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THE PERSONALITY OF EMERSON 
 

THE PERSONALITY OF 
 E M E K S O N 
 
 BY F. B. SANBORN 
 
 BOSTON 
 CHARLES E. GOODSPEED 
 
 1903 
 
Copyright, 1903, by F. B. Sanborn 
 
 THt L:BRAKY of 
 T»»c Copiui rtec«iv«n 
 
 WAY. 15 r^03 j 
 
 j COPY tt. . ] 
 
 
 D. B. Updike, The Merryniouiit Press, Boston 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 Having determined to write a series of volumes 
 describing the personal ti^aits of four distin- 
 guished authors whom I intimately knew, — Km- 
 erson, Thoreau, Ellery Channing, and Bronson 
 Alcott, — / offer this volume as the second. So 
 close were the relations of these friends, that men- 
 tion of all is naturally made in each hook, involv- 
 ing some rejjetitio?!. Frovi these books, illustrated 
 with portraits, a good concejition is had of tJie 
 Concord school of poets and philosophers, who 
 
 were so distinctly original. 
 I 
 I A part of the plan was to give in each hook the 
 
 I best portrait, with a facsimile of manuscript. The 
 
 i portrait of Thoreau did not appear in " The 
 
 I Personality of Thoreau^' hut was reserved for 
 
 I Channing s life. Kmersons portrait here given 
 
 was painted hy David Scott at Edinburgh in 
 
 1848, but reached America thirty years later, and 
 
 j was never well engraved before. In some respects 
 
 it is the best of many porti'aits. 
 
 F. B. S. 
 
 Concord, February 11-, 1903. 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF EMERSON 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 E 31 E R S O N 
 
 In writing of my comparatively short acquaint- 
 ance with Henry Thoreau, I was easily able to re- 
 call the circumstances under which I first became 
 acquainted, not only with his person, but with his 
 mind. It was not so in my relations with Emer- 
 son; for so early did I begin to read his writings, 
 that I can hardly remember when I did not know 
 them, at least superficially. A natural affinity for 
 the school of thought which he most clearly rep- 
 resented, and something akin to his intuitions in 
 my own way of viewing personal and social mat- 
 ters, brought me into relations with him long be- 
 fore I ever saw him, or heard that thrilling voice 
 which few who had listened to its deeper tone 
 could ever forget. I was indeed as much younger 
 than Emerson as Persius was younger than his 
 revered Stoic philosopher, Cornutus; but I could 
 have said, and often did say to myself, after be- 
 coming intimate with the Concord philosopher, 
 
 [ 1 ] 
 
Tuv. rKusoNAi.rrv ov 
 
 what vouui;' Pcrsius proclaimed in lasting Latin 
 verse : - 
 
 •* .Vfwvio qiuxl iTrt(' <>V. qtuMi tw tibi teitipt'mt Ofttnitu." 
 'T was suro sJoino star attunod luy tato to thine. 
 
 I must have begun to read Kmerson before six- 
 teen; tor in my sixteenth year 1 remember perus- 
 ing' ^vith indignation Franeis ln">\ven*s review ot^ 
 the l\h'nis, which eame out in the Xorfh ^l/ncri- 
 Cii'i lii'vir:*.' for 1S47: and it was soon atter that 
 1 tirst made Carlyle's acquaintance in his early 
 book. Siirtor Ixcsarfus. The second edition of Em- 
 erson's \iifi//-c came in 184l>, when I was seven- 
 teen: and at eiiihteen 1 had read the J\ssiii/s. and 
 the remarkable biographical criticism of Plato, 
 Shakespeare. Montaigne, and Napoleon in Ixcp- 
 ristvifafiic ^^cn. l>ut the little town where 1 was 
 born and spent all these earliest years, with the 
 exception of a few weeks at Boston in 18 to. 
 though abounding in good books and inspiring 
 teachei"s. hardly cn er attracted a lecturer of more 
 than local repute: and Kxeter. its market-town 
 and seat of learning, had no inclination to invite 
 Transeendentalists to its "Lyceum.'* 1 remember 
 
