Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/188

162. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand on the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that were dangerous." Among the side-lights upon this tax episode was the significant dialogue between Emerson and Thoreau, when the former visited his friend in jail and asked, "Henry, why are you here?" Thoreau's answer, so often misquoted, was, "Why are you not here?" This should not be construed as pertness or lack of deference. It was a calm, judicial, and perhaps Yankee, counter-question, expressing his firm belief that all who opposed slavery in thoughts and words, among whom was Emerson, should be willing to show that opposition in deed, even at the risk of being counted as eccentrics, perhaps law-breakers. In the essay on "Civil Disobedience," he emphasized this idea and urged the Abolitionists to refuse support to the state until it should declare itself against slavery. Such course, involving incarceration in county jail, if maintained by "ten honest men only,—ay, if one honest man ceasing to hold slaves,—it would be the abolition of slavery in America."