by all, for all are virtuous, as then their "innate
virtue" will no more be perverted by unnatural institutions. This will
not be a millennium but a practical and possible application of
uncommon common sense. For is it not sense, common or otherwise, for
Nature to want to hand back the earth to those to whom it belongs--that
is, to those who have to live on it? Is it not sense, that the average
brains like the average stomachs will act rightly if they have an equal
amount of the right kind of food to act upon and universal education is
on the way with the right kind of food? Is it not sense then that all
grown men and women (for all are necessary to work out the divine "law
of averages") shall have a direct not an indirect say about the things
that go on in this world?

Some of these attitudes, ungenerous or radical, generous or
conservative (as you will), towards institutions dear to many, have no
doubt given impressions unfavorable to Thoreau's thought and
personality. One hears him called, by some who ought to know what they
say and some who ought not, a crabbed, cold-hearted, sour-faced
Yankee--a kind of a visionary sore-head--a cross-grained, egotistic
recluse,--even non-hearted. But it is easier to make a statement than
prove a reputation. Thoreau may be some of these things to those who
make no distinction between these qualities and the manner which often
comes as a kind of by-product of an intense devotion of a principle or
ideal. He was rude and unfriendly at times but shyness probably had
something to do with that. In spite of a certain self-possession he was
diffident in most company, but, though he may have been subject to
those spells when words do not rise and the mind seems wrapped in a
kind of dull cloth which everyone dumbly stares at, instead of looking
through--he would easily get off a rejoinder upon occasion. When a
party of visitors came to Walden and some one asked Thoreau if he found
it lonely there, he replied: "Only by your help." A remark
characteristic, true, rude, if not witty. The writer remembers hearing
a schoolteacher in English literature dismiss Thoreau (and a half hour
lesson, in which time all of Walden,--its surface--was sailed over) by
saying that this author (he called everyone "author" from Solomon down
to Dr. Parkhurst) "was a kind of a crank who styled himself a
hermit-naturalist and who idled about the woods because he didn't want
to work." Some such stuff is a common concep