e so interesting that his name became famous, even
before he wrote books. He settled in Concord, where Thoreau and Louisa
May Alcott lived. He knew so much that by and by people called him "The
Sage of Concord." He said he could never think very well sitting down.
So when he wanted to write a poem, or sermon, or essay, (and you can
hardly step into a New England home where there is not a book called
_Emerson's Essays_) he put on his hat and went out for a walk. When he
had walked three or four hours, he had usually decided just what he
wanted to write down. On this account he generally went out alone. It
was after a stroll in the woods near Concord, where the squirrels are
thick, that he wrote the fable about the mountain and the squirrel. It
begins this way:

"The Mountain and the Squirrel
Had a quarrel.
The Mountain called the Squirrel 'Little Prig'--"

[Illustration: He generally went out alone. _Page 221._]

It is rather nice to remember that after William Emerson had sold his
bass viol, after all the pinching and saving of Mrs. William, and after
going with half a coat, Ralph Waldo Emerson proved, in the end, to be
such an uncommon man and scholar that his name is known the world over.
Perhaps if all of us were as willing to study and work, and to keep
studying and working, as the Sage of Concord was, there would be ever so
many more famous Americans than there are to-day.

JANE ADDAMS

When Jane Addams was a little girl about seven years old, out in
Cedarville, Illinois, her father used to wonder why she got up in the
morning so much earlier than the other children. She explained to him
politely that it was because she had so much to do. Her mother was dead,
but her father looked after the children very carefully, and to make
sure that Jane read something besides fairy stories, gave her five cents
every time she could tell him about a new hero from _Plutarch's Lives_
and fifteen cents for every volume of Irving's _Life of Washington_. She
would have read what he asked her to without a cent of pay, for she
almost worshiped him. He was tall and handsome and a man of great
importance in the west. Jane was very proud of him, and as she was
plain, toed in when she walked, and had rather a crooked back, she
imagined that he must really be ashamed of her, only he was too kind to
say so. So she tried to keep out of his way.

The Honorable John Addams (her father) taught a Bible class in
Sunday-sch