EMERSON 
 in my nineteenth year, as I was reading Greek 
 with Professor Hoyt of the Exeter Academy, he 
 related to me how his classmates at Dartmouth 
 invited Emerson in 18*38 to give them that grand 
 discourse on lAtei^ary Etfdcs which was one of 
 the first of his orations I had read, how few under- 
 stood it, and how Emerson repelled the proposal 
 of reporting it. "I curse the Reporters," said the 
 gentle sage, — "I curse them"; so, at least, my old 
 teacher reported that Emerson at Hanover had 
 said to him. 15ut when, many years after, I cited 
 this remark to Emerson, he could not believe he 
 had made it. But his opinion was so constant, — 
 that the casual reporter is sure to misunderstand 
 and misrcport, — and he had suffered so often 
 therefrom, that I never really doubted the exact 
 memory of Professor Hoyt. Singularly enough, 
 Emerson disliked even the exact reporter, though 
 for a different reason, of course. He was almost 
 morbidly sensitive about repeating his essays to 
 those who had read them in full; thinking it de- 
 prived him of their fresh attention, and lost them 
 the interest of surprise, on which his rhetoric so 
 
 [3 ] 
 
riii: ri: USC1N A i.rrv ov 
 
 hirgoly dopoiulcd at the tirst lu\irino-. In the last 
 decade ot' his hte he o-ave in Coneord that essay 
 on J\/o(/uc/u't' Nvhieh eanie out shortly before his 
 death, in the volume ealled Lcttrrs a>ul Social 
 -7/W, — a title that o"aN e hin\ nuieh trouble, like 
 the definition of •'eivili/ation.'" It was new to n\e, 
 in February, 1S7.'>. and I knew it would be pleas- 
 ing to readers of the Sprin^fichl lirpui'Iicu/i. I 
 therefore took full notes, and spent the next day 
 or two in looking;; up the orators he had quoteil. — 
 l.atavette. John Quiney Adams, and Canning-. — 
 and was tortunate enouixh to tind the very pai::e 
 from whieh he had eopied a remarkable address 
 of l.atavette to the Chamber o{ Deputies ^.lune 
 •Jl. 1S1.>\ in whieh he threw down the gauntlet 
 to Napoleon. 
 
 As Kmei-son, for some reason, omitted it from 
 his volume, and it may be unknown to my 
 readers. I will ipiote it as Kmei-son read it to us 
 at the Coneord ••l.yeeum"": — 
 
 ••Napoleon, returning from Elba, was obliged 
 to summon a Chamber of Deputies, and among 
 them eame Lafayette. A\'hen Napoleon eame baek 
 
EMERSON 
 fiom Waterloo to Paris, he resolved to abolish 
 this Assembly. Lafayette heard of it. In the first 
 session afterward he ascended the tribune with- 
 out delay, and said: 'When for the first time in 
 many years I raise in this Chamber a voice which 
 the Jriends of free institutions will ixcognizCy I 
 feel myself called upon, Gentlemen, to address 
 you respecting the dangers of the country, which 
 you alone are now able to save. Sinister reports 
 have been spread abroad ; they are now unhappily 
 confirmed. The moment has arrived for rallying 
 around the old tri-colored standard of 1789, — 
 the standard of liberty, equality, and public or- 
 der. Permit, Gentlemen, a veteran in this sacred 
 cause, one who was ever a stranger to the spirit of 
 faction, to submit to you some resolutions, — the 
 necessity of which, I trust, you will feel as I do. 
 Let this Assembly declare itself in permanent 
 session ; let it send for the ministers of State, and 
 require of them a report on the present aspect 
 of affairs.' The Assembly voted as Lafayette had 
 proposed. Then Lucien 15onaparte, who was a 
 deputy, rose in his place, bowed to Lafayette with 
 
 [5] 
 
riii: rEUSDNAi.irv of 
 
 protbuiul respect, and lett the liall. In two honrs 
 Xapoleon sent in his abdieation," 
 
 But to n\y story. \\'hen this report appeared, 
 five days atter. in my newspaper, Eniei-son saw it 
 and was grieved. He met me in the street and 
 said, •'You slunild not iiave reported mv cpiota- 
 tions. Dog nuist not eat dog." I exphiined my rea- 
 sons; but they did not eonvinee Ihm: he wislied 
 to use tliat lecture again, and thought this report 
 hindered him. 
 
