Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/44

26 pride existent between Thoreau and Concord: "Henry Thoreau we all remember as a man of genius and of marked character, known to our farmers as the most skilful of surveyors, and indeed better acquainted with their forests and meadows and trees than themselves, but more widely known as the writer of some of the best books which have been written in this country and which, I am persuaded, have not yet gathered half their fame. He too, was an excellent reader. No man would have rejoiced more than he in the event of this day."

While Thoreau was concerned for the civic purity and the political and educational freedom and progress of his natal town, which seemed to him the microcosm of the nation, while he was a prophet, preaching the purification and simplification of individual life, such aspirations were sequential from his life-theme, Nature. He found her enshrined in his home-country and he became her seer; here he interpreted her messages and proclaimed her inspiration as motor-power in noblest living. To him no theme could be more free, more exhaustive, more satisfying. The pines with their fragrant aroma and their harmonious soughing, the wayside ferns and flowers, bird-friends and insect neighbors, the season's glorious tints on the hill-slopes and in the valleys, the easeful beauty of river and ponds,—all