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 praise of Thoreau's quality as a writer: — “With every exception there is no writing comparable with Thoreau's in kind, that is comparable with it in degree where it is best. His range was narrow, but to be a master is to be a master. There are sentences of his as perfect as anything in the language, and thoughts as clearly crystallized; his metaphors and images are always fresh from the soil.” Page 14, note 1. The late Mr. Horace Hosmer, of Acton, a very interesting man, whose valuable reminiscences of the Thoreau brothers as teachers of the Academy will be given later, kindly sent me, in 1890, the following: —

“That H. D. Thoreau was not a superior scion on an inferior stock; neither was he begotten by a northwest wind as many have supposed.

“That there were good and sufficient reasons for the children's taste for Botany and Natural History. ‘The aspirations of parents often become realizations in the children’; John Thoreau and wife were seen year after year on the west bank of the Assabet, on Fairhaven, Lee's Hill, [Nashawtuc] and at Walden. My mother said that one of the children narrowly escaped being born on Lee's Hill. I never knew