"Whilst he used in his writings a certain petulance of remark in reference to churches or churchmen, he was a person of a rare, tender, and absolute religion,—a person incapable of any profanation, by act or thought." This must be borne in mind in reading the ensuing pages; and also the further remark of Emerson, that "a certain habit of antagonism defaced his earlier writings,—a trick of rhetoric never quite out grown."
Nothing of this appears in the Notes of the last of his journeys here developed and published without the aid of his interpolations. How much these would have added to the interest of the book when published, need not here be remarked. Thoreau would have introduced those characters of humor or adventure, like Martin Scott, Marquette, and La Salle, in the early and the more recent story of the Mississippi Valley; whose names merely occur in these Notes, but of whom a thousand anecdotes and adventures are known. He would doubtless have expanded his slight allusion to the Gascon Baron Lahontan (as the name is now written) into
[xxxii]
