“ To the first, life will be an opportunity and a beckoning. He will be ready to give himself for the better future; he will be ready to strike hands with the fine thought and generous endeavor of the whole world, bringing to his own community the fruit of great things, caring little for the ease and comfort of his body, but much for the possibilities of a finer, truer realization of man's eternal struggle toward a purer liberty and a nobler life. The spirit of adventure is a generous spirit, kindling to great appeals. ”

“ The essayist is not concerned with giving accurate and logically-arranged information. He thinks only of telling how his subject appeals to him, of telling whether or not he likes it, and why. The more personally he writes, the better we like his work. In his revelation of himself we find a sort of revelation of ourselves as well,—and we like his work in proportion to that revelation.
Naturally, a good essay is short; for self-revelation is given in flashes, as it were,—in sparkles of thought that gleam only for a moment. ”

“ That quick imagination of the might-be and the might-have-been is the beginning both of realism and of romance. The story you would tell would use the third person, in all probability; would seek an orderly development, and would aim at climax.
When you stand in your window on a winter day and watch thousands of snow-flakes float down from the sky, circling in fantastic whirls, you see them as so many white fairies led by a master spirit in revel and dance. ”

“ At no time does the story, in so many words, say that the supernatural is present. Instead, it places the reader in a position where it is natural to infer something beyond the ordinary. In other words, the story does what life does: it presents facts and leaves people to draw their own conclusions.
Over the entire story hangs an atmosphere entirely in keeping with the events narrated. The reader feels drawn into the solemn silence of the vast forest; he knows the loneliness of little-visited lakes, and the black terror that surrounds a wilderness camp-fire at night. ”

“ The teacher and the taught have somehow drifted apart. His function in the large has been to teach an ideal, a tradition. He is content, he has to be content, with partial results. It is not for life as it is, it is for what life ought to be, that he is preparing even in arithmetic; he has allowed the faint unreality of a priestcraft to numb him. In the mind of the student a dim conception has entered, that this education—all education—is a garment merely, to be doffed for the struggle with realities. ”

“ I like the boy or girl who sighs after a quest more difficult than the trodden trail, who wants more of life than the assurance of a good job. I know very well that the home-keeping lad has a stout task to perform and a good life to live. But I know, too, that if the youth of a nation loses its love of adventure, if that wild and moving spirit passes from it, then the nation is close to losing its soul. ”

“ Of all possible kinds of prose writing, the essay, therefore, gives the greatest freedom. The essayist may reveal himself completely and in any manner that he pleases. He may tell of his delight in wandering by mountain streams, or in mingling with the crowds in city streets; he may tell of his thoughts as he meditated by ancient buildings or in the solemn half-darkness of age-old churches; he may dream of a long-gone childhood or look ahead into a roseate future ”

“ From that morning there began a sullenness between us, which was nourished by too little food, and by being shut up in that bit of a schooner cabin too long together. For relief's sake, when I was not off snaring rabbits or looking for some stray up-river seal with my revolver in my hand, I began building an igloo, a hut of snow you know, not far from the ship. I thought that the time must be prepared for when we should have chopped up our shelter, and have pushed our home piecemeal into that devouring stove. ”

“ Sometimes the heat and the pressure of emotion have been fierce enough and intense enough to call forth at once both words and music, and to weld them together indissolubly once and for all. Almost always the maker of the song does not suspect the abiding value of his work; he has wrought unconsciously, moved by a power within; he has written for immediate relief to himself, and with no thought of fame or the future; he has builded better than he knew. The great national lyric is the result of the conjunction of the hour and the man. ”

“ Steam has not banished from the deep sea the ships that lift tall spires of canvas to win their way from port to port. The gleam of their topsails recalls the centuries in which men wrought with stubborn courage to fashion fabrics of wood and cordage that would survive the enmity of the implacable ocean and make the winds obedient. Their genius was unsung, their hard toil forgotten, but with each generation the sailing ship became nobler and more enduring, until it was a perfect thing. Its great days live in memory with a peculiar atmosphere of romance. ”

