"The Stranger Guest" appeared as Chapter XXII of C.A. Stephens, Haps and Mishaps at The Old Farm (Norway, Maine: The Old Squire's Bookstore, 1925), pp. 219-227.
Since it is fun to try to guess the identity of the stranger guest as you read the story, I won't spoil the fun by revealing the answer.
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Who he was, the old squire never knew with certainty; but this is the story as I used to hear it:
It was late in September, on one of the first cold nights of fall, when the leaves are beginning to flutter down from the trees and the ripe apples are dropping in the orchards. After clearing the supper table Grandmother Ruth had kindled a fire in the sitting-room fireplace, and she sat by it, knitting, while the old squire read the Independent aloud to her. Except for a hired man and a woman helper they were alone at the old farm, for this was in Civil War times, some years before we young folks went home to live there. Two of their sons had already fallen in battle, and the other two were with the army at the front.
About eight o'clock they heard a knock at the side door. On opening it the old squire dimly perceived a stranger—a medium-sized man, wearing a cap and jacket and carrying a stout stick in his hand.
"Good evening, sir !" the old squire said, peering out at him. "What's wanted ?"
The stranger asked whether they could entertain him for the night. "I am taking a long walk," he added, "and I can find no tavern."
"I guess we will try to put you up," the old squire replied. "Are you alone?"
"Alone and afoot," the stranger replied dryly. "Perhaps I ought to tell you before I come in that I've been in jail once."
"That so?" the old squire said. "Well, step inside here, and let me have a look at you."
The stranger entered and stood just within the doorway, perfectly still, with a curious smile on his face, but without speaking, as the old squire brought a lamp.
"You don't look like a very bad man, and rogues are not likely to tell of their being in jail," the old squire remarked, with a smile. "Excuse me for asking, but what's your business in these parts?"
"Stealing apples," the odd visitor replied.
"How do you get them away, without a team?" the old squire inquired skeptically.
"I don't get them away," the stranger said. "I merely bite them and throw them down. I'm only after the flavor. I bite only natural fruit, mostly apples growing wild by the roadsides or in pastures. Grafts I don't care for. Natural fruit has the fine flavors."
"Just so," the old squire rejoined, amused, but with some misgivings as to the fellow's sanity. "You can stay here for the night. Do you want supper?"
"I should like some bread and butter, if it is convenient, and a cup of tea," he said.
Grandmother Ruth was not favorably impressed by the stranger's appearance, but she brought a loaf of bread, some butter and a slice of cake. She spread a little table at one side of the fireplace, and when she had brewed a pot of green tea she bade him help himself. He did so without a word, and for some time did full justice to the simple repast. When he had finished, he extended his feet to the fire.
Wishing to seem sociable, the old squire asked the stranger whether he had traveled far, and where he was from.
"I have come roundabouts from a town not far from Boston," the man replied. "I came into New Hampshire, and walked through the Glen of the White Mountains. I've been in Maine three times before this. Yes, four times. I frequently tramp about."
"And how do you like our state?" the old squire asked.
"I like it, because much of it is wild country. I like virgin forests, and lakes and rivers in the wilderness. Once, about eleven years ago, I climbed that hoary, grim mountain the Indians call Katahdin. Twice I have followed the Penobscot in a birch canoe, from Chesuncook to Bangor. Once I canoed down the Allagash to the St. John."
"Interested in lumber?"
"Interested in trees. I love trees. I pity them. Men slay them and use their dried flesh for houses and to burn in stoves."
Somewhat impressed by such Delphic utterances, the old squire asked his guest whether he thought trees felt the axe when being felled.
"Beyond doubt," said the queer traveler unhesitatingly. "Not as we feel a cut, of course, but they feel it and shrink from death."
"You deem it cruel to cut a tree, then?"
"I deem it murder," replied the stranger.
"Yet it can hardly be helped," the old squire rejoined.
"No, because man has become man, with his foolish round of artificial wants. That is where cruelty enters -- cruelty to all nature round him. Man has become unnatural, hence cruel, and believes now that he cannot be otherwise."
"You think the way we live is a mistake, then?" the old squire asked.
"Certainly I do. Human beings ought never to have begun living in artificial ways. The human race should have gone on living naturally, like the birds and beasts. No real happiness can ever come from civilization, because it is unnatural and contrary to terrestrial nature. It will end badly."
"But how can we do otherwise than we do?" the old squire asked him. "We live among other people and have to do as they do."
"Not at all. We can live naturally if we have a mind to. It is a duty."
"But, my dear man, have you ever tried that yourself?" the old squire exclaimed.
"Yes, sir," the stranger declared emphatically. "I have. I do when at home -- and that is the way I got into jail," he added, laughing for the first time, but rather sardonically.
"I can well understand that," the old squire remarked dryly. "It is what I should expect for myself, if I started to live wholly according to nature."
Noticing that Grandmother Ruth was knitting faster and faster, he guessed that this talk nettled her, and so he changed the subject. Grandmother Ruth considered that being in jail was a sign of great moral turpitude.
The old squire had at first believed that the wanderer was a border smuggler, who had merely invented the tale of "stealing apples" to cloak some less trivial purpose for his travels. As they conversed, however, the old squire perceived that his guest was a man of education, with deep and earnest conviction in his beliefs -- not at all the sort of man who would engage in petty smuggling.
"Did you ever go as far as Canada on your tramps?" the old squire asked.
