6 INDOOR STUDIES 



principle that provokes and stimulates like a winter 

 morning. I am not aware that Thoreau shirked 

 any responsibility or dodged any duty proper to 

 him, and he could look the world as square in the 

 face as any man that ever lived. 



The people of his native town remember at least 

 one notable occasion on which Thoreau did not 

 skulk, nor sulk either. I refer to the 30th of Octo- 

 ber, 1859, when he made his plea for Captain John 

 Brown, while the hero was on trial in Virgiaia. 

 It was proposed to stop Thoreau's mouth, persuade 

 him to keep still and lie low, but he was not to be 

 stopped. He thought there were enough lying low, 

 — the ranks were all full there, the ground was 

 covered; and in an address delivered in Concord he 

 glorified the old hero in words that, at this day and 

 in the light of subsequent events, it thrills the blood 

 to read. This instant and unequivocal indorsement 

 of Brown by Thoreau, in the face of the most over- 

 whelming public opinion even among antislavery 

 men,' throws a flood of light upon him. It is the 

 most significant act of his life. It clinches him; 

 it makes the colors fast. We know he means what 

 he says after that. It is of the same metal and has 

 the same ring as Brown's act itself. It shows 

 what thoughts he had fed his soul on, what school 

 he had schooled himself in, what his devotion to 

 the ideal meant. His hatred of slavery and injus- 

 tice, and of the government that tolerated them, 

 was pure, and it went clean through; it stopped at 

 nothing. Iniquitous laws must be defied, and there 



