Read "Economy" in "Walden" and the second and third of Crèvecoeur's "Letters from an American Farmer" for the contrast in ideas on property or for the contrast in ideas on the privileges and the obligations of citizenship. Read in "Walden" or "The Maine Woods" or "Cape Cod" or "A Yankee in Canada" or "Excursions" for examples of exaggeration and of aggressive self-consciousness. Is there any real likeness between Thoreau and Whitman in these respects? Read the characterizations of Thoreau in the essays by Robert Louis Stevenson and James Russell Lowell and decide in which points they should be modified. Read any one or two essays for Thoreau's allusions to science and to the sciences, the kind of allusions made, and the kind of significances derived from them. Read any two or three essays for the nature element in them, the kind of things alluded to, and the kind of significances derived from them. CHAPTER XVI NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE The thought of Hawthorne (1804-1864) as a member of the "Concord group" should be made with a mental reservation. He did not belong to Concord in any literal or figurative sense, he was not an intimate of those who did, he lived there for only seven years at two different periods in his career, and, wherever he lived, he was in thought and conduct anything but a group man. Yet he was a resident there for the first three years after his marriage (1842-1846), and he developed enough of a liking for the town to return to it for the closing four years of his life. What the town was by tradition and what it had become through Emerson's influence made it the most congenial spot in America for Hawthorne. On the other hand, he lived far longer in Salem--all but twelve out of his first forty-six years--and he belonged to the town of his heritage both far more and far less. Through instinctive feelings which were quite beyond his control he belonged to Salem from the bottom of his heart.