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Show 222. heard through our thickest walls. He hoped to affect the reader as a storm might; his voice would be permeated with the wild wind and torrent. Thus it was contrary to his purposes that he should sympathize with human losses while the gains to Nature were so much more important. Storms were graphic reminders to men and a necessary therapy for an anthropocentric society. THE LANGUAGE OF WILDNESS I suspect that Muir was reading Thoreau even while visiting Emily Pelton. Certainly "Flood Storm" used the language and strategy of Thoreau's late and most radical essays, like "Walking" (originally entitled "The Wild") and "Wild Apples." I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil - to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society- I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that. So begins "Walking," and this was the tradition of rhetoric which Muir took as his model. If Muir was to be the heir of Thoreau, it was not because of ideology alone, but because he chose the strategy and the voice which could not be assimilated °r acculturated. There is something of honesty and something of |