Living and Thinking - A Friend in the Library

Volume I - A Practical Guide to the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes

Eva March Tappan

• Publisher: Read & Co. Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781528702294
• eBook ISBN: 9781528784696
• Subtopic: North American Literary Collections

Eva March Tappan's "A Friend in the Library" series is a comprehensive guide to the writings of six seminal American writers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Volume one looks at living and thinking, analysing the minds and messages of these seminal American writers with reference to their work. This volume is highly recommended for those with an interest in American literature and would make for a worthy addition to any collection. Eva March Tappan (1854 – 1930) was an American author and teacher. Other notable works by this author include: "Adventures & Achievements" (1900), "Poems & Rhymes" (1900), and "In the Days of Queen Elizabeth" (1902). Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author. This book was first published in 1909.

LIVING AND THINKING

SOME high-school girls and boys were once reading Longfellow, and their teacher asked each of them to choose a poem to read aloud on the following day, giving a reason for the selection. Of course, there were two or three who thought that, because there was nothing that must be learned by heart, no preparation was needed. These read their “selections” with only slightly varying degrees of badness, and were evidently struggling hard to discover “reasons” as they went along. One was sure that he had a favorite poem, but, unluckily, he had forgotten which it was! The idler-in-chief declared that he thought “Driftwood” a most worthy poetical production, and was unpleasantly surprised to learn that “Driftwood” was prose. These, however, were the excrescences, the hangers-on of the class. Nearly every one of the others made a good choice.

One young girl had been more conspicuous for the remarkable variety and gorgeousness of her dresses than for interest in her lessons, and the teacher expected her to choose either “Beware!” or “The Rainy Day” (i. 78). Behold, she read “A Psalm of Life” (i. 18); and as she read, she forgot the others, she remembered nothing but the poem; and she read it as if every word were a golden secret that she had just discovered. When she came to the end, her face was all aglow, and she exclaimed, “It is true, but I never thought of it before. It is wonderful. I did n’t know there was such a poem in the world. Is n’t this glorious!” and she read:—

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

Find us farther than to-day.

Some one has declared that each person has a keynote to which his whole being vibrates. This pretty butterfly of a girl soon passed from her teacher’s ken; but I believe that in the old poem, so often repeated and parodied that one might have idly fancied all the virtue had long since gone out of it, she had found something that was to be a power in her life.

There is nothing like having a definite purpose. An arrow shot into the air may hit something, but it is decidedly more likely to hit if it is carefully aimed. A writer who is somewhat well known for his power of condensation has declared that it came from a remark of one of his college professors that words were expensive, and he was using far too many. He had then something definite to aim at, and he had hit the bull’s-eye.

The first step toward getting a thing, either a bag of gold or a virtue, is to wish for it earnestly. The world may be, as the old verses used to say, a vale of disappointments; but the Fates are often kind, and what one longs for with his whole heart and mind and strength, he is reasonably sure of getting—...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Living and Thinking