This faculty of draining all the rivulets of knowledge by the way was strikingly developed by a man of surpassing eloquence and tireless activity.  He was never a methodical student in the sense of following rigidly a single line of study, but he habitually fed himself with any kind of knowledge which was at hand.  If books were at his elbow, he read them; if pictures, engravings, gems were within reach, he studied them; if nature was within walking distance, he watched nature; if men were about him, he learned the secrets of their temperaments, tastes, and skills; if he were on shipboard, he knew the dialect of the vessel in the briefest possible time; if he travelled by stage, he sat with the driver and learned all about the route, the country, the people, and the art of his companion; if he had a spare hour in a village in which there was a manufactory, he went through it with keen eyes and learned the mechanical processes used in it.  “Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar?” says Emerson.  “It is this:  every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.”

The man who is bent on getting the most out of life in order that he may make his own nature rich and productive will learn to free himself largely from dependence on conditions.  The power of concentration which issues from a resolute purpose, and is confirmed by habits formed to give that purpose effectiveness, is of more value than undisturbed hours and the solitude of a library; it is of more value because it takes the place of things which cannot always be at command.  To learn how to treat the odds and ends of hours so that they constitute, for practical purposes, an unbroken duration of time, is to emancipate one’s self from dependence on particular times, and to appropriate all time to one’s use; and in like manner to accustom one’s self to make use of all places, however thronged and public, as if they were private and secluded, is to free one’s self from bondage to a particular locality, or to surroundings specially chosen for the purpose.  Those who have abundance of leisure to spend in their libraries are beyond the need of suggestions as to the use of time and place; but those whose culture must be secured incidentally, as it were, need not despair,—­they have shining examples of successful use of limited opportunities about them.  It is not only possible to make all time enrich us, but to use all space as if it were our own.  To have a book in one’s pocket and the power of fastening one’s mind upon it to the exclusion of every other object or interest is to be independent of the library, with its unbroken quietness.  It is to carry the library with us,—­not only the book, but the repose.