Henry David Thoreau 177 



potent factor in keeping people in great cities 

 and attracting them than the prospect of better 

 clothes and whiter hands which the shop offers 

 to the young man from the farm. Therefore 

 in order to wean city people, who ought not to 

 live in the city, away from improper environ- 

 ment it is necessary to influence them in some 

 other way than by the offer of purely physical 

 or economical advantages. Probably but very 

 little can be done in this field except through 

 the children, and the value of the work accom- 

 plished by the Children's Aid Society in send- 

 ing out waifs picked out from the streets to 

 green fields and pastures new in the Far West 

 cannot be overestimated. With the average 

 young man or young woman, who finds ample 

 enjoyment in the gossip of the shops and is in- 

 clined to pity any one condemned to country 

 life, I am inclined to think that the case is 

 almost equally hopeless. The man who takes 

 nothing into the country with him, intellec- 

 tually speaking, ought not to go there ; he will 

 be lonely. I was strongly impressed with this 

 phase of the matter when I made some visits 

 among the cheap shops which line Grand 



