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“But what shall I do?” said the patient publican.

“Resign,” said the philosopher.

Thoreau seemed to forget that officeholders seldom die and never resign. In the argument the publican was worsted, but he was not without resource. He went back to town and told the other officials what had happened. Their dignity was at stake. Alcott had been guilty of a like defiance some time before, and now it was the belief that he was putting the younger man up to insurrection.

The next time Thoreau came over to the village for his mail he was arrested and lodged in the local bastile.

Emerson, hearing of the trouble, hastened to the jail, and reaching the presence of the prisoner asked sternly, “Henry, why are you here?”

And the answer was, “Waldo, why are you not here?” Emerson had no use for such finespun theories of duty, and the matter was too near home for a joke, so he turned away and let the culprit spend the night in limbo. The next morning Thoreau was released, the tax having been paid by some unknown person–Emerson, undoubtedly. This was a tame enough ending to what was rather an interesting affair–the hope of the best citizens being that Thoreau would get a goodly sentence for vagrancy. The townfolk looked upon Thoreau and Alcott with suspicious eyes. They both came in for much well-deserved censure, and Emerson did not go unsmirched, since he was guilty of harboring and encouraging these ne’er-do-wells.

Thoreau’s cabin-life continued for two Summers and Winters. He had proved that two hours’ manual work each day was sufficient to keep a man–twenty cents a day would suffice.

The last year in the woods he had many callers: Agassiz had been to see him, Emerson had often called, Ellery Channing was a frequent visitor, and picnickers were constant. Lowell had made a few cutting remarks to the effect that “as compared with shanty-life, the tub of Diogenes was preferable, as it had a much sounder bottom,” and Hawthorne had written of “the beauties of conspicuous solitude.”

Thoreau felt that he was attracting too much attention, and that perhaps Hawthorne was right: a recluse who holds receptions is becoming the thing he pretends to despise. Besides that, there was plenty of precedent for quitting–Brook Farm had gone by the board, and was but a memory.

Thoreau’s shanty was turned over to a utilitarian Scotchman with red hair. Later the immortal shanty was a useful granary. Thoreau went back to the village to live in a garret and work at odd jobs of boat-building and gardening.

Now only a pile of boulders marks the place where the cabin stood. For some years, each visitor to the spot threw a stone upon the heap, but recently the proposition has been reversed, and each visitor takes a stone away, which reveals not a reversal in the sentiment toward the memory of Thoreau, but a change in the quality of the Concord pilgrim.

* * * * *

Thoreau’s early death was the direct result of his reckless lack of common prudence. That which made him live, in a literary way, curtailed his years. The man was improperly and imperfectly nourished, physically. Men who live alone do not cook any more than they have to: men and women, both, cook for emulation. That is to say, we work for each other, and we succeed only as we help each other.

Thoreau was such a pronounced individualist that he cared for no one but himself, and he cared for himself not at all. It is wife, children and home that teach a man prudence, and make him bank against the storm. “At Walden no one bothered me but the State,” said Thoreau. If Thoreau had had a family and treated his household as he treated himself, that scorned thing, the State, would have stepped in and sent him to the workhouse, and his children to the Home for the Friendless.