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THE CENTENARY 
 
 OF THE BmTH OF 
 
 3RaIp{) ^atoo Cmerson 
 
 AS OBSERVED IN CONCORD MAY 25 1903 
 UNDER THE DIRECTION OF 
 
 THE SOCIAL CIRCLE IN CONCORD 
 
 Rhodora ! if the sages ask thee why 
 
 This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, 
 
 Tell them, dear, that if ej-es were made for seeing, 
 
 Then Beauty is its own excuse for being. 
 
 JJrinteH at CI)c KibcraiHe pregg 
 
 FOR THE SOCIAL CIRCLE IN CONCORD 
 
 JUNE 1903 
 

 THE LIBRARY OF 
 CONORESS. 
 
 Two Copies Recoiv0<> 
 
 Ann 31 r903 
 
 Copyiignt tntiy 
 
 clas€ CL. XXc n« 
 66^ 77-2- 
 
 COPV B. 
 
 COFYRIGHT I903 BY JOHN SHEPARD KEYBS 
 
EMERSON 
 
 "Wherever the English language is spoken 
 throughout the world his fame is established and 
 secure. . . . But we, his neighbors and townsmen, 
 feel that he was ours. He was descended from the 
 founders of the town. He chose our village as the 
 place where his lifelong work was to be done. It 
 was to our fields and orchards that his presence 
 gave such value ; it was our streets in which the 
 children looked up to him with love, and the elders 
 with reverence. He was our ornament and pride." 
 
 Ebexezer Rockwood Hoar, 
 
 April SO, 1882. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The proceedings recorded in this volume resulted 
 from the following votes passed at a meeting of 
 
 The Social Circle in Concord 
 
 on December 23, 1902 : 
 
 Voted : That the Social Circle in Concord ar- 
 range a celebration of the Centenary of Ralph 
 Waldo Emerson, May 25, 1903, their best beloved 
 and respected member for many years. 
 
 Voted: That the members of the Circle be a 
 committee to make arrangements for the same. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAOB 
 
 The Morning . 1 
 
 Morning Introduction 3 
 
 Address of William Lorenzo Eaton . . 5 
 
 Address of LeBaron Russell Briggs . . 14 
 
 The Afternoon 31 
 
 Afternoon Introduction .... 33 
 
 Prayer by Loren Benjamin Macdonald 34 
 
 Address of Samuel Hoar .... 36 
 Address of Charles Eliot Norton . . .45 
 
 Address of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 58 
 Address of William James . . . .67 
 
 Address of George Frisbie Hoar . . 78 
 
 The Evening 95 
 
 Evening Introduction ..... 97 
 
 Opening Remarks, by John Shepard Keyes . 99 
 
 Speech of Caroline Hazard .... 99 
 
 Speech of Moorfield Storey .... 104 
 
 Letter from James Bryce and Others . Ill 
 
 Speech of Hugo Munsterberg .... 113 
 
 Speech of Edward Waldo Emerson . . 119 
 
 The Concord Hymn 128 
 
 Appendix 129 
 
 The Social Circle and Committees . . . 137 
 
THE MORNING 
 
EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 MEMORIAL EXERCISES in the Town 
 Hall in Concord, Massachusetts, on the morning 
 of Monday, May 25, 1903, one hundred years 
 after the birth of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 Arranged by the Social Circle, a society of 
 which he was a member for forty-two years. 
 
 1. OPENING HYMN: "The Pilgrim Fathers" 
 
 2. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 
 
 By William Lorenzo Eaton 
 Chairman of the Meeting 
 
 3. RECITATIONS 
 
 By Pupils of the High School 
 
 4. SONG: "Ode" 
 
 Sung in the Town Hall, Concord, July 4, 1857 
 
 By Pupils of the High School 
 
 5. ADDRESS 
 
 By Le Baron Russell Briggs 
 
 6. SONG: "Concord Hymn" 
 
 Sung at the completion of the Battle Mon- 
 ument, April 19, 1836 
 
 By all the Schools 
 
 7. CLOSING SONG: "Gloria" 
 
 From Mozart's Twelfth Mass 
 
 By Pupils of the High School 
 
THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 THE MORNING 
 
 On the occasion of the celebration of the two hun- 
 dredth anniversary of the settlement of Concord, Mr. 
 Emerson being the orator of the day, "the children of 
 the town, to the number of five hundred, moved in 
 procession to the Common in front of the old church 
 and Court House," and thence proceeded to the 
 church. "The North Gallery had been assigned for 
 them : but (it was a good omen) the children over- 
 ran the space assigned for their accommodation and 
 were sprinkled throughout the house and ranged in 
 seats along the aisles." Following this precedent 
 the Social Circle as a part of its plan for the suitable 
 observance of the one hundredth anniversary of 
 Mr. Emerson's birth, determined to arrange a 
 morning meeting for the children of the town, in 
 which they should participate. The School Commit- 
 tee was requested to make May 25th a school holi- 
 day, and pupils of the Grammar and High School 
 grades of the public schools and their teachers were 
 invited to a morning meeting in the Town Hall on 
 that day. A similar invitation was extended to the 
 
4 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 pupils and teachers of the Middlesex School, the 
 Concord School, and Miss White's Home School. 
 
 The pupils of these schools, to the number of six 
 hundred, came together at half past ten, filling the 
 hall, both floor and gallery. The children and grand- 
 children of Mr. Emerson, the Social Circle, the 
 School Committee of Concord, and other invited 
 guests to the number of sixty or more, occupied the 
 platform in the rear of the speakers. 
 
 Thus in 1903 as in 1835 the young people of the 
 town were assembled to help celebrate the day. To 
 quote the special correspondent of the Springfield 
 Kepublican : — 
 
 "The Social Circle could have done nothing bet- 
 ter than by bringing the children into the event of 
 the town, and making them perceive that it was also 
 an occasion of the world, and that they had a proper 
 and, indeed, a most important part in it." 
 
 The young people were seated punctually in the 
 seats previously assigned, and the exercises opened 
 with singing of "The Pilgrim Fathers" by the 
 schools, under the leadership of Fred W. Archi- 
 bald. 
 
 An address was then given by William Lorenzo 
 Eaton, Superintendent of Public Schools in Con- 
 cord, as follows : — 
 
ADDRESS OF WILLIAM LORENZO EATON 5 
 
 ADDRESS OF 
 WILLIAM LORENZO EATON 
 
 Pupils of the Concord Schools : You have been 
 asked to come here to-day to participate in exercises 
 in honor of Concord's foremost citizen. But he 
 whom we to-day celebrate was much more than a 
 citizen of Concord, for his name and fame have gone 
 wherever men live and have regard for sincerity, 
 and truth, and duty, and honor. Yet the Social 
 Club, of which he was a member for more than forty 
 years, has arranged to-day's series of memorial exer- 
 cises with the feeling that in a peculiar and limited 
 sense he who lived here a neighbor to your fathers and 
 grandfathers belonged to this town. The gentlemen 
 of this club also thought that it was fitting that the 
 children of the town should have a meeting arranged 
 especially for them. For you, young people, are the 
 hope of your native town. Your faces are toward 
 the future. To you they look to maintain the high 
 ideals, to carry forward the high purposes to which 
 this town has been committed for so many genera- 
 tions. It is their expectation and belief that from this 
 meeting you will carry away impressions of this 
 great man that will help to make your lives nobler, 
 and purer, and sweeter ; that there wiU descend upon 
 you something of that spirit, of that radiant person- 
 ality that set Emerson apart and made him a tran- 
 scendent power for noble living wherever his word 
 has reached. 
 
6 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 His personality was indeed a radiant one ! No one 
 came in contact with him during his life but felt it 
 strongly and was the better for it. Those who have 
 come under its influence through the printed volumes 
 which he has left as a legacy to the world, feel and 
 acknowledge its power. This spirit, this power, this in- 
 tangible something, which fills this hall where his voice 
 was heard so many times ; which pervades these streets 
 in which he walked ; which rests upon these meadows 
 and forests which he traversed ; which clings to his 
 home where he wrought through a long and fruitful 
 lifetime, has entered into the lives of all of us with 
 an uplifting force that we feel, though we may not 
 define. 
 
 To you young people, as well as to your elders, must 
 often come the query, What constitutes greatness ? 
 Why do we accord greatness to this man and not to 
 that man ? What is its test ? What the touchstone 
 by which we recognize it? I suppose that you, as 
 you grow older and think more deeply upon these 
 matters, must come to the same conclusion that think- 
 ing people always reach, that a great man is great 
 because he, more clearly than any one else, expresses 
 the ideals and aspirations of his age. Especially is 
 this true of great poets and great statesmen. We 
 all know that Abraham Lincoln was a great man. 
 Now, he was a great man because he had the power 
 to see, and the power to express, in clear and deci- 
 sive action, what all men, at the North at least, 
 were thinking and were eager to express. He became 
 
ADDRESS OF WILLIAM LORENZO EATON 7 
 
 the God-given leader of the Northern conscience 
 that found expression in the political action which 
 has given a new and a nobler meaning to our great 
 Nation. 
 
 To Mr. Emerson, also, we must accord a leader- 
 ship of the men of his age. But were he the spokes- 
 man merely of his own age, and for his own age, he 
 would fall short of that superlative greatness that we 
 believe is now determined for him. The utterances 
 of such a man become proverbial. Once they fall 
 from his lips they are upon the lips of all men. 
 For they reveal to all men and, at the same time, 
 express for all men the truths which they have been 
 feeling, and trying in vain adequately to express. 
 They become the current coin of men's daily speech, 
 and are used without conscious thought of their 
 origin. 
 
 You are familiar, even at your age, with some of 
 this coinage. Lines which have been embodied in 
 the every-day language of the people readily recur 
 to your minds. I need hardly recall them to you. 
 They are such as these : — 
 
 " He builded better than he knew, 
 
 " The conscious stone to beauty grew." 
 
 " Beauty is its own excuse for being." 
 
 " Pure by impure is not seen." 
 
 " Obey thy heart." 
 
 " When half gods go, 
 The gods arrive." 
 
 " He serves all who dares to be true." 
 
8 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 " The silent organ loudest chants 
 The Master's requiem." 
 
 " What is excellent, 
 As God lives is permanent." 
 
 " Right is might throughout the world." 
 
 " *T is man's perdition to be safe 
 When for the truth he ought to die." 
 
 Then you remember the lines which ring as a 
 
 clarion call to every young soul who looks to live a 
 
 noble and useful life, — 
 
 " So nigh is Grandeur to our dust, 
 So near is God to man ; 
 When Duty whispers low, * Thou must ! * 
 The youth replies, * I can.' " 
 
 I need hardly say that the man who makes the 
 proverbs, the current sayings, for the nation is the 
 man who exerts an undisputed moral leadership 
 which guides that nation onward and upward. 
 
 I have asked you to think of Emerson as a great 
 poet. Did time permit I would ask you to consider 
 him as a great lecturer and essayist. Above all 
 I would have you know him as a man who was 
 greater than his works. I would have you under- 
 stand, too, that it was the young people of his day 
 who heard and heeded his message rather than their 
 elders. Believing as I do that he has the same mes- 
 sage for you, I urge you, therefore, young people of 
 Concord, as you grow older to acquaint yourselves 
 with Emerson. Go with him into the pine woods 
 that he loved so well, and which whispered such 
 
ADDRESS OF WILLIAM LORENZO EATON 9 
 
 secrets into his ear. Perhaps you will hear those 
 secrets also. Walk over these plains with him and 
 with him spend a frequent holiday on his and your 
 dream-giving Indian River. Scale the hills and take 
 the distant view. See Wachusett and Monadnock 
 beckoning you to their heights, as they did him. 
 With him gaze at the sunset. Look into that deep, 
 overarching sky. Hitch your wagon to yonder star, 
 and with him travel into the unexplored and unex- 
 plained depths beyond. Gaze upon the rhodora where 
 it blooms, and " leave it on its stalk." Watch the 
 birds in their flight and where they nest, and name 
 them " without a gun." Listen to the humble-bee's 
 " mellow, breezy bass," and think what Emerson 
 heard, and let it teach you the lesson it taught him. 
 In the long winter evenings, when mayhap the snow 
 is swirling around your house, and shuts you from 
 the outer world, take down your volume of Emerson 
 and, in " a tumultuous privacy of storm," read and 
 think, and think and read, until something coming 
 to you out of that great spirit shall have shaped and 
 moulded your lives to nobler thought and deeds. 
 
 I have spoken to you of some of the reasons why 
 Emerson's life and teachings should interest and 
 inspire you. In the main they are reasons that would 
 apply to young people of your age anywhere in this 
 broad land. But there are other reasons why the 
 pupils in the Concord schools should have a closer 
 and more personal interest in Emerson. As a boy, 
 years before he came to live in Concord, he visited 
 
10 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 the town. It is said that he went to our schools. 
 There is a tradition that, standing on a box or barrel, 
 in the corner grocery, in the store now occupied by 
 Richardson's Pharmacy, he would recite poems to 
 the delight of those who frequented the store. 
 
 Later in life he did his duty on the School Com- 
 mittee of the town. We have a recently found copy 
 of the records of the School Committee covering 
 the years from 1826 to 1842. Several pages of these 
 records were written and signed by Mr. Emerson, 
 as Secretary of the School Board. 
 
 He enjoyed visiting the schools and listening to 
 the children. He took a special delight in the school 
 that so long was kept nearly opposite his house. The 
 schoolhouse, as you know, was recently removed, 
 and is now occupied by the Sloyd School, over 
 whose entrance might well be placed the line from 
 one of Emerson's Essays, — 
 
 "Labor is God's education." 
 
 He visited that schoolhouse many times when it 
 was on its original site, long after his duties on the 
 School Committee required such visitation. Many 
 pupils of those days now recall with great delight 
 and pride his visits. He was specially pleased to 
 hear the boys and girls declaim, or recite poetry, for 
 he regarded such exercises as an important part of 
 the education of the young. A gentleman who is 
 now in active business in Boston, speaking to me of 
 his experiences as a boy in the school, said that Mr. 
 
ADDRESS OF WILLIAM LORENZO EATON 11 
 
 Emerson, after listening awhile to the regular exer- 
 cises, would, with the consent of the teacher, turn to 
 him and say, " Has n't Henry something for us to- 
 day?" And Henry, all charged for the expected 
 invitation, would rise and recite some choice bit of 
 poetry or of prose, and receive the commendation 
 of his auditor. That boy's name was Wheeler, and 
 since the founding of this town our schools have 
 never lacked a full supply of Wheelers. So, to-day, 
 in introducing to you the part of the programme 
 which is to follow, I will ask a boy, whose name is 
 Wheeler, if he has not something for us to-day. 
 
 Then the following recitations were given by 
 pupils of the High School : — 
 
 Hamatreya Sermon Temple Wheeler 
 
 Fable Agnes Louise Garvey 
 
 Humble-bee James Joseph Loughlin 
 
 MoNADNOCK Kenneth Thompson Blood 
 
 Burns Edward Bailey Caiger 
 
 The Titmouse Mildred Browne 
 
 Let me go Lucy Tolman Hosmer 
 
 Forbearance Warren Kendall Blodgett 
 
 Wood-notes Roland Wortldey Butters 
 
 Wood-notes Richard Francis Powers 
 
 Rhodora Margaret Louise Eaton 
 
 After the singing of the " Ode" of July 4, 1857, 
 the chairman of the meeting, Mr. Eaton, introduced 
 Mr. Briggs as follows : — 
 
12 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 Twenty-six years ago this very month I attended 
 a meeting here when this hall was filled, floor and 
 gallery, not as to-day with school-children, but with 
 their natural friends, their teachers. They had 
 come to this town from all parts of Middlesex 
 County to discuss questions pertaining to the inter- 
 ests of their schools. In the course of the afternoon 
 Mr. Emerson read to them a portion of his lecture 
 Education. I well remember how he appeared on 
 this platform and I distinctly recall his marvellous 
 voice. There was a carrying power and strength in 
 it the like of which I never heard in any other man. 
 One passage in particular I recall, in which he 
 characterized boys. It seems as if now I heard his 
 voice, as he read : — 
 
 I like boys, the masters of the playground and 
 the street, — boys, who have the same liberal ticket 
 of admission to all shops, factories, armories, town- 
 meetings, caucuses, mobs, target-shootings, as flies 
 have ; quite unsuspected, coming in as naturally as 
 the janitor, — known to have no money in their 
 pockets, and themselves not suspecting the value of 
 this poverty ; putting nobody on his guard, but see- 
 ing the inside of the show, — hearing all the asides. 
 There are no secrets from them, they know every- 
 thing that befaUs in the fire-company, the merits of 
 every engine and of every man at the brakes, how to 
 work it, and are swift to try their hands at every 
 part ; so too the merits of every locomotive on the 
 
ADDRESS OF WILLIAM LORENZO EATON 13 
 
 rails, and will coax the engineer to let them ride 
 with him and pull the handles when it goes to the 
 engine-house. They are there only for fun, and not 
 knowing that they are at school, in the court-house, 
 or at the cattle-show, quite as much and more than 
 they were, an hour ago, in the arithmetic class. 
 
 The committee in charge of to-day's exercises de- 
 sired to find some one to address you who knew, and 
 understood, and sympathized with young people. It 
 was not unnatural that their thoughts at once turned 
 to a man who, as a professor and an officer of Har- 
 vard College, had had wide and sympathetic deal- 
 ings with thousands of young men. It was known 
 also that his comprehensive interest in young people 
 was not confined to the young men. The doors of 
 Badcliffe and Wellesley coUeges were always open 
 to him, where the welcome accorded him was no less 
 cordial than that which he was accustomed to ex- 
 tend to the Harvard boys summoned to the Dean's 
 office. I have the pleasure of introducing to you to- 
 day, therefore. Professor Le Baron Russell Briggs, 
 for so many years the well-known and well-beloved 
 Dean of Harvard College. 
 
14 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 ADDRESS OF 
 
 LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS 
 
 Now and then we meet a man who seems to live 
 high above the little things that vex our lives, and 
 who makes us forget them. He may speak or he 
 may be silent ; it is enough that he lives and that we 
 are with him. When we face him, we feel somewhat 
 as we feel when we first see the ocean, or Niagara, 
 or the Alps, or Athens, or when we first read the 
 greatest poetry. Nothing, indeed, is more like great 
 poetry than the soul of a great man ; and when the 
 great man is good, when he loves everything that is 
 beautiful and true and makes his life like what he 
 loves, his face becomes transfigured, or, as an old 
 poet used to say, " through-shine ; " for the soul 
 within him is the light of the world. 
 
 Such a great man was Emerson. He was much 
 beside : he was a philosopher. Sometimes a philoso- 
 pher is a man who disbelieves everything worth 
 believing, and spends a great deal of strength in 
 making simple things hard ; but Emerson was a 
 philosopher in the best sense of the word — a lover 
 of wisdom and of truth. He was also a poet ; not 
 a poet like Homer who sang, but a poet like that 
 Greek philosopher, Plato, who thought deep and 
 high, and saw what no one else saw, and told what 
 he saw as no one else could tell it. This is another 
 way of saying that Emerson was a " seer." 
 
ADDRESS OF LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS 15 
 
 To many of you he may not seem a poet, for his 
 verse is often homely and rough. It has lines and 
 stanzas of noble music, — 
 
 " Out from the heart of nature rolled 
 The burdens of the Bible old." 
 
 " Still on the seeds of all he made 
 The rose of beauty burns. 
 Through times that wear and forms that fade 
 Immortal youth returns ; " 
 
 but seldom many of them in succession. 
 
 " Though love repine and reason chafe, 
 There came a voice without reply, — 
 ' 'T is man's perdition to be safe, 
 When for the truth he ought to die.' " 
 
 The first three of these lines are beyond the reach of 
 most poets ; the fourth line is prose. 
 
 " I am born a poet," he wrote to his betrothed ; 
 " of a low class without doubt, yet a poet. That is 
 my nature and vocation. My singing, be sure, is 
 very husky, and is, for the most part, in prose." 
 " He lamented his hard fate," says his biographer, 
 Mr. Cabot, " in being only half a bard ; or, as he 
 wrote to Carlyle, * not a poet, but a lover of poetry 
 and poets, and merely serving as writer, etc, in this 
 empty America before the arrival of the poets.' " 
 He questioned whether to print his poems, " uncer- 
 tain always," he wrote, " whether I have one true 
 spark of that fire which burns in verse ; " and in a 
 
16 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 little poem, called " The Test," he says that in some 
 five hundred of his verses, 
 
 " Five lines lasted, soand and true." 
 
 When he wrote prose, he thought of a sentence by 
 itself, and not of its connection with other sentences ; 
 and when he wrote verse, he thought, it would seem, 
 of the form of each line, without much attention to 
 the form or the length of its neighbors, or even to 
 its own smoothness, — he whose ear for a prose sen- 
 tence was trained so delicately. 
 
 Yet I, for one, would give up any other poetry of 
 America rather than Emerson's ; and I am certain 
 that one secret of his power over men and women 
 was his belief that every human soul is poetry and 
 a poet, and his waking of men and women to that 
 belief. He had beyond other men a poet's heart ; 
 and if, as Carlyle says, to see deeply is to see music- 
 ally, and poetry is musical thought, he is a poet of 
 poets. 
 
 " God hid the whole world in thy heart," 
 
 says Emerson. "The poet," he says elsewhere, 
 "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 ani- 
 mals, with men and gods." 
 
 Nature he lived with ; and when he wrote of her, 
 he wrote as one who knew her as his closest friend. 
 " My book should smell of pines," he said. 
 
ADDRESS OF LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS 17 
 
 " To read the sense the woods impart 
 You must bring the throbbing heart." 
 
 " Sheen will tarnish, honey cloy, 
 And merry is only a mask of sad, 
 But, sober on a fund of joy. 
 The woods at heart are glad." 
 
 " Hast thou named all the birds without a gun ?_ 
 Loved the wood-rose and left it on its stalk ? 
 
 O be my friend, and teach me to be thine." 
 
