brightly as from the rich man's abode. The snow melts before its door as early in the spring."
Thoreau's enjoyment was calm and level. From his writings we do not gather that he was ever desperately unhappy, unless it was perhaps in a crowded street or in a luxurious drawing-room. He did mind very much the struggle and bustle, the ugliness of city life and all it stands for. It had a bad, cramping effect upon him, and he shunned it. Once back again in his woods and fields, his whole nature expanded. On cheerless, bleak days, when he was out of doors and the villagers would be thinking of their inn, he would, he says, come to himself and feel himself to be part of it all. "This cold and solitude are friends of mine." In the country and alone he would see things as they are, "grand and beautiful," and forget "all trivial men and things." The stillness and solitude inspired him. His brain and mind worked and his nerves were steadied.
To some, Thoreau appeared to have a cold personality. One man said of him he would as soon think of taking his arm as taking the arm of an elm-tree. "You could not," said Carlyle, "nestle up to him." There are others who put a man down as a coward if he runs away from the world as it is, and does not face it and make the best of it. On this question there must always be a good deal of dispute, but it is really rather an absurd thing to argue about, because we are all made so differently. What is one man's
