Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/355

Rh of the most remarkable books of modern literature. The public made a mild response to its appearance in 1856 and two years after more than two thousand copies had been sold or dispersed. Emerson was especially enthusiastic over "Walden." In a letter to a friend, soon after the book was published, he wrote;—"All American kind are delighted with Walden as far as they have dared to say. The little pond sinks in these days as tremulous at its human fame. I do not know if the book has come to you yet, but it is cheerful, sparkling, readable, with all kinds of merits, and rising sometimes to very great heights. We count Henry the undoubted king of all American lions." Thoreau received many letters of tribute and some of questions. To his journal he confides the diverse and puzzled attitudes of the public towards the book. He cites the case of one reader who enjoyed "Walden" but viewed it as a huge satire and insisted that the map of the town, even, must be merely a caricature of the Coast Survey.

The permanent vitality of "Walden" is its sure excuse for being. Its spontaneity and vigor are as pervasive in the reading-world as they were a half-century ago. Mr. George R. Bartlett relates his encounter in the West with a Russian Jew who had read some stray leaves of "Walden" while still in