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302 and have enabled the world to receive fresh impetus from his mind, long after his life here was ended.

The keeping of journals was the fashion in these days of few books and many stirring thoughts. Alcott had voluminous records, a small part of which has been published; Hawthorne's journals or note-books, of earlier and later life, suggested not alone many personal experiences, giving the best picture of the inner life of this recluse, but also contained many germs of fancy used in later fiction; Emerson's journals, through the printed portions, reveal the real personality behind the veil of mystic idealism,—they were, as he declares, his "savings banks." The query of Judge Hoar,—"Why should Henry Thoreau's journals be published anyway?"—was not a reproach upon Thoreau but a natural inquiry of the years when journal-keeping was a common habit but journal-publishing had not yet come into vogue.

In one of the "forensics," written at Harvard in his junior year, Thoreau mentions the desirability of "keeping a private journal or record of thoughts, feelings, studies, and daily experience." In this respect, as in many others, he simply adopted the habit and idea of others, but gave to his personal application an intensity and absorption which made the result unusual and individual. There are