants. In his last illness it did 
 not occur to us that he would care to see us, but 
 his sister told my mother that he watched us 
 from the window as we passed, and said : * Why 
 don t they come to see me ? I love them as if 
 they were my own. After that we went often, 
 and he always made us so welcome that we liked 
 to go. I remember our last meetings with as 
 much pleasure as the old play-days." 
 
 Although so great a traveler in a small 
 circle being every day a-field when not 
 too ill, he was also a great stay-at-home. 
 18 
 
274 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 He never crossed the ocean, nor saw Niagara 
 or the Mississippi until the year before his 
 death. He lived within twenty miles of Bos 
 ton, but seldom went there, except to pass 
 through it on his way to the Maine woods, 
 to Cape Cod, to the house of his friend, 
 Marston Watson at Plymouth, or to Daniel 
 Ricketson s at New Bedford. To the latter 
 he wrote in February, 1855 : 
 
 " I did not go to Boston, for, with regard to 
 that place I sympathize with one of my neigh 
 bors (George Minott), an old man, who has not 
 been there since the last war, when he was com 
 pelled to go. No, I have a real genius for stay 
 ing at home." 
 
 What took him from home in the winter 
 season was generally some engagement to 
 lecture, of which he had many after his 
 Waldeii life became a little known abroad. 
 
 From the year 1847 Thoreau may be 
 said to have fairly entered on his career as 
 author and lecturer ; having taken all the 
 needful degrees and endured most of the 
 mortifications necessary for the public pro 
 fession of authorship. Up to that time he 
 had supported himself, except while in col 
 lege, chiefly by the labor of his hands; 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS AND SOCIAL LIFE. 275 
 
 after 1847, though still devoted to manual 
 labor occasionally, he yet worked chiefly 
 with his head as thinker, observer, surveyor, 
 magazine contributor, and lecturer. 
 
 His friends were the first promoters of 
 his lectures, and among his correspondence 
 are some letters from Hawthorne, inviting 
 him to the Salem Lyceum. The first of 
 these letters is dated, Salem, October 21, 
 1848, and runs thus : 
 
 "Mr DEAR SIR, The managers of the Sa 
 lem Lyceum, sometime ago, voted that you 
 should be requested to deliver a lecture before 
 that Institution during the approaching season. 
 I know not whether Mr. Chever, the late corre 
 sponding secretary, communicated the vote to 
 you ; at all events, no answer has been received, 
 and as Mr. Chever s successor in office, I am re 
 quested to repeat the invitation. Permit me to 
 add my own earnest wishes that you will accept 
 it ; and also, laying aside my official dignity, to 
 express my wife s desire and my own that you 
 will be our guest, if you do come. In case of 
 your compliance, the Managers desire to know 
 at what time it will best suit you to deliver the 
 lecture. Very truly yours, 
 
 "NATH L HAWTHORNE, 
 * Cor. Sec y, Salem Lyceum* 
 
276 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 " P. S. I live at No. 14 Mall Street, where I 
 shall be very happy to see you. The stated fee 
 for lectures is $20." 
 
 A month later, Hawthorne, who had re 
 ceived an affirmative answer from Thoreau, 
 wrote to him from Boston (November 20, 
 1848), as follows : 
 
 " MY DEAR THOREAU, I did not sooner 
 write you, because there were preengagements for 
 the two or three first lectures, so that I could 
 not arrange matters to have you come during the 
 present month. But, as it happens, the expected 
 lectures have failed us, and we now depend on 
 you to come the very next Wednesday. I shall 
 announce you in the paper of to-morrow, so you 
 must come. I regret that I could not give you 
 longer notice. "We shall expect you on Wednes 
 day at No. 14 Mall Street. Yours truly, 
 
 " NATH L HAWTHORNE. 
 
 "If it be utterly impossible for you to come, 
 pray write me a line so that I may get it Wed 
 nesday evening. But by all means come. 
 
 " This secretaryship is an intolerable bore. I 
 have traveled thirty miles, this wet day, on no 
 other business." 
 
 Apparently another lecture was wanted 
 by the Salem people the same winter, for 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS AND SOCIAL LIFE. 277 
 
 on the 19th of February, 1849, when the 
 " Week on the Concord and Merrimac " 
 was in press, Hawthorne wrote again, 
 thus : 
 
 " The managers request that you will lecture 
 before the Salem Lyceum on Wednesday even 
 ing after next, that is to say, on the 28th inst. 
 May we depend on you ? Please to answer im 
 mediately, if convenient. Mr. Alcott delighted 
 my wife and me, the other evening, by announ 
 cing that you had a book in press. I rejoice at it, 
 and nothing doubt of such success as will be 
 worth having. Should your manuscripts all be 
 in the printer s hands, I suppose you can reclaim 
 one of them for a single evening s use, to be re 
 turned the next morning, or perhaps that In 
 dian lecture, which you mentioned to me, is in a 
 state of forwardness. Either that, or a continua 
 tion of the Walden experiment (or indeed, any 
 thing else), will be acceptable. We shall expect 
 you at 14 Mall Street. Very truly yours, 
 
 "NATH L HAWTHORNE." 
 
 These letters were written just before 
 Hawthorne was turned out of his office in 
 the Salem custom-house, and while his own 
 literary success was still in abeyance, the 
 " Scarlet Letter " not being published till a 
 
280 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 out in all weathers during his daily excur 
 sions, he naturally dressed himself for what 
 he had to do. 
 
 As may be inferred from his correspond 
 ence with Horace Greeley, Thoreau s whole 
 income from authorship during the twenty 
 years that he practiced that profession, can 
 not have exceeded a few hundred dollars 
 yearly, not half enough in most years to 
 supply even his few wants. He would 
 never be indebted to any person pecunia 
 rily, and therefore he found out other ways 
 of earning his subsistence and paying his 
 obligations, gardening, fence -building, 
 white- washing, pencil-making, land-survey 
 ing, etc.^ for he had great mechanical 
 skill, and a patient, conscientious industry 
 in whatever he undertook. When his 
 father, who had been long living in other 
 men s houses, undertook, at last, to build 
 one of his own, Henry worked upon it, and 
 performed no small part of the manual la 
 bor. He had no false pride in such mat 
 ters, was, indeed, rather proud of his 
 workmanship, and averse to the gentility 
 even of his industrious village. 
 
 During his first residence at Mr. Emer- 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS AND SOCIAL LIFE. 281 
 
 son s in 1841-43, Thoreau managed the 
 garden and did other hand-work for his 
 friend ; and when Mr. Emerson went to 
 England in 1847, he returned to the house 
 (soon after leaving his Walden hut), and 
 took charge of his friend s household affairs 
 in his absence. In a letter to his sister So 
 phia (October 24, 1847), Thoreau says : 
 
 "... I went to Boston the 5th of this month 
 to see Mr. Emerson off to Europe. He sailed in 
 the Washington Irving packet ship, the same 
 in which Mr. Hedge went before him. Up to 
 this trip, the first mate aboard this ship was, as I 
 hear, one Stephens, a Concord boy, son of Ste 
 phens, the carpenter, who used to live above Mr. 
 Dennis. Mr. Emerson s state-room was like a 
 carpeted dark closet, about six feet square, with 
 a large keyhole for a window (the window was 
 about as big as a saucer, and the glass two inches 
 thick), not to mention another skylight overhead 
 in the deck, of the size of an oblong doughnut, 
 and about as opaque. Of course, it would be in 
 vain to look up, if any contemplative promenader 
 put his foot upon it. Such will be his lodgings 
 for two or three weeks ; and instead of a walk in 
 Walden woods, he will take a promenade on deck, 
 where the few trees, you know, are stripped of 
 their bark." 
 
282 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 There is a poem of Thoreau s, of uncer 
 tain date, called " The Departure," which, 
 as I suppose, expresses his emotions at leav 
 ing finally, in 1848, the friendly house of 
 Emerson, where he had dwelt so long, upon 
 terms of such ideal intimacy. It was never 
 seen by his friends, so far as I can learn, 
 until after his death, when Sophia Thoreau 
 gave it to me, along with other poems, for 
 publication in the " Boston Commonwealth," 
 in 1863. Since then it has been mentioned 
 as a poem written in anticipation of death. 
 This is not so ; it was certainly written long 
 before his illness. 
 
 " In this roadstead I have ridden, 
 In this covert I have hidden : 
 Friendly thoughts were cliffs to me, 
 And I hid beneath their lee. 
 
 " This true people took the stranger, 
 And warm-hearted housed the ranger; 
 They received their roving guest, 
 And have fed him with the best ; 
 
 " Whatsoe er the land afforded 
 To the stranger s wish accorded, 
 Shook the olive, stripped the vine, 
 And expressed the strengthening wine. 
 
 " And by night they did spread o er him 
 What by day they spread before him; 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS AND SOCIAL LIFE. 
 