 " Thou " [the poet], he said, " shalt have the whole 
 land for thy park and manor, the sea for thy bath 
 and navigation, without tax and without envy ; the 
 woods and the rivers thou shalt own ; and thou shalt 
 possess that wherein others are only tenants and 
 boarders. Thou true land-lord! sea-lord! air-lord! 
 Wherever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, 
 wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever 
 the blue heaven is hung by clouds or sown with 
 stars, wherever are forms with transparent bound- 
 aries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wher- 
 ever is danger and awe and love, there is Beauty, 
 plenteous as rain, shed for thee ; and though thou 
 shouldst walk the world over, thou shalt not be able 
 to find a condition inopportune or ignoble." 
 The poet is not only a seer, he is a hearer : — 
 
 " Let me go where'er I will 
 I hear a sky-born music still : 
 It sounds from all things old. 
 It sounds from all things young, 
 
18 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 From all that 's fair, from all that 's foul, 
 Peals out a cheerful song. 
 It is not oulj in the rose, 
 It is not only in the bird, 
 Not only where the rainbow glows, 
 Nor in the song of woman heard, 
 But in the darkest, meanest things 
 There alwaj, alwaj something sings. 
 ^T is not in the high stars alone, 
 Nor in the cups of budding flowers. 
 Nor in the red-breast's mellow tone, 
 Nor in the bow that smiles in showers, 
 But in the mud and scum of things 
 There alwaj, alway something sings." 
 
 Yet it was not cheerfulness that made Emerson a 
 poet ; and certainly it was not music, in the common 
 understanding of the term : it was high thought, 
 joined with a wonderful gift — an almost inspired 
 sense — of the right word ; a gift not always his, but 
 his so often that he has said more memorable things 
 than any other American. You can find no higher 
 simplicity in the fitting of word to thought : — 
 
 " Though love repine and reason chafe, 
 There came a voice without reply." 
 
 While I speak of the poetry in him and the love 
 of nature, let me read what he wrote to a little girl of 
 thirteen who looked up to him then and always : — 
 
 My dear Lucia : — I am afraid you think me 
 very ungrateful for the good letters which I begged for 
 and which are so long in coming to me, or that I am 
 
ADDRESS OF LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS 19 
 
 malicious and mean to make you wait as long for an 
 answer ; but, to tell you the truth, I have had so many 
 " composition lessons " set me lately, that I am sure 
 that no scholar of Mr. Moore's has had less spare 
 time. Otherwise I should have written instantly ; for 
 I have an immense curiosity for Plymouth news, and 
 have a great regard for my young correspondent. I 
 would gladly know what books Lucia likes to read 
 when nobody advises her, and most of all what her 
 thoughts are when she walks alone or sits alone. 
 For, though I know that Lucia is the happiest of 
 girls in having in her sister so wise and kind a guide, 
 yet even her aid must stop when she has put the 
 book before you : neither sister nor brother nor mo- 
 ther nor father can think for us : in the little private 
 chapel of your own mind none but God and you can 
 see the happy thoughts that follow each other, the 
 beautiful affections that spring there, the little silent 
 hymns that are sung there at morning and at even- 
 ing. And I hope that every sun that shines, every 
 star that rises, every wind that blows upon you will 
 only bring you better thoughts and sweeter music. 
 Have you found out that Nature is always talking to 
 you, especially when you are alone, though she has 
 not the gift of articulate speech ? Have you found 
 out what that great gray old ocean that is always in 
 your sight says? Listen. And what the withered 
 leaves that shiver and chatter in the cold March 
 wind ? Only listen. The Wind is the poet of the 
 World, and sometimes he sings very pretty summer 
 
20 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 ballads, and sometimes very terrible odes and dirges. 
 But if you will not tell me the little solitary thoughts 
 that I am asking for, what Nature says to you, and 
 what you say to Nature, at least you can tell me 
 about your books, — what you like the least and 
 what the best, — the new studies, — the drawing and 
 the music and the dancing, — and fail not to write 
 to your friend, 
 
 R. Waldo Emerson. 
 
 His " immense curiosity for Plymouth news " is 
 not surprising ; for he wrote this letter shortly be- 
 fore his marriage with Miss Jackson, of Plymouth. 
 The " wise and kind " sister of his little correspond- 
 ent was Miss Jackson's closest friend, and stood up 
 with her at the wedding. 
 
 Emerson was also a patriot, a man who loved his 
 country, and longed for it to do right. " One thing," 
 he says, " is plain for all men of common sense and 
 common conscience, that here, here in America, is 
 the home of man." " America is a poem in our eyes," 
 " its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and 
 it will not wait long for metres." 
 
 " For He that flung the broad blue fold 
 O'ermantling land and sea, 
 One third part of the sky unrolled 
 For the banner of the free." 
 
 " For he that worketh high and wise 
 Nor pauses in his plan, 
 
ADDRESS OF LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS 21 
 
 Will take the sun out of the skies 
 Ere freedom out of man." 
 
 Yet his greatest patriotic poem is not the Fourth 
 of July Ode, from which I have been quoting, — 
 
 (" O tenderly the haughty day 
 Fills his blue urn with fire,") 
 
 and not the Concord Hymn, never so familiar that 
 we can read without a thrill, — 
 
 " Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
 And fired the shot heard round the world." 
 
 His greatest patriotic poem is Voluntaries, which 
 treats of slavery and the conflict between North and 
 South. Freedom loves the North ; — 
 
 " The snowflake is her banner's star ; 
 Her stripes the boreal streamer are." 
 
 It is this poem that answers the terrible question ; — 
 
 " Who shall nerve heroic boys 
 To hazard all in Freedom's fight ? " 
 
 with that mighty quatrain, — 
 
 " So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 So near is God to man, 
 When Duty whispers low, * Thou must,* 
 The youth replies, * I can.' " 
 
 Yet Emerson is greatest, not as philosopher, poet, 
 or patriot, but as helper of men. He made men 
 better by simply walking among them. I have 
 spoken of his face as " through-shine," as transfigured 
 
22 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 with love and refinement and wisdom, with the 
 vision that shall not fade, — 
 
 " And never poor beseeching glance 
 Shamed that sculptured countenance." 
 
 It is much to remember him as I do, even in his old 
 age ; to have lived with those to whom he was " Mr. 
 Emerson," who had known him early, and who loved 
 him as they loved no other man. Some of you may 
 secretly wonder whether he was all that your elders 
 have called him, — just as I used to wonder whether 
 the Parthenon, the great temple at Athens, was 
 not Professor Norton's building rather than mine, 
 whether it would appeal to such as I. When I saw 
 the Parthenon, even in its ruin, I accepted it in- 
 stantly and forever ; and, if you could have seen 
 Emerson, even in his enfeebled old age, you would 
 have accepted him. 
 
 " No spring nor summer's beauty hath such grace 
 As I have seen in one autumnal face." 
 
 Emerson's face was the highest and the loveliest and 
 the most " through-shine," because his life was all 
 this. " Is it so bad? " he wrote to a friend who had 
 said that " no one would dare to uncover the thoughts 
 of a single hour," — " Is it so bad ? I own that to a 
 witness worse than myself and less intelligent I 
 should not willingly put a window into my breast. 
 But to a witness more intelligent and virtuous than 
 I, or to one precisely as intelligent and well inten- 
 tioned, I have no objection to uncover my heart." 
 
ADDRESS OF LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS 23 
 
 " He was right," says Mr. Cabot, " he could only 
 have gained by it." " It was good," says Hawthorne 
 in a passage that Mr. Cabot quotes, " to meet him in 
 the wood-paths or sometimes in our avenue with that 
 pure intellectual gleam diffusing about his presence 
 like the garment of a shining one ; and he, so quiet, 
 so simple, so without pretension, encountering each 
 man alive as if expecting to receive more than he 
 would impart. It was impossible to dwell in his 
 vicinity without inhaling more or less the mountain 
 atmosphere of his lofty thought." 
 
 Emerson himself has told us that '' Rectitude scat- 
 ters favors on every side without knowing it, and 
 receives with wonder the thanks of all people." So 
 it was with him ; as it is written of one whom no 
 man was more like, " There went virtue out of 
 him and healed them all." He who knew sorrow 
 yet was glad, who knew self-distrust yet stood self- 
 reliant, who knew weakness yet remained strong, 
 who knew bitterness yet kept sweet, whose love of 
 man and of nature and of nature in man, shone 
 through his face, and through every page he wrote, 
 — he seemed to those near him the very prophet of 
 God, preaching hope, freedom, courage, the glory of 
 a high and simple life. " The sublime vision," he 
 says, " comes to the pure and simple soul in a clean 
 and chaste body." " 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." 
 
24 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 " Teach me your mootl, O p.itient stars I 
 Who climb each night the aucieut sky, 
 Leaving on space no shade, no scars, 
 No trace of age, no fear to die." 
 
 In his presence weak men were ashamed that they 
 had ever wondered whether it was worth while to 
 live ; for in his presence, even in the presence of 
 what he had written, it was harder to be a coward 
 than to be brave. 
 
 Of young people — not children, but young men 
 and women — he was the supreme helper ; and we 
 must remember that it was not only neighbors and 
 friends who loved him, not only those that touched 
 the hem of his garment who were made whole. His 
 voice, his manner, his presence, charmed and refined 
 all who came near him ; but his written words put 
 courage into ten thousand hearts. 
 
 " Trust thyself ; every heart vibrates to that iron 
 string." 
 
 " We will walk on our own feet ; we will work 
 with our own hands ; we will speak our own minds." 
 
 " K the single man plant himself indomitably on 
 his instincts and there abide, the huge world will 
 come round to him." 
 
 " We are parlor soldiers. We shun the rugged 
 battle of fate where strength is bom." 
 
 " But we sit and weep in vain. The voice of the 
 Almighty saith, * Up and onward forever more ! ' " 
 
 " Man is timid and apologetic ; he is no longer 
 upright ; he dares not say, * I think,' ' I am,' but 
 
ADDRESS OF LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS 25 
 
 quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before 
 the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses 
 under my window make no reference to former roses 
 or to better ones ; they are for what they are ; they 
 exist with God to-day." 
 
 " I call upon you, young men, to obey your heart 
 and be the nobility of this land." 
 
 Here is the star to which many an awkward and 
 timid country lad has hitched his wagon ; the strong 
 and steady light to which the lights that flickered in 
 a thousand hearts have flashed their bravest answer. 
 This gentle scholar was a man, and a man who 
 inspired others with his own manliness. There was 
 in his philosophy no room for the weak and lazy. 
 With all his visions he had a keen sense of the 
 value of time, and expressed it (with more truth 
 than poetry) in " The Visit : " — 
 
 " Askest, * How long thou shalt stay ? * 
 Devastator of the day ! " 
 
 " Do your work," he says, " and I shall know 
 you. Do your work and you shall reinforce yourself. 
 Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope 
 too much or dare too much." 
 
 " The distinction and end of a soundly constituted 
 man is his labor. Use is inscribed on all his facul- 
 ties. Use is the end to which he exists. As the tree 
 exists for its fruit, so a man for his work. A fruitless 
 plant, an idle animal, does not stand in the uni- 
 verse." 
 
26 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 lie believed in work that left no time for worry- 
 ing:— 
 
 *' But blest is he who playing deep yet haply asks not why, 
 Too busied with the crowded hour to fear to live or die." 
 
 And he believed in work through everything, — 
 
 " On bravely through the sunshine and the showers I 
 Time hath his work to do and we have ours." 
 
 Such was the courage of his preaching and of his 
 life. We are to be ourselves in the present, not to 
 make ourselves like anybody else or like what we 
 ourselves have been. If we are inconsistent, no 
 matter ; if we are misunderstood, no matter. " With 
 consistency,'* he says, " a great soul has simply 
 nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with 
 his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now 
 in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow 
 thinks in hard words again, though it contradict 
 everything you said to-day. ' Ah, so you shall be 
 sure to be misunderstood ! ' Is it so bad, then, to be 
 misunderstood ? . . . Every pure and wise spirit that 
 ever took flesh " has been misunderstood. 
 
 " Whenever a mind is simple and receives a divine 
 wisdom, old things pass away, — means, teachers, 
 texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past 
 and future into the present hour." 
 
 " Our helm is given up to a better guidance than 
 our own ; the course of events is quite too strong for 
 any helmsman, and our little wherry is taken in tow 
 by the ship of the great Admiral, which knows the 
 
ADDRESS OF LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS 27 
 
 way, and has the force to draw men and states and 
 planets to their good." 
 
 And there was no room in his philosophy for the 
 sickly and discontented. As one of " the first obvious 
 rules of life," he says, " Get health." " And the best 
 part of health," he adds, " is fine disposition. It is 
 more essential than talent, even in the works of tal- 
 ent. Nothing will supply the want of sunshine to 
 peaches, and to make knowledge valuable, you must 
 have the cheerfulness of wisdom." 
 
 " I know how easy it is to men of the world to 
 look grave, and sneer at your sanguine youth and its 
 glittering dreams. But I find the gayest castles in 
 the air that were ever piled far better for comfort 
 and for use than the dungeons in the air that are 
 daily dug and caverned out by grumbling, discon- 
 tented people." 
 
 Nor is cheerfulness for the young only : — 
 
 " Spring still makes spring in the mind 
 When sixty years are told ; 
 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 snow-drift 
 The warm rosebuds below." 
 
 Even though old age bring loss of power, it need 
 not bring loss of cheerfulness : — 
 
 " As the bird trims her to the gale, 
 I trim myself to the storm of time 
 
28 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 I man the rudder, reef the sail, 
 Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime, 
 * Lowly faithful, banish fear, 
 Right onward drive unharmed; 
 The port, well worth the cruise, is near, 
 And every wave is charmed.' " 
 
 If disaster come, there is good in it. "We learn 
 geology the morning after the earthquake.*' 
 
 George Eliot tells us of a woman who seemed 
 among other people like a fine quotation from the 
 Bible in a paragraph of a newspaper. Something 
 like this might be said of Emerson, who brought into 
 every-day life the help that cometh from the hills. 
 " I believe," says an old friend of his, " no man ever 
 had so deep an influence as he had on the life and 
 thought of the young people of his day. I think 
 there are many who would say . . . that it has 
 been one of the chief privileges of their life to have 
 lived at the same time with him." 
 
 I have tried to show you what Emerson has meant 
 to American youth ; how he has stood for pure life, 
 high thought, brave speech, patient and cheerful 
 work ; how he found in everything poetry and a man's 
 poetry, and revealed that poetry to the world : but 
 this is not all. It is as easy to " put a girdle round 
 about the earth in forty minutes " as to compass in 
 half an hour a great man. I might speak of him as a 
 forerunner of Darwin. " Man," he says, " is no up- 
 start in the creation, but has been prophesied in nature 
 
ADDRESS OF LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS 29 
 
 for a thousand, thousand ages before he appeared . . . 
 His limbs are only a more exquisite organization — 
 say rather the finish — of the rudimental forms that 
 have been already sweeping the sea and creeping in 
 the mud ; the brother of his hand is even now cleav- 
 ing the Arctic sea in the fin of the whale, and innum- 
 erable ages since was pawing the marsh in the flipper 
 of the saurian." I might speak of his Yankee humor, 
 or of his tenderness and romance, — 
 
 «' The little Shakspeare in the maiden's heart 
 Makes Romeo of a ploughboy on his cart;" 
 
 but I purposely let them pass with this bare mention 
 (as I let pass "The Titmouse," "The Rhodora," 
 " The Mountain and the Squirrel," " The Humble- 
 bee ") ; for I wish you this day to think of Emerson, 
 living and dead, as a high and helpful friend. 
 There is no better company, no better society, than 
 his. Read him and re-read him. Do not try to write 
 like him : he would have you write like none but 
 yourselves ; and besides, his style is his and his only. 
 Do not try to he like him, except so far as in being 
 your best selves you come into the likeness of all who 
 are good and true. When you read him, do not be 
 troubled if you lose the thread of his thought ; he 
 himself did that ; yet, as a young man once said of 
 him, "His sayings are like the stars, which are 
 scattered disorderly but together make a firmament 
 of light." 
 
 "Hundreds of people," says Raskin, "can talk 
 
30 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 for one who can think ; but thousands can think for 
 one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, 
 and religion all in one." 
 
 This man who walked your streets, and loved them, 
 spoke with a voice that is rare in any race or time ; 
 he thought as it is given to few to think ; and he saw. 
 We have had no man like him. I will not say that 
 we have had none so great. Lincoln may have been 
 greater. They are so different that we cannot com- 
 pare the two: and yet, as Lincoln's proclamation 
 brought life and hope to captive hearts, so did the 
 brave word that Emerson spoke flash on the souls of 
 men the truth that they were slaves no more ; that 
 each misfht and must stand to his work erect and 
 strong, since nature and God were his very own. 
 The eyes of the blind were opened, and the ears of 
 the deaf unstopped ; " for he came that they might 
 have life, and that they might have it more abun- 
 dantly." 
 
 The morning exercises then closed with the ** Concord 
 Hymn," sung by all the schools, and the " Gloria " from 
 Mozart's Twelfth Mass, sung by pupils of the High School. 
 
THE AFTERNOON 
 
©mer0on Centenary 
 
 MEMORIAL EXERCISES 
 
 IN THE MEETING HOUSE 
 OF THE FIRST PARISH 
 
 IN 
 
 CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 ON 
 
 MONDAY AFTERNOON 
 
 MAY THE TWENTY-FIFTH 
 
 NINETEEN HUNDRED AND THREE 
 
 ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 AFTER THE BIRTH OF 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 ARRANGED BY THE SOCIAL CIRCLE 
 A SOCIETY OF WHICH HE WAS A 
 MEMBER FOR FORTY-TWO YEARS 
 
ORDER OF EXERCISES 
 
 1. MUSIC 
 
 Under the direction of Thomas W. Surette 
 
 2. PRAYER 
 
 By Rev. Loren B. Macdonald 
 
 3. INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS 
 
 By Samuel Hoar 
 
 Chairman of the Meeting 
 
 4. ADDRESS 
 
 By Charles Eliot Norton 
 
 5. ADDRESS 
 
 By Thomas Wentworth Higginson 
 
6. A SONG OF DESTINY 
 
 By Friedrich Holderlin 
 
 English 'Translation by Rev. J. Troutbeck 
 
 Music by Johannes Brahms 
 
 " Far in yon regions of light, where pleasures fai/ not^ 
 
 wander the Spirits blest, 
 Breathed on by airs of glory, bright and divine, like a harp 
 
 when a master hand wakes it from silence. 
 Free from care like a babe that is sleeping, are they that in 
 
 Heaven dwell. 
 Pure and lowly as half opened blossoms, in those fields of 
 
 light they ever bloom; 
 And in bliss are their eyes still gazing on clearness calm 
 
 and eternal." 
 
 Sung by the Concord Choral Association 
 
 7. ADDRESS 
 
 By William James 
 
8. ADDRESS 
 
 By George Frisbie Hoar 
 
 9. SEVENTY-EIGHTH PSALM 
 
 Sung by the Congregation 
 to the tune of St, Martins 
 
 My tongue, by inspiration taught 
 
 Shall parables unfold ; 
 Dark oracles, but understood, 
 
 And owned for truths of old. 
 
 Let children learn the mighty deeds 
 Which God performed of old, 
 
 Which, in our younger years, we saw. 
 And which our fathers told. 
 
 Our lips shall tell them to our sons. 
 
 And they again to theirs ; 
 That generations yet unborn 
 
 May teach them to their heirs. 
 
THE AFTERNOON 
 
 The afternoon exercises were held in the Meeting 
 House of the First Parish. 
 
 The music was under the direction of Professor 
 Thomas Whitney Surette, who was also the organist 
 of the occasion and liberally contributed his time 
 and talents to the success of the afternoon. 
 
 The singing was by forty members of the Concord 
 Choral Association, who also gave their services. 
 
 The Meeting House was opened at two o'clock 
 for the holders of tickets, and at three o'clock for the 
 general public, about eight hundred people being 
 present. 
 
 The following named sons of members of the So- 
 cial Circle were ushers and assistants : — 
 
 William Bradford Bartlett, Samuel Hoar, Jr., 
 
 Percy Whiting Brown, Francis DeHart Houston, 
 
 Henry Taft Eaton, Nathaniel Peabody How, 
 
 John Marshall Eaton, Richard Jefferson Eaton, 
 
 William Forbes Emerson, John Hoar, 
 
 Raymond Emerson, Francis Rodman Titcomb. 
 
 The exercises began at five minutes after three 
 by the singing of Luther's hymn, ** A Mighty Fort- 
 ress is our God," followed by a prayer by the Rev- 
 erend Loren Benjamin Macdonald, the minister of 
 the First Parish. 
 
34 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 PRAYER 
 
 BY LOREN BENJAMIN MACDONALD 
 
 O God, we thank Thee for that Divine Wisdom 
 which, from generation to generation, entering into 
 holy souls, has made them friends of God and pro- 
 phets. We come before Thy face deeply grateful for 
 the gift of that illumined soul whose name to-day we 
 honor. We thank Thee for all the blessed way in 
 which Thou didst lead him. We bless Thee that, 
 entering into his mind and heart, Thou didst so 
 guide him in the way of truth and light and beauty, 
 that, shedding down upon us to-day the greatness of 
 his thought and the beauty of his spirit, we catch 
 something of that divine influence and inspiration, 
 and our lives are made sweeter and better because he 
 has lived. 
 
 We thank Thee, O God, that Thou didst so touch 
 his heart in early youth that he was led on in de- 
 vout allegiance to the spirit of truth to which he 
 gave his life — that truth which brought him into 
 Thy sacred presence. We thank Thee that Thy 
 spirit of beauty so took possession of his soul that 
 he was evermore guided by it to Thee, the source of 
 all beauty. We thank Thee for that vision of right- 
 eousness by which he was ever led on into the Holy 
 of Holies of Thy presence. And we thank Thee that 
 from that mount of vision, from that divine insight, 
 he comes to us to-day to quicken our better life, to 
 
PRAYER BY LOREN B. MACDONALD 35 
 
 make the world more beautiful for us, to make the 
 way of life more sacred, to give us a deeper sense of 
 responsibility in living, so that our lives mean more 
 to us to-day because of his teaching. 
 