 It was not till 1 entered Harvard College, in 
 the sunnner o( \S'y2. that 1 liad oppcn-tunities 
 of heariniT and meeting Kmerson. I hail heard 
 Theodore Parker in the year before: but in .\pril, 
 1851, when I visited Hoston for the second time, 
 and Concord for the tirst time, Kmerson was not 
 making public addresses, in the week or ten days 
 at my disposal; and though 1 passed his house, 
 whose door stood invitingly open (his daughter 
 Ellen descending the stairway, remindino- me of 
 some angel in Allston's Jacob's JJrcam), I had 
 not then the courage to call on him. I did so for 
 the hrst time in .hily. 1853. after hearing him 
 
 [ (^ J 
 
1 : M E R S O N 
 lecture occasioMjilly, and after meeting Alcott, 
 Parker, Mrs. Cheney, and others of his friends. I 
 had walked up from Cambridge to Concord over 
 the Turnj)ike, on my way to visit Henry Shaw, a 
 former schoolmate, in Sudbury. Reaching Emer- 
 son's house, at the corner where the Cambridge 
 Turnpike debouches into the I^exington road 
 (now JNIassachusetts Avenue), about eleven in 
 the morning, I rang the bell and was shown at 
 once into the study, where Emerson sat in his 
 accustomed chair, facing the Fates of IMichel 
 Anirelo over the mantel. He was either reading 
 or writing, as his morning habit was. I had no 
 letter of introduction, but perhaps used the name 
 of some mutual friend, Alcott or Parker; was 
 received graciously, and questioned about the 
 young men in College, where I had just ended 
 my Sophomore year, with some small tokens of 
 distinction among classmates, — a Society Poem, 
 or something of the kind. I observed that, after 
 giving me one of those gently piercing glances 
 which took in so much of the character of his 
 visitors, he did not look directly at me in ques- 
 
 [T ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 
 tioning or replying; but gazed at one side, as if 
 withdrawing his mind from persons to ideas. 
 What I remember best of his remarks is his hop- 
 ing to see a "good crop of mystics at Harvard," 
 — the last place in which many of that class were 
 to be found, or had been, for some years. 
 
 Emerson w^as then in the vigor of middle age, 
 just turned of fifty, in good health and fine color, 
 with abundant dark brown hair, no beard, but a 
 slight whisker on each cheek, and plainly dressed. 
 His form was never other than slender, after I 
 knew him, and his shoulders, like Thoreau's, had 
 that peculiar slope which had attracted notice in 
 England, where the New England type of Anglo- 
 Norman was not so well known as it has since 
 become. His striking features were the noble 
 brow, from which the hair was carelessly thrown 
 back, though not long, and the mild and penetrat- 
 ing blue eye, smiling, in its social mood, in the 
 most friendly manner, but capable, on rare occa- 
 sions, of much severity. The portrait by David 
 Scott, painted at Edinburgh five years before, 
 erred by giving him a complexion and an eye too 
 
 [8] 
 
EMERSON 
 dark; but in its general expression was then al- 
 most perfect; and five years later, in 1858, Rowse 
 drew and threw aside an unfinished head which 
 best preserves the noble serenity of his gaze. 
 
