Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/249

Rh March, 1856, he refers to two friends who failed to meet his tests of friendship, one who offered friendship "on such terms that I could not accept it without a sense of degradation," who sought to patronize him; the other, through obtuseness, "did not recognize a fact which the dignity of friendship would by no means allow me to descend so far as to speak of, and yet the inevitable effect of that ignorance was to hold us apart forever." Without any offensive details intime, how fully these comments reveal the dignity and lofty uprightness, the delicacy and nobleness of Thoreau's heart and soul!

To a casual thinker, it might seem as if a man who had such cerulean ideals for friendship, who mingled a supersensitiveness and severity in his demands, would find few practical friends who could approximate his standards. On the contrary, Thoreau was a friend, deeply loved and eagerly sought by men and women of diverse natures. With all his ideal demands, he mingled a rare charity for actual words and acts; he was personally humble and full of practical aid. He was ready to appreciate the services of his friends, capable of understanding their generous motives, even better than their impulsive acts, he was a cheerful, intellectual comrade, though always disparaging his own merits in idealizing the qualities of his friends.