Cheerful Yesterdays

eething epoch sometimes called vaguely Transcendentalism. But as these chapters are to be mainly autobiographic, it is well to state with just what outfit I left college in 184t. I had a rather shallow reading knowledge of six languages, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, and Greek, and had been brought in contact with some of the best books in each of these tongues. I may here add that I picked up at a later period German, Portuguese, and Hebrew, with a little Swedish ; and that I hope to live long enough to learn at least the alphabet in Russian. Then I had acquired enough of the higher mathematics to have a pupil or two in that branch ; something of theforms of logic and of Locke's philosophy with the criticisms of the French eclectics upon it; a smattering of history and political economy ; some crude acquaintance with field natural history ; some practice in writing and debating; a passion for poetry and imaginative literature; a voracious desire for all knowledge and all action ; and an amount of self-confidence which has now, after more than half a century, sadly diminished. It will be seen that this was an outfit more varied than graduates of the present day are apt to possess, but that it was also more superficial; their knowledge of what they know being often far more advanced as well as more solidly grounded than was mine. No matter ; I was a happy boy, ankle-deep in a yet unfathomed sea. I had two things in addition not set down in the... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.