Compelling Chords 



and pugnaciously participate I believe 

 it has escaped being recorded. Thoreau 

 certainly fired shots into the artificial- 

 ity of modern life that were heard just 

 as far as those of the embattled 

 farmers, and yet you will find fifty 

 tourists standing around where two 

 or three Britishers were killed to 

 where you will see one making for 

 Walden Pond. 



Apparently the average visitor 

 knows more of Emerson and Haw- 

 thorne and Louisa Alcott than of the 

 author of "Life in the Woods." I 

 am not unappreciative, I hope, of their 

 great contributions to our literature, 

 but I like Thoreau best, just as I enjoy 

 the swamp maples and water willows 

 at Concord bridge better than the 

 man-built arch that spans the dark 

 waters of the tiny river. How the old 

 "nullifier of civilization," the "half- 

 college graduate, half-Algonquin" 

 would have resented the gasoline in- 

 vasion of those quiet sylvan scenes! 

 [151] 



