same case with one who requires to take opium for the same
purpose. What we want to see is one who can breast into the
world, do a man's work, and still preserve his first and pure
enjoyment of existence.

Thoreau's faculties were of a piece with his moral shyness;
for they were all delicacies. He could guide himself about
the woods on the darkest night by the touch of his feet. He
could pick up at once an exact dozen of pencils by the
feeling, pace distances with accuracy, and gauge cubic
contents by the eye. His smell was so dainty that he could
perceive the foetor of dwelling-houses as he passed them by
at night; his palate so unsophisticated that, like a child,
he disliked the taste of wine - or perhaps, living in
America, had never tasted any that was good; and his
knowledge of nature was so complete and curious that he could
have told the time of year, within a day or so, by the aspect
of the plants. In his dealings with animals, he was the
original of Hawthorne's Donatello. He pulled the woodchuck
out of its hole by the tail; the hunted fox came to him for
protection; wild squirrels have been seen to nestle in his
waistcoat; he would thrust his arm into a pool and bring
forth a bright, panting fish, lying undismayed in the palm of
his hand. There were few things that he could not do. He
could make a house, a boat, a pencil, or a book. He was a
surveyor, a scholar, a natural historian. He could run,
walk, climb, skate, swim, and manage a boat. The smallest
occasion served to display his physical accomplishment; and a
manufacturer, from merely observing his dexterity with the
window of a railway carriage, offered him a situation on the