 That good will which was repast 
 Was his covering at last. 
 
 " The stranger moored him to their pier 
 Without anxiety or fear ; 
 By day he walked the sloping land, 
 By night the gentle heavens he scanned. 
 
 " When first his bark stood inland 
 To the coast of that far Finland, 
 Sweet-watered brooks came tumbling to the shor^ 
 The weary mariner to restore. 
 
 " And still he stayed from day to day, 
 If he their kindness might repay ; 
 But more and more 
 The sullen waves came rolling toward the shore. 
 
 " And still, the more the stranger waited, 
 The less his argosy was freighted ; 
 And still the more he stayed, 
 The less his debt was paid. 
 
 " So he unfurled his shrouded mast 
 To receive the fragrant blast, 
 And that same refreshing gale 
 Which had woo d him to remain 
 Again and again ; 
 It was that filled his sail 
 And drove him to the main. 
 
 * All day the low hung clouds 
 Dropped tears into the sea, 
 And the wind amid the shrouds 
 Sighed plaintively." 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 POET, MOEALIST, AND PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 THE character of poet is so high and so 
 rare, in any modern civilization, and spe 
 cially in our American career of nationality, 
 that it behooves us to mark and claim all 
 our true poets, before they are classified 
 under some other name, as philosophers, 
 naturalists, romancers, or historians. Thus 
 Emerson is primarily and chiefly a poet, 
 and only a philosopher in his second inten 
 tion ; and thus also Thoreau, though a nat 
 uralist by habit, and a moralist by con 
 stitution, was inwardly a poet by force of 
 that shaping and controlling imagination, 
 which was his strongest faculty. His mind 
 tended naturally to the ideal side. He 
 would have been an idealist in any circum 
 stances ; a fluent and glowing poet, had he 
 been born among a people to whom poesy 
 is native, like the Greeks, the Italians, the 
 Irish. As it was, his poetic light illumined 
 
POET, MORALIST, AND PHILOSOPHER. 285 
 
 every wide prospect and every narrow 
 cranny in which his active, patient spirit 
 pursued its task. It was this inward illu 
 mination as well as the star-like beam of 
 Emerson s genius in " Nature," which caused 
 Thoreau to write in his senior year at col 
 lege, " This curious world which we inhabit 
 is more wonderful than it is convenient ; 
 more beautiful than it is useful," and he 
 cherished this belief through life. In youth, 
 too, he said, " The other world is all my 
 art, my pencils will draw no other, my jack- 
 knife will cut nothing else ; I do not use it 
 as a means." It was in this spirit that he 
 afterwards uttered the quaint parable, which 
 was his version of the primitive legend of 
 the Golden Age : 
 
 " I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a 
 turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many 
 are the travelers I have spoken concerning them, 
 describing their tracks and what calls they an 
 swered 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 the cloud ; 
 and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if 
 they had lost them themselves." 
 
 In the same significance read his little- 
 known verses, " The Pilgrims." 
 
286 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 " When I have slumbered 
 
 I have heard sounds 
 
 As of travelers passing 
 
 These my grounds. 
 
 " T was a sweet music 
 
 Wafted them by, 
 I could not tell 
 If afar off or nigh. 
 
 " Unless I dreamed it 
 This was of yore ; 
 I never told it 
 To mortal before. 
 
 " Never remembered 
 
 But in my dreams, 
 
 What to me waking 
 
 A miracle seems." 
 
 It seems to have been the habit of Tho- 
 reau, in writing verse, to compose a couplet, 
 a quatrain, or other short metrical expres 
 sion, copy it in his journal, and afterward, 
 when these verses had grown to a consider 
 able number, to arrange them in the form 
 of a single piece. This gives to his poems 
 the epigrammatic air which most of them 
 have. After he was thirty years old, he 
 wrote scarcely any verse, and he even de 
 stroyed much that he had previously writ 
 ten, following in this the judgment of Mr. 
 
POET, MORALIST, AND PHILOSOPHER. 287 
 
 Emerson, rather than his own, as he told 
 me one day during his last illness. He had 
 read all that was best in English and in 
 Greek poetry, but was more familiar with 
 the English poets of Milton s time and ear 
 lier, than with those more recent, except 
 his own townsmen and companions. He 
 valued Milton above Shakespeare, and had 
 a special love for JEschylus, two of whose 
 tragedies he translated. He had read Pin 
 dar, Simonides, and the Greek Anthology, 
 and wrote, at his best, as well as the finest 
 of the Greek lyric poets. Even Emerson, 
 who was a severe critic of his verses, says, 
 " His classic poem on Smoke suggests 
 Simonides, but is better than any poem of 
 Simonides." Indeed, what Greek would 
 not be proud to claim this fragment as his 
 own ? 
 
 " Light winged smoke, Icarian bird ! 
 Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight, 
 Lark without song, and messenger of dawn, 
 
 Go thou, my incense, upward from this hearth, 
 And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame." 
 
 No complete collection of Thoreau s poems 
 has ever been made. Amid much that is 
 harsh and crude, such a book would contain 
 many verses sure to survive for centuries. 
 
288 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 As a moralist, the bent of Thoreau is 
 more clearly seen by most readers ; and on 
 this side, too, he was early and strongly 
 charged. In a college essay of 1837 are 
 these sentences : 
 
 " Truth neither exalteth nor humbleth herself. 
 She is not too high for the low, nor yet too low 
 for the high. She is persuasive, not litigious, 
 leaving conscience to decide. She never sacri- 
 ficeth her dignity that she may secure for herself 
 a favorable reception. It is not a characteristic 
 of Truth to use men tenderly ; nor is she over 
 anxious about appearances." 
 
 In another essay of the same year he 
 wrote : 
 
 " The order of things should be reversed : 
 the seventh should be man s day of toil, in which 
 to earn his living by the sweat of his brow, 
 and the other six his Sabbath of the affections 
 and the soul, in which to range this wide-spread 
 garden, and drink in the soft influences and sub 
 lime revelations of Nature." 
 
 This was an anticipation of his theory of 
 labor and leisure set forth in " Walden," 
 where he says : 
 
 " For more than five years I maintained my 
 self solely by the labor of my hands, and I found 
 
POET, MORALIST, AND PHILOSOPHER. 289 
 
 that, by working about six weeks in a year, I 
 could meet all the expenses of living ; the whole 
 of my winters, as well as most of my summers, I 
 had free and clear for study. I found that the 
 occupation of day-laborer was the most inde 
 pendent of any, especially as it required only 
 thirty or forty days in the year to support one." 
 
 This was true of Thoreau, because, as he 
 said, his "greatest skill had been to want 
 but little." In him this economy was a 
 part of morality, or even of religion. 
 
 " The high moral impulse," says Chan- 
 ning, " never deserted him, and he resolved 
 early to read no book, take no walk, under 
 take no enterprise, but such as he could en 
 dure to give an account of to himself." How 
 early this austerity appeared in what he 
 wrote, has been little noticed ; but I dis 
 cover it in his earliest college essays, before 
 he was eighteen years old. Thus, in such 
 a paper of the year 1834, this passage oc 
 curs : 
 
 " There appears to be something noble, some 
 thing exalted, in giving up one s own interest for 
 that of his fellow-beings. He is a true patriot, 
 who, casting aside all selfish thoughts, and not suf 
 fering his benevolent intentions to be polluted by 
 19 
 
290 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 thinking of the fame he is acquiring, presses for 
 ward in the great work he has undertaken, with 
 unremitted zeal ; who is as one pursuing his way 
 through a garden abounding with fruits of every 
 description, without turning aside, or regarding 
 the brambles which impede his progress, but press 
 ing onward with his eyes fixed upon the golden 
 fruit before him. He is worthy of all praise ; his 
 is, indeed, true greatness." 
 
 In contrast with this man the young 
 philosopher sets before us the man who 
 wishes, as the Greeks said, TrA-eoveKretv, to 
 get more than his square meal at the ban 
 quet of life. 
 
 " Aristocrats may say what they please, lib 
 erty and equal rights are and ever will be grate 
 ful, till nature herself shall change ; and he who 
 is ambitious to exercise authority over his fellow- 
 beings, with no view to their benefit or injury, 
 is to be regarded as actuated by peculiarly selfish 
 motives. Self-gratification must be his sole ob 
 ject. Perhaps he is desirous that his name may 
 be handed down to posterity ; that in after ages 
 something more may be said of him than that he 
 lived and died. His deeds may never be forgot 
 ten ; but is this greatness ? If so, may I pass 
 through life unheeded and unknown ! " 
 
 What was his own ambition a purpose 
 
POET, MORALIST, AXD PHILOSOPHER. 291 
 
 in life which only the unthinking could ever 
 confound with selfishness was expressed 
 by him early in a prayer which he threw 
 into this verse : 
 
 " Great God ! I ask Thee for no meaner pelf, 
 Than that I may not disappoint myself ; 
 That in my conduct I may soar as high 
 As I can now discern with this clear eye. 
 That my weak hand may equal my firm faith, 
 And my life practice more than my tongue saith ; 
 That my low conduct may not show, 
 
 Nor my relenting lines, 
 That I thy purpose did not know, 
 Or overrated thy designs." 
 