 We come at this hour yielding our minds and 
 hearts in gracious and loving admiration and alle- 
 giance to his blessed influence. We feel the touch 
 of his spirit in these sacred surroundings. We feel 
 that, in these places hallowed by his presence, we 
 stand on holy ground. We pray Thee that more and 
 more we may feel that the beauty of the world is 
 increased to us, indeed, because he has lived. Grant 
 us, we pray, that, standing in the inspiration of his 
 memory, with the blessed influence of his spirit 
 pressing in upon our spirits, we may, indeed, follow 
 in that way to which he pointed. May his spirit be 
 an antidote for all our restlessness, a cure for all 
 that is shallow and unworthy in our lives. May we, 
 entering to-day into the silences of the spirit, feeling 
 ourselves in the presence of that great Over-Soul, in 
 whose presence he felt himself, be inspired, as he 
 was, to go forth to do Thy work for the right, and 
 to earnest labor for Thy blessed kingdom of truth 
 and beauty and goodness. Make us also illumined 
 souls, touched by that divine fire from above, so that 
 we, too, catching some vision from the mount, may 
 go forward to help bring something of the divine 
 kingdom of light and peace and joy here upon the 
 earth. 
 
 We ask it all as Thy children, Amen. 
 
36 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 ADDRESS OF SAMUEL HOAR 
 
 Neighbors and Friends : — It is a rare event 
 in the life of a New England town when, by a com- 
 mon impulse, men pause to celebrate the anniversary 
 of the birth of one of its citizens. 
 
 With patriotic pride, and deep and tender feeling, 
 we are accustomed to recur at frequent intervals to 
 the pathetic story of those settlements in the wilder- 
 ness, of which this in Concord was the type, and we 
 note with high appreciation that what was then sown 
 here in weakness has been raised in power again and 
 yet again. 
 
 And we also esteem it a priceless heritage, worthy 
 of continued celebration, that when in the provi- 
 dence of God it became necessary that the might of 
 England should be " fronted and driven back," to 
 secure the preservation of the liberty of which the 
 Fathers had sown the seed, there was then found 
 here the fertile field and the husbandmen ready for 
 the harvest. These strengthening memories are a 
 part of our local history. 
 
 It is not, however, the least of the claims of Con- 
 cord to fame that out from her loins should have 
 sprung the great intellectual and spiritual leader and 
 emancipator of America. 
 
 It seems fitting that this people should commemo- 
 rate Emerson on the one hundredth anniversary of 
 his birth, for their history and their quiet fields 
 
ADDRESS OF SAMUEL HOAR 37 
 
 furnished the alembic in which that clear and pure 
 spirit was distilled. 
 
 Of the seven men who had been ministers of this 
 town before his birth, whose names are borne on 
 yonder tablet, he claimed five as his kindred. It was 
 the blood of Peter Bulkeley, the founder, repeating 
 itself in his veins, that made him a non-conformist. 
 His grandfather, William Emerson, the preacher 
 of the Revolution, transmitted to him a lofty patri- 
 otism. If there was found in his discourses a moving 
 eloquence, it was traceable to the unquenchable spirit 
 of Daniel Bliss, his great-grandfather, who came 
 down here from Springfield to discipline and divide 
 this people, of whom it was said that when the cele- 
 brated Whitefield preached here in 1764 in the after- 
 noon, and Mr. Bliss preached in the morning, " the 
 Concord people thought their minister gave them 
 the better sermon of the two." 
 
 The Social Circle, of which Mr. Emerson was an 
 active member for forty-two years, itself a society in 
 this town which traces its origin to the Committee of 
 Safety in the Revolution, acting in this behalf for 
 the people of Concord, has invited you to join with 
 it in this Commemoration. It has appointed me its 
 mouthpiece. The summons must be obeyed, for I 
 cannot disregard those voices, audible to myself alone, 
 which bid me to say what I can. 
 
 This Society, with the modesty generated by over 
 one hundred and twenty years of life in Concord, re- 
 calls what Emerson himself recorded of it in 1844 : 
 
38 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 " Much the best society I have ever known is a 
 chib in Concord called the Social Circle, consisting 
 always of twenty-five of our citizens, doctor, lawyer, 
 farmer, trader, miller, mechanic, etc., solidest of 
 men who yield the solidest of gossip." 
 
 It should be added that no member of the Social 
 Circle now living was a member when these words 
 were written. 
 
 I suppose that a majority of this audience will 
 agree that the earliest misfortune in Mr. Emerson's 
 life, which, however, he did all he could to counter- 
 act in after years, was that he was not born in Con- 
 cord. 
 
 The record which fixes the time of his birth 
 speaks of three successive events, and is found in 
 his father's diary, as follows : — 
 
 "May 25, 1803. Mr. Puffer preached his Elec- 
 tion Sermon to great acceptance. This day also, 
 whilst I was at dinner at Governor Strong's, my son 
 Ralph Waldo was born. Mrs. E. well. — Club at 
 Mr. Adams'." 
 
 So we, too, divide our ceremonies to-day into three 
 parts : an acceptable discourse in the morning ; a 
 symposium after noon ; and a meeting of the Club 
 in the evening. 
 
 His father, the Rev. William Emerson, who in 
 1803 was the minister of the First Church in Bos- 
 ton, died in 1811 when Ralph Waldo was eight 
 years old. His mother, left a widow with six chil- 
 dren and in narrow circumstances, was a woman of 
 
ADDRESS OF SAMUEL HOAR 39 
 
 high character, who under great difficulties reared 
 and educated her family. When they were without 
 food for a day she sustained them by stories of 
 heroic endurance. His grandfather, William Em- 
 erson, minister of this town, builder of the Old 
 Manse, in which his children were born, addressed 
 and encouraged the minutemen on the Common in 
 the early morning of the nineteenth of April, 1775, 
 was witness and recorder of the fight at the bridge, 
 joined the army at Ticonderoga as chaplain, and 
 died of camp-fever in 1776. 
 
 The only grandfather Mr. Emerson ever knew 
 was Dr. Ezra Kipley, minister in this town for 
 nearly sixty -three years, who married the widow of 
 his predecessor and lived in the Old Manse, where 
 Mr. Emerson came as a boy on frequent visits, at- 
 tending school, and forming the acquaintance of the 
 families of the town, and the fields, trees, and mead- 
 ows which were his intimate friends during his long 
 life. His biographical sketch of Dr. Kipley, pub- 
 lished among the memoirs of the Social Circle, 
 shows a deep appreciation of the life and character 
 and manners of a sturdy New England minister of 
 the old school, and does not fail to note the humor- 
 ous side of its subject. 
 
 Mr. Emerson entered Harvard College in 1817, 
 was President's Freshman under President Kirkland, 
 which office entitled him to a room rent free, earned 
 needed money as a waiter in Commons, held several 
 scholarships, withdrew with his class from college 
 
40 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 in his sophomore year because some of its members 
 were expelled for a fight with freshmen, returned 
 and graduated about midway in his class in 1821, 
 and was its class poet. He taught school, studied 
 for the ministry, was ordained in 1826 and preached, 
 was threatened by serious sickness, became asso- 
 ciate pastor with the Rev. Henry Ware in the Sec- 
 ond Church in Boston (the old church of Cotton 
 Mather), separated himself therefrom in 1832, re- 
 fused offers of settlement from other societies, and 
 came to Concord with his mother to board at the 
 Old Manse in the fall of 1834, when he was thirty- 
 one years of age. 
 
 He came to be the seer and prophet and poet, the 
 teacher and the spokesman of this town. On its 
 great occasions he appeared for it, and not only illu- 
 mined the events of which he spoke but made those 
 events vocal and perpetuated them in human mem- 
 ory. His address on the two hundredth anniversary 
 of the settlement of the town is easily the first of 
 its kind. It should be read here to each successive 
 generation on the twelfth of September, even as the 
 Declaration of Independence is read in our towns on 
 the Fourth of July. It was delivered on Saturday, 
 September 12, 1835, when he was thirty-two years 
 old. He drove to Plymouth on the fourteenth, was 
 there married to Miss Lydia Jackson, and drove 
 back on the fifteenth with his wife, to the house 
 which he had bought on the Cambridge turnpike, to 
 live there the rest of his life. 
 
ADDRESS OF SAMUEL HOAR 41 
 
 Of the farm, as he called it, on which he lived, he 
 subsequently wrote thus : — 
 
 " When I bought my farm I did not know what 
 a bargain I had in the blue-birds, bobolinks, and 
 thrushes, which were not charged in the bill. As 
 little did I guess what sublime mornings and sunsets 
 I was buying, what reaches of landscape, and what 
 fields and lanes for a tramp. Neither did I fully con- 
 sider what an indescribable luxury is our Indian 
 River, which runs parallel with the village street and 
 to which every house on that long street has a back 
 door which leads down through the garden to the 
 river bank ; where a skiff or dory gives you all 
 summer access to enchantments new every day, and 
 all winter to miles of ice for the skater. Still less did 
 I know what good and true neighbors I was buying : 
 men of thought and virtue, some of them known the 
 country through for their learning, or subtlety, or 
 action, or patriotic power, but whom I had the plea- 
 sure of knowing long before the country did ; and 
 other men, not known widely, but known at home, 
 farmers, not doctors of laws, but doctors of land, 
 skilled in turning a swamp or a sandbank into a 
 fruitful field, and where witch-grass and nettles grew 
 causing a forest of apple-trees or miles of corn and 
 rye to thrive. I did not know what groups of interest- 
 ing school-boys and fair school-girls were to greet 
 me in the highway, and to take hold of one's heart 
 at the school exhibitions." 
 
 In 1837 he wrote the famous hymn for the dedi- 
 
42 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 cation of the Battle Monument, and compressed the 
 story of the fight into the lines which are now in- 
 scribed on the base of the statue of the Minuteman. 
 
 And we take pride in the knowledge that the sub- 
 lime record of his mighty thoughts has been heard 
 round the world, with a potency for good at least as 
 effective as the shot of the embattled farmers. 
 
 In his old age, upon the one hundredth anniversary 
 of the fight, he spoke at our great celebration, saying 
 at the close, " It is a proud and tender story. I chal- 
 lenge any lover of Massachusetts to read the fifty- 
 ninth chapter of Bancroft's Historv without tears of 
 
 joy." 
 
 And what great benefactions he showered upon 
 this people all his life. He gratuitously gave one 
 hundred lectures before our Lyceum, or an average 
 of two a year. It was sometimes irreverently said that 
 he tried them on in Concord. If this were true, it is 
 comforting to us to admit that they proved a good 
 fit. They are themselves the record of a noble life. 
 They constitute the greatest service rendered to this 
 community by any single life in its history. They 
 were eagerly attended by old and young. They were 
 filled with lofty and inspiring thoughts, and every 
 now and then came flashes of unexpected humor. 
 
 I remember hearing as a boy a lecture of his ; the 
 subject I have forgotten, its doctrines probably I 
 did not appreciate ; I was no doubt charmed as always 
 by the music of his voice and the felicity of his dic- 
 tion. Perhaps he was arguing for concentration of 
 
ADDRESS OF SAMUEL HOAR 43 
 
 effort. He turned from the pages of his manuscript, 
 which, like a handful of pearls, he would seem to take 
 one by one at random and discourse upon, and, hesi- 
 tating a moment as he looked out upon his audience, 
 smiled, and said, " No man, says the Italian proverb, 
 can carry more than three watermelons under one 
 arm." The memory of this anecdote served a good 
 end thirty years afterward, and furnished an apt 
 illustration of the helpless condition of a witness who 
 had unsuccessfully ventured on a number of false- 
 hoods in testifying to an important transaction. 
 
 He was for many years on our School Committee. 
 He regularly attended the town meetings and occa- 
 sionally took active part in the discussions. We re- 
 member his speaking words of high encouragement 
 and patriotic fervor to a company of young men of 
 this town who were starting for the front in the Civil 
 War. These words were spoken on the Common to 
 the descendants of the men for whom his grandfather 
 had done a similar service on the same spot nearly 
 ninety years before. 
 
 And when the town dedicated its monument to 
 those who went and did not return, we spontaneously 
 turned again to the kindness which never failed us. 
 
 He had long service on the Library Committee of 
 the town. He delivered also the address at the open- 
 ing of our new Public Library in 1873. 
 
 He was a member of this Parish, had during all 
 his life here a pew, in which he sat with his family 
 whenever he went to church. 
 
44 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 He acknowledged his own indebtedness to three 
 women of high character and rare attainments, not 
 of his own immediate family, — his aunt, Mary 
 Moody Emerson, of whom he wrote, " she gave high 
 counsels : it was the privilege of certain boys to 
 have this immeasurably high standard indicated to 
 their childhood, a blessing which nothing else in edu- 
 cation could supply ; " Mrs. Samuel Ripley, of whom 
 he said, " The kindness and genius that blend their 
 light in the eyes of Mrs. Ripley inspire me with some 
 feeling of unworthiness ; at least with impatience of 
 doing so little to deserve so much confidence ; " and 
 Elizabeth Hoar, of whom he recorded in his journal, 
 " I have no other friend whom I more wish to be 
 immortal than she ; an influence I cannot spare, but 
 must always have at hand for recourse.'* 
 
 Mr. Emerson was an idealist, he was the idealist 
 of our time, he was " the Man thinking," but he was 
 more than that to us. Where his standard was 
 planted, to that height he had himself attained ; yet 
 he was singularly free from self-assertion ; he sought 
 for, and seemed eager to recognize, the superiority 
 of others, and lived among us here as other men 
 lived. It is our great felicity that he lived here. He 
 bound us to him by the completeness of his character 
 and the sweetness and simplicity of his life, and by 
 the message of good hope which he continually gave. 
 The supreme test of the neighbor proved his worth. 
 Did not our own Sam Staples say of him that he 
 was " a first-rate neighbor, and one who always kept 
 
ADDRESS OF CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 45 
 
 his fences up " ? And he himself said, " Those of us 
 who do not believe in communities, believe in neigh- 
 borhoods and that the Kingdom of Heaven may con- 
 sist of such." 
 
 The Chairman then said : — 
 
 We have invited some eminent men to speak to us 
 to-day, and I take pleasure in presenting Professor 
 Charles Eliot Norton, of Cambridge. 
 
 ADDRESS OF 
 
 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Members of the Social Circle, 
 Ladies and Gentlemen of Concord and from abroad : 
 It is well that this day should be celebrated through- 
 out our land, for the memory of Emerson deserves 
 more than mere local honor. It is well, moreover, 
 because the celebration is a virtual protest against 
 the prevalent spirit of materialism and militarism. 
 But here, in this doubly consecrated town, the cele- 
 bration, as you, Mr. Chairman, have justly said, has 
 special significance and appropriateness, and you 
 will not disapprove of my citing, as accordant with 
 your own words, those of your honored father, Mr. 
 Emerson's near friend, the " incomparable citizen," 
 as he called him, the spokesman of the town at 
 Emerson's funeral, when he said, in his brief and 
 heartfelt address on that occasion : " We, his 
 
46 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 neighbors and townsmen, feel that he was ours. He 
 was descended from the founders of the town. He 
 chose our village as the place where his lifelong work 
 was to be done. It was to our fields and orchards that 
 his presence gave such value ; it was our streets in 
 which the children looked up to him with love, and 
 the elders with reverence. He was our ornament 
 and pride." It is becoming, then, that you, members 
 of the Social Circle to which Emerson belonged for 
 many years, should, above all, commemorate this an- 
 niversary, and should ask others to celebrate it with 
 you. I thank you for inviting me to take part in it. 
 
 " There are always in the world," says Plato, " a 
 few inspired men whose acquaintance is beyond 
 price." " I am in the habit of thinking," said Mr. 
 Emerson, " that to every serious mind Providence 
 sends from time to time five or six or seven teachers 
 who are of the first importance to him in the lessons 
 they have to impart. The highest of these not so 
 much give particular knowledge, as they elevate by 
 sentiment, and by their habitual grandeur of view." 
 
 And of these highest inspired men whose ac- 
 quaintance is beyond price, and who elevate those 
 who come into relations with them by sentiment and 
 habitual grandeur of view, was Emerson himself. 
 In modern times the influence of these men is dif- 
 fused through their printed words, and they become 
 teachers of first importance to many remote and 
 unknown readers. Yet now, as in the days of Plato, 
 personal acquaintance with them is beyond price. 
 
ADDRESS OF CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 47 
 
 But the printed word is diuturnal, and the personal 
 acquaintance transitory. For a little while the per- 
 sonality of these divine men, cherished in the memo- 
 ries of a few of their contemporaries, continues to 
 have a twilight existence ; but before long all who 
 knew them face to face have gone from the world, 
 and only hearsay and tradition concerning them 
 remain. 
 
 It is an interesting and precious element of this 
 commemorative occasion that so many are taking 
 part in it who remember Mr. Emerson in life, and 
 who bear in their hearts the image of his benignant 
 presence. We, the elders, who held acquaintance 
 with him to be priceless, and for whom he felt a 
 kindly regard or even a friendly affection, can hardly 
 do a better service for the younger generation than 
 to give them, so far as may be possible, a faithful 
 impression of the man himself, who exhibited in his 
 daily walk and conversation a nature of ideal sim- 
 plicity, dignity, and elevation. 
 
 Emerson was fortunate in the time and place of 
 his birth. I doubt if there has ever been a com- 
 munity happier in its main conditions, moral and 
 material, than that of Massachusetts during the 
 early years of the last century. But it was essen- 
 tially immature ; it had not yet secured intellectual 
 independence ; its thought, its literature, its manners, 
 its religion, were imported and derivative. Many 
 men of vigorous character and abundant natural 
 capacity were found in it ; but there were few who 
 
\ 
 
 48 THE EMERSON CENTENARY ■] 
 
 possessed originality or depth of intellect ; no poets, i 
 no philosophers, no thinkers in the highest sense i 
 were here ; nor were there any deep founts of learn- 
 ing. 
 
 Into this fortunate, immature, intelligent, reli- 
 gious, hopeful community, Emerson was born ; born 
 of admirable parents, the children of a long line of 
 well-bred ancestors. He was born good, with an 
 inheritance of serious-mindedness, of an intellectual 
 disposition, and of religious sentiment. He was also 
 born a poet, and the advantages of place and time 
 of his birth gave form and direction to his poetic 
 genius. Its very originality, that which distinguishes 
 and individualizes it, exhibits its native source. 
 
 The originality of genius is often a strange and 
 perplexing phenomenon to the contemporaries of its 
 possessor, — nor is it always understood by the man 
 himself. Contemporaries fail to recognize at once 
 the poet as the seer who reveals to them their own 
 imperfectly developed tendencies, and expresses for 
 them their own mute sentiments ; while the poet, 
 familiar with the conditions in which he lives, and 
 unconsciously shaped by them, may fail, for a time 
 at least, to note the partial incompatibility between 
 the traditional and customary order of things and 
 the novel ideas revealed to his poetic vision. 
 
 So it was with Emerson. The mass of his contem- 
 poraries for a long while looked askance on him, and 
 regarded his utterances with suspicion and disap- 
 proval. And he himself made a long trial of the 
 
ADDRESS OF CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 49 
 
 old ways before he arrived at the conviction that he 
 could not follow them, but must take the independ- 
 ent course dictated to him by his genius. He was 
 already thirty years old when he came to full self- 
 reliance. Before he was forty years old he had de- 
 livered his chief message. This was no systematic 
 philosophy, no dogmatic doctrine, but an individual 
 interpretation of the universe, and of the life of 
 man as a part of the universe. 
 
 The essence of his spiritual teaching seems to me 
 to be comprised in three fundamental articles, — 
 first, that of the Unity of Being in God and Man ; 
 second, that of the creation of the visible, material 
 world by Mind, and of its being the symbol of the 
 spiritual world ; and third, that of the identity and 
 universality of moral law in the spiritual and mate- 
 rial universe. These truths are for him the basis 
 of life, the substance of religion, and the meaning of 
 the universe. 
 
 From the little circle of selfish interests in which 
 our lives are mainly spent, Emerson lifts us into the 
 great circles of the universe, from the meanness of 
 personal and individual considerations into the sense 
 of the large spiritual relations of even our common 
 daily affairs, and makes us conscious partakers of the 
 general life of the universe, part and parcel of its 
 divine order. It is this that Matthew Arnold meant 
 when he said so well that Emerson " is the friend 
 and aider of those who live in the spirit." Holding 
 nature, and man as a part of nature, to be but a 
 
60 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 symbol and external manifestation of the Eternal 
 and Infinite Mind, omnipresent in the form of the 
 Universe, the source of its law by which it works 
 always toward perfection, he cannot but be the most 
 absolute of optimists. There is no pause in the flow 
 of Being through the world ; everything is in a state 
 of flux, and the main course of the stream is always 
 forward, from good to better. 
 
 " Through flood and sea and firmament, 
 Through light, through life it forward flows." 
 
 But truth that has been spiritually discerned must 
 be spiritually interpreted. When he insists on the 
 divinity in man, and bids him trust himself, it is 
 not to the selfish and arrogant that he speaks, but 
 to the man who is endeavoring after righteousness 
 and who keeps his soul open to the influences of 
 the divine essence which is its source. His optimism 
 is the same with that of Ecclesiasticus : " All the 
 works of the Lord are good, — so that a man cannot 
 say this is worse than that, for in him they shall all 
 be approved." And his teaching of self-confidence 
 is taught not less by the same wise man of old: 
 " In every good work trust thine own soul, for this 
 is the keeping of the commandments.'* " The soul 
 converses with truths," said Emerson, "that have 
 always been spoken in the world." 
 
 Emerson was of that class of men, individuals of 
 which, as he says, appear at long intervals, eminently 
 endowed with insight and virtue, and manifesting in 
 
ADDRESS OF CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 51 
 
 every relation and expression a latent indefinable 
 power, whicli is of a different and higher order than 
 any talent and which compels attention and respect. 
 It is the power of character, that is, of the highest 
 form of the nature of the man. It is this which 
 determines ultimately the extent and the strength of 
 his influence. In a noble nature it exhibits itself in 
 every expression. 
 
