116 
WALDEN. 
news as lie says, for he is above that, but to “keep 
himself in practice,” he being a Canadian by birth ; and 
when I ask him what he considers the best thing he can 
do in this world, he says, beside this, to keep up and 
add to his English. This is about as much as the col¬ 
lege bred generally do or aspire to do, and they take an 
English paper for the purpose. One who has just 
come from reading perhaps one of the best English 
books will find how many with whom he can converse 
about it ? Or suppose he comes from reading a Greek 
or Latin classic in the original, whose praises are fa¬ 
miliar even to the so called illiterate; he will find no¬ 
body at all to speak to, but must keep silence about it. 
Indeed, there is hardly the professor in our colleges, 
who, if he has mastered the difficulties of the language, 
has proportionally mastered the difficulties of the wit 
and poetry of a Greek poet, and has any sympathy to 
impart to the alert and heroic reader; and as for the 
sacred Scriptures, or Bibles of mankind, who in this 
town can tell me even their titles ? Most men do not 
know that any nation but the Hebrews have had a 
scripture. A man, any man, will go considerably out 
of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are 
golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have 
uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding 
age have assured us of; — and yet we learn to read only 
as far as Easy Beading, the primers and class-books, 
and when we leave school, the “ Little Beading,” and 
story books, which are for boys and beginners; and our 
reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very 
low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins. 
I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this 
our Concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly 
