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Thoreau's modern reputation is a testament to his Yankee stubbornness in sticking to his realistic problem. "I wanted," said Thoreau, "to drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it ... of if it were sublime, to know it by experience. ... If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business."