Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/298

There are suggestions of Whitman's "The Sun-Bath," without his expressions of crude animalism, in the poetic fancy in "A Week," depicting the delight of resting on a summer's day "up to one's chin on some retired swamp, scenting the wild honey-suckle and bilberry blows and lulled by the minstrelsy of gnats and mosquitoes." To Thoreau, wildness was a stimulant and a panacea for village life and the distractions of society. Such doctrine is applied in current life with a full measure undreamed in his day. Fifty years ago a man who took walks in the country, as a part of his daily life-schedule, or a woman who took her book or sewing under the trees or by the pond, represented a minority in the community for whom their friends assumed an apologetic tone. Present-day recreations, "fresh-air" excursions, classes sauntering into woods and fields for practical study, family life and domestic pursuits transacted on the spacious piazzas of modern homes,—such healthful signs of the times indicate the stimulative, prophetic force of teachings and examples like those of Thoreau and his few disciples. The modern world has at last accepted his emphasis of the intellectual and moral sanity, no less than the bodily vigor, which can be gained only by a free, constant comradeship with nature.