Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 10.djvu/166

 THOltEAU

THOREAU

and vexing the faculty by his utter inilifference to Die prizes and other artificial incentives to study. At this time began his friendship with Emers^m. the attention of the latter having been attracted to him by the discovery of a com- mon friend that a note in Thoreau's diary contained the same kernel of thought as one of Emerson's early lec- tures. Tlioreau was graduated from Har- vard, A.B., in 1837, but declined a diplo- ma to save the addi- tional five dollars. In 1838. bearing rec- ommendations from ^ iry)cry^ Ezra Ripley, Emer-

y^^^^^Z//z^>7-tti^Ay. son and President Josiah Quincy of Harvard, he went to Maine with the intention of teaching school, but was unsuccessful in his quest for a position. For a short time he taught in Conconl, but later engaged in pencil making, surveying, and other occupations. Tlioreau be- came deeply interested in transcendentalism, in the movement for the abolition of slavery, and in other social and political reforms. Later his home became a station on the "Underground Railway," and liis uncompromising attitude to- ward slavery was further evidenced by his mem- orable address to the citizens of Concord on be- half of Jo'nn Bro%vn at the time of the latter's ar- rest in 1S")9. Tlioreau succeeded in earning a fair living by making pencils, but when he had attaineil such skill in this work that financial success seemed assured, he announced that he should never make another pencil, for he could •lever make a better, and the only time he did lesort to tlii.s means of making money was when -fine dependent relative stood in need of aid. He was a true student of nature, being evermore at home in the open than under cover. His woodcraft was marvelous, enabling him to follow a trail by the tread, after dark. He was strong, long-limbe«l. and of a nervous, untiring nature;— apt at all kinds of manual labor, often surveying for his neighbors, farming for himself, and build- ing for any one wishing a new house. He said, '• I found that the occupation of a day laborer wan the most independent of any, especially as it requires only thirty or forty days in the year to support one." Love of liberty and love of truth were Thoreau's most conspicuous traits of character. In 18.36 his theories led him to re- nounce the church and decline to pay its tax: and in 1846 he renounced the state and refused

to pay his taxes, preferring to go to jail rather than contribute to the support of what seemed to him an evil. When Emerson visited him in his cell and asked him why he was there, Thoreau replied, " And why are you not here? " In March, 184.5, he built with his own hands a little cabin, in which he lived and wrote for two years. The cabin was situated on a piece of land owned by Bronson Alcott on the shore of Lake "Walden. Tlioreau did not live there as a hermit, as is sometimes supposed; on the contrary he mingled with his fellow men as usual, and frequently spent a day or a night at home. While at W^al- den he edited his Week on the Concord and Mer- rimack Rivers, chapters of which had begun to ap- pear in the Dial in 1840. In 1846 he sent his essay on Carlyle to Horace Greeley, who had it published in Graham's Magazine. In the same year he visited a relative in Bangor, Maine, and traveled with him to the headwaters of the Penobscot river and to the summit of Mount Ktaadn, a region at that time unexplored. He returned to Concord in 1847, having sold his hut on the lake. In the same year he sent to Agassiz specimens which he had gathered in the woods, some of which were entirely new to the scientist, who tried, but witliout success, to cultivate the ac- quaintance of the careful observer. Greeley pur- chased his Ktaadn and Maine Woods in 1848. and in 1849 the Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers was published and favorably received by such Clitics as George Ripley and James Russell Lowell, but the sale did not pay the exiiense of printing, and to free himself from debt Thoreau took up surveying once more. Greeley was al- most insistent in his requests that Tlioreau should write frequent short articles, such as essays on Emerson and other Concord contemporaries, but Thoreau knew no way but his own. A Yankee in Canada, a journal of his journey with Ellery Channing in French Canada in 1850, was ac- cepted by Putnam's Magazine in 1852. but was not publisiied there because of a disagreement between Putnam and Thoreau. Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854) and the Week were the only volumes published during the life of the author. Thoreau was stricken with pulmonary consump- tion, an inherited disease, and died after a long illness. Unlike his friend Emerson he did not grasp the Divine as a personality, but like the Indians he so closely resembled, he saw Him in the clouds and beheld Him in the wind. Wlien on his deathbed he was questioned by Parker Pillsbury regarding his belief in the future he re- plied. " One world at a time." A cairn marks the spot on the shores of Walden where his hut stood. The portrait from which the accompany- ing illustration was made is .seldom seen, but is said to resemble Thoreau during the greater part