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a place where a life is to be lived. It is not beautiful 

 to him who has not resolved on a beautiful life." 

 Never was greater mistake made than to charge Thor- 

 eau with being a misanthrope. His aloofness from men 

 and his contempt for the conventionalities of society 

 were due to the fact that his ideals were so much 

 higher than those which he found generally prevail- 

 ing. One of his most pregnant utterances is quoted 

 by Dr. Edward Emerson, himself a boy-friend of 

 Thoreau's: "If I do not keep step with others it is 

 because I hear a different drummer. Let a man step 

 to the music which he hears, however measured and 

 however far away." 



Thoreau's glorification of Concord — not histori- 

 cal or literary or social or agricultural Concord, but 

 outdoor Concord — is the supreme compelling feature 

 of his journal writing. No writer in all literature has 

 so exalted the place of his birth and recorded so fully 

 and so entertainingly its manifold attractions. Gilbert 

 White of Selborne is a remote second. And Thoreau 

 was absolutely sincere. "I have never got over my 

 surprise," he writes, "that I should be born into the 

 most estimable place in the world, and in the very 

 nick of time too." Winter and summer, day and night, 

 through cold and heat, he explored the fields and 

 woods and water-courses of Concord, rejoicing in the 

 recurrence of the seasons, and invariably returning 

 with new treasures of beauty or interest for his jour- 

 nal record. "I take all these walks to every point of 



