Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/39

 natural tendency to diminish his zeal, if not his exertions. His instructors were impressed with the conviction that he was indifferent, even to a degree that was faulty. I have always entertained a respect for and interest in him, and was willing to attribute any apparent neglect or indifference to his ill-health rather than to wilfulness There is no doubt that, from some cause, an unfavorable opinion has been entertained of his disposition to exert himself. To what it has been owing may be doubtful. I appreciate very fully the goodness of his heart and the strictness of his moral principle; and have done as much for him as under the circumstances was possible."

No doubt an element of wilfulness entered into Thoreau's opinions and actions in his earlier life; such is wont to be the case with men of marked originality. His religious dissent, his literary and political heresies, appear sufficiently in this volume, and were seldom suppressed by him in publication. Emerson well said of him in his funeral eulogy, given in that old Concord meeting house which Thoreau seldom entered,— [xxxi]