theme, in order that he may reproduce from the chambers of memory all that he has stored there that pertains to the subject in hand. We will get down to practical work by paraphrasing some extracts from Ralph Waldo Emerson's oration, The American Scholar, delivered at Cambridge, Mass., August 31, 1887.
BOOKS
(1) The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind and uttered it again. It came into him, life; it went out from him, truth. It came to him, short-lived actions; it went out from him, immortal thoughts. It came to him, business; it went from him, poetry. It was dead fact; now, it is quick thought. It can stand and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. Precisely in proportion to the depth of mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing.
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