LITEEATUEE ON STATEN ISLAND. 3 



hermit thrush? How did he miss our joyous bob-o-link or the over- 

 flowing gayety of our mocking bird or cat bird? The lonely Phcebo 

 might have seemed to him a mournful echo of the nightingale, and 

 although the song sparrow does not soar yet like the lark he sings. 

 Could the poet not delight in a sweet brier rose because he looked in 

 vain for the daisy? Were the delicate anemones and columbines and 

 profuse azalias without a charm because the English primrose wag 

 lacking? As happens so often his wife was wiser than the poet and, 

 with a truthful lilt which the vain heart of man could not resist, her 

 tranquil wisdom closes the poem. 



" 'Ah well ! ' my true love said and smiled, 



1 There's shade to every glory, 

 And no true paradise on earth 



Exists in song or story. 

 The place is fair, and while thou'rt here, 



Thy land shall still be my land, 

 And all the Eden earth affords 



Be ours in Staten Island.'" 



Charles Mackay brewed a sort of literaiy small beer which was not 

 unpalatable although it had no sparkle or flavor of the divine wine of 

 poesy. His music beat a rub-a-dub-dub of easy, familiar sentiment 

 to which we listen as to the plain drum and fife when the great bursts 

 of the band are still. But there are more famous literary names than 

 his associated with the Island. Francis Parkman, the historian, lived 

 for a short time in a house now gone which stood upon the present 

 estate of Mr. George Bonner, on Bard avenue, and Henry S. Thoreau 

 lived upon Todt Hill as tutor to the children of Judge "William Emer- 

 son. But neither of them have left any distinctive literary memo- 

 rial of their residence, although Parkman probably partly wrote his 

 "Oregon Trail," upon the Island and Thoreau unquestionably noted 

 in his diary some of those constant and sagacious observations of na- 

 ture which rank him with White of Selborne for accuracy, while thought 

 and scholarship together with his solitary tastes, his mental independ- 

 ence, his detailed knowledge of the woods and fields and the virtue of 

 simple and natural remedies, made him a highly civilized Indian. 

 Thoreau always insisted that the Indians were much wiser not only 

 than the white man acknowledged but than he suspected. In five 



