ore coming down.
Let him make the earth turn round now the other way, and whet his wits
on it as on a grindstone; in short, see how many ideas he can
entertain at once."

Expect no Poor Richard maxims or counsel from Thoreau. He would tell
you to invest your savings in the bonds of the Celestial Empire, or
plant your garden with a crop of Giant Regrets. He says these are
excellent for sauce. He encourages one of his correspondents with the
statement that he "never yet knew the sun to be knocked down and
rolled through a mud puddle; he comes out honor bright from behind
every storm."

X

All Thoreau's apparent inconsistencies and contradictions come from
his radical idealism. In all his judgments upon men and things, and
upon himself, he is an uncompromising idealist. All fall short. Add
his habit of exaggeration and you have him saying that the pigs in the
street in New York (in 1843) are the most respectable part of the
population. The pigs, I suppose, lived up to the pig standard, but the
people did not live up to the best human standards. Wherever the ideal
leads him, there he follows. After his brother John's death he said he
did not wish ever to see John again, but only the ideal John--that
other John of whom he was but the imperfect representative. Yet the
loss of the real John was a great blow to him, probably the severest
in his life. But he never allows himself to go on record as showing
any human weakness.

"Comparatively," he says, "we can excuse any offense against the
heart, but not against the imagination." Thoreau probably lived in his
heart as much as most other persons, but his peculiar gospel is the
work of his imagination. He could turn his idealism to practical
account. A man who had been camping with him told me that on such
expeditions he carried a small piece of cake carefully wrapped up in
his pocket and that after he had eaten his dinner he would take a
small pinch of this cake. His imagination seemed to do the rest.

The most unpromising subject would often kindle the imagination of
Thoreau. His imagination fairly runs riot over poor Bill Wheeler, a
cripple and a sot who stumped along on two clumps for feet, and who
earned his grog by doing chores here and there. One day Thoreau found
him asleep in the woods in a low shelter which consisted of meadow hay
cast over a rude frame. It was a rare find to Thoreau. A man who could
turn his back upon the town and civilization like that must be s