 And it may be said of him that he acted 
 this prayer as well as uttered it. Says Chan- 
 ning again : 
 
 " In our estimate of his character, the moral 
 qualities form the basis ; for himself rigidly en 
 joined ; if in another, he could overlook delin 
 quency. Truth before all things ; in all your 
 thoughts, your faintest breath, the austerest purity, 
 the utmost fulfilling of the interior law ; faith in 
 friends, and an iron and flinty pursuit of right, 
 which nothing can tease or purchase out of us." 
 
 Thus it is said that when he went to 
 prison rather than pay his tax, which went 
 to support slavery in South Carolina, and 
 
292 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 his friend Emerson came to the cell and 
 said, " Henry, why are you here ? " the re 
 ply was, " Why are you not here ? " 
 In this act, 
 
 at first denounced as "mean and sneaking 
 and inharH;a.stp. T " this refusal Ito ^navthft 
 
 triflingsum demanded of him by 
 
 cord tax-gatherer, the outlines of his 
 political pniiosopny appear; They were 
 illuminated afterwards by his trenchant ut> 
 terances in jdejmncjation of slavery and Jn 
 encjmiimn^ of John Brown, who attacked 
 that monster in its most vulnerable par$. 
 Tt was notmere wEimn^uFa settled theory 
 
 of human nature and the institution of 
 government, which led him, in 1838, to re^ 
 nounce the parish church and refuse to pay 
 its tax, in 1846 to renounce the State and 
 refuse tribute to it, and in 1859 to come for 
 ward, first of all men, in public support of 
 Brown and his Virginia campaign. This 
 theory found frequent expression in his 
 lectures. In 1846 he said : 
 
 " Any man more right than his neighbors con 
 Btitutls a majority of one already." 
 
 And again : 
 
POET, MORALIST, AND PHILOSOHPER. 293 
 
 " I know this well, that if one thousand, if one 
 hundred, if ten men whom I could name, if 
 ten honest men only, ay, if one honest man, 
 ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw 
 from this copartnership, and be locked up in the 
 county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of 
 slavery in America. Under a government which 
 imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just 
 man is also a prison." 
 
 This sounded hollow then, but when that 
 embodiment of American justice and mercy, 
 John Brown, lay bleeding in a Virginia 
 prison, a dozen years later, the significance 
 of Thoreau s words began to be seen ; and 
 when a few years after our countrymen 
 were dying by hundreds of thousands to 
 complete what Brown, with his single life, 
 had begun, the whole truth, as Thoreau 
 had seen it, flashed in the eyes of the na 
 tion. 
 
 In this^same essay of 1846, on " Civil 
 Disobedience," the ultimate truth concern 
 ing governmentjj* stated in a passage which 
 also does justice to Daniel Webster, our 
 " logic-fencer and parliamentary Hercules," 
 as Carlyle called him in a letter to Emer 
 son in 1839. Thoreau said : 
 
294 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 " Statesmen and legislators, standing so com 
 pletely within the institution (of government) 
 never distinctly and nakedly behold it. They 
 speak of moving society, but have no resting- 
 place without it. They are wont to forget that 
 the world is not governed by policy and expe 
 diency. Webster never goes behind government, 
 and so cannot speak with authority about it. His 
 words are wisdom to those legislators who con 
 template no essential reform in the existing gov 
 ernment ; but for thinkers, and those who legis 
 late for all time, he never once glances at the 
 subject. Yet compared with the cheap professions 
 of most reformers, and the still cheaper wisdom 
 and eloquence of politicians in general, his are 
 almost the only sensible and valuable words, and 
 we thank heaven for him. Comparatively, he is 
 always strong, original, and, above all, practical ; 
 still his quality is not wisdom, but prudence. 
 Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is 
 not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that 
 may consist with wrong-doing. For eighteen 
 hundred years the New Testament has been 
 written ; yet where is the legislator who has wis 
 dom and practical talent enough to avail himself 
 of the light which it sheds on the science of gov 
 ernment ? " 
 
 Such a legislator, proclaiming his law 
 
POET, MORALIST, AND PHILOSOPHER. 295 
 
 from the scaffold, at last appeared in John 
 Brown : 
 
 " I see a book kissed here which I suppose to 
 be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. 
 That teaches me that * whatsoever I would that 
 men should do unto me, I should do even so to 
 them. It teaches me further to remember 
 them that are in bonds as bound with them. I 
 endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say 
 that I am yet too young to understand that God 
 is any respecter of persons. I believe that, to have 
 interfered as I have done in behalf of His de 
 spised poor, was not wrong, but right." 
 
 Before these simple words of Brown, 
 down went Webster and all his industry in 
 behalf of the " compromises of the Consti 
 tution." When Thoreau heard them, and 
 saw the matchless behavior of his noble 
 old friend, he recognized the hour and the 
 man. 
 
 " For once," he cried in the church-vestry at 
 Concord, " we are lifted into the region of truth 
 and manhood. No man, in America, has ever 
 stood up so persistently and effectively for the 
 dignity of human nature ; knowing himself for a 
 man, and the equal of any and all governments. 
 The only government that I recognize, and it 
 
 \\ 
 
298 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 on the page, up and down or across, not 
 mere repetition, but creation, and which a 
 man might sell his ground or cattle to 
 build." It was this thirst for final and con 
 centrated expression, and not love of fame, 
 or "literary aspirations," as poor Greeley 
 put it, which urged him on to write. For 
 printing he cared little, and few authors 
 since Shakespeare have been less anxious to 
 publish what they wrote. Of the seven vol 
 umes of his works first printed, and twenty 
 more which may be published some day, 
 only two, " The Week " and " Walden," 
 appeared in his lifetime, though the ma 
 terial for two more had been scattered 
 about in forgotten magazines and newspa 
 pers, for his friends to collect after his 
 death. Of his first works (and some of his 
 best) it could be said, as Thomas Wharton 
 said, in 1781, of his friend Gray s verses, 
 " I yet reflect with pain upon the cool re 
 ception which those noble odes, The Prog 
 ress of Poetry and 4 The Bard met with 
 at their first publication ; it appeared there 
 were not twenty people in England who 
 liked them." This disturbed Thoreau s 
 friends, but not himself ; he rather rejoiced 
 
LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY. 299 
 
 in the slow sale of his first book ; and when 
 the balance of the edition, more than seven 
 hundred copies out of one thousand, came 
 back upon his hands unsold in 1855, and 
 earlier, he told me with glee that he had 
 made an addition of seven hundred vol 
 umes to his library, and all of his own 
 composition. " O solitude, obscurity, mean 
 ness ! " he exclaims in 1856 to his friend 
 Blake, " I never triumph so as when I have 
 the least success in my neighbors eyes." 
 Of course, pride had something to do with 
 this ; " it was a wild stock of pride," as 
 Burke said of Lord Keppel, " on which the 
 tenderest of all hearts had grafted the 
 milder virtues." Both pride and piety led 
 him to write, 
 
 " Fame cannot tempt the bard 
 
 Who s famous with his God,, 
 Nor laurel him reward 
 
 Who has his Maker s nod." 
 
 Though often ranked as an unbeliever, 
 and too scornful in some of his expressions 
 concerning the religion of other men, Tho- 
 reau was in truth deeply religious. Sincer 
 ity and devotion were his most marked 
 traits ; and both are seen in his verses from 
 
300 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 the same poem (" Inspiration ") so often 
 quoted : 
 
 " I will then trust the love untold 
 
 Which not my worth or want hath bought, 
 Which wooed me young and wooes me old, 
 
 And to this evening hath me brought." 
 
 Thoreau s business in life was observa 
 tion, thought, and writing, to which last, 
 reading was essential. He read much, but 
 studied more ; nor was his reading that in 
 discriminate, miscellaneous perusal of every 
 thing printed, which has become the vice of 
 this age. He read books of travel, scien 
 tific books, authors of original merit, but few 
 newspapers, of which he had a very poor 
 opinion. " Read not the 4 Times, read the 
 Eternities," he said. Nor did he admire 
 the magazines, or their editors, greatly. He 
 quarreled with " Putnam s Magazine," in 
 1853-54, and in 1858, after yielding to the 
 suggestion of Mr. Emerson, that he should 
 contribute to the "Atlantic," in consequence 
 of a dispute with Mr. Lowell, its editor, 
 about the omission of a sentence in one of 
 his articles, he published no more in that 
 magazine until the year of his death (1862), 
 when Mr. Fields obtained from him some of 
 
LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY. 301 
 
 his choicest manuscripts. He spent the last 
 months of his life in revising these, and 
 they continued to appear for some years 
 after his death. Those which were published 
 in the " Atlantic " in 1878 are passages from 
 his journals, selected by his friend Blake, 
 who long had the custody of his manu 
 scripts. These consist chiefly of his journals 
 in thirty-nine volumes, many parts of which 
 had already been printed, either by Thoreau 
 himself, by his sister Sophia, or his friend 
 Channing, who, in 1873, published a life 
 of Thoreau, containing many extracts from 
 the journals, which had never before been 
 printed. When we speak of his works, we 
 should include Mr. Channing s book also, 
 half of which, at least, is from Thoreau s 
 pen. 
 
