Page:Thoreau - As remembered by a young friend.djvu/90

 way towards the North Star and the rights of a man.

After Stevenson had published in his “Men and Books” his views of Thoreau, whom, of course, he had never seen,1 saying, that in his whole works there is no trace of pity, Mr. Alexander H. Japp contributed this true story of the effective tenderness of the man. It was told by Moncure D. Conway, the brave young Virginian preacher, who had left his home and forgone his inheritance of slaves for conscience' sake. He lived for a time in Concord, near the Thoreaus, when a hunted slave came to the village by night to the home of that family.

“When I went [there] next morning, I found them all in a state of excitement by reason of the arrival of a fugitive negro from the South, who had come fainting to their door about daybreak and thrown himself upon their mercy.