[PW] Re: ? "Use what talent you possess"

[swguardian-stumpers at yahoo.com]

This quote appears with no attribution in the Grand Traverse Herald, Traverse City, Michigan on 16 July 1874. The newspapers of this time often printed small morality quotes like this without attribution. Often they are borrowed, sometimes from another newspaper, sometimes from a book, but the author is generally not credited. In this case, the Grand Traverse Herald was the oldest use of the quote I could find in newspapers. 
   
  Use what talent you possess. The woods
would be very silent if no bird sang there
but those who sang best. 
   
  If you would like a copy of the page it appears on, just let me know. 

"Cramer, Jeff" <Jeff.Cramer at walden.org> wrote:
  I am trying to find the source for the quotation ¡ÈUse what talent you
possess¡É which is erroneously attributed to Henry Van Dyke. It appeared in
the Ladies Repository (Sept. 1874) with no attribution. It also appeared in
the following two books, neither of which I can easily locate. If anyone has
either or both of these volumes, could you please check the page number
indicated and see if there is any attribution? It would be greatly
appreciated. 



Page 237 of Treasured Thoughts of Great Minds, compiled by J.B. (1876) 



Page 5 of Francis Redfern¡Çs The Edeographic Inductive Reader, or, The Art
of Reporting . . . (1875)



Many thanks in advance, Jeff





Jeffrey S. Cramer, Curator of Collections 
The Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods 
44 Baker Farm, Lincoln, MA 01773-3004 
Telephone/Fax: (781) 259-4730
E-mail: Jeff.Cramer at walden.org
Website: www.walden.org/Institute

"I have sometimes imagined a library, i.e. a collection of the works of true
poets, philosophers, naturalists, etc., deposited not in a brick and marble
edifice in a crowded and dusty city. . . but rather far away in the depths
of the primitive forest. . ."
-- Henry D. Thoreau, 3 February 1852

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