It is not very surprising, perhaps, that this doctrine has been ridiculed by critics, in view of the unwise manner in which some of its adherents have preached and practised it. The attractions of Rousseau’s “return to nature” have been too powerful for the weaker enthusiasts, who, in their desire to be “natural,” have missed the qualities in which true naturalness consists. I remember the case of a clever young man, fresh from the University, who, bitten by the creed of simplicity, rented a large tract in a sandy wilderness where crops could hardly be made to grow, and induced an experienced labourer, of the old school, to bring his family to reside upon this model farm in the hope of there realizing the ideal. He would be “natural”; that was his constant cry. A Hardy would have been needed to portray the agricultural tragedies that ensued. In the fierce heat of a fiery summer the crops withered one by one, until the heart of the old husbandman was sick within him with a savage despair. I recall a Sunday stroll, with the party from the farm, to a hill which overlooked that Sahara where their hopes were buried, and the deep fervour of the veteran’s ejaculations as he gazed across the desolate scene. “Well, I _am_--” was his repeated remark; and the language was quite unfitted for the mixed company at his side. Against fiascos of this sort stood the fact that the writings of the true exponents of Simplicity were increasingly read and pondered. In Thoreau’s genius there was a magnetism which could influence not only those who knew him, but a later generation of readers, among whom a common love for the “poet-naturalist” of Concord has often been a link of friendship (as I have reason to remember with gratitude) between lives that were otherwise far apart. A first reading of _Walden_ was in my own case an epoch, a revelation; and I know that in this respect my experience was not a singular one; nor has the impression which I then formed of Thoreau’s greatness been in any way lessened, but on the contrary much strengthened, by my correspondence or personal intercourse with those who were numbered among his friends.