YUBSCRIPTIONS to the NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE, thus far this season, are twenty per cent in advance of the number at the same date last year. This fact encourages the publishers to believe that the present policy of the magazine meets the approval of the community, and that policy will be continued during the coming year. While we are interested in the commercial development of New England, and desire in every legitimate way to use our pages to this end, the magazine finds its widest field of usefulness as an organ of New England idealism, and of New England song, story, and local life. Lovers of New England, everywhere, are invited to subscribe. The rate is $1.75 a year. Send remittance to the New England Magazine Co. POPE BUILDING, BOSTON Beautiful New England ANDSOME is as handsome does." The most lovely spots will always be those where lovely things have been done. Of such New England has many, and none more loved than the ancient seat of transcendental thought, the home of the Concord Sages. We are printing in this issue the first installment of a sensitive appreciation of Thoreau's Bible - that page of nature which he studied with such unfaltering devotion. It has its own loveliness, but I question if it would have been much noted but for the revealing pen of the poet whose gentle prose poems sang his own uncompromising idealism into the windings of the river, the still reflections of Walden and the swamps and fields that teem with tiny life. Here one is close to nature, not because of the remoteness of man and his works, but because of the seer that has opened the page. There are many ponds in New England, but none that touch us like Walden. No materialistic philosophy can ever change the fact that this world is the home of man, and as the foundation of his dreams and endeavors, attains its truest beauty. |