Thoreau avowed, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life." So he lived, a happy stoic, beside his little lake. "A lake," said he, "is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is the earth's eye, looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.... It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh, ... swept by the sun's hazy brush." In the solitude of his days the lake-dweller found himself "no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a bumble-bee. I am no more lonely than the mill brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or the first spider in a new house." He describes with affection "the old settler and original proprietor who is reported to have dug Walden Pond, and stoned it, and fringed it with pine woods"; and that "elderly dame" who lived in his neighborhood, "invisible to most persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to stroll some times, gathering samples and listening to her fables; for she has a genius of unequaled fertility. Her memory runs back farther than mythology, and she can tell me the original of every fable, and on what fact everyone is founded, for the incidents occurred when she was young. A ruddy and lusty old dame, who delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive all her children yet." Thoreau's vigorous, contented years came to a close in 1862, when he was only forty-five. He sleeps in the burying-ground of his well-loved Concord, from which he rarely strayed far during his lifetime. Said his friend, William Ellery Channing, "His love of wildness was real. This child of an old civilization, this Norman boy with the blue eyes and brown hair, held the Indian's creed, and believed in the essential worth and integrity of plant and animal. This was a religion; to us mythical. So far a recluse as never to seek popular ends, he was yet gifted with the ability and courage to be a captain of men. Heroism he possessed in its highest sense,--the will to use his means to his ends, and these the best." [Illustration: FROM THE JOHN MUIR MEMORIAL NUMBER OF THE SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN JOHN MUIR W.F. DASSONVILLE, PHOTOGRAPHER] _AMERICAN NATURALISTS_ _John Muir_ FOUR