eccentric with more than a touch of genius was
Henry David Thoreau, and it is noteworthy that his fame, which burned
dimly enough during his life, has flamed ever brighter and brighter
since his death. This increase of reputation is no doubt due, in some
degree, to the "return to nature," which has recently been so prominent
in American life and which has gained a wide hearing for so noteworthy a
"poet-naturalist"; but it is also due in part to a growing recognition
of the fact that as a writer of delightful, suggestive and inspiring
prose he has had few equals.

Thoreau is easily our most extraordinary man of letters. Born in Concord
of a poor family, but managing to work his way through Harvard, he spent
some years teaching; but an innate love of nature and of freedom led him
to seek some form of livelihood which would leave him as much his own
master as it was possible for a poor man to be. To earn money for any
other purpose than to provide for one's bare necessities was to Thoreau
a grievous waste of time, so it came about that for many years he was a
sort of itinerant tinker, a doer of odd jobs. Another characteristic,
partly innate and party cultivated, was a distrust of society and a
dislike of cities. "I find it as ever very unprofitable to have much to
do with men," he wrote; and finally, in pursuance of this idea, he built
himself a little cabin on the shore of Walden pond, where he lived for
some two years and a half.

It was there that his best work was done, for, at bottom, Thoreau was a
man of letters rather than a naturalist, with the most seeing eye man
ever had. "Walden, or Life in the Woods," and "A Week on the Concord and
Merrimac Rivers" contain the best of Thoreau, and any boy or girl who is
interested in the great outdoors, as every boy and girl ought to be,
will enjoy reading them.

The last of the Transcendental group worthy of mention here is George
William Curtis, a versatile and charming personality, not a genius in
any sense, but a writer of pleasant and amusing prose, an orator of no
small ability, and one of the truest patriots who ever loved and labored
for his country. It is in this latter aspect, rather than as the author
of "Nile Notes" and "The Potiphar Papers," that Curtis is best
remembered to-day. The books that he produced have, to a large extent,
lost their appeal; but the work he did during the dark days of
reconstruction and after entitles him to admiring and grateful
remem