CORNELL
UNIVERSITY
‘LIBRARY

 

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME
OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT
FUND GIVEN IN I89I BY

HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE

 

 

 

 

 

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AN EMERSON CALENDAR
 
GREER TRAE GRATE GTS DEE

 

AN EMERSON

 

CALENDAR

 

EDITED BY

 

HUNTINGTON SMITH

 

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NEW YORK

 

 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. |’

 

 

 

bs ADL BATE TASTE DU BUTE TRE DUE TATE DRE DATE DUNS
COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY
PREFATORY NOTE

“VFN these days, when there is so much talk about
I the simple life, it is perhaps well to go back to

the writings of the New England philosopher
from whom all the later writers on the subject have
directly or indirectly derived their inspiration, and in-
quire of him at first hand just what the simple life and
its requirements really are.

One has not to read far in the essays and poems of
Emerson to understand that as he saw it the simple
life was not governed by a definite formula, or a series
of rules about personal expenses, diet, and “ the return
to nature,” — whatever that may mean. To Emerson
the simple life is the life in the spirit ; it expresses an
attitude of mind; it is a tendency, and not a fixed con-
dition. To put oneself in harmony with the supreme
laws of the universe, which are the laws of righteous-
ness ; to respect one’s own individuality and the indi-
viduality of others; to be receptive before one is ex-
pressive; to have faith in the eternal and to look for
perfection, but not to be impatient if it come not at
one’s bidding; to keep an open mind, unyielding
courage, unvarying tolerance, and immutable loyalty
to high ideals; to make friendship a religion, and love
a sacrament, —these are the essentials of Emerson’s
doétrine ; and they who have once known them in
their fulness may well look askance at the suggestions
of less inspired disciples.

The opportunity of preparingan Emerson Calendar

[v]
devolved upon me quite unexpectedly, but the calen-
dar, such as it is, represents the results of much careful
and persistent reading. It would hardly be possible,
however, even in the course of three hundred and
sixty-six short quotations, to give anything like an
adequate outline of Emerson’s teachings. The most
one can hope for is that these selections may help to
a clearer perception of life and its obligations, and to
a greater reverence, admiration and love for a writer
whose utterances lose nothing of their significance
with the lapse of time. Surely, a little of his wisdom
and poise are needed in an age when the stir and
glitter of ever changing surfaces so distractingly ob-
scure the movement of the great forces that make for
serenity, steadfastness and joy.

H. S$.

Dorchester, Massachusetts
April 19, 1905
GREE SREAE IRAE GRAS GME DE

JANUARY

JANUARY FIRST

IGHER than the question of our dura-
tion is the question of our deserving. Im-
mortality will come to such as are fit for

it, and he who would bea great soul in future, must

be a great soul now.
WORSHIP

JANUARY SECOND

Love wakes anew this throbbing heart,
And we are never old.

Over the winter glaciers,

I see the summer glow,

And through the wild-piled snowdrift

The warm rose buds below.
THE WORLD-SOUL

JANUARY THIRD
It is easy in the world to live after the world’s
opinion ; it is easy in solitude to live after our own;
but the great man is he who in the midst of the
crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the indepen-

dence of solitude.
: SELF-RELIANCE

Lt]
JANUARY FOURTH

If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for
the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak
to be weak. When we have new perception, we
shall gladly disburthen the memory of its hoarded
treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with
God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of
the brook and the rustle of the corn.

SELF-RELIANCE _

JANUARY FIFTH

All power is of one kind, a sharing of the nature
of the world. The mind that is parallel with the
laws of nature will be in the current of events, and
strong with their strength. Sais

JANUARY SIXTH

‘The word unto the prophets spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken ;
The word by seers or sibyls told

In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost

The heedless world hath never lost.
THE PROBLEM

JANUARY SEVENTH

Trust men and they will be true to you ; treat them
greatly and they will show themselves great, though
they make an exception in your favor to all their

r ;
ules of trade PRUDENCE

[2]
JANUARY EIGHTH

Could we not deal with a few persons, — with one
person, —after the unwritten statutes, and make
an experiment of their efficacy ? Could we not pay
our friend the compliment of truth, of silence, of
forbearing? Need we be so eager to seek him? If

we are related, we shall meet.
CHARACTER

JANUARY NINTH

Life is a series of surprises, and would not be worth
taking or keeping, if it were not. God delights to
isolate us every day, and hide from us the past and

the future.
EXPERIENCE

JANUARY TENTH

If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you
have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-
stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your
peace, and not pollute the morning... by cor-
ruption and groans. Come out of the azure. Love
the day. Do not leave the sky out of your landscape.

BEHAVIOR

JANUARY ELEVENTH

Every man takes care that his seiehipeE shall not
cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to
care that he do not cheat his neighbor. Then all
goes well. He has changed his market-cart into a

chariot of the sun.
WORSHIP

[3]
JANUARY TWELFTH

Life is too short to waste

The critic bite or cynic bark,
Quarrel, or reprimand ;

”T will soon be dark ;

Up! mind thine own aim, and
God speed the mark.

TO J. W.

JANUARY THIRTEENTH

That only which we have within, can we see with-
out. If we meet no gods, it is because we harbor
none. If there is grandeur in you, you will find
grandeur in porters and sweeps. He only is rightly
immortal, to whom all things are immortal.
WORSHIP
JANUARY FOURTEENTH

We have no pleasure in thinking of a benevolence
that is only measured by its works. Love is inex-
haustible, and if its estate is wasted, its granary emp-
tied, still cheers and enriches, and the man, though
he sleep, seems to purify the air, and his house to
adorn the landscape and strengthen the laws.

CHARACTER

JANUARY FIFTEENTH

No sane man at last distrusts himself. His existence
is a perfect answer to all sentimental cavils. If he is,
he is wanted, and has the precise properties that are
required. That we are here, is proof we ought to be

here. CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY

[4]
JANUARY SIXTEENTH

The spirit of the world, the great calm presence of
the creator, comes not forth to thesorceries of opium
or of wine. The sublime vision comes to the pure
and simple soul in a clean and chaste body.

THE POET

JANUARY SEVENTEENTH

The right use of Fate is to bring up our conduct to
the loftiness of nature. Rude and invincible except
by themselves are the elements. So let man be. Let
him . . . show his lordship by manners and deeds

on the scale of nature.
FATE

JANUARY EIGHTEENTH

Go where he will, the wise man is at home,

His hearth the earth ;— his hall the azure dome;
Where his clear spirit leads him, there,’s his road,
By God’s own light illumined and foreshowed.

WOOD NOTES

JANUARY NINETEENTH

The genius of life is friendly to the noble, and in
the dark brings them friends from far. Fear God,
and where you go, men shall think they walk in

hallowed cathedrals.
WORSHIP
JANUARY TWENTIETH

For practical success, there must not be too much
design. A man will not be observed in doing that
which he can do best. There is a certain magic
about his properest action, which stupefies your
powers of observation, so that though it is done be-

fore you, you wist not of it.
EXPERIENCE

JANUARY TWENTY-FIRST

You would compliment a coxcomb doing a good
aét, but you would not praise an angel. The silence
that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the
world is the highest applause. Such souls, when
they appear, are the Imperial Guard of Virtue, the
perpetual reserve, the dictators of fortune. One
needs not praise their courage, — they are the heart

and soul of nature.
AN ADDRESS

JANUARY TWENTY-SECOND

The fate of the poor shepherd, who, blinded and
lost in the snow-storm, perishes in a drift within a
few feet of his cottage door, is an emblem of the
state of man. On the brink of the waters of life and

truth, we are miserably dying.
THE POET

ae
JANUARY TWENTY-THIRD

What boots it, thy virtue,
What profit thy parts,

While one thing thou lackest,
The art of all arts!

The only credentials,
Passport to success,

Opens castle and parlor, —
Address, man, Address.

TACT

JANUARY TWENTY-FOURTH

Every great and commanding moment in the annals
of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm.
MAN THE REFORMER
JANUARY TWENTY-FIFTH ;

All that is clearly due to-day is not to lie. In other
places, other men have encountered sharp trials, and
have behaved themselves well. The martyrs were
sawn asunder, or hung alive on meat-hooks, Can-
not we screw our courage to patience and truth,
and without complaint, or even with good-humor,
await our turn of action in the Infinite Counsels?
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST
JANUARY TWENTY-SIXTH

Heaven is large, and affords space for all modes of
love and fortitude. Why should we be busy-bodies
and superserviceable ? A€tion and inaction are alike
to the true. One piece of the tree is cut for a wea-
thercock and one for the sleeper of a bridge; the

virtue of the wood is apparent in both.
[7] SPIRITUAL LAWS
JANUARY TWENTY-SEVENTH .

All things are known to the soul. It is not to be
surprised by any communication. Nothing can be
greater than it. Let those fear and fawn who will.
The soul is in her native realm, and it is wider than
space, older than time, wide as hope, rich as love.
Pusillanimity and fear she refuses with a beautiful
scorn: they are not for her who putteth on her
coronation robes, and goes out through universal
love to universal power.

THE METHOD OF NATURE

JANUARY TWENTY-EIGHTH

Every natural action is graceful. Every heroic act

,is also decent, and causes the place and the by-
standers to shine. We are taught by great actions
that the universe is the property of every individual
in it. Every rational creature has all Nature for his
dowry and estate. It is his, if he will.

BEAUTY
JANUARY TWENTY-NINTH

Nor scour the seas, nor sift mankind,

A poet or a friend to find;

Behold, he watches at the door,

Behold his shadow on the floor. SaabE

JANUARY THIRTIETH

The true thrift is always to spend on the higher
plane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice,
. that he may spend in spiritual creation, and not in
augmenting animal existence.

fe

WEALTH
JANUARY THIRTY-FIRST

The wise man is the State. He needs no army, fort,
_ or navy,—he loves men too well; no bribe, or feast,
or palace, to draw friends to him; no vantage
ground, no favorable circumstance. He needs no
library, for he has not done thinking; no church,
for he is a prophet; no statute book, for he is the
law-giver ; no money, for he is value; no road, for
he is at home where he is; no experience, for the
life of the creator shoots through him and ldoks

from his eyes.
POLITICS

[9]
SASS SHEE SHEAR SRE GE TRAE

FEBRUARY

FEBRUARY FIRST

N youth we are mad for persons. Childhood and
youth see all the world in them. But the larger
experience of man discovers the identical nature
appearing through them all. Persons themselves ac-

quaint us with the impersonal.
THE OVER-SOUL

FEBRUARY SECOND

Pictures must not be too picturesque. Nothing
astonishes men so much as common sense and plain
dealing. All great actions have been simple, and all

great pictures are.
ART

FEBRUARY THIRD

Some men are born to own, and can animate all
their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is
not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their
character : they seem to steal their own dividends.

They should own who can administer.
WEALTH

[tr]
FEBRUARY FOURTH

The hand that rounded Peter’s dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity,
Himself from God he could not free ;
He builded better than he knew,
The conscious stone to beauty grew.
THE PROBLEM

FEBRUARY FIFTH

In the last analysis, love is only the reflection of a
man’s own worthiness from other men. Men have
sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as
if they would signify that in their friend each loved

his own soul.
FRIENDSHIP

FEBRUARY SIXTH

Most of life seems to be mere advertisement of fa-
culty : information is given us not to sell ourselves
too cheap ; that we are very great. So, in particulars,
our greatness is always in a tendency or direction,

not in an action.
EXPERIENCE

FEBRUARY SEVENTH

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and
defying though he look, he has a helm which he
obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are
classified. He can only be reformed by showing him
a new idea which commands his own.

[ 12 ]

CIRCLES
FEBRUARY EIGHTH

We like to come to a height of land and see the
landscape, just as we value a general remark in con-
versation. But it is not the intention of nature that
we should live by general views. We fetch fire and
water, run about all day among the shops and
markets, and get our clothes and shoes made and
mended, and are the victims of these details, and
once in a fortnight we arrive perhaps at a rational
moment. If we were not thus infatuated, if we saw
the real from hour to hour, we should not be here
to write and to read, but should have been burned

or frozen long ago.
NOMINALIST AND REALIST

FEBRUARY NINTH

The face which character wears to me is self-suffi-
cingness, I revere the person who is riches ;.so that
T cannot think of him as alone, or poor, or exiled, or
unhappy, or a client, but as perpetual patron, bene-
factor, and beatified man. Character is centrality,
the impossibility of being displaced or overset.

