222 LITEKAEY VALUES 



had the view, and until the impression is more or 

 less obliterated he does not care to repeat it. But 

 one's friend is always a fresh stimulus : he keeps 

 the past alive for him (which the book can also do 

 in a measure), and he consecrates the present (which 

 the book cannot do). Indeed, the sense of compan- 

 ionship which one can have in a book is but a faint 

 echo or shadow of the companionship he has with 

 persons. Yet this sense of companionship does ad- 

 here to some books much more vividly than to 

 others. They are our books ; they were written for 

 us ; they become a part of our lives, and they do 

 not drop away from us with the lapse of time, as do 

 others. Different readers have felt this way about 

 such writers as Emerson, Carlyle, Wordsworth, and 

 Whitman ; but it may be a question how writers 

 who make the intense personal appeal that these men 

 make will wear. Are they too special and individ- 

 ual for future generations to recognize close kinship 

 with ? Will each age have its own doctors and 

 saviors, and go back only for lovers and for the touch 

 of nature that makes all the world kin ? I know 

 not ; yet it is apparent that he who stands upon the 

 common ground where all men stand, and by the 

 magic of his genius makes poetry and romance out of 

 that, has the best chance to endure. Only so far as 

 the writers named, or any writers, represent states 

 of mind and spirit that are likely to return again 

 and again, and not to be outgrown in the progress of 

 the race, are we likely to come back to them, or is 

 the future likely to feel an interest in them. A path 