 His method in writing was peculiarly his 
 own, though it bore some external resem 
 blance to that of his friends, Emerson and 
 Alcott. Like them he early began to keep 
 a journal, which became both diary and 
 commonplace book. But while they noted 
 down the thoughts which occurred to them, 
 without premeditation or consecutive ar 
 rangement, Thoreau made studies and ob- 
 
302 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 servations for his journal as carefully and 
 habitually as he noted the angles and dis 
 tances in surveying a Concord farm. In 
 all his daily walks and distant journeys, he 
 took notes on the spot of what occurred to 
 him, and these, often very brief and sym 
 bolic, he carefully wrote out, as soon as he 
 could get time, in his diary, not classified 
 by topics, but just as they had come to him. 
 To these he added his daily meditations, 
 sometimes expressed in verse, especially in 
 the years between 1837 and 1850, but gen 
 erally in close and pertinent prose. Many 
 details are found in his diaries, but not 
 such as are common in the diaries of other 
 men, not trivial but significant details. 
 From these daily entries he made up his 
 essays, his lectures, and his volumes; all be 
 ing slowly, and with much deliberation and 
 revision, brought into the form in which he 
 gave them to the public. After that he 
 scarcely changed them at all ; they had 
 received the last imprint of his mind, and 
 he allowed them to stand and speak for 
 themselves. But before printing, they un 
 derwent constant change, by addition, eras 
 ure, transposition, correction, and combina- 
 
LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY. 303 
 
 tion. A given lecture might be two years, 
 or twenty years in preparation ; or it might 
 be, like his defense of John Brown, copied 
 with little change from the pages of his 
 diary for the fortnight previous. But that 
 was an exceptional case; and Thoreau was 
 stirred and quickened by the campaign and 
 capture of Brown, as perhaps he had never 
 been before. 
 
 " The thought of that man s position and fate," 
 he said, " is spoiling many a man s day here at 
 the North for other thinking. If any one who 
 has seen John Brown in Concord, can pursue 
 successfully any other train of thought, I do not 
 know what he is made of. If there is any such 
 who gets his usual allowance of sleep, I will 
 warrant him to fatten easily under any circum 
 stances which do not touch his body or purse. I 
 put a piece of paper and a pencil under my pil 
 low, and when I could not sleep, I wrote in the 
 dark. I was so absorbed in him as to be sur 
 prised whenever I detected the routine of the 
 natural world surviving still, or met persons go 
 ing about their affairs indifferent." 
 
 The fact that Thoreau noted down his 
 thoughts by night as well as by day, ap 
 pears also from an entry in one of his jour- 
 
304 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 nals, where he is describing the coming on 
 of day, as witnessed by him at the close of 
 a September night in Concord. " Some 
 bird flies over," he writes, " making a noise 
 like the barking of a puppy (it was a 
 cuckoo). It is yet so dark that I have 
 dropped my pencil and cannot find it." No 
 writer of modern times, in fact, was so much 
 awake and abroad at night, or has described 
 better the phenomena of darkness and of 
 moonlight. 
 
 It is interesting to note some dates and 
 incidents concerning a few of Thoreau s 
 essays. The celebrated chapter on " Friend 
 ship," in the " Week," was written in the 
 winter of 1847-48, soon after he left Wai- 
 den, and while he was a member of Mr. Em 
 erson s household during the absence of his 
 friend in Europe. On the 13th of January, 
 1848, Mr. Alcott notes in his diary : 
 
 " Henry Thoreau came in after my hours with 
 the children, and we had a good deal of talk on 
 the modes of popular influence. He read me a 
 manuscript essay of his on Friendship, which 
 he has just written, and which I thought superior 
 to anything I had heard." 
 
 To the same period or a little later be- 
 
LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY. 305 
 
 long those verses called " The Departure," 
 which declare, under a similitude, Thoreau s 
 relations with one family of his friends. 
 
 In 1843, when he first met Henry James, 
 Lucretia Mott, and others who have since 
 been famous, in the pleasant seclusion of 
 Staten Island, he wrote a translation of the 
 " Seven Against Thebes," which has never 
 been printed, some translations from Pindar, 
 printed in the " Dial," in 1844, and two ar 
 ticles for the New York " Democratic Re 
 view," called " Paradise to be Regained," 
 and " The Landlord." 
 
 Thoreau left " a vast amount of manu 
 script," in the words of his sister, who was 
 his literary executor until her death in 
 1876, when she committed her trust to his 
 Worcester friend, Mr. Harrison Blake. 
 She was aided in the revision and publica 
 tion of the "Excursions," "Maine Woods," 
 " Letters," and other volumes which she 
 issued from 1862 to 1866, by Mr. Emerson, 
 Mr. Channing, and other friends, Mr. 
 Emerson having undertaken that selection 
 of letters and poems from his mass of cor 
 respondence and his preserved verses, which 
 appeared in 1865. His purpose, as he said 
 20 
 
306 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 to Miss Thoreau, was to exhibit in that vol 
 ume " a most perfect piece of stoicism," 
 and he fancied that she had " marred his 
 classic statue " by inserting some tokens of 
 natural affection which the domestic letters 
 showed. Miss Thoreau said that " it did 
 not seem quite honest to Henry " to leave 
 out such passages; Mr. Fields, the pub 
 lisher, agreed with her, and a few of them 
 were retained. His correspondence, as a 
 whole, is much more affectionate, and less 
 pugnacious than would appear from the 
 published volume. He was fond of dispute, 
 but those who knew him best loved him 
 most. 
 
 Of his last illness his sister said : 
 
 " It was not possible to be sad in his presence. 
 No shadow of gloom attaches to anything in my 
 mind connected with my precious brother. He 
 has done much to strengthen the faith of his 
 friends. Henry s whole life impresses me as a 
 grand miracle." 
 
 Walking once with Mr. Alcott, soon af 
 ter he passed his eightieth birth day, as we. 
 faced the lovely western sky in December, 
 the old Pythagorean said, " I always think 
 of Thoreau when I look at a sunset ; " and 
 
LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY. 307 
 
 I then remembered it was at that hour Tho- 
 reau usually walked along the village street, 
 under the arch of trees, with the sunset sky 
 seen through their branches. " He said to 
 me in his last illness," added Alcott, I 
 shall leave the world without a regret, 
 that was the saying either of a grand egotist 
 or of a deeply religious soul." Thoreau was 
 both, and both his egotism and his devo 
 tion offended many of those who met him. 
 His aversion to the companionship of men 
 was partly religious a fondness for the in 
 ward life and partly egotism and scorn 
 for frivolity. 
 
 " Emerson says his life is so unprofitable and 
 shabby for the most part." writes Thoreau in 
 1854, "that he is driven to all sorts of resources, 
 and among the rest to men. I tell him we 
 differ only in our resources : mine is to get away 
 from men. They very rarely affect me as grand 
 or beautiful ; but I know that there is a sunrise 
 and a sunset every day. I have seen more men 
 than usual lately ; and well as I was acquainted 
 with one, I am surprised to find what vulgar fel 
 lows they are." 
 
 In 1859 he wrote to Mr. Blake : 
 
 " I have lately got back to that glorious soci- 
 
308 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 ety called Solitude, where we meet our friends 
 continually, and can imagine the outside world 
 also to be peopled. Yet some of my acquaint 
 ance would fain hustle me into the almshouse 
 for the sake of society ; as if I were pining for that 
 diet, when I seem to myself a most befriended 
 man, and find constant employment. However, 
 they do not believe a word I say. They have 
 got a club, the handle of which is in the Parker 
 House, at Boston, and with this they beat me 
 from time to time, expecting to make me tender, 
 or minced meat, and so fit for a club to dine off. 
 The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering 
 for want of society. Was never a case like it ! 
 First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. 
 Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought 
 it was indigestion of the society I got." 
 