CHARACTER

FEBRUARY TENTH

Iam thankful for small mercies. I compared notes
with one of my friends who expects everything of
the universe, and is disappointed when any thing is
less than the best, and I found that I begin at the
other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always
full of thanks for moderate goods.

[ 13 J

EXPERIENCE
FEBRUARY ELEVENTH

I care not how you are drest,

In the coarsest, or in the best,

Nor whether your name is base or brave,
Nor for the fashion of your behavior, —
But whether you charm me,

Bid my bread feed, and my fire warm me,

And dress up nature in your favor.
FATE

FEBRUARY TWELFTH

If the disparities of talent and position vanish when
the individuals are seen in the duration which is
necessary to complete the career of each, even more
swiftly the seeming injustice disappears when we
ascend to the central identity of all the individuals,
and know that they are made of the substance

which ordaineth and doeth.
USES OF GREAT MEN

FEBRUARY THIRTEENTH
Thesoul looketh steadily forwards, creating a world
alway before her, leaving worlds alway behind her.
She has no dates, nor rites, nor persons, nor spe-
cialties, nor men. The soul knows only the soul ;
all else is idle weeds for her wearing.
THE OVER-SOUL

[14 ]
FEBRUARY FOURTEENTH

The permanent interest of every man is, never to be
in a false position, but to have the weight of Na-
ture to back him in all that he does. Riches and
poverty are a thick or thin costume ; and our life—

the life of all of us— identical.
ILLUSIONS

FEBRUARY FIFTEENTH
I could better eat with one who did not respect the
truth or the laws, than with a sloven and unpre-
sentable person. Moral qualities rule the world, but

at short distances, the senses are despotic.
MANNERS

FEBRUARY SIXTEENTH

In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible vir-
tue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at
twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in
my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune,
I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to

the brink of fear.
NATURE

FEBRUARY SEVENTEENTH
If you choose to plant yourself on the side of Fate,
and say, Fate is all; then we say, a part of Fate is
the freedom of man.
_ FATE
FEBRUARY EIGHTEENTH

*T is not within the force of Fate

The fate-conjoined to separate.
THRENODY
[35 ]
FEBRUARY NINETEENTH

What is best in each kind is an index of what should
be the average of that thing. Love shows me the
opulence of nature, by disclosing to me in my friend
a hidden wealth, and I infer an equal depth of good

in every other direction.
NOMINALIST AND REALIST

FEBRUARY TWENTIETH

Dreadful limits are set in nature to the powers of
dissimulation. Truth tyrannizes over the unwilling
members of the body. Faces never lie, it is said. No
man need be deceived who will study the changes

of expression.
SPIRITUAL LAWS

FEBRUARY TWENTY-FIRST

We believe in ourselves, as we do not believe in
others. We permit all things to ourselves, and that
which we call sin in others, is experiment for us.

EXPERIENCE
FEBRUARY TWENTY-SECOND
Why should I keep holiday,
When other men have none?
Why but because when these are gay,
I sit and mourn alone.
COMPENSATION

[ 16 ]
FEBRUARY TWENTY-THIRD

Nature is tugging at every contract to make the
terms of it fair. If you are proposing only your own,
the other party must deal a little hardly by you. If
you deal generously, the other, though selfish and
unjust, will make an exception in your favor, and
deal truly with you. When I asked an iron-master
about the slag and cinder in railroad iron, —“O,”
he said, “‘there’s always good iron to be had: if
there’s cinder in the iron, ’tis because there was
cinder in the pay.”

CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY

FEBRUARY TWENTY-FOURTH

There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or
behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain
around us. ”T is good to give a stranger a meal, or
a night’s lodging. ’T is better to be hospitable to his
good meaning and thought, and give courage toa
companion. We must be as courteous to a man as
we are to a picture, which we are willing to give -

the advantage of a good light.
BEHAVIOR

FEBRUARY TWENTY-FIFTH

Be lord of a day, through wisdom and justice, and
you can put up your history books.

LITERARY ETHICS

[ae]
#

FEBRUARY TWENTY-SIXTH

The stronger the nature, the more it is reactive.
Let us have the quality pure. A little genius let us
leave alone. A main difference betwixt men, is whe-
ther they attend their own affair or not. Man is that
noble endogenous plant which grows, like the palm,

from within outward.
USES OF GREAT MEN

FEBRUARY TWENTY-SEVENTH .

Wilt thou not ope this heart to know
What rainbows teach and sunsets show,
Verdict which accumulates

From lengthened scroll of human fates,
Voice of earth to earth returned,
Prayers of heart that inly burned ;
Saying, what is excellent,

As God lives, is permanent,

Hearts are dust, hearts’ loves remain,

Heart’s love will meet thee again.
THRENODY

FEBRUARY TWENTY-EIGHTH

We boast our emancipation from many supersti-
tions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through
a transfer of the idolatry. What have I gained, that
I no longer immolate a bull to Jove, or to Nep-
tune, or a mouse to Hecate; that I do not tremble
before the Eumenides, or the Catholic Purgatory,
or the Calvinistic Judgment-day, —if I quake at
opinion, the public opinion, as we call it ; or at the

[ 18 ]
threat of assault, or contumely, or bad neighbors,
or poverty, or mutilation, or at the rumor of revo-
lution, or murder? If I quake, what matters it what

T quake at?
CHARACTER

FEBRUARY TWENTY-NINTH

By right or wrong,

Lands and goods go to the strong;
Property will brutely draw

Still to the proprietor,

Silver to silver creep and wind,
And kind to kind,

Nor less the eternal poles

Of tendency distribute souls.
CELESTIAL LOVE

[ 19 ]
,

DEKE FREE TEAS TTS GTS TRE

MARCH:

MARCH FIRST _
VERY man’s nature is a sufficient advertise-
ment to him of the character of his fellows.
My right and my wrong, is their right and their
wrong. Whilst I do what is fit for me, and abstain
from what is unfit, my neighbor and I shall often
agree in our means, and work together for a time to

one end.
POLITICS

MARCH SECOND
Weare such lovers of self-reliance, that we excuse
in a man many sins, if he will show us a complete
satisfaction in his position, which asks no leave to
be, of mine, or any man’s good opinion.
MANNERS

* MARCH THIRD

Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the
call, There is one direétion in which all space is
open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him
thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in a
‘river ; he runs against obstructions on every side but
one; on that side all obstruction is taken away and
he sweeps serenely over God’s depths into an infi-

nite sea.
SPIRITUAL LAWS

[21 ]
MARCH FOURTH

Every solid in the universe is ready to become fluid
on the approach of the mind, and the power to flux
it is the measuré of the mind. If the wall remain

adamant, it accuses the want of thought.
: FATE

MARCH FIFTH
Every child that is born must have a just chance for
his bread. Let the amelioration in our laws of pro-
perty proceed from the concession of the rich, not
from the grasping of the poor. Let us begin by ha-
bitual imparting.
MAN THE REFORMER

MARCH SIXTH
What a man does, that he has. What has he to do
with hope or fear ? In himself is his might. Let him
regard no good as solid but that which is in his na-
ture and which must grow out of him as long as he

exists.
SPIRITUAL LAWS

MARCH SEVENTH

Eterne alternation

Now follows, now flies,

And under pain, pleasure,
Under pleasure, pain lies.
Love works at the centre,
Heart-heaving alway ;

Forth speed the strong pulses
To the borders of day.

[ 22 J

THE SPHYNX
MARCH EIGHTH

I suffer, every day, from the want of perception of
beauty in people. They do not know the charm
with which all moments and objects can be embel-
lished, the charm of manners, of self-command, of
benevolence. Repose and cheerfulness are the badge

of the gentleman, — repose in energy.
CULTURE

MARCH NINTH

That spirit which suffices quiet hearts, which seems
to come forth to such from every dry knoll of sere
grass, from every pine-stump, and half-imbedded
stone, on which the dull March sun shines, comes
forth to the poor and hungry, and such as are of

simple taste.
THE POET

MARCH TENTH

A man’s fortunes are the fruit of his character. A

man’s friends are his magnetisms.
FATE

MARCH ELEVENTH

As the wave breaks to foam on shelves,
Then runs into a wave again,
So lovers melt their sundered selves,

Yet melted would be twain.
INITIAL LOVE

[4a]
MARCH TWELFTH

A belief in causality, or stri€t connection between
every trifle and the principle of being, and, in con-
sequence, belief in compensation, or, that nothing is
got for nothing, — characterizes all valuable minds,
and must control every effort that is made by an

industrious one.
POWER

MARCH THIRTEENTH

Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirm-
ity of will. Regret calamities if you can thereby help
the sufferer; if not, attend your own work and al-

ready the evil begins to be repaired.
SELF-RELIANCE

MARCH FOURTEENTH

Hospitality must be for service and not for show,
or it pulls down the host. The brave soul rates itself
too high to value itself by the splendor of its table
and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath,
but its own majesty can lend a better grace to ban-
nocks and fair water than belong to city feasts.

HEROISM

MARCH FIFTEENTH

The sexton tolling the bell at noon,

Dreams not that great Napoleon

Stops his horse, and lists with delight,

Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument

[741
Thy life to thy neighbor’s creed has lent: -
All are needed by each one,

Nothing is fair or good alone.
EACH AND ALL

MARCH SIXTEENTH

Whenever you are sincerely pleased, you are nour-
ished. The joy of the spirit indicates its strength.
All healthy things are sweet-tempered. Genius
works in sport, and goodness smiles to the last; and,
for the reason, that whoever sees the law which dis-
tributes things, does not despond, but is animated
to great desires and endeavors.

CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY

MARCH SEVENTEENTH

Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than
his echo. The condition which high friendship de-
mands is ability to do without it. To be capable
that high office requires great and sublime parts.
There must be very two, before there can be very

one.
FRIENDSHIP

MARCH EIGHTEENTH
If there be power in good intention, in fidelity, and
in toil, the north wind shall be purer, the stars in
heaven shall glow with a kindlier beam, that I have
lived. Iam primarily engaged to myself to be a pub-
lic servant of all the gods, to demonstrate to all men
that there is intelligence and good will at the heart
of things, and ever higher and yet higher leadings.

THE CONSERVATIVE
[25]
MARCH NINETEENTH

A man was born not for prosperity, but to suffer
for the benefit of others, like the noble rock-maple
which all around our villages bleeds for the service

of man.
THE METHOD OF NATURE

MARCH TWENTIETH

As soon as beauty is sought, not from religion and
love but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker. High
beauty is no longer attainable by him in canvas or
in stone, in sound, or in lyrical construction; an
effeminate, prudent, sickly beauty, which is not
beauty, is all that can be formed; for the hand can
never execute any thing higher than the character
can inspire.

ART

MARCH TWENTY-FIRST

The politics are base,
The letters do not cheer,
And ’tis far in the deeps of history —
The voice that speaketh clear.
Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn,
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.
THE WORLD-SOUL

MARCH TWENTY-SECOND

Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess to-day
the mood, the pleasure, the power of to-morrow,

[ 26 ]
when we are building up our being. Of lower states,
—of acts of routine and sense, we can tell some-
what, but the masterpieces of God, the total growths
and universal movements of the soul, he hideth;

they are incalculable.
CIRCLES

MARCH TWENTY-THIRD

The simplest utterances are worthiest to be writ-
ten, yet are they so cheap and so things of course,
that in the infinite riches of the soul it is like ga-
thering a few pebbles off the ground, or bottling a
little air in a phial, when the whole earth and the
whole atmosphere are ours, ~

THE OVER-SOUL ~

MARCH TWENTY-FOURTH

Those who live to the future, must always appear
selfish to those who live to the present.
CHARACTER

MARCH TWENTY-FIFTH
One way is right to go: the hero sees it, and moves
on that aim, and has the world under him for root
and support. He is to others as the world. His ap-

probation is honor; his dissent, infamy.
FATE

MARCH TWENTY-SIXTH

It is only necessary to ask a few questions as to the
progress of the articles of commerce from the fields

[ 27 ]
where they grew, to our houses, to become aware
that we eat and drink and wear perjury and fraud

in a hundred commodities.
. MAN THE REFORMER

MARCH TWENTY-SEVENTH

Nature never spares the opium or nepenthe; but,
wherever she mars her creature with some deform-
ity or defect, lays her poppies plentifully on the
bruise, and the sufferer goes joyfully through life,
ignorant of the ruin, and incapable of seeing it,
though all the world point their finger at it every
day.

