Ralph Waldo Emerson, in H. S. Salt, The Life of Henry David Thoreau My first intimacy with Henry began after his
graduation in 1837. Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Emerson’s sister from Plymouth, then boarded
with Mrs. Thoreau and her children in the Parkman house, where the [p. 128] Library now
stands, and saw the young people every day. She would bring me verses of
Henry’s,—the "Sic Vita," for instance, which he had thrown into Mrs.
Brown’s window, tied round a bunch of violets gathered in his walk,—and once a
passage out of his Journal, which he had read to Sophia, who spoke of it to Mrs. Brown as
resembling a passage in one of my Concord lectures. He always looked forward to authorship
as his work in life, and fitted himself for that. Finding he could write prose so
well,—and he talked equally well,—he soon gave up much verse-writing, in which
he was not patient enough to make his lines smooth and flowing. He is a man of incorruptible integrity, and of great ability and industry; and we shall
yet hear much more of him. But he affects manners rather brusque, does not think it worth
while to use the cheap service of courtesy; is pugnacious about trifles; likes to
contradict, likes to say No, and to be on the other side. You cannot always tell what will
please him. He was ill, and I sent him a bottle of wine, which I doubt if he ever tasted.
I regret these oddities. He needs to fall in love, to sweeten him and straighten him. |