Perhaps no other man
would have been so greatly missed in his native town.
Thoreau used to walk through Concord with the long step of an Indian,
looking straight before him, but at the same time observing everything.
Occasionally he would stop, make an incision in the bark of a tree with
his knife, or pick up a stone and examine it. It was not often that he
was met with in anybody's house, or seen in company with other men.
His profession was that of a surveyor; and it is easy to imagine how,
with his poetic temperament, while laying out roads and measuring
wood-lots, he came to be what he was. Many people thought his peculiar
ways were an affectation, but I believe that he was one of the plainest
and simplest of men; as plain and single-minded as President Lincoln
himself. It was his theory of the way men should live. He was a Diogenes
without being a cynic.
James Russell Lowell (as he himself tells us) was sent to Concord to
rusticate while he was at college, and conceived at that time an
aversion for Thoreau which never left him. In his celebrated "Fable for
Critics" he satirized him as an imitator of Emerson, and so plainly that
there was no mistaking the portrait. This could not have troubled
Thoreau much for he was a perfect stoic, and cared little for the
opinions of others so long as he satisfied his own conscience. Emerson,
however, felt it keenly, for it was equally a reflection on his friend
and his own sagacity.
Pages:
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36