te, is everywhere acknowledged. To paraphrase
Emerson's famous remark concerning Plato: Say what you will, you will
find everything mentioned by Emerson hinted at somewhere in Thoreau. The
younger man had as much mind as the elder, but he lacked the capacity
for patient effort that works steadily, persistently, and weighs, sifts,
decides, classifies and arranges. The voice was the voice of Jacob, but
the hand was the hand of Esau. That is to say, Thoreau lacked business
instinct. During the Winter at Walden Pond, all the work Thoreau had to
do was to gather firewood. There was plenty of time to think and write,
and here the better part of "Walden" and "A Week on the Concord and
Merrimac Rivers" were written. He had no neighbors, no pets, no
domesticated animals--only the squirrels on the roof, a woodchuck under
the floor, the scolding blue jays in the pines overhead, the wild ducks
on the pond, and the hooting owls that sat on the ridgepole at night.

Thoreau loved solitude more because he prized society--the society of
simple men who could talk and tell things. Thoreau was no hermit--at
least twice a week he would go to the village and meander along the
street, gossiping with all or any. Often he would accept invitations to
supper, but on principle refused all invitations to remain overnight, no
matter what the weather. Indeed, as Hawthorne hints, there is a trace of
the theatrical in the man who leaves a warm fireside at nine or ten
o'clock at night and trudges off through the darkness, storm and sleet,
feeling his way through the blackness of the woods to a cold and
cheerless shanty which he with unconscious humor calls home. Hawthorne
hints that Thoreau was a delightful poseur--he posed so naturally that
he deceived even himself. On one particular visit to the village,
however, he did not go back home for the night. It seems that he had
been called upon by the local taxgatherer for his poll-tax, a matter of
a dollar and a quarter. Thoreau argued the question at length, and among
other things, said, "I will not give money to buy a musket, and hire a
man to use this musket to shoot another." And also, "The best government
is not that which governs least, but that which governs not at all."

"But what shall I do?" said the patient publican.

"Resign," said the philosopher.

Thoreau seemed to forget that officeholders seldom die and never resign.
In the argument the publican was worsted, but he was not without
resour