shore, indicate his interest in the whole compass of nature's operations, and the poems are faithful portrayals of the beauty he saw in all external objects.

Emerson the Man. The most delightful impression one gets from Emerson is, however, that of the man himself, who stands out behind and above all his writing. "It's a very striking and curious spectacle," wrote Carlyle in 1872, "to behold a man in these days so confidently cheerful as Emerson." And perennial cheerfulness despite his recognition of the numerous things that are wrong with the world, is his most distinguishing personal characteristic, and the characteristic that drew all to him. "Even the little chil

dren knew and loved him," says Holmes, "and babes in arms returned his angelic smile." Even the contemplation of his own approaching end did not disturb this cheerfulness. His Terminus, written in 1867, when his mental decay began to make itself felt, is a worthy companion to Tennyson's Crossing the Bar in the "serene dignity" with which it looks toward death. We cannot close our sketch of Emerson better than by quoting the last lines of this poem.

"As the bird trims her to the gale,

I trim myself to the storm of time,

I man the rudder, reef the sail,

Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime;
'Lowly faithful, banish fear,

Right onward drive unharmed;

The port, well worth the cruise, is near,

And every wave is charmed.'"'

HENRY DAVID THOREAU, 1817-1862

"I am a mystic, a Transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot," said Thoreau; but this formidable array of titles should not prevent any student of literature, life, and

nature from making his acquaintance. His life is a story of "plain living," and his writings are a record of "high thinking"-a combination always assuring interest. Thoreau has, moreover, grown in popularity as has no other Transcendentalist, an evidence of which is the publication in 1906 of his complete journal just as he left it, making fourteen volumes of over 6000

HENRY DAVID THOREAU.

Of whom Hawthorne said: "He is as ugly as sin. . . But his ugliness is of an honest and agreeable fashion."

he was graduated in 1837. Among his college themes is one of his sophomore year in which he recommends the keeping of a journal, the form of all his writings. From 1837 to his death he kept a journal, leaving thirty manuscript volumes.

Thoreau is usually described as eccentric; and the first conspicuous sign of this in his biography is his refusal to take his diploma at the University on the ground that it wasn't worth five dollars! It is usually intimated that he was not an especially good student; but when he went to Maine in 1838 seeking a school, he carried with him strong letters of endorsement from Emerson, from Dr. Ripley, pastor of the Concord Church, and from President Quincy, of

the University. It appears that he was certainly distinguished in Greek and in English composition. After teaching a while, he took up his father's trade, pencil making; and when he had made a better pencil, he refused to continue at it, saying that he would not do the same thing twice. He then, according to Emerson, began those "endless walks and miscellaneous studies," which occupied him the remainder of his life. One of these journeys took him the entire length of Cape Cod; another into Maine; still another into Canada. He never showed interest in literary fame, and his reports of these trips were not published until after his death.

In 1843 an effort was made by Alcott and others to establish in Harvard township a community along the general lines of Brook Farm; and Thoreau seems to have been sought as a member. This "Paradise Regained," called "Fruitlands," he visited, but he had no desire to remain. It was a vegetarian community, in which "the 'aspiring' vegetables, those which grow into the air like the fruits, were allowed, but the baser ones, like potatoes and beets, which grow downward, were forbidden," and it expired. painlessly in less than a year.

The Simple Life, and "Walden." Two years after this Thoreau made a social experiment of his own, which is the most familiar episode of his life. He had then become an important factor in Concord life, being in constant demand as lecturer before the Athenæum, and as a skillful surveyor, gardener, and carpenter. But he wished "to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles"; and so, in the year we have now reached (1845) he borrowed an ax from Alcott, and a piece of land on Walden Pond from Emerson, and built himself a hut. Here for a little over two years, with his flute, spyglass, and transit as companions, he lived

1 See page 161.

the simple life at a total expense of less than seventy dollars, and kept a minute record of his observations "on man, on nature, and on human life."

This record, the book Walden, he published in 1854, one of the two books from his pen that appeared during his life. Though much of what it contains the philosophical portions might as well have been written in the heart of civilization, the better and greater part of it arose out of his closeness to nature. In the second chapter, What I Lived For, he says: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." One thing he believed he had already learned that the institution of human slavery was morally wrong; and he took extreme ground in opposition to it. An experience of the Walden period shows how strongly he felt on the subject. Going into the village one afternoon he was arrested and jailed, "because I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the state which buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle at the door of its senate house."

The great virtue of the book, however, is to be found not. in its meditations on Solitude and Higher Laws, or in its attacks on slavery and other human institutions, but in its accounts of how "the whippoorwills chanted their vespers for half an hour," of the changing colors of Walden water, and of "seeing the spring come in." It has opened and still opens the eyes of readers to the beauty and grandeur of the great out-of-doors, and has given rise to an illustrious school of nature writers, of whom John Burroughs is perhaps the greatest.

Other Writings.- Before Walden Thoreau had published (1849) A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers, the record of a trip made with his brother in a boat of their own

construction. The Week did not meet a long-felt want, and seven hundred of the thousand copies printed were returned to the writer. This fact was the occasion of Thoreau's humorous remark that he had a library of nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which he himself had written. The titles of works published after his death, all compiled from his journals, are: Excursions, 1863; Maine Woods, 1864; Cape Cod, 1865; A Yankee in Canada, 1866; Spring, 1881; Summer, 1884; Winter, 1887; Autumn, 1892; and Notes on New England Birds, 1910. He did publish, however, chiefly through the friendly assistance of Horace Greeley, politician and editor of the New York Tribune, a number of articles in magazines, for which he received the paltry remuneration usual at the time.

Death, and Character. Thoreau continued his outdoor life in all weathers, and is believed to have developed by exposure the consumption that brought about his death, which took place May 6, 1862. All who knew him were strongly attracted to him as a beautiful character, and nothing in his life better justified their attraction than some sentiments expressed in his last weeks, when he knew death was at hand. "When I was a very little boy," he said to one, "I learned that I must die, and I set that down, so, of course, I am not disappointed now." To Alcott he said: "I shall leave the world without a regret," though to few men had "the mere living" been more delightful. To a young friend he wrote: "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." Emerson tells us that Thoreau never went to church, and in the eyes of many he was an irreligious man; but the sentences just quoted from the last weeks of a long and painful illness show a faith to which not all Christians attain.