"Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife."

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say:
"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,

To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

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There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech,
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noon-tide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove;
Now drooping, woful wan, like one forlorn,
Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.

"One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
Along the heath, and near his favorite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he.

"The next, with dirges due, in sad array,
Slow thro' the churchway path we saw him borne.
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon agéd thorn."

The Epitaph

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth, to Fortune and to Fame unknown;
Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere;
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear:

He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend.

No further seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
(There they alike in trembling hope repose),
The bosom of his Father and his God.

THOMAS GRAY (1716-1771) was an English poet of high rank. His writings are not numerous, but they are all of a superior quality. Probably no poem has been more deeply and widely admired than this "Elegy in a Country Churchyard." The poet-laureateship of England was offered to Gray, but he declined it.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

RALPH WALDO EMERSON was the son of a Boston clergyman, and was born in that city May 25, 1803. It was the custom a hundred years ago to send children to school at a very early age. This Boston boy was sent to a dameschool, as it was called, before he was three years old. He was not much older than this when his father began to require him to recite a sentence of English grammar every day at breakfast. His father expected a great deal from him, and apparently was not entirely satisfied with his son's progress, for he wrote in his journal a week before the child's third birthday, "Ralph does not read very well." At the present time a child is not expected to read very well when he is barely three years old.

When Ralph was about ten years old, his father died, and the family shortly after removed to Concord, to make their home with a relative. People still living in Concord tell of the time when the men in the village grocery used to set the little boy upon a sugar barrel and call upon him to recite poems like Campbell's "Glenara," or verses from Milton's "Paradise Lost." When he had grown up, he looked so dignified in the lecture desk that it was hard to think of him as ever having been a little boy repeating poetry from the top of a barrel in a village grocer's shop. But those who have seen him in his own house, as I have, playing with a baby grandchild whom he held on his knee, believe that there was always something young and childlike in his heart.

Emerson lived in Concord a large part of his life, and he was greatly beloved by the townspeople. He was

deeply interested in the schools, to which he sent his own children. He was particularly careful that his children should pronounce well, and read aloud clearly. Their compositions, too, were a matter of great interest to him. He lived a quiet and rather secluded life at home, but he liked to observe all the odd people in Concord, particularly those least like himself.

He was always ready to attend the old-fashioned "musters," or outdoor meetings of the militia companies. "The Cornwallis," so familiar and dear to the hearts of New England boys of his day, never failed to interest him. In the Cornwallis, the soldiers represented by their manœuvres the surrender of the British army under General Cornwallis to the American army under General Washington. Mr. Emerson used also to attend the exhibitions given by some of the great horse-trainers, like Rarey. He enjoyed meeting people who were not students or writers, like himself, but who could accomplish things worth doing in lines of work with which he was not acquainted. He wrote once in his journal, “I like people who can do things."

For a time Mr. Emerson was a clergyman, as his ancestors had been for five generations; but he retired early from the pulpit and devoted his time to lecturing and writing. As a writer and as a lecturer he had great influence over the public mind. His best known books are two volumes of essays, one on "Representative Men," and the other on "English Traits," written after his last visit to England.

More widely read than either of these, perhaps, is his volume of poems, appealing as they do to the noblest human aims and highest human thoughts, and yet rarely reaching into the highest grace and musical quality. Yet