Meeting Mr. Emerson one day, I inquired if he saw much of my classmate, Henry D. Thoreau, who was then living in Concord. "Of Thoreau?" replied Mr. Emerson, his face lighting up with a smile of enthusiasm. "Oh, yes, we could not do without him. When Carlyle comes to America, I expect to introduce Thoreau to him as the man of Concord," and I was greatly surprised at these words. They set an estimate on Thoreau which seemed to be extravagant.... Not long after I happened to meet Thoreau in Mr. Emerson's study at Concord—the first time we had come together after leaving college. I was quite startled by the transformation that had taken place in him. His short figure and general cast of countenance were, of course, unchanged; but in his manners, in the tones of his voice, in his modes of expression, even in the hesitations and pauses of his speech, he had become the counterpart of Mr. Emerson. Thoreau's college voice bore no resemblance to Mr. Emerson's, and was so familiar to my ear that I could have readily identified him by it in the dark. I was so much struck by the change that I took the opportunity, as they sat near together talking, of listening with closed eyes, and I was unable to determine with certainty which was speaking. I do not know to what subtle influences to ascribe it, but after conversing with Mr. Emerson for even a brief time, I always found myself able and inclined to adopt his voice and manner of speaking.
Meeting Mr. Emerson one day, I inquired if he saw much of my classmate, Henry D. Thoreau, who was then living in Concord. "Of Thoreau?" replied Mr. Emerson, his face lighting up with a smile of enthusiasm. "Oh, yes, we could not do without him. When Carlyle comes to America, I expect to introduce Thoreau to him as the man of Concord," and I was greatly surprised at these words. They set an estimate on Thoreau which seemed to be extravagant.... Not long after I happened to meet Thoreau in Mr. Emerson's study at Concord—the first time we had come together after leaving college. I was quite startled by the transformation that had taken place in him. His short figure and general cast of countenance were, of course, unchanged; but in his manners, in the tones of his voice, in his modes of expression, even in the hesitations and pauses of his speech, he had become the counterpart of Mr. Emerson. Thoreau's college voice bore no resemblance to Mr. Emerson's, and was so familiar to my ear that I could have readily identified him by it in the dark. I was so much struck by the change that I took the opportunity, as they sat near together talking, of listening with closed eyes, and I was unable to determine with certainty which was speaking. I do not know to what subtle influences to ascribe it, but after conversing with Mr. Emerson for even a brief time, I always found myself able and inclined to adopt his voice and manner of speaking.
Thoreau had tried schoolteaching, but he had to give up his position because he would not exercise the birch and ferule. "If the scholars once find out the teacher is not goin' to sting 'em up when they need it, that is an end to the skule," said one of the directors, and he spat violently at a fly, ten feet away. The others agreeing with him, Thoreau was asked to resign.
William Emerson, a brother of Ralph Waldo's, a prosperous New York merchant, had lured Ralph Waldo's hired man away from him and taken him down to Staten Island, New York. Here Thoreau acted as private tutor, and imparted the mysteries of woodcraft to boys who cared more for marbles.
Staten Island was about two hundred miles too far from Concord to suit Thoreau.
His loneliness in New York City made Concord and the pine-trees of Walden woods seem paradise enow. There is no heart desolation equal to that which can come to one in a throng.
Margaret Fuller was now in New York City, working for Greeley on the editorial staff of the "Tribune." Greeley was so much pleased with Thoreau that he offered to set him to work as reporter, for Greeley had guessed the truth that the best city reporters are country boys. They observe and hear—all is curious and wonderful to them: by and by they will become blase—sophisticated—that is, blind and deaf.
Greeley was a great talker, and he had a way of getting others to talk also. He got Thoreau to talking about communal life and life in the woods, and then Horace worked Henry's words up into copy—for that is the way all good newspaper-writers evolve their original ideas.
Thoreau was amazed to pick up a number of the daily "Tribune" and find his conversation of the day before, with Greeley, skilfully transformed into a leader.
Fourierism had been the theme—the Phalanstery versus Individual Housekeeping. Greeley had prophesied that the phalanstery, with one kitchen for forty families, instead of forty kitchens for forty families, would soon come about. Greeley's prophetic vision did not quite anticipate the modern apartment-house, which perhaps is a transitional expedient, moving toward the phalanstery, but he quoted Thoreau by saying, "A woman enslaved by her housekeeping is just as much a chattel as if owned by a man."
