BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THOREAU. 27 



the secret of friendship, but almost worshipped by 

 those few persons who resorted to him as their con 

 fessor and prophet, and knew the deep value of his 

 mind and great heart. He thought that without re 

 ligion or devotion of some kind nothing great was 

 ever accomplished : and he thought that the bigoted 

 sectarian had better bear this in mind. 



His virtues, of course, sometimes ran into extremes. 

 It was easy to trace to the inexorable demand on all 

 for exact truth that austerity which made this willing 

 hermit more solitary even than he wished. Himself 

 of a perfect probity, he required not less of others. 

 He had a disgust at crime, and no worldly success 

 could cover it. He detected paltering as readily in 

 dignified and prosperous persons as in beggars, and 

 with equal scorn. Such dangerous frankness was in 

 his dealing that his admirers called him &quot;that ter 

 rible Thoivau,&quot; as it In- spoke when silent, and was 

 still present \shen lie had departed. I think the 

 severity of his ideal interfered to deprive him of a 

 healthy sufficiency of human society. 



The habit of a realist to find things the reverse of 

 their appearance inclined him to put every statement 

 in a paradox. A certain habit of antagonism defaced 

 his earlier writings, a trick of rhetoric not quite 

 outgrown in his later, of substituting for the obvious 

 word and thought its diametrical opposite. He praised 

 wild mountains and winter forests for their domestic 

 air, in snow and ice he would find sultriness, and com 

 mended the wilderness for resembling Rome and 

 Paris. &quot; It was so dry, that you might call it wet.&quot; 



The tendency to magnify the moment, to read all 

 the laws of Nature in the one object or one combina 

 tion under your eye, is of course comic to those who 