 And if I were called on to describe Emerson in 
 a single phrase, I should say that of all the men I 
 have known he made the strongest impression of con- 
 sistent loftiness of character. This character was no 
 less manifest in familiar social relations than in his 
 public discourses. His superiority was evident in the 
 natural simplicity of his manners and demeanor. 
 Affectation, self-consciousness, parade, were impos- 
 sible to him. His habitual bearing was of sweet 
 gravity and reserve, in which was no aloofness, but 
 a ready responsiveness to every claim of thought or 
 word of another. He was not lavish of sympathy, 
 but in case of need no sympathy was more compre- 
 hensive than his. He inspired affection and honor 
 in every one who knew him. His presence raised the 
 level of every company. 
 
 His essays on Character, Manners, and Beha- 
 vior show how penetrating and clear had been his 
 observation of the ways of men, and how wise his 
 conclusions from it, — but though many of the finer 
 traits which he described found illustration in him- 
 self, yet the secret of his superiority is hardly dis- 
 
62 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 closed in them. It resided, I believe, in the fact that 
 he lived more in accord with the moral order of the 
 soul than other men, more as one whose soul was 
 always open to the influences of the divine spirit, 
 however that spirit be defined. In this was the source 
 of the serenity and elevation of his own spirit, and in 
 it was also the source of that clear insight into the 
 significance of common life and daily trivial affairs 
 which his reflections upon them and his aphorisms 
 concerning them display. 
 
 In 1870, after reading Emerson's volume entitled 
 Society and Solitude, Carlyle wrote to him in well- 
 chosen words : " It seems to me you are all your old 
 self here, and something more. A calm insight, 
 piercing to the very centre ; a beautiful sympathy, a 
 beautiful epic humor ; a soul peaceably irrefragable 
 in this loud-jangling world, of which it sees the ugli- 
 ness, but notices only the huge new opulences (still so 
 anarchic) ; knows the electric telegraph, with all its 
 vulgar botherations and impertinences, accurately for 
 what it is, and ditto ditto the oldest eternal Theolo- 
 gies of men. All this belongs to the Highest Class 
 of thought ; and again seemed to me as, in several re- 
 spects, the one perfectly Human Voice I had heard 
 among my fellow-creatures for a long time. And 
 then the ' style,' the treatment and expression, — yes, 
 it is inimitable, best — Emersonian throughout. . . . 
 You have done very well ; and many will know it 
 ever better by degrees." The judgment of the friend 
 is confirmed by that of the new generation. 
 
ADDRESS OF CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 63 
 
 My own relations with Emerson began after his 
 position as poet and seer was established, not with the 
 great public indeed, but with the best of his contem- 
 poraries. Twenty-five years younger than he, I felt 
 at first a certain hesitancy and shyness in personal 
 relations with him, not only because of the disparity 
 of age, and the distinction of his place in the esteem 
 of worthy men, but also because my father had been 
 conspicuous in opposition to the drift of his teach- 
 ings and had used language of severe condemnation 
 of them. It seemed to me possible that Mr. Emerson, 
 though too high-minded to feel resentment toward 
 an upright and high-minded opponent, might yet in- 
 cline to hold back from more than merely f.ormal 
 acquaintance with me. But I was mistaken. From 
 the beginning of our intercourse he treated me with 
 a simple graciousness and frank confidence that set 
 me at ease with him, and quickened in me that affec- 
 tion and reverence which I have just spoken of his 
 inspiring in every one who had the happiness of 
 coming into close relation with him. 
 
 Thirty years ago this month I had the opportunity 
 of seeing more of him, and of being in more constant 
 relation with him than at any other time. He was 
 returning with his daughter from his last visit to 
 Europe, and I, with my family, was a fellow passenger 
 on the steamer. There was no crowd on board ; the 
 vessel was not one of the swift Leviathans of to-day. 
 We had long walks together on the deck ; and in the 
 evening, after the rest of the passengers had gone 
 
54 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 to their berths, he and I used to sit talking together 
 for an hour or two, till eleven o'clock, when the lights 
 were extinguished in the deserted cabin. The visit 
 to Europe and to Egypt had been undertaken, as 
 some of you will remember, at the urgency of friends, 
 in the belief that a change of scene and interest 
 would be serviceable to him after the shock which 
 he had experienced from the burning of his house in 
 the summer, and the depressed condition of health 
 which had followed it. It had done him all the good 
 that had been hoped for, and he now seemed in 
 excellent health and spirits. 
 
 " It is rank blasphemy," said he one day, " to 
 doubt anything in the universe ; everything in life 
 makes for good. The moral element in man supreme, 
 is progressive. Man is always better than himself. 
 The world is all for happiness, and is meant for the 
 happy. It is always improving. Pain and sorrow are 
 of no account as compared with the joy of living ; if 
 a man be overcome by them he violates the moral 
 order.'* 
 
 " The universe is not a cheat ; the beauty and the 
 order of the external world are sufficient proof that 
 the spiritual world is in accord with the hopes and 
 instincts of man and nature for their own perfection." 
 
 " Order, goodness, God are the one everlasting, 
 self -existent fact." 
 
 " I measure a man's intellectual sanity by his faith 
 in immortality. A wise man's wish for life is in pro- 
 portion to his wisdom." 
 
ADDRESS OF CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 55 
 
 He would not entertain for a moment the evidence 
 of ruthlessness and disorder in nature, of perversion 
 of the moraL nature in men. His faith was superior 
 to any apparent exceptions to his doctrine ; all of them 
 could be brought into accordance with it. 
 
 In our long evening talks he told me much of his 
 early life. He was often in a mood of reminiscence, 
 and in the retrospect all life lay fair behind him, like 
 a pleasant landscape illumined by the slowly sinking 
 sun. The sweetness and purity and elevation of his 
 nature were manifest in his recollections, and his 
 vision of the past was that not only of the poet, but 
 of the good man who had gained from life the best 
 it can afford. He returned over and over again to the 
 happiness of life and the joy of existence. He had 
 been very fortunate in his times. 
 
 The 25th of May, his seventieth birthday, was 
 the last day before the voyage ended. When I 
 greeted him in the morning, he replied with a plea- 
 sant semi-humorous smile, and with a blush like a 
 youth, " You are too good with all these kind words, 
 but the day is a melancholy one for me, for I count 
 this seventieth birthday as the close of youth ! " He 
 had been reading with great interest on the voyage 
 the quatrains of Omar Khayyam, and one of them 
 may have been lingering in his mind : — 
 
 " Yet Oh ! that Spring should vanish with the Rose! 
 That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close ! 
 The nightingale that in the branches sang, 
 Ah whence, and whither flown again, who knows ? " 
 
56 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 But my thoughts fell back to his own Terminus^ 
 written ten years before ; not so much to its opening 
 words, " It is time to grow old," but rather to the 
 verses with which it ends : — 
 
 " As the bird trims her to the gale, 
 I trim myself to the storm of time, 
 I man the rudder, reef the sail, 
 Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime ; 
 Lowly faithful, banish fear. 
 Right onward drive unharmed; 
 The port, well worth the cruise, is near, 
 And every wave is charmed." 
 
 One day, a day of rough waves and lowering skies, 
 as we walked the deck, he spoke of the stout hearts 
 of the early mariners, sailing the untracked seas. 
 " How, in Heaven's name, did Columbus get over ? " 
 as Clough asks. " Not so much of a wonder after 
 all," said Emerson ; " Columbus had his compass, and 
 that was enough for such a soul as his ; there was 
 the miracle of the magnet, the witness of the divine 
 spirit in nature, type of the eternal control of matter 
 by spirit, of fidelity to the unseen and the ideal. I 
 always carry with me a little compass," and taking 
 it from his pocket, he added, " I like to hold the god 
 in my hand." 
 
 He lived for nine years after his return home. 
 Some of you remember his gently declining days. 
 The evening mists steadily gathered about him, but 
 while they gradually obscured the light of his mind, 
 they were still suffused by the unquenched glow of 
 his spirit. His sweetness, his faith never failed. 
 
ADDRESS OF CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 57 
 
 On the last occasion that I saw him at his own 
 house his powers of recollection were imperfect, but 
 his gracious benignity was unchanged. His talk had 
 its old tone, though the intermittent thoughts some- 
 times failed to find perfect expression. As I was 
 bidding him good-bye at his hospitable door, his 
 daughter, who proposed to go with me to the rail- 
 road station, urged him to accompany us. " No," said 
 he, " no, my dear, my good friend whose name I can- 
 not recall, has had quite enough of me to-day ; " and 
 then turning to me with a smile, as if to apologize 
 for the seeming lack of courtesy in his inability to 
 recall my name, he said in words and manner like 
 his old self, " Strange that the kind Heavens should 
 keep us upon earth after they have destroyed our 
 connection with things ! " 
 
 The last time I saw him was at the funeral of 
 Longfellow on the 26th of March, just a month be- 
 fore his own death. He leaned on my arm as we 
 walked through the path at Mt. Auburn behind the 
 poet's coffin, and as we stood listening to the short 
 service at the grave. He hardly seemed to belong to 
 our actual life ; he was present but yet remote ; for 
 him, too, " The port well worth the cruise was near." 
 
 If there be pathos in the record of these last days, 
 there is no drop of bitterness in it. They were the 
 peaceful ending of a happy life. "Enoch walked 
 with God ; and he was not, for God took him." 
 
 Emerson's fame is secure. The years will sift his 
 work, but his true message and service were not for 
 
68 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 his own generation alone. It is not tKe founders 
 of schools whose influence is the strongest and most 
 lasting in the world, but rather that of teachers who 
 lift and invigorate the souls of men by sentiment and 
 habitual loftiness of view. Men draw strength and 
 high resolve to-day, after seventeen centuries, from 
 the desultory Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and 
 in long future time men seeking to elevate and lib- 
 erate their souls will find help in the words and ex- 
 ample in the character of Emerson. 
 
 The Chairman then introduced Colonel Thomas 
 Wentworth Higginson. 
 
 ADDRESS OF 
 
 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 When one opens the morning's newspaper on a day 
 like this and finds it filled, like all its companion 
 journals, with eulogiums upon one man, it is diffi- 
 cult not to recall that fine passage in Landor's 
 Imaginary Conversations^ where Demosthenes says 
 of Athens, " I have seen the day when the most 
 august of cities had but one voice within her walls ; 
 and when the stranger, on entering them, stopped 
 at the silence of the gateway, and said, ' Demos- 
 thenes is speaking in the assemblage of the people. ' " 
 One controlling voice speaks to us to-day and all 
 that we can do is in our humbler individual tones to 
 
ADDRESS OF T. W. HIGGINSON 59 
 
 respond to it. The point upon which I am to speak, 
 as I understand, is the record of Ealph Waldo 
 Emerson as a reformer. 
 
 In viewing him thus, we may well recall Father 
 Taylor, the famous preacher to sailors in Boston, 
 who, when criticised by some fellow Methodists for 
 being a friend of Emerson, inasmuch as he was a 
 man who, they thought, must surely go to hell, re- 
 plied, "It does look so; but I am sure of one thing; 
 if Emerson goes to hell it will change the climate 
 there and emigration will set that way." ^ The wide- 
 spread commemorations of this month show that 
 Father Taylor, as usual, was right. They imply that 
 Emerson was not merely a technical reformer, but 
 stood to the world as a vital influence and repre- 
 sented the general attitude of reform. Above all 
 thought rises the freedom to think; above all utter- 
 ance ranks the liberty to utter. The man who first 
 asserted that liberty at a given time, and, in assert- 
 ing it, made it attractive and convincing, became 
 the leader of his period. It was Emerson who did 
 this for us. From the moment that his volume called 
 Nature was published in 1836, the thraldom of 
 Puritanism was broken and men were summoned to 
 follow the Inner Light. William Penn and the 
 early Friends had stretched out their hands for this 
 attitude, but had never quite reached it, because 
 still somewhat fettered by the tradition of Bible 
 worship, and by a persecuting clergy of whom Wil- 
 ^ Conway : Emerson at Home and Abroad, p. QQ. 
 
60 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 Ham Penn complained that so far from being good 
 Christians, they had yet to learn to be good 
 Heathen.^ Yet Emerson described himself, speak- 
 ing to his kinsman. Dr. Haskins, as "more of a 
 Quaker than anything else.'* Channing did not 
 reach this position, though he drew, as his son tes- 
 tifies, nearer and nearer to it as he grew older. 
 Parker was not absolutely a leader, but rather fol- 
 lowed Emerson and popularized him. Emerson, 
 and he only, is the more than Luther of these mod- 
 ern days. We'see this through a glass darkly to-day, 
 but a hundred years hence, it will be held unques- 
 tionable. 
 
 I was but a boy of twelve when Emerson's vol- 
 ume. Nature^ was published. But I was not too 
 young to hear him lecture once at the Cambridge 
 Lyceum, and I recall most definitely the impression 
 he made on at least one of his youngest hearers. 
 The lectures were held in an old building, preceding 
 the present Lyceum Hall, and it was the custom of 
 the village boys, as is still the habit in small coun- 
 try towns, to attend each lecture, take seats very- 
 near the front, and within fifteen minutes retire, 
 one by one, without much mercy on the lecturer or 
 the audience. No doubt I took my full share of this 
 form of intellectual experiment — which in Cam- 
 bridge has especial force from the fact that we re- 
 tired not down the stairs, but by dropping through 
 a mysterious hole in the slanting floor among the 
 ^ No Cross, No Crown, ii. 76. 
 
ADDRESS OF T. W. HIGGINSON 61 
 
 upper seats ; but I remember very well that on the 
 occasion of Mr. Emerson's lecture, I was gradually- 
 deserted by my fellows and sat through the lecture 
 alone. Being reproached afterwards by my play- 
 mates for this want of fidelity to their customs, I 
 could only plead that "I liked to hear that man;" 
 and when asked if I understood what he said, I 
 honestly replied "No." It now seems to me that 
 not one of his grown-up hearers could have paid 
 him a greater compliment. What had reached me 
 was the personality of the man. Long after this, 
 when I read in Lowell's words, "We do not go to 
 hear what Emerson says, so much as to hear Emer- 
 son," I felt that this was just what I had done as a 
 child. 
 
 It was in college that I read his books and reread 
 them, but only came gradually to recognize him as 
 being what he was, the most resolute reformer, not 
 excepting Garrison, whom our nation had produced. 
 This conviction took definite form, perhaps, at the 
 first meeting of the Free Keligious Association in 
 1868, when he came last among the speakers and 
 selected for praise the last but one, who had dis- 
 tinctly objected to the word "Christian" as being 
 a limitation. Mr. Emerson following, said, "I have 
 listened with great pleasure to the lessons we have 
 heard. To many, to those last spoken, I have found 
 so much in common with my own thought that I 
 have little left to say." The form of the phrase is 
 evidently not given with precise accuracy, but I fol- 
 
>>^ 
 
 62 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 low the printed report. He said later in his speech, 
 "The child, the young student finds scope in his 
 mathematics and chemistry or natural history, be- 
 cause he finds a truth larger than he is ; finds him- 
 seK continually instructed. But in churches, every 
 healthy and thoughtful mind finds itself in some- 
 thing less; it is checked, cribbed, confined." No- 
 thing: said was on the whole so trenchant as this. 
 The Rev. Richard Cecil said in England, about 
 1777, that "If one good upright man should deny 
 Christianity, he would do the faith of England more 
 harm than all the sneers of Voltaire or all the senti- 
 mentalism of Rousseau." In the sense in which Cecil 
 used the words, Emerson was that man. But these 
 words were spoken more than a century ago, at a 
 time of sectarian narrowness which it is now hard 
 to recall; and the very terms "faith" and "Chris- 
 tianity" are now habitually used in a far wider 
 sense. To Mr. Cecil, Emerson would have seemed 
 anti-Christian ; but now a chorus of those who call 
 themselves Christians speaks his praise. We have 
 the striking testimony of the Rev. Dr. Haskins, his 
 near kinsman, that Mr. Emerson preferred even to 
 speak of the Deity as "It," and nothing more illus- 
 trates the power of his essentially reverential tone 
 of mind than that this same kinsman, an Episcopal 
 clergyman of unimpeached standing, was so im- 
 pressed by what Emerson said that he himself went 
 on to vindicate this pronoun "It" as being, in it- 
 self, not meaningless or even irreverent, but rather 
 
ADDRESS OF T. W. HIGGINSON 63 
 
 a good selection of words, as Mr. Emerson used it, 
 standing simply for God's omnipresence.^ We know 
 also that while Emerson found formal prayer at 
 stated intervals impossible to him, yet he said, "As 
 well may the child live without its mother's milk 
 as the soul without prayer;" while he also said, 
 "Do not speak of God much. After a very little 
 conversation on the Highest Nature, thoughts de- 
 sert us and we run into formalism ! ! " - He never 
 recognized the leadership of Jesus Christ as that 
 of an absolutely infallible guide ; yet to show that 
 he guarded against overstatement on this ground 
 also, we have the remarkable passage, preserved 
 by Miss E. P. Peabody from the original manu- 
 script of his Divinity Hall address, — a passage 
 left out for want of time only, and warning his 
 hearers against making even truth a fanaticism: 
 "Too soon we shall have the puppyism of a preten- 
 sion of looking down on the head of all human cul- 
 ture; setting up against Jesus Christ every little 
 seK magnified." ^ 
 
 Attempts have always been made to disparage 
 Emerson, on the ground that he was not, even in 
 reform, a system-maker, but was fragmentary. This 
 trait seems to me more and more to have been one 
 of his highest titles to immortality. System-makers 
 are short-lived ; each makes his single contribution, 
 
 ^ Haskins's Emerson, p. 130. 
 
 2 E. W. Emerson in Prophets of Liberalism, p. 49. 
 
 ^ Peabody, Reminiscences of Dr. Channing, p. 373. 
 
64 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 and the world passes on. They are finger-posts in 
 history; but the man who dares to be himself is not 
 the finger-post, but the runner. Few now read Aris- 
 totle ; but Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Antoninus yield 
 us new translations and editions every year. We 
 have them for manuals and give them to our chil- 
 dren. What the system of each may be is quite 
 secondary — each ojffers us a series of thoughts, 
 detached or otherwise; and each of these thoughts 
 may turn out great enough to mould a life. Such 
 are the thoughts we get from Emerson. We may 
 say of his works what Renan said so finely of Mar- 
 cus Antoninus, "His works will never grow anti- 
 quated, because they offer no dogma." 
 
 Let us all be Platos and Newtons, if you please; 
 or, if you prefer. Homers and Shakespeares ; let 
 our school committees hunt them up in abundance, 
 if possible, in every school district; yet let us not 
 lose faith in the greatness of the spontaneous or 
 fragmentary life ; that is, the life which becomes at 
 its highest moments a source of vital influence. 
 Open your Emerson anywhere and you are presently 
 touched by the vivid power of a phrase, a sentence ; 
 or perhaps — in his earlier addresses especially — 
 by the cadence of some fine paragraph. Read, for 
 instance, that description of the boyish student to 
 be found in his address at Dartmouth College 
 (1838): — 
 
 " In solitude, in a remote village, the ardent youth 
 loiters and mourns. With inflamed eye, in his sleep- 
 
ADDRESS OF T. W. HIGGINSON 65 
 
 ing wilderness, he has read the story of the Emperor 
 Charles the Fifth, until his fancy has brought home 
 to the surrounding woods the faint roar of cannon- 
 ades in the Milanese, and marches in Germany. He 
 is curious concerning that man's day. What filled 
 it? the crowded orders, the stern decisions, the for- 
 eign despatches, the Castilian etiquette? The soul 
 answers — Behold his day here ! In the sighing of 
 these woods, in the quiet of these gray fields, in the 
 cool breeze that sings out of these northern mount- 
 ains; in the workmen, the boys, the maidens you 
 meet, — in the hopes of the morning, the ennui of 
 noon, and sauntering of the afternoon; in the dis- 
 quieting comparisons; in the regrets at want of 
 vigor; in the great idea and the puny execution; 
 — behold Charles the Fifth's day; another, yet the 
 same; behold Chatham's, Hampden's, Bayard's, 
 Alfred's, Scipio's, Pericles's day, — day of all that 
 are born of women. The difference of circumstance 
 is merely costume. ... Be lord of a day, through 
 wisdom and justice, and you can put up your history 
 books."! 
 
 Fifty years ago there must have been more than 
 a thousand men and women in America and in Eng- 
 land who could look back on that passage, as I did, 
 and say of it, "At any rate, it was the making of 
 me." A hundred thousand others since then may 
 have, perhaps, looked back and said of those first 
 thousand converts, "It was they who made us." You 
 ^ Nature^ Addresses and Lectures, pp. 157-159. 
 
66 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 might as well question the creative power of pas- 
 sages in the Book of Psalms. 
 
 I began with a picture of Emerson as he showed 
 himself to an essentially childish mind. Let me 
 close with a glimpse of the scene when he was 
 brought, for the first time, before a thousand half- 
 childish minds, gathered beneath the solemn moss- 
 hung forests of South Carolina, early in the Civil 
 War. It was the first regiment of freed slaves mus- 
 tered into the service of the Union ; and they stood, 
 with that perfect stillness of which they were ca- 
 pable, while their white surgeon, Dr. Seth Kogers, 
 of Worcester, a man who possessed their confidence 
 in all ways, read before them at their Sunday ser- 
 vice, by his own wish, the whole of Emerson's 
 " Boston Hymn." When he came to the lines — 
 
 " Pay ransom to the owner 
 
 And fill his cup to the brim. 
 Who is the owner ? The slave is owner, 
 And ever was. Pay him ! " — 
 
 I watched their faces as he read. There was no look 
 of wild excitement, no air of aroused and selfish 
 desire, but a serene religious expression, a look of 
 absolute security, as if the Almighty had at last 
 heard their prayers and this far-off poet was his 
 messenger. 
 
 The Chairman then introduced Professor William 
 James. 
 
