The father is described by Mr. Sanborn as “a small, deaf, and unobtrusive man,” “grave and silent, but inwardly cheerful and social.” Mrs. Thoreau, on the other hand, was by all accounts of a peculiarly vivacious temper: “very much of a person,” says Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, “by no means negative; of Scotch ancestry, a Dunbar, with characteristic keenness, ready wit, economy, and skill of fence with her tongue, all of which, as well as strong family affection, her son Henry inherited from her.” Withal, it is interesting to know, on the same excellent authority, that she “had a great love of nature. It was her constant habit to take her children afield while they were very young. She first directed their attention to birds and flowers, and she and her daughters always had beautiful flowers in a great south window at home during the winter.” She was a “notable housewife,” Dr. Emerson adds, “keeping an excellent table by her skill and taste, even at a time when the family were largely denying themselves butter and sugar that money might be laid by for the boys’ education; and, for all that, she always made home agreeable, not letting herself be drowned in housekeeping and family cares.” Like her son after her, she had a friendly way with children. “I can testify to her exceeding kindness and hospitality to young people, to whom she was a most entertaining hostess,” says Dr. Emerson; “for although she talked fast and much, her wit and mimicry and memory were admirable.”* After this testimony to Mrs. Thoreau’s qualities, it is not difficult to understand why the neighbors of the family always maintained that Henry was “clear Dunbar.” The son, too, held strong opinions, not only about questions of philosophy and politics, but about persons; and these opinions he expressed on occasion with pungency and freedom. What else were opinions for? And he, as well as his mother, was of a social turn. He professed, to be sure, never to have found “the companion that was so companionable as solitude;” a bold saying, at which some readers will sneer, and others grow angry, though there was never a studious, thoughtful man but in certain moods could say the same; but he professed, also, that he was naturally no hermit, and loved society “as much as most.” “He enjoyed common people,” says Channing. “He came to know the inside of every farmer’s house and head, his pot of beans, and mug of hard cider. Never in too much hurry for a dish of gossip, he could sit out the oldest frequenter of the bar-room, and was alive from top to toe with curiosity.” All of which will not be deemed inconsistent with a two years’ life in a woodland hermitage, except by those who demand of human nature a measure of self-consistency that was never in the Maker’s plan.

Of the Thoreau household, as a whole, Mr. Sanborn has drawn a pleasing picture.

“Helen, the oldest child, born in 1812, was an accomplished teacher. John, the elder son, born in 1814, was one of those lovely and sunny natures which infuse affection in all who come within their range; and Henry, with his peculiar strength and independence of soul, was a marked personage among the few who would give themselves the trouble to understand him. Sophia, the youngest child, born in 1819, had, along with her mother’s lively and dramatic turn, a touch of art; and all of them, whatever their accidental position for the time, were superior persons. . . . The household of which they were living and thoughtful members (let one be permitted to say who was for a time domesticated there) had, like the best families everywhere, a distinct and individual existence, in which each person counted for something. . . . To meet one of the Thoreaus was not the same as to encounter any other person who might happen to cross your path. Life to them was something more than a parade of pretensions, a conflict of ambitions, or an incessant scramble for the common objects of desire. . . . Without wealth, or power, or social prominence, they still held a rank of their own, in scrupulous independence, and with qualities that put condescension out of the question.”

At sixteen Henry Thoreau entered Harvard College, the other members of the family cheerfully making sacrifices to that end. His collegiate career, a phrase at which he always smiled, was undistinguished. He carried away no honors, though President Quincy afterward certified that “his rank was high as a scholar in all the branches,” and seems to have made few friends; but he did much reading, and to much purpose, in books of his own choice. One of his fellow students remembers him “in the college yard, with downcast thoughtful look intent, as if he were searching for something;* always in a green coat,—green because the authorities required black, I suppose.”

He was graduated in the regular course at twenty. Then came at once the question of a livelihood. For a time he tried teaching, the first resort of young scholars; but he soon made up his mind against it as too wasteful of time and energy, and seems before long to have settled down upon the conviction, more than once expressed in his books, and consistently adhered to in his practice, that for a scholar bound to remain a scholar—that is, a learner—there is no resource so good as light manual labor. Cut your expenses down till you need to earn little, and earn that little by days’ work, not years’ work, with the hands. This, for substance, was his industrial creed. “Regular” work of any kind, “salaried” work, so called, involves a relinquishment of independence such as would have been fatal to Thoreau’s scheme of life. As for getting a living without earning it, that was something that never entered into his thoughts.

For supporting himself according to his method,—working only when money was needed,—he possessed some very special advantages over the common run of scholars.