Page:Some unpublished letters of Henry D. and Sophia E. Thoreau; a chapter in the history of a still-born book.djvu/30

 of him to be withheld; so it shall be shared with the reader—though this complaisance involves the editor in not a little personal peril.

Be it known then, first of all, that the ex-professor himself takes Thoreau very seriously; does not by any possible interpretation consider him a "glittering generality," but rather a "blazing ubiquity" wherever and whenever the blunt, plain truth is needful—which time and place he also believes is always and everywhere. Perhaps an excerpt from the ex-professor's lecture on "Thoreau" will best serve to show his attitude. (This lecture, it may be as well to add, was written for and delivered in a nameless territory where 'success' is a matter of the bank-book rather than of that old-fashioned Hebrew Book.)