Henry David Thoreau

“ I do not believe we would allow such an one as Thoreau's corresponent in our select can; nor do I believe Thoreau would have written a line to an "extra select." However, this sterling man, who owes little to the school and less to the college, had vouchsafed unto him the divine gift of insight. He is one of that rare few who are endowed with prescient foresight; most of us have only a purblind hindsight. We see the landscapes of life only after they have been passed, we discern the great ones of life only after they are dead—we are the "extra selects"! ”

“ It is what we do and how, when not the great world is the spectator, but when the self is alone with the selfhood; then the undertone of character is heard, the 'still small voice' speaking audibly to the soul above all the roaring din of the mighty Babylon of which so many of us are in such cowardly dread.
That now aged man with whom Thoreau was then corresponding is indeed a most remarkable man. ”

“ Thoreau's experiment actually presupposed all that complicated civilization which it theoretically abjured. He squatted upon another man's land; he borrows an axe; his boards, his nails, his bricks, his mortar, his books, his lamp, his fish-hooks, his plough, his hoe, all turn state's evidence against him as an accomplice in the sin of that artificial civilization which rendered it possible that such a person as Henry D. Thoreau should exist at all.' I question whether in all the history of criticism a blinder misconception can be found. ”

“ One who has been allowed access to those richly laden shelves may be allowed, without violating the sanctity of hospitality, to bear witness to the simplicity, sincerity, and serenity investing the eventide of a true life with that ineffable splendor which has in it the soul's strongest assurance of a dayspring beyond the mists of Life's mirage. ”

“ Twelve days after the burial of her brother Henry, Sophia Thoreau wrote to Mr. Daniel Eicketson: "Profound joy mingles with my grief. I feel as if something beautiful had happened—not death."
And something beautiful had indeed happened—another of the countless miracles that surround us here: a soul leveling this lift that it may go on to a higher; a soul that also had for its last countersign the "Æquanimitas" of the dying Roman Emperor; a soul that found 'perfect disease as agreeable as perfect health' ”

“ Up at six o'clock for a walk past the old Monument and up Ponkawtasset hill, on the side of which William Ellery Channing once lived and got the credit for going farther to visit Thoreau in his hut in midwinter than any other living man—"that was not a poet!" It was pleasant to stand there and see the placid Concord running through the meadows, where thirty-five years ago, near this time of the year, Henry Thoreau and his brother rowed down this stream upon that trip on the account whereof were strung the beads that glitter and gleam in Thoreau's first book. ”

“ It was Thoreau's purpose at Walden Pond to find out just how much of Lowell's confessedly 'complicated civilization' was absolutely necessary in order that Man's sojourn in Nature might be as sane and serene as became an immortal soul. Did he not plainly write, 'I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life [kid gloves not being found in that inventory] , and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear ”

“ Of course Thoreau learned of Froude from Emerson's lips, and read Emerson's copy of that "incendiary" book. That Thoreau should send Froude a copy of his own first book—then falling still-born from Munroe's—press was only natural, considering the downrightness of that chapter in the work fancifully termed "Sunday." Froude's letter to Thoreau is the acknowledgment of the gift, and what an acknowledgment: "I have a right to tell you that there is no man living upon this earth at present, whose friendship or whose notice I value more than yours." ”

“ Very often I have heard him tell his visitors that he enjoyed existence as much as ever. He remarked to me that there was as much comfort in perfect disease as in perfect health, the mind always conforming to the condition of the body. ”

“ In the meantime I will but congratulate you on the age in which your work is cast: the world has never seen one more pregnant.
God bless you!
Your friend (if you will let him call you so) ,
J. A. Froude.
There is so much between the lines here that one must go back to the middle of the present century for a clue. In 1849 Froude, then a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, published a book—The Nemesis of Faith—which, immediately following in the wake of the "Oxford Movement," gave a disagreeable shock to Anglican Churchmen, lay and cleric. ”

“ Arose this morning about Four o'clock and started for a last visit to Walden Pond. I shall probably not see it again. Here I sit with my back against a little pine sapling, now growing on the site where once stood the hut. A few feet in front of me is a small but gradually increasing pile of stones to which every friend of Thoreau is expected to add his unit. I brought one up from the pond as my contribution and pencilled on it the word "Bethel." I also set out near by a plant of "Life-everlasting" that I had found while on the way here. ”

“ This can refer only to a complimentary copy of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers that had been previously sent to Froude either by Thoreau or their mutual friend Emerson. Thoreau himself has recorded that of his still-born book some 'seventy-five copies were given away.'
Froude's Nemesis of Faith could transmit no seismic tremors to the man who would have nothing between him and Heaven—not even a rafter. The blue dome with its inscrutable mystery: nothing must obstruct the soul's view of that! ”

“ Is this the man to comprehend the aim and purpose of Thoreau,—this leather and prunella combination of 'civilization' and 'culture'!
"Yes; I am aware that I am speaking of a dead man, of a man whose pig weighed more than he thought it would, if one may judge from the tone of his own early letters; of one whose living tongue tasted the seducing sweetness of earthly fame; but there is another dead man, one who was called away 'in the midst of his broken task, which none else can finish,' and him the kid-gloved favorite of fame and fashion has flouted. There is a time for all things ”

“ You may rely on it that you have the best of me in my books, and that I am not worth seeing personally, the stuttering, blundering clod-hopper that I am. Even poetry, you know, is in one sense an infinite brag and exaggeration. ”

“ It was this same James Munroe that published Emerson's Nature; and it took him twelve years to sell an edition of five hundred copies. Verily, "authors must turn booksellers themselves." "The price is $1.25." A copy of the first edition of Thoreau's Week for one dollar and twenty-five cents! Go to, thou author-bookseller, thou art not up to the trade values of books! Every one of the very volumes that James Munroe had no 'room' for, now finds warm welcome to the selectest of private libraries at—eighteen dollars a copy! ”