USES OF GREAT MEN

MARCH TWENTY-EIGHTH

Pure by impure is not seen.
For there’s no sequestered grot,
Lone mountain tarn, or isle forgot,
But justice journeying in the sphere
Daily stoops to harbor there.
ASTREA

MARCH TWENTY-NINTH
The virtues are economists, but some of the vices
are also. Thus, next to humility, I have noticed that
pride is a pretty good husband. A good pride is, as
T reckon it, worth from five hundred to fifteen hun-
dred a year.
WEALTH

MARCH THIRTIETH

Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about
your business anywhere. Life is not intellectual or

[ 28 ]
critical, but sturdy. Its chief good is for well-mixed
people who can enjoy what they find, without ques-

tion.
EXPERIENCE

MARCH THIRTY-FIRST

There is a time in every man’s education when he
arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance ;
that imitation is suicide; that he must take him-
self for better for worse as his portion ; that though
the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nour-
ishing corn can come to him but through his toil
bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to

him to till.
SELF-RELIANCE

[ 29 ]
SEE TERE DEKE DAKE DAKE DE

APRIL

APRIL FIRST

OVE, and you shall be loved. All love is mathe-
matically just, as much as the two sides of
an algebraic equation. The good man has absolute
good, which like fire turns everything to its own
nature, so that you cannot do him any harm; but as
the royal armies sent against Napoleon, when he ap-
proached cast down their colors and from enemies
became friends, so do disasters of all kinds, as sick-
ness, offence, poverty, prove benefactors.

COMPENSATION

APRIL SECOND

Be-content with a little light, so it be your own.
Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flat-
tered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Nei-
ther dogmatize, nor accept another’s dogmatism.
Why should you renounce your right to traverse
the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature com-
forts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has

its roof, and bed, and board.
* . LITERARY ETHICS

APRIL THIRD

As we are, so,we do; and as we do, so is it done
to us ; we are the builders of our fortunes ; cant and

[ 31 ]
lying and the attempt to secure a good which does
not belong tous, are, once for all, balked and vain.

WORSHIP

APRIL FOURTH

The prosperous and beautiful

To me seem not to wear

The yoke of conscience masterful,
Which galls me Shen nel

Yet susie yon purple snaneaans

Yet said yon ancient wood,

That night or day, that love or crime,
Lead all souls to the Good.

THE PARK

APRIL FIFTH

Nature will not have us fret and fume. She does
not like our benevolence or our learning much bet-
ter than she likes our frauds and wars. When we
come out of the caucus, or the bank, or the Abo-
lition Convention, or the Temperance meeting, or
the Transcendental club into the fields and woods,
she says to us, “So hot? my little sir.”

SPIRITUAL LAWS

APRIL SIXTH

You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. . .
Treat men as pawns and ninepins and you shall
suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart,
you shall lose your own.

[ 32 ]

COMPENSATION
APRIL SEVENTH

The hero fears not that if he withhold the avowal
of a just and brave aét it will go unwitnessed and
unloved. One knows it, himself, —and is pledged
by it to sweetness of peace and to nobleness of aim
which will prove in the end a better proclamation
of it than the relation of the incident.

SPIRITUAL LAWS

APRIL EIGHTH

It seems as if the law of the intelleét resembled that
law of nature by which we now inspire, now ex-
pire the breath ; by which the heart now draws in,
then hurls out the blood, —the law of undulation.
So now you must labor with your brains, and now
you must forbear your activity and see what the

great Soul showeth.
INTELLECT

APRIL NINTH

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from
flees from us.... Hence the high caution, that,
since we are sure of having what we wish, we be-

ware to ask only for high things.
FATE |

APRIL TENTH
Lovers should guard their strangeness. If they for-
give too much, all slides into confusion and mean-

ness. -
MANNERS

[ 33]
APRIL ELEVENTH

It is because we know how much is due from us,
that we are impatient to show some petty talent as
a substitute for worth. We are haunted by a con-
science of this right to grandeur of character, and

are false to it.
POLITICS

APRIL TWELFTH

Kings unborn shall walk with me,
And the poor grass shall plot and plan
What it will do when it is man:
Quickened so, will I unlock

Every crypt of every rock.
BACCHUS

APRIL THIRTEENTH

The things that are really for thee gravitate to thee.
You are running to seek your friend. Let your feet
run, but your mind need not. If you do not find him,
will you not acquiesce that it is best you should not
find him? for there is a power, which as it is in
you, is in him also, and could therefore very well
bring you together, if it were for the best.

THE OVER-SOUL

APRIL FOURTEENTH

All things exist in the man tinged with the manners
of his soul. With what quality is in him, he infuses
all nature that he can reach; nor does he tend to lose’
himself in vastness, but, at how long a curve soever,
all his regards return into his own good at last.

CHARACTER

[ 34]
APRIL FIFTEENTH

There are men who rise refreshed on hearing a
threat; men to whom a crisis which intimidates
and paralyzes the majority —demanding not the
faculties of prudence and thrift, but comprehension,
immovableness, the readiness of sacrifice — comes

graceful and beloved as a bride.
AN ADDRESS

APRIL SIXTEENTH

He who would gather immortal palms must not be
hindered by the name of goodness, but must ex-
plore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but
the integrity of our own mind. Absolve you to your-
self, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

SELF-RELIANCE

APRIL SEVENTEENTH
By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the
little you gain the great. You become pronounced.
You demonstrate yourself, so as to put yourself out
of the reach of false relations, and you draw to you
the first-born of the world,—those rare pilgrims
whereof only one or two wander in nature at once,
and before whom the vulgar great show as spectres

and shadows merely.
FRIENDSHIP

APRIL EIGHTEENTH

* .

Why needs any man be rich? Why must he have
horses, fine. garments, handsome apartments, ac-
cess to public houses and places of amusement?

[ 35 ]
Only for want of thought. Give his mind a new
image, and he flees into a solitary garden or garret
to enjoy it, and is richer with that dream than the
fee of a county could make him.

MAN THE REFORMER

APRIL NINETEENTH

In our flowing affairs a decision must be made, —
the best, if you can; but any is better than none.
There are twenty ways of going toa point, and one

is the shortest ; but set out at once on one.
POWER

APRIL TWENTIETH

The rain has spoiled the farmer’s day;
Shall sorrow put my books away?
Thereby are two days lost :
Nature shall mind her own affairs,
I will attend my proper cares,

In rain, or sun, or frost. suUM CUIOUE

APRIL TWENTY-FIRST

To every creature is his own weapon, however
skilfully concealed from himself, a good while. His
work is sword and shield. Let him accuse none, let
him injure none. The way to mend the bad world,

is to create the right world. wegen

La

APRIL TWENTY-SECOND

Every man is actually weak and apparently strong.
To himself he seems weak ; to others formidable.

[ 36 ]
You are afraid of Grim ; but Grim also is afraid of
you. You are solicitous of the good will of the
meanest person, uneasy at his ill will. But the stur-
diest offender of your peace and of the neighbor-
hood, if you rip up is claims, is as thin and timid as
any; and the peace of society is often kept, because,
as children say, one is afraid and the other dares not.

PRUDENCE

APRIL TWENTY-THIRD

The spirit of the world, the great calm presence of
the creator, comes not forth to the sorceries of
opium and wine. The sublime vision comes to the
pure and simple soul in a clean and chaste body.

THE POET

APRIL TWENTY-FOURTH
A man inspires affection and honor, because he was
not lying in wait for these. The things of a man for
which we visit him, were done in the dark and the
cold.

BEHAVIOR

APRIL TWENTY-FIFTH

The rain comes when the wind calls,
The river knows the way to the sea,
Without a pilot it runs and falls,

Blessing all lands with its charity.
! WOOD NOTES

[ 37]
APRIL TWENTY-SIXTH

God never jests with us, and will not compromise
the end of Nature, by permitting any inconse-
quence in its procession. Any distrust of the perma-
nence of laws would paralyze the faculties of man.

IDEALISM

APRIL TWENTY-SEVENTH

Simple hearts put all the history and customs of this
world behind them, and play their own play in in-
nocent defiance of the Blue-Laws of the world; and
such would appear, could we see the human race
assembled in vision, like little children frolicking
together, though to the eyes of mankind at large
they wear a stately and solemn garb of works and

influences.
HEROISM

APRIL TWENTY-EIGHTH

He saw the partridge drum in the woods,
He heard the woodcock’s evening hymn,
He found the tawny thrush’s broods,
And the shy hawk did wait for him.
What others did at distance hear,

And guessed within the thicket’s gloom,
Was showed to this philosopher,

And at his bidding seemed to come.
WOOD NOTES

APRIL TWENTY-NINTH

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his
real character, and reveals it by hiding. If a man

( 38 ]
wish to conceal anything he carries, those whom
he meets know that he conceals somewhat, and
usually know what he conceals. Is it otherwise if
there be some belief or some purpose he would bury
in his breast? ’T is as hard to hide as fire.

WORSHIP

APRIL THIRTIETH

Let a man keep the law, —any law, —and his way
will be strown with satisfactions. There is more dif-
ference in the quality of our pleasures than in the

amount.
PRUDENCE

[ 39 ]
DERE DEE DEAE GATE GRAS TTS

MAY

MAY FIRST

BELIEVE, as, thou livest, that every sound

that is spoken over the round world, which
thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine ear.
Every proverb, every book, every by-word that be-
longs to thee for aid or comfort, shall surely come
home through. open or winding passage. Every
friend whom not thy fantastic will but the great
and tender heart in thee craveth, shall lock thee in

his embrace.
THE OVER-SOUL

MAY SECOND

God offers to every mind its choice between truth
and repose. Take which you please,—you can
never have both. Between these, as a pendulum,

man oscillates.
INTELLECT

MAY THIRD
Eat thou the bread which men refuse ;
Flee from the goods which from thee flee ;

Seek nothing; Fortune seeketh thee.
SAADI

[4b]
MAY FOURTH

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on
this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when
a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and
no man knows what is safe, or where it will end.

CIRCLES

MAY FIFTH -

I like to see that we cannot be bought and sold.
The best of hospitality and of generosity is also not
in the will but in fate. I find that Iam not much
to you; you do not need me; you do not feel me;
then am I thrust out of doors, though you proffer

me house and lands.
GIFTS

MAY SIXTH

The poet, the prophet, has a higher value for what
he utters than any hearer, and therefore it gets

spoken.
NATURE

MAY SEVENTH

Then I said, “I covet Truth ;

Beauty is unripe childhood’s cheat, —

I leave it behind with the games of youth.”
As I spoke, beneath my feet

The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs ;

IT inhaled the violet’s breath; _

Around me stood the oaks and firs;

Pine cones and acorns lay on the ground ;

[ 42 ]
Above me soared the eternal sky,

Full of light and deity ;

Again I saw, again I heard,

The rolling river, the morning bird ; —

Beauty through my senses stole,

I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
EACH AND ALL

MAY EIGHTH

Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, to-day.
Let us treat the men and women well : treat them

as if they were real: perhaps they are.
EXPERIENCE

MAY NINTH

If you follow the suburban fashion in building a
sumptuous-looking house for a little money, it will
appear to all eyes as a cheap dear house. There is
no privacy that cannot be penetrated. No secret

can be kept in the civilized world.
WORSHIP

MAY TENTH

At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the
world is forced to leave his city estimates of great
and small, wise and foolish. The knapsack of cus-
tom falls off his back with the first step he makes
into these precincts. Here is sanctity which shames
our religions, and reality which discredits our he-
roes. Here we find nature to be the circumstance
which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges
like a god all men that come to her.

[ 43 ]

NATURE
MAY ELEVENTH

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,

Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,

Then beauty is its own excuse for being ;

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose !

I never thought to ask ; I never knew ;

But in my simple ignorance suppose

The self-same power that brought me there,
brought you.

THE RHODORA

MAY TWELFTH

We can never see christianity from the catechism ;
—from the pastures, from a boat in the pond, from
amidst the songs of wood-birds we possibly may.

CIRCLES

MAY THIRTEENTH

He who travels to be amused or to get somewhat
which he does not carry, travels away from him-
self, and grows old even in youth among old things.
In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have be-
come old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins

to ruins.
SELF-RELIANCE

MAY FOURTEENTH

Oft didst thou thread the woods in vain
To find what bird had piped the strain, —
Seek not, and the little eremite

Flies gayly forth and sings in sight.

