Page:Miscellanies - With a biographical sketch by Ralph Waldo Emerson and a general index to the writings. -- by Thoreau, Henry David.djvu/15



biographical sketch which introduces this volume was in its original form an address by Mr. Emerson at the funeral of Mr. Thoreau. He expanded it for use in The Atlantic Monthly, August, 1862, and it has until now done service in the volume Excursions, the first collection of Thoreau's papers which was published after his death.

The contents of Excursions in the present series represented the fugitive papers by Thoreau upon subjects with which he is most identified, aspects of nature, especially seen in longer or shorter journeys. The papers here grouped under the title Miscellanies are the product of the somewhat less known Thoreau, the student of human life, of literature and religion, though the reader may easily have discovered both sides of his nature in A Week, which blends observation and reflection, and is a transcript from a diary which records the march of the "daughters of Time," as