Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/68

48 world." As the unconscious raillery grieved the home-loving boy, Helen lovingly encircled his shoulder and said,—"No, Henry, you shall not go; you shall stay at home and live with us,"—and so he did, "loving and being loved, serving and being served."

The same tender earnestness which characterized Helen was a marked trait of John, two years the senior of Henry. As one stands before the plain, spotless Thoreau monument at Sleepy Hollow, and notes simply the date—1815, sans month or day, on John's birth-record, the strange fact recurs to memory that, in this methodical family, by some droll oversight, no one had preserved with surety this son's birthday. John's thoughtful services to others have been recorded in part. For Emerson he procured a daguerreotype of little Waldo, "the hyacinthine boy," a few months before his death shattered the father's hopes and wrung from his sore heart that pathetic "Threnody." Again, Emerson refers to a little box-house for bluebirds on his barn, placed there by John Thoreau, where for fifteen years the annual visitants gladdened the Emerson household. John and Henry Thoreau were constant companions and the loss of John's broad and warm humanity left marked impress upon the younger brother. With less