A lady once asked John Burroughs this question: "What would become of this world if everybody in it patterned after Henry Thoreau?" And Ol' John replied, "It would be much improved." But your Uncle John is a humorist--he knows that Henry Ward Beecher was right when he said, "God never made but one Thoreau--that was enough, but we are grateful for the one." Thoreau was a poet-naturalist, and the lesson he taught us is that this is the most beautiful world to know anything about, and there are enough curious and wonderful things right under our feet, and over our heads, and all around us, to amuse, divert, interest and instruct us for a lifetime. We need only a little. Use your eyes! "How do you manage to find so many Indian relics?" a friend asked Thoreau. "Just like this," he replied, and stooping over, he picked up an arrowhead under the friend's foot. At dinner once at a neighbor's he was asked what dish he preferred, and his answer was, "The nearest." To him, everything was good--he uttered no complaints and made no demands. When asked by a clergyman why he did not go to church, he said, "It is the rafters--I can't stand them--when I look up, I want to gaze straight into the blue sky." Then he turned the tables and asked the interrogator a question: "Did you ever happen, accidentally, to say anything while you were preaching?" Yet preachers of brains were always attracted to him: Harrison Blake, to whom he wrote more letters than to any one else, was a Congregational preacher. And when Horace Greeley took Thoreau to Plymouth Church, Beecher invited him to sit on the platform and quoted him as one who saw God in autumn's every burning bush. The wit of the man--his direct speech, and all of his beautiful indifference for the good opinion of those whom others follow after and lie in wait for--was sublime. Meanness, hypocrisy, secrecy and subterfuge had no place in Thoreau's nature. He wanted nothing--nothing but liberty--he did not even ask for your applause or approval. When walking on country roads, laborers would hail him and ask for tobacco--seeing in him only one of their own kind. Farmers would stop and gossip with him about the weather. Children ran to him on the village streets and would cling to his hands and clutch his coat, and ask where the berries grew, or the first spring flowers were to be found. With children he was particularly patient and kind. With them he would converse as freely as did George Francis Train with the children in Madison Square. The children recognized in him something very much akin to themselves--he would play upon his flute for them and whittle out toy boats, regardless of the flight of time. Imbeciles and mental defectives from the almshouse used occasionally to wander over to his cabin in the woods, and he would treat them with gentle consideration, and accompany them back home.