“ Old men and old women had in their eyes a look of young people in love. Age-old visions sang themselves in me, songs of freedom of an oppressed people. America! America!
Between buildings that loomed like mountains we struggled [Pg 84] with our bundles, spreading around us the smell of the steerage. Up Broadway, under the bridge, and through the swarming streets of the Ghetto, we followed Gedalyah Mindel.
I looked about the narrow streets of squeezed-in stores and houses, ragged clothes, dirty bedding oozing out of the windows, ash-cans and garbage-cans cluttering the sidewalks. ”

“ The writer of a familiar essay selects any subject in which he is interested. Sometimes the more trifling the subject seems to be, the more delightful is the essay. Trifles, in fact, make up life, and around them center many of our deepest interests. The very charm of the familiar essay lies in its ability to call attention to the value of trifles,—to the little things in life, to little events, and to all the odds and ends of human interests. ”

“ Now, why do we become uneasy the moment we suspect a writer of aiming at musical effects? It is because we know instinctively that every thought creates its own rhythm, and that when a writer's attention is upon his rhythm, he is bent upon something else than his thought processes. The only way of giving the impression of thought that is not original or spontaneous is by imitating the rhythm of that thought. For real meanings cannot be borrowed. They are always new. Real thought is an action, an original adventure. ”

“ How is it that the steam locomotive appeared at the time it did, and not earlier in the history of the world?
Because it was not invented. But why was it not invented? Not for want of a crowning intellect, for none of the many minds concerned in the development strikes one—as the mind of Newton, Shakespeare, or Darwin [97] strikes one—as being that of an unprecedented man. It is not that the need for the railway and steam-engine had only just arisen, and—to use one of the most egregiously wrong and misleading phrases that ever dropped from the lips of man—the demand created the supply ”

“ An essayist needs a desk and a library near at hand, because an essay is a kind of back-stove cookery. A novel needs a hot fire, so to speak. A dozen chapters bubble in their turn above the reddest coals, while an essay simmers over a little flame. Pieces of this and that, an odd carrot, as it were, a left-over potato, a pithy bone, discarded trifles, are tossed in from time to time to feed the composition. Raw paragraphs, when they have stewed all night, at last become tender to the fork. An essay, therefore, cannot be written hurriedly on the knee. Essayists, as a rule, chew their pencils. ”

“ America, as the oppressed of all lands have dreamed America to be, and America as it is, flashed before me, a banner of fire. Behind me I felt masses pressing, thousands of immigrants; thousands upon thousands crushed by injustice, lifted me as on wings.
I entered the boss's office without a shadow of fear. I was not I; the wrongs of my people burned through me till I felt the very flesh of my body a living flame of rebellion. I faced the boss.
“We can't stand it,” I cried. “Even as it is we're hungry. Fifty cents a dozen would starve us. ”

“ Many of the best English essays were written just for the joy of self-expression. Serious workers in life, in their leisure moments, have let their pens move, as it were, automatically, in a sort of frank and full expression somewhat akin to the plowman's whistling and the milkmaid's singing.
Certainly in that joyous spirit Michel de Montaigne, in the sixteenth century, wrote the delightfully familiar essays that have charmed readers for over three hundred years, and that established the essay as a literary type. ”

“ This process of meditation habitually brought to bear on one's reading lays bare the very heart of the book in hand, and puts one in complete possession of it.
This process of meditation, if it is to bear its richest fruit, must be accompanied by a constant play of the imagination, than which there is no faculty more readily cultivated or more constantly neglected. Some readers see only a flat surface as they read; others find the book a door into a real world, and forget that they are dealing with a book. The real readers get beyond the book, into the life which it describes. ”

