HENRY THOREAU
friends. He came for friendship, not for food. “I was never so effectually deterred from frequenting a man's house by any kind of Cerberus whatever,” he says, “as by the parade one made about dining me, which I took to be a very polite and roundabout hint never to trouble him so again.” And, fully to satisfy cavil, it is certain that he overpaid his keep in mere handiwork, which he convinced all friends that it was a favour to him to allow him to do for them (such as burning out chimneys, setting stoves, door-knobs, or shutters to right), to make no mention of higher service.
He was not a professing philanthropist, though steadily friendly to his kind as he met them. His eminent, but unappreciative, critic, Lowell, said severely, among other charges, “Did his plan of life seem selfish — he condemned doing good as
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