. American lands and letters. Henry D. Thoreau. From a crayon draiuifig by Ro7tse, made tlie accomplishment of tlie Sir William Tem-ples ; yet, if a cricket chirped in his ear, as he scuf-fled with his hoe in his bean-patch, he harked back straight to the Cicada of Anacreon, like a 274 AMERICAN LANDS &- LETTERS. Thoreau is probably best known to the world bythat curious experience of his in Concord, where he built his own house under the pines — measur-ing costs by pennies, illustrating a great many idle. Walden Pond. economies, coquetting with the birds, havingfriendships with the sq
. American lands and letters. Henry D. Thoreau. From a crayon draiuifig by Ro7tse, made tlie accomplishment of tlie Sir William Tem-ples ; yet, if a cricket chirped in his ear, as he scuf-fled with his hoe in his bean-patch, he harked back straight to the Cicada of Anacreon, like a 274 AMERICAN LANDS &- LETTERS. Thoreau is probably best known to the world bythat curious experience of his in Concord, where he built his own house under the pines — measur-ing costs by pennies, illustrating a great many idle. Walden Pond. economies, coquetting with the birds, havingfriendships with the squirrels and woodchucks,living abstemiously, measuring with nicety everydepth and shallow of his watery domain of Wal-den—Avhich he finds deepest where the diameters WALDEN HOME. 275 of breadth and length intersect. This seems to usnot a great discovery; yet, observe how character-istically he twists it into solution of ethical prob-lems : Such a rule [of the two diameters] not only guides towardthe sun in its system and the heart in maii^ but draws linesthrough the length and breadth of the aggregate of a mansparticular daily behaviors and waves of life, into his covesand inlets, and where they intersect will be the height ordepth of his character. This tempts to a new sounding of motives, andto a question — if the mixing of Norman bloodwith English Puritanism, and Scotch covenantingsharpness in this philosopher of the woods, may notsuggest new ways of measuring tlie shallows anddepths of the composite
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