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 it patterned 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 than to 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