Page:Some unpublished letters of Henry D. and Sophia E. Thoreau; a chapter in the history of a still-born book.djvu/89

 recently asked if he did not mean that we are the "extra elects." His reply is not adapted for polite ears. Though it may cost him the friendship of the ex-professor, the editor trusts that he, at least, has done his duty to Society.]

Thoreau's meaning in this universe is no more a secret to this untutored man dwelling in remote Michigan than it was to the learned Fellow of Exeter College or to that graduate of Harvard who pitched his tent in Concord and taught America to think. Can you imagine what it implies to have "discovered" Thoreau in those early days; or do you imagine that Nature's "extra selects" are marked with a stencil-plate? Try and imagine what a consuming fervor is enkindled when a true Book is