HENRY THOREAU
pute about solitude and society, any comparison is impertinent. It is an idling down on a plain at the base of a mountain instead of climbing steadily to its top. Of course, you will be glad of all the society you can get to go up with. ‘Will you go to Glory with me?’ is the burden of the song. It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and, when we do soar, the company grows thinner and thinner, till there is none at all. It is either the Tribune or the plain, a sermon on the Mount, or a very private ecstasy higher up. Use all the society that will abet you.”
And now as to the belief that he was hard, stern, selfish, or misanthropic. Truly he was undemonstrative; a sisterly friend said of him, “As for taking his arm, I should as soon think of taking the arm of an elm-tree as Henry's”; and he, himself, said, “When I am dead you will
57
