owes to and takes from its objects."

Nearly twenty years after Thoreau's death, Alcott, while walking
towards the close of day, said, "I always think of Thoreau when I
look at a sunset."

Emerson was fourteen years older than Thoreau, but between the two
men there existed through life profound sympathy and affection.
Emerson watched him develop as a young man, and delivered the
address at his funeral; for two years they lived in the same
house, and concerning him Emerson wrote in 1863, a year after his
death, "In reading Henry Thoreau's journal, I am very sensible of
the vigor of his constitution. That oaken strength which I noted
whenever he walked or worked, or surveyed wood-lots, the same
unhesitating hand with which a field laborer accosts a piece of
work which I should shun as a waste of strength, Henry shows in
his literary task. He has muscle, and ventures in and performs
feats which I am forced to decline. In reading him I find the same
thoughts, the same spirit that is in me, but he takes a step
beyond and illustrates by excellent images that which I should
have conveyed in a sleepy generalization. 'Tis as if I went into a
gymnasium and saw youths leap and climb and swing with a force
unapproachable, tho these feats are only continuations of my
initial grapplings and jumps." One is reminded of Mrs. Hawthorne's
vivid characterization of the two men as she saw them on the ice
of the Musketaquid twenty years before.

In our reverence for a place where a great man for a time has had
his home, we must not forget that, while death may mark a given
spot, life is quite another matter. A man may be born or may die
in a country, a city, a village, a house, a room, or,--narrower
still,--a bed; for birth and death are physical events, but life
is something quite different. Birth is the welding of the soul to
a given body; death is the dissolution of that connection; life is
the relation of the imprisoned soul to its environment, and the
content of that environment depends largely upon the individual;
it may be as narrow as the village in which he lives, or it may
stretch beyond the uttermost stars. A man may live on a farm, or
he may visit the cities of the earth,--it does not matter much;
his life is the sum total of his experiences, his sympathies, his
loves, of his hopes and ambitions, his dreams and aspirations, his
beliefs and convictions.

To live is to love, and to think, and to dream, and to believe,
and