ADDKESS OF WILLIAM JAMES 67 
 
 ADDRESS OF WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 The pathos of death is this, that when the days of 
 one's life are ended, those days that were so crowded 
 with business and felt so heavy in their passing, 
 what remains of one in memory should usually be so 
 slight a thing. The phantom of an attitude, the 
 echo of a certain mode of thought, a few pages of 
 print, some invention, or some victory we gained in a 
 brief critical hour, are all that can survive the best 
 of us. It is as if the whole of a man's significance 
 had now shrunk into the phantom of an attitude, 
 into a mere musical note or phrase, suggestive of his 
 singularity — happy are those whose singularity 
 gives a note so clear as to be victorious over the inev- 
 itable pity of such a diminution and abridgment. 
 
 An ideal wraith like this, of Emerson's singular- 
 ity, hovers over all Concord to-day, taking in the 
 minds of those of you who were his neighbors and 
 intimates a somewhat fuller shape, remaining more 
 abstract in the younger generation, but bringing 
 home to all of us the notion of a spirit indescribably 
 precious. The form that so lately moved upon these 
 streets and country roads, or awaited in these fields 
 and woods the beloved Muse's visits, is now dust ; 
 but the soul's note, the spiritual voice, rises strong 
 and clear above the uproar of the times, and seems 
 securely destined to exert an ennobling influence over 
 future generations. 
 
68 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 What gave a flavor so matchless to Emerson's 
 individuality was, even more than his rich mental 
 gifts, their combination. Rarely has a man so known 
 the limits of his genius or so unfailingly kept within 
 them. " Stand by your order,'' he used to say to youth- 
 ful students ; and perhaps the paramount impression 
 one gets of his life is of his loyalty to his own 
 type and mission. The type was that of what he 
 liked to call the scholar, the perceiver of pure truth, 
 and the mission was that of the reporter in worthy 
 form of each perception. The day is good, he said, 
 in which we have the most perceptions. There are 
 times when the cawing of a crow, a weed, a snow- 
 flake, or a farmer planting in his field, become sym- 
 bols to the intellect of truths equal to those which 
 the most majestic phenomena can open. Let me 
 mind my own charge, then, walk alone, consult the 
 sky, the field and forest, sedulously waiting every 
 morning for the news concerning the structure of 
 the universe which the good Spirit will give me. 
 
 This was the first half of Emerson, but only half ; 
 for his genius was insatiate for expression, and his 
 truth had to be clad in the right verbal garment. 
 The form of the garment was so vital with Emer- 
 son that it is impossible to separate it from the mat- 
 ter. They form a chemical combination, — thoughts 
 which would be trivial expressed otherwise are 
 important through the nouns and verbs to which 
 he married them. The style is the man, it has been 
 said : the man Emerson's mission culminated in his 
 
ADDRESS OF WILLIAM JAMES 69 
 
 style, and if we must define him in one word, we 
 have to call him Artist. He was an artist whose 
 medium was verbal and who wrought in spiritual 
 material. 
 
 This duty of spiritual seeing and reporting deter- 
 mined the whole tenor of his life. It was to shield 
 it from invasion and distraction that he dwelt in the 
 country, and that he consistently declined to entan- 
 gle himself with associations or to encumber himself 
 with functions which, however he might believe in 
 them, he felt were duties for other men and not for 
 him. Even the care of his garden, " with its stoop- 
 ings and fingerings in a few yards of space," he 
 found " narrowing and poisoning," and took to long 
 free walks and saunterings instead, without apology. 
 " Causes " innumerable sought to enlist him as their 
 "worker" — all got his smile and word of sympa- 
 thy, but none entrapped him into service. The strug- 
 gle against slavery itself, deeply as it appealed to 
 him, found him firm : " God must govern his own 
 world, and knows his way out of this pit without 
 my desertion of my post, which has none to guard it 
 but me. I have quite other slaves to face than those 
 Negroes, to wit, imprisoned thoughts far back in the 
 brain of man, and which have no watchman or lover 
 or defender but me." This in reply to the possible 
 questions of his conscience. To hot-blooded moral- 
 ists with more objective ideas of duty, such a fidel- 
 ity to the limits of his genius must often have made 
 him seem provokingly remote and unavailable ; but 
 
70 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 we who can see things in more liberal perspective 
 must unqualifiedly approve the results. The fault- 
 less tact with which he kept his safe limits while he 
 80 dauntlessly asserted himself within them is an 
 example fitted to give heart to other theorists and 
 artists the world over. 
 
 The insight and creed from which Emerson's life 
 followed can be best summed up in his own verse : — 
 
 " So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 So near is God to man ! " 
 
 Through the individual fact there ever shone for 
 him the effulgence of the Universal Reason. The 
 great Cosmic Intellect terminates and houses itself 
 in mortal men and passing hours. Each of us is an 
 angle of its eternal vision, and the only way to be 
 true to our Maker is to be loyal to ourselves. " O 
 rich and various Man ! " he cries, " thou palace of 
 sight and sound, carrying in thy senses the morning 
 and the night and the unfathomable galaxy ; in thy 
 brain the geometry of the city of God ; in thy heart 
 the bower of love and the realms of right and 
 wrong." 
 
 If the individual open thus directly into the Ab- 
 solute, it follows that there is something in each and 
 all of us, even the lowliest, that ought not to consent 
 to borrowing traditions and living at second hand. 
 " If John was perfect, why are you and I alive ? " 
 writes Emerson. " As long as any man exists there 
 is some need of him ; let him fight for his own." 
 
ADDRESS OF WILLIAM JAMES 71 
 
 This faith that in a life at first hand there is some- 
 thing sacred is perhaps the most characteristic note 
 in Emerson's writings. The hottest side of him is 
 this non-conformist persuasion, and if his temper 
 could ever verge on common irascibility, it would be 
 by reason of the passionate character of his feelings 
 on this point. The world is still new and untried. In 
 seeing freshly, and not in hearing of what others 
 saw, shall a man find what truth is. " Each one of 
 us can bask in the great morning which rises out of 
 the Eastern Sea, and be himself one of the children 
 of the light." " Trust thyself, every heart vibrates to 
 that iron string. There is a time in each man's edu- 
 cation when he must arrive at the conviction that 
 imitation is suicide ; when he must take himself for 
 better or worse as his portion ; and know that though 
 the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nour- 
 ishing corn can come to him but through his toil be- 
 stowed on that plot of ground which it was given 
 him to till." 
 
 The matchless eloquence with which Emerson pro- 
 claimed the sovereignty of the living individual elec- 
 trified and emancipated his generation, and this 
 bugle-blast will doubtless be regarded by future critics 
 as the soul of his message. The present man is the 
 aboriginal reality, the Institution is derivative, and 
 the past man is irrelevant and obliterate for present 
 issues. " If any one would lay an axe to your tree 
 with a text from 1 John, v. 7, or a sentence from 
 Saint Paul, say to him," Emerson wrote, " ' My tree 
 
72 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 is Ygdrasil, the tree of life.' Let Lim know by your 
 security that your conviction is clear and sufficient, 
 and, if he were Paul himself, that you also are here 
 and with your Creator." " Cleave ever to God," he 
 insisted, " against the name of God ; " — and so, in 
 spite of the intensely religious character of his total 
 thought, when he began his career it seemed to many 
 of his brethren in the clerical profession that he was 
 little more than an iconoclast and desecrator. 
 
 Emerson's belief that the individual must in rear 
 son be adequate to the vocation for which the Spirit 
 of the world has called him into being is the source 
 of those sublime pages, hearteners and sustainers of 
 our youth, in which he urges his hearers to be in- 
 corruptibly true to their own private conscience. 
 Nothing can harm the man who rests in his appointed 
 place and character. Such a man is invulnerable ; he 
 balances the universe, balances it as much by keep- 
 ing small when he is small as by being great and 
 spreading when he is great. " I love and honor Epa- 
 minondas," said Emerson, " but I do not wish to be 
 Epaminondas. I hold it more just to love the world 
 of this hour than the world of his hour. Nor can you, 
 if I am true, excite me to the least uneasiness by say- 
 ing, ' He acted and thou sittest still.' I see action to 
 be good when the need is, and sitting stiU to be also 
 good. Epaminondas, if he was the man I take him 
 for, would have sat stiU with joy and peace, if his 
 lot had been mine. Heaven is large, and affords space 
 for all modes of love and fortitude." " The fact that 
 
ADDRESS OF WILLIAM JAMES 73 
 
 I am here certainly shows me that the Soul has need 
 of an organ here, and shall I not assume the post ? " 
 
 The vanity of all super-serviceableness and pretense 
 was never more happily set forth than by Emerson 
 in the many passages in which he develops this as- 
 pect of his philosophy. Character infallibly proclaims 
 itself. " Hide your thoughts ! — hide the sun and 
 moon. They publish themselves to the universe. 
 They will speak through you though you were dumb. 
 They will flow out of your actions, your manners and 
 your face. . . . Don't say things : What you are 
 stands over you the while and thunders so that I can- 
 not say what you say to the contrary. . . . What a 
 man is engraves itself upon him in letters of light. 
 Concealment avails him nothing, boasting nothing. 
 There is confession in the glances of our eyes ; in 
 our smiles ; in salutations ; and the grasp of hands. 
 His sin bedaubs him, mars all his good impression. 
 Men know not why they do not trust him, but they 
 do not trust him. His vice glasses the eye, casts lines 
 of mean expression in the cheek, pinches the nose, sets 
 the mark of the beast upon the back of the head, and 
 writes, O fool ! fool ! on the forehead of a king. If 
 you would not be known to do a thing, never do it ; 
 a man may play the fool in the drifts of a desert, 
 but every grain of sand shall seem to see. — How 
 can a man be concealed ? How can he be concealed ? " 
 
 On the other hand, never was a sincere word or a 
 sincere thought utterly lost. " Never a magnanimity 
 fell to the ground but there is some heart to greet 
 
74 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 and accept it unexpectedly. . . . The hero fears not 
 that if he withstood the avowal of a just and brave 
 act, 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 than the relating of 
 the incident." 
 
 The same indefeasible right to be exactly what one 
 is, provided one only be authentic, spreads itself, in 
 Emerson's way of thinking, from persons to things 
 and to times and places. No date, no position is 
 insignificant, if the life that fills it out be only 
 genuine : — 
 
 " In solitude, in a remote village, the ardent youth 
 loiters and mourns. With inflamed eye, in this sleep- 
 ing wilderness, he has read the story of the Emperor 
 Charles the Fifth, until his fancy has brought home 
 to the surrounding woods the faint roar of can- 
 nonades in the Milanese, and marches in Germany. 
 He is curious concerning that man's day. What filled 
 it? The crowded orders, the stern decisions, the 
 foreign despatches, the Castilian etiquette ? The soul 
 answers — Behold his day here ! In the sighing of 
 these woods, in the quiet of these gray fields, in the 
 cool breeze that sings out of these northern mount- 
 ains; in the workmen, the boys, the maidens you 
 meet, — in the hopes of the morning, the ennui of 
 noon, and sauntering of the afternoon ; in the dis- 
 quieting comparisons ; in the regrets at want of vigor ; 
 in the great idea and the puny execution ; — behold 
 
ADDRESS OF WILLIAM JAMES 75 
 
 Charles the Fifth's day ; another, yet the same ; 
 behold Chatham's, Hampden's, Bayard's, Alfred's, 
 Scipio's, Perieles's day, — day of all that are born of 
 women. The difference of circumstance is merely 
 costume. I am tasting the self -same life, — its sweet- 
 ness, its greatness, its pain, — which I so admire in 
 other men. Do not foolishly ask the inscrutable, 
 obliterated past what it cannot tell, — the details of 
 that nature, of that day, called Byron or Burke ; — 
 but ask it of the enveloping Now. ... Be lord of a 
 day and you can put up your history books." 
 
 Thus does " the deep to-day which all men scorn" 
 receive from Emerson superb revindication. " Other 
 world ! there is no other world." All God's life opens 
 into the individual particular, and here and now, 
 or nowhere, is reality. "The present hour is the 
 decisive hour, and every day is doomsday." 
 
 Such a conviction that Divinity is everywhere may 
 easily make of. one an optimist of the sentimental 
 type that refuses to speak ill of anything. Emerson's 
 drastic perception of differences kept him at the 
 opposite pole from this weakness. After you have 
 seen men a few times, he could say, you find most 
 of them as alike as their barns and pantries, and 
 soon as musty and as dreary. Never was such a fas- 
 tidious lover of significance and distinction, and 
 never an eye so keen for their discovery. His opti- 
 mism had nothing in common with that indiscriminate 
 hurrahing for the Universe with which Walt Whit- 
 man has made us familiar. For Emerson, the indi- 
 
76 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 vidual fact and moment were indeed suffused with 
 absolute radiance, but it was upon a condition that 
 saved the situation — they must be worthy specimens, 
 — sincere, authentic, archetypal; they must have 
 made connection with what he calls the Moral Sen- 
 timent, they must in some way act as symbolic 
 mouthpieces of the Universe's meaning. To know 
 just which thing does act in this way, and which 
 thing fails to make the true connection, is the secret 
 (somewhat incommunicable, it must be confessed) of 
 seership, and doubtless we must not expect of the 
 seer too rigorous a consistency. Emerson himself was 
 a real seer. He could perceive the full squalor of 
 the individual fact, but he could also see the trans- 
 figuration. He might easily have found himself say- 
 ing of some present-day agitator against our Philip- 
 pine conquest what he said of this or that reformer 
 of his own time. He might have called him, as a 
 private person, a tedious bore and canter. But he 
 would infallibly have added what he then added: 
 *' It is strange and horrible to say this, for I feel that 
 under him and his partiality and exclusiveness is 
 the earth and the sea, and all that in them is, and 
 the axis round which the Universe revolves passes 
 through his body where he stands." 
 
 Be it how it may, then, this is Emerson's revela- 
 tion : — The point of any pen can be an epitome of 
 reality ; the commonest person's act, if genuinely 
 actuated, can lay hold on eternity. This vision is the 
 head-spring of all his outpourings ; and it is for this 
 
ADDRESS OF WILLIAM JAMES 77 
 
 truth, given to no previous literary artist to express 
 in sucli penetratingly persuasive tones, that poster- 
 ity will reckon him a prophet, and, perhaps neglect- 
 ing other pages, piously turn to those that convey 
 this message. His life was one long conversation 
 with the invisible divine, expressing itself through 
 individuals and particulars : — "So nigh is grandeur 
 to our dust, so near is God to man ! " 
 
 I spoke of how shrunken the wraith, how thin the 
 echo, of men is after they are departed. Emerson's 
 wraith comes to me now as if it were but the very 
 voice of this victorious argument. His words to this 
 effect are certain to be quoted and extracted more 
 and more as time goes on, and to take their place 
 among the Scriptures of humanity. " 'Gainst death 
 and all oblivious enmity shall you pace forth," be- 
 loved Master. As long as our English language 
 lasts, men's hearts will be cheered and their souls 
 strengthened and liberated by the noble and musical 
 pages with which you have enriched it. 
 
 The Chairman then said : — 
 
 May I say on your behalf, citizens of Concord, 
 that we greet with warm and peculiar affection our 
 elder brother, George Frisbie Hoar. 
 
78 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 ADDRESS OF 
 
 GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 
 
 f 
 
 I AM proud and happy that I am counted among the 
 children of Concord on this anniversary. There are 
 many things we are all thinking that we cannot find 
 time to say to-day. There are some things we are 
 all thinking that Mr. Emerson would not like to 
 have us say. His modest and discreet spirit would 
 have found something of exaggeration in it, even 
 coming from his neighbors and townsmen. 
 
 We are thinking, all of us, of that lovely and 
 delightful personal quality, pure and sweet as that 
 of an archangel. We are full of the love which every 
 one of us who knew him felt for him, from the time 
 he first took up his abode here in his sylvan home. 
 But the town has had other citizens of that quality. 
 That town is poor that has not had them. We are 
 tempted to compare our philosopher and poet with 
 other great men, with other thinkers, and writers, 
 and poets. Some of us think Emerson the first 
 American by the same title by which Shakespeare is 
 the first Englishman. Some of us think of him as 
 the only writer since Bacon, in whose essays a 
 thought quoted from Bacon's essays seems to be in 
 its natural place, — the setting quite as costly as the 
 jewel. But I do not think he would have liked such 
 comparisons. At any rate, if they are to be made, 
 let them be made by men without the bias of a per- 
 sonal affection. 
 
ADDRESS OF GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 79 
 
 Yet our celebration would be cold indeed, were we 
 to leave out of it the human feeling, — the feeling of 
 pride and love, — in which we have a right to indulge 
 as his townsmen and his countrymen. 
 
 When the young philosopher, in his first produc- 
 tion which might be called public, — his Bowdoin 
 Prize Essay, in 1820, — disclosed his aspiration and 
 his ideal of excellence, he prefaced it with these 
 lines. He was then seventeen years old. 
 
 " Guide my way 
 Through fair Lyceum's walk, the green retreats 
 Of Academus, and the thymy vale 
 Where, oft enchanted with Socratic sounds, 
 Ilissus pure devolved his tuneful stream 
 In gentler murmurs. From the blooming store 
 Of these auspicious fields, may I unblamed 
 Transplant some living blossoms to adorn 
 My native clime." 
 
 Surely that aspiration was accomplished. Ah, 
 sweetest of Evangelists! Here in these fields of 
 ours stood your feet when you uttered your message 
 to mankind. You walked by our river and our ponds, 
 like Lycidas, the very genius of the shore. You 
 transplanted here, unblamed, the living blossoms of 
 the groves of Academe. You waked again the echoes 
 of the voice of Plato, mingled with Ilissus' tuneful 
 murmurs, in our woods and fields and by our Indian 
 stream. 
 
 I do not undertake to speak of Mr. Emerson's 
 service to the youth of his country, as a guide to 
 
80 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 the best literature, or as a counsellor and inspirer to 
 that noble and brave behavior of which he was, 
 himself, so admirable an example. I will not speak 
 of him as a critic, to whose almost infallible touch- 
 stone every man brought his metal to see if it were 
 gold. I will not undertake to speak of him as a 
 poet, or as an orator, rising, on fit occasion, to the 
 loftiest eloquence. 
 
 I have time to speak of him in but one aspect. 
 That is, the contribution he made to the knowledge 
 by mankind of spiritual laws. 
 
 I think he had the farthest and clearest spiritual 
 discernment of any man who has lived in modern 
 times. His vision was not only keen and far-sighted, 
 but he was singularly free from the things that dis- 
 tort or disturb. There was no local attraction, or 
 temptation, or heat, or blur. So we may take him 
 as the best witness we know of to the spiritual facts 
 which are all around us and close to us, but yet so 
 many of which we cannot know, or know but imper- 
 fectly, by any seeing or hearing of our own. What 
 we see, he saw more clearly. What we hear, he heard 
 more distinctly. And always he sees a face we can- 
 not see, and hears a voice we cannot hear. Now, to 
 what does this witness, the best witness we can find 
 so far, certify ? Whether any human intelligence be 
 absolutely trustworthy, or any human judgment be 
 absolutely sure, in its report of such things, or in 
 determining their value and quality, we need not stop 
 to inquire. This is, in our opinion, the best we have 
 
ADDRESS OF GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 81 
 
 at command. What are the things which this man 
 of farthest and profoundest vision has to report? 
 What is the estimate of them by the judgment the 
 most accurate in its poise ? What do they weigh by 
 these balances in which there is no dust ? 
 
 I do not mean only that he saw what no other man 
 can see. I mean, too, what other men see dimly and 
 doubtfully, but are the more certain of because he 
 saw it too. Persons on the deck see a dim object or 
 a cloud of smoke in the horizon. Some conjecture 
 one thing, and some another. Then comes the pilot 
 with his far sight and his trained eye, and tells you 
 that it is a steamer, or a ship. He knows the line to 
 which she belongs, and the name of the vessel. He 
 only, it may be, confirms what some of the rest have 
 said. But what other men guessed, he knew. 
 
 Every man who is seeking a spiritual life finds in 
 Emerson his own faith, if he have faith, as the 
 Christian sects find theirs in the Saviour. Now, what 
 are the things in which our confidence is strengthened 
 and deepened by the fact that he tells us they are 
 true ? Some of them — and we may thank God for 
 it — we may see also for ourselves. Some of them he 
 reveals to us and makes clear to us. But we can take 
 the courage that they give us from the fact that the 
 clearest eyes, and the best intelligence, and the most 
 dispassionate judgment that has appeared among men 
 for many a day adds to the imperfect evidence of our 
 intelligence, the more perfect evidence of his. I 
 cannot, of course, in a few minutes, enumerate all 
 
82 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 the things he has reported to us. It would take a 
 long, and careful, and profound study to comprehend 
 them myself. 
 
 He has taught us the virtue of completeness, and 
 courage, and sincerity of utterance. In dealing with 
 the things that pertain to the soul he utters no half- 
 truths, no pious frauds. He gives us no milk for 
 babes. The purpose of Emerson, like that of Milton, 
 is to justify the ways of God to man, and they do 
 not need to be clothed in a veil. God is not to be 
 seen, as Moses saw him, from behind. 
 
 He affirms that inspiration, and the [process of 
 revelation, did not end with the Apostles and the 
 Scriptures. It is going on to-day, and all the time, 
 to him that hath ears to hear. The bush is burning 
 still. 
 
 The spiritual message comes to each man for him- 
 self, which he can trust and which he must act upon. 
 " Trust thyself ! Every nerve vibrates to that iron 
 string." The universe is for the building up of indi- 
 vidual character. Each soul is to be a star and dwell 
 apart. Men should greet each other every morning 
 as coming from far countries — like the Gods, who 
 sit apart, and talk from peak to peak all around 
 Olympus. 
 
 Mr. Emerson said of his own style that his works 
 were made up of infinitely repellent particles. This 
 is in a sense true of humanity — as he thought it 
 should be. But he has reaffirmed for us, and taught 
 us anew the value of the human affections, and 
 
ADDRESS OF GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 83 
 
 to prize the great virtues to which our race has 
 attained thus far. He was a royal and noble lover. 
 He loved wife, and children, and home, and neigh- 
 bor, and friend, and town, and country. He loved 
 liberty, and justice, and hope, and courage. His 
 picture of the New England Town, for which Con- 
 cord sat ; his Boston Hymn ; his Fortune of the Re- 
 public, are the high-water mark which the love of 
 country, and of birthplace, and of town had reached 
 at that time. 
 
