trines of education for this generation which should succeed his own!
Our southern poet, Sidney Lanier, personified the clover and the clouds as "cousins"; he apostrophized the "tender, sisterly, sweetheart leaves." So this earlier nature-poet of Concord emphasized the kinship between trees, flowers, birds and men. Emerson called Thoreau "the bachelor of nature"; rather he was her lover. Recall that romantic personification of the oak;—"I love and could embrace the shrub oak. . . . What cousin of mine is the shrub oak? Rigid as iron, clean as the atmosphere, hardy as virtue, innocent and sweet as a maiden is the shrub oak." At Walden, the mice and the squirrels, the loons, the ants, the phœbe in his shed, the robin in his nearest pine-tree, became the friends from whom he learned many lessons and upon whom he bestowed all honor and love. Even the wasps, that settled on his walls, furnished him with unique study, and "did not molest seriously."
He found great pleasure in instructing children regarding the proper attitude, not fear and wantonness but sympathy, in their relations with animals and reptiles. A boy who was thus taught a valuable lesson has recalled, in his late manhood, this incident. When working at Barrett's mill, the boys were anxious to go swimming in the pond but
