re all the materials, excepting the timber, stones, and sand,
which I claimed by squatter's right. I have also a small woodshed
adjoining, made chiefly of the stuff which was left after building the
house.

I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on the main street
in Concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon as it pleases me as much and
will cost me no more than my present one.

I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one
for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays
annually. If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that
I brag for humanity rather than for myself; and my shortcomings and
inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement. Notwithstanding
much cant and hypocrisy--chaff which I find it difficult to separate
from my wheat, but for which I am as sorry as any man--I will breathe
freely and stretch myself in this respect, it is such a relief to both
the moral and physical system; and I am resolved that I will not through
humility become the devil's attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good
word for the truth. At Cambridge College the mere rent of a student's
room, which is only a little larger than my own, is thirty dollars each
year, though the corporation had the advantage of building thirty-two
side by side and under one roof, and the occupant suffers the
inconvenience of many and noisy neighbors, and perhaps a residence in
the fourth story. I cannot but think that if we had more true wisdom
in these respects, not only less education would be needed, because,
forsooth, more would already have been acquired, but the pecuniary
expense of getting an education would in a great measure vanish. Those
conveniences which the student requires at Cambridge or elsewhere cost
him or somebody else ten times as great a sacrifice of life as they
would with proper management on both sides. Those things for which
the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most
wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill,
while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating
with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made. The
mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of
dollars and cents, and then, following blindly the principles of a
division of labor to its extreme--a principle which should never be
followed but with circumspection--to call in a cont