DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING
Write about an actual visit or interview. In all your work pay most attention to presenting the spirit of the person whom you talk with. The events of your visit, and the remarks that are made, are of less importance than the things that reveal spirit,—the surroundings, the costume, the habits, the work done and the various things that show character. The essay is in no sense to be the story of a visit; it is to give an intimate picture of the person in whom you are interested. Your object is to show character.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] Jean Henri Fabre (1823-1915). A French entomologist who wrote many volumes on insect life, among them being The Life and Love of the Insects; The Life of the Spider; The Life of the Fly.
[31] Walt Whitman (1819-1892). An American poet, noted for highly original poems marked by absence of rhyme and metre. Whitman loved the outdoor world, and had great philosophic insight.
[32] Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). A brilliant English essayist and historian, strikingly original and unconventional, and a firm upholder of stalwart manhood.
[33] Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). A great Russian novelist, reformer and philosopher,—a bold and original thinker.
[34] Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919). Ranchman, author, soldier, explorer, and President of the United States, a man of sterling manhood and great personal fearlessness.
[35] Mona Lisa. A picture of a lady of Florence, painted about 1504 by Leonardo da Vinci, an Italian painter. The face has a peculiarly tantalizing expression.
[36] Wake Robin. One of John Burroughs' delightful outdoor books, written in 1870.
[37] William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878). The first great American poet; author of Thanatopsis; noted for his love of nature.
[38] John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892). An American poet who wrote lovingly of New England life and scenery. He is noted for his poems against slavery.
[39] Pantheist. One who sees God in everything that exists.
[40] Mount Hymettus. A mountain in Greece from which most excellent honey was obtained in classic times.
[41] Alexander Wilson (1766-1813). Born in Scotland and died in Philadelphia; author of a remarkable study of American birds, published in nine volumes.
[42] John Muir (1838-1914). An American naturalist and explorer of the west and of Alaska.
[43] Gilbert White (1720-1793). An English naturalist, noted for his Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne.
[44] Frank M. Chapman (1864—). An American writer on bird life. He is especially noted for excellent work in photographing birds.
[45] John James Audubon (1780-1851). A great American student of birds; noted for his exact drawings of birds.
[46] Horace Traubel (1858-1919). An American editor who was the literary executor of Walt Whitman.
[47] Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). An American poet and philosopher; a man of marked individuality and power.
[48] Macrocosmic. The sentence means that Whitman looked upon the world and upon the universe as a whole, while Burroughs studied little or individual things in order to understand the whole.
[49] Ivan Turguenieff (1818-1883). A Russian novelist whose Diary of a Sportsman aided in bringing about the freeing of Russian serfs.
[50] Transcendentalist. One who believes in principles that can not be proved by experiment.
[51] Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). An American essayist, naturalist and philosopher.