HENEY D. THOEBAU 31 



This is very Parisian and Victor Hugoish, except 

 for its self- consciousness and the playful twinkle in 

 the author's eye. 



Thoreau had humor, but it had worked a little, 

 — it was not quite sweet; a vinous fermentation 

 had taken place more or less in it. There was too 

 much acid for the sugar. It shows itself especially 

 when he speaks of men. How he disliked the aver- 

 age social and business man, and said his only 

 resource was to get away from them ! He was sur- 

 prised to find what .vulgar fellows they were. 

 "They do a little business commonly each day, in 

 order to pay their board, and then they congregate 

 in sitting-rooms, and feebly fabulate and paddle in 

 the social slush; and when I think that they have 

 sufficiently relaxed, and am prepared to see them 

 steal away to their shrines, they go unashamed to 

 their beds, and take on a new layer of sloth." Me- 

 thinks there is a drop of aquafortis in this liquor. 

 Generally, however, there is only a pleasant acid or 

 sub-acid flavor to his humor, as when he refers to 

 a certain minister who spoke of God as if he en- 

 joyed a monopoly of the subject; or when he says 

 of the good church-people that "they show the 

 whites of their eyes on the Sabbath, and the blacks 

 all the rest of the week." He says the greatest 

 bores who visited him in his hut by Walden Pond 

 were the self-styled reformers, who thought that he 

 was forever singing, — 



" This is the house that I built; 

 This is the man that lives in the house that I built. 



