to Baker Farm, as he "rambles through pine groves ... like
temples, or like fleets at sea, full-rigged, with wavy boughs and
rippling with light so soft and green and shady that the Druids would
have forsaken their oaks to worship in them." Follow him to "the cedar
wood beyond Flint's Pond, where the trees covered with hoary blue
berries, spiring higher and higher, are fit to stand before Valhalla."
Follow him, but not too closely, for you may see little, if you do--"as
he walks in so pure and bright a light gilding its withered grass and
leaves so softly and serenely bright that he thinks he has never bathed
in such a golden flood." Follow him as "he saunters towards the holy
land till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever it has
done, perchance shine into your minds and hearts and light up your
whole lives with a great awakening, light as warm and serene and golden
as on a bankside in autumn." Follow him through the golden flood to the
shore of that "holy land," where he lies dying as men say--dying as
bravely as he lived. You may be near when his stern old aunt in the
duty of her Puritan conscience asks him: "Have you made your peace with
God"? and you may see his kindly smile as he replies, "I did not know
that we had ever quarreled." Moments like these reflect more nobility
and equanimity perhaps than geniality--qualities, however, more
serviceable to world's heroes.

The personal trait that one who has affection for Thoreau may find
worst is a combative streak, in which he too often takes refuge. "An
obstinate elusiveness," almost a "contrary cussedness," as if he would
say, which he didn't: "If a truth about something is not as I think it
ought to be, I'll make it what I think, and it WILL be the truth--but
if you agree with me, then I begin to think it may not be the truth."
The causes of these unpleasant colors (rather than characteristics) are
too easily attributed to a lack of human sympathy or to the assumption
that they are at least symbols of that lack instead of to a
supersensitiveness, magnified at times by ill health and at times by a
subconsciousness of the futility of actually living out his ideals in
this life. It has been said that his brave hopes were unrealized
anywhere in his career--but it is certain that they started to be
realized on or about May 6, 1862, and we doubt if 1920 will end their
fulfillment or his career. But there were many in Concord who knew that
within their vill