 From the date of this visit, although at first I 
 saw Emerson but seldom, I felt at ease in his 
 company, except in those moments which all his 
 intimates experienced (and some of them bitterly 
 lamented and complained of), when he seemed 
 to be removed to an infinite distance from human 
 companionship, and hardly to recognize the pres- 
 ence of those with whom he seemed to be con- 
 versing. This trait, or circumstance,^ for it must 
 have been a part of his fate, rather than an ele- 
 ment in his disposition, which was eminently so- 
 cial and friendly, — I was wont to explain by his 
 superiority of nature, which of necessity isolated 
 him from those around him, until by the force of 
 will and generosity he brought himself within the 
 daily round of common thoughts and cares, in 
 which he did not naturally belong. His was the 
 higher poetic nature, to which the phenomenal 
 world presents itself as a phantasm rather than a 
 
 [9 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 
 fact, and from which the daily events and com- 
 panionships of Hfe seem strangely averse and re- 
 mote. The ecstasies and profundities of religious 
 and philosophic meditation are akin to this poetic 
 exaltation; and all were mingled and exemplified 
 in some of those experiences which Emerson has 
 himself narrated, and which appeared also in the 
 solitary and thoughtful spiritual life of his eccen- 
 tri'c aunt, JNIary JNIoody Emerson. To her, as he 
 was wont to say, he was much indebted for his 
 early induction into the graver paths of self-cul- 
 ture. The typical passage on this matter in Em- 
 erson's books is that which occurs so early in the 
 first one, his philosophic abridgment called JVa- 
 tu?%', where he says of himself: "All mean egotism 
 vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am 
 nothing, I see all; the currents of the Universal 
 Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel 
 of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds 
 then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to 
 be acquaintances, — master or servant, is then a 
 trifle and a disturbance." 
 
 This abstraction and aloofness of mind, if its 
 [10 j 
 
EMERSON 
 powers are once turned toward human things, 
 gives extreme clearness of vision and apprecia- 
 tion. Emerson said of himself, "I have the fatal 
 gift of perception"; and those who saw much of 
 him soon learned to understand this, without al- 
 ways knowing from what quality in his nature 
 so remarkable a gift proceeded. Simplicity had 
 something to do with it, and the poetic eye 
 much more. George Chapman, himself a poet 
 of no mean order, in dedicating his version of 
 Homer to Lord Howard of Walden, said well 
 of Poesy, personified: — 
 
 ''Virtue, in all things else at best, she betters. 
 
 Honor she heightens, and gives life in death; 
 She is the ornament and soul of letters; 
 
 The world's deceit before her vanisheth : 
 Simple she is as doves, like serpents wise, 
 
 Sharp, grave and sacred ; nought but things divine 
 And things divining fit her faculties, — 
 
 Accepting her as she is genuine." 
 
 This saying could hardly be applied in literal 
 strictness to any man; but it came near to the 
 higher moods of Emerson. He had also a prac- 
 tical side, which often puzzled those who expected 
 
 [n ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 to find him all sage or all poet, and perceived in- 
 stead an unusual versatility or even worldliness. 
 This is said to have been less noticeable before 
 his second visit to England in 1847-48, which was 
 some years earlier than I saw him; it was recog- 
 nized, however, by Low^ell in his clever portrayal 
 of Emerson in the F able for Critics, which first 
 appeared in 1848: — 
 
 ''A Greek head on rii^ht Vankee shoulders, whose ran^e 
 Has Olympus for one pole, for t'other the Exchange; 
 A I'lotinus-Montaigne, where the Egyptian's gold mist 
 And the Gascon's shrewd wit cheek-by-jowl coexist; 
 He sits in a mystery calm and intense^ 
 And looks coolly around him with sharp common-sense." 
 
 When I first knew him, in the years 1858-56, 
 the long conflict over the questions of American 
 slavery was shaping itself for final decision by 
 the ordeal of battle; and Emerson had taken his 
 public attitude on it some ten years earlier, — a 
 fact which for a time escaped the notice of his 
 friend and correspondent Carlyle, who was inclin- 
 ing to the support of negro slavery, from his con- 
 tempt for the African, and his worship of force. 
 
