...spite of his curious searchings in the realm of metaphysics. He sauntered in books as he sauntered by Walden Pond, in quest of what interested him; he fished in Montaigne, he said, as he fished in Plato and Goethe. He basketed the day's luck, good or bad as it might be, into the pages of his private , which he called his savings-bank, because from this source he drew most of the material for his b...