HENRY D. THOEEAU 27 



tracting health and longevity from water-gruel and 

 rye-meal. 



He knew what an exaggeration he was, and he 

 went about it deliberately. He says to one of his 

 correspondents, a Mr. B— — , whom he seems to 

 have delighted to pummel with these huge boxing- 

 gloves: "I trust that you realize what an exag- 

 gerator I am, — that I lay myself out to exaggerate 

 whenever I have an opportur;ity, — pile Pelion 

 upon Ossa to reach heaven so. Expect no trivial 

 truth from me, unless I am on the witness-stand. 

 I wiU come as near to lying as you can drive a 

 coach-and-f our. " 



We have every reason to be thankful that he was 

 not always or commonly on the witness-stand. The 

 record would have been much duller. Eliminate 

 from him all his exaggerations, all his magnifying 

 of the little, all his inflation of bubbles, etc., and 

 you make sad havoc in his pages, — as you would, 

 in fact, in any man's. Of course, it is one thing 

 to bring the distant near, and thus magnify as does 

 the telescope, and it is quite another thing to inflate 

 a pigmy to the stature of a giant with a gaspipe. 

 But Thoreau brings the stars as near as any writer 

 I know of, and if he sometimes magnifies a will-o'- 

 the-wisp, too, what matters it? He had a hard 

 common sense, as well as an uncommon sense, and 

 he knows well when he is conducting you to the 

 brink of one of his astonishing hyperboles, and 

 inviting you to take the leap with him, and, what 

 is more, he knows that you know it. Nobody is 



