1902.] THE EDUCATION OF BOOKS AND OF NATURE. 29I 



son's little essay on " Nature." It is simply a little essay in 

 which he quietly confesses that he lives in a very plain country, 

 on the edge of a little village, without any scenery in it at all, 

 and yet in that little sketch he has gone out of the world of 

 commonplace and into the glories of the world of poetry and 

 dreams. You practical men will say that that is the idealiza- 

 tion of nature, and it is, but it made him without any money, 

 and without much health, in a very plain wooden house on the 

 edge of a very modest and plain little country village; it made 

 that man one of the first men whose names could be written 

 in the hall of fame; it made a philosopher whose name is 

 just being mentioned for the great school of philosophy to be 

 built at our oldest university, to be called the Emerson School 

 of Philosophy; it made a poet whose power to see and love 

 simple things is widely recognized, and whose writings are 

 more generally read in a greater number of schools in Paris 

 and Berlin than the writings of any other poet who has 

 written on this side of the sea. It was a philosophy which 

 taught that there was beauty not only in the bird, not only in 

 the cloud, not only in the voice of the human heart, not 

 only in the colors of the rainbow, but in the smallest things 

 there is always something to delight the senses. That was 

 the philosophy of the greatest philosopher of New England 

 life. And so it does seem to me that it is practical and simple 

 for you busy people, as you close your session, to remember 

 that the sources of happiness are always the sources of power, 

 and that sources of power are always sources of character, and 

 of willingness to do for others beside ourselves. There is 

 nothing so catching in all the world as goodness. Scarlet 

 fever is not half so catching; not half. There is nothing more 

 attractive in all the world than the happy man or woman w'ho 

 has learned how to be younger at forty than at twenty, and 

 happier and more interesting at sixty than at the younger 

 ages. That is something some of you know, and some of 

 you mean to help make others so. Your lives close to 

 nature's heart have helped to make it so. May you pass it 

 on, not only to your own happy children, but to your children's 

 children, and to the little ones who are thronging the streets 

 of all the busy cities of your State. May you have success 

 in doing it. And may you feel as you do it, and as you add 

 better books to the good books of the past, and better teach- 



