AUTHOR’S NOTE

Abundantly as Henry Thoreau informs us about himself in his Journal, his correspondence and his writings, his story, owing to the extreme reticence of his nature, would obviously be incomplete if it were reduced to these elements alone. To finish it remained the task of certain of his contemporaries, members of his circle. What the following pages owe to their invaluable testimony is so evident that it has not been thought necessary to emphasize this indebtedness by crowding the book with notes, as if it laid any claim to erudition. Nevertheless, this absence of references, ill-judged as it may be, must not be taken to imply that this portrait-study has been inspired by any desire less exacting than their own for the pure and simple truth. It merely means that behind this truth there was perhaps another, less often sought for, but no less moving after these vanished years.