Gboreau 



appointed boat down a safe stream, and report the 

 graceful weeping willows that adorn its banks; 

 Thoreau can sit cross-legged in a cranky canoe and 

 tell in matchless language of the wild life that lives 

 in dangerous rapids and lurks in the fastnesses of 

 the untrodden wilderness. Lowell is tame ; Tho- 

 reau is savage. The former tells us of a zoological 

 garden ; the latter of life in the haunts that Nature 

 has provided. This being true, there lurked no 

 cunning in Lowell's pen to tell the world who and 

 what Thoreau really was. He simply gives us his 

 own impressions, and they are erroneous. The 

 well-known instance of Lowell, as editor, omitting 

 from a manuscript of Thoreau's what he consid- 

 ered an objectionable passage, shows how widely 

 apart these two men stood, and the act was an 

 assumption on Lowell's part without excuse. What 

 right, indeed, had he tacitly to assert that heaven 

 lacked a feature Thoreau thought might be there ? 

 Neither of them knew, of course, one whit about 

 the matter, but it is difficult to see why the bare- 

 headed, sun-burnt, out-of-door Thoreau's opinion is 

 not as worthy of consideration as that of his in- 

 door, kid-gloved critic. It was a trivial matter, 

 perhaps, but nevertheless a straw showing the di- 

 rection of Lowell's thoughts, that Thoreau, because 

 of his being a champion of simplicity and a foe to 

 half that which Lowell cherished as making life 

 worth living, could be snubbed successfully. But 

 the world is growing wiser. There is more free- 

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