WOOD NOTES

[ 44]
MAY FIFTEENTH

If thou fill thy brain with Boston and New York,
with fashion and covetousness, and wilt stimulate
thy jaded senses with wine and French coffee, thou
shalt find no radiance of wisdom in the lonely waste

of the pinewoods.
THE POET

MAY SIXTEENTH

We fancy men are individuals ; so are pumpkins ;
but every pumpkin in the field, goes through every
point of pumpkin history.

NOMINALIST AND REALIST

MAY SEVENTEENTH

Give me health and a day, and I will make the
pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my As-
syria ; the sunset and moonrise my Paphos, and un-
imaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my
England of the senses and the understanding; the
night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy

and dreams.
BEAUTY

MAY EIGHTEENTH

Onward, and nearer draws the sun of May,
And wide around the marriage of the plants
Is sweetly solemnized ; then flows amain —
The surge of summer’s beauty ; dell and crag,
Hollow and lake, hill-side, and pine arcade,
Are touched with genius. Yonder ragged cliff
Has thousand faces in a thousand hours.

[ 45 ] % MUSKETAQUID
MAY NINETEENTH

Right ethics are central, and go from the soul out-
ward. Gift is contrary to the law of the universe.
Serving others is serving us. I must absolve me to
myself.

USES OF GREAT MEN

MAY TWENTIETH

We foolishly think in our days of sin that we must
court friends by compliance to the customs of so-
ciety, to its dress, its breeding, and its estimates. But
later if we are so happy we learn that only that
soul can be my friend which I encounter on the
line of my own march, that soul to which I do not
decline and which does not decline to me, but, na-
_ tive of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own

all my experience.
SPIRITUAL LAWS

MAY TWENTY-FIRST

A man who is sure of his point, carries a broad and
contented expression, which everybody reads. And
you cannot rightly train one to an air and manner,
except by making him the kind of man of whom
that manner is the natural expression. Nature for-
ever puts a premium on reality. What is done for
effect, is.seen to be done for effet; what is done

for love, is felt to be done for love.
BEHAVIOR

[ 46 ]
MAY TWENTY-SECOND

Aman should not tell me that he has walked among
the angels: his proof is that his eloquence makes

me one,
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC

MAY ‘TWENTY-THIRD

Past utterance and past belief,

And past the blasphemy of grief,

The mysteries of nature’s heart, —

And. though no muse can these impart,
Throb thine with nature’s throbbing breast,

And all is clear from east to west.
THRENODY

MAY TWENTY-FOURTH

Men hold themselves cheap and vile: and yet a man
is a fagot of thunderbolts. All the elements pour
through his system: he is the flood of the flood, and
fire of the fire ; he feels the antipodes and the pole,
as drops of his blood: they are the extension of his
personality. His duties are measured by that instru-
ment he is; and a right and perfect man would be
felt to the centre of the Copernican system.

BEAUTY

MAY TWENTY-FIFTH

There is no luck in literary reputation. They who
make up the final verdict upon every book are not
the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it
appears, but a court as of angels, a public not to be
bribed; not to be entreated and not to be overawed,

[47 ]
decides upon every man’s title to fame, Only those.
books come down which deserve to last.

SPIRITUAL LAWS
MAY TWENTY-SIXTH

Pride ruined the angels,
Their shame them restores,
And the joy that is sweetest
Lurks in stings of remorse.
Have | a lover

Who is noble and free, —

I would he were nobler

Than to love me. eR GBR

MAY TWENTY-SEVENTH

The only reward of virtue is virtue: the only way
to have a friend is to be one. You shall not come
nearer a man by getting into his house. If unlike,
his soul only flees the faster from you, and you shall
catch never a true glance of his eye. We see the
noble afar off and they repel us; why should we

intrude ? FRIENDSHIP

MAY TWENTY-EIGHTH

The poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vege-
tation, and animation, for he does not stop at these
facts, but employs them as signs. He knows why
the plain, or meadow of space, was strown with
these flowers we call suns, and moons, and stars;
why the great deep is adorned with animals, with
men, and gods; for, in every word he speaks he rides
on them as the horses of thought.

[ 48 ]

THE POET
_ MAY TWENTY-NINTH

All private sympathy is partial. Two human beings
are like globes, which can touch only ina point, and,
whilst they remain in contact, all other points of
each of the spheres are inert; their turn must also
come, and the longer a particular union lasts, the
more energy of appetency. the parts not in union

acquire, EXPERIENCE

MAY THIRTIETH

Genius is religious. It is a larger imbibing of the
common heart. It is not anomalous, but more like
and not less like other men. There is in all great
poets a wisdom of humanity which is superior to
any talents they exercise. The author, the wit, the
partisan, the fine gentleman, does not take place
of the man. THE OVER-SOUL

MAY THIRTY-FIRST

It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly
learns, that, beyond the energy of his possessed and
conscious intellect, he is capable of a new energy
(as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandon-
ment to the nature of things; that, beside his pri-
vacy of power as an individual man, there is a great
public power, on which he can draw, by unlock-
ing, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the
ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him: then
he is caught up into the life of the Universe, his
speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words
are universally intelligible as the plants and animals.

[49 ] THE POET
GREE TE FETE GRAS GE DAE

JUNE

JUNE FIRST

HE south-wind brings
Life, sunshine, and desire,
And on every mount and meadow

Breathes aromatic fire.
THRENODY

JUNE SECOND
Has the naturalist or chemist learned his craft, who
has explored the gravity of atoms and the elective
affinities, who has not yet discerned the deeper law
whereof this is only a partial or approximate state-
ment, namely that like draws to like, and that the
goods which belong to you gravitate to you and

need not be pursued with pains and cost?
CIRCLES

JUNE THIRD
Insight we must have, or we shall run against one
another, and miss the way to our food; but intellect
is selfish and barren. The secret of success in so-
ciety, is a certain heartiness and sympathy.
MANNERS

[51]
JUNE FOURTH

All just persons are satisfied with their own praise.
They refuse to explain themselves, and are content
that new actions should do them that office. They
believe that we communicate without speech, and
above speech, and that no right action of ours is
quite unaffeCting to our friends, at whatever dis-
tance; for the influence of action is not to be mea-

sured by miles.
EXPERIENCE

JUNE FIFTH

_ Lover of all things alive,
Wonderer at all he meets,
Wonderer chiefly at himself, —
Who can tell him what he is,
Or how meet in human elf

Coming and past eternities.
WOOD NOTES

JUNE SIXTH

The one serious and formidable thing in nature is
a will. Society is servile for want of will, and there-
fore the world wants saviours and religions.

FATE

JUNE SEVENTH

We shall one day see that the most private is the
most public energy, that quality atones for quan-
_ tity, and grandeur of character acts in the dark, and
succors them who never saw it. What greatness has
yet appeared, is beginnings and encouragements to

[ 52 ]
us in this direction. The history of those gods and
saints which the world has written, and then wor-

shipped, are documents of character.
CHARACTER

JUNE EIGHTH

I thought the sparrow’s note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;

I brought him home in his nest at even ;—

He sings the song, but it pleases not now;

For I did not bring home the river and sky;

He sang to my ear; they sang to my eye.

EACH AND ALL
JUNE NINTH

Men are helpful through the intellect and the af-
feétions. Other help, I find a false appearance. If
you affect to give me bread and fire, I perceive that
I pay for it the full price, and at last it leaves me
as it found me, neither better nor worse; but all
mental and moral force is a positive good. It goes
out from you, whether you will or not, and profits
me whom you never thought of.

USES OF GREAT MEN

JUNE TENTH

Let a man learn to look for the permanent in the
mutable and fleeting; let him learn to bear the dis-
appearance of things he was wont to reverence, let
him learn that he is here, not to work, but to be
worked upon; and that, though abyss open under
abyss and opinion displace opinion, all are at last
contained in the Eternal Cause.

ee

MONTAIGNE
JUNE ELEVENTH "
All my hurts

My garden-spade can heal. A woodland walk,
A wild rose, or rock-loving columbine,
Salve my worst wounds, and leave no cicatrice. .

MUSKETAQUID

JUNE TWELFTH

The world is his, who can see through its preten-
sion. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what
overgrown error you behold, is there only by suf-
ferance, — by your sufferance. See it to bea lie, and
you have already dealt it its mortal blow.

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

JUNE THIRTEENTH

He who knows the most, he who knows what
sweets and virtues are in the ground, the waters,
the plants, the heavens, and how to come at these
enchantments, is the rich and royal man. Only as
far as the masters of the world have called in na-
ture to their aid, can they reach the height of mag-

nificence. Se

JUNE FOURTEENTH

The difference between landscape and landscape
is small, but there is great difference in the behold-
ers. There is nothing so wonderful in any particu-
lar landscape, as the necessity of being beautiful
under which every landscape lies. Nature cannot
be surprised in undress. Beauty breaks in every-
where.
[ 54 ]

NATURE
JUNE FIFTEENTH

He trod the unplanted forest-floor, whereon
The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone,
Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear,
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.

He saw, beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,
The slight Linnza hang its twin-born heads.

WOOD NOTES

JUNE SIXTEENTH
We have crept out of our close and crowded houses
into the night and morning, and we see what ma-
jestic beauties daily wrap us in their bosom. How
willingly we would escape the barriers which render
them comparatively impotent, escape the sophisti-
cation and second thought, and suffer nature to en-
trance us. The tempered light of the woods is like
a perpetual morning, and is stimulating and heroic.

NATURE

JUNE SEVENTEENTH
Has anything grand and lasting been done? Who
did it? Plainly not any man, but all men: it was the
prevalence and inundation of an idea.

THE METHOD OF NATURE

JUNE EIGHTEENTH
Men talk as if vi€tory were something fortunate.
Work is victory. Wherever work is done, victory is
obtained. There is no chance, and no blanks.

WORSHIP

[55 ]
JUNE NINETEENTH

”T was one of the charmed days
When the genius of God doth flow,
The wind may alter twenty ways,
A tempest cannot blow:

It may blow north, it still is warm;
Or south, it still is clear;

Or east, it smells like a clover farm;

Or west, no thunder fear.
WOOD NOTES

JUNE TWENTIETH

The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great
points steadily reappear, alike in the poverty of the
obscurest farm, and in the miscellany of metropoli-
tan life, and that these few are alone to be regarded,
— the escape from all false ties ; courage to be what
we are; and love of what is simple and beautiful ;
independence, and cheerful relation, these are the
essential, —these, and the wish to serve, —to add
somewhat to the well-being of man.

- CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY

JUNE TWENTY-FIRST

For the world was built in order,
And the atoms march in tune,
Rhyme the pipe, and time the warder,
Cannot forget the sun, the moon.

MONADNOC ~

[ 56 ]
JUNE TWENTY-SECOND

” From within, or from behind, a light shines through
us upon things and makes us aware that we are
nothing, but the light is all. A man is the facade
of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide.

THE OVER-SOUL

JUNE TWENTY-THIRD

You must pay at last your own debt. If you are wise
you will dread a prosperity which only loads you
with more. Benefit is the end of nature. But for
every benefit which you receive, a tax is levied. He
is great who confers the most benefits. He is base,
—and that is the one base thing in the universe, —

to receive favors and render none.
COMPENSATION

JUNE TWENTY-FOURTH

Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impedi-
ments, and bring the man pure to energize. They
aid our dealing and conversation, as a railway aids
travelling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstruc-
tions of the road, and leaving nothing to be con-

quered but pure space.
: MANNERS

JUNE TWENTY-FIFTH

Genial manners are good, and power of accommo-
dation to any circumstance, but the high prize of
life, the crowning fortune of a man is to be born
with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in em-

[57]
ployment and happiness, — whether it be to make
baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or

songs.
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY

JUNE TWENTY-SIXTH

To my friend I write a letter and from him I re-
ceive a letter. That seems to you a little. Me it suf-
fices. It is a spiritual gift, worthy of him to give and
of me to receive. It profanes nobody. In these warm
lines the heart will trust itself, as it will not to the
tongue, and pour out the prophecy of a godlier ex-
istence than all the annals of heroism have yet made
good.

