father and mother,
and brother and sister, and wife and child, and friends; if you have
paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and
are a free man, you are ready for a walk."

Though a severe critic of conventional follies, Thoreau was always a
hopeful man; and no finer rebuke to the philosophy of Pessimism was
ever given than in these words of his: "I know of no more encouraging
fact than the unquestionable ability of a man to elevate his life by a
conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular
picture, or to carve a statue, and so make a few objects beautiful; but
it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and
medium through which we look. This, morally, we can do."

But it is not of Thoreau as a saunterer, or as a naturalist, or as an
essayist, that I wish to speak, but as a moralist, and this in relation
to American politics. Thoreau lived in a dark day of our political
history. At one time he made a declaration of independence in a small
way, and refused allegiance and poll-tax to a Government built on a
corner-stone of human slavery. Because of this he was put into jail,
where he remained one night, and where he made some curious
observations on his townspeople as viewed from the inside of the bars.
Emerson came along in the morning, and asked him what he was there for.
"Why are you not in here, Mr. Emerson?" was his reply; for it seemed to
him that no man had the right to be free in a country where some men
were slaves.

"Voting for the right," Thoreau said, "is doing nothing for it; it is
only expressing feebly your desire that right should prevail." He
would not for an instant recognize that political organization as his
government which was the slave's government also. "In fact," he said,
"I will quietly, after my fashion, declare war with the State. Under a
government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man
is also a prison. I know this well, that if one thousand, if one
hundred, or if one honest man in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing
to remain in this co-partnership, should be locked up in the county
jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. It
matters not how small the beginning may seem to be, what is once well
done is done forever."

Thoreau's friends paid his taxes for him, and he was set free, so that
the whole affair seemed like a joke. Yet, as Stevenson says, "If his
exa