 Yet Thoreau knew the value of society, 
 and avoided it oftentimes only because he 
 was too busy. To his friend Ricketson, 
 who reproached him for ceasing to answer 
 letters, he wrote in November, 1860, just 
 before he took the fatal cold that termi 
 nated in consumption and ended his life 
 prematurely : 
 
 " FRIEND RICKETSON, You know that I 
 never promised to correspond with you, and so, 
 when I do, I do more than I promised. Such 
 
LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY. 309 
 
 are my pursuits and habits, that I rarely go 
 abroad ; and it is quite a habit with me to de 
 cline invitations to do so. Not that I could not 
 enjoy such visits, if I were not otherwise occu 
 pied. I have enjoyed very much my visits to 
 you, and my rides in your neighborhood, and am 
 sorry that I cannot enjoy such things oftener ; 
 but life is short, and there are other things also 
 to be done. I admit that you are more social 
 than I am, and more attentive to the common 
 courtesies of life ; but this is partly for the rea 
 son that you have fewer or less exacting private 
 pursuits. Not to have written a note for a year 
 is with me a very venial offense. I think I do 
 not correspond with any one so often as once in 
 six months. I have a faint recollection of your 
 invitation referred to ; but I suppose I had no 
 new or particular reason for declining, and so 
 made no new statement. I have felt that you 
 would be glad to see me almost whenever I got 
 ready to come ; but 1 only offer myself as a rare 
 visitor, and a still rarer correspondent. I am very 
 busy, after my fashion, little as there is to show 
 for it, and feel as if I could not spend many days 
 nor dollars in traveling ; for the shortest visit must 
 have a fair margin to it, and the days thus affect 
 the weeks, you know. 
 
 " Nevertheless, we cannot forego these luxu 
 ries altogether. Please remember me to your 
 
310 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 family. I have a very pleasant recollection of 
 your fireside, and I trust that I shall revisit it ; 
 also of your shanty and the surrounding regions." 
 
 He did make a last visit to this friend in 
 August, 1861, after his return from Min 
 nesota, whither he went with young Horace 
 Mann, in June. And it was to Mr. Rick- 
 etson that Sophia Thoreau, two weeks after 
 her brother s death, wrote the following ac 
 count of his last illness : 
 
 " CONCORD, May 20, 1862. 
 
 " DEAR FRIEND, Profound joy mingles with 
 my grief. I feel as if something very beautiful 
 had happened, not death. Although Henry is 
 with us no longer, yet the memory of his sweet 
 and virtuous soul must ever cheer and comfort 
 me. My heart is filled with praise to God for 
 the gift of such a brother, and may I never dis 
 trust the love and wisdom of Him who made him, 
 and who has now called him to labor in more glo 
 rious fields than earth affords ! 
 
 " You ask for some particulars relating to 
 Henry s illness. I feel like saying that Henry 
 was never affected, never reached by it. I never 
 before saw such a manifestation of the power of 
 spirit over matter. Very often I have heard him 
 tell his visitors that he enjoyed existence as well 
 as ever. He remarked to me that there was aa 
 
LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY. 311 
 
 much comfort in perfect disease as in perfect 
 health, the mind always conforming to the con 
 dition of the body. The thought of death, he 
 said, could not begin to trouble him. His 
 thoughts had entertained him all his life, and 
 did still. When he had wakeful nights, he 
 would ask me to arrange the furniture, so as to 
 make fantastic shadows on the wall, and he 
 wished his bed was in the form of a shell that he 
 might curl up in it. He considered occupation 
 as necessary for the sick as for those in health, 
 and has accomplished a vast amount of labor dur 
 ing the past few months, in preparing some pa 
 pers for the press. He did not cease to call for 
 his manuscript till the last day of his life. Dur 
 ing his long illness I never heard a murmur es 
 cape him, or the slightest wish expressed to 
 remain with us. His perfect contentment was 
 truly wonderful. None of his friends seemed to 
 realize how very ill he was, so full of life and 
 good cheer did he seem. One friend, as if by 
 way of consolation, said to him, * Well, Mr. Tho- 
 reau, we must all go. Henry replied, When I 
 was a very little boy, I learned that I must die, 
 and I set that down, so, of course, I am not 
 disappointed now. Death is as near to you as it 
 is to me. 
 
 "There is very much that I should like to 
 tfrite you about my precious brother had I time 
 
312 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 and strength. I wish you to know how very 
 gentle, lovely, and submissive he was in all his 
 ways. His little study bed was brought down 
 into our front parlor, when he could no longer 
 walk with our assistance, and every arrangement 
 pleased him. The devotion of his friends was 
 most rare and touching. His room was made fra 
 grant by the gifts of flowers from young and old. 
 Fruit of every kind which the season afforded, 
 and game of all sorts, were sent him. It was 
 really pathetic, the way in which the town was 
 moved to minister to his comfort. Total strangers 
 sent grateful messages, remembering the good he 
 had done them. All this attention was fully ap 
 preciated and very gratifying to Henry. He would 
 sometimes say, * I should be ashamed to stay in 
 this world after so much has been done for me. 
 I could never repay my friends. And they re 
 membered him to the last. Only about two hours 
 before he left us, Judge Hoar called with a bou 
 quet of hyacinths fresh from his garden, which 
 Henry smelt and said he liked, and a few min 
 utes after he was gone another friend came with 
 a dish of his favorite jelly. I can never be grate 
 ful enough for the gentle, easy exit which was 
 granted him. At seven o clock, Tuesday morn 
 ing, he became restless, and desired to be moved. 
 Dear Mother, aunt Louisa, and myself were with 
 him. His self-possession did not forsake him. A 
 
LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY. 313 
 
 little after eight he asked to be raised quite up. 
 His breathing grew fainter and fainter, and with 
 out the slightest struggle, he left us at nine 
 o clock, but not alone ; our Heavenly Father 
 was with us. 
 
 " Your last letter reached us by the evening 
 mail on Monday. Henry asked me to read it to 
 him, which I did. He enjoyed your letters, and 
 felt disappointed not to see you again. Mr. 
 Blake and Mr. Brown came twice to visit him, 
 since January. They were present at his funeral, 
 which took place in the church. Mr. Emerson 
 read such an address as no other man could have 
 ione. It is a source of great satisfaction that one 
 ?o gifted knew and loved my brother, and is pre 
 pared to speak such brave words about him at 
 this time. The Atlantic Monthly for July will 
 contain Mr. Emerson s memories of Henry. I 
 hope that you saw a notice of the services on 
 Friday, written by Mr. Fields, in the Tran 
 script. 
 
 " Let me thank you for your very friendly let 
 ters. I trust we shall see you in Concord, Anni 
 versary Week. It would give me pleasure to 
 make the acquaintance of your family, of whom 
 my brother has so often told me. If convenient, 
 will you please bring the ambrotype of Henry 
 which was taken last autumn in New Bedford. 
 I am interested to see it. Mr. Channing will 
 
314 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 take the crayon likeness to Boston this week to 
 secure some photographs. My intention was to 
 apologize for not writing you at this time ; but 
 I must now trust to your generosity to pardon 
 this hasty letter, written under a great pressure 
 of cares and amidst frequent interruptions. My 
 mother unites with me in very kind regards to 
 your family. 
 
 " Yours truly, S. E. THOREAU." 
 
 To Parker Pillsbury, who would fain talk 
 with Thoreau in this last winter concerning 
 the next world, the reply was, " One world 
 at a time." To a young friend (Myron 
 Benton) he wrote a few weeks before 
 death : 
 
 "CONCORD, March 21, 1862. 
 " DEAR SIR, I thank you for your very 
 kind letter, which, ever since I received it, I 
 have intended to answer before I died, how 
 ever briefly. I am encouraged to know, that, so 
 far as you are concerned, I have not written my 
 books in vain. I was particularly gratified, some 
 years ago, when one of my friends and neigh 
 bors said, I wish you would write another book 
 write it for me. He is actually more fa 
 miliar with what I have written than I am my 
 self. I am pleased when you say that in * The 
 Week you like especially * those little snatches 
 
LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY. 315 
 
 of poetry interspersed through the book ; for 
 these, I suppose, are the least attractive to most 
 readers. I have not been engaged in any par 
 ticular work on Botany, or the like, though, if I 
 were to live, I should have much to report on 
 Natural History generally. 
 
 " You ask particularly after my health. I 
 suppose that I have not many months to live ; 
 but, of course, I know nothing about it. I may 
 add, that I am enjoying existence as much as 
 ever, and regret nothing. 
 
 " Yours truly, HENRY D. THOREAU, 
 
 " By SOPHIA E. THOREAU." 
 