FRIENDSHIP

JUNE TWENTY-SEVENTH
The whole intercourse of society, its trade, its re-
ligion, its friendships, its quarrels, —is one wide
judicial investigation of character. In full court, or
in small committee, or confronted face to face, ac-
cuser or accused, men offer themselves to be judged.
THE OVER-SOUL

JUNE TWENTY-EIGHTH
Let us understand that the equitable rule is, that no
one should take more than his share, let him be ever
so rich. Let me feel that I am to be a lover. I am to
see to it that the world is the better for me, and to
find my reward in the aét.

[58 ]

MAN THE REFORMER
JUNE TWENTY-NINTH

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone; |
And Morning opes with haste her. lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids;

O’er England’s abbeys bends the sky
As on its friends with kindred eye;
For out of Thought’s interior sphere
‘These wonders rose to upper air,
And nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,

And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.

THE PROBLEM

JUNE THIRTIETH
The path which the hero travels alone is the high-
way of health and benefit to mankind. What is the
privilege and nobility of our nature but its persis-
tency, through its power to attach itself to what

is permanent?
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST

[ $9]
DATE DEE DIE GASKET GRAS GASTE
JULY

JULY FIRST

HE lover of Nature is he whose inward and

outward senses are still truly adjusted to each
other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even
into the era of manhood. His intercourse with hea-
ven and earth becomes part of his daily food.

NATURE

JULY SECOND

In the thought of to-morrow there is a power to up-
heave all thy creed, all the creeds, all the literatures
of the nations, and marshal thee toa heaven which
no epic dream has yet depicted. Every man is not
so much a workman in the world as he is a sug-
gestion of that he should be. Men walk as prophe-

cies of the next age.
CIRCLES

JULY THIRD

We buy ashes for bread,

We buy diluted wine;

Give me of the true,

Whose ample leaves and tendrils curled
Among the silver hills of heaven,

Draw everlasting dew.
BACCHUS

[ 61 J
JULY FOURTH

The power of manners is incessant, —an element
as unconcealable as fire. The nobility cannot in
any country be disguised, and no more in a repub-
lic or a democracy than in a kingdom. No man

can resist their influence.
BEHAVIOR

JULY FIFTH

Is not prayer also a study of truth, —a sally of the
soul into the unfound infinite ? No man ever prayed

heartily without learning something.
PROSPECTS

JULY SIXTH

There was never mystery,
But ’t is figured in the flowers,
Was never secret history,

But birds tell it in the bowers.
THE APOLOGY

JULY SEVENTH

We see literature best from the midst of wild na-
ture, or from the din of affairs, or from a high re-
ligion. The field cannot be well seen from within
the field. The astronomer must have his diameter
of the earth’s orbit as a base to find the parallax of
any star.

CIRCLES
JULY EIGHTH

Because ecstasy is the law and cause of Nature,
therefore you cannot interpret it in too high and

[ 62 ]
deep a sense. Nature represents the best meaning

of the wisest man.
THE METHOD OF NATURE 7

JULY NINTH

‘The tradesman, the attorney, comes out of the din
and craft of the street, and sees the sky and the
woods, and is a man again. In their eternal calm
he finds himself. The health of the eye seems to
demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as

we can see far enough.
BEAUTY

JULY TENTH

All things are moral, and in their boundless changes
have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature.

DISCIPLINE
JULY ELEVENTH

Mensuffer all their life long under the foolish super-
stition that they can be cheated. But it is as impos-
sible for a man to be cheated by any one but himself,
as it is for a thing to be and not to be at the same
time. There is a third silent party toall our bargains.
The nature and soul of things takes on itself the
guaranty of the fulfilment of every contract, so that
honest service cannot come to loss.

COMPENSATION

JULY TWELFTH

A subtle chain of countless rings
The next unto the farthest brings;
The eye reads omens where it goes,

[ 63 ]
And speaks all languages the rose ;
And, striving to be man, the worm

- Mounts through all the spires of form.
NATURE

JULY THIRTEENTH

He teaches who gives, and he learns who receives.

There is no teaching until the pupil is brought in-

to the same state or principle in which you are; a

transfusion takes place; he is you and you are he;

then is a teaching, and by no unfriendly chance or

bad company can he ever quite lose the benefit.

SPIRITUAL LAWS
JULY FOURTEENTH

‘There are three wants which never can be satisfied:

that of the rich, who wantssomething more; that of

the sick, who wants something different; and that

of the traveller, who says, “ Anywhere but here.”
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY

JULY FIFTEENTH

Wiser far than human seer,

Yellow-breeched philosopher !

Seeing only what is fair,

Sipping only what is sweet,

‘Thou dost mock at fate and care,

Leave the chaff and take the wheat.

THE HUMBLEBEE
JULY SIXTEENTH

People grieve and bemoan themselves, but it is not
half so bad with them as they say. There are moods

[ 64 ]
in which we court suffering, in the hope that here,
at least, we shall find reality, sharp peaks and edges
of truth. But it turns out to be scene-painting and
counterfeit. The only thing grief has taught me, is
to know how shallow it is.
EXPERIENCE
JULY SEVENTEENTH

Ourspontaneousaction is always the best. You.can-
not with your best deliberation and heed come so
close to any question as your spontaneous glance
shall bring you, whilst you rise from your bed, or
walk abroad in the morning after meditating the
matter before sleep on the previous night.

INTELLECT
JULY EIGHTEENTH

The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire
is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our pro-
priety, to lose our sempiternal memory and to do
something without knowing how or why; in short
to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever
achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is
wonderful. It is by abandonment.

' CIRCLES

JULY NINETEENTH

Love’s hearts are faithful, but not fond,
Bound for the just, but not beyond;
Not glad, as the low-loving herd,

Of self in others still preferred,

But they have heartily designed

The benefit of broad mankind.

[ 65 ] CELESTIAL LOVE
JULY TWENTIETH

What is man born for but to be a reformer, a re-
maker of what man has made; a renouncer of lies;
a restorer of truth and good, imitating that great
Nature which embosoms us all, and which sleeps no
moment on an old past, but every hour repairs her-
self, yielding us every morning anew days and with

every pulsation a new life? |
MAN THE REFORMER

JULY TWENTY-FIRST

No man can write anything, who does not think
that what he writes is for the time the history of the
world; or do anything’ well, who does not esteem
his work to be of importance. My work may be of
none, but I must not think it of none, or I shall not
do it with impunity,

NATURE

JULY TWENTY-SECOND

Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believ-
ers. Whenever the appeal is made,—no matter
how indirectly, —to numbers, proclamation is then
and there made that religion is not. He that finds
God a sweet enveloping thought to him never
counts his company.

THE OVER-SOUL ~

JULY TWENTY-THIRD

Of all wit’s uses, the main one
Is to live well with who has none.

Cleave to thine acre; the round year
[ 66 ]
Will fetch all fruits and virtues here:
Fool and foe may harmless roam,
Loved and lovers bide at home.

A day for toil, an hour for sport,
But for a friend is life too short.

CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY

JULY TWENTY-FOURTH 7

We dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the
household with our wives, and these things make
no impression, are forgotten next week ; but in the
solitude to which every man is always returning, he
has a sanity and revelations, which in his passage
into new worlds he will carry with him. Never
mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again,
old heart !—it seems to say, —there is victory yet
for all justice; and the true romance which the
world exists to realize, will be the transformation
of genius into practical power. °

EXPERIENCE

JULY TWENTY-FIFTH

The sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in
the human voice when it speaks from its instant
life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage.
: ART
JULY TWENTY-SIXTH

We pass for what we are. Character teaches above
our wills. Men imagine that they communicate
their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not
see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

[ 67 ]

SELF-RELIANCE
JULY TWENTY-SEVENTH

Tax not my sloth that I
Fold my arms beside the brook ;
Each cloud that floated in the sky

Writes a letter in my book,
THE APOLOGY

JULY TWENTY-EIGHTH

O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the
centre of nature and over the will of every man,
so that none of us can wrong the universe. It has
so infused its strong enchantment into nature that
we prosper when we accept its advice, and when we
struggle to wound its creatures our hands are glued
to our sides, or they beat our own breasts.

SPIRITUAL LAWS

JULY TWENTY-NINTH

It is the privilege of any human work which is well
done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness.
He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful
work will answer for him.
WEALTH
JULY THIRTIETH

It is for us to believe in the rule, not in the excep-
tion. The noble are thus known from the ignoble.
So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is
not what we believe concerning the immortality
of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to
believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the
principal faét in the history of the globe.

EXPERIENCE

[ 68 ]
JULY THIRTY-FIRST

Men are what their mothers made them. You may
as well ask a loom which weaves huckaback, why it
does not make cashmere, as expect poetry from this
engineer, or a chemical discovery from that jobber.

FATE

[ 69 ]
GREER TRAE GRAS GRAS TEAS BSE
AUGUST

AUGUST FIRST

HE wise man always throws himself on the

- side of his assailants. It is more his interest
than it is theirs to find his weak point. The wound
cicatrizes and falls off from him like a dead skin
and when they would triumph, lo! he has passed

on invulnerable.
COMPENSATION

AUGUST SECOND
For this is love’s nobility,
Not to scatter bread and gold,
Goods and raiment bought and sold,
But to hold fast his simple sense,
And speak the speech of innocence.

CELESTIAL LOVE

AUGUST THIRD

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little
minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers
and divines. With consistency a great soul has
simply nothing to do. He may as well concern him-
self with his shadow on the wall.

SELF-RELIANCE

[71]
AUGUST FOURTH

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much
from his chamber as from society. Iam not solitary
whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me.
But if a man would be alone, let him look at the

stars.
NATURE

AUGUST FIFTH

Enough for thee the primal mind

That flows in streams, that breathes in wind.
Leave all thy pedant lore apart ;

God hid the whole world in thy heart.

WOOD NOTES

AUGUST SIXTH

Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and
is not reminded of the flux of all things? Throw a
stone into the stream, and the circles that propagate
themselves are the beautiful type of all influence.
Man is conscious of a universal soul within or be-
hind his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament,
the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom, arise

and shine.
LANGUAGE

AUGUST SEVENTH
The pleasure of life is according to the man that
lives it, and not according to the work or the place.

Life is an ecstasy.
FATE

[ 72 ]
AUGUST EIGHTH

If your eye is on the eternal, your intellect will
grow, and your opinions and actions will have a
beauty which no learning or combined advantages
of other men can rival. The moment of your loss
of faith, and acceptance of the lucrative standard,
will be marked in the pause, or solstice of genius,
the sequent retrogression, and the inevitable loss of

attraction to other minds,
x WORSHIP

AUGUST NINTH

No land is bad, but land is worse. If a man own
land, the land owns him. Now let him leave home,
if he dare. Every tree and graft, every hill of me-
lons, row of corn, or quickset hedge, all he has done,
and all he means to do, stand in his way, like duns,

when he would go-out of his gate.
WEALTH

AUGUST TENTH

The fiend that man harries,
Is love of the best ;

Yawns the Pit of the Dragon
Lit by rays from the Blest.
The Lethe of Nature

Can’t trance him again,
Whose soul sees the Perfect,

Which his eyes seek in vain.
THE SPHYNX

[a
AUGUST ELEVENTH

What is Love, and why is it the chief good, but be-
cause it is an overpowering enthusiasm ? Never self-
possessed or prudent, it is all abandonment.

THE METHOD OF NATURE

AUGUST TWELFTH

If a man should send to me to come a hundred
miles to visit him, and should set before me a bas-
ket of fine summer-fruit, I should think there was
some proportion between the labor and the reward.

GIFTS

AUGUST THIRTEENTH

Your goodness must have some edge to it, —else it
is none. The doétrine of hatred must be preached,
as the counteraction of the doétrine of love, when

that pules and whines.
SELF-RELIANCE

AUGUST FOURTEENTH

Our age and history, for these thousand years, has
not been the history of kindness, but of selfishness.
Our distrust is very expensive. The money we
spend for courts and prisons is very ill laid out. We
make, by distrust, the thief, and burglar, and in-
cendiary, and by our court and jail we keep him so.
An acceptance of the sentiment of love throughout
Christendom for a season would bring the felon and

’ the outcast to our side in tears, with the devotion
of his faculties to our service.

