Thank you! Yes, I have been reading Thoreau's journals recently, and the prevalence of statements much like the one above had me thinking quite a lot, and inevitably also thinking of Holmes. Holmes quotes Thoreau in one of the stories (which one I sadly cannot remember at this moment), and so he must have been somewhat familiar with his work.

But yes, something about the incredible reserve, coupled with incredibly deep feeling, really struck me as Holmesian. Or perhaps at least soething that he would find interesting. I would definitely recommend Thoreau o anyone -- he's a great writer, definitely the best of the Transcendentalists to my mind, although, as Holmes states above, his poetry is mostly bad.<ahref="http://eserver.org/thoreau/civil.html">Civil Disobedience is a famous, and justifiably so, example of his essay writing, though.