Henry David Thoreau 181 



thinkers know anything about him. I am con- 

 vinced that the time will come when the name 

 of Henry David Thoreau will stand high in 

 American annals. He was our first noted 

 protestant passionate, earnest, persistent, 

 honest against the sordid materialism of this 

 country. Our earlier years as a nation were 

 naturally taken up with hard material work, 

 and if to-day we place work, as work, upon a 

 pedestal which it does not deserve, it is due to 

 the hereditary warp of the last one hundred 

 years, when the drawing of water and the hew- 

 ing of wood were essential to life, to say no- 

 thing of comfort. There was certain to be 

 some energetic protest against the narrow view 

 of life which all work and no play was sure to 

 produce in us as a people, and the wonder is 

 that Thoreau stands alone as a protestant. 



The personality of the man is so interesting 

 that I will take the liberty of devoting a few 

 pages to saying something of him, using many 

 words and expressions which I find in an ad- 

 mirable little article contributed some years 

 ago to the Cornhill Magazine, by Stevenson. 

 " Thoreau 's thin, penetrating, big-nosed face, 



