i68 THE FACE OF THE FIELDS 



gone, the writer left; the substance gone, the 

 style left corn that tastes as much like corn as 

 it tastes like puffed rice, which tastes like no- 

 thing at all. There is the sweetness of the husk, 

 the flavor of the cob, the substance of the uncut 

 corn to Mr. Burroughs. 



There is no lack of cob and husk to Thoreau, 

 of shell and hull, one should say, for he is more 

 like a green walnut than an ear of green corn. 

 Thoreau is very human, a whole man ; but he is 

 almost as much a tree, and a mountain, and a 

 pond, and a spell of weather, and a state of 

 morals. He is the author of "Walden," and 

 nobody else in the world is that ; he is a lover 

 of nature, as ardent a lover as ever eloped with 

 her ; he is a lover of men, too, loving them with 

 an intensity that hates them bag and baggage ; 

 he is poetical, prophetic, paradoxical, and utterly 

 impossible. 



But he knew it. Born in Concord, under the 

 transcendental stars, at a time when Delphic say- 

 ings and philosophy, romance and poetry ran wild 

 in the gardens where Bouncing-Bet and Way- 

 ward Charlie now run wild, Thoreau knew that 

 he was touched, and that all his neighbors were 



