dustrious community, and kept his hold upon
it, he could not have made his Walden experiment of toying and
coquetting with the wild and the non-industrial. His occupations as
land-surveyor, lyceum lecturer, and magazine writer attest how much he
owed to the civilization he was so fond of decrying. This is Thoreau's
weakness--the half-truths in which he plumes himself, as if they were
the whole law and gospel. His Walden bean-field was only a pretty
piece of play-acting; he cared more for the ringing of his hoe upon
the stones than for the beans. Had his living really depended upon the
product, the sound would not have pleased him so, and the botany of
the weeds he hoed under would not have so interested him.

Thoreau's half-truths titillate and amuse the mind. We do not nod over
his page. We enjoy his art while experiencing an undercurrent of
protest against his unfairness. We could have wished him to have shown
himself in his writings as somewhat sweeter and more tolerant toward
the rest of the world, broader in outlook, and more just and
charitable in disposition--more like his great prototype, Emerson, who
could do full justice to the wild and the spontaneous without doing an
injustice to their opposites; who could see the beauty of the pine
tree, yet sing the praises of the pine-tree State House; who could
arraign the Government, yet pay his taxes; who could cherish Thoreau,
and yet see all his limitations. Emerson affirmed more than he denied,
and his charity was as broad as his judgment. He set Thoreau a good
example in bragging, but he bragged to a better purpose. He exalted
the present moment, the universal fact, the omnipotence of the moral
law, the sacredness of private judgment; he pitted the man of to-day
against all the saints and heroes of history; and, although he decried
traveling, he was yet considerable of a traveler, and never tried to
persuade himself that Concord was an epitome of the world. Emerson
comes much nearer being a national figure than does Thoreau, and yet
Thoreau, by reason of his very narrowness and perversity, and by his
intense local character, united to the penetrating character of his
genius, has made an enduring impression upon our literature.

III

Thoreau's life was a search for the wild. He was the great disciple of
the Gospel of Walking. He elevated walking into a religious exercise.
One of his most significant and entertaining chapters is on "Walking."
No other writer that