"
Ten years passed. The young man gave up school-keeping, thinking
it a loss of time. He learned pencil-making, surveying, and farm
work, and found that by manual labor for six weeks in the year he
could meet all the expenses of living. He haunted the woods and
pastures, explored rivers and ponds, built the famous hut on
Emerson's wood-lot with the famous axe borrowed from Alcott, was
put in jail for refusal to pay his polltax, and, to sum up much
in little, "signed off" from social obligations. "I, Henry D.
Thoreau, have signed off, and do not hold myself responsible to
your multifarious uncivil chaos named Civil Government." When his
college class held its tenth reunion in 1847, and each man was
asked to send to the secretary a record of achievement, Thoreau
wrote: "My steadiest employment, if such it can be called, is to
keep myself at the top of my condition and ready for whatever may
turn up in heaven or on earth." There is the motto of
Transcendentalism, stamped upon a single coin.
For "to be ready for whatever may turn up" is Thoreau's racier,
homelier version of Emerson's "endless seeker"; and Thoreau, more
easily than Emerson, could venture to stake everything upon the
quest.
Pages:
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163