rings in an inch in each tree one, the
comparative slowness of growth of the inches is thus expressed." Then
follows another carefully prepared table of figures. Before one is
done with these pages one fairly suspects the writer is mad, the
results are so useless, and so utterly fail to add to our knowledge of
the woods. Would counting the leaves and branches in the forest, and
making a pattern of each, and tabulating the whole mass of figures be
any addition to our knowledge? I attribute the whole procedure, as I
have said, to his uncontrollable intellectual activity, and the
imaginary demands of this Journal, which continued to the end of his
life. The very last pages of his Journal, a year previous to his
death, are filled with minute accounts of the ordinary behavior of
kittens, not one item novel or unusual, or throwing any light on the
kitten. But it kept his mind busy, and added a page or two to the
Journal.

In his winter walks he usually carried a four-foot stick, marked in
inches, and would measure the depth of the snow over large areas,
every tenth step, and then construct pages of elaborate tables showing
the variations according to locality, and then work out the
average--an abnormal craving for exact but useless facts. Thirty-four
measurements on Walden disclosed the important fact that the snow
averaged five and one sixth inches deep. He analyzes a pensile nest
which he found in the woods--doubtless one of the vireo's--and fills
ten pages with a minute description of the different materials which
it contained. Then he analyzes a yellow-bird's nest, filling two
pages. That Journal shall not go hungry, even if there is nothing to
give it but the dry material of a bird's nest.

VII

The craving for literary expression in Thoreau was strong and
constant, but, as he confesses, he could not always select a theme. "I
am prepared not so much for contemplation as for forceful expression."
No matter what the occasion, "forceful expression" was the aim. No
meditation, or thinking, but sallies of the mind. All his paradoxes
and false analogies and inconsistencies come from this craving for a
forceful expression. He apparently brought to bear all the skill he
possessed of this kind on all occasions. One must regard him, not as a
great thinker, nor as a disinterested seeker after the truth, but as a
master in the art of vigorous and picturesque expression. To startle,
to wake up, to communicate to his reader a litt