[ 74]

MAN THE REFORMER
AUGUST FIFTEENTH

Some thoughtsalways find us young, and keep us so.
Such a thought is the love of the universal and eter-
nal beauty. Every man parts from that contempla-
tion with the feeling that it rather belongs to ages

than to mortal life.
THE OVER-SOUL

AUGUST SIXTEENTH

Give all to love;

Obey thy heart;

Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good fame,

Plans, credit, and the muse;

Nothing refuse.
GIVE ALL TO LOVE

AUGUST SEVENTEENTH
Every man supposes himself not to be fully under-
stood ; and if there is any truth in him, if he rests
at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can be
otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, he
" must feel was never opened; there is always a re-
siduum unknown, unanalyzable. ‘That is, every
man believes that he has a greater possibility.
CIRCLES

AUGUST EIGHTEENTH
Every spirit makes its house; but afterwards the
house confines the spirit.

[75]

FATE
AUGUST NINETEENTH

Though the uninspired man certainly finds persons
a conveniency in household matters, the divine man
does not respect them: he sees them as a rack of
clouds, or a fleet of ripples which the wind drives
over the surface of the water.

NOMINALIST AND REALIST

AUGUST TWENTIETH

You cannot hide any secret. If the artist succor his
flagging spirits by opium or wine, his work will
characterize itself as the effect of opium or wine.
If you make a picture or a statue, it sets the be-
holder in that state of mind you had, when you made
it. If you spend for show, on building, or garden-
ing, or on pictures, or on equipages, it will so ap-
pear. We are all physiognomists and penetrators of
character, and things themselves are detective.

WORSHIP

AUGUST TWENTY-FIRST
The aspect of Nature is devout. Like the figure of
Jesus, she stands with bended head and hands folded
upon the breast. The happiest man is he who learns
from Nature the lesson of worship.

SPIRIT
AUGUST TWENTY-SECOND

Every man who would do anything well must come
to it from a higher ground. A philosopher must be
more than a philosopher.

PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER

[ 76 ]
AUGUST TWENTY-THIRD

You are preparing with eagerness to go and render
a service to which your talent and your taste invite
you, the love of men and the hope of fame. Has it
not occurred to you that you have no right to go,
unless you are equally willing to be prevented from
going?

THE OVER-SOUL

AUGUST TWENTY-FOURTH

First one, then another, we drain all cisterns, and,
waxing greater by all these supplies, we crave a bet-
ter and more abundant food. The man has never

lived that can feed us ever.
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

AUGUST TWENTY-FIFTH

There is a principle which is the basis of things,
which all speech aims to say, and all action to
evolve, a simple, quiet, undescribed, undescribable
presence, dwelling very peacefully in us, our rightful
lord: we are not to do, but to let do; not to work,
but to be worked upon; and to this homage there
is a consent of all thoughtful and just men in all
ages and conditions.

WORSHIP
AUGUST TWENTY-SIXTH
That you are fair or wise is vain,
Or strong, or rich, or generous ;
You must have also the untaught strain
That sheds beauty on the rose.
FATE

[37]
AUGUST TWENTY-SEVENTH

As the granite comes to the surface, and towers into
the highest mountains, and, if we dig down, we find
it below the superficial strata, so in all the details
of our domestic or civil life is hidden the elemental
reality which ever and anon comes to the surface
and forms the grand men who are the leaders and
examples, rather than the companions, of the race.

LECTURE ON THE TIMES

AUGUST TWENTY-EIGHTH

Ifa man dissemble, deceive, he deceives himself, and
goes out of acquaintance with his own being. Aman
in the view of absolute goodness adores with total
humility. Every step so downward is a step upward.
The man who renounces himself comes to himself.

AN ADDRESS

AUGUST TWENTY-NINTH

The beautiful laws of time and space, once dislo-
cated by our inaptitude, are holes and dens, If the
hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead
of honey it will yield us bees. Our words and ac-

tions to be fair must be timely.
: PRUDENCE

AUGUST THIRTIETH

Nothing is beneath you, if it is in the direction of
your life: nothing is great or desirable, if it is off
from that. I think we are entitled to draw here a
straight line, and say, that society can never pros-

[ 78 ]
per, but must always be bankrupt, until every man
does that which he was created to do.
WEALTH

AUGUST THIRTY-FIRST

For nature beats in perfect tune,

And rounds with rhyme her every rune,
Whether she work in land or sea,

Or hide underground her alchemy.

Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,

Or dip thy paddle in the lake,

But it carves the bow of beauty there,
And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.

WOOD NOTES

[ 79 ]
SARE THEE GETS GRTE TATE GRRE

SEPTEMBER

SEPTEMBER FIRST

AKE yourself necessary to the world, and

mankind will give you bread, and if not
store of it, yet such as shall not take away your pro-
perty in all men’s possessions, in all men’s affec-
tions, in art, in nature; and in hope.

LITERARY ETHICS

SEPTEMBER SECOND

I settle myself ever the firmer in the creed, that we
should not postpone and refer and wish, but do
broad justice where we are, by whomsoever we deal
with, accepting our actual companions and circum-
stances, however humble or odious, as the mystic
officials to whom the universe has delegated its

whole pleasure for us.
EXPERIENCE

SEPTEMBER THIRD

Use what language you will, you can never say
anything but what you are. What I am, and what |
I think, is conveyed to you, in spite of my efforts
to hold it back.

WORSHIP

[ 81 ]
SEPTEMBER FOURTH

Do not cumber yourself with fruitless pains to
mend and remedy remote effects; let the soul be
ere¢t, and all things will go well.

THE TRANSCENDENTALIST

SEPTEMBER FIFTH

Think me not unkind and rude,
That I walk alone in grove and glen;
I go to the god of the wood

To fetch his word to men.
THE APOLOGY

SEPTEMBER SIXTH

Very idle is all curiosity concerning other peoples’
estimate of us, and idle is all fear of remaining un-
known. If a man know that he can do anything,
—that he can do it better than any one else, —he
has a pledge of the acknowledgment of that fact by
all persons. The world is full of judgment-days, and
into every assembly that a man enters, in every ac-
tion he attempts, he is guaged and stamped.

SPIRITUAL LAWS

SEPTEMBER SEVENTH

Honor him whose life is perpetual victory; him,
who, by sympathy with the invisible and real, finds
support in labor, instead of praise; who does not
shine, and would rather not.

WORSHIP

[ 82 J
SEPTEMBER EIGHTH

Youshall get your lesson out of the hour, and the ob-
ject, whether it be a concentrated or a wasteful em-
ployment, even in reading a dull book, or working
off a stint of mechanical day labor, which your ne-
cessities or the necessities of others impose.

LITERARY ETHICS

SEPTEMBER NINTH

To believe your own thought, to believe that what
is true for you in your private heart is true for all
men,—that is genius. Speak your latent conviction,

and it shall be the universal sense.
SELF-RELIANCE

SEPTEMBER TENTH

The one prudence in life is concentration ; the one
evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference whe-
ther our dissipations are coarse or fine; property
and its cares, friends, and a social habit, or politics,
or music, or feasting. Everything is good which
takes away one plaything and delusion more, and
drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work.

POWER

SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH

Yet shine forever virgin minds,
Loved by stars and purest winds,
Which, o’er passion throned sedate,
Have not hazarded their state,

[ 83 ]
Disconcert the searching spy,
Rendering to a curious eye
The durance of a granite ledge

To those who gaze from the sea’s edge.
ASTRJEA

SEPTEMBER TWELFTH

Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by
making these the fruit of his character. Ducks take
to the water, eagles to the sky, .. . clerks to count-

ing rooms, soldiers to the frontier.
FATE

SEPTEMBER THIRTEENTH

Wherever there is failure, there is some giddiness,
some superstition about luck, some step omitted,
which Nature never pardons. The happy condi-
tions of life may be had on the same terms. Their
attraction for you is the pledge that they are within
your reach. Our prayers are prophets.

CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY

SEPTEMBER FOURTEENTH

T ought not to allow any man, because he has broad
lands, to feel that he is rich in my presence. I ought
to make him feel that I can do without his riches,
that I cannot be bought, —neither by comfort, nei-
ther by pride, —and though I be utterly penniless,
and receiving bread from him, that he is the poor

man beside me.
MAN THE REFORMER

[84]
SEPTEMBER FIFTEENTH

There are days which occur in this climate, at al-
most any season of the year, wherein the world
reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly
bodies, and the earth, make a harmony, as if nature
would indulge her offspring ; when, in these bleak
upper sides of the planet, nothing is to desire that
we have heard of the happiest latitudes, and we bask
in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba.

NATURE

SEPTEMBER SIXTEENTH

There need no vows to bind
Whom not each other seek but find.
They give and take no pledge or oath,

Nature is the bond of both.
CELESTIAL LOVE

SEPTEMBER SEVENTEENTH

Be a gift and a benediction. Shine with real light
and not with the borrowed reflection of gifts. Com-
mon men are apologies for men; they bow the head,
they excuse themselves with prolix reasons, they
accumulate appearances because the substance is

not.
SPIRITUAL LAWS

SEPTEMBER EIGHTEENTH
Wisdom will never let us stand with any man or
men on an unfriendly footing. We refuse sympathy
and intimacy with people, as if we waited for some

[ 85 ]
better sympathy and intimacy to come. But whence
and when? To-morrow will be like to-day. Life
wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live.

PRUDENCE

SEPTEMBER NINETEENTH

It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall
wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a
small part on the reflecting planet. Let your great-
ness educate the crude and cold companion. If he
is unequal he will presently pass away ; but thou
art enlarged by thy own shining, and no longer a
mate for frogs and worms, dost soar and burn with

the gods of the empyrean.
FRIENDSHIP

SEPTEMBER TWENTIETH

We spend our incomes for paint and paper, for a
hundred trifles, I know not what, and not for the
things of a man. Our expense is almost all for con-
formity. It is for cake that we run in debt; ’t is not
the intelleét, not the heart, not beauty, not worship,

that costs so much.
= MAN THE REFORMER

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FIRST

Oft in streets or humbler places

I deteét far wandered graces,
Which from Eden wide astray

In lowly homes have lost their way.

[ 86 ]

ODE TO BEAUTY
SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SECOND

We dare not trust our wit for making our house
pleasant to our friend, and so we buy ice-creams.
He is accustomed to carpets, and we have not suffi-
cient character to put floor-cloths out of his mind
whilst he stays in the house, and so we pile the floor
with carpets. Let the house rather be a temple of
the Furies of Lacedamon, formidable and holy to
all, which none but a Spartan may enter.

MAN THE REFORMER

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-THIRD

As to what we call the masses and common men—
there are no common men. All men are at last of a
size ; and true art is only possible on the conviétion
that every talent has its apptheosis somewhere. Fair
play, and an open field, and freshest laurels to all

who have won them!
USES OF GREAT MEN

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH

Let a man believe in God,'and not in names and
places and persons. Let the great soul incarnated in
some woman’s form, poor and sad and single, in
some Dolly or Joan, go out to service and sweep
chambers and scour floors, and its effulgent day-
beams cannot be muffled or hid, but to sweep and
scour will instantly appear supreme and beautiful

actions.
SPIRITUAL LAWS

[ 87]
SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH

Certain men affect us as rich possibilities, but help-
less to themselves and to their times,—the sport,
perhaps, of some instinét that rules in the air, —
they do not speak to our want. But the great are

near; we know them at sight.
USES OF GREAT MEN

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH

It is commonly said by farmers, that a good pear or
apple costs no more time or pains to rear, than a poor
one; so I would have no work of art, no speech, or
action, or thought, or friend, but the best.

NOMINALIST AND REALIST

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SEVENTH

When frail Nature can no more, —
Then the spirit strikes the hour,
My servant Death with solving rite

Pours finite into infinite.
THRENODY

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH

Trust thyself: Every heart vibrates to that iron
string. Accept the place the divine providence has
found for you, the society of your contemporaries,
the connexion of events. Great men have always
done so, and confided themselves childlike to the
genius of their age, betraying their perception that

[ 88 ]
the Eternal was stirring at their heart, working
through their hands, predominating in all their be-
ing.

SELF-RELIANCE

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-NINTH

A man adorns himself with prayer and love, as an
aim adorns an action. What is strong but goodness,
and what is energetic but the presence of a brave

man?
THE METHOD OF NATURE

SEPTEMBER THIRTIETH

Not with scarfs or perfumed gloves
Do these celebrate their loves,
Not by jewels, feasts, and savors,
Not by ribbons or by favors,
But by the sun-spark on the sea,
And the cloud-shadow on the lea,
The soothing lapse of morn to mirk,
And the cheerful round of work.
Their cords of love so public are,
They intertwine the farthest star.
CELESTIAL LOVE

[ 89 ]
RAE TE FATE TAR TAS TAR

OCTOBER

OCTOBER FIRST

E should meet each morning, as from for-

eign countries, and spending the day to-

gether, should depart at night, as into foreign coun-

tries. In all things I would have the island of a man
inviolate.

