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my sister. It is a portion of thee and a portion of me which are of kin. O my sister! O Diana! thy tracks are on the eastern hill; thou newly didst pass that way. I, the hunter, saw them in the morning dew. My eyes are the hounds that pursued thee. I hear thee; thou canst speak, I cannot; I fear and forget to answer; I am occupied with hearing. I awoke and thought of thee; thou wast present to my mind. How camest thou there? Was I not present to thee, likewise?"

In such a lofty mystical strain did this Concord Endymion declare his passion for Nature, in whose green lap he slumbers now on the hill-side which the goddess nightly revisits.

"O sister of the sun, draw near,

With softly-moving step and slow,
For dreaming not of earthly woe
Thou seest Endymion sleeping here!"

CHAPTER XI.

PERSONAL TRAITS AND SOCIAL LIFE.

The

THE face of Thoreau, once seen, could not easily be forgotten, so strong was the mark that genius had set upon it. portrait of him, which has been commonly engraved, though it bore some resemblance at the time it was taken (by S. W. Rowse, in 1854), was never a very exact likeness. A few years later he began to wear his beard long, and this fine silken muffler for his delicate throat and lungs, was also an ornament to his grave and thoughtful face, concealing its weakest feature, a receding chin. The head engraved for this volume is from a photograph taken, in 1861, at New Bedford, and shows him as he was in his last years. His personal traits were not startling and commanding like, those of Webster, who drew the eyes of all men wherever he appeared, but they were peculiar, and dwelt long in the memory. His features were

prominent, his eyes large, round, and deepset, under bold brows, and full of fearless meditation; the color varying from blue to gray, as if with the moods of his mind. A youth who saw him for the first time, said with a start, "How deep and clear is the mark that thought sets upon a man's face!" And, indeed, no man could fail to recognize in him that rare intangible essence we call thought; his slight figure was active with it, while in his face it became contemplative, as if, like his own peasant, he were "meditating some vast and sunny problem." Channing says of his appearance:· :

"In height he was about the average; in his build spare, with limbs that were rather longer than usual, or of which he made a longer use. His features were marked; the nose aquiline or very Roman, like one of the portraits of Cæsar (more like a beak, as was said); large overhanging brows above the deepest-set blue eyes that could be seen, blue in certain lights and in others gray ; the forehead not unusually broad or high, full of concentrated energy and purpose; the mouth with prominent lips, pursed up with meaning and thought when silent, and giving out when open a stream of the most varied and un

usual and instructive sayings. His whole figure had an active earnestness, as if he had no moment to waste; the clenched hand betokened purpose. In walking he made a short cut, if he could, and when sitting in the shade or by the wall-side, seemed merely the clearer to look forward into the next piece of activity. The intensity of his mind, like Dante's, conveyed the breathing of aloofness, his eyes bent on the ground, his long swinging gait, his hands perhaps clasped behind him, or held closely at his side,the fingers made into a fist."

It is not possible to describe him more exactly.

In December, 1854, Thoreau went to lecture at Nantucket, and on his way spent a day or two with one of his correspondents, Daniel Ricketson of New Bedford, reaching his house on Christmas day. His host, who then saw him for the first time, thus recorded his impressions:

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"I had expected him at noon, but as he did not arrive, I had given him up for the day. In the latter part of the afternoon, I was clearing off the snow, which had fallen during the day, from my front steps, when, looking up, I saw a man walking up the carriage-road, bearing a portmanteau in one hand and an umbrella in the

other. He was dressed in a long overcoat of dark color, and wore a dark soft hat. I had no suspicion it was Thoreau, and rather supposed it was a pedler of small wares."

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This was a common mistake to make about Thoreau. When he ran the gauntlet of the Cape Cod villages, "feeling as strange," he says, 66 as if he were in a town in China," one of the old fishermen could not believe that he had not something to sell, as Bronson Alcott had when he perambulated Eastern Virginia and North Carolina in 1819-22, peddling silks and jewelry. Being assured that Thoreau was not peddling spectacles or books, the fisherman said at last: "Well, it makes no odds what it is you carry, so long as you carry Truth along with you."

"As Thoreau came near me," continues Mr. Ricketson," he stopped and said, 'You do not know me.' It flashed at once on my mind that the person before me was my correspondent, whom in my imagination I had figured as stout and robust, instead of the small and rather inferior-looking man before me. I concealed my disappointment, and at once replied, I presume this is Mr. Thoreau.' Taking his portmanteau,

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