HENRY THOREAU
Alcott.” He knew a good fellow and surveyor, but did not prize a Platonist.1
His short imprisonment was a slight enough matter to Thoreau. He mentions his night spent there in “Walden,” in an entertaining line or two. An incident, not there told, I learned from a friend. He was kept awake by a man in the cell below ejaculating, “What is life?” and, “So this is life!” with a painful monotony. At last, willing to get whatever treasure of truth this sonorous earthen vessel might hold, Thoreau put his head to the iron window-bars and asked suddenly, “Well, What is life, then?” but got no other reward than the sleep of the just, which his fellow-martyr did not further molest.
After dark, some person, unrecognized by Staples's little daughter, who went to the door, left with the child some money “to pay Mr. Thoreau's tax.” Her father
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