ders; that repentance
would put this preacher right with the powers that be in this
world--and the next. Thoreau might pass a remark upon this man's
intimacy with God "as if he had a monopoly of the subject"--an intimacy
that perhaps kept him from asking God exactly what his Son meant by the
"camel," the "needle"--to say nothing of the "rich man." Thoreau might
have wondered how this man NAILED DOWN the last plank in HIS bridge to
salvation, by rising to sublime heights of patriotism, in HIS war
against materialism; but would even Thoreau be so unfeeling as to
suggest to this exhorter that HIS salvation might be clinched "if he
would sacrifice his income" (not himself) and come--in to a real
Salvation Army, or that the final triumph, the supreme happiness in
casting aside this mere $10,000 or $20,000 every year must be denied
him--for was he not captain of the ship--must he not stick to his
passengers (in the first cabin--the very first cabin)--not that the
ship was sinking but that he was ... we will go no further. Even Thoreau
would not demand sacrifice for sacrifice sake--no, not even from Nature.

Property from the standpoint of its influence in checking natural
self-expansion and from the standpoint of personal and inherent right
is another institution that comes in for straight and cross-arm jabs,
now to the stomach, now to the head, but seldom sparring for breath.
For does he not say that "wherever a man goes, men will pursue him with
their dirty institutions"? The influence of property, as he saw it, on
morality or immorality and how through this it mayor should influence
"government" is seen by the following: "I am convinced that if all men
were to live as simply as I did, then thieving and robbery would be
unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more
than is sufficient while others have not enough--

Nec bella fuerunt,
Faginus astabat dum
Scyphus ante dapes--

You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ
punishments? Have virtue and the people will be virtuous." If Thoreau
had made the first sentence read: "If all men were like me and were to
live as simply," etc., everyone would agree with him. We may wonder
here how he would account for some of the degenerate types we are told
about in some of our backwoods and mountain regions. Possibly by
assuming that they are an instance of perversion of the species. That
the little civilizing their forbears experienced