st tout l'anglais que je sais._'

"'_Mais, commandant_,' said the Russian lady, '_ce n'est pas l'anglais
du tout ce que vous venez de dire la._'

"'_Ah, oui, madame, ca vient de votre Longfellow._'

"None of the other passengers contributed, but already six
nationalities had spoken--Scotch, Russian, Greek, French, English, and
American. As we arose from the table and went up on deck to watch the
lights glimmering in Napoleon's birthplace, Ajaccio, the Russian lady
said: 'Do you suppose there is any other poet of any country, living
or dead, from whom so many of us could have quoted? Not one. Not even
Shakspere or Victor Hugo or Homer.'"

LVIII

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

During his lifetime Thoreau published but two books,--_Walden_, and
the _Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers_,--and these had but
limited sale while the author was living. Over seven hundred copies of
the _Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers_ were returned, to
Thoreau by his publisher. Thoreau must have had a helpful sense of
humor, for after lugging the burden upstairs he complacently
remarks,--"I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over
seven hundred of which I wrote myself." In recent times a costly
edition of all Thoreau's writings has been published. He is one of the
rare spirits whose fame increases with the years. But of all his
voluminous writings _Walden_, so it seems to me, is the most readable,
the freshest, the most stimulating. Higginson says that it is,
perhaps, the only book yet written in America that can bear an annual
reading.

_Walden_ is a record of Thoreau's sojourn for about two years in the
woods by Walden Pond. He went about two miles from his mother's door,
built a little house or hut, and there lived, reading his favorite
books, philosophizing, studying nature, and to a great extent
avoiding society. Some people have condemned him as selfish, others
have defended him. His best defense is his work. If anything so fresh
and readable as _Walden_ be the result, we might be willing to deny
ourselves the society of some of our urban friends, without charging
them with selfishness. Thoreau is sometimes called a "wild man"; in a
sense, he is untamed. He himself confessed,--"There is in my nature,
methinks, a singular yearning toward all wildness." Yet he was a true
lover of men. He hated slavery and went to jail rather than pay his
taxes, because he disbelieved in supporting a government that upheld