This was in Eighteen Hundred Forty-five, and Thoreau was now twenty-eight years of age. He was homesick for the dim pine-woods with their ceaseless lullaby, the winding and placid river, and the great, massive, sullen, self-sufficient boulders of Concord.
He was resolved to follow the example of Brook Farm, and start a community of his own in opposition. His community would be on the shores of Walden Pond, and the only member of the genus homo who wouldbe eligible to membership would be himself; the other members would be the birds and squirrels and bees, and the trees would make up the rest. Brook Farm was a retreat for transcendentalists—a place to meditate, dream and work—a place where one could exist close to Nature, and live a simple, hardy and healthful life.
Thoreau's retreat would be the same, with the disadvantage of personal contact eliminated.
It was in March, Eighteen Hundred Forty-five, that Thoreau began building his shanty. The spot was in a dense woods, on a hillside that gently sloped down to the clear, cold, deep water of Walden Pond. The land belonged to Emerson, who obligingly gave Thoreau the use of it, rent free, with no conditions. Alcott helped in the carpenter work, and discussed betimes of the Wherefore, and when it came to the raising, a couple of neighboring farmers were hailed and pressed into service. The cabin was twelve by fifteen, and cost—furnished—the sum of twenty-eight dollars, good money, not counting labor, which Thoreau did not calculate as worth anything, since he had had the fun of the thing—something for which men often pay high.
The furniture consisted of a table, a chair, and a bed, all made by the owner. For bedclothes and dishes the Emerson household was put under contribution. On the door was a latch, but no lock.
And Thoreau looked upon his work and pronounced it good.
Stripped of the fact that a man of culture and education built the shanty and lived in it, the incident is scarcely worth noting. Boys passing through the shanty stage, all build shanties, and forage through their mothers' pantries for provender, which they carry off to their robbers' roost. Thoreau was an example of shanty-arrested development.
But as the import of every sentence depends upon who wrote it, and the worth of advice hinges upon who gave it, so does the value of every act depend upon who did it. Thus when a man, who was in degree an inspiration of Emerson, takes to the woods, it is worth our while to follow him afield and see what he does.
Thoreau set to work to clean up two acres of blackberry brambles for a garden-patch. He did not work except when he felt like it. His plan was to go to bed at dusk, with window and door open, and get up at five o'clock in the morning. After a plunge in the lake he would dress and prepare his simple breakfast. Then he would work in his garden, or if the mood struck him, he would sit in the door of his shanty and meditate, or else write. In the arrangement of his home he followed no system or rule, merely allowing the passing inclination to lead.
His provisions were gotten of friends in the village, and were paid for in labor. It was part of Thoreau's philosophy that to accept something for nothing was theft, and that the giving or acceptance of presentswas immoral. For all he received he conscientiously gave an equivalent in labor; and as for ideas, he always considered himself a learner; if he had thoughts they belonged to anybody who could annex them. And that Emerson and Horace Greeley were alike in their capacity to absorb, digest and regurgitate, is everywhere acknowledged. To paraphrase Emerson's famous remark concerning Plato: Say what you will, you will find everything mentioned by Emerson hinted at somewhere in Thoreau. The younger man had as much mind as the elder, but he lacked the capacity for patient effort that works steadily, persistently, and weighs, sifts, decides, classifies and arranges. The voice was the voice of Jacob, but the hand was the hand of Esau. That is to say, Thoreau lacked business instinct. During the Winter at Walden Pond, all the work Thoreau had to do was to gather firewood. There was plenty of time to think and write, and here the better part of "Walden" and "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers" were written. He had no neighbors, no pets, no domesticated animals—only the squirrels on the roof, a woodchuck under the floor, the scolding blue jays in the pines overhead, the wild ducks on the pond, and the hooting owls that sat on the ridgepole at night.
Thoreau loved solitude more because he prized society—the society of simple men who could talk and tell things. Thoreau was no hermit—at least twice a weekhe would go to the village and meander along the street, gossiping with all or any. Often he would accept invitations to supper, but on principle refused all invitations to remain overnight, no matter what the weather. Indeed, as Hawthorne hints, there is a trace of the theatrical in the man who leaves a warm fireside at nine or ten o'clock at night and trudges off through the darkness, storm and sleet, feeling his way through the blackness of the woods to a cold and cheerless shanty which he with unconscious humor calls home. Hawthorne hints that Thoreau was a delightful poseur—he posed so naturally that he deceived even himself. On one particular visit to the village, however, he did not go back home for the night. It seems that he had been called upon by the local taxgatherer for his poll-tax, a matter of a dollar and a quarter. Thoreau argued the question at length, and among other things, said, "I will not give money to buy a musket, and hire a man to use this musket to shoot another." And also, "The best government is not that which governs least, but that which governs not at all."
