26 INDOOE STUDIES 



would give a new dress, even if he set it masquer- 

 ading. But the reader is always the gainer by this 

 tendency in him. It gives a fresh and novel color- 

 ing to what in other writers would prove flat and 

 wearisome. He made the whole world interested 

 in his private experiment at Walden Pond by the 

 strange and, on the whole, beaming face he put 

 upon it. Of course, this is always more or less the 

 art of genius, but it was preeminently the art of 

 Thoreau. We are not buoyed up by great power, 

 we do not swim lightly as in deep water, but we 

 are amused and stimulated, and now and then posi- 

 tively electrified. 



To make an extreme statement, and so be sure 

 that he made an emphatic one, that was his aim. 

 Exaggeration is less to be feared than dullness and 

 tameness. The far-fetched is good if you fetch it 

 swift enough; you must make its heels crack, — jerk 

 it out of its boots, in fact. Cushions are good, 

 provided they are well stuck with pins; you will 

 be sure not to go to sleep in that case. Warm 

 your benumbed hands in the snow; that is a more 

 wholesome warmth than that of the kitchen stove. 

 This is the way he underscored his teachings. 

 Sometimes he racked his bones to say the unsay- 

 able. His mind had a strong gripe, and he often 

 brings a great pressure to bear upon the most vague 

 and subtle problems, or shadows of problems, but 

 he never quite succeeds to my satisfaction in con- 

 densing bluing from the air or from the Indian 

 summer haze, any more than he succeeded in ex- 



