ll be by tagging close to the only
man among them who glorified his Maker by using his reason.

Nothing should be claimed as truth that can not be demonstrated, but as
a hypothesis (borrowed from Henry Thoreau) I give you this: Man is only
the tool or vehicle--Mind alone is immortal--Thought is the Thing.

* * * * *

Heredity does not account for the evolution of Henry Thoreau. His father
was of French descent--a plain, stolid, little man who settled in
Concord with his parents when a child; later he tried business in
Boston, but the march of commerce resolved itself into a double-quick,
and John Thoreau dropped out of line, and turned to the country village
of Concord, where he hoped that between making lead-pencils and
gardening he might secure a living.

He moved better than he knew.

John Thoreau's wife was Cynthia Dunbar, a tall and handsome woman, with
a ready tongue and nimble wit. Her attentions were largely occupied in
looking after the affairs of the neighbors, and as the years went by her
voice took on the good old metallic twang of the person who discusses
people, not principles.

Henry Thoreau was the third child in the family of seven. He was born in
an old house on the Virginia Road, Concord, about a mile and a half from
the village. This house was the home of Mrs. Thoreau's mother, but the
Thoreaus had taken refuge there, temporarily, to escape a financial
blizzard which seems to have hit no one else but themselves.

John Thoreau was assisted in the pencil-making by the whole family. The
Thoreaus used to sell their pencils down at Cambridge, fifteen miles
away, and Harvard professors, for the most part, used the Concord
article in jotting down their sublime thoughts. At ten years of age,
Thoreau had a furtive eye on Harvard, directed thither, they say, by his
mother. All the best people in Concord, who had sons, sent them to
Harvard--why shouldn't the Thoreaus? The spirit of emulation and family
pride were at work.

Henry was educated principally because he wasn't very strong, nor was he
on good terms with work, and these are classic reasons for imparting
classical education to youth, aspiring or otherwise.

The Concord Academy prepared Henry for college, and when he was sixteen,
he trudged off to Cambridge and was duly entered in the Harvard Class of
Eighteen Hundred Thirty-seven. At Harvard, his cosmos seemed to be of
such a slaty gray that no one said, "Go to--