"But what shall I do?" said the patient publican.
"Resign," said the philosopher.
Thoreau seemed to forget that officeholders seldom die and never resign. In the argument the publican was worsted, but he was not without resource. He went back to town and told the other officials what had happened. Their dignity was at stake. Alcott had beenguilty of a like defiance some time before, and now it was the belief that he was putting the younger man up to insurrection.
The next time Thoreau came over to the village for his mail he was arrested and lodged in the local bastile.
Emerson, hearing of the trouble, hastened to the jail, and reaching the presence of the prisoner asked sternly, "Henry, why are you here?"
And the answer was, "Waldo, why are you not here?" Emerson had no use for such finespun theories of duty, and the matter was too near home for a joke, so he turned away and let the culprit spend the night in limbo. The next morning Thoreau was released, the tax having been paid by some unknown person—Emerson, undoubtedly. This was a tame enough ending to what was rather an interesting affair—the hope of the best citizens being that Thoreau would get a goodly sentence for vagrancy. The townfolk looked upon Thoreau and Alcott with suspicious eyes. They both came in for much well-deserved censure, and Emerson did not go unsmirched, since he was guilty of harboring and encouraging these ne'er-do-wells.
Thoreau's cabin-life continued for two Summers and Winters. He had proved that two hours' manual work each day was sufficient to keep a man—twenty cents a day would suffice.
The last year in the woods he had many callers: Agassiz had been to see him, Emerson had often called,Ellery Channing was a frequent visitor, and picnickers were constant. Lowell had made a few cutting remarks to the effect that "as compared with shanty-life, the tub of Diogenes was preferable, as it had a much sounder bottom," and Hawthorne had written of "the beauties of conspicuous solitude."
Thoreau felt that he was attracting too much attention, and that perhaps Hawthorne was right: a recluse who holds receptions is becoming the thing he pretends to despise. Besides that, there was plenty of precedent for quitting—Brook Farm had gone by the board, and was but a memory.
Thoreau's shanty was turned over to a utilitarian Scotchman with red hair. Later the immortal shanty was a useful granary. Thoreau went back to the village to live in a garret and work at odd jobs of boat-building and gardening.
Now only a pile of boulders marks the place where the cabin stood. For some years, each visitor to the spot threw a stone upon the heap, but recently the proposition has been reversed, and each visitor takes a stone away, which reveals not a reversal in the sentiment toward the memory of Thoreau, but a change in the quality of the Concord pilgrim.
Thoreau's early death was the direct result of his reckless lack of common prudence. That which made him live, in a literary way, curtailed his years. The man was improperly and imperfectly nourished, physically. Men who live alone do not cook any more than they have to: men and women, both, cook for emulation. That is to say, we work for each other, and we succeed only as we help each other.
Thoreau was such a pronounced individualist that he cared for no one but himself, and he cared for himself not at all. It is wife, children and home that teach a man prudence, and make him bank against the storm. "At Walden no one bothered me but the State," said Thoreau. If Thoreau had had a family and treated his household as he treated himself, that scorned thing, the State, would have stepped in and sent him to the workhouse, and his children to the Home for the Friendless.
If he had treated dumb animals as he treated himself, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would have interfered. The absence of social ties and of all responsibilities fixed in his peculiar temperament an indifference to hunger, heat, cold, wet, damp, and all bodily discomfort that classes the man with the flagellants. He tells of whole days when he ate nothing but berries and drank only cold water; and at other times of how he walked all day in a soakingrain and went to bed at night, supperless, under a pine-tree. Emerson records the fact that on long tramps Thoreau would carry only a chunk of plum-cake for food, because it was rich and contained condensed nutriment.
The question is sometimes asked, "How can one eat his cake and keep it too?" but this does not refer to plum-cake.
A few years of plum-cake, cold mince-pie and continual wet feet will put the petard under even the stoutest constitution.
During his shanty-life Thoreau was imperfectly nourished, and for the victim of malassimilation, tuberculosis hunts and needs no spyglass.
It is absurd for a man to make a god of his digestive apparatus, but it is just as bad to forget that the belly is as much the gift of God as the brain.
