"Now I lay me down to sleep," and who is always anticipating "his long rest." Such comments, which, of necessity, seem extreme and unpardonable to-day, were called forth by the moral apathy of the times when Thoreau lived and wrote. The formalism and narrowness of the Puritan religion seemed to Thoreau, as it did to many another of his time, almost cruel, surely unjust, in its neglect of free, open-handed service to the poor and oppressed.
The extravagant, philosophic chapter on "Clothes" in "Walden" is suggestive of the satire and the serious remonstrance of Teüfelsdröckh. With forceful prophecy, again, he contrasts true education, which regards nature as fundamental and attains intelligent thought, with a forced instruction in sundry accomplishments, or hothouse branches. In the essay on "Walking" occurs this denunciation, couched in the terse, vigorous sentences of his most expulsive style,—"I would say to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, sometimes, 'Go to grass. You have eaten hay long enough. The spring has come with its green crop. The very cows are driven to their country pastures before the end of May; though I have heard of one unnatural farmer who kept his cow in the barn and fed her on hay all the year round.' So, frequently,
