Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/159

Rh, but any such concealment or device would be contrary to his open, sincere nature. With good motive he had started to bring home the pine-tree and, justifying his conscience, he sturdily bore his burden past the church amid the gaping, horrified people to his mother's yard. Of course, this incident, like many another in his life, was misconstrued as predetermined defiance of custom, and he suffered quietly the judgment which resulted, tenaciously refusing to explain.

Among many distorted ideas regarding the Walden experiment, one of the most flagrant is Mr. Lowell's conclusion,—"His shanty life was a mere impossibility, so far as his own conception of it goes, as an entire independency of mankind." What possible evidence, from his own words or those of his friends, is there for the assertion that Thoreau had any desire to establish or declare "the entire independency of mankind"? Recently, a gentleman, speaking of Thoreau in public, but with inadequate knowledge as later statements evidenced, said, with a half-sneer,—"He started out to live without any aid of civilized man and began by borrowing an axe and setting his hut on another's land without paying any rental." Such have been some of the unfair ideas promulgated by Mr. Lowell and other critics who would not, or, at least,