 Has any man spoken to us like him of the virtue 
 of a good hope, since the Apostle placed it forever 
 in the centre of the mighty group ? He saw that 
 crime and sin led all souls to the good. The cosmic 
 results will be the same whatever the daily events 
 may be. 
 
 He was eminently a reconciler. His larger orbit 
 enclosed all lesser orbits, and even all divergent lines. 
 
 One thing he saw which mankind have not seen. 
 That is, that forever the slave is owner, and forever 
 the victim is victor. 
 
 So, when Freedom, Virtue, Religion, Justice, Love, 
 Patriotism, call their witnesses his name will be the 
 first of our time to be called. So far as mortal testi- 
 mony can prove it, they can rest the case with him. 
 
 He has made the best statement in all secular 
 literature of the doctrine of immortality. He shows 
 us that the world and the human soul are not only 
 unreasonable, but inexplicable, without it. Yet he 
 makes no absolute affirmation, except that we shall 
 
84 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 be immortal if that be best. Whether we shall know 
 each other again is a Sunday-school question. He 
 will not spend his time about it. Perhaps, as he says 
 of Carlyle, this nimble and active spirit does not care 
 to beat itself against walls. But he is not, like Carlyle, 
 a destroyer or a scorner. He worships no demon of 
 mere force. If he does not know what we long to 
 know of another world, he pays due homage to the 
 loving and wise Spirit that sitteth as Sovereign on 
 the throne of this. Kather he believes that the world 
 is but one world, and that the Sovereign who reigns 
 over it — never to be dethroned — knows very well 
 that every road leads to the gates of His Kingdom. 
 He sees no God of force or of disdain looking down 
 on mankind as on a race of grovelling swine or 
 chattering apes. For myself, I never read what 
 Emerson says about Immortality, or think of him 
 as thinking about it, without summing it all up in 
 Addison's noble line, — 
 
 " The Soul, secure in her existence, smiles." 
 
 When Emerson first uttered his grave and cheerful 
 voice, there still echoed in the ear of mankind the 
 cry of disdain inspired by the diseased brain of 
 Carlyle, when he imagined the serene and silent stars 
 looking down from their eternal solitudes on the 
 varied occupations of men. " What thinks Bootes of 
 them as he leads his hunting-dogs across the zenith 
 in their leash of sidereal fire ? " What thinks Bootes 
 of them ? Bootes is but a few specks of shining dust, 
 
ADDRESS OF GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 85 
 
 glistening witli putrescent light, save as he is clothed 
 with beauty and with glory in the conscious soul of 
 man. The only thing in the world, under Him who 
 made it, that can ever be truly an object of reverence 
 is a human soul subjecting itself, of its own volition, 
 to a law higher than its own desire. The answer to 
 the seer of the old world came from the seer of the 
 new; — 
 
 " So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 So near is God to man, 
 When Duty whispers low, Thou must,' 
 The youth replies, ' I can.' " 
 
 Nothing could be more unbecoming than to speak 
 irreverently of Carlyle while we are doing homage to 
 Emerson. Emerson stood loyally by his friends, by 
 that friend most loyally of all. Among Carlyle's 
 chief titles to remembrance by posterity will be 
 Emerson's certificate. 
 
 Still, Emerson, though his lover and admirer, 
 admits that Carlyle reminds him of a sick giant. 
 Carlyle is a hater of evil. He stands for honesty 
 and righteousness. He finds them hardly anywhere, 
 and finds them least of all in the men who are 
 most eager in trying to attain unto them. Until 
 honesty and righteousness come to the throne — 
 which Carlyle does not expect to happen in his time 
 — he proposes to maintain and to obey an ad inte- 
 rim Sovereign, who is nothing but a poor and com- 
 monplace tyrant. 
 
 Jowett well said of him that he was a man with- 
 
86 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 out admiration of any active goodness ; he expressed 
 his own personal fancies in the likeness of intellec- 
 tual truths, and that if he, himself, were engaged in 
 any work more than usually good, Carlyle would be 
 the first person to utter a powerful sneer, and if he 
 were seeking to know the truth, Carlyle would ridi- 
 cule the notion of a homunculus discovering the 
 truth. 
 
 Wordsworth said truly of Carlyle that he defied 
 all sympathy. And he said truly of the Carlyle tem- 
 per: — 
 
 «* That pride, 
 How e'er disguised in its own majesty, 
 Is littleness ; that he who feels contempt 
 For any living thing hath faculties 
 That he has never used, that thought with him, 
 Is in its infancy." 
 
 He seemed to despise every good man. He was 
 essentially a scorner, and the lash of his scorn fell 
 upon good men ; and his homage, which he rarely 
 gave, was given, in general, to bad men. However 
 we may be dazzled by Carlyle, our fixed star will be 
 shining in the sky when this meteor is gone. If we 
 may trust our seer when he tells us that evil is tem- 
 porary and perishable, and that 
 
 " What is excellent, 
 As God lives, is permanent," 
 
 then the function of the destroyer of evil is perish- 
 able and temporary also. 
 
 Mr. Emerson's philosophy had no Stoicism in it. 
 
ADDRESS OF GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 87 
 
 If it brought him ampler compensations than were 
 vouchsafed to common men, grief also filled to its 
 depths a larger heart, and touched with its agony- 
 nerves more finely sensitive than those of common 
 men. Who has uttered, like him, in that immortal 
 "Threnody,'^ the voice of parental sorrow? What 
 more loving heart ever mourned the loss of a brother's 
 love than that which could not be unlocked because 
 the key had gone with Charles and Edward ? I re- 
 member, as if it were yesterday, that winter morning 
 in my early youth, when the messenger came to my 
 father's door before sunrise, bearing his written mes- 
 sage to one of the household, " Everything wakes 
 this morning, except my darling boy." The noblest 
 emotions of the soul are nobler to us that they have 
 moved him. 
 
 I have spoken very imperfectly of a part only of 
 the messages Emerson brought to us. Now, it is not 
 enough for our purpose that the intellect should see 
 these things. Men do not like skeletons or anatomies. 
 And they do not like cold. These things must come 
 to us, if they are to be living truths for us, clothed 
 and apparelled in regal splendor; adorned and 
 wreathed with flowers and branches ; made sweet and 
 tender by the graces of poetry ; made musical with 
 rhythm and verse. They must be spoken by eloquent 
 lips, and the soul must be opened to receive them by 
 the glance of the eye, and the tone of the voice, and 
 the flush of the cheek, of the prophet who utters them. 
 
 We who are the survivors of that generation, and 
 
88 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 who dwelt in the town of his home, enjoyed that 
 privilege also. I do not know how others may feel. 
 But I would not be without that sweet and tender 
 memory of the voice whose words yet linger in my 
 ear, " nestling," as Lowell says, " in the ear, because 
 of their music, and in the heart, because of their 
 meaning," to have heard Demosthenes speak from 
 the Bema, or Plato in the Academy. 
 
 To cite the tributes of eminent authorities to the 
 great place of Mr. Emerson in literature, and his 
 trustworthiness as an intellectual and spiritual guide, 
 would occupy not only the day but the year. We 
 cannot undertake to do that. But we ought to be 
 certain that we are not induced by our love for our 
 delightful friend and townsman to confound our own 
 narrow field of vision with that of all mankind — 
 especially with that of posterity. Yet that must be 
 a fixed star of the first magnitude, of whom observ- 
 ers, whose stations are apart by the distance of the 
 whole heavens, concur in so reporting. When the 
 Jew, and the Catholic, and the Unitarian, and the 
 Anglican, and the Calvinist, and the Sceptic ; when 
 the Russian, and the German, and the Scotsman, 
 concur with his own countrymen in their estimate 
 of a religious teacher, we may fairly believe that 
 we have got the verdict not of the year or of the 
 generation only, but of the centuries. 
 
 I received the other day a letter from an accom- 
 plished Jew containing a paper he had written upon 
 Emerson. In it he says, " Emerson's hold on the 
 
ADDRESS OF GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 89 
 
 minds and thoughts of men is truly remarkable. The 
 circle of his influence grows continually wider and 
 wider. He appeals to the most various and diverse 
 natures. The greatest and the humblest unite in 
 paying him homage. He fascinates and inspires the 
 hearts and souls of all. The men and women of two 
 continents come to his writings with the feeling that 
 a new world has been discovered, and a new era 
 opened in their lives. They peruse his works with a 
 delight and an avidity unaroused and unsatisfied by 
 any other author, ancient or modern. The sanest, 
 the soberest, the most 'practical' lawyers, doctors, 
 statesmen, philosophers, business men — those are 
 among the unnumbered hosts of those throughout 
 the world who confess themselves the eager, devoted 
 students and admirers of the inspiring Emerson. 
 His words are on every tongue. His sentences illu- 
 mine the pages and adorn the speeches of the great- 
 est writers and orators." 
 
 About the time I got his letter, I heard from 
 Bishop Spaulding, one of the most eminent Catholic 
 prelates in this country, who has lately earned public 
 gratitude by an important service to public order, 
 that Emerson was a favorite author of his also. This 
 is his letter. It is written with some reserve, as 
 would be expected from one to whom the^Church is 
 the final authority on all such questions. I am told 
 that Bishop Spaulding is called by the men of his 
 own faith "the Catholic Emerson," and that they 
 deem it a title of high honor. 
 
90 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 St. Mary's Cathedral, 
 Peoria, III., April 14, 1903. 
 
 My dear Senator Hoar: — I send you this 
 brief word on Emerson. 
 
 Emerson is the keenest, the most receptive, the 
 most thoughtful mind we have had; and whatever 
 his limitations, his failures to get at the profoundest 
 and therefore the most interesting truth, he is, and 
 probably will continue to be for a long time, the 
 most vital force in American literature. His influ- 
 ence [wiR outlast that of Carlyle and Ruskin. His 
 sanity, his modesty, his kindliness are greater ; he is 
 more hopeful and consequently more helpful than 
 they. He himself says we judge of a man's wisdom 
 by his hopefulness ; and so we may give him a place 
 among the world's wise men. 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 (Signed) I. L. Spaulding. 
 
 Constantine Pobedonostzeff, since the death of 
 Alexander H., has been the power behind the throne 
 in Eussia. At the first meeting of Alexander HI. 
 with his councillors, he told the Emperor that all 
 liberal measures and all constitutions were a de- 
 lusion; that no constitution was fitted to Eussia 
 except the will of an autocrat, directed by his own 
 sense of responsibility to the Almighty. He holds 
 that not only the political conduct, but the religious 
 faith of the people must be ordered from the throne. 
 Six words — " Obey or die ; believe or die " — are 
 
ADDRESS OF GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 91 
 
 all the constitution, statute, or bill of rights for 
 an empire that holds one sixth of the people of the 
 globe. I suppose his single will, influencing that of 
 the Emperor, and compelling submission from the 
 whole people, has been, for nearly a quarter of a 
 century, the most powerful single will on the face of 
 the earth. Yet his favorite author is Emerson. He 
 has enriched Russian literature by several transla- 
 tions. The first book he translated was Thomas a 
 Kempis's Imitation of Christy and the next was 
 Emerson's " Works and Days." 
 
 A little time ago, at my request, he sent for the 
 Concord Library a volume of his translation into 
 Russian, with an autograph letter and his own por- 
 trait. I was told by our representative at St. Peters- 
 burg that he was much delighted by my request 
 which led him to send them. This is the letter with 
 which he accompanied the book : — 
 
 Sir : — It is true that having been from my youth 
 a constant reader and admirer of Ralph Waldo Emer- 
 son, I one day undertook the translation of one of 
 his essays, " Works and Days," taken from the book, 
 Society and Solitude. The work had for me a par- 
 ticular interest, since it is not easy to express in a 
 foreign language the original style of the author. 
 The work, published in 1874, was reprinted in a col- 
 lection of my essays which appeared in 1896, in Mos- 
 cow. 
 
 The Hon. Andrew White, whose stay at St. Peters- 
 
92 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 burg, unhappily too short, has left with me the most 
 agreeable memories, probably had this work in view 
 when he mentioned my fondness for Emerson in an 
 article in the Century Magazine, 
 
 If my book should answer the idea of Senator 
 Hoar, I desire to send it to you. Monsieur, with the 
 request that you transmit it to the Library at Con- 
 cord with my most sincere compliments. 
 
 Accept, Monsieur, the expression of my most re- 
 spectful regards, 
 
 (signed) Const. Pobedonostzeff. 
 
 The 17th of May, 1898, Petersburg. 
 To Monsieur Herbert Pierce. 
 
 In 1833, three years before he wrote Nature^ Mrs. 
 Ripley said of him, " We regard him still, more than 
 ever, as the apostle of the Eternal Reason." 
 
 When Dean Stanley was in this country he took 
 special pains to inform himself of the history and 
 present condition of our religious denominations. 
 The result of his observation was, that whatever 
 might be the sect or creed of the clergymen, they 
 all preached Emerson. 
 
 It were a sorry story for humanity if these eternal 
 verities had been uttered by but one voice, or had 
 waited from the beginning for any one voice to utter 
 them. They were revealed to humanity in the morn- 
 ing of creation. The revelation will continue until 
 time shall be no more. What is best in humanity 
 answered in the beginning, and will answer to the 
 
ADDRESS OF GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 93 
 
 end. The lesson is that the common virtues, the com- 
 mon hopes, the common loves, the common faiths of 
 mankind are the foundations on which the Universe 
 is builded and are the things that shall endure. There 
 is a diversity of gifts, but the same spirit. There 
 is a difference of language, but the same message. 
 Emerson says, "he is base — that is the one base thing 
 of the universe — to receive benefits, and render 
 none." " JVbhlesse oblige,''^ says the chivalrous pro- 
 verb of France. " To whom much is given, of him 
 much shall be required," say the Hebrew Scriptures. 
 Emerson tells us that beauty, love, and truth are 
 one. He is only another witness that faith, and 
 hope, and love are the pillars on which all things 
 rest, and that they abide. Their identity the Church 
 has striven for ages to express in the great doctrine 
 of the Trinity. Emerson also tells us that they are 
 one with duty and with joy. What is that but to 
 say with the Assembly's catechism that the chief end 
 of man is to " glorify God and to enjoy him forever " ? 
 Thank God if it be true that these are the eternal 
 commonplaces, and that the humblest individual soul 
 as well as the greatest, by virtue of its birthright as 
 a child of the Infinite Soul, is able to comprehend 
 them and to trust them. 
 
 But above all these, comprehending them all, is 
 his perception of a presence that I hardly know how 
 to name, and that it sometimes seems he did not like 
 to name. I asked a famous preacher what it was 
 that he thought Emerson saw more clearly than other 
 
94 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 men. He said, "It is the Immanent God." What 
 Emerson would have called it if he had given it 
 a name, I do not know — God, the Over-Soul, the 
 Unknown, the Unity manifesting itself in beauty, in 
 power, in love, in joy, in duty, existing everywhere, 
 speaking in every age through some prophet of its 
 own, — it spoke to our age its high commands 
 through the lips of Emerson. 
 
 The exercises closed at forty-five minutes after five 
 with the " Seventy-eighth Psalm," sung by the congrega- 
 tion to the tune of " St. Martins." 
 
THE EVENING 
 
1 
 
THE EVENING 
 
 The Social Circle met in the evening of May 25, 
 1903, at seven o'clock, in the vestry of the First 
 Parish. It had been voted at a meeting February 
 3, 1903, " that Miss Ellen T. Emerson, Mrs. Wil- 
 liam H. Forbes and her children, and the family of 
 Edward W. Emerson be invited ... as guests of 
 the Circle." Other guests were invited by the Com- 
 mittee and by the members individually, and in all 
 one hundred and fifty-two were present. 
 
 At half -past seven the company took their seats, 
 the guests invited by the vote of the Circle and those 
 invited by the Committee sitting at tables upon the 
 raised platform at the end of the room, with the 
 Chairman of the Committee. 
 
 The tables were decorated with lady's-slipper and 
 rhodora. A large portrait of Mr. Emerson, framed 
 in branches of pink hawthorn, with a laurel wreath 
 at its base, rested against the head table in front of 
 the Chairman. Branches of wild cornel bush, wild 
 cherry, and pink hawthorn filled the spaces on either 
 side. On the walls hung extracts from Mr. Emerson's 
 writings framed in pine boughs. 
 
 On the dinner card was the " Concord Hymn," a 
 colored print of the rhodora blossom with four lines 
 
98 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 from " The Rhodora," and the following tribute to 
 the Social Circle written by Mr. Emerson to a friend 
 December 17, 1844 : — 
 
 " Much the best society I have ever known is a 
 club in Concord called the Social Circle, consisting 
 always of twenty-five of our citizens, doctor, lawyer, 
 farmer, trader, miller, mechanic, etc., solidest of men, 
 who yield the solidest of gossip. Harvard University 
 is a wafer compared to the solid land which my friends 
 represent." 
 
 The menu was as follows : — 
 
 Little Necks 
 
 Radishes Olives 
 
 Cream of Lettuce 
 
 Toast Sticks 
 
 Turbans of Halibut Lobster Sauce 
 
 Sliced Cucumbers 
 
 FiUet of Beef 
 
 Potato Croquettes Green Peas 
 
 Asparagus, Hollandaise 
 
 Lettuce and Tomato Salad, Mayonnaise 
 
 Frozen Pudding Strawberries 
 
 Ice Cream and Water Ices 
 
 Assorted Cake 
 
 Toasted Crackers 
 
 Roquefort Cheese Cream Cheese 
 
 Coffee 
 
 During the dinner there was music by an orches- 
 tra, and then the Chairman, the Hon. John Shep* 
 ard Keyes, rose and said : — 
 
SPEECH OF CAROLINE HAZARD 99 
 
 EEMARKS OF JOHN SHEPARD KEYES 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends and Fellow Mem- 
 bers of the Social Circle : — To-night is Emerson's, 
 
 THE SEER. 
 
 " Alone on his dim heights of song and dream 
 He saw the dawn, and of its solace told. 
 We on his brow beheld the luminous gleam 
 And listened idly, for the night was cold. 
 
 *' Then clouds shut out the view, and he was gone, 
 And though the way is dubious, dark the night, 
 And though our dim eyes still await the dawn, 
 We saw a face that once beheld the light." 
 
 This is the third time — and the third time never 
 fails — that the ladies have attended a meeting of 
 the Social Circle. The first occasion was at the Cen- 
 tennial of the Circle, the second was on a summer 
 evening later, and to-night we have a majority of 
 the fair sex with us. I am very glad to be able to 
 present to you the President of the foremost women's 
 college, the daughter of an especial friend of Emer- 
 son — Miss Hazard, of Wellesley College. 
 
 SPEECH OF CAROLINE HAZARD 
 
 Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Social 
 Circle : — I am sure it is a great honor to be accounted 
 a member of this Social Circle for this one evening, 
 
 LofC.s 
 
100 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 an honor which I prize very highly. I must say, 
 when your Chairman of the day asked me to come 
 here and say a word, I feared that I should be what 
 Mr. Emerson would call " an unauthorized talker." 
 But I have the authority, not only of the kind invi- 
 tation of your Chairman, but what Mr. Emerson 
 would recognize as the true authority — the authority 
 of the affection and gratitude which I have — which 
 all women must have — for the work which Mr. 
 Emerson did for women as well as for men. It 
 seems to me that that splendid message of the dig- 
 nity of the person and of the worth of personality 
 which he preached and was the preeminent example 
 of — that message which he spoke to all young men 
 and young women — comes with an especial force 
 to the young women of to-day. When we think 
 what New England was one hundred years ago, how 
 it was truly a provincial New England, — a New 
 England connected with the mother country by 
 the closest ties, but still connected only with the 
 mother country and not with the great world cur- 
 rents, — we also think of what Mr. Emerson did 
 in widening that connection, in making the con- 
 nection with the whole of German literature, with 
 the revival of the study of Dante, and with all of 
 those other currents of literature which have en- 
 riched our lives, and flow from his preaching and 
 his awakening. 
 
 The dignity which he gave to the individual with 
 his call to awake and arise — this splendid call to per- 
 
SPEECH OF CAROLINE HAZARD 101 
 
 sonality — sounded not only for men but for wo- 
 men. " The whole realm of history and biography," 
 he says, " is to increase my self-respect. Then I ven- 
 ture ; then I will also essay to be." And it was to 
 what has been called the misrepresented and neglected 
 sex that this call came with perhaps especial em- 
 phasis. It was a call to service. There were many 
 women who were content with their daily round of 
 duty, who found in it certainly all the room they 
 could ask for self-denial; but the call to awaken 
 to their own personality, to a conception of the 
 worth of their own souls and the right that they 
 had to live their own lives, — this call came with 
 an especial force, as it seems to me, to the women 
 of his day. We hope we have learned the lesson. 
 There were some who carried the lesson farther 
 than he ever intended, perhaps, but that call was 
 a call which has aroused all that is best in the 
 women of our land. Mr. Emerson himself, in his 
 own beautiful and gracious life, in his association 
 with women, recognized what the place of women 
 could be in society and in the world. They had 
 been too long merely pretty playthings. The young 
 girl who ruled with an arbitrary authority for 
 a brief hour, and then was consigned to house- 
 hold cares, too often as a housekeeper rather than 
 as a companion of her husband — all that Mr. 
 Emerson saw, and in his own life showed how it 
 need not be. The value of his women friends, the 
 value of the women of his own household, he cher- 
 
102 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 ished and in every way increased by his own gra- 
 cious and loving deference and the dignity of his 
 own character. And so his splendid message of the 
 value of personality, is a gift for us women to be 
 especially grateful for. 
 
 And with that gift of the recognition of the value 
 of the person came his recognition of the day, — the 
 present moment, this hour, — whether the day came 
 " in bud-crowned spring " or whether the day was — 
 
 " Deformed and low, 
 Short and bent by cold and snow." 
 
