for a boy, or girl either, than Scott's novels, or Cooper's, to speak only of the dead. I have found them very good reading at least for one young man, for one middle-aged man, and for one who is growing old. No, no banish the Antiquary, banish Leather Stocking, and banish all the world! Let us not go

about to make life duller than it is.

But I must shut the doors of my imaginary library or I shall never end. It is left for me to say a few words of cordial acknowledgment to Mr. Fitz for his judicious and generous gift. I have great pleasure in believing that the custom of giving away money during their lifetime (and there is nothing harder for most men to part with, except prejudice) is more common with Americans than with any other people. It is a still greater pleasure to see that the favorite direction of their beneficence is towards the founding of colleges and libraries. My observation has led me to believe that there is no country in which wealth is so sensible of its obligations as our own. And, as most of our rich men have risen from the ranks, may we not fairly attribute this sympathy with their kind to the benign influence of democracy rightly understood? My dear and honored friend, George William Curtis, told me that he was sitting in front of the late Mr. Ezra Cornell in a convention, where one of the speakers made a Latin quotation. Mr. Cornell leaned forward and asked for a translation of it, which Mr. Curtis gave him. Mr. Cornell thanked him, and added, "If I can help it, no young man shall grow up in New York hereafter without the

1 In Shakespeare's King Henry IV., Part I., Act II. sc. 4, will be found the phrase which was in Mr. Lowell's mind when he wrote this.

chance, at least, of knowing what a Latin quotation means when he hears it." This was the germ of Cornell University, and it found food for its roots in that sympathy and thoughtfulness for others of which I just spoke. This is the healthy side of that good nature which democracy tends to foster, and which is so often harmful when it has its root in indolence or indifference; especially harmful where our public affairs are concerned, and where it is easiest, because there we are giving away what belongs to other people. It should be said, however, that in this country it is as laudably easy to procure signatures to a subscription paper as it is shamefully so to obtain them for certificates of character and recommendations to office. And is not this public spirit a national evolution from that frame of mind in which New England was colonized, and which found expression in these grave words of Robinson and Brewster,2 "We are knit together as a body in a most strict and sacred bond and covenant of the Lord, of the violation of which we make great conscience, and by virtue whereof we hold ourselves strictly tied to all care of each other's good and of the whole"? Let us never forget the deep and solemn import of these words. The problem before us is to make a whole of our many discordant parts, our many foreign elements; and I know of no way in which this can better be done than by providing a common system of education, and a common door of access to the best books by which that education may be continued, broadened,

1 The motto about the seal of Cornell University indicates Mr. Cornell's conception of that institution.

2 In a letter signed jointly by them to Sir Edwin Sandys, to be found in Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation, page 20.

and made fruitful. For it is certain that, whatever we do or leave undone, those discordant parts and foreign elements are to be, whether we will or no, members of that body which Robinson and Brewster had in mind, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, for good or ill. I am happy in believing that democracy has enough vigor of constitution to assimilate these seemingly indigestible morsels, and transmute them into strength of muscle and symmetry of limb.1

There is no way in which a man can build so secure and lasting a monument for himself as in a public library. Upon that he may confidently allow "Resurgam "2 to be carved, for, through his good deed, he will rise again in the grateful remembrance and in the lifted and broadened minds and fortified characters of generation after generation. The pyramids may forget their builders, but memorials such as this have longer memories.

Mr. Fitz has done his part in providing your library with a dwelling. It will be for the citizens of Chelsea to provide it with worthy habitants. So shall they, too, have a share in the noble eulogy of the ancient wise man: "The teachers shall shine as the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever."

1 For a fuller statement of Mr. Lowell's faith, see his address Democracy.

2 This Latin word, "I shall rise again," reappears in the word resurrection.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU.

• INTRODUCTION.

THERE died at Concord, Massachusetts, in the year 1862, a man of forty-five who, if one were to take his word for it, need never have gone out of the little village of Concord to see all that was worth seeing in the world. Lowell, in his My Garden Acquaintance, reminds the reader of Gilbert White, who, in his Natural History of Selborne, gave minute details of a lively world found within the borders of a little English parish. Alphonse Karr, a French writer, has written a book which contracts the limit still further in A Journey round my Garden, but neither of these writers so completely isolated himself from the outside world as did Thoreau, who had a collegiate education at Harvard, made short journeys to Cape Cod, Maine, and Canada, acted for a little while as tutor in a family on Staten Island, but spent the best part of his life as a looker-on in Concord, and during two years of the time lived a hermit on the shores of Walden Pond. He made his living, as the phrase goes, by the occupation of a land surveyor, but he followed the profession only when it suited his convenience. He did not marry; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay taxes; he sought no society; he declined companions when they were in his way, and, when he had anything to say in public, went about from door to door and invited people to come to a hall to hear him deliver his word.

That he had something to say to the world at large is

made pretty evident by the books which he left, and it is intimated that the unpublished records of his observation and reflection are very extensive. Thus far his published writings are contained in ten volumes. The first in appearance was A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. It was published in 1849 and built upon the adventures of himself and brother ten years before, when, in a boat of their own construction, they had made their way from Concord down the Concord River to the Merrimack, up that to its source, and back to the starting point. It will readily be seen that such an excursion would not yield a bookful of observation, and though Thoreau notes in it many trivial incidents, a great part of the contents is in the reflections which he makes from day to day. He comes to the little river with its sparse border of population and meagre history, and insists upon measuring antiquity and fame by it. All of his reading he tests by the measure of this stream, and undertakes to show that the terms "big" and "little" are very much misapplied, and that here on this miniature scale one may read all that is worth knowing in life. His voyage is treated with the gravity which one might use in recording a journey to find the sources of the Nile.

Between the date of the journey and the publication of the book, Thoreau was engaged upon an experiment still more illustrative of his creed of individuality. In 1845 he built a hut in the woods by Walden Pond, and for two years lived a self-contained life there. It was not altogether a lonely life. He was within easy walking distance of Concord village, and the novelty of his housekeeping attracted many visitors, while his friends who valued his conversation sought him out in his hermitage. Besides and beyond this Thoreau had a genius for intercourse with humbler companions. There have been few instances in history of such perfect understanding as existed between him and the lower orders of creation. It has been said of him: "Every fact which occurs in the bed [of the Concord