192 The Life Worth Living 



Reiterate your blows there and account for 

 the mountain to yourself. Not that the story 

 need be long, but it will take a long while to 

 make it short." Perhaps the most success- 

 ful work that Thoreau accomplished in this 

 direction is to be found in the passages relating 

 to fish in the Week. These are remarkable 

 for a vivid truth of impression and a happy use 

 of language not frequently surpassed. 



Perhaps the very coldness and egoism of his 

 own nature gave Thoreau a clearer insight into 

 the intellectual basis of our warm mutual tolera- 

 tions grouped under the head of friendship; 

 testimony to the value of friendship comes 

 with added force from one who was solitary 

 and disobliging, and of whom a friend re- 

 marked: "I love Henry, but I cannot like 

 him." He made scarcely any distinction be- 

 tween love and friendship. He was, indeed, 

 too accurate an observer not to remark that 

 there exists already a natural disinterestedness 

 and liberality between men and women; yet 

 he thought friendship no respecter of sex. 

 "We are not what we are," says he, "nor do 

 we treat or esteem each other for such but for 



