HENEY D. THOREAU 15 



He loved wild men, not tame ones. Any half- 

 wild Irishman, or fisherman, or hunter in his neigh- 

 borhood he was sure to get a taste of sooner or 

 later. He seems to have had a hankering for the 

 Indian all his life; could eat him raw, one would 

 think. In fact, he did try him when he went to 

 Maine, and succeeded in extracting more nutriment 

 out of him than any other man has done. He 

 found him rather tough diet, and was probably a 

 little disappointed in him, but he got something 

 out of him akin to that which the red squirrel gets 

 out of a pine-cone. In his books he casts many a 

 longing and envious glance upon the Indian. Some 

 old Concord sachem seems to have looked into his 

 fount of life and left his image there. His annual 

 spring search for arrow-heads was the visible out- 

 cropping of this aboriginal trace. How he prized 

 these relics ! One is surprised to see how much he 

 gets out of them. They become arrow-root instead 

 of arrow-stones. "They are sown, like a grain 

 that is slow to germinate, broadcast over the earth. 

 As the dragon's teeth bore a crop of soldiers, so 

 these bear crops of philosophers and poets, and the 

 same seed is just as good to plant again. It is a 

 stone-fruit. Each one yields me a thought. I 

 come nearer to the maker of it than if I found his 

 bones." "When I see these signs, I know that 

 the subtle spirits that made them are not far oflf, 

 into whatever form transmuted. " ^ Our poetry, he 

 said, was white man's poetry, and he longed to 

 1 Early Spring in, Massachusetts, pp. 259, 260. 