“ I will choose a husband for thee. To-morrow shalt thou wed my cook's kitchen-boy and none other, and he shall be lord over thee.”
Goldborough wept and prayed; but she could not turn Godrich from his shameful purpose.
Then Godrich sent for Havelok, and when he had come before him, he said, “Fellow, do you want a wife?”
“Nay, truly,” said Havelok, “no wife for me! What should I do with a wife? I have neither clothing nor shoes nor food for her, neither house nor home to put her in. I own not a stick in the world, and even the coat I bear on my back belongs to Bertram the cook.” ”

“ The quick motion of our running put courage in our blood, and after a little while even ole Pierre's brush waves higher in the air, as if he had remembered some fight of old, and we gallop. We gallop, but the wolves they gallop too. First on one side far off, then on the other nearer, and ever as the trail winds in a new direction they sound like pack on pack of them, although there might have been less than ten. It is only late in the winter with us, when the snow is deep, that they gather into big packs to pull down the moose. ”

“ The savor of lonely dawns, the call of an unknown voice, the need to establish new frontiers of spirit and action beyond any man has yet set, these are also part of life. Do not forego them. You are young and the world is before you. Be among those who perceive all its variety, its potentialities, who can see good in the new and unknown, and find joy in hazard and strength in effort. ”

“ I do not mean to say that the possession of much money is always a barrier to real wealth of mind and heart. Nor would I maintain that all the poor of this world are rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom. But some of them are. And if some of the rich of this world (through the grace of Him with whom all things are possible) are also modest in their tastes, and gentle in their hearts, and open in their minds, and ready to be pleased with unbought pleasures, they simply share in the best things which are provided for all. ”

“ Now he had just finished buying when Havelok happened along, and the cook shouted, “Porter, porter!” for somebody to come to carry his marketing home. Instantly ten or a dozen jumped for the chance, for there were plenty of men looking for work in Lincoln. But Havelok got ahead of them all; he pushed them this way and that and sent them sprawling head over heels, and seized hold of the cook's baskets, without so much as a “By your leave.” Rough and ready was the young Havelok, as strong as a bear and as hungry as a savage. ”

“ Nobody is safe from him, for he steals from every one he meets. Like the man in the old poem, he relies on his memory for his wit.
An essayist is not a mighty traveler. He does not run to grapple with a roaring lion. He desires neither typhoon nor tempest. He is content in his harbor to listen to the storm upon the rocks, if now and then by a lucky chance he can shelter some one from the wreck. His hands are not red with revolt against the world. He has glanced upon the thoughts of many men, and as opposite philosophies point upon the truth, he is modest with his own and tolerant of others. ”

“ With the exception of The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, all these so-called essays are of considerable length and are unfitted to serve as the best examples of the essay form;—for the essay, like the lyric, demands brevity: it is, after all, only a quick flash of self-revelation,—not a sustained effort.
Then again, who would wish to learn to write like Addison, like Washington Irving, like Macaulay, or like Carlyle! Those great writers couched their thoughts in the language-fashions of their days, just as they clothed their bodies in the garments of their times. ”

“ The vast majority of men are so absorbed in dealing with material that they appear to be untouched by the general questions of life; but these general questions are the habitual concern of the men who think. In such men the mind, released from specific tasks, turns at once and by preference to these great themes, and by quiet meditation feeds and enriches the very soul of the thinker. And the quality of this meditation determines whether the nature shall be productive or sterile; whether a man shall be merely a logician, or a creative force in the world. ”

“ Just as some one, some time, must sweep out a shrine,—possibly nowadays with a vacuum-cleaner!—so papers must be picked from God's grass, and pick-pockets must be diligently looked for in holiday crowds. Men on high and practical sprinkling-carts must keep the roadways clean, and emissaries of the law must see to it that motorists do not speed too fast. You think of ice-cream as being miraculously made in a park pavilion, and unless you visit the city woodland at the hour of eleven or so in the morning, you may keep your dream. ”