of poetry interspersed through the book;' for these, I suppose, are the least attractive to most readers. I have not been engaged in any particular work on Botany, or the like, though, if I were to live, I should have much to report on Natural History generally.

I

"You ask particularly after my health. suppose that I have not many months to live; but, of course, I know nothing about it. I may add, that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.

"Yours truly,

"By

HENRY D. THOREAU,

SOPHIA E. THOREAU."

"With an unfaltering trust in God's mercies," wrote Ellery Channing, “and never deserted by his good genius, he most bravely and unsparingly passed down the inclined plane of a terrible malady-pulmonary consumption; working steadily at the completing of his papers to his last hours, or so long as he could hold the pencil in his trembling fingers. Yet if he did get a little sleep to comfort him in this year's campaign of sleepless affliction, he was sure to interest those about him in his singular dreams, more than usually fantastic. He said once, that having got a few moments

of repose, sleep seemed to hang round his bed in festoons. He declared uniformly that he preferred to endure with a clear mind the worst penalties of suffering rather than be plunged in a turbid dream by narcotics. His patience was unfailing; assuredly he knew not aught save resignation; he did mightily cheer and console those whose strength was less. His every instant now, his least thought and work, sacredly belonged to them, dearer than his rapidly perishing life, whom he should so quickly leave behind."

Once or twice he shed tears. Upon hearing a wandering musician in the street playing some tune of his childhood he might never hear again, he wept, and said to his mother, "Give him some money for me!"

"Northward he turneth through a little door,

And scarce three steps, ere Music's golden tongue,
Flattered to tears this aged man and poor;

But no

already had his death-bell rung,

The joys of all his life were said and sung."

He died on the 6th of May, 1862, and had a public funeral from the parish church a few days later. On his coffin his friend

Channing placed several inscriptions, among them this, "Hail to thee, O man! who hast come from the transitory place to the imperishable." This sentiment may stand as faintly marking Thoreau's deep, vital conviction of immortality, of which he never had entertained a doubt in his life. There was in his view of the world and its Maker no room for doubt; so that when he was once asked, superfluously, what he thought of a future world and its compensations, he replied, "Those were voluntaries I did not take," having confined himself to the foreordained course of things. He is buried in the village cemetery, quaintly named Sleepy Hollow," with his family and friends about him; one of whom, surviving him for a few years, said, as she looked upon his low head-stone on the hillside, "Concord is Henry's monument, covered with suitable inscriptions by his own hand."

66

INDEX.