Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/250

222 He once declared that his distinction among his friends must be that "of the greatest bore they ever had." Among some passages from letters to his Western correspondent, Mr. Greene, is a comment, called forth by an expressed desire to see Thoreau, in which he derides himself as "the stuttering, blundering, clodhopper that I am, not worth a visit."

While he was a wise and entertaining comrade and a practical helper in any possible way for his friends, he was especially venerated by some as a father-confessor and a spiritual guide. Mr. Emerson, in his funeral eulogy, referred to the worship given Thoreau by those who recognized his qualities of soul as well as brain; his letters and those of his sister testify to the many requests for advice, both on practical and moral themes, during his later life, and the wide-spread appeal to him for inspiration and courageous incentive. While always ready to aid where his words or acts could do real service, he disliked any semblance of dogmatism, he never posed as a preacher or prophet, and in many cases answered the requests for advice by a dignified, courteous refusal, and an adjuration to the seeker to consult his own higher nature and educate his own conscience to become his guide. Among his friends, none has more fittingly commemorated his