greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive
correspondence, has not heard from himself this long time."

This hard, basic individualism was for Thoreau the foundation of
all enduring social relations, and the dullest observer of
twentieth century America can see that Thoreau's doctrine is
needed as much as ever. His sharp-edged personality provokes
curiosity and pricks the reader into dissent or emulation as the
case may be, but its chief ethical value to our generation lies
in the fact that here was a Transcendentalist who stressed, not
the life of the senses, though he was well aware of their
seductiveness, but the stubborn energy of the will.

The scope of the present book prevents more than a glimpse at the
other members of the New England Transcendental group. They are a
very mixed company, noble, whimsical, queer, impossible. "The
good Alcott," wrote Carlyle, "with his long, lean face and
figure, with his gray worn temples and mild radiant eyes; all
bent on saving the world by a return to acorns and the golden
age; he comes before one like a venerable Don Quixote, whom
nobody can laugh at without loving." These words paint a whole
company, as well as a single man. The good Alcott still awaits an
adequate biographer. Connecticut Yankee, peddler in the South,
school-teacher in Boston and elsewhere, he descended upon
Concord, flitted to the queer community of Fruitlands, was
starved back to Concord, inspired and bored the patient Emerson,
talked endlessly, wrote ineffective books, and had at last his
apotheosis in the Concord School of Philosophy, but was chiefly
known for the twenty years before his death in 1888 as the father
of the Louisa Alcott who wrote "Little Women." "A tedious