 [ 12 ] 
 
EMERSON 
 It was about this time, say in 1854, when I had 
 become a frequent visitor at Theodore Parker's 
 hospitable house in Exeter Place, Boston, that he 
 told me the story of his own colloquy with Car- 
 lyle on this point, in the Chelsea house, in 1843, 
 at an evening conversation when Doctor John 
 Carlyle was present, and several contemporaries 
 were discussed. Parker found the two Carlyles sit- 
 ting round the open fire, where on the hob was the 
 kettle heating for the Scotch beverage of whiskey 
 punch. At first, literature w^as the theme, and 
 Tennyson, then just rising into note as a poet, 
 though he had been long known to Emerson, in 
 the early edition of 1833, which, bound in red 
 morocco, used to lie on Emerson's table. Parker, 
 who was not so good a judge of poets as of theo- 
 logues, began to give Carlyle his notion of Ten- 
 nyson, as an exquisite who arrayed himself for 
 writing verse in a silk-lined dressing-gown, and, 
 seated at an inlaid table, with a gold-tipped quill, 
 would indite verses on satin paper, like "Airy, 
 fairy Lilian" or Claribcl. Carlyle laughed loud at 
 the picture. "Ow, that's not so at all, — Alfred 
 
 [ 13] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 comes here and drinks his toddy and smokes his 
 pipe Uke the rest of us ; he 's no dandy nor milk- 
 sop." America then coming up for consideration, 
 Carlyle began to rail against "Quashee" and the 
 Abolitionists, whose cause Parker championed, of 
 course. But Carlyle said, "Your neighbor Emer- 
 son's no Abolitionist; he thinks about these things 
 much as I do." "On the contrary," said Parker, 
 "he no longer withdraws from association with 
 active reformers, like Garrison, but is outspok- 
 en against negro slavery." Carlyle could hardly 
 believe it. "But," said Parker to me, "when I 
 reached home in 1844, and Emerson had printed 
 that trenchant address on JFest India Emancipa- 
 tion, which Mrs. Brooks, Mrs. Emerson, and the 
 Thoreaus made an occasion for him to give in 
 Concord (August 1, 1844), I had the satisfaction 
 of sending the pamphlet to Carlyle at Chelsea." 
 It contained this passage, among others, which 
 indicates how the slave question addressed itself 
 to Emerson when I first knew him: — 
 
 "As I have walked in these pastures and along 
 the edge of woods, I could not keep my imagina- 
 
 [ 1^ ] 
 
EMERSON 
 tion on agreeable figures, for other images that 
 intruded on me. I could not see the great vision 
 of the patriots and senators who have adopted the 
 slave's cause, — they turned their backs on me. 
 No: I see other pictures, — of mean men: I see 
 very poor, very ill-clothed, very ignorant men, not 
 surrounded by happy friends, — to be plain, poor 
 black men of obscure employment as mariners, 
 cooks or stewards in ships, yet citizens of this 
 our Commonwealth, — freeborn as we, whom the 
 slave-laws of South Carolina have arrested in ves- 
 sels, and shut up in jails. This man, these men, 
 these men I see, and no law to save them. . . . 
 Gentlemen, I thought the deck of a Massachu- 
 setts ship was as much the territory" of Massachu- 
 setts as the floor on which we stand. It should be 
 as sacred as the temple of God. If such a dam- 
 nable outrage can be committed on the person of 
 a citizen with impunity, let the Governor break 
 the broad seal of the State; he bears the sword 
 in vain." 
 
 No doubt Emerson was thinking of the crest 
 and legend on the State seal of our State, — the 
 
 [ 1.5 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 arm with uplifted sword grasped in a firm hand, 
 picturing the first half-fine of Algernon Sidney's 
 inscription in the table-book of the King of Den- 
 mark, — while the legend gave the other line, 
 promising freedom to all who might come under 
 our flag: — 
 
 "Maims hcec, inimica tyrannis, 
 Ense petit pkicidam suh libertate quietem." 
 