 "With an unfaltering trust in God s 
 mercies," wrote Ellery Channing, " and 
 never deserted by his good genius, he most 
 bravely and unsparingly passed down the 
 inclined plane of a terrible malady pul 
 monary consumption ; working steadily at 
 the completing of bis papers to bis last 
 bours, or so long as be could hold tbe pencil 
 in bis trembling fingers. Yet if he did get 
 a little sleep to comfort him in this year s 
 campaign of sleepless affliction, he was sure 
 to interest tbose about bim in bis singular 
 dreams, more tban usually fantastic. He 
 Baid once, tbat having got a few moments 
 
316 HENRY D. TEOREAU. 
 
 of repose, sleep seemed to hang round his 
 bed in festoons. He declared uniformly 
 that he preferred to endure with a clear 
 mind the worst penalties of suffering rather 
 than be plunged in a turbid dream by nar 
 cotics. His patience was unfailing; assur 
 edly he knew not aught save resignation ; 
 he did mightily cheer and console those 
 whose strength was less. His every instant 
 now, his least thought and work, sacredly 
 belonged to them, dearer than his rapidly 
 perishing life, whom he should so quickly 
 leave behind." 
 
 Once or twice he shed tears. Upon hear 
 ing a wandering musician in the street 
 playing some tune of his childhood he 
 might never hear again, he wept, and said 
 to his mother, " Give him some money for 
 me ! " 
 
 " Northward he turneth through a little door, 
 And scarce three steps, ere Music s golden tongue, 
 Flattered to tears this aged man and poor ; 
 But no already had his death-bell rung, 
 The joys of all his life were said and sung." 
 
 He died on the 6th of May, 1862, and 
 had a public funeral from the parish church 
 a few days later. On his coffin his friend 
 
LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY. 317 
 
 Charming placed several inscriptions, among 
 them this, " Hail to thee, O man 1 who hast 
 come from the transitory place to the im 
 perishable." This sentiment may stand as 
 faintly marking Thoreau s deep, vital con 
 viction of immortality, of which he never 
 had entertained a doubt in his life. There 
 was in his view of the world and its Maker 
 no room for doubt ; so that when he was 
 once asked, superfluously, what he thought 
 of a future world and its compensations, he 
 replied, " Those were voluntaries I did not 
 take," having confined himself to the 
 foreordained course of things. He is buried 
 in the village cemetery, quaintly named 
 " Sleepy Hollow," with his family and 
 friends about him ; one of whom, surviving 
 him for a few years, said, as she looked 
 upon his low head-stone on the hillside, 
 " Concord is Henry s monument, covered 
 with suitable inscriptions by his own 
 hand." 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ACADEMY, CONCORD, 46. 
 
 Acton, originally a part of Con 
 cord, 32. 
 
 Adams, John Quincy, 78. 
 
 Adams, Samuel, 100. 
 
 African Slaves in Concord, 203- 
 205. 
 
 Agassiz, Louis, 115, 243, 245. 
 
 Agricola at Marseilles, 64. 
 
 Alcott, A. Bronson, sonnet on 
 Thoreau, v. ; born in Connecti 
 cut, 63 ; at Concord Lyceum, 
 49 ; visits Dr. Ripley, 80 ; in old 
 age, 81 ; goes to live in Con 
 cord, 117 ; helps " raise " Tho- 
 reau s hut, 118; his School 
 of Philosophy, 121 ; an ear 
 ly Transcendentalist, 124 ; his 
 Paradise at Fruitlands, 134- 
 140 ; a friend of John Brown, 
 148 ; plan of living in Concord 
 woods, 155 ; builds a summer- 
 house for Emerson, 194; his 
 friendship with Thoreau 186 ; 
 his conversations, 187, 188, 190, 
 199 ; from his diary, 192, 195 
 304 ; peddler in Virginia, 187, 
 260 , visits Horace Greeley, 188 ; 
 harbors a fugitive slave, 195 ; 
 lends Thoreau his axe, 209; 
 goes to the opera with Greeley, 
 241 ; with Thoreau in New Bed 
 ford, 267 ; his opinion of Tho 
 reau, 306. 
 
 Alcott, Louisa, 63, 91. 
 AlMon, Washington, visits Con 
 cord, 111. 
 
 American literature, Thoreau s 
 
 view of, 100. 
 American Slavery, Thoreau s op 
 
 position to, 195, 199, 292 ; Johm 
 Brown s attack upon, 292, 303. 
 Assabet River, 15, 33, 114, 202. 
 
 BALL, B. W., 135. 
 
 Bangor, 1, 5, 245. 
 
 Barnes, Lucy, 109, 110. 
 
 Barrett, Humphrey, a Concord 
 farmer, 89, 98, 103, 107. 
 
 Barrett, Joseph, 114-117. 
 
 Bartlett, Dr. Josiah, 43, 44. 
 
 Bartlett, Robert, 190. 
 
 Bedford (the town), 9, 12. 
 
 Bedford road, 12, 270. 
 
 Betsey (Thoreau), 3, 4. 
 
 Bigelow, Dr. H. J., 62. 
 
 Blake, Harrison, 141, 301, 305, 
 307. 
 
 Bliss, Rev. Daniel, 74, 75, 99, 100. 
 
 Bliss, Daniel, the Tory, 100, 204. 
 
 Bliss, Phebe, 75, 205. 
 
 Boston, the home of John Tho 
 reau, the Jerseyman, 2, 6; of 
 Henry Thoreau, 27; birth-place 
 of Emerson, 63. 
 
 Boston Miscellany, 220. 
 
 Bowen, Prof. Francia, 62. 
 
 Bradford, George P., 46. 
 
 Bradford, Gershom, 105. 
 
 Bremer, Frederika. 141. 
 
 Brisbane, Albert, 133, 134. 
 
 Brister s Hill, 202. 
 
 Brister, a freedman, 203, 205, 208. 
 
 Brook Farm, 134, 141. 
 
 Brooks, Nathan, 42, 46, 77, 105, 
 
 Brooks, Mrs. Nathan, 68. 
 Brown, John, of Osawatomie, 
 146, 185, 199, 242, 292,293, 296, 
 
320 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Brown, Mrs., of Plymouth, 60. 
 Brownson, Orestes A., 53. 
 Bruno, Giordano, quoted, 208. 
 Bulkley family in Concord, 33, 
 
 39, 98. 
 
 Burke, Edmund, quoted, 299. 
 Buttrick, Major, 102. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, Thoreau s residence 
 in, 51 ; letters from, 55, 61 ; 
 Thoreau s visit to, 196. 
 
 Campbell, Sir Archibald, 68. 
 
 Canada, Thoreau s excursion to, 
 233, 235. 
 
 Cape Cod, 236, 264. 
 
 Carly le, Thomas, 124, 125, 193, 
 233 ; Thoreau s essay on, 218- 
 224. 
 
 Channing, Rev. Dr., 80, 82, 144. 
 
 Channing, Ellery (the poet), 11, 
 41, 49-51, 63, 70, 135, 136, 177- 
 189 ; his lines on Emerson, 69 ; 
 on Thoreau, 185, 214 ; quoted, 
 49-51 ; his friendship for Tho 
 reau, 178-185 ; his verses on 
 Hawthorne, 188; his house, 
 198; his letters to Thoreau, 
 209,218 ; calls Thoreau Idolon, 
 252 ; and Rudolpho, 253 ; visits 
 Monadnoc, 255 ; describes Tho 
 reau, 262, 267, 291, 315 ; his bi 
 ography of Thoreau, 11, 49, 
 301. 
 
 Channing, Rev. W. H., 140, 141, 
 
 174, 216. 
 
 Chapman, Dr., 193. 
 Chappaqua, 241. 
 
 Cheney, Mrs., of Concord, 18, 93. 
 
 Cohasset, 91, 175. 
 
 Columella, 132. 
 
 Concord (town of) described, 32- 
 40; celebrities, 41-48, 63-96 , 
 farmers, 97-123 ; Lyceum, 47, 
 48, 168 : as a transcendental 
 capital, 135, 143, 146 ; the home 
 of Channing and Thoreau, 178 ; 
 localities, 201-204; freedmen, 
 204 ; jail, 207 ; the monument 
 to Thoreau, 317. 
 
 Concord Fight, 76, 86, 99, 102, 
 109. 
 
 Concord grape, 34. 
 
 Concord River, 33, 140, 154, 167, 
 
 175, 178, 183, 188, 199, 202, 208. 
 Concord Village, 189, 201 ; trade 
 
 in, 35 : customs of, 40, 46, 48, 
 
 64, 72, 76, 87, 116, 12^!. 
 Connecticut, 73, 82, 127, 186. 
 Corner, Nine-Acre, 70, 84,208. 
 
 DAVENANT, SIR WILLIAM, 127, 164. 
 
 "Departure, The," 282, 305. 
 
 Dial, The, 127, 135, 163, 168, 171. 
 173, 212, 217, M& 
 
 Diana, Ascription to, 260. 
 
 Dunbar. Rev. Asa, 8, 9, 20. 
 
 Dunbarl Charles, uncle of Tho 
 reau, 21-24, 92, 93. 
 
 Dunbar, Cynthia (mother of 
 Thoreau), 8, 18, 19, 21, 24-28, 
 50, 57, 92, 96, 312. 
 
 Dunbar, Louisa, 13-17, 21. 
 
