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Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

THE character and opinions of Henry David Thoreau have for the most part been a stumbling-block to the judgment of his critics. As the early naturalists were puzzled to account for the peculiar structure of the bat, which did not readily adapt itself to their established system of classification, so the literary critics have been. perplexed and baffled by the elusive qualities of this unique personality, who flits unclassified along the confines of civilization and wildness. One who "was bred to no profession; who never married; who lived alone; who never went to church; who never voted; who refused to pay a tax to the State; who ate no flesh, who drank no wine, who never knew the use of tobacco ; and though a naturalist, used neither trap nor gun,”—it is evident that such a man must appear unreasonable and contumacious to those who have never seriously questioned the shibboleths of social order and respectability. If an individual finds himself in conflict with society, it is assumed to be the fault of the individual; he is perverse, or idle, or selfish, or cynical, and the duties of

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citizenship have not been rightly apprehended by him. Such is the common charge against Thoreau, who, as Professor Nichol had explained to us in his "American Literature," was "lethargic, self-complacently defiant, and too nearly a stoico-epicurean adiaphorist to discompose himself in party or even in national strifes." Thoreau was a "stoico-epicurean adiaphorist," or nearly so: such is the critical verdict on him. These are hard words (in more senses than one), and before acquiescing in them, it may be well to test their accuracy by reference to the life and writings of him to whom they are applied. On what social subjects was Thoreau an indifferentist, and on what was he not so? A study of his "Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers" will perhaps show him in a new light to those who know him only by Walden or the Diaries.

The facts of Thoreau's life can here be only summarized. He was born at Concord, Massachusetts, on July 12, 1817, being the third child of a worthy but unimaginative pencil-maker, of French extraction, whose father had emigrated from the Channel Islands to New England in 1773. Henry Thoreau was educated at Harvard University, where, though known as a sound classical scholar, he was looked upon by his class-mates as dull, phlegmatic, and unimpressionable. But after his return to Concord in 1838, there was a remarkable awakening of the energies that lay dormant and unsuspected in his mind, the immediate cause of this change being the quickening influence of Emerson and the rise of the transcendental school of thought. The presence of Emerson at Concord (he settled there in 1834) had the effect of transforming that quiet village into the centre

of a social and philosophic movement which attracted many earnest thinkers; and among these "apostles of the newness," who preached, an ideal simplicity both in life and art, there was none more single-hearted and resolute than Henry Thoreau.

The remainder of his life was spent in his native village or its neighborhood, varied by occasional brief visits to Boston or New York, and more lengthy excursions to Canada, the mountains of New Hampshire, the forests of Maine, and the sandy peninsula of Cape Cod. His thrifty, self-contented nature did not need the stimulus of travel, in the ordinary sense; it was at once his pleasure and his profit to find in Concord all the material of his thought. After a brief experience of school-keeping, he supported himself by pencil-making, land-surveying, and various odd pieces of handicraft, his singular aptness and dexterity enabling him to satisfy the few wants of his existence (for he deliberately minimised his wants in order to secure greater leisure and personal liberty) by a very small outlay of remunerative. labour, and so to devote himself more freely to what he considered the real business of his life, the study of wild nature, which earned him the appropriate title of the "poet-naturalist." He died at Concord, in 1862, of pulmonary consumption, the result of a cold caught while botanizing in severe winter weather.

Thoreau's singular personality has thus been described by Emerson. "Henry was homely in appearance, a rugged stone hewn from the cliff. I believe it is accorded to all men to be moderately homely. But he surpassed sex. He had a beautiful smile, and an earnest look. His character reminds me of Massillon. One

could jeopard anything on him. A limpid man, a realist with caustic eyes that looked through all words and shows and bearing with terrible perception!" "Thoreau

was a Stoic," says G. W. Curtis, "but he was in no sense a cynic. His neighbors in the village thought him odd and whimsical, but his practical skill as a surveyor and in woodcraft was known to them. No man was his enemy, and some of the best were his fastest friends. But his life was essentially solitary and reserved. Careless of appearances in later days, when his hair and beard were long, if you had seen him in the woods, you might have fancied Orson passing by; but had you stopped to talk with him, you would have felt that you had seen the shepherd of Admetus' flock, or chatted with a wiser Jaques." The same writer has graphically described the characteristic rigour of Thoreau's personal manner-his "erect posture, which made it seem impossible that he should ever lounge or slouch, and which made Hawthorne speak of him as 'cast-iron,'" and his staccato style of speech, every word coming separately and distinctly, as if preserving the same cool isolation in the sentence that the speaker did in society."

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The most intimate of Thoreau's friends were Emerson, Ellery Channing, Alcott, Harrison Blake, Daniel Ricketson, and F. B. Sanborn, all of whom have expressed the strongest admiration for the nobility and purity of his genius. It has been his misfortune-or rather the misfortune of a later generation of readers—that his eccentricities have been magnified out of all due proportion by

1 Recorded by C. J. Woodbury, Century Magazine, Feb., 1890. 2 Harper's Magazine, July, 1862.

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