Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/77

Rh be a spectator rather than a participant in many of the games; his chief delight was to wander away to the river-banks to search for arrow-heads and pestles, or to watch the occasional Indians who paddled down the Musketaquid. Doubtless, this cautious, minute study of Indian habits gave him that great skill with the paddles which caused Hawthorne's admiration and personal despair. There existed a family memory that, as a little boy, Thoreau was greatly alarmed in thunder-storms and would creep to his father's lap for comfort, that he was to find later beneath Nature's own protection.

As early as ten years his seriousness of mien had given him the common boyish title of "Judge." His wonderful control over a most sensitive emotional nature was early tested. When, as a lad, he took his petted chickens to the innkeeper for sale, he was compelled to see their necks wrung, as he stood by, pale with compressed lips. Channing relates another childish anecdote which is important in later character-analysis. A schoolmate had lost a knife and Henry, accused, maintained quietly, "I did not take it." When the theft was finally located, he explained that he had been away all that day with his father, but his reserve and dogged sense of justice refused to make this