 This device and motto, selected by John Adams, 
 who framed our first State Constitution, and pre- 
 sided at its revision, forty years after, I once 
 translated thus: — 
 
 This hand, the tyrant's foe^ 
 Seeks peace, through freedom, with a manly blow. 
 
 Emerson had a great admiration for both the 
 Adamses, John and John Quincy; he once told 
 me that John Adams was in his view the great- 
 est of the Revolutionary patriots, — superior to 
 Franklin or Jefferson, and, though not Washing- 
 ton's equal in moral qualities or military talent, 
 a far better writer. Washington, he said, was a 
 heavy writer, and against Jefferson he had re- 
 tained some of the prejudices of the Boston Fed- 
 
 [ 16] 
 
EMERSON 
 eralists, in which he had grown up. His brother 
 Edward, who died early in Porto Rico, was tu- 
 tor of some of the elder Adams's grandsons, and 
 Waldo Emerson liked to relate the visit the two 
 brothers made to the old statesman at Quincy ; he 
 read it to me from his journal of February, 1825, 
 before he included it in his essay on Old Age. 
 They found the old President in his easy-chair, 
 calmly awaiting the death that found him there 
 the next year. When they asked him about his 
 son, who had just been chosen President, he 
 praised the political prudence of John Quincy 
 Adams, but said, " I shall never see him again ; he 
 will not come to Quincy but to my funeral; it 
 would be a great satisfaction to me to see him, 
 but I don't wish him to come on my account." 
 He lived to see his son more than once, though 
 ninety years old in 1825. When I related to Em- 
 erson a story of Adams in his old age, whicli I had 
 from Theodore Parker, and he from Reverend 
 Doctor Gray of Roxbury, he refused to believe it, 
 such was his veneration for John Adams; though 
 the anecdote was quite in keeping with his well- 
 
 [IT J 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 known irascibility. Doctor Gray was invited to 
 dine with the ex-President at the house of a pa- 
 rishioner, and, as JNIr. Adams was leaving early, 
 the Doctor stepped into the hall to help him on 
 with his overcoat. Then ensued this colloquy: — 
 Adams. I thank you, Doctor Gray, for your po- 
 lite attention. 
 
 Gray. Do not mention it, Mr. Adams; no at- 
 tention is too great, no trouble is too much, that 
 we of this century have the privilege of taking 
 for the patriots of the Revolution, — for General 
 Washington and yourself. Sir. 
 Adams. Do not name Washington to me, Sir! 
 Washington was a dolt! 
 
 "No," said Emerson, "I cannot believe that 
 story;" nor would he, when I gave him my au- 
 thority. He loved also to cite the eloquence of 
 John Quincy Adams, which he has described in 
 one of his essays. Indeed, he was a follower of 
 eloquent men, and once told me that he reported 
 a great speech of Harrison Gray Otis, then reck- 
 oned Boston's chief orator, and was complimented 
 by Otis on his accuracy. He had in truth a re- 
 
 [ 18] 
 
EMERSON 
 markable verbal memory, as all poets should have; 
 since much of their easy writing of verse depends 
 upon it. 
 
 Quincy Adams was dead and gone before I 
 ever saw Emerson ; so was Webster before I ever 
 conversed with him; but Emerson liked to com- 
 memorate those earlier days, before Webster made 
 his gran rifiuto, in 1850, and went to his grave 
 in 1852 under the heavy censure of the best sen- 
 timent in Massachusetts. It was to Emerson that 
 Carlyle in 1839 wrote his remarkable word-por- 
 trait of Webster in England, which the Concord 
 friend allowed Webster's biographers to copy, and 
 which disclosed the unhandsome as well as the 
 glorious features of his character. In 1845, when 
 Webster and Choate came to Concord for a week, 
 to defend the fraudulent bank officer (against 
 whose offence there was then no countervailing 
 law), and got him acquitted, Mrs. Emerson, who 
 remembered Webster in black dress-coat and 
 small-clothes at the Plymouth Pilgrim festival of 
 1820, where he made one of his noblest orations, 
 gave a reception for Webster and the gentlemen 
 
