brain only, like the nut its kernel. I think that he must be the man of the most faith alive. His words and attitude always suppose a better state of things than other men are acquainted with, and he will be the last man to be disappointed as the ages revolve. . . . think that he should keep a caravansary on the world's highway, where philosophers of all nations might put up, and on his sign should be printed, 'Entertainment for man, but not for his beast. Enter ye that have leisure and a quiet mind, who earnestly seek the right road. A blue-robed man, whose fittest roof is the over arching sky which reflects his serenity. I do not see how he can ever die; nature cannot spare him.'"
At one time Thoreau quoted Alcott as saying were he and Ellery Channing to live in the same house, they "would soon sit with their backs to each other." Both these poet-philosophers, diverse in temperament, united in a common devotion to Thoreau, and, in time, gained that mutual sympathy which ended in firm friendship for each other. Channing, the last survivor of this famous Concord group, passing away in December, 1901, was, in truth, "the last leaf upon the tree," of transcendental poetry. He possessed, to the last, a strange, contradictory personality and a unique, neglected
