nfortunately for me, I came along just too late to ever interview anyone who actually had known Thoreau in person. I recall once as a teen-ager visiting Concord and seeing old Howard Melvin who ran a little gift and postcard shop at Old North Bridge for years and who used to regale visitors with his memories of Thoreau, but that was before I became obsessed with Thoreau—and besides I probably would have been too shy to ask him even if I had had the foresight. But then it is probably just as well, for although Melvin used to tell of going hunting and mountain climbing with Thoreau, he was, I have since been told, two or three years old when Thoreau died.