The Humanism of Thoreau.

One hundred years from his birth and some fifty years from his death, writer Henry David Thoreau has come into his own, perhaps more than his own. Obscure and contentedly "unsuccessful" while his friend was the anointed leader of a spiritual, social, and literary movement, he has since his death steadily advanced in popular and critical favor, until now he stands almost side by side with the shining leader himself. During his lifetime the author of two books, he has now to his credit no less than twenty volumes. The first edition of his book "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers," a copy of which recently sold at about one hundred dollars at auction, was so dismal a failure that the publisher returned the greater part of the edition, and the author found the growth of his library very suddenly accelerated.