NOTES
“At the house there was nothing jarring. Mrs. Thoreau was pleasant and talkative and her husband was always kind. If I ever saw a gentleman at home, it was he. John would carry melons from his garden for the scholars. Once I found a piece of melon in my desk and should have supposed it was put there as a joke, but I caught the fragrance. It was the first citron melon I ever had seen.
“In reading about Arnold of Rugby I have often thought that John Thoreau resembled him in conducting his school. To me that man seemed to make all things possible. Henry was not loved in the school. He had his scholars upstairs. I was with John only. John was the more human, loving; understood and thought of others. Henry thought more about himself. He was a conscientious teacher but rigid.” . . . Here follows the passage, quoted in the text, of Henry's then being “in the green-apple stage.”
As I parted from Mr. Hosmer, whom the memory of his loved master had deeply stirred, he exclaimed, “When I hear of Henry Thoreau's growing fame the lines in Byron's ‘Isles of Greece’ from our old Reading Book rise in my mind, —
‘Ye have the Pyrrhic dance as yet, —
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons why forget
The nobler and the manlier one?’ ”
And the tears stood in his eyes.
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