like it. As we hurry and scurry through this mechanical century, we might do well to turn to its quiet pages, and if we do we may wonder if Thoreau was not the wise one and we the cranks after all.
Henry Thoreau's childhood was a calm and happy one. He was brought up under the best possible conditions for forming a steadfast and unworldly character. Concord was a large, quiet village of plain white houses and shady elm-trees—a specially good example of a New England village community. There were no very rich people and no very poor: the inhabitants managed all their little affairs for themselves, and were perfectly capable of so doing. They were shrewd, honest, good people, and friendly towards one another. They seemed to have few worldly ambitions and were naturally inclined to be simple and democratic. They had simple occupations and amusements and did not crave for excitement, as we do now. Concord produced a very fine race of people and a few remarkable individuals—Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau himself; there were others less well known, but equally stalwart in character. Emerson, the poet and philosopher, no doubt helped his neighbors to become more cultivated and ideal: he brought them into touch with all the enlightened thought of that day, for it was the period when Carlyle and Wordsworth and Coleridge were living in England, and when the civilized world was beginning to wake up to many problems it had never
