Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/148

130 afield. He can hardly decide upon any route; "all seem so unpromising, mere surface-walking and fronting the cold wind." "Surface-walking." How excellent that is! Every contemplative outdoor man knows what is meant, but only Thoreau could have hit it off to such perfection in a word.

I must admit that I am not sorry to find the Walden stoic once in a long while overtaken by such a comparatively unheroic mood. He boasted so often and so well (with all the rest he boasted of his boasting) that it pleases me to hear him complain. So the weather could be too much even for him, I say to myself, with something like a chuckle. He was mortal, after all; and the day was sometimes dark, even in Concord.

Not that he ever whimpered. And had he done so, in any moment of weakness, it should never have been for me to lay a public finger upon the fact. Nobody shall be more loyal to Thoreau than I am, though others may understand him better and praise him more adequately. If he complained, he did it "man-fashion," and was within a man's right. To say that the worst of Massachu-