Page:Thoreau - As remembered by a young friend.djvu/126

 that RIVER which so fills up the world to its brim, — worthy to be named with Mincius and Alpheus, — still drinking its meadows while I am far away. . ..

“I am pleased to think of Channing as an inhabitant of the gray town. Seven cities contended for Homer dead. Tell him to remain at least long enough to establish Concord's right and interest in him. . . . And Hawthorne, too, I remember as one with whom I sauntered, in old heroic times, along the banks of the Scamander, amid the ruins of chariots and heroes. Tell him not to desert, even after the tenth year. Others may say, ‘Are there not the cities of Asia?’ But what are they? Staying at home is the heavenly way.”

In these days when the classics are misprised, the old “humanities” so crowded out by the practical, it is good to observe how this sturdy villager's life and his