 [ 19 J 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 
 of the Middlesex Bar, of which the leader was 
 then Samuel Hoar of Concord, father of Senator 
 Hoar. Edward Emerson, before his health gave 
 way, and he went to the West Indies in tlie lu^pe 
 of restoration, had been the tutor of AVebster's 
 sons, and had studied law in the great man's Bos- 
 ton office. But the flaw in the metal of \\\4)ster 
 did not escape the piercing insight of Emerson, 
 long before he betrayed his trust on the slavery 
 question. He told me one or two anecdotes of 
 Webster's chronic insensibility to the demands 
 of hc^nor where money was concerned, — one of 
 them dating back before 1830; and when the 
 March speech of 1850 came to shatter the hopes 
 of Webster's anti-slavery friends, whom he should 
 have led instead of deserting, Emerson ^^Tote in 
 his journal: — 
 
 ">A'liy did all manly gifts in ^Vebster fiiil? 
 Ho wrote on Nature's noblest brow, Foh Sai^." 
 
 He also, just before I made his personal acquaint- 
 ance, gave a public address, at Cambridge and 
 elsewhere, in which he portrayed the scope of 
 Webster's mind, antl the lack of moral greatness 
 
 [ -^0 ] 
 
EMERSON 
 
 in the man so grandly endowed; but he would 
 never publish it, and it has never appeared in full. 
 Of W^ildo Emerson's brothers, to whom he 
 was most tenderly attached, I saw only \Mlliam, 
 the eldest, and Bulkeley, the "innocent," — who, 
 though a bright and capable child up to the age 
 of ten or twelve, then liad his mental growth 
 arrested by sc^me severe malady, and continued 
 through a long life to be dependent on others 
 for his care and comfort. AVhile I knew him, he 
 resided in Littleton, a few miles west of Con- 
 cord, adjoining Harvard, where his father, Rev- 
 erend William Emerson, had his first parish, and 
 where many of the descendants of Reverend 
 Peter Bulkeley, the founder of Concord in 1635, 
 were then living. William Emerson was a lawyer 
 of success in New York City, with a house on 
 Staten Island before I knew him, in which Tho- 
 reau lived for a time in 1843, as the tutor of his 
 three sons, and where EUery Channing, during his 
 short residence in New York as one of the editors 
 of the Tribune, under Horace Greeley, used to 
 visit. I soon met William Emerson at his brother's 
 
 [ 21 ] 
 
T H E r K U S N A L I T V O F 
 
 luniso in Concord, and wlien I first visited Now 
 York, in tlic spring" ot" 18,)(». I dined at his citv 
 house, anil heard tVoni liini the story of his in- 
 terview witli Cioethe in 18l\"). or about that time. 
 Kmerson liad early told n\e of tliis. and that, 
 "svlien the young* .Vnieriean. who was destined for 
 the pulpit, like his ancestors for many oenera- 
 tions. laid before the Cicrman sage his religious 
 doubts, and sought counsel whether lie should 
 preach or not. Cioethe advised him to swallow his 
 scruples and preach. The conscientious Christian 
 could not do this; he returned to his mother's 
 Koxbury lu>me in October, lS-5. and saddened 
 her by giving up his purpose of entering the min- 
 istry, beginning the study of law soon after. He 
 was a faithful, court ei>us. but slightly formal i>-en- 
 tleman, well read and aifectionate. but rather anti- 
 pathetic to Thoreau and the more eccentric Tran- 
 scendentalists. 1 also knew for a few years that 
 notewcn'thy aunt oi' the Kmersons, Miss ^Nlary 
 bloody Emerson, the youngest child of Emerson's 
 grandfather, who built the C^ld Manse, where she 
 was born; and she used to say "she was in arms 
 
 [ -^^.^ ] 
 