MANNERS

OCTOBER SECOND

The power of love, as the. basis of a State, has never
been tried. We must not imagine that all things are
lapsing into confusion, if every tender protestant be.
not compelled to bear his part in certain social con-
ventions : nor doubt that roads can be built, letters
carried, and the fruit of labor secured, when the

government of force is at an end.
POLITICS

OCTOBER THIRD

All things show us, that on every side we are very
near to the best. It seems not worth while to exe-
cute with too much pains some one intellectual, or
zsthetical, or civil feat, when presently the dream
will scatter, and we shall burst into universal power.

NOMINALIST AND REALIST

[ 91 ]
OCTOBER FOURTH
When I have attempted to join myself to others by
services, it proved an intellectual trick, —no more.
They eat your service like apples, and leave you
out. But love them, and they feel you, and delight in

you all the time.
GIFTS

OCTOBER FIFTH

Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?
Why need I galleries, when a pupil’s draught
After the master’s sketch, fills and o’erfills
My apprehension ?

THE DAY’S RATION

OCTOBER SIXTH

My gentleman gives the law where he is; he will
outpray saints in chapel, outgeneral veterans in the
field, and outshine all courtesy in the hall. He is
good company for pirates, and good with academi-
cians ; so that it is useless to fortify yourself against
him ; he has the private entrance to all minds, and

I could as easily exclude myself, as him.
MANNERS

OCTOBER SEVENTH

I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not
an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a

spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower

strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should

be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound

and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding.

[ 92 ] SELF-RELIANCE
OCTOBER EIGHTH

Personal force never goes out of fashion. That is
still paramount to-day, and, in the moving crowd.
of good society, the men of valorand reality are

known, and rise to their natural place.
MANNERS

OCTOBER NINTH

The union of all minds appears intimate ; what gets
admission to one cannot be kept out of any other;
the smallest acquisition of truth or of energy, in any
quarter, is so much good to the commonwealth of

souls, g
USES OF GREAT MEN

OCTOBER TENTH

For he that feeds men, serveth few,
He serves all, who dares be true.

CELESTIAL LOVE

OCTOBER ELEVENTH

He is great, whose eyes are opened to see that the
reward of actions cannot be escaped, because he is
transformed into his action, and taketh its nature,
which bears its own fruit, like every other tree. A
great man cannot be hindered of the effects of his

act, because it is immediate.
WORSHIP

OCTOBER TWELFTH
Thekey to the age may be this, or that, or the other,
as the young orators describe ;— the key to all ages
is—Imbecility. ... This gives force to the strong,
that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or
original action.

[ 93 ] POWER
OCTOBER THIRTEENTH

All things
Are of one pattern made; bird, beast, and plant,
" Song, picture, form, space, thought, and character,
Deceive us, seeming to be many things,
_And are but one. i
XENOPHANES
OCTOBER FOURTEENTH

A man in pursuit of greatness feels no little wants.
How can you mind diet, bed, dress, or salutes or
compliments, or the figure you make in company,
or wealth, or even the bringing things to pass,
when you think how paltry are the machinery and
the workers?

CULTURE

‘ OCTOBER FIFTEENTH

In one of those celestial days, when heaven and
earth meet and adorn each other, it seems a poverty
that we can only spend it once : we wish for a thou-
sand heads, a thousand bodies, that we might cele-
brate its immense beauty in many ways and places.

USES OF GREAT MEN
OCTOBER SIXTEENTH

The civility of no race can be perfect whilst an-
other race is degraded. It is a doctrine alike of the
oldest and of the newest philosophy, that man isone,
and that you cannot injure any member without
a sympathetic injury to all the members. America
is not civil, whilst Africa is barbarous,

EMANCIPATION ADDRESS

[ 94 ]
OCTOBER SEVENTEENTH

The world must be just. It always leaves every man,
with profound unconcern, to set his own rate. Hero
or driveller, it meddles not in the matter. It will
certainly accept your own measure of your doing
and being, whether you sneak about and deny your
own name, or whether you see your work produced
to the concave sphere of the heavens, one with the
revolution of the stars.

SPIRITUAL LAWS

OCTOBER EIGHTEENTH

The moral law lies at the centre of nature and ra-
diates to the circumference. It is the pith and mar-
row of every substance, every relation, and every
process. All things with which we deal, preach to
us. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff
and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, in-
sets, sun, — it is a sacred emblem from the first fur-
row of spring to the last stack which the snow of

winter overtakes in the field.
DISCIPLINE

OCTOBER NINETEENTH

For nature ever faithful is

To such as trust her faithfulness.
When the forest shall mislead me,
When the night and morning lie,
When sea and land refuse to feed me,
’T will be time enough to die.

[95 ]

WOOD NOTES
OCTOBER TWENTIETH

I pray my companion, if he wishes for bread, to ask
me for bread, and if he wishes for sassafras or arsenic,
to ask me for them, and not to hold out his plate,
as if I knew already. Every natural function can be
dignified by deliberation and privacy. Let us leave

hurry to slaves.
MANNERS

OCTOBER TWENTY-FIRST

Massachusetts, Conneéticut River and Boston Bay
you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of
foreign and classic topography. But here we are : —
that is a great fact, and, if we tarry a little, we may
come to learn that here is best. See to it only that
thyself is here,—and art and nature, hope and
dread, friends, angels and the Supreme Being shall °
not be absent from the chamber where thou sittest.

HEROISM

OCTOBER TWENTY-SECOND

There are many eyes that can dete¢t and honor the
prudent and household virtues ; there are many that
can discern Genius on his starry track, though the
mob is incapable; but when that love which is
all-suffering, all-abstaining, all-aspiring, which has
vowed to itself, that it will be a wretch and alsoa
fool in this world, sooner than soil its white hands by
any compliances, comes into our streets and houses,
—only the pure and aspiring can know its face, and
the only compliment they can pay it, is to own it.

[ 96 ] CHARACTER
OCTOBER TWENTY-THIRD

He is the rich man in whom the people are rich,
and he is the poor man in whom the people are
poor: and how to give all access to the masterpieces
of art and nature, is the problem of civilization.

WEALTH

OCTOBER TWENTY-FOURTH

Toa man at work, the frost is but a color: the rain,
the wind, he forgot them when he came in. Let us
learn to live coarsely, dress plainly, and lie hard.
The least habit of dominion over the palate has cer-
tain good effects not easily estimated. Neither will
we be driven into a quiddling abstemiousness. ’T is
a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made
at last of the same chemical atoms.

CULTURE
OCTOBER TWENTY-FIFTH
Light is light which radiates,
Blood is blood which circulates,
Life is life which generates,
And many-seeming life is one.
THRENODY

OCTOBER TWENTY-SIXTH
There is always room for the man of force.... A
feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and
tilled, the houses that are built. The strong man
sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes
estates, as fast as the sun breeds clouds.

[ 97 ]

POWER
OCTOBER TWENTY-SEVENTH

I look upon the simple and childish virtues of ve-
racity and honesty as the root of all that is sublime
in character. Speak as you think, be what you are,
pay your debts of all kinds. I prefer to be owned
as sound and solvent, and my word as good as my
bond, and to be what cannot be skipped, or dissi-
pated, or undermined, to all the éclat in the uni-

verse.
ILLUSIONS

OCTOBER TWENTY-EIGHTH

Idealism sees the world in God. It beholds the
whole circle of persons and things, of actions and
events, of country and religion, not as painfully ac-
cumulated, atom after atom, act after act, in an aged
creeping Past, but as one vast picture which God
paints on the instant eternity for the contemplation

of the soul.
IDEALISM

OCTOBER TWENTY-NINTH

Why should I roam,
Who cannot circumnavigate the sea
Of thoughts and things at home, but still adjourn
The nearest matters to another moon?

Why see new men, who have not understood the
old?

THE DAY’S RATION

[ 98 ]
OCTOBER THIRTIETH

Let him be great, and love shall follow him. No-
thing is more deeply punished than the neglect
of the affinities by which alone society should be
formed, and the insane levity of choosing associates
by others’ eyes.

SPIRITUAL LAWS

OCTOBER THIRTY-FIRST

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the
manhood of every one of its members. Society is a
joint-stock company, in which the members agree,
for the better securing of his bread to each share-
holder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the
eater. The virtue in most request is conformity.

SELF-RELIANCE

. [99 ]
GREE TRAE TEAS GRAS GRETE. SHEAR

NOVEMBER

NOVEMBER FIRST

O what you know, and perception is con-

verted into character, as islands and conti-
nents were built by invisible infusories, or as these
forest leaves absorb light, ele¢tricity, and volatile
gases, and the gnarled oak to live a thousand years
is the arrest and fixation of the most volatile and
ethereal currents.

THE METHOD OF NATURE
NOVEMBER SECOND

Silent rushes the swift Lord
Through ruined systems still restored, .
Broad-sowing, bleak and void to bless,
Plants with worlds the wilderness,
Waters with tears of ancient sorrow

Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow.
. THRENODY

NOVEMBER THIRD
‘The moment we indulge our affections, the earth
is metamorphosed: there is no winter and nonight:
all tragedies, all ennuis vanish, —all duties even;
nothing fills the proceeding eternity but the forms
all radiant of beloved persons. Let the soul be as-
sured that somewhere in the universe it should re-
join its friend, and it would be content and cheerful

alone for a thousand years.
[ 101 ] FRIENDSHIP
NOVEMBER FOURTH

The heroic soul does not sell its justice and its
nobleness. It does not ask to dine nicely and to sleep
warm. The essence of greatness is the perception
that virtue is enough. Poverty is its ornament.
Plenty does not need it, and can very well abide its

loss.
HEROISM

NOVEMBER FIFTH

The inevitable morning

Finds them who in cellars be,
And be sure the all-loving Nature
Will smile in a factory.

THE WORLD-SOUL
NOVEMBER SIXTH

We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let
our angels go. We do not see that they only go out
that archangels may come in. We are idolators of
the old. We do not believe in the riches of the soul,
in its proper eternity and omnipresence.

; COMPENSATION

NOVEMBER SEVENTH

The last lesson of life, the choral song which rises
from all elements and all angels, is a voluntary obe-
dience, a necessitated freedom. Man is made of the
same atoms as the world is, he shares the same im-
pressions, predispositions, and destiny. When his
mind is illuminated, when his heart is kind, he
throws himself joyfully into the sublime order,
and does, with knowledge, what the stones do by

structure.
[ 102 } WORSHIP
NOVEMBER EIGHTH
For gods delight in gods,
And thrust the weak aside ;
To him who scorns their charities,

Their arms fly open wide.
THE WORLD-SOUL

NOVEMBER NINTH

The private poor man hath cities, ships, canals,
bridges, built for him. He goes to the post-office, and
the human race run on his errands; to the book-
shop, and the human race read and write of all that
happens for him; to the court-house, and nations
repair his wrongs. He sets his house upon the road,
and the human race go forth every morning and
shovel out the snow, and cut a path for him.

“ COMMODITY

NOVEMBER TENTH
The Greek battle-pieces are calm ; the heroes, in
whatever violent actions engaged, retain a serene
aspect ; as we say of Niagara, that it falls without
speed. A cheerful, intelligent face is the end of cul-
ture, and success enough. For it indicates the pur-

pose of Nature and wisdom attained.
CULTURE

NOVEMBER ELEVENTH
We cannot describe the natural history of the soul,
but we know that it is divine.

THE METHOD OF NATURE

[ 103 ]
NOVEMBER TWELFTH

Good and bad are but names very readily transfer-
able to that or this; the only right is what is after
my constitution ; the only wrong what is against
it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all
opposition as if every thing were titular and ephe-

meral but he.
SELF-RELIANCE

NOVEMBER THIRTEENTH

One thing is forever good,

That one thing is success, —

Dear to the Eumenides,

And to all the heavenly brood.

Who bides at home, nor looks abroad,

Carries the eagles, and masters the sword.
és FATE

NOVEMBER FOURTEENTH

The time is coming when all men will see that the
gift of God to the soul is not a vaunting, over-
powering, excluding sanctity, but a sweet, natural
goodness, a goodness like thine and mine, and that
so invites thine and mine to be and to grow.

