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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.
And Marie, unsuspicious, put her arms about the shoulders of the Pharisee and helped him to rise. They ate their supper with a narrow table between them. If there had been a doubt in Blake's mind before that, the half hour in which she sat facing him dispelled it utterly. At first the amazing beauty of Thoreau's wife had impinged itself upon his senses with something of a shock.
A man who must separate himself from his neighbours' habits in order to be happy, is in much the same case with one who requires to take opium for the same purpose. What we want to see is one who can breast into the world, do a man's work, and still preserve his first and pure enjoyment of existence. Thoreau's faculties were of a piece with his moral shyness; for they were all delicacies.
However, underlying the practical or impractical suggestions implied in the quotation above, which is from the last paragraph of Thoreau's Village, is the same transcendental theme of "innate goodness."
Published in 1859, it followed Thoreau's at that time unread "Walden" by only five years, while it preceded Murray's "Adventures in the Wilderness," and the earliest of John Burroughs' delightful volumes, by a full generation. It was in every way a commendable, if not great, adventure in authorship.
It is as difficult to be generous, or anything else, except perhaps a member of Parliament, on thirty thousand as on two hundred a year. Now Thoreau's tastes were well defined.
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.
He was interested in things only so far as they related to Henry Thoreau. He interpreted Nature entirely in the light of his own idiosyncrasies. Science goes its own way in spite of our likes and dislikes, but Thoreau's likes and dislikes determined everything for him. He was stoical, but not philosophical. His intellect had no free play outside his individual predilection.
It was part of the man, and without it we could not have had Hawthorne. Perhaps the easiest solution is that of Thoreau's wild apple-tree. When the sprout from an apple-seed comes up in the grass a cow pretty soon bites it off. The next year it puts out two more shoots, and the ends of these are again nipped off.
He chuckled as David surveyed as much as he could see of himself in a small mirror. "The cap is Marie's work," he finished. "She got the size from your hat and made it while we were asleep. A fine fisher-coat that Thoreau's best. And a good fit, eh?" "Marie ... did this ... for me?" demanded David. The Missioner nodded. "And the pay, Father...."
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