"Hitch your waggon to yonder star, and with him travel into unexplored depths of space; watch the birds in their flight and where they rest, and name them without a gun.

"In the long winter evenings when mayhap the snow is swirling around your house, and shuts you from the outer world, take down your volume of Emerson, and in ‘a tumultuous privacy of storm' read and think, and think and read, until something coming to you out of that great spirit shall have moulded your lives to nobler thoughts and deeds."

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON

"O tenderly the haughty day
Fills his blue urn with fire."
Concord Ode.

"Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Loved the wood-rose and left it on its stalk?

O be my friend, and teach me to be thine."

"Life is too short to waste
In critic peep or cynic bark,
Quarrel or reprimand,

'Twill soon be dark."

Tact.

Forbearance.

"I thought the sparrow's note from heaven.
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;

I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
He sings the song, but it pleases not now;

For I did not bring home the river and sky;
He sang to my ear—they sang to my eye."

And the former called the latter 'Little Prig!'

Bun replied,

'You are doubtless very big,

But all sorts of things and weather

Must be taken in together

To make up a year,
And a sphere;

And I think it no disgrace

To occupy my place;

If I'm not so large as you,
You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry;

I'll not deny you make

A very pretty squirrel track.

Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;

If I cannot carry forests on my back,

Neither can you crack a nut.'

XXII

HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862)

ONE of the Concord group held fast to the town all through life, even spending his travel days in the woods, and on near-by streams. This was Henry David Thoreau, who was born here in 1817. The father of French descent was a small, deaf, unobtrusive man, who made lead-pencils, while the mother, daughter of a New England clergyman, was very dressy and very talkative.

Thoreau's delightful biographer, Frank Sanborn, tells of her such a characteristic story that we must insert it right here: One day when Mrs. Thoreau was seventy years old, she called upon Miss Mary Emerson, the austere aunt of "The Sage," who was then eighty-four. She wore a bonnet adorned with bright ribbons of goodly length. During the call Miss Emerson kept her eyes closed, and when her guest rose to leave, she said: "Perhaps you noticed, Mrs. Thoreau, that I kept my eyes closed during your call; I did so because I did not wish to look on the ribbons you are wearing, so unsuitable for a child of God and a person of your age!"

Such were the parents; while the boy Henry, from earliest childhood, displayed a stubborn will which

made it difficult to direct him in "the way he should go." He was, however, fitted at the Concord Academy to enter Harvard, where he graduated in 1837. As a profession, he tried school-teaching but not with marked ability, but he lectured year after year in the "Concord Lyceum course. He also worked at the lead-pencil craft; but when he had succeeded in producing the best kind of pencil, he refused to make another, for with other Transcendentalists, he held to the belief of never doing the same thing twice.

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He was very skilful with tools, and had a good knowledge of mathematics, so he became both carpenter and surveyor; and did his work so well that the neighbours liked to employ him. His idea of thoroughness was in driving a nail home clench it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction!" Although Thoreau was always poor, earning a livelihood never troubled him much-he wished just money enough to live.

His wealth was in the woods and on the streams, and he sought "a wide margin of leisure," in which to enjoy it. Sometimes he would spend weeks earning money to last for a certain period, and then he would stop and enter into his Nature study, until his funds were exhausted. He delighted in the sermons of his lay preacher, Emerson, for if any one ever believed in a gospel of individualism, it was Thoreau, and Emerson helped him in many ways.

He would often meet him on his walks, carrying under his arm a music-book to press plants, and in his pocket drawing-pencils, microscope, jack-knife, and twine.

From the day he graduated, to the end of his short life, Thoreau kept a journal, which was chiefly descriptive of his out-of-door observations. With his brother he studied the motion of fishes and the flight of birds, until the two were able to fashion a boat and rig it. This they loaded with potatoes and melons and started on a trip-a trip probably as important to Thoreau as that on the Nile to Sir Samuel Baker; for in 1849, he published a book about it, entitled "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac."

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This has many picturesque descriptions, and includes reminiscences of Indian and pioneer life and of the Puritanical observance of the Sabbath. But alas! for the edition of a thousand volumes seven hundred were unsold, and Thoreau brought them home and laughingly told of the unexpected addition to his library. The book, however, is more valued to-day.

His "Walden," published several years later, gave him more immediate fame. This was the recountal of a two years' sojourn in the woods. This woodland belonged to Emerson; here it was that the philosopher often lingered with his muse who guided his facile pen through his "Woodnotes." Woodnotes." In the cen