Page:Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/323

Rh tion. A given lecture might be two years, or twenty years in preparation; or it might be, like his defense of John Brown, copied with little change from the pages of his diary for the fortnight previous. But that was an exceptional case; and Thoreau was stirred and quickened by the campaign and capture of Brown, as perhaps he had never been before.

The fact that Thoreau noted down his thoughts by night as well as by day, appears also from an entry in one of his jour-