200 LITEEAEY VALUES 



penetrating, •winged, a flying shaft, bringing down 

 its game ■with marvelous sureness. His literary 

 art was to let fly with a kind of quick inspira- 

 tion ; and though his arrows sometimes go wide, 

 yet it is always a pleasure to watch their aerial 

 course. Indeed, Thoreau was a kind of Emerso- 

 nian or transcendental red man, going about with 

 a pocket-glass and an herbarium, instead of with a 

 bow and a tomahawk. He appears to have been as 

 stoical and indifferent and unsympathetic as a veri- 

 table Indian ; and how he hunted without trap or 

 gun, and fished without hook or snare ! Everywhere 

 the wild drew him. He liked the telegraph because 

 it was a kind of aeolian harp ; the wind blowing 

 upon it made wild, sweet music. He liked the rail- 

 road through his native town, because it was the 

 wildest road he knew of : it only made deep cuts 

 into and through the hills. " On it are no houses nor 

 foot-travellers. The travel on it does not disturb 

 me. The woods are left to hang over it. Though 

 straight, it is wild in its accompaniments, keeping 

 all its raw edges. Even the laborers on it are not 

 like other laborers." One day he passed a little 

 boy in the street who had on a home-made cap of 

 woodchuck's skin, and it completely filled his eye. 

 He makes a delightful note about it in his journal. 

 That was the kind of cap to have, — "a perfect 

 little idyl, as they say." Any wild trait unexpect- 

 edly cropping out in any of the domestic animals 

 pleased him immensely. The crab-apple was his 

 favorite apple,., because of its beauty and perfume. 



