Thoreau writes in his journal:
One must fight his way, after a fashion, even in the most civil and polite society. The most truly kind and gracious have to be won by a sort of valor, for the seeds of suspicion seem to lurk in every spadeful of earth, as well as those of confidence. The president and librarian turn the cold shoulder to your application, though they are known for benevolent persons. They wonder if you can be anything but a thief, contemplating frauds on the Library. It is the instinctive and salutary principle of self-defense; that which makes the cat show her talons when you take her by the paw.
Thoreau checks out a book called Poetical Tracts, The history of the Anglo-Saxons by Sharon Turner, Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon poetry by John Josias Conybeare, and The works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper, volume 21, edited by Alexander Chalmers from Harvard College Library.
(Companion to Thoreau’s Correspondence, 288)
