Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/97

Rh end of existence, and we shall hear no more of the commercial spirit. The sea will not stagnate, the earth will be as green as ever, and the air as pure."

"After college,—what?" was a perplexing question to the young man in Thoreau's time, even as it is to-day. Then the answer was far more restrictive and final. Had financial conditions favored, Thoreau was unfitted for church or medicine. In reading his volumes, one is impressed often by his keen, logical faculty; the suggestion has arisen that his mind, trained and broadened by legal studies, might have achieved brilliant results. His philosophy which opposed existing government and religion, however, had been heralded in college days, and the innate love for poetry and nature, as exclusive enthusiasms, were barriers against concentrated study of law, even if opportunity had offered. Probably Thoreau's name would have been added to that already long list of authors who attempted law to leave it soon for their chosen profession, literature. At that time, however, an author or a naturalist had no sure entrance to public regard nor could he expect any adequate income. "Whatever may have been the family ambitions for Thoreau, he seems to have adopted the profession of brother and sisters, and the year after graduation was