"Once only," the stranger replied, "and then I went by train, and not on foot, to Montreal and Quebec." He described his walk from Quebec to the Falls of Montmorency and thence to the shrine of Ste. Anne de Beaupré. He went on to speak of faith as a means of healing the sick, and let fall certain remarks that indicated clearly that he was not a firm believer in miracles.
"What is your belief ?" the old squire asked.
"I am a pantheist, pure and simple," the stranger said. "So is Ralph Waldo Emerson, though he hedges about avowing it. I do not see how one can be anything else."
Grandmother Ruth did not know what a pantheist was, but she felt sure that it was something not at all proper. Her needles were fairly flying now.
"Some years ago," the stranger went on, "I traveled the length of Cape Cod. I went to Cohasset and to Provincetown, where the Pilgrims first set foot on the soil of Massachusetts. Magnificently in earnest, those people! But difficult to live with."
"Yes, they would have made it warm for pantheists," the old squire remarked. "It is likely, too, that they would strongly have disapproved of 'stealing apples.'"
"No doubt they would have jailed me or put me in their stocks," the stranger said. "Yet nature plants wild apples for bird and beast; why not for me?"
Grandmother Ruth could listen in silence no longer. "You ask why?" she exclaimed. "Because you are not a bird or a squirrel. Because you are a human being, and have to stand together with the rest of us to keep order in the world. That's why."
Their guest contemplated her for several moments with disapproval. "Yes, that is the common view of it," he said at last.
"And the right one," Grandmother Ruth insisted.
In the interests of hospitality the old squire quickly changed the subject.
"I dare say you find now and then a tree of fine-flavored natural fruit," he remarked.
Thereupon the stranger began to describe certain delicious wild apples that he had discovered on his long walks. The old squire became much interested in the conversation, for the stranger proved a most entertaining and instructive talker. From apple trees, they passed to forest trees, of which, as a lumberman as well as a farmer, the old squire possessed an extensive practical knowledge. Even here he found that the stranger had much information to give him.
The clock struck eleven, and after lighting a bedtime candle for their guest Grandmother Ruth retired. The two tree lovers talked on until past midnight.
"Really, I should like to know your name," the old squire said, when at last he showed the stranger his way to a bed in the "east room." "I have greatly enjoyed our talk together. You seem to be a philosopher."
"Do names count for much ?" the stranger remarked after a moment's silence. "Names always appear to me to befog the personality of my acquaintances. Their names stand for one thing, they themselves for another. Often I think I would know them better if they had had no names. Would you not as soon remember me for what I am, as by a name?"
"Certainly, certainly," the old squire said, thinking that for some reason the man did not wish to reveal his name -- perhaps because of the jail episode.
The stranger sat thoughtfully on the side of the bed. "Of course, as I have entered your house and accepted your hospitality, I ought to give you my name, if you wish it," he said.
"No, no, don't mention it," the old squire said hastily, and bade him good night.
On going out at sunrise the next morning the old squire espied the stranger walking about in the orchard. He came in and took breakfast with them, but seemed rather taciturn; after offering to pay for his entertainment he went his way. That was the last they saw of him.
As time passed, the old squire reverted to his surmise that, in spite of the stranger's erudition and love of nature, he was a border smuggler. In the fall of 1862, however, while on a trip to Portland, the old gentleman happened to take up a copy of the Atlantic Monthly, and saw in it an essay entitled Wild Apples, by Henry D. Thoreau. The title attracted him, and he had not read the article half through before he became convinced that the author was none other than his former guest. The sentiment, the descriptions and the quotations from classic writers were identical with those that his strange guest had used in that memorable conversation at the old farm.
On returning home he wrote a pleasant letter of reminiscence, and sent it to Thoreau, in care of the Atlantic Monthly. The letter was returned, with a note from the editor, saying that Henry D. Thoreau had died only a short time before. The old squire was not a little shocked. by the news, so vividly had the personality of his guest impressed itself on his mind. To the end of his life the old gentleman never doubted that the sojourner at the farm that night was indeed the celebrated author.
But had Thoreau been in jail? He had -- actually. Thoreau at one time lived alone at Concord, Massachusetts, in a little cabin on the shore of Walden Pond. He maintained that, since he caused the town no expense, he ought not to be asked to pay taxes.
But the town officials took a different view of the matter. The tax collector called at his cabin and demanded payment of the sum assessed. Thoreau refused to pay it.
"I owe you nothing," he said, "I will pay nothing." The collector departed, but came again the next year -- to receive the same answer.
"If people would all live as I live, there would be no need of taxes," Thoreau asserted. "Taxes come from living artificially. The town has no proper bill against me, for I live by myself."
He often argued the matter with his friend, Waldo Emerson, who lived in Concord. Although feeling great affection for Thoreau, Emerson did not agree with him about taxation, and they had many long discussions over it. Thoreau even declared that it was wrong for either of them to pay a tax.
This went on for some time, and at last the town fathers sent the sheriff to arrest him for repeated and contumacious violations of the law. He was brought to Concord jail and locked up, pending trial.
The news flew. Thoreau was in jail! Emerson, greatly distressed, at once bestirred himself. It is said that he appeared at the jail with his surtout unbuttoned and his hat askew. Then, according to report, this bit of dialogue followed between the two philosophers.
Emerson, agitated: "Henry, Henry, why are you here!"
Thoreau, mimicking: "Ralph, Ralph, why are you not here?"
Emerson offered the authorities bail to any amount, and surety for Thoreau's tax. Thoreau, however, utterly declined bail. He would have none of it, and in the end, as the story goes, the town officials had to put him out of jail.
When he heard of this incident the old squire laughed heartily; but Grandmother Ruth said, "Served him right."