tasted any that was
good; and his knowledge of nature was so complete and curious that he
could have told the time of year, within a day or so, by the aspect of
the plants. In his dealings with animals he was the original of
Hawthorne's Donatello. He pulled the woodchuck out of its hole by the
tail; the hunted fox came to him for protection; wild squirrels have
been seen to nestle in his waistcoat; he would thrust his arm into a
pool and bring forth a bright, panting fish, lying undismayed in the
palm of his hand. There were few things that he could not do. He could
make a house, a boat, a pencil, or a book. He was a surveyor, a scholar,
a natural historian. He could run, walk, climb, skate, swim, and manage
a boat. The smallest occasion served to display his physical
accomplishment; and a manufacturer, from merely observing his dexterity
with the window of a railway carriage, offered him a situation on the
spot. "The only fruit of much living," he observes, "is the ability to
do some slight thing better." But such was the exactitude of his senses,
so alive was he in every fibre, that it seems as if the maxim should be
changed in his case, for he could do most things with unusual
perfection. And perhaps he had an approving eye to himself when he
wrote: "Though the youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the
universe are not indifferent, _but are for ever on the side of the most
sensitive_."

II

Thoreau had decided, it would seem, from the very first to lead a life
of self-improvement: the needle did not tremble as with richer natures,
but pointed steadily north; and as he saw duty and inclination in one,
he turned all his strength in that direction. He was met upon the
threshold by a common difficulty. In this world, in spite of its many
agreeable features, even the most sensitive must undergo some drudgery
to live. It is not possible to devote your time to study and meditation
without what are quaintly but happily denominated private means; these
absent, a man must contrive to earn his bread by some service to the
public such as the public cares to pay him for; or, as Thoreau loved to
put it, Apollo must serve Admetus. This was to Thoreau even a sourer
necessity than it is to most; there was a love of freedom, a strain of
the wild man, in his nature, that rebelled with violence against the
yoke of custom; and he was so eager to cultivate himself and to be happy
in his own society, that he could consent with