HENRY D. THOKEAU 25 



times inflates, his page. His exaggeration is saved 

 by its wit, its unexpectedness. It gives a whole- 

 some jostle and shock to the mind. 



Thoreau was not a racy writer, but a trenchant ; 

 not nourishing so much as stimulating; not con- 

 vincing, but wholesomely exasperating and arous- 

 ing, which, in some respects, is better. There is 

 no heat ia him, and yet in reading him one under- 

 stands what he means when he says that, sitting by 

 his stove at night, he sometimes had thoughts that 

 kept the fire warm. I think the mind of his reader 

 always reacts, healthfully and vigorously from his 

 most rash and extreme statements. The blood 

 comes to the surface and to the extremities with a 

 bound. He is the best of coimter-irritants when 

 he is nothing else. There is nothing to reduce the 

 tone of your moral and intellectual systems in Tho- 

 reau. Such heat as there is in refrigeration, as he 

 himself might say, — you are always sure of that in 

 his books. 

 I His literary art, like that of Emerson's, is in the 

 unexpected turn of his sentences. Shakespeare 

 says : — 



" It is the witness still of excellency 

 To put a strange face on his own perfection." 



This "strange face" Thoreau would have at all 

 hazards, even if it was a false face. If he could 

 not state a truth he would state a paradox, which, 

 however, is not always a false face. He must 

 make the commonest facts and occurrences wear a 

 strange and unfamiliar look. The commonplace he 



