book he reads
he reads through all his senses--through his eyes, his ears, his nose,
and also through his feet and hands--and its pages are open
everywhere; the rocks speak of more than geology to him, the birds of
more than ornithology, the flowers of more than botany, the stars of
more than astronomy, the wild creatures of more than zooelogy.

The average walker is out for exercise and the exhilarations of the
road, he reaps health and strength; but Thoreau evidently impaired his
health by his needless exposure and inadequate food. He was a
Holy-Lander who falls and dies in the Holy Land. He ridiculed walking
for exercise--taking a walk as the sick take medicine; the walk itself
was to be the "enterprise and adventure of the day." And "you must
walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates
while walking."

IV

Thoreau's friends and neighbors seem to have persuaded themselves that
his natural-history lore was infallible, and, moreover, that he
possessed some mysterious power over the wild creatures about him that
other men did not possess. I recall how Emerson fairly bristled up
when on one occasion while in conversation with him I told him I
thought Thoreau in his trips to the Maine woods had confounded the
hermit thrush with the wood thrush, as the latter was rarely or never
found in Maine. As for Thoreau's influence over the wild creatures,
Emerson voiced this superstition when he said, "Snakes coiled round
his leg, the fishes swam into his hand, and he took them from the
water; he pulled the woodchuck out of its hole by the tail, and took
the foxes under his protection from the hunters." Of course Thoreau
could do nothing with the wild creatures that you or I could not do
under the same conditions. A snake will coil around any man's leg if
he steps on its tail, but it will not be an embrace of affection; and
a fish will swim into his hands under the same conditions that it will
into Thoreau's. As for pulling a woodchuck out of its hole by the
tail, the only trouble is to get hold of the tail. The 'chuck is
pretty careful to keep his tail behind him, but many a farm boy, aided
by his dog, has pulled one out of the stone wall by the tail, much
against the 'chuck's will. If Thoreau's friends were to claim that he
could carry _Mephitis mephitica_ by the tail with impunity, I can say
I have done the same thing, and had my photograph taken in the act.
The skunk is no respecter of persons, and