and industrious than he admits; he was devoted to his family, and a loyal friend. In his protest at the ways of the world he was, in a manner, "whistling to keep his courage up," and often his whistling became rather shrill.

Thoreau the poet-naturalist. The greater part of "Walden," and, indeed, of his writing as a whole, is the work of a naturalist-the work included in

such chapters as "Sounds," "The Ponds," "Brute Neighbors," "Former Inhabitants," and "Winter Visitors," "Winter Animals," and "The Pond in Winter." In the two generations since Crèvecœur's "Letters from an American Farmer" no one on this side of the Atlantic had written about the out-of-doors with such fullness and intimate knowledge. In this respect, moreover, Thoreau, instead of being a student or imitator of Emerson, was his guide and instructor. Although

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

modern science owes little to him and has corrected many of his findings, it recalls his help to Agassiz in collecting specimens; and modern literature has produced only one or two men, like John Burroughs and John Muir, who write of nature with the same sympathy and beauty. The title of his friend Channing's book "Thoreau: the Poet-Naturalist" suggests the whole story. He was fascinated by growing things. He could not learn enough about their ways. The life in Concord's rivers, ponds, fields, and woods by day and night and during the changing seasons was an endless study and pleasure. In his journal he kept a detailed record of the pageant of the year, which after his death was assembled in the four vol

umes "Spring in Massachusetts," "Summer," "Autumn," and "Winter." When he went to other parts of the country, he carried his knowledge of Concord as a sort of reference book. From Staten Island he wrote: "The woods are now full of a large honeysuckle in full bloom, which differs from ours... Things are very forward here compared with Concord." In the Maine woods he recognized his old familiars, but in more rugged, primitive surroundings than those at home. The sandy stretches of Cape Cod furnished him daily with fascinating contrasts in natural surroundings and in their effect on the residents. On his trip to Mount Washington he found forty-two of the fortysix plants he expected, adding one to his list when, after falling and spraining his ankle, he limped a few steps and said, "Here is the arnica, anyhow," reaching for an arnica mollis, which he had, not found before. And when he chose to put into essay form some of the information he had gleaned, he was exact without being technical and never for long repressed his lively spirits.

Thoreau the poet. The poet in him brought him back continually to the beauty in what he saw. He did not care much to philosophize about creation like Emerson; the sheer facts of it meant so much more to him. Nor did he care to expound the beauties of nature; he simply held them up to view. Take, for example, this bit from the "Pond in Winter," in which the last twelve words are quite as beautiful as the thing they describe:

Standing on the snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlor of fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber, twilight sky.

Or, again, this prose poem quoted in Channing's book:

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 (progressive), making pretence of browsing; nearer and nearer, till there was wafted to us the bovine 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, and 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.

The following passages contain the main features of contemporary Imagist poetry (see page 425):

I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden pond itself. What company has that lonely lake, I pray? . . . I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean-leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumble-bee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weather-cock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.

The wind has gently murmured through the blinds, or puffed with feathery softness against the windows, and occasionally sighed like a summer zephyr, lifting the leaves along, the livelong night. The meadow-mouse has slept in his snug gallery in the sod, the owl has sat in a hollow tree in the depth of the swamp; the rabbit, the squirrel, and the fox have all been housed. The watch-dog has lain quiet on the hearth, and the cattle have stood silent in their stalls. . . . But while the earth has slumbered, all the air has been alive with feathery flakes descending, as if some northern Ceres reigned, showering her silvery grain over all the fields.

No yard; but unfenced Nature reaching to your very sills. A young forest growing up under your windows, and wild sumachs and blackberry vines breaking through into your cellar; sturdy pitch-pines rubbing and creaking against the shingles for want of room, their roots reaching quite under the house. Instead of a scuttle or a blind blown off in the gale,—a pine tree torn up by

the roots behind your house for fuel. Instead of no path to the front-yard gate in the Great Snow,-no gate-no front yard, and no path to the civilized world.

His manner of writing was so like Emerson's that the comments on the style of the elder man (see pages 202-205) apply for the most part to that of the younger.

Thoreau's later years-the coming of recognition. From the year of "Walden's" appearance to the end of Thoreau's life, in 1862, three matters are specially worthy of record. The first is that recognition began at last to come. This probably did not hasten his writing, but it released some of the great ac.. cumulation of manuscript in his possession. Several of the magazines accepted single papers, and the Atlantic Monthly took eight of his articles, although seven of them were not published until the two years just after his death. In these and the next two years five new volumes of his were published; others followed in the eighties and nineties; but it was not until 1906 that a complete and final edition appeared.

His support of Walt Whitman and John Brown. The second significant thing is his friendly support of two of the most strikingly unconventional men of his day-Walt Whitman, and John Brown of Harpers Ferry. Of Whitman he wrote, when few were reading him, and few of these approving:

I have just read his second edition (which he gave me), and it has done me more good than any reading for a long time. . . . I have found his poems exhilarating, encouraging. . . . We ought to rejoice greatly in him. He occasionally suggests something a little more than human. You can't confound him with the other inhabitants of Brooklyn or New York. How they must shudder when they read him! . . . Since I have seen him, I find I am not disturbed by any brag or egoism in his book. He may turn out the least of a braggart of all, having a better right to be confident.

John Brown he had met in Concord only a few weeks before the Harpers Ferry raid. Two weeks after the capture of Brown he delivered an adddress on the issues, first in Concord and