But the critics sometimes miss the inner harmony which Thoreau's
admirers see, and discern only queer paradoxes and extravagances of
statement where the others hear the voice of nature's oracle. With
most literary men, the power or disposition of those who know or
understand their writings is in some degree a matter of literary
culture. It is hardly so in the case of Thoreau.
The most illiterate man I know who had ever heard of Thoreau, Mr.
Barney Mullins, of Freedom Centre, Outagamie County, Wisconsin, was a
most ardent admirer of Thoreau, while the most eminent critic in
America, James Russell Lowell, does him scant justice. To Lowell, the
finest thoughts of Thoreau are but strawberries from Emerson's garden,
and other critics have followed back these same strawberries through
Emerson's to still older gardens, among them to that of Sir Thomas
Browne.
But, setting the critics aside, let me tell you about Barney Mullins.
Twenty years ago, I lived for a year in the northern part of Wisconsin.
The snow is very deep in the winter there, and once I rode into town
through the snowbanks on a sled drawn by two oxen and driven by Barney
Mullins.
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