BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THOREAU. 31 



&quot; We are strictly confined to our men to whom we 

 give liberty.&quot; 



&quot; Of what significance the things you can forget ? 

 A little thought is sexton to all the world.&quot; 



&quot; How can we expect a harvest of thought who have 

 not had a seed-time of character ? &quot; 



&quot; Only he can be trusted with gifts who can present 

 a face of bronze to expectations.&quot; 



&quot; I ask to be melted. You can only ask of the 

 metals that they be tender to the fire that melts them, 

 To naught else can they be tender.&quot; 



There is a flower known to botanists, one of the 

 same genus with our summer plant called &quot; Life 

 Everlasting,&quot; a Gnaphalium like that, which grows 

 on the most inaccessible cliffs of the Tyrolese moun 

 tains, where the chamois dare hardly venture, and 

 which the hunter, tempted by its beauty, and by his 

 love, (for it is immensely valued by the Swiss maid 

 ens,) climbs the cliffs to gather, and is sometimes 

 found dead at the foot, with the flower in his hand. 

 It is called by botanists the Gnaphalium leontopo* 

 dium, but by the Swiss Edelweiss? which signifies 

 Noble Purity. Thoreau seemed to me living in the 

 hope to gather this plant, which belonged to him of 

 right. The scale on which his studies proceeded was 

 so large as to require longevity, and we were the less 

 prepared for his sudden disappearance. The country 

 knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it 

 has lost. It seems an injury that he should leave in 

 the midst his broken task, which none else can finish, 

 a kind of indignity to so noble a soul, that he 

 should depart out of Nature before yet he has been 

 1 Pronounced a del-vice. 



