g a scholar and a poet, and as full of
promise as a young apple-tree."

And again, in a letter to Carlyle: "One reader and friend of yours
dwells in my household, Henry Thoreau, a poet whom you may one day be
proud of--a noble, manly youth, full of melodies and invention. We work
together day by day in my garden, and I grow well and strong."

To work and talk is the true way to acquire an education. All of our
best things are done incidentally--not in cold blood. Hawthorne says in
his Journal that most of Emerson's and Thoreau's farming was done
leaning on the hoe-handles, while Alcott sat on the fence and explained
the Whyness of the Wherefore.

But we must remember that in Hawthorne's ink-bottle there was a goodly
dash of tincture of iron. In his Journal of September First, Eighteen
Hundred Forty-two, he writes: "Mr. Thoreau dined with us yesterday. He
is a singular character--a young man with much of wild, original nature
still remaining in him; and so far as he is sophisticated, it is in a
way and method of his own. He is as ugly as sin, long-nosed,
queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and somewhat rustic ways, though his
courteous manner corresponds very well with such an exterior. But his
ugliness is of an honest character and really becomes him better than
beauty." Little did Hawthorne's guests imagine they were being basted,
roasted, or fricasseed for the edification of posterity.

Prosperity at this time had just begun to smile on Hawthorne, and among
other extravagances in which he indulged was a boat, bought from
Thoreau--made by the hands of this expert Yankee whittler. Hawthorne
quotes a little transcendental advice given to him by the maker of the
boat: "In paddling a canoe, all you have to do is to will that your boat
shall go in any particular direction, and she will immediately take the
course, as if imbued with the spirit of the steersman." Hawthorne then
adds this sober postscript: "It may be so with you, but it is certainly
not so with me."

Admiration for Thoreau gradually grew very strong with Hawthorne, and he
quotes Emerson, who called Thoreau "the young god Pan." And this lends
much semblance to the statement that Thoreau served Hawthorne as a model
for Donatello, the mysterious wood-sprite in the "Marble Faun."

As to the transformation of Thoreau himself, one of his classmates
records this:

Meeting Mr. Emerson one day, I inquired if he saw much of my
classmate, Henry D. Thoreau,