16 INDOOR STUDIES 



hear what the Indian muse had to say. I think 

 he liked the Indian's paint and feathers. Cer- 

 tainly he did his skins, and the claws and hooked 

 beaks with which he adorned himself. He puts 

 a threatening claw or beak into his paragraphs 

 whenever he can, and feathers his shafts with the 

 nicest art. 



So wild a man, and such a lover of the wild, 

 and yet it does not appear that he ever sowed any 

 wild oats. Though he somewhere exclaims impa- 

 tiently, "What demon possesses me that I behave 

 so well ? " he took it all out in transcendentalism 

 and arrow-heads. His only escapades were eloping 

 with a mountain or coquetting with Walden Pond ! 

 He sees a water-bug, and at once exclaims, "Ah! 

 if I had no more sins to answer for than a water- 

 bug ! " Had he any more ? His weakness was 

 that he had no weakness, — it was only unkindness. 

 He had a deeper centre-board than most men, and 

 he carried less sail. The passions and emotions 

 and ambitions of his fellows, which are sails that 

 so often need to be close-reefed and double-reefed, 

 he was quite free from. Thoreau's isolation, his 

 avoidance of the world, was in self-defense, no 

 doubt. His genius would not bear the contact of 

 rough hands any more than would butterflies' wings. 

 He says in " Walden : " " The finest qualities of 

 our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be pre- 

 served only by the most delicate handling." This 

 bloom, this natural innocence, Thoreau was very 

 jealous of and sought to keep unimpaired, and. 