 EDWARDS, JONATHAN, quoted, 128. 
 
 " Egomites," 80. 
 
 Emerson, Charles, 46. 
 
 Emerson, Miss Mary, 19, 20, 75. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, born in 
 Boston . 63 ; a descendant of 
 Concord ministers, 39; quoted, 
 37; began to lecture in Con 
 cord, 48 ; begins acquaintance 
 with Thoreau, 59 ; goes to live 
 in Concord, 69; draws people 
 there, 71 ; describes Dr. Ripley, 
 77-84 ; describes the " Concord 
 Fight," 103 ; on Captain Hardy, 
 121, 123; goes to Europe, 281 ; 
 his " Forester," 251 ; his propo 
 sition for an international maga 
 zine, 193; on Thoreau s ac 
 quaintance with Nature, 251, 
 252 ; on Thoreau s patience in 
 observation, 250 ; his relations 
 with Thoreau, 189; his sum 
 mer-house, 194, 278; tries to 
 work in the woods, 278; praises 
 Thoreau s "Smoke," 287; gives 
 his funeral eulogy, 313. 
 
 Emerson, William, 190. 
 
 Endymion of Concord, 260. 
 
 Essays of Thoreau, in college, 
 150-163 ; " Effect of Story Tell 
 ing," 158; " L Allegro and II 
 Penseroso," 156 ; " National 
 Characteristics," 160 ; " Pa- 
 ley s Common Reasons," 161; 
 " Punishment," 158 ; " Source 
 of our feeling for the Sublime," 
 159; " Simplicity of Style." 
 
INDEX. 
 
 321 
 
 Everett, Edward, 88. 
 
 FAIRHAVEN CLIFFS, 153. 
 
 Fenda, the fortune teller, 204. 
 
 Fields, James T., 300, 300. 
 
 Forbes, Mrs. W. H., recollections 
 of Thoreau, 270-273. 
 
 " Forester, The," verse by Emer 
 son, 257. 
 
 " Fruitlands," in Harvard, 135- 
 137. 
 
 Fugitive Slave, in Concord, 195. 
 
 Fuller, Margaret, in Concord, 
 70 ; criticises Thoreau s poems, 
 169-172 ; rejects a prose article 
 by him, 173 ; her character, 
 174 ; in Cambridge, 191 ; at a 
 conversation, 190 ; visit to Eu 
 rope, marriage, and death, 230 ; 
 writes for the " Tribune, and 
 lives with H. Greeley, 217. 
 
 GARDINER. DR., 79, 80. 
 
 Garfleld, his ancestors, 204. 
 
 Gilman, Rev. Nicholas, 128-130. 
 
 Goodwin, Rev. H. B., 83. 
 
 Graham, George R., 222, 224. 
 
 Graham s Magazine, 213, 224. 
 
 Graveyard in Lincoln, 204. 
 
 Greeley, Horace, as Maecenas, 
 217; editor of the "Tribune, 
 216; described by Margaret 
 Fuller, 217 ; his correspond 
 ence with Thoreau, 219-229, 
 231-240; invites Thoreau to 
 Chappaqua, satirized by W. E. 
 Channing, 218. 
 
 Griswold, R. W., 220, 222. 
 
 HAFIZ, quoted, 166. 
 
 Hamilton, Alexander, 113. 
 
 Hampden, John, 107. 
 
 Hardy, Captain, 120-122. 
 
 Harvard Magazine, 196. 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, moves 
 and removes to Concord, 70 ; 
 quoted, 71 ; Channing s verses 
 on, 188 ; Emerson s influence 
 on, 148 ; his " Scarlet Letter, 
 277; invites Thoreau to lect 
 ure in Salem, 276 ; returns to 
 Concord, 278 ; returns thither 
 from Europe, 189. 
 
 Herald s Office, London, 108. 
 
 Heywood, Dr. Abiel, 38, 40-42. 
 
 21 
 
 Heywood, George, 89. 
 
 Hildreth, S. T., 57. 
 
 Hoar, E. R., 90,312. 
 
 Hoar, Edward, 254. 
 
 Hoar, Miss Elizabeth, 239. 
 
 Hoar, Mrs. Samuel, 96. 
 
 Hoar, Samuel, 46, 72,90, 95, 112. 
 
 Hollowell Farm, 172, note, 208. 
 
 Hosmer Cottage, 117. 
 
 Hosmer, Cyrus, 111. 
 
 Hosiner, Edmund, 118-120. 
 
 Hosmer, James, 98. 
 
 Hosmer, Joseph (the Major). 98. 
 
 99, 100, 109, 111, 112, 113. 
 Hosmer, Lucy , 110. 
 Hurd, Dr. Isaac, 42. 
 
 ICARUS, 202. 
 
 Indians, (American), 240, 242, 
 
 248. 
 
 Ingraham, Cafco, a slave, 203. 
 Ingrahaui, Duncan, 66-68. 
 
 JACK, JOHN, a negro, 204; epi 
 taph on, 205. 
 
 Jackson, Dr. C. T., 246, 247. 
 
 James, Henry, 305. 
 
 Jarvis, Deacon Francis, 76, 77. 
 
 Jarvis, Dr. Edward, 76. 
 
 Jersey, Isle of, 1-4. 
 
 Journal of Thoreau, 2, 150, 154, 
 167. 
 
 KTAADN, and Thoreau s visit 
 
 there, 225, 227, 228, 245. 
 Keene, N. II., 18. 
 Kosta, Martin, 67. 
 
 LANE, CHARLES, 135-141. 
 
 Lee. family, 114 ; their farm and 
 hill, 115. 
 
 Letters from Maria Thoreau, 5 ; 
 from D. Webster, 15 ; from Jo- 
 eiah Quincy, 53, 61 ; from Dr. 
 Ripley, 57,"81 ; from Dr. Chan- 
 ning to Dr. Ripley, 82; from 
 Charles Lane, to Thoreau, 137- 
 140; from A. G. Peabody, 65, 
 56 ; from K. U". Emerson, 155, 
 193 ; from F. B. Sanborn, 197 ; 
 from Henry Thoreau, 92, 181, 
 209, 210, 216, 307, 308, 314; 
 from Horace Greeley,219, 222- 
 231, 233-240: from Margaret 
 Fuller, 169-173 ; from Dr. Rip- 
 
322 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ley, 144-146; from Sophia 
 Thoreau, 176, 268 306, 310, 
 314 ; letter to Sophia Thoreau, 
 189, 216, 281. 
 
 Levet, Robert, 43. 
 
 Lowell, James Russell, 112, 246. 
 
 MJSCENAS, Greeley as, 216-241. 
 
 Manse, Old, built in 1766, 75; 
 occupied by Hawthorne 85 ; 
 Channing s verses on, 188 ; 
 farmers at, 86-88; "Mosses 
 from," 183; first mistress of, 
 205. 
 
 Marlboro road, 109. 
 
 Marryatt, Captain, 67. 
 
 Marvell, Andrew, 42. 
 
 Massey, Gerald, 240. 
 
 Merrlck, Tilly, 67, 108. 
 
 Milton, John, 156, 157. 
 
 Minott, George, 22. 24, 92, 274. 
 
 Minott, Mrs., the grandmother of 
 Thoreau, 9-11. 
 
 Minute-Man, statue of, 86. 
 
 Monadnoc, 115, 254-257. 
 
 Moore, Abel (" Captain Hardy"), 
 120, 121. 
 
 Morton, Edwin, 197. 
 
 Munroe of Lexington and Con 
 cord, 66 ; William, 37, 152. 
 
 Musketaquid, 33. 
 
 NATURE," born and brought up 
 in Concord," 96 : Thoreau s 
 observation of, 252, 285. 
 
 ORROK, DAVID, 2. 
 
 Orrok, Sarah, 2. 
 
 Out-door life of Thoreau, at 
 Walden, 209, 211 ; in general, 
 242, 243, 249-252, 254-257 ; by 
 night, 304. 
 
 PARKER, THEODORE, 69; school 
 
 candidate, 88. 
 " Past and Present," by Carlyle, 
 
 notice of, 217. 
 
 Peabody, A. G., letter from, 54. 
 Peabody, Elizabeth P., 70, 168. 
 Penobscot River, 245. 
 Pepperell, Sir William, 129. 
 Perry, Joseph. 67. 
 Phalanstery, 140, 141, 216. 
 Phillips, Wendell, at Concord, 49. 
 Pierpont, Sarah, 128. 
 
 Pillsbury, Parker, 314 
 
 Poems, quoted from Tennyson, 
 31 ; from Ellery Channing, 24, 
 69, 119, 175, 184, 185, 215, 252, 
 255 ; Emerson s " Saadi", 119 ; 
 " Maine Woods," 246, 247 ; Mil 
 ton, 181; Thoreau s "Love," 
 167 ;" Sympathy," 164 :" The 
 Maiden in the East," 165: to 
 his brother John, 176 ; The De 
 parture, 282 ; " The Pilgrims," 
 285; "Smoke 1 (a fragment), 
 287 ; from T. P. Sanborn, 260 ; 
 from Keats, 316. 
 
