Red-cushionéd and tasseled with the day."

The events and thoughts of Thoreau's life at Walden may be read in his book of that name. As a protest against society, that life was ineffectual, as the communities at Brook Farm and Fruitlands had proved to be; and as the Fourierite phalansteries, in which Horace Greely interested himself, were destined to be. In one sense, all these were failures; but in Thoreau's case the failure was slight, the discipline and experience gained were invaluable. He never regretted it, and the Walden episode in his career has made him better known than anything else.

CHAPTER IX.

HORACE IN THE RÔLE OF MÆCENAS.

IN a letter to his sister Sophia, July 21, 1843, written from Mr. William Emerson's house at Staten Island, Thoreau says:

"In New York I have seen, since I wrote last, Horace Greeley, editor of the Tribune,' who is cheerfully in earnest at his office of all work, a hearty New Hampshire boy as one would wish to meet, and says, 'Now be neighborly.' He believes only or mainly, first in the Sylvania Association, somewhere in Pennsylvania; and secondly, and most of all, in a new association, to go into operation soon in New Jersey, with which he is connected."

This was the "Phalanstery Phalanstery" at which W. H. Channing afterward preached. A fortnight later, Thoreau writes to Mr. Em

"I have had a pleasant talk with W. H. Channing; and Greeley, too, it was refreshing to meet. They were both much pleased with your criti

cism on Carlyle, but thought that you had overlooked what chiefly concerned them in the book, -its practical aims and merits."

This refers to the notice of Carlyle's "Past and Present," in the "Dial" for July, 1843, and shows that Mr. Greeley was a quick reader of that magazine, as Thoreau always was of the "New York Tribune." From this time onward a warm friendship continued between Thoreau and Greeley, and many letters went to and fro, which reveal the able editor in the light of a modern Mæcenas to the author of the Musketaquid Georgics.

No letters seem to have passed between them earlier than 1846; and in 1844-45 Thoreau must have known the "Tribune" editor best through his newspaper, and from the letters of Margaret Fuller, Ellery Channing, and other common friends, who saw much of him then, admired and laughed at him, or did both by turns. Miss Fuller, who had gone to New York to write for the "Tribune," and to live in its Editor's family, wrote:

"Mr. Greeley is a man of genuine excellence, honorable, benevolent, and of an uncorrupted dis

position. He is sagacious, and, in his way, of even great abilities. In modes of life and manners, he is a man of the people, and of the American people. With the exception of my own mother, I think him the most disinterestedly generous person I have ever known."

There was a laughable side even to these fine traits, and there were eccentricities of dress and manner, which others saw more keenly than this generous woman. Ellery Channing, whose eye no whimsical or beautiful object ever escaped,

in the letter

of March, 1845, already cited, thus signaled to Thoreau the latest news of his friend:

"Mumbo Jumbo is recovering from an attack of sore eyes, and will soon be out, in a pair of canvas trousers, scarlet jacket, and cocked hat. I understand he intends to demolish all the remaining species of Fetichism at a meal. I think it is probable it will vomit him.”

Thoreau wrote an essay on Carlyle in 1846, and in the summer of that year sent it to Mr. Greeley, with a request that he would find a place for it in some magazine. To this request, which Mr. Greeley himself had invited, no doubt, he thus replied:

say that I mean to do the errand you have asked of me, and that soon. But I am not sanguine of success, and have hardly a hope that it will be immediate, if ever. I hardly know a work that would publish your article all at once, and 'to be continued' are words shunned like a pestilence. But I know you have written a good thing about Carlyle, too solidly good, I fear, to be profitable to yourself, or attractive to publishers. Did'st thou ever, 0 my friend! ponder on the significance and cogency of the assurance, ‘Ye cannot serve God and Mammon,' as applicable to literature, — applicable, indeed, to all things whatsoever? God grant us grace to endeavor to serve Him rather than Mammon, that ought to suf

fice us. In my poor judgment, if anything is calculated to make a scoundrel of an honest man, writing to sell is that very particular thing.

"Yours heartily,

HORACE GREELEY.

"Remind Ralph Waldo Emerson and wife of my existence and grateful remembrance."

On the 30th of September Mr. Greeley again wrote, saying,

"I learned to-day, through Mr. Griswold, former editor of Graham's Magazine,' that your lecture is accepted, to appear in that magazine.