Page Four 



So, for the sake of finding a closer and uninterrupted con- 

 tact with nature, and to demonstrate that the exertion of 

 maintenance need play onh^ a very minor part in life, he 

 retired, at the age of twenty-eight, to the hut he had })uilt 

 at Walden. From there, after two years filled with adven- 

 tures in natural history, he returned to Concord, ha\'ing 

 shown that the struggle for existence can be subordinated to a 

 broader living, but evidently content not to prolong the ex- 

 periment into custom. Perhaps, in spite of himself and un- 

 conscioush', he was drawn nearer to his kind. 



Curioush', his study of Indian ethnolog}' fired to en- 

 thusiasm his human sympathies, left strangely cold by casual 

 association with his neighbors. Apart from such notable ex- 

 ceptions as his friendship with Emerson, he seems never to 

 have acquired the facilit}- — as he did not possess the instinct 

 — for social intercourse. His remark may be taken literally: 



''I should not talk so much about myself, were there 

 anybody else whom I know as well. Unfortunately, I am 

 confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. '' 

 It is doubtful, on the other hand, whether he had any larger 

 self-knowledge than most of us. 



His humor, oddly exuberant in view of his solitary habits, 

 reflected his social detachment. Although reverent, in the 

 truest sense, to an unusual degree, his witticisms were fre- 

 quently of a superficial flippancy giving an initial effect of 

 irreverence. But they wove actually, for the most part, 

 shrewd satire directed against nothing more lofty than the 

 artificialities and smallnesses of humanity. Wider human 

 relationships would surely, in a mind so fundamentally genial, 

 have mellowed this pungency to a more philosophical tole- 

 rance. But he was not a misanthrope, who said : 