 Poet, the character of, 284. 
 
 Ponkawtassett Hill, 86, 182. 
 
 Putnam s Magazine, 235, 237. 
 
 QUARTERLY, MASSACHUSETTS, 230. 
 Quincy, Josiah, 52 ; letter from, 
 
 53, 61 ; certificate in favor of 
 
 Thoreau, 61. 
 
 RALSTON, MRS. LAURA DUNBAR, 
 19. 
 
 Ricketson, Daniel, 176, 188, 263 ; 
 description of Thoreau s act 
 ual appearance, 266; disap 
 pointment in imagined per 
 sonal appearance of Thoreau, 
 264 ; on Thoreau s domestic 
 character, 267 ; describes Tho 
 reau s dance, 268 ; Letters from 
 Thoreau to, 308, 309; Letter 
 from Sophia Thoreau to, 310. 
 
 Ripley, Dr. (pastor at Concord), 
 petition to Grand Lodge of Ma 
 sons, 1-9 ; letter from, 25 ; cer 
 tificate in favor of Thoreau s 
 father, 26 ; schism in parish of, 
 28, 85 ; Thoreau baptized by, 
 46 ; letter from Edward Everett 
 to, 47 ; letter introducing Tho 
 reau as a teacher, 57 ; anecdotes 
 of, 73-80, 86, 87 ; letter to Dr. 
 Channing, 81 : reply, 82 ; his 
 prayers, 83, 84 ; letter on the 
 Transcendental movement,144, 
 146. 
 
 Ripley, Rev. Samuel, 74. 
 
 Ripley, Mrs. Sarah, 85. 
 
 Robbins, Caesar, a negro, 104, 
 203. 
 
 SANBORN, F. B., acquaintance 
 
INDEX. 
 
 323 
 
 with Thoreau, 196; extract 
 from diary, 198, 199; intro 
 duces John Brown to Thoreau, 
 199; letter to Thoreau, 197. 
 
 Sanborn, T. P., his "Endym- 
 ion" quoted, 260. 
 
 Sartain, John, 232. 
 
 " Service, The," 172. 
 
 Sewall, Ellen, 163. 
 
 " Shay," a one-horse, 131-133. 
 
 Slave, fugitive, 195. 
 
 Staten Island, 89, 92, 305. 
 
 Sunday prospect, 152. 
 
 Sunday walkers, 85. 
 
 TACITUS, quoted, 64. 
 
 Teufelsdrbckh, 210. 
 
 Thoreau family, 4, 5, 27-31. 
 
 Thoreau, Helen, 59-61. 
 
 Thoreau, Henry, his ancestry, 
 1-10 ; born in Concord, 12 ; his 
 mother, 8, 24 ; his father, 25 ; 
 as a pencil-maker, 37 ; first 
 dwelling-place, 45 ; at the Con 
 cord Academy, 46 ; enters Har 
 vard College, 46 ; at Chelms- 
 /ord, 49 ; his childish stoicism, 
 50 ; his graduation, 51 ; as 
 school teacher, 52 ; a benefi 
 ciary of Harvard College, 53, 54; 
 his certificate from Dr. Ripley, 
 57, 58 ; from Emerson, 59 ; be 
 ginning of acquaintance with 
 Emerson, 59 ; his " Sic Vita " 
 60 ; Quincy s certificate, 61 ; 
 a Transcendentalist, 124; first 
 essays in authorship, 149, 153 ; 
 description of a visit to Fair- 
 haven Cliffs, 153, 154; his 
 early poems, 164-167 ; his first 
 lecture, 168 ; his " Walk to Wa- 
 chusett," 169 ; his earliest com 
 panion, 175; his friendship 
 with Ellery Channing, 178-183; 
 his praise of Alcott, 186; goes 
 to Alcott s conversations, 18" ; 
 visits Chappaqua and Walt 
 Whitman, 188 ; his burial 
 place, 189; his relation with 
 Emerson, 189, 190 ; reads his 
 " Week to Alcott, 192 ; de 
 signs a lodge for Emerson, 194 ; 
 his acquaintance with San- 
 born, 195 ; at Walden, 201 ; his 
 reasons for going to Walden, 
 
 212; edits "The Week," 212; 
 talks with W. H. Channing and 
 Greeley, 216 : his essay on Car- 
 lyle, 218-225; his paper on 
 " Ktaadn and the " Maine 
 Woods," 225 ; his " Week," 230 ; 
 asks Greeley for a loan, 235 ; 
 his " Canada," and " Cape 
 Cod," 235, 236 ; Greeley asks 
 him to become a tutor, 241; 
 his out-door life, 242 ; collects 
 specimens for A^assiz, 243, 
 245 ; his visits to Maine, 245, 
 248 ; as a naturalist, 249-252 ; 
 a night on Mount Washington, 
 254 ; his Monadnoc trip, 256- 
 257 ; his description of a Con 
 cord heifer, 258, 259 ; his apos 
 trophe to the "Queen of Night," 
 259: his face, 199, 261,266; de 
 scribed by Channing, 262 ; by 
 Ricketson, 263-266; travels on. 
 Cape Cod, 264 : domestic char- 
 racter, 267 , dances, 268 ; sings 
 " Tom Bowline, 1 269 ; his so 
 cial traits, 270-273 ; as author 
 and lecturer, 274-277 ; his man 
 ual labor, 278 ; fashion of his 
 garments, 279 ; income from 
 authorship, 280 ; lives in Emer 
 son s household, 281 ; his para 
 ble, 285 : his habit of versifica 
 tion, 286 ; his reading, 286 ; as 
 naturalist, 288-291 ; his theory 
 of labor and leisure, 288 ; hia 
 political philosophy, 292 : eraa 
 in his life, 297: his aim in 
 writing, 298 ; his religion, 299 ; 
 his business in life, 300 ; his 
 method in writing, 304 ; his 
 sunset walks, 307 ; his aversion 
 to society, 307 ; his decline and 
 death, 313-316; his funeral, 
 317. 
 Thoreau, John, the father, 25, 
 
 Thoreau, John, the brother, 17 
 178. 
 
 Thoreau, John, the Jerseyma 
 1, 5-7, 37. 
 
 Thoreau, Maria, 1-8. 
 
 Thoreau, Sophia, 29, 38, 44, 2* 
 282, 301, 305, 310, 315 : lettr 
 from, 176, 268, 306, 310-31 
 letters to, 189, 216, 281. 
 
324 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 "Tom Bowline," sung by Tho- 
 reau, 268, 269, 272. 
 
 Transcendentalism, 124, 125, 133, 
 142, 247, 279 ; in New England, 
 124-126 ; in politics, 292-296 ; 
 social, and unsocial, 141-145; 
 at Brook Farm, 134 ; at Fruit- 
 lands, 137. 
 
 Transcendentalists of Concord, 
 63, 70, 76, 80, 119, 134-137, 143, 
 146, 148, 288, 307. 
 
 Transcendental Period, 124-147. 
 
 " Tribune," New York, 217, 230, 
 
 VERY, JONES, 51, 190. 
 
 WACHUSETT, 115, 138, 169, 220. 
 
 Walden (the book), 196, 211, 214, 
 239, 240. 
 
 Walden Hermitage, 201-215. 
 
 Walden woods, 11, 155, 202, 209, 
 212, 214. 
 
 Watson, Marston, 188, 197. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, a lover of Lou 
 isa Dunbar, 13, 14; describes 
 
 his native place, 15-17 ; his 
 friendship for Louisa Dunbar, 
 17, 93 ; at the " Wyman Trial," 
 90 ; his " rose-cold, 91 ; visits 
 in Concord, 93 ; letter to Mrs. 
 Cheney, 94 ; described by Car- 
 lyle, 293; by Thoreau, 294; 
 contrasted with Thoreau, 296. 
 
 Webster, Prof. J. W., 56. 
 
 " Week," The, ( Thoreau s first 
 book), 183, 196, 213, 230, 240, 
 269,304. 
 
 Weiss, Rev. John, 57. 
 
 " Westminster Review," 240. 
 
 Wharton, Thomas, 298. 
 
 Whig Review, 238. 
 
 Whitefield, G., letter to, 129. 
 
 Whiting, Colonel, 36, 46. 
 
 Whiting, Rev. John, 65. 
 
 Whitman, Walt, 186, 188. 
 
 Whittier, J. G., quoted, 131. 
 
 Wiggles worth, Michael, 131. 
 
 Willard, Major, 32, 98. 
 
 Woolman, John, 127, 130. 
 
 ZILPHA, the Walden Circe, 203. 
 
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