In childhood, Thoreau was frail and weak. Outdoor life gradually developed on his slight frame a splendid strength and a power to do and endure. He could outrun, outrow, outwalk any of his townsmen. In him developed the confidence of the athlete—the confidence of the athlete who dies young. Thoreau was an athlete, and he died as the athlete dieth. Irregular diet and continued exposure did their work—the vital powers became reduced, the man "caught cold," bronchitis followed, and the tuberculæ laughed.
During Thoreau's life he published but two volumes, and these met with scanty sale. Since his death ten volumes have been issued from his manuscripts and letters, and his fame has steadily increased.
Boston had no recognition for Thoreau as long as he was alive. Among the most popular writers of the time, feted and feasted, invited and exalted, were George S. Hillard, N. P. Willis, Caroline Kirkland, George W. Green, Parke Godwin and Charles F. Briggs. These writers, who had the run of the magazines, would have smiled in derision if told that the name and fame of uncouth Thoreau would outlive them all. They wrote for the people who bought their books, but Thoreau dedicated his work to time. He wrote what he thought, but they wrote what they thought other people thought.
In the publication of "The Dial," Thoreau took a hearty interest, and was a frequent contributor. The official organ of the transcendentalists, however, paid no honorariums—it was both sincere and serious, and died in due time of too much dignity. The "Atlantic Monthly" accepted one article by Thoreau, and paid for it, but as James Russell Lowell, the editor, used his blue pencil a trifle, without first consulting the author, he never got an opportunity to do so again.
Horace Greeley had interested himself in Thoreau's writings and gotten several articles accepted byGraham's and also Putnam's Magazine. "The Week" had been published on the author's guaranty that enough copies would be sold the first year to cover the cost. After four years, of the edition of one thousand copies only three hundred were disposed of, and these were mostly given away. To pay the publisher for the expense incurred, Thoreau buckled down and worked hard at surveying for a year.
The only man he ever knew, of whom he stood a little in awe, was Walt Whitman. In a letter to Blake he says:
Nineteenth November, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six.—Alcott has been here, and last Sunday I went with him to Greeley's farm, thirty-six miles north of New York. The next day Alcott and I heard Beecher preach; and what was more, we visited Whitman the next morning, and we were much interested and provoked. He is apparently the greatest democrat the world has seen, kings and aristocracy go by the board at once, as they have long deserved to. A remarkably strong though coarse nature, of a sweet disposition, and much prized by his friends. Though peculiar and rough in his exterior, he is essentially a gentleman. I am still somewhat in a quandary about him—feel that he is essentially strange to me, at any rate; but I am surprised by the sight of him. He is very broad, but, as I have said, not fine.Seventh December, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six.—That Walt Whitman, of whom I wrote you, is the most interesting fact to me at present. 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. Perhaps Iremember best the poem of "Walt Whitman an American" and the "Sundown" poem. There are two or three pieces in the book which are disagreeable, to say the least, simply sensual.... As for its sensuality—and it may turn out to be less sensual than it appears—I do not so much wish that those parts were not written, as that men and women were so pure that they could read them without harm.On the whole, it sounds to me very brave and American, after whatever deductions. I do not believe that all the sermons, so called, that have been preached in this land, put together, are equal to it for preaching. We ought greatly to rejoice in him. He occasionally suggests something a little more than human. You can't confound him with the other inhabitants of Brooklyn. How they must shudder when they read him!To be sure, I sometimes feel a little imposed on. By his heartiness and broad generalities he puts me into a liberal frame of mind, prepared to see wonders—as it were, sets me upon a hill or in the midst of a plain—stirs me well up, and then—throws in a thousand of brick. Though rude and sometimes ineffectual, it is a great primitive poem, an alarum or trumpet-note ringing through the American camp. Wonderfully like the Orientals, too, considering that, when I asked him if he had read them, he answered, "No; tell me about them."Since I have seen him, I find that 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. Walt is a great fellow.
Nineteenth November, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six.—Alcott has been here, and last Sunday I went with him to Greeley's farm, thirty-six miles north of New York. The next day Alcott and I heard Beecher preach; and what was more, we visited Whitman the next morning, and we were much interested and provoked. He is apparently the greatest democrat the world has seen, kings and aristocracy go by the board at once, as they have long deserved to. A remarkably strong though coarse nature, of a sweet disposition, and much prized by his friends. Though peculiar and rough in his exterior, he is essentially a gentleman. I am still somewhat in a quandary about him—feel that he is essentially strange to me, at any rate; but I am surprised by the sight of him. He is very broad, but, as I have said, not fine.
