Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/46

 This was absolutely all he was ever heard by me to say of that outward world, during his illness; neither could a stranger in the least infer that he had ever a friend in field or wood He now concentrated all his force, caught the shreds of his fleeting physical strength, the moment when the destinies accorded to him a long breath,—to complete his stories of the Maine woods, then in press; endeavoring vainly to finish his lists of birds and flowers, and arrange his papers on Night and Moonlight Thirteen days before his death he said he could not fairly rouse himself for work,—could not see to correct his Allegash paper; 'it is in a knot I cannot untie.' His every instant now, his least thought and work, sacredly belonged to them, dearer than his rapidly perishing life, whom he should so quickly leave behind."

It has been a pleasure to his surviving friends, of whom but few now remain, to do for his memory and his fame what he could not do for himself, and so present to the world, which he too early abandoned, the profound or witty thoughts and the delicate observations that every page of his [xxxviii]