Page:Some unpublished letters of Henry D. and Sophia E. Thoreau; a chapter in the history of a still-born book.djvu/25

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'walk'; he might indeed have whispered to his own heart,

"Time cannot bend the line which Truth hath writ."

The present editor has assured himself that Froude's presentation copy of his self-sacrificing Nemesis of Faith is to this day in Emerson's library at the old home, but he has not been able to learn that Froude also sent a copy to Thoreau; so it is a safe inference that Thoreau read Emerson's. A phrase in Froude's letter to Thoreau shows conclusively that Thoreau had learned of Froude from Emerson and that Thoreau had read Froude's ill-starred Nemesis—the "wild protest against all authority, Divine and human," as that gentlest of Quakeresses, Caroline Fox,