Seventh December, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six.—That Walt Whitman, of whom I wrote you, is the most interesting fact to me at present. 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. Perhaps Iremember best the poem of "Walt Whitman an American" and the "Sundown" poem. There are two or three pieces in the book which are disagreeable, to say the least, simply sensual.... As for its sensuality—and it may turn out to be less sensual than it appears—I do not so much wish that those parts were not written, as that men and women were so pure that they could read them without harm.
On the whole, it sounds to me very brave and American, after whatever deductions. I do not believe that all the sermons, so called, that have been preached in this land, put together, are equal to it for preaching. We ought greatly to rejoice in him. He occasionally suggests something a little more than human. You can't confound him with the other inhabitants of Brooklyn. How they must shudder when they read him!
To be sure, I sometimes feel a little imposed on. By his heartiness and broad generalities he puts me into a liberal frame of mind, prepared to see wonders—as it were, sets me upon a hill or in the midst of a plain—stirs me well up, and then—throws in a thousand of brick. Though rude and sometimes ineffectual, it is a great primitive poem, an alarum or trumpet-note ringing through the American camp. Wonderfully like the Orientals, too, considering that, when I asked him if he had read them, he answered, "No; tell me about them."
Since I have seen him, I find that 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. Walt is a great fellow.
A lady once asked John Burroughs this question: "What would become of this world if everybody in itpatterned after Henry Thoreau?" And Ol' John replied, "It would be much improved."
But your Uncle John is a humorist—he knows that Henry Ward Beecher was right when he said, "God never made but one Thoreau—that was enough, but we are grateful for the one."
Thoreau was a poet-naturalist, and the lesson he taught us is that this is the most beautiful world to know anything about, and there are enough curious and wonderful things right under our feet, and over our heads, and all around us, to amuse, divert, interest and instruct us for a lifetime. We need only a little.
Use your eyes!
"How do you manage to find so many Indian relics?" a friend asked Thoreau. "Just like this," he replied, and stooping over, he picked up an arrowhead under the friend's foot. At dinner once at a neighbor's he was asked what dish he preferred, and his answer was, "The nearest." To him, everything was good—he uttered no complaints and made no demands.
When asked by a clergyman why he did not go to church, he said, "It is the rafters—I can't stand them—when I look up, I want to gaze straight into the blue sky." Then he turned the tables and asked the interrogator a question: "Did you ever happen, accidentally, to say anything while you were preaching?" Yet preachers of brains were always attracted to him: Harrison Blake, to whom he wrote more letters thanto any one else, was a Congregational preacher. And when Horace Greeley took Thoreau to Plymouth Church, Beecher invited him to sit on the platform and quoted him as one who saw God in autumn's every burning bush.
The wit of the man—his direct speech, and all of his beautiful indifference for the good opinion of those whom others follow after and lie in wait for—was sublime. Meanness, hypocrisy, secrecy and subterfuge had no place in Thoreau's nature.
He wanted nothing—nothing but liberty—he did not even ask for your applause or approval. When walking on country roads, laborers would hail him and ask for tobacco—seeing in him only one of their own kind. Farmers would stop and gossip with him about the weather. Children ran to him on the village streets and would cling to his hands and clutch his coat, and ask where the berries grew, or the first spring flowers were to be found. With children he was particularly patient and kind. With them he would converse as freely as did George Francis Train with the children in Madison Square. The children recognized in him something very much akin to themselves—he would play upon his flute for them and whittle out toy boats, regardless of the flight of time.
Imbeciles and mental defectives from the almshouse used occasionally to wander over to his cabin in the woods, and he would treat them with gentle consideration, andaccompany them back home.
His lack of worldly prudence, Blake thought, tokened a courage which under certain conditions would have made him as formidable as John Brown. Blake tells this: Once on a lonely road, two miles from Concord, two loafers stopped a girl who was picking berries, and began to bother her. Thoreau just then happened along, and seeing the young woman's distress, he collared the rogues and marched them into the village, turning them over to that redoubtable transcendentalist, Sam Staples, who locked them up. Thoreau's hook nose and features could be transformed in rare instances into a look of command that no man dare question—it was the look of the fatalist—the benign fanatic—the look of Marat—the look of a man who has nothing but his life to lose, and places small store on that. "A little more ambition, and a trifle less sympathy, and the world would have had a Cæsar to deal with," says Blake.
Cowardice is only caution carried to an extreme. Thoreau exercised no prudence in making money, securing fame, preserving his health, holding his friends or making new ones. This Spartan-like quality, that counts not the cost, is essentially heroic.
