Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/94

74 Vose, Samuel Treat, Charles Stearns Wheeler, and others. From scattered class records and memorials may be gleaned a few memories of Thoreau by his classmates and one or two personal confessions. Of his yearnings for Concord he wrote in a classbook;—"Immured within the dark but classic walls of a Stoughton or a Hollis, my spirit yearned for the sympathy of my old and almost forgotten friend, Nature." Again, with one of those rare glimpses into his deeply-hidden affections, he wrote,—"Think not that my classmates have no place in my heart,—but that is too sacred a matter even for a class-book." One of the most familiar portraits of Thoreau as a college student has been given by his classmate, John Weiss, the poet-reformer. In an article in The Christian Examiner for July, 1865, he recalls the traits of Thoreau,—his fondness for poetry, his outward coldness, his "moist hand clasp," and the gray-blue eyes always upon the ground, "as his grave Indian stride carried him down to University Hall." Weiss was especially impressed with the complacency which was one of Thoreau's lifelong traits,—"You might as well quarrel with the self-sufficiency of a perfect day in Nature, which makes no effort to conciliate, as with this primitive disposition of his." During his senior year Thoreau was ill and,