n stop a hole to keep the wind away, but no other man could serve so
rare a use as the author of this illustration did. Confucius says,--"The
skins of the tiger and the leopard, when they are tanned, are as the
skins of the dog and the sheep tanned." But it is not the part of a true
culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious; and
tanning their skins for shoes is not the best use to which they can be
put.

When looking over a list of men's names in a foreign language, as
of military officers, or of authors who have written on a particular
subject, I am reminded once more that there is nothing in a name. The
name Menschikoff, for instance, has nothing in it to my ears more human
than a whisker, and it may belong to a rat. As the names of the Poles
and Russians are to us, so are ours to them. It is as if they had been
named by the child's rigmarole,--IERY FIERY ICHERY VAN, TITTLE-TOL-TAN.
I see in my mind a herd of wild creatures swarming over the earth,
and to each the herdsman has affixed some barbarous sound in his own
dialect. The names of men are, of course, as cheap and meaningless as
BOSE and TRAY, the names of dogs.

Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named
merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to
know the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual.
We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman
army had a name of his own--because we have not supposed that he had a
character of his own.

At present our only true names are nicknames. I knew a boy who, from his
peculiar energy, was called "Buster" by his playmates, and this rightly
supplanted his Christian name. Some travelers tell us that an Indian had
no name given him at first, but earned it, and his name was his fame;
and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every new exploit.
It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has
earned neither name nor fame.

I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me, but still
see men in herds for all them. A familiar name cannot make a man less
strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his
own wild title earned in the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and
a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours. I see that my
neighbor, who bears the familiar epithet William or Edwin, takes it off
with his jacket. It does not adhere to him