Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1889, volume 6).djvu/125

Rh following passage from a contribution: &ldquo;It [the pine-tree] is as immortal as I am, and, perchance, will go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me still.&rdquo; His doctrine was that of individualism. Therein he differed from Emerson, who was sympathetic and began at the divine end. Thoreau began with the ground and reasoned up. He saw beauty in ashes, and &ldquo;never chanced to meet with any man so cheering and elevating and encouraging, so infinitely suggestive, as the stillness and solitude of the Well-meadow field.&rdquo; He aimed at becoming elemental and spontaneous. He wrote hymns to the night quite in the pagan fashion. His very aptitudes brought him in contact with the earth. His aspect suggested a faun, one who was in the secret of the wilderness. Mr. Sanborn, his friend and biographer, thus describes him: &ldquo;He is a little under size, with a huge Emersonian nose, bluish-gray eyes, brown hair, and a ruddy weather-beaten face, which reminds one of some shrewd and honest animal's &mdash; some retired philosophical woodchuck or magnanimous fox.&rdquo; Another friend mentions his sloping shoulders, his long arms, his large hands and feet. &ldquo;I fancy,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;the saying that man was created a little lower than the angels should have been a little lower than the animals.&rdquo; He built a hut on the shore of Walden pond in 1845, and lived there, with occasional absences, about two years and a half. He built on Emerson's land, though he had wished to build elsewhere. The house had no lock to the door, no curtain to the window. It belonged to nature as much as to man, and to all men as much as to any one. When Thoreau left it, it was bought by a Scotch gardener, who carried it off a little way and used it as a cottage. Then a farmer bought it, moved it still farther away, and converted it into a tool-house. A pile of stones marks the site of Thoreau's hut. He went into the woods, not because he wished to avoid his fellow-men, as a misanthrope, but because he wanted to confront Nature, to deal with her at first hand, to lead his own life, to meet primitive conditions; and having done this, he abandoned the enterprise, recommending no one to try it who had not &ldquo;a pretty good supply of internal sunshine. . . . To live alone comfortably, he must have that self-comfort which rays out of Nature &mdash; a portion of it at least.&rdquo; At Walden he labored, studied, meditated, edited his first book, the &ldquo;Week,&rdquo; and gauged his genius. He redeemed and consecrated the spot. The refusal to pay taxes, and his consequent imprisonment, were due to a more specific cause &mdash; namely, his dissent from the theory of human government and from the practice of the American state, which supported slavery. He stood simply and plainly on the rights and duty of the individual. The act was heroic as he performed it, and, when read by the light of his philosophy, was consistent. Thoreau was anything but sour, surly, or morose. He could sing, and even dance, on occasion. He was sweet with children; fond of kittens; a sunbeam at home; the best of brothers, gentle, patient, helpful. Those he loved he gave his heart to, and if they were few it was perhaps because his affections were not as expansive as they were deep. But he showed little emotion, having learned, like the Indian, to control his feelings. He cultivated stoicism. He had the pride as well as the conceit of egotism, and while the latter gave most offence to those who did not know him well, the former was the real cause of his conduct. Thoreau had no zeal of authorship, yet he wrote a great deal, and left a mass of manuscripts, mostly in prose, for he produced very few verses after he was thirty years old. The &ldquo;Dial,&rdquo; the &ldquo;Democratic Review,&rdquo; &ldquo;Graham's Magazine,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Union Magazine,&rdquo; &ldquo;Putnam's Magazine,&rdquo; the &ldquo;Atlantic Monthly,&rdquo; the &ldquo;Tribune,&rdquo; all contained contributions from him. Every volume of the &ldquo;Dial&rdquo; had something; the third volume many articles. The essay on &ldquo;Resistance to Civil Government&rdquo; was printed in &ldquo;Æsthetic Papers.&rdquo; Only two of the seven volumes of his printed works appeared in his lifetime &mdash; &ldquo;A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers&rdquo; (Boston, 1849) and &ldquo;Walden, or Life in the Woods&rdquo; (1854). The others are &ldquo;Excursions in Field and Forest,&rdquo; with a memoir by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1863); &ldquo;The Maine Woods&rdquo; (1864); &ldquo;Cape Cod&rdquo; (1865); &ldquo;Letters to Various Persons,&rdquo; with nine poems (1865); and &ldquo;A Yankee in Canada,&rdquo; with anti-slavery and reform papers (1866). His life has been written by William Ellery Channing under the title &ldquo;The Poet-Naturalist&rdquo; (1873), and by Franklin B. Sanborn in the &ldquo;American Men of Letters&rdquo; series (1882). The former is a rhapsody rather than a biography, and is largely composed of extracts from Thoreau's journals, which had never seen the light before. It also contains a full list of his publications.

THORFINN, Scandinavian navigator, b. in Norway; d. in Glœmbœland, Iceland, after 1016. He was surnamed Karlsefn, which signifies one that is destined to become a great man. He was one of the wealthiest and most powerful nobles of the three northern kingdoms, and several of his ancestors had been kings. He went to Greenland from Norway in 1006, bringing with him two vessels. Here he married Gudrida, the widow of Thorstein, who persuaded him to organize an expedition to Vinland. With three ships and 160 men and women, besides a supply of cattle, Thorfinn and his companions set sail from Ericsfiord in the spring of 1007, and finally were driven by the polar current and a north wind toward Helluland (probably Newfoundland). They next came in sight of Markland (Nova Scotia), and then of an island (probably Anticosti), on which some of them landed and killed a bear. Therefore they called it Bjarnar, or Bearsland. The sagas are somewhat vague as to the route that they followed afterward, but it is probable that in their search after the grave of Thorvald they sailed along the New England coast. They touched at Cape Kjalarnes, for mention is made of the keel which was set up there three years before; but they did not discover the tomb of the son of Eric, although some of his companions must have been among the crew of Thorfinn. After leaving Kjalarnes they sailed past Cape Cod, which they called Furdustrandir, or Wonderstrands, because they saw there sand-hills and long and narrow shores, and it was &ldquo;long to sail by.&rdquo; Thorfinn soon put two scouts on shore, who were ordered to explore the country to the southwest, They returned after three days, bringing some bunches of grapes and ears of wheat. Next the Northmen anchored in a deep bay, which they called Straumfjord, on account of its currents, and they then reached an island frequented by eider-ducks in great numbers. They named it Straumey, and it is supposed to be either Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket. They wintered at Straumfjord, and, resolving to plant their settlement on its shores, landed their flocks, built booths, and spent the spring in cultivating the land, fishing, and exploring the country. But when the next winter came their resources were nearly exhausted, and Thorfinn was deserted by some of his companions. With his two remaining vessels he sailed for Leifsbudir, probably in Mount Hope bay, and