But Thoreau was not given to strife; for the most part, he was non-resistant. The chief thing he prized was equanimity, and this you can not secure through struggle and strife. His game was all captured with the spyglass, or carried home in his botanists' drum. Forworldly wealth and what we call progress, he had small appreciation—this marks his limitations. But his reasons are surely good literature:
They make a great ado nowadays about hard times; but I think that the community generally, ministers and all, take a wrong view of the matter. This general failure, both private and public, is rather occasion for rejoicing, as reminding us whom we have at the helm—that justice is always done. If our merchants did not most of them fail, and the banks too, my faith in the old laws of the world would be staggered. The statement that ninety-six in a hundred doing such business surely break down, is perhaps the sweetest fact that statistics have revealed—exhilarating as the fragrance of the flowers in the Spring. Does it not say somewhere, "The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice"? If thousands are thrown out of employment, it suggests that they were not well employed. Why don't they take the hint? It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?The merchants and company have long laughed at transcendentalism, higher law, etc., crying, "None of your moonshine," as if they were anchored to something not only definite, but sure and permanent. If there were any institution which was presumed to rest on a solid and secure basis, and more than any other, represented this boasted commonsense, prudence, and practical talent, it was the bank; and now these very banks are found to be mere reeds shaken by the wind.Scarcely one in the land has kept its promise. Not merely the Brook Farm and Fourierite communities,but now the community generally has failed. But there is the moonshine still, serene, beneficent and unchanged.
They make a great ado nowadays about hard times; but I think that the community generally, ministers and all, take a wrong view of the matter. This general failure, both private and public, is rather occasion for rejoicing, as reminding us whom we have at the helm—that justice is always done. If our merchants did not most of them fail, and the banks too, my faith in the old laws of the world would be staggered. The statement that ninety-six in a hundred doing such business surely break down, is perhaps the sweetest fact that statistics have revealed—exhilarating as the fragrance of the flowers in the Spring. Does it not say somewhere, "The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice"? If thousands are thrown out of employment, it suggests that they were not well employed. Why don't they take the hint? It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?
The merchants and company have long laughed at transcendentalism, higher law, etc., crying, "None of your moonshine," as if they were anchored to something not only definite, but sure and permanent. If there were any institution which was presumed to rest on a solid and secure basis, and more than any other, represented this boasted commonsense, prudence, and practical talent, it was the bank; and now these very banks are found to be mere reeds shaken by the wind.
Scarcely one in the land has kept its promise. Not merely the Brook Farm and Fourierite communities,but now the community generally has failed. But there is the moonshine still, serene, beneficent and unchanged.
Thoreau was no pessimist. He complained neither of men nor of destiny—he felt that he was getting out of life all that was his due. His remarks might be sharp and his words sarcastic, but in them there was no bitterness. He made life for none more difficult—he added to no one's burdens. Sympathy with Nature, pride, buoyancy, self-sufficiency, were his prevailing traits. The habit of his mind was hopeful.
His wit and good-nature were his to the last, and when asked if he had made his peace with God, he replied, "I have never quarreled with Him."
He died, aged forty-four, in the modest home of his mother. The village school was dismissed that the scholars might attend the funeral, and three hundred children walked in the procession to Sleepy Hollow. Emerson made an address at the grave; Alcott read selections from Thoreau's own writings; and Louisa Alcott read this poem, composed for the occasion:
We sighing said, "Our Pan is dead;His pipe hangs mute beside the river,Around it wistful sunbeams quiver,But Music's airy voice is fled.Spring mourns as for untimely frost:The bluebird chants a requiem;The willow-blossom waits for him;—The Genius of the wood is lost."Then from the flute, untouched by hands,There came a low, harmonious breath:"For such as he there is no death;His life the eternal life commands;Above man's aims his nature rose.The wisdom of a just contentMade one small spot a continent,And turned to poetry life's prose."To him no vain regrets belong,Whose soul, that finer instrument,Gave to the world no poor lament,But wood-notes ever sweet and strong.O lonely friend! he still will beA potent presence, though unseen—Steadfast, sagacious, and serene;Seek not for him—he is with thee."
SO HERE ENDETH "LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF GREAT PHILOSOPHERS,BEING VOLUME EIGHT OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD; EDITED AND ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS, AND PRODUCED BY THE ROYCROFTERS, AT THEIR SHOPS, WHICH ARE IN EAST AURORA, ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, MCMXXII.