“ Do we not hear the sounds as of satanic revelry coming from high places in the land; is not every breeze burdened with the muttered curses of ill-requited labor toiling for the task-masters until the sweat of the brow is that of a Gethsemane which is only the Devil's? ”

“ I forwarded to you by mail on the 31st of January a copy of my "Week" post paid, which I trust that you have received. I thank you heartily for the expression of your interest in "Walden" and hope that you will not be disappointed by the "Week" You ask how the former has been received. It has found an audience of excellent character, and quite numerous, some 2000 copies having been dispersed. I should consider it a greater success to interest one wise and earnest soul, than a million unwise and frivolous. ”

“ Such are the secret sustainments of the Thinker, and such sustainments should be and ever will be vouchsafed; for is not he who brings a message to men an Ambassador from the Most High, and do not even the ravens feed such Ministers Plenipotentiary?
The assurance of the Fellow of Exeter College was grateful to the graduate of Harvard; but Belief is not the accident of a diploma or the prerogative of the aristocracy of Letters. Thoreau was to have another assurance, dearer no doubt to him because its source was so much nearer the soil. ”

“ If you should open a certain Life of Thoreau you could read therein, "Mrs. Thoreau, with her sister Louisa, and her sisters-in-law, Sarah, Maria, and Jane Thoreau, took their share in the village bickerings"; and also that Mrs. Thoreau indulged in "sharp and sudden flashes of gossip and malice": this and much else that is derogatory. Now Mrs. Thoreau died in 1873, and yet, in 1897, and so casually, the lady whose letter I am reading thus testifies to the high quality of the women of the Thoreau family:
"The women of the Thoreau family seem to me quite as remarkable as the men ”

“ So I have for some time been in the habit of associating him with the North pole-star, as through every hour of the twenty-four it keeps its one position in the heavens."
It is much to have inspired such a friendship, and it passeth riches to have been capable of such an inspiration. It fitly marks an epoch in a man's life. ”

“ The editor is utterly unable to account for this rude and wholly unwarrantable outburst. Not a city of its size contains more people that are 'nice to know'; not any the largest city outdoes it in culture and elegant refinement. ”

“ At the risk of marring the symmetry of the printed page the labor-saving editor will take the liberty of superposing such patches of his own plain homespun upon the ex-professor's tapestry as occasion seems to demand (though he may be tempted of the devil to take undue advantage of so rare an opportunity) . Being himself "as mild a mannered man as ever cut a throat," he owes it to himself to gently but plainly deprecate the ex-professor's lapses into the sarcastic. Both the editor and Herr Teufelsdröckh believe that sarcasm is the Devil's patois. ”

“ How quiet and restful the people seem! After breakfast went to call upon X. His housekeeper went up stairs and notified him, and he came down with quite a visible scowl on his countenance, but when I told him who I was, he soon called me to mind, brightened up, was quite cordial and made me welcome to his room below, for reading, writing, and so forth. ”

“ The cane was of manzanita wood, the handle was made from a buffalo horn, and the silver mountings were engraved with appropriate quotations from Thoreau's writings. It was a pious thank-offering from the two brothers—one in the far West and the other in California; but Death was swifter than friendship, and the belated tribute was given to the dead man's dearest friend. ”

“ Far remote is the little monastery at Zwolle, and five centuries have passed since the meekest of pietists put aside his pen, but if there is in this world to-day a spiritual influence of potent puissance it is Thomas of Kempen's Imitatio Christi. ”

“ Be it known then, first of all, that the ex-professor himself takes Thoreau very seriously; does not by any possible interpretation consider him a "glittering generality," but rather a "blazing ubiquity" wherever and whenever the blunt, plain truth is needful—which time and place he also believes is always and everywhere. Perhaps an excerpt from the ex-professor's lecture on "Thoreau" will best serve to show his attitude. ”

“ Burial-plot of the Thoreau Family.
The grave of Henry's brother John is behind the large stone,
between Sophia and Helen.
Battle-ground and the Monument. On my return, took a look at the new monument (erected to the memory of the fallen friends in the late war) standing on the public square. When here before in '63, it was war time and soldiers were being mustered into service, and they were encamped on the same open square. Now only some of their names are on record there. Such is life!
Aug 29th. Arose at 5 o'clock and took an early walk on North side of R. R. This is a grand old town! ”

“ It was a moral suicide in a moment of desperate aberration,—a soul's tragedy.
Emerson knew some time before that something of this nature was imminent. He wrote in his journal for April, 1848: "I had an old invitation from Mr. Clough, a Fellow of Oriel, and last week I had a new one from Dr. Daubeny, the botanical professor. I went on Thursday. I was housed close upon Oriel, though not within it, but I lived altogether upon college hospitalities, dining at Exeter College with Palgrave, Froude, and other Fellows, and breakfasting next morning at Oriel with Clough, Dr. Daubeny, etc. ”

“ Here is the field of boulders, some from eight to ten feet high, and such clumps of barberry bushes! Evening at Mrs. Horace Mann's with Miss Thoreau. Met there Miss Elizabeth Peabody, Mrs. Mann's sister, and her eldest son [Mrs. Horace Mann's] , who accompanied Thoreau on his trip West seeking health. Found the young man greatly interested in Botany. Miss Peabody spoke very feelingly and freely of Margaret Fuller of blessed memory.
Sept. 7th. Arose rather early this morning and took a walk westward some mile and a half to a mill on the Assabet. ”

“ The scale on which his studies proceeded was so large as to require longevity, and we were the less prepared for his sudden disappearance. The country knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it has lost. ”