 This day, this present moment, as he said, is the best 
 day that ever was. He said that every day was a 
 doomsday, a day to be filled with work, a day to be 
 filled with all high endeavor. Who of us does not 
 recall with a thrill of joy that wonderful poem of the 
 "Daughters of Time,'' and the herbs and the apples 
 which were taken, and the solemn scorn with which 
 he saw the day turn and depart silent ? That splendid 
 message comes to each one of us. And with the 
 worth of the person and the value of the day came 
 ever the sounding note of joy, — joy in the present, 
 joy in life, joy in the world ! These are his flowers, 
 his rhodora, his pine-trees, his beauty in these Con- 
 cord meadows that we love and rejoice in. As for 
 the deeper sources of that joy, how full and subtle 
 the intimations are as they gleam on his pages. " Of 
 that Ineffable Essence which we call Spirit," he says, 
 " he who thinks most will say least." He could say 
 
SPEECH OF CAROLINE HAZARD 103 
 
 with Sir Thomas Browne, "whoso feels not the 
 warm gales and gentle ventilation of this Spirit, 
 though I feel his pulse, I dare not say he lives, for 
 truly without this there is to me no heat under the 
 tropic nor any light, though I dwelt in the body of 
 the sun." 
 
 It was here in these Concord meadows that he 
 taught us that man may have fellowship with God, — 
 " that man in the bush with God may meet." This 
 was the source of his joy ; this was the strength of 
 his personality; this was the message which he 
 preached to the men and women of his day, that 
 over us 
 
 ** Soars the eternal sky 
 Full of light and of Deity." 
 
 The Chairman : Emerson had very little to do 
 with the law, but he once got sued. A couple of 
 scamps sold him a piece of land for his Walden 
 garden, and another scamp undertook to contest the 
 title, and the philosopher and poet had to become 
 defendant in a suit. That was a good many years 
 ago, and the lawyers were not perhaps then as bril- 
 liant as they are now. If he had only had such a 
 lawyer as we have here to-night, — the foremost 
 member of the Suffolk Bar, — I think the result 
 would have been very different. I am very happy to 
 present to you Moorfield Storey, Esq. 
 
104 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 SPEECH OF MOORFIELD STOREY 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : — I 
 might well hesitate in this company of his old friends 
 and neighbors to speak of Emerson, for what can I 
 say that is not already known to you all ? Nor is it 
 easier to say the fitting word after all that you have 
 heard to-day and all that many of you heard last 
 night from lips that are far more eloquent than mine. 
 I am encouraged, however, by the reflection that the 
 better we love and honor a man, the more welcome 
 is appreciation, even from strangers. We like to 
 know that his quality was recognized by every one. 
 I feel, however, a sense of personal obligation to 
 your great teacher for the lesson that he taught me, 
 and your Chairman's invitation came as a challenge 
 to bear my testimony in recognition of my debt 
 which I could not well refuse. I speak to-night, not 
 as a contemporary and an equal, but simply as a 
 representative of the yoimger generation which his 
 words influenced profoundly. And I am glad that I 
 have an opportunity, at this late hour of a long day 
 spent in celebration, to speak briefly. I am satisfied 
 that you will thank me for setting those who may 
 come after me that good example. 
 
 I well remember the evening, early in my college 
 course, when I first met Mr. Emerson. It was at his 
 own table, and I have never forgotten the grave and 
 gracious simplicity of his manner. He appeared 
 
SPEECH OF MOORFIELD STOREY 105 
 
 anxious rather to draw from me my opinions on the 
 questions which he suggested than to express his 
 own. Then and always he seemed to ask of each 
 newcomer, " What have you to tell me ? " His atti- 
 tude was that of a learner, and conveyed a subtle 
 suggestion that the ideas of his visitor might be 
 of interest to him, which was at once unexpected 
 and delightful. A friend of mine, now an eminent 
 philosopher, has confessed to me that he was so be- 
 guiled by a similar appeal to himself at his first 
 interview with Mr. Emerson that he launched into 
 an exposition of his philosophic creed which, upon 
 reflection, he felt must have been more interesting 
 to himself than it was to his hearer. My memory 
 retains the look and the gracious manner of my 
 host, but, mercifully perhaps, does not recall my 
 
 response. 
 
 It was from the writings of Mr. Emerson, how- 
 ever, that during our college life many of us learned 
 our most valuable lessons. The vital thought which 
 he thus expresses, — " Nature arms each man with 
 some faculty which enables him to do easily some 
 feat impossible to any other, and this makes him 
 necessary to society," with its corollary that each is 
 bound to discover what his faculty is, to develop it, 
 and to use it for the benefit of mankind, was in itself 
 a liberal education. It meant that every man, able 
 or dull, superior or inferior, white, brown, or black, 
 had his right to his chance of success, and it followed 
 that no other man had a right to take that chance 
 
106 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 away or to insist that his fellow man should be remade 
 according to his ideas. He who has learned to be 
 himself and to act upon his own convictions, regard- 
 less of personal consequences, " safe in himself as in 
 a fate," and who does this naturally and simply, not 
 claiming praise for being what he is, any more than 
 the plant asks praise for blooming, has grasped the 
 highest conception of duty. 
 
 Again, I learned from Mr. Emerson that the moral 
 laws of the universe are as inexorable as the physical 
 laws which govern the solar system, that they " ex- 
 ecute themselves," that " in the soul of man there is 
 a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. 
 He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He 
 who does a mean deed is by the action itself con- 
 tracted. Thefts never enrich ; alms never impover- 
 ish." 
 
 He who really believes this has an abiding faith 
 which will enable him to view without impatience 
 the crooked workings of the world and to wait with 
 serenity for the inevitable punishment which waits 
 upon wrong and the certain triumph of right, con- 
 tent to do his part while he may and indifferent to 
 the insignificant question whether he lives to see the 
 punishment and the triumph or not. Such seem to 
 me in part Emerson's faith and his conception of 
 duty, and happy he whose strength enables him to 
 make them his own. 
 
 Not merely, however, in the supreme moments of 
 life, and in the great crises of human affairs, does 
 
SPEECH OF MOORFIELD STOREY 107 
 
 Emerson help us. We may find in him a practical 
 recognition of smaller troubles, and he teaches us, 
 if not to avoid them, at least how to see them in 
 their proper perspective. When, for example, we 
 realize a long cherished ideal, and after a life of 
 labor in the city, acquire a farm, we feel the truth 
 of such words as these : — 
 
 "If a man own land, the land owns him. . . . 
 With brow bent, with firm intent the pale scholar 
 leaves his desk to draw a freer breath, and get a 
 juster statement of his thought in the garden walk. 
 He stoops to pull up a purslain or a dock that is 
 choking the young corn, and finds there are two ; 
 close behind the last is a third ; he reaches out his 
 hand to a fourth ; behind that are four thousand and 
 one. He is heated and untuned, and by and by wakes 
 up from his hideous dream of chickweed and redroot 
 to remember his morning thought, and to find that 
 with his adamantine purposes he has been duped by 
 a dandelion. A garden is like those pernicious ma- 
 chineries we read of every month in the newspapers, 
 which catch a man's coat, skirt, or his hand, and 
 draw in his arm, his leg, and his whole body to irre- 
 sistible destruction." 
 
 There is a profound truth in this statement which 
 every man who has tried farming recognizes. If I 
 were to criticise it at all, I should say that he under- 
 estimates the number of weeds. 
 
 While we are considering the relation between 
 tariff and treaty, we may read with advantage such 
 
108 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 passages as this : " Do not legislate. Meddle, and 
 you snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws. Give 
 no bounties ; make equal laws ; secure life and 
 property, and you need not give alms." 
 
 Against the panegyrics of war, which seem now to 
 be the fashion, it is well to weigh his calm sentences : 
 
 " It is the ignorant and childish part of mankind 
 that is the fighting part. Idle and vacant minds want 
 excitement, as all boys kill cats." ... In certain 
 regions " of man, boy, or beast, the only trait that 
 much interests the speaker is the pugnacious. And 
 why? Because the speaker has as yet no other 
 image of manly activity and virtue, none of endur- 
 ance, none of perseverance, none of character, none 
 of attainment of truth. Put him into a circle of 
 cultivated men where the conversation broaches the 
 great questions that besiege the human reason, and 
 he would be dumb and unhappy as an Indian in 
 church. ... If the search of the sublime laws of 
 morals and the sources of hope and trust in man 
 and not in books, in the present and not in the past, 
 proceed ; if the rising generation can be provoked to 
 think it unworthy to nestle into every abomination 
 of the past, and shall feel the generous darings of 
 austerity and virtue, then war has a short day, and 
 human blood will cease to flow." 
 
 Citizens of Concord, yours is a great inheritance. 
 You breathe an inspiring air. You celebrate at fit- 
 ting times the first scenes in a great struggle for 
 human freedom. The Minuteman marks the spot 
 
SPEECH OF MOORFIELD STOREY 109 
 
 where the shot was fired which startled the world. 
 Are its echoes silent here ? Is your admiration spent 
 on the statue, or does it extend to the cause for 
 which the Minuteman died? Are the sons of your 
 fathers indifferent to the struggles of other men for 
 freedom? Are they content to stand silently by 
 while their fellow citizens in this country are denied 
 their equal rights ? Are they willing to help deprive 
 another people of that liberty which is the birth- 
 right of all human beings ? 
 
 You meet to-day to celebrate the birth of Emerson* 
 Why? Because he taught great truths, or uttered 
 vain aspirations for impossible ideals ? Do you cele- 
 brate dates and names with empty forms, or do you 
 really believe in the truths which make those dates 
 and names significant? One proof of living faith in 
 those truths, of willingness to maintain them no 
 matter at what personal cost, whether found in vote 
 or speech or effective action, were worth a hundred 
 monuments and a thousand celebrations. Is it the 
 name or the reality which calls us together ? Are we 
 trying to win honor for ourselves by professing to 
 believe in the plain life and high thought which 
 Emerson taught, or do we really believe? This is 
 the question which this occasion asks us all, and 
 only the conduct of our lives can answer it. 
 
 The Chairman : — Your committee thought, not- 
 withstanding the smallness of this room and the 
 actual filling of it which you would make, that it 
 
110 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 might be agreeable to invite — knowing they could 
 not come — some of the distinguished foreigners 
 who have so much admiration for Mr. Emerson and 
 who were so friendly to him on his visit abroad. I 
 have before me quite a package of the letters that 
 they have sent in answer, all of them fortunately — 
 inasmuch as we have but one vacant seat in the 
 room — declining to come, and quite a number of 
 them expressing a very high and exalted opinion 
 both of the senders who do them this honor of invit- 
 ing them, and of Mr. Emerson whom we are trying 
 in this way to honor. However, I am not going to 
 read these letters at this time. They will all be care- 
 fully preserved for the use and good reading of the 
 Social Circle at some future time.^ The vacant seat 
 at this table was to have been occupied by a profes- 
 sor of Glasgow University, which, as you know, gave 
 Mr. Emerson a very large vote for the position — 
 the highest in the college — of Lord Provost ; and 
 although it did not elect him, fortunately for us, — 
 as it might have taken him away more than we would 
 have been willing, — he said of it that the voices of 
 those young men were his fairest laurels. This gen- 
 tleman. Professor Smith, was sent over here by the 
 University to bear his tribute at this or some other 
 of the celebrations in honor of Mr. Emerson ; but he 
 is unfortunately in a hospital in Toledo, Ohio, instead 
 of being here. But he has sent to Mr. Hoar his 
 tribute, and Mr. Hoar will oblige me by reading it. 
 ^ See Appendix, page 131. 
 
LETTER READ BY SAMUEL HOAR 111 
 
 Samuel Hoar : — Mr. Chairman, I received this 
 to-day just before the afternoon celebration began. 
 The length of that celebration prevented my present- 
 ing it to the audience then. 
 
 Mr. Hoar then read the following 
 
 MEMORIAL.! 
 
 "We, a few of the Scottish and English admirers 
 of the late K. W. Emerson, and of his writings, 
 desire to associate ourselves with those who are cele- 
 brating in the United States his Centenary. We re- 
 joice in the knowledge that his ethical teaching has 
 so largely influenced to high and worthy aims the 
 great nation to which he belonged, and we desire to 
 testify how powerfully his teaching has affected 
 for good very many in our own country. Many 
 of his writings have been a life-long inspiration to 
 people of the Anglo-Saxon nation all over the world. 
 
 Rt. Hon. James Bktce, D. C. L., M. P. 
 
 Principal Donaldson, of St. Andrews University. 
 Principal Marshall Lang, Aberdeen University. 
 Principal Story, Glasgow University. 
 Rev. John Watson, D. D., of Liverpool (Ian Maclaren). 
 Rev. John Kelman, M. A., Edinburgh. 
 Rev. James Moffat, Dundonald, Ayrshire. 
 Professor Walter Raleigh, Glasgow University. 
 Rev. Hugh Black, M. A., Edinburgh. 
 Mrs. Mary Drew (n6e Gladstone). 
 
 ^ See Appendix, page 131. 
 
112 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 Miss Agnes C Maitland, Somerville College, Oxford. 
 Professor Henry Goudy, D. C. L., Oxford. 
 Professor J. G. McKendrick, Glasgow University. 
 Professor S. Alexander, Owen's College, Manchester. 
 Professor George Saintsbury, Edinburgh University. 
 Professor George Adam Smith, Glasgow. 
 Patrick W. Campbell, W. S., Edinburgh. 
 Sir Leslie Stephen. 
 
 Sir William Turner, Edinburgh University. 
 Professor Marcus Dods, Edinburgh. 
 Professor Latta, University, Glasgow. 
 Professor A. V. Dicey, All Souls, Oxford. 
 Professor Alexander Lawson, University, St. An- 
 drews. 
 Professor C. H. Herford, Manchester. 
 Professor A. S. Pringle Pattison. 
 Edmund Gosse, LL. D., London. 
 
 The Chairman: — Rudyard Kipling declined his 
 invitation, but we have his " Recessional " here to- 
 night and we hope to have the pleasure of hearing 
 Mr. Parker sing it. 
 
 Kipling's " Recessional " was sung by Mr. George 
 J. Parker, accompanied on the piano by Mrs. 
 Charles Edward Brown. 
 
 The Chaikman : — The gentleman who has per- 
 haps honored the memory of Emerson by the grandest 
 and most lasting memorial, and who proposed the 
 plan for the Emerson Hall of Philosophy at Cam- 
 
SPEECH OF HUGO MUNSTERBERG 113 
 
 bridge, at an expense of 1150,000, which sum he has 
 already raised, is with us to-night, and we desire to 
 thank him in this manner for the great service he 
 has done for the memory of Emerson. I have plea- 
 sure in introducing to you Professor Miinsterberg, of 
 Harvard University. 
 
 SPEECH OF HUGO MUNSTERBERG 
 
 Mk. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : — The 
 overwhelming kindness of your generous words, 
 Mr. Chairman, adds much to the embarrassment with 
 which I stand before you. I am deeply embarrassed 
 indeed, — how can I, a foreigner, an outsider, rise at 
 this occasion to speak to a circle of women and men, 
 inspired from childhood by the atmosphere of Emer- 
 son's New England ? I have been brought up near 
 the Baltic Sea, and in my childhood the waves of 
 the ocean seldom brought greetings from these New 
 England shores to the shores of Germany. And yet 
 my youth was not untouched by Emerson's genius. 
 I am glad to mention this Emersonian influence 
 abroad, because in the rich chord of the joyful enthu- 
 siasm of this day I missed only one overtone : a tone 
 bringing out the grateful appreciation which Emer- 
 son found in the not-English speaking foreign coun- 
 tries. As far as I remember, I had only three Amer- 
 ican books, in German translation, in my little 
 schoolday library. At ten I got a boys' edition of 
 Cooper's L eather stocking ; at twelve I enjoyed 
 
114 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 Longfellow's poems, but at fourteen I had Emerson's 
 Essays. And they accompanied me through my stu- 
 dent days ; I read and reread them, and he became 
 thus the star to which I hitched my little wagon 
 when it was to carry me to the new world from the 
 fatherland. This was not without effect on my own 
 American experiences. Emerson's work had so often 
 represented to me the spirit of the new world which 
 I entered that my mental eye became so sensitive as 
 to recognize the Emersonian lines and curves and 
 forms everywhere in the background of American 
 life. Most Europeans, and especially Germans, who 
 come over, see everywhere the features of commer- 
 cialism and practical utilitarianism. I was impressed 
 by the idealism of this young, healthful community, 
 and in the first essay which I published on America, 
 in a German paper, only a few months after my first 
 visit, I wrote with most sincere conviction : "If 
 you really want to understand the deepest energies 
 of this glorious country, do not consult the editorials 
 of the yellow press of New York, but read the 
 golden books of the wise man of Concord." 
 
 But, Mr. Chairman, I feel that I have no right to 
 speak here as a German, since you have assured us 
 that the foreign scholars have been invited for to- 
 night, with the understanding that they are not 
 allowed to come — if a cover has been laid for me, 
 nevertheless, I take it that I was expected not to 
 forget that I am here as the representative of the 
 Harvard Philosophy Department. But, Mr. Chair- 
 
SPEECH OF HUGO MUNSTERBERG 115 
 
 man, the Philosophy Department of Harvard has 
 not to report any new facts to-night. The Emerson 
 story is very simple, very short, and completely known 
 to you. We saw a year ago that the time had come 
 to place an Emerson Hall for Philosophy on the 
 Harvard Yard, and that it was necessary for that 
 purpose to collect 1150,000 before the 25th of May, 
 1903 ; we began thus to collect, and when we counted 
 the contents of our purse, on the 23d of May, 1903, 
 we found there 1150,250. That is the whole simple 
 story indeed, and yet some connotations to it may 
 be in order, and I am most happy to make them 
 in this company. 
 
 First, do not misunderstand the report of our 
 treasurer ; the sum I mentioned was meant from the 
 beginning merely as a fund sufficient to secure a 
 building, — not at all sufficient to secure the building 
 for which we were hoping from the start. We want 
 a spacious, noble, monumental hall — the architec- 
 tural plans are drawn. To build it as the plans sug- 
 gest it we need 1100,000 more; and while we 
 highly appreciate any small gifts toward this addi- 
 tional sum we are firmly determined not to reject 
 even the largest contributions. 
 
 But all this refers to the externals, to the news- 
 paper side of our memorial work ; let me speak in 
 this narrower circle of some more internal points. 
 Seen from such an exoteric point of view, it may 
 look as though we Harvard philosophers had said 
 through all the year : " Happy public, you are fortu- 
 
116 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 nate in being allowed to build a fine building for our 
 splendid philosophy instruction, and now that the 
 checks are written, the public may kindly remove 
 itself and the students may fill their fountain pens 
 to write down in the new building our glorious effu- 
 sion of wisdom." Well, over there in Cambridge, 
 we must impose on the freshmen and sophomores, 
 but here let me say at once, we know exactly that 
 the generous contributions of the community were 
 not given to us but to Emerson. And if we ever 
 forgot it, our benefactors reminded us of it. I asked, 
 for instance, the help of Andrew Carnegie, and he 
 gave generously, but when I replied that there would 
 be rejoicing in Harvard that at last he had given to 
 Harvard University, — I saw in the far background 
 the big Harvard Library building we need so badly, — 
 he left me not the slightest doubt that his pledge 
 was for the Emerson Memorial, but not for Harvard 
 as Harvard. Yes, it is thoroughly an Emerson build- 
 ing, a late expression of Harvard's gratitude for her 
 greatest son. 
 
 But we know also that the value of this memorial 
 gift lies not in its walls and roof, but in the kind of 
 work which will develop within those walls. It will 
 be a true Emerson memorial only if the words and 
 work in that hall become help and guidance, wisdom 
 and inspiration for new and new generations of Har- 
 vard men. There would be no hope of such influence 
 if we instructors really entered into it with an air 
 of self-satisfaction and self-complacency. Let me 
 
SPEECH OF HUGO MUNSTERBERG 117 
 
 assure you that it is exactly the opposite feeling with 
 which we look into the future, and this conviction 
 that we must fulfil our duty better, much better, 
 than heretofore, is common to all of us in the whole 
 large Department of Philosophy. A lucky chance 
 brought to me this morning, when I left for Concord, 
 a letter from our colleague, Professor Royce, who is 
 spending his sabbatical year in the country of his 
 childhood, in California. He finds the fit word bet- 
 ter than I could hope to do ; let me read from his 
 letter. I had written to him that the success seems 
 near, and he replies : — 
 
 " I feel very deeply how great are the responsi- 
 bilities which the new gift places upon the shoulders 
 of each teacher of the department which is thus 
 endowed. I do not know how much I shall be able 
 to do to live up to these new responsibilities. I only 
 know that the news of the success of the Emerson 
 Hall endowment fills me with a desire not only to 
 improve here and there, but quite to make over 
 afresh, and to change throughout for the better, my 
 methods of work as a teacher of philosophy; and 
 with a determination to devote myself as never be- 
 fore to the task of offering to philosophy and to 
 Harvard my best services. That the founding of this 
 new building may mean the beginning of a new life 
 for philosophical study in our country, and the dawn- 
 ing of a new day for the interests of higher thought 
 in our national affairs, is the earnest wish of your 
 absent colleague." 
 
118 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 This is the feeling of our common department's 
 soul. We shall not enter the new Philosophy Hall 
 with the feeling that we can sit there on our laurels, 
 but with the firm promise that we will live up to the 
 duties which the single word above its door demands 
 from us. We all are united by the ideal to make 
 our work in Emerson Hall worthy of the name that 
 honors it. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, I see from your pretty menu-card 
 that Emerson once said, " Harvard University is 
 thin like a wafer compared with the solid land of 
 our Social Circle in Concord." That was sixty years 
 ago, and there has not been much change since that 
 time, indeed. But now the change will come, believe 
 us. Emerson Hall in Harvard University will be 
 built on solid land, too, on the solid land of our best 
 will and effort, and we will work that it may prove 
 perhaps even not less solid than the Social Circle, — 
 solid land on which to stand to-night gave me the 
 greatest possible pleasure. 
 
