16 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THOREAU. 



He liked and used the simplest food, yet, when some 

 one urged a vegetable diet, Thoreau thought all diets 

 a very small matter, saying that &quot;the man who 

 shoots the buffalo lives better than the man who 

 boards at the Graham House.&quot; He said, &quot; You 

 can sleep near the railroad, and never be disturbed : 

 Nature knows very well what sounds are worth at 

 tending to, and has made up her mind not to hear 

 the railroad-whistle. But things respect the devout 

 mind, and a mental ecstasy was never interrupted.&quot; 

 He noted what repeatedly befell him, that, after 

 receiving from a distance a rare plant, he would 

 presently find the same in his own haunts. And 

 those pieces of luck which happen only to good play 

 ers happened to him. One day, walking with a 

 stranger, who inquired where Indian arrow-heads 

 could be found, he replied, &quot; Everywhere,&quot; and, 

 stooping forward, picked one on the instant from the 

 ground. At Mount Washington, in Tuckerman s 

 Ravine, Thoreau had a bad fall, and sprained his 

 foot. As he was in the act of getting up from his 

 fall, he saw for the first time the leaves of the Arnica 

 mollis. 1 



His robust common sense, armed with stout hands, 

 keen perceptions, and strong will, cannot yet account 

 for the superiority which shone in his simple and hid 

 den life. I must add the cardinal fact, that there 

 was an excellent wisdom in him, proper to a rare class 

 of men, which showed him the material world as a 

 means and symbol. This discovery, which sometimes 

 yields to poets a certain casual and interrupted light, 

 serving for the ornament of their writing, was in him 



1 A plant with healing virtue, found in the mountains 

 Hampshire and New York, and also about Lake Superior. 



