THE NATURE-WRITER 121 



Cod ; but his best writing will be that about his 

 hut at Walden. 



It is a large love for the earth as a dwelling- 

 place, a large faith in the entire reasonableness of 

 its economy, a large joy in all its manifold life, that 

 moves the nature-writer. He finds the earth most 

 marvelously good to live in — himself its very 

 dust ; a place beautiful beyond his imagination, 

 and interesting past his power to realize — a mys- 

 tery every way he turns. He comes into it as a 

 settler into a new land, to clear up so much of 

 the wilderness as he shall need for a home. 



Thoreau perhaps, of all our nature-writers, was 

 the wildest wild man, the least domestic in his 

 attitude. He went off far into the woods, a mile 

 and a half from Concord village, to escape do- 

 mestication, to seek the wild in nature and to free 

 the wild in himself. And what was his idea of 

 becoming a wild man but to build a cabin and 

 clear up a piece of ground for a bean-patch ! He 

 was solid Concord beneath his war-paint — a thin 

 coat of savagery smeared on to scare his friends 

 whenever he went to the village — a walk which 

 he took very often. He differed from Gilbert 

 White as his cabin at Walden differed from the 