AN ADDRESS

NOVEMBER FIFTEENTH

A man cannot utter two or three sentences, without
disclosing to intelligent ears precisely where he
stands in life and thought, namely, whether in the
kingdom of the senses and the understanding, or in

[ 104 ]
that of ideas and imagination, in the realm of in-
tuitions and duty. People seem not to see that their
opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

WORSHIP
NOVEMBER SIXTEENTH
Who liveth by the ragged pine,
Foundeth a heroic line;
Who liveth in the palace hall,
Waneth fast and spendeth all.
WOOD NOTES

NOVEMBER SEVENTEENTH

There are more belongings to every creature than
his air and his food. His instinéts must be met, and
he has predisposing power that bends and fits what
is near him to his use. He is not possible until
the invisible things are right for him, as well as the
visible.

FATE

NOVEMBER EIGHTEENTH

God screens usevermore from premature ideas. Our
eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare
us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind
is ripened, —then we behold them, and the time
when we saw them not is like a dream.

SPIRITUAL LAWS

NOVEMBER NINETEENTH :

It is as easy to be great as to be small. The reason
why we do not at once believe in admirable souls
is because they are not in our experience.

PLATO 5; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER

[ 105 ]
NOVEMBER TWENTIETH

Long I followed happy guides, —
I could never reach their sides.
Their step is forth, and, ere the day,
Breaks up their leaguer, and away.
Keen my sense, my heart was young,
Right goodwill my sinews strung,
But no speed of mine avails
To hunt upon their shining trails.
THE FORERUNNERS

NOVEMBER TWENTY-FIRST

To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has
its own beauty, and in the same field it beholds,
every hour, a picture which was never seen before,

and which shall never be seen again.
BEAUTY

NOVEMBER TWENTY-SECOND

We must extend the area of life, and multiply our
relations. We are as much gainers by finding a new
property in the old earth as by acquiring a new

planet.
USES OF GREAT MEN

NOVEMBER TWENTY-THIRD

A sympathetic person is placed in the dilemma of a
swimmer among drowning men, who all catch at
him, and if he gives so much as a leg or a finger,
they will drown him. They wish to be saved from
the mischiefs of their vices, but not from their vices.

EXPERIENCE

{ 106 ]
NOVEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH

The great man, that is, the man most imbued with
the spirit of the time, is the impressionable man, —
of a fibre irritable and delicate, like iodine to light.

He feels the infinitesimal attraCtions.
FATE

NOVEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH
Seek not the Spirit, if it hide,
Inexorable to thy zeal :

Baby, do not whine and chide;

Art thou not also real?
. SURSUM CORDA

NOVEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH

Heis the rich man who can avail himself of all men’s
faculties. . . . The same correspondence that is be-
tween thirst in the stomach, and water in the spring,
exists between the whole of man and the whole of
nature. The elements offer their service to him.

WEALTH

NOVEMBER TWENTY-SEVENTH

Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power
and wisdom which flows into you as life, place
yourself in the full centre of that flood, then you
are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a
perfect contentment. Then you put all gainsayers
in the wrong. Then you are the world, the mea-
sure of right, of truth, of beauty.

[ 107 ]

SPIRITUAL LAWS
NOVEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH

There is a great deal of self-denial and manliness in
poor and middle-class houses, in town and country,
that has not got into literature, and never will, but

that keeps the earth sweet.
CULTURE

NOVEMBER TWENTY-NINTH

Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,

Tho’ her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive,
Heartily know,

When half-gods go,

The gods arrive.

GIVE ALL TO LOVE

NOVEMBER THIRTIETH

Culture is the suggestion from certain best thoughts,
that a man has a range of affinities, through which
he can modulate the violence of any master-tones
that have a droning preponderance in his scale, and
succor him against himself. Culture redresses his ba-
lance, puts him among his equals and superiors, re-
vives the delicious sense of sympathy, and warns
him of the dangers of solitude and repulsion.

CULTURE

[ 108 ]
BREE TTS TIE TE TATE TE

DECEMBER

DECEMBER FIRST

N certain men, digestion and sex absorb the vital
force, and the stronger these are, the individual
is so much weaker. The more of these drones perish,

the better for the hive.
FATE

DECEMBER SECOND

I look for the hour when that supreme Beauty
which ravished the souls of those Eastern men, and
chiefly of those Hebrews, and through their lips
spoke oracles to all time, shall speak in the West

also.
AN ADDRESS

DECEMBER THIRD

He was the heart of all the scene,

On him the sun looked more serene,
To hill and cloud his face was known,
It seemed the likeness of their own.
They knew by secret sympathy

The public child of earth and sky.

WOOD NOTES

[ 109 ]
DECEMBER FOURTH

We walk alone in the world. Friends such as we
desire are dreams and fables. But a sublime hope
cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in
other regions of the universal power, souls are now
aéting, enduring and daring, which can love us and

which we can love.
FRIENDSHIP

DECEMBER FIFTH

The faith that stands on authority is not faith. The
reliance on authority measures the decline of reli-

' gion, the withdrawal of the soul.
THE OVER-SOUL

DECEMBER SIXTH
The growth of the intelleét is stri€tly analogous in
all individuals. It is larger reception. Able men, in ©
general, have good dispositions and a respect for jus-
tice ; because an able man is nothing else than a
good, free, vascular organization, whereinto the uni-
versal spirit freely flows ; so that his fund of justice

is not only vast, but infinite.
LITERARY ETHICS

DECEMBER SEVENTH

Parched corn eaten to-day that I may have roast
fowl to my dinner on Sunday is a baseness; but
parched corn and a house with one apartment, that
I may be free of all perturbations, that I may be

[ 110 }
serene and docile to what the mind may speak, and
girt and road-ready for the lowest mission of know-
ledge or goodwill, is frugality for gods and heroes.

‘MAN THE REFORMER
DECEMBER EIGHTH

Gold and iron are good
To buy iron and gold;
All earth’s fleece and food
For their like are sold.

Nor kind nor coinage buys
Aught above its rate.
Fear, Craft, and Avarice

Cannot rear a State.
POLITICS

DECEMBER NINTH.

What your heart thinks great, is great. The soul’s

emphasis is always right.
SPIRITUAL LAWS

DECEMBER TENTH
There is a power in love to divine another’s de-
stiny better than that other can, and, by heroic en-
couragements, hold him to his task. What has friend-
ship so signal as its sublime attraction to whatever

virtue is in us?
USES OF GREAT MEN

DECEMBER ELEVENTH

We must trust infinitely to the beneficent necessity
which shines through all laws. Human nature ex-

f a1 ]
presses itself in them as characteristically as in sta-
tues, or songs, or railroads, and an abstract of the
codes of nations would be a transcript of the com-

mon conscience.
POLITICS

DECEMBER TWELFTH

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift
you can present every moment with the cumulative
force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted
talent of another you have only an extemporaneous
half possession. That which each can do best, none

but his Maker can teach him.
SELF-RELIANCE

DECEMBER THIRTEENTH

The soul that ascendeth to worship the great God
is plain and true; has no rose color; no fine friends;
no chivalry; no adventures ; does not want admi-
ration; dwells in the hour that now is, in the earnest
experience of the common day, — by reason of the
present moment and the mere trifle having become
porous to thought and bibulous of the sea of light.

THE OVER-SOUL

DECEMBER FOURTEENTH

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.
Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last
in the presence of a man so real and equal that I
may drop even those most undermost garments of
dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which
men never put off, and may deal with him with the
simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical

atom meets another. ;
[ 112 ] FRIENDSHIP
DECEMBER FIFTEENTH

It makes no difference, in looking back five years,
how you have been dieted or dressed; whether you
have been lodged on the first floor or the attic ; whe-
ther you have had gardens and baths, good cattle
and horses, have been carried in a neat equipage,
or ina ridiculous truck: these things are forgotten
so quickly, and leave no effect. But it counts much
whether we have had good companions, in that time;
—almost as much as what we have been doing.

CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY

DECEMBER SIXTEENTH

The horseman serves the horse,
The neat-herd serves the neat,
The merchant serves the purse,
The eater serves his meat ;

’T is the day of the chattel,

Web to weave, and corn to grind,
Things are in the saddle,

And ride mankind.

ODE TO WILLIAM H. CHANNING

DECEMBER SEVENTEENTH

A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; a
beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form :
it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures;
it is the finest of the fine arts. A man is but a little
thing in the midst of the objects of nature, yet, by
the moral quality radiating from his countenance,
he may abolish all considerations of magnitude, and
in his manners equal the majesty of the world.

[te] MANNERS
DECEMBER EIGHTEENTH

A great man illustrates his place, makes his climate
genial in the imagination of men, and its air the
beloved element of all delicate spirits. That coun-
try is the fairest which is inhabited by the noblest

minds.
HEROISM

DECEMBER NINETEENTH

These temples grew as grows the grass,
Art might obey but not surpass.

The passive Master lent his hand

To the vast soul that o’er him planned,
And the same power that reared the shrine,
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.

Ever the fiery Pentecost

Girds with one flame the countless host,
Trances the heart through chanting quires,
_And through the priest the mind inspires.

THE PROBLEM

DECEMBER TWENTIETH

The love of beauty is mainly the love of measure
or proportion. The person who screams, or uses the
superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts
whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be
loved, love measure.

MANNERS
DECEMBER TWENTY-FIRST

The compensations of calamity are made apparent
to the understanding also, after long intervals of

[ 114 J
time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment,
a loss’of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the mo-
ment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years
reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all

facts.

COMPENSATION

DECEMBER TWENTY-SECOND

The soul can be appeased not by a deed but by a
tendency. It is in a hope that she feels her wings.
You shall love rectitude and not the disuse of
money or the avoidance of trade; an unimpeded
mind, and not a monkish diet; sympathy and use-
fulness, and not hoeing or coopering.

THE METHOD OF NATURE

- DECEMBER TWENTY-THIRD

The art of life has a pudency, and will not be ex-
posed. Every man is an impossibility, until he is
born; every thing impossible, until we see a success. |

EXPERIENCE

DECEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH

A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his
personal presence. Whoever looked on him would
consent to his will, being certified that his aims
were generous and universal. The reason why men
do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the

bottom of our eye.
BEHAVIOR

[ 115 ]
DECEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH

If, at any time, it comes into my head, that a pre-
sent is due from me to somebody, Iam puzzled what
to give, until the opportunity is gone. Flowers and
fruits are always fit presents ; flowers, because they
are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues

all the utilities of the world.
GIFTS

DECEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH

Whilst a man seeks good ends, he is strong by the
whole strength of Nature. In so far as he roams from
these ends, he bereaves himself of power, of auxil-
iaries ; his being shrinks out of all remote channels,
he becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until ab-

solute badness is absolute death.
4 AN ADDRESS

DECEMBER TWENTY-SEVENTH
The Eden of God is bare and grand; like the out-

door landscape remembered from the evening fire-
side, it seems cold and desolate whilst you cower
over the coals ; but once abroad again, we pity those
who can forego the magnificence of nature for

candle-light and cards.
SWEDENBORG ; OR, THE MYSTIC

DECEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH

Let us affront and reprimand the smooth medio-
crity and squalid contentment of the times, and
hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the

[ 116 ]
fact which is the upshot of all history, that there
is a great responsible Thinker and Actor moving
wherever moves a man; that a true man belongs to
no other time or place, but is the centre of all things.

Where he is, there is nature.
SELF-RELIANCE

DECEMBER TWENTY-NINTH

I look for the new Teacher, that shall follow so far
those shining laws, that he shall see them come
full circle ; shall see their rounding complete grace;
shall see the world to be the mirror of the soul ; shall
see the identity of the law of gravitation with purity
of heart; and shall show that the Ought, that Duty,
is one thing with Science, with Beauty, and with

Joy.

AN ADDRESS

DECEMBER THIRTIETH

And truly it demands something godlike in him
who has cast off the common motives of humanity
and has ventured to trust himself for a task-master.
High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight,
that he may in good earnest be doétrine, society,
law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to
him as strong as iron necessity is to others.

SELF-RELIANCE

DECEMBER THIRTY-FIRST

On him the light of star and moon
Shall fall with purer radiance down;

E117 ]
All constellations of the sky

Shed their virtue through his eye.
Him nature giveth for defence

His formidable innocence,

The mountain sap, the shells, the sea,
All spheres, all stones, his helpers be.

He shall see the speeding year,

Without waiting, without fear.
WOOD NOTES