 The Chairman : — Dr. Emerson needs no intro- 
 duction from me to you. He will occupy the few 
 remaining moments before the time to leave for 
 the train, and the exercises will then close with 
 singing the "Battle Hymn" to the tune of "Old 
 Hundred." 
 
SPEECH OF EDWARD WALDO EMERSON 119 
 
 SPEECH OF EDWARD WALDO EMERSON 
 
 Mr. Chairman, My Honored Friend, — My 
 Friends and Neighbors: — The Social Circle, as 
 stated in its book of chronicles, was not merely 
 founded "for the diffusion of useful communica- 
 tions " by the twenty -five members who composed it, 
 
 — some of which might be shared by their wives and 
 some not, — but for the promotion of the social affec- 
 tions, that they should not die. I am glad to see 
 how liberally the Circle has gone to work to promote 
 them by such a thoroughly social and affectionate 
 and catholic occasion as this. 
 
 Now, it makes me smile a little when, after the 
 exercises that I have had the privilege of attending 
 here and elsewhere, I think of a remark that I have 
 so often heard my father make. My mother was 
 constantly remembering that "Ten years ago to-day 
 such a thing occurred," and other members of the 
 family would remember other anniversaries. When 
 at table such remarks were made, my father would 
 often laugh and say, " Oh, it is always a hundred 
 years from something." But he was so good a towns- 
 man and he had such an affectionate regard for his 
 neighbors — and he construed that term very largely 
 
 — that if we can conceive of him being present and 
 receiving such a tribute as has been given to him 
 to-day, it is very clear how it would have affected 
 him. Some of you are too young — or too young 
 
120 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 Concordians — to remember the burning of his house 
 as far as the heroic mustering of his friends would 
 allow it to be burned, for they, some of whom I see 
 here to-night, at the risk of their lives, prevented the 
 entire destruction and saved all his effects. Well, 
 his friends had sent him abroad to restore his health, 
 and he was coming home, and word had gone out 
 that the steamer had come in, and the engineer was 
 instructed to toot the whistle as the train came down 
 the grade from Walden Woods if Mr. Emerson was 
 on board, and the bells were ringing and the people 
 gathered at the depot. Mr. Emerson was carried 
 homeward delighted, under a triumphal arch, sur- 
 rounded by his neighbors, with the school-children 
 marching alongside, but he supposed in good faith 
 that all this was a tribute to my sister Ellen. He 
 did not realize that it was for him. But when after 
 passing beneath a triumphal arch, he came to his 
 own door, and found the house just as he had left 
 it, with hardly a trace of the injury, and his study 
 just as it was before, with, all the books there, and 
 then saw the waiting throng of friends and neigh- 
 bors around his gate, it suddenly came over him 
 what it meant. He sped down the marble walk to 
 the gate, — I cannot say all that he said; it was but 
 a few words, for the meaning of it all swept over 
 him. He began, "My friends and neighbors! lam 
 not wood nor stone." He articulated but a few 
 words, but he made his meaning clear. And so we, 
 his family, feel to-day. 
 
SPEECH OF EDWARD WALDO EMERSON 121 
 
 Now, what was the reason, though not born in 
 Concord, though a scholar living apart, though fol- 
 lowing his own lines regardless of other people's 
 ideas, has caused him to be considered, first, as 
 crazy, and then as atheistic, and then the charge 
 resolved itself into pantheism, and then it became 
 merely mysticism, and finally he was accepted, — 
 what was the reason that he was accepted? It was 
 for two reasons. In the first place, he never fought. 
 He simply announced his message. He was a her- 
 ald; he announced the word that was given to him, 
 and it was not his part to defend it. The truth, he 
 believed, would defend itself. There was no pugnac- 
 ity in him. The truth needed no defence. He sim- 
 ply left it to work its own way, and so he aroused 
 no opposition. In the second place, while finding 
 good in all things, he saw even in the fierce and 
 ferocious wars of the Middle Ages and the institu- 
 tions of feudalism, this benefit, that it was a proof 
 of the gentleman that he carried his life in his hands 
 and was ready to answer for his word with his life, 
 — it was exactly that which Mr. Emerson did : he 
 answered for his words with his life. Many persons 
 were not reading his words in those days; only a 
 few were; but his life was before the people, and 
 those who had read his words also came to see his 
 life, and finding his life humble and serene and 
 sweet and expectant and hopeful, they became his 
 friends. He made friends everywhere as the sun in 
 heaven makes friends. 
 
122 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 But while he was an idealist, this story is told of 
 him by a friend, that when the philosophers who 
 were visiting him were discoursing in his study, a 
 load of wood arrived for him and he said to them, 
 " Excuse me, for a moment ; we have to attend to 
 these things just as if they were real." And so 
 when his duty to his town and his country and his 
 globe came up, he attended to those duties as if 
 they were real. He went to town meeting, although 
 his neighbor on the hill advised him not to go be- 
 cause " what you do with the ballot is no use — it 
 won't stay so; but what you do with the gun stays 
 done." But he went to town meeting, and I want 
 to recall one word that he said. It is a good politi- 
 cal tract, and very short. He said, " What business 
 have you to stay away from the polls because you 
 are paired off with a man who means to vote 
 wrong? How shall you, who mean to vote right, 
 be excused from staying away? Suppose the three 
 hundred Spartans at Thermopylae had paired off 
 with an equal number of Persians. Would it have 
 been the same to history? Would it have been 
 the same to Greece? Would it have been the same 
 to the world?" This morning, in the singing of 
 the Ode at the town hall, I missed two verses. 
 The time was short and they were therefore left out, 
 but they were lasting truths that he announced — as 
 true from 1898 to 1903 and onward as in the dark 
 days of the Civil War. These were the omitted 
 verses : — 
 
SPEECH OF EDWARD WALDO EMERSON 123 
 
 " United States ! The ages plead, — 
 Present and past in under-song, — 
 Go put your creed into your deed, 
 Nor speak with double tongue. 
 
 " For sea and land don't understand, 
 Nor skies without a frown 
 See rights for which the one hand fights 
 By the other cloven down." 
 
 Now, to turn to a more entertaining aspect of our 
 subject, perhaps, I wish to tell two stories which 
 were connected with the little book I wrote about 
 my father, but which came to me too late to go into 
 the book. I will try to make them brief, but they 
 seem to me very delightful. Our good neighbor, 
 Mr. Bowers, whom many of you remember, who 
 lived on Heywood Street by the brook, — a patriot 
 who always spoke so well in the temperance meet- 
 ings and the Anti-slavery and Kansas meetings that 
 my father, very humble about his own eloquence, 
 always came home saying, "Bowers spoke admir- 
 ably; " — when the war came shouldered his gun as 
 a private in the three months' men, and afterwards 
 served as captain throughout the war with credit. 
 From various troubles, owing to the war, Mr. 
 Bowers's reason was affected, and he was confined 
 in Danvers Asylum willingly. But he did not for- 
 get his principles, and instantly set himself to make 
 the life of the inmates as tolerable as he could. He 
 would write to my sister and myself, asking if we 
 would please send him some books, — "Why, the 
 
124 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 people here haven't any books to read, and they 
 would be a great comfort to them." When my me- 
 morial volume about my father came out, he wrote 
 me and said, "I have no money, but will you send 
 me your book?" and then wrote me such a letter 
 that I said, "No price that has as yet been paid for 
 that book has even approached the price you have 
 paid for it." Mr. Bowers was a nephew of George 
 Minott, who lived on the hill opposite my father's. 
 Mr. Bowers was one day talking with his uncle, — 
 an old agriculturalist and pot-hunter, who had only 
 been to Boston once, when he marched there in 
 1812 with his gun and then he got so homesick 
 for Concord that he promptly deserted ; — as they 
 stood there talking together, my father came out 
 from his study with his tall hat on and his satchel 
 in hand, going to Boston for the day. He paused 
 as he reached the middle of that dusty diagonal 
 leading to the upper sidewalk, as you know, and 
 was apparently lost in meditation. They supposed 
 he was meditating some profound problem. Un- 
 doubtedly, the problem was whether or no he had 
 done with a certain book which should be carried 
 back to the Athenaeum. But Mr. Minott said to 
 Mr. Bowers, "Charley, that man ain't like other 
 men. He is like Enoch. He walks with God and 
 talks with his angels." I am sometimes tempted to 
 ask how many graduates of Harvard College would 
 know who Enoch was.^ 
 
 1 Mr. Samuel Hoar, on behalf of the University, officially 
 
SPEECH OF EDWARD WALDO EMERSON 125 
 
 The other story was this. Mr. Bowers was tem- 
 porarily curator of the Lyceum. The minister of a 
 neighboring town, who had a sonorous voice which 
 he, with others, enjoyed, and a florid style of rheto- 
 ric, was to have lectured, but was unexpectedly de- 
 tained. Mr. Bowers came down to ask Mr. Emerson 
 if he would read something. Mr. Emerson said: 
 "Yes; I could read you something; but will the 
 people who are assembled to hear the sound of the 
 trumpet be content with a penny whistle ? " 
 
 Mr. Emerson's love for his townsfolk, especially 
 for the boys and girls, was very great. How little 
 conscious was the boy, as he passed the gate, riding 
 a horse to be shod, or the girls walking to school, — 
 how little conscious of the admiration that they 
 excited in him and his pleasure in watching them 
 pass. He had a little book which he called Auto 
 among his manuscripts in which he noted a few 
 points especially characteristic of himself. One 
 thins: he wrote was, "I have never seen a man that 
 could not teach me something. I always felt that 
 in some point he was my master." It was so with 
 women and with children. We had once a friend, 
 a charming young girl, visiting us at our house. 
 One morning, through some family exigency, she 
 was alone at breakfast with Mr. Emerson and 
 poured out his cup of coffee for him. She felt very 
 much abashed. She felt unable to discourse on 
 
 informs me that Harvard students are familiar with Enoch 
 because he was translated some time ago. 
 
126 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 philosophy, but she said it suddenly came over her, 
 "Mr. Emerson could not fix over an old dress, he 
 could not do plain sewing the way I can do it, to 
 save his life." Then she felt better, and they got 
 on together beautifully after that. I wish she had 
 said it to him ; it would have delighted him. When 
 1 was in college many persons used to come to ask 
 Mr. Emerson questions, — young people often no 
 older than I. But you know how it is; boys are not 
 apt to ask their fathers questions. They ask some 
 other person's father. I was surprised to see how 
 the boys who came there did so. I seldom asked a 
 very serious question of him, but I recall one 
 answer with pleasure. It was about Immortality. 
 I ventured to ask what he thought. This was the 
 answer : — "I think we may be sure that, whatever 
 may come after death, no one will be disappointed." 
 That seemed to cover all our concern about the 
 future. 
 
 My father's delight in his farm and what he found 
 in it — except the weeds — has already been men- 
 tioned. I like to close with this incident, because, 
 you know, in the pictures of the good men and 
 women who have been canonized, they are repre- 
 sented with some emblem, — a book or a wheel or 
 a cross or a sword, as an attribute. David Scott, 
 the Edinburgh painter, has this one merit in that 
 wooden picture that he made of my father, in that 
 he recognized that my father stood for Hope, and he 
 put the rainbow in the background — the symbol of 
 
SPEECH OF EDWAED WALDO EMERSON 127 
 
 hope. Mr. Emerson, finding everything good in 
 Concord, and near at hand in his home, wrote this : — 
 
 " The sun athwart the cloud thought it no sin 
 To use my land to put his rainbow in." 
 
 The evening closed with the "Concord Hymn" 
 sung to the tune of "Old Hundred," in which all 
 present were asked to join. 
 
128 THE EMERSON CENTENARY 
 
 CONCORD HYMN : 
 
 SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE BATTLE MONUMENT, 
 APRIL 19, 1836. 
 
 By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
 Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 
 
 Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
 And fired the shot heard round the world. 
 
 The foe long since in silence slept ; 
 
 Alike the conqueror silent sleeps ; 
 And Time the ruined bridge has swept 
 
 Down the dkrk stream which seaward creeps. 
 
 On this green bank, by this soft stream. 
 
 We set to-day a votive stone ; 
 That memory may their deed redeem, 
 
 When, like our sires, our sons are gone. 
 
 Spirit, that made those heroes dare 
 To die, and leave their children free, 
 
 Bid Time and Nature gently spare 
 The shaft we raise to them and thee. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Professor George Adam Smith of Glasgow, who was 
 unexpectedly prevented from attending the dinner of the 
 Social Circle, writes, under date of May 23, 1903 : — 
 
 " I had hoped to get to Concord to represent my coun- 
 try at the great memorial of one as highly honoured with 
 us as with you. ... I enclose the letter from Scottish 
 (and a few English) admirers of Mr. Emerson. The 
 number could easily have been quadrupled." 
 
 In sending his signature to the letter mentioned by Pro- 
 fessor Smith, Sir Leslie Stephen wrote to Mr. Campbell : 
 
 " I should be proud to think that any value could be 
 attached to my expression of respect and admiration for 
 Emerson. No man of his time, I think, had a loftier or 
 purer character, or did more to raise the intellectual level 
 of his contemporaries. ... I can never read his writings 
 without being, for the time at least, a better man." 
 
 Among the letters referred to by the Chairman were 
 
 the following : — 
 
 Kbvue DBS Deux Mondes, 
 Cabinet du Dikectbur 15, Rub de l'Univebsite, 
 
 LuNDi ET Vendredi Pabis, le 2 Mai 1903. 
 
 de 3 1 5 HEURES. 
 
 M. F. Brunetiere serait heureux, tant en son nom per- 
 sonnel que comme directeur de la Revue des Deux Mondes 
 
132 APPENDIX 
 
 si les circonstances lui avaient permis de prendre part au 
 Banquet que le Social Circle de Concord va c^l^brer en 
 I'honneur du grand penseur Amdricain: Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson. 
 
 Mais s'il est priv^ du plaisir d'y assister il tient h. t&- 
 moigner de son admiration pour celui qui sera le hdros de 
 cette fete et il prie M. le President Keyes de vouloir bien 
 etre I'interpr^te de ses sentiments. 
 
 30 Hyde Park Gate, London. 
 April 30, 1903. 
 
 Dr. Stanton Coit begs to thank the Social Circle in Con- 
 cord for their kind invitation to the banquet on May 25th. 
 He regrets that he cannot be present, but although so far 
 away he is doing what he can to celebrate the anniversary 
 of Emerson's birthday. A special service will be held on 
 Sunday, May 24, at the West London Ethical Society in 
 memory of Emerson when Dr. Coit will deliver a com- 
 memoration address on Emerson. 
 
 John S. Keyes, Esq. 
 
 4 Lavebockbanb: Road, Edinbubgh. 
 May 8, 1903. 
 John S. Keyes, Esq. 
 
 Dear Sir: — I beg to thank you, and through you 
 the " Social Circle of Concord," for the great honour done 
 me in inviting me to the banquet on the centenary of Mr. 
 Emerson's birthday. I am only sad that as an octogena- 
 rian, I am now too old to undertake all that my attendance 
 in Concord would mean. 
 
 I know not that I ever met on earth a man of the no- 
 bility of Emerson : it was a moral exaltation simply to 
 have seen him. That I did see him has been one of the 
 
APPENDIX 133 
 
 calms of my life : reverence and love always accompany 
 my memory of the evening I spent with him. 
 
 It will always be a joy to know that I was associated 
 with those five hundred Glasgow University Student Voices 
 which Mr. Emerson himself spoke of as his "Fairest 
 Laurel." 
 
 I do hope you and the Circle will readily sympathize 
 with me in my sorrow not to be present on such a memor- 
 able occasion of the honouring of Emerson. 
 
 Wishing you and the Circle the full joy of success on 
 that auspicious May twenty-fifth, I am, 
 Most respectfully. 
 
 Yours and theirs, 
 
 James Hutchison Stirling. 
 
 30 Newbattle Tekkace, Edinbubgh. 
 14 May, 1903. 
 
 Dear Sir : — I have to thank you very heartily for 
 your kind invitation to the banquet which the " Social 
 Circle in Concord " are to give on the 25th inst., in honour 
 of Emerson's centenary. 
 
 It is a real pleasure to me to hear of this banquet in 
 memory of my Uncle's much loved and highly appreciated 
 friend ; and it is with deep regret that I have to decline 
 the invitation to be present, so kindly tendered me, on the 
 grounds of distance from Concord and my many engage- 
 ments. But tho' absent in body, I shall be with you in 
 spirit on the memorable twenty-fifth of May, and heartily 
 wish success to the celebration. 
 
 With many thanks and kind wishes, 
 
 1 am, yours sincerely, 
 
 Alex. Carlyle. 
 John S. Keyes, Esq., 
 
 Concord, U. S. A. 
 
134 APPENDIX 
 
 Balliol College, 
 May 3, 1903. 
 
 Dear Sir : — Will you express to the members of the 
 Social Circle of Concord my great regret that I cannot ac- 
 cept theii' kind invitation. Emerson teaches us not to lay 
 too much weight on the conditions of time and space, but 
 they sometimes come in one's way in the details of prac- 
 tice. I heartily sympathize with you in doing honour to 
 one who has done so much to elevate the tone of literature 
 and to encourage ideal ways of thinking among all Eng- 
 lish speaking people. 
 
 I am much obliged to the Social Circle for the kindness 
 of this invitation. I am, 
 
 Very respectfully, 
 
 E. Caird. 
 
 House of Commons, 
 May 7, 1903. 
 
 Dear Sir : — Permit me to thank the members of the 
 Social Circle in Concord for their very kind invitation to 
 be present at the banquet to be held on the hundredth 
 anniversary of the birth of the most illustrious citizen of 
 Concord, and to express my sincere regret that it is impos- 
 sible for me to leave England at present, and have the 
 pleasure of attending this celebration. I had the honour 
 and pleasure of knowing Mr. Emerson, and retain the 
 most vivid recollection of the charm of his manner and 
 conversation. No life and no character better deserves 
 to be commemorated by the people of New England than 
 his does. Believe me. 
 
 Very faithfully yours, 
 
 James Brtce. 
 
 Chairman of the Committee. 
 
APPENDIX 135 
 
 University cbf Edinburgh, 
 May 19, 1903. 
 
 Dear Sir : — I must apologize for the delay in reply- 
 ing to your most kind invitation to the banquet of the 
 " Social Circle in Concord '* on May twenty-fifth, the an- 
 niversary of the birthday of its most distinguished mem- 
 ber, Kalph Waldo Emerson. The delay was caused by 
 my absence on the continent, my letters not being for- 
 warded. 
 
 It would have given me the greatest pleasure, had it 
 been possible, to be present at your banquet in the flesh, 
 as I shall certainly be in the spirit, on Monday night. 
 The spell of Emerson's home does not lose its power as 
 the years go by, and I have myself had the great pleasure 
 of visiting the scenes round which his memory clings, and 
 others in your beautiful Concord. 
 
 May I ask you to be so kind as to convey to the other 
 members of your " Social Circle " my regrets that I can- 
 not avail myself of the invitation with which you have 
 honoured me. 
 
 Believe me, 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 James Seth. 
 John S. Keyes, Esq., 
 Concord, Mass. 
 
 Palermo, 
 5 Maggio, 1903. 
 
 Ill"^°. Sig'^. Presidente : — Dolente di non potere assis- 
 tere al simposio che cotesto Circolo Sociale terra in onore 
 del grande idealista Ralph Waldo Emerson nel centesimo 
 anniversario della sua nascita, prego Lei Signor John S. 
 Keyes di volermi rappresentare in tale fausta ricorrenza 
 
136 APPENDIX 
 
 e di voler porgere ai socii tutti di cotesto nobile Sodalizio 
 il mio afEettuoso saluto nel nome dell' immortale pensatore, 
 le cui opere sono il mio vademecum e il porto nel quale is 
 raccoglie il mio spirito sconf ortato dallo scetticismo in- 
 vadente. 
 
 Le stringo fraternamente la mano 
 n suo devotissimo, 
 
 Andrea Lo Forte Randi. 
 
 In addition to the foregoing letters, formal expressions 
 of regret for their inability to be present were received 
 from the following : — 
 
 Giosub Carducci, Bologna. 
 
 Professor A. V. Dicey, All Souls College, Oxford. 
 
 Shadworth H. Hodgson, London. 
 
 Rudyard Kipling, Sussex, England. 
 
 Sir Frederick Pollock, London. 
 
 Herbert Spencer, Brighton, England. 
 
 Bernard Bosanquet, Oxshott, Surrey, England. 
 
THE SOCIAL CIRCLE IN CONCORD 
 
 MAY, 1903 
 
 John Shepabd Kbtes 
 Julius Michael Smith 
 Henry Francis Smith 
 Edward Waldo Emerson 
 William Henry Hunt 
 David Goodwin Lang 
 Alfred Munroe 
 Prescott Keyes 
 Woodward Hudson 
 EicHARD Fay Barrett 
 Edward Jarvis Bartlett 
 Charles Edward Brown 
 William Henry Brown 
 
 Henry Dingley Coolidge 
 
 William Lorenzo Eaton 
 
 John Leach Gilmore 
 
 Samuel Hoar 
 
 George Eugeitb Titcomb 
 
 William Wheeler 
 
 LoREN Benjamin Macdonald 
 
 Stedman Buttrick 
 
 Harvey Wheeler 
 
 Francis Augustine Houston 
 
 Thomas Holms 
 
 Russell Robb 
 
 Frederic Alcott Pratt 
 
 Adams Tolman 
 
 CENTENARY COMMITTEES 
 
 Executive 
 
 Samuel Hoab 
 • LoREN Benjamin Macdonald Thomas Hollis 
 William Lorenzo Eaton Edward Jarvis Bartlett 
 
 On the Dinner 
 
 John Shepard Keyes 
 John Leach Gilmore Richard Fay Barrett 
 
 Charles Edward Brown Woodward Hudson 
 
 On Publication 
 
 Frederic Alcott Pratt 
 William Lorenzo Eaton 
 
 Woodward Hudson 
 
1 
 
 AUG 31 1003 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 012 073 149 A 
 
 
 KHrjSy.l'.nt' ;