Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays

[92] always proved too much for me,--the enormous wealth of the world of knowledge, and the stupendous variety of that which I wished to know. Doubtless the modern elective system, or even a wise teacher, would have helped me; they would have compelled me to concentration, but perhaps I may have absolutely needed some such period of intellectual wild oats. This was in September, 1843.

I read in that year, and a subsequent similar year, the most desultory and disconnected books, the larger the better: Newton's “Principia” and Whewell's “Mechanical Euclid;” Ritter's “History of Ancient philosophy;” Sismondi's “Decline and fall of the Roman empire;” Lamennais' “Paroles d'un Croyant” and “Livre du Peuple;” Homer and Hesiod; Linnaeus's “Correspondence;” Emerson over and over. Fortunately I kept up outdoor life also and learned the point where books and nature meet; learned that Chaucer belongs to spring, German romance to summer nights, Amadis de Gaul and the Morte d'arthur to the Christmas time; and found that books of natural history, in Thoreau's phrase, “furnish the cheerfulest winter reading.” Bettine Brentano and Gunderodethe correspondence between the two maidens being just then translated by Margaret Fuller --also fascinated me; and I have seldom been