'It was good,' says Hawthorne, 'to meet him in the
wood-paths, or sometimes in our avenue, with that pure intellectual
gleam diffused about his presence like the garment of a shining one; and
he so quiet, so simple, so without pretension, encountering each man
alive as if expecting to receive more than he could impart.'
The most remarkable of all his neighbours was Thoreau, who for a couple
of years lived in a hut which he had built for himself on the shore of
Walden Pond. If he had not written some things with a considerable charm
of style, Thoreau might have been wisely neglected as one of the crazy.
But Emerson was struck by the originality of his life, and thought it
well in time to edit the writings of one 'who was bred to no profession;
never married; lived alone; never went to Church; never voted; refused
to pay a tax to the State; ate no flesh, drank no wine, never knew the
use of tobacco; had no temptations to fight against, no appetites, no
passions, refused all invitations, preferred a good Indian to highly
cultivated people, and said he would rather go to Oregon than to
London.' The world has room for every type, so that it be not actively
noxious, and this whimsical egotist may well have his place in the
catalogue. He was, after all, in his life only a compendium, on a scale
large enough to show their absurdity, of all those unsocial notions
which Emerson in other manifestations found it needful to rebuke.
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