Page:Sir Walter Raleigh by Thoreau, Henry David,.djvu/131

 as if by way of consolation, said to him, 'Well, Mr. Thoreau, we must all go.' Henry replied, 'When I was a very little boy I learned that I must die, and I set that down,—so of course I am not disappointed now. Death is as near to you as it is to me.' The devotion of his friends was most rare and touching. He would sometimes say 'I should be ashamed to stay in this world after so much had been done for me; I could never repay my friends.

In this last sally of his wit, which was as marked in its expression during his illness as in his vigorous days of rambling and writing, we see not alone the humor, but likewise that strict sense of obligation which he had from boyhood. He wished to receive nothing gratis except from Nature herself; his debts, unlike those of many poets, must always be punctually paid. []

12. In this description of Virtue, Thoreau made some use of the MS. afterward printed in Mr. Sanborn's edition, in which he quoted the same passage from Sir Thomas Browne, but without giving the author's name. A portion of the illustration of the clarion and corselet is also found in The Service. That this whole Ralegh sketch was given as a winter lecture in the Concord Lyceum is rendered probable by his speaking hereof "waiting for warm weather," and of a winter