18 INDOOE STUDIES 



He will have his way, but his way is not down the 

 stream with the current. He loves to warp up it 

 against wind and tide, holding fast by his anchor 

 at night. When he is chagriaed or disgusted, it con- 

 vinces him his health is better, — that there is some 

 vitality left. It is not compliments his friends get 

 from him, — rather taunts. The caress of the hand 

 may be good, but the sting of its palm is good also. 

 No is more bracing and tonic than Yes. He said: 

 "I love to go through a patch of scrub-oaks in a 

 bee-line, — where you tear your clothes and put 

 your eyes out." The spirit of antagonism never 

 sleeps with Thoreau, and the love of paradox is one 

 of his guiding stars. "The longer I have forgotten 

 you, the more I remember you," he says to his 

 correspondent. "My friend is cold and reserved, 

 because his love for me is waxing and not waning," 

 he says in his journal. The difficult and the dis- 

 agreeable are in the liae of his self-indulgence. 

 Even lightning will choose the easiest way out of 

 the house, — an open window or door. Thoreau 

 would rather go through the solid wall, or mine out 

 through the cellar. 



When he is sad, his only regret is that he is not 

 sadder. He says if his sadness were only sadder it 

 would make him happier. In writing to his friend, 

 he says it is not sad to him to hear she has sad 

 hours: "I rather rejoice in the richness of your 

 experience." In one of his letters, he charges his 

 correspondent to "improve every opportunity to be 

 melancholy, " and accuses himself of being too easily 



