Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/297

Rh, but he did not desire to relinquish his home and friends. After return from the Maine Woods he said with distinctness on this point,—"For a permanent residence it seemed to me that there could be no comparison between this (Concord) and the wilderness, necessary as the latter is for a resource and a background, the raw material of our civilization. The wilderness is simple almost to barrenness. The partially cultivated country it is which has inspired and will continue to inspire, the strains of poets such as compose the mass of any literature." As an expert gardener, he exampled his pleasure in culture of the fields no less than of the mind. A letter from his sister Helen, in 1844, refers to the practical and decorative work of Henry,—"He has set out about forty trees and has made a bank around the house so we begin to look quite cultivated." He always gave valuable aid to his sisters in caring for the garden and house flowers. He never disdained, rather he urged, simple, artistic gardening, but he feared that excess of cultivation which might supplant the natural beauty and simplicity of nature. Perhaps he had visions of some of the crudities of modern landscape gardening.

The reader is sometimes reminded of Whitman in Thoreau's rhapsodies on free, sensuous nature.