hbor asked
him to take some handbills and leave them at a certain place as he
passed on his walk.

A great deal of the piquancy and novelty in Thoreau come from the
unexpected turn he gives to things, upsetting all our preconceived
notions. His trick of exaggeration he rather brags of: "Expect no
trivial truth from me," he says, "unless I am on the witness stand."
He even exaggerates his own tendency to exaggeration. It is all a part
of his scheme to startle and wake people up. He exaggerates his likes,
and he exaggerates his dislikes, and he exaggerates his indifference.
It is a way he has of bragging. The moment he puts pen to paper the
imp of exaggeration seizes it. He lived to see the beginning of the
Civil War, and in a letter to a friend expressed his indifference in
regard to Fort Sumter and "Old Abe," and all that, yet Mr. Sanborn
says he was as zealous about the war as any soldier. The John Brown
tragedy made him sick, and the war so worked upon his feelings that in
his failing state of health he said he could never get well while it
lasted. His passion for Nature and the wild carried him to the extent
of looking with suspicion, if not with positive dislike, upon all of
man's doings and institutions. All civil and political and social
organizations received scant justice at his hands. He instantly
espoused the cause of John Brown and championed him in the most public
manner because he (Brown) defied the iniquitous laws and fell a martyr
to the cause of justice and right. If he had lived in our times, one
would have expected him, in his letters to friends, to pooh-pooh the
World War that has drenched Europe with blood, while in his heart he
would probably have been as deeply moved about it as any of us were.

Thoreau must be a stoic, he must be an egotist, he must be illogical,
whenever he puts pen to paper. This does not mean that he was a
hypocrite, but it means that on his practical human side he did not
differ so much from the rest of us, but that in his mental and
spiritual life he pursued ideal ends with a seriousness that few of us
are equal to. He loved to take an air-line. In his trips about the
country to visit distant parts, he usually took the roads and paths or
means of conveyance that other persons took, but now and then he
would lay down his ruler on the map, draw a straight line to the
point he proposed to visit, and follow that, going through the meadows
and gardens and door-yards of the owner