What Else Is There?: Thoreau

"...[O]n his return from one of his Maine journeys, he told the story at great length (though it was already written in his note-book) with the important details, not only to his family, but to his friends, with the utmost alacrity and pleasure, yet as if he were discharging a sacred duty, then wrote it out carefully in his Journal, and next as carefully corrected it for its issue to the public. This is indeed a rare talent. Most of us, if we have experiences, do not know how to describe them; or if we do, do not interest ourselves enough in them to give them forth for the benefit of others. He did this, and so well and so universally, that it must be conceded to him as a special felicity. Things made a deep and ineffaceable impression on his mind. He had no trace of that want of memory which besets some amiable beings. Yet as I have said, he was reticent; so he was, remarkably in certain ways. I can mention that he never or rarely spoke to me of the Indians; never alluded to his collections on the subject; and, in all the years (about twenty) that I knew him intimately, maintained a profound silence on that (to him) altogether engrossing topic. But there was little bound to his usual communicativeness.

Connected with this was his skill in asking questions, a natural talent, long cultivated. Sometimes, where the matter was important, he carried with him a string of leading questions, carefully written, which he had the ability to get as skilfully answered, though, if there was a theory to maintain, with a possible overlapping to his side of the argument. Ever on the search for knowledge, he lived to get in formation; and as I am so far like Alfieri that I have almost no curiosity, I once said to him how surprised I was at the persistence of this trait in him. "What else is there in life?" was his reply.