Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/214

188, industry, repression, truth, commingled with fineness, vivacity, ingenuity and nature-love, became amalgamated into a character singularly simple yet paradoxical, tinctured with the extreme philosophy and culture of the New England Transcendentalists. To question the sincerity of his life in any of its expressions, the Walden incident included, is to thrust a poisoned arrow at the very basis of his character. A school friend, Mr. Joseph Hosmer, wrote,—"He was the embodiment of perfect sincerity and truth; there was no gush or glamour in his make-up." With this sincerity was an unflinching bravery of soul which knew not faltering before discouragements, misinterpretations, grief, even death itself. Call this complacency, stoicism, if you will, yet forget not the delicate sensitiveness of humanity behind the quiet, steadfast endurance. It is a common quotation, as representative of his seeming misanthropy,—"Men rarely affect me as grand or beautiful, but I know that there is a sunrise and a sunset every day." The same critics, straining the meaning of the above sentence apart from its context, overlook the sentences so happily mingling nature and humanity in mutual dependence,—"Nature must be viewed humanely to be viewed at all, that is, her senses must be associated with human affections, such as