"Three cheers for the Giver of this glorious afternoon," and then the
caps would go up in the air, and the rocks and hills echo the hoarse
shouts of the boys. I can hear now the jingling of the skates, the
crackling of the snow and the merry laughter as we came from under the
pine trees of Walden into the keen starlight, with the great comet
streaming in front of us.

On the first of May, 1859, Emerson wrote in a letter to Carlyle: "My boy
divides his time between Cicero and cricket,--and will go to college
next year. Sam Ward and I tickled each other the other day, in looking
over a very good company of young people, by finding in the newcomers a
marked improvement on their parents."

There are those who still remember seeing the two distinguished men on
the Concord playground, and wondering what they thought of it. Mr. Ward
came to place his boy under Mr. Sanborn's care; and a remarkable boy he
proved to be,--equally generous, fearless and high-minded. Twenty years
later, that same boy, looking out of his New York office window, saw his
former guide and preceptor striding through Wall Street. He rushed down
the stairs, and out upon the sidewalk, but the friend of his youth had
disappeared and was nowhere to be found.

With two or three exceptions, Mr. Sanborn's young men held him in high
regard, and when, in 1860, the United States marshals tried to carry him
off by force to testify at Washington in regard to the Harper's Ferry
invasion, they all rushed to his rescue, and foremost among them a
Baltimore boy, who had been cursing his teacher as an infernal
abolitionist for the previous six months.

Mr. Sanborn is much better known for his connection with the Harper's