EMERSON 
 
 at Concord Fii>ht" because her niotlier (who had 
 a brother and cousins on tlic Tory side) held her 
 up at the window to see the redcoats as they 
 marched past the Parsonage on their way to the 
 historic North Ih-idge. She was therefore more 
 than eighty when I met her at her nephew's fire- 
 side, — a small, energetic, by no means beautiful 
 person, but of singular talents and much origi- 
 nality, which had been of great service to the 
 chilihvn of iier deceased brother, as they grew up 
 under her eye. Like her nephew, she had great 
 regard for beautiful persons, — men, women, or 
 children, — and equally good esteem for original 
 persons, though they might hold opinions which 
 she abhorred. Thoreau was such a person; and 
 her interest in him, which he reciprocated, gave 
 a piquancy to their interviews, and to her com- 
 ments on him. made to me and others. She did 
 not accept Bronson Alcott in the same way, 
 though admiring his fine aspect and graceful 
 manners. AN'hcn she first heard hmi explain his 
 new system of instruction for children, which he 
 was then exemplifying in Boston, she wrote to 
 
 [ ^^^o ] 
 
r II E r E K S N A L I T V O F 
 him (October 30, 1835) thus: — 
 
 "While the form dazzled, — Avhile the speaker 
 inspired confidence, — the foundations of the — 
 the — superstructure, gilded and oolden. was in 
 depths of, — I Avill tell you plainly what, wlu-n I 
 am furnished more with terms as well as prin- 
 ciples. Xo marA el that Age is at a loss to express 
 itself about a system, theory or whatever, which 
 is proposed for Infancy. If you will l^n e the kind- 
 ness to send me a letter including the Conversa- 
 tion, and as nuu-li more as you can afford, I will, 
 if vou give leave, express myself more plainly, on 
 a eround which now seems to oive wav to mv 
 literality and common-sense philosophy. It will 
 gratifv me if vou will read a book which I left 
 for you at Front Street, 13. It is an antidote to 
 vtnn- opinions, and is modern Unitarianism of a 
 hiiiher order; and I know no one whom I wish to 
 read it more than yoin-seltV 
 
 Having administered this courtly reproof, Miss 
 INIary gave the needful sugar-plum at the close 
 of her letter: "JMr. Emerson came to welcome me 
 home; but he talked of nothing but the pleasure 
 
 [ '^^ ] 
 
EMERSON 
 of seeing you. Affectionate regards to Mrs. Al- 
 cott, and hearty wishes for your success." Three 
 years later, when the "tempest in a wash-bowl," 
 as Emerson styled it, over his Divinity Hall Ad- 
 dress of 1838 was raging, this proud and loving, 
 but controversial, aunt of his wrote to her half- 
 brother. Reverend Samuel Ripley of Waltham 
 (who had married her dearest young friend. Miss 
 Sarah Bradford), as follows: — 
 
 [No year date, but presumably 1889, — the postage six cents.] 
 
 "Belfast, 18 (Sabbath ev'g) November. 
 ''My dear Brother: 
 
 " The pleasure of hearing of yoiir clerical arrangements by the Reg- 
 " ister last week makes me write for very gladness. What time will 
 " be given you, — and how desirable to unite the sheep into onefold! 
 " A subject which I have waited since Sarah's conversation in the 
 " Vale [Old Manse^ to know about, with no little interest. And God 
 "forbid that you preach asyoti jvrite to me, when expatiating on the 
 " virtues of those whose Christian foith is broken up into the glitter- 
 " ing fragments of a corrupted philosophy and pantheistic specters! 
 " Talk of Waldo's virtues, — / know and respect theyn, — so had 
 "Spinoza and Fichte and Kant \yiriues\ And theij were and are 
 " the gifts of that Being who may be said to laugh at their chimeras. 
 " To talk of a holy life and benevolence, as you do, unless those 
 " virtues are based on the personal Infinite, is like mistaking the me- 
 
 [25] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 
 " teors of night Jhr the lamp of dat/. The constitution of man for- 
 " bids it, — histori/ pnnrs it, — and Ixcirlation nitixt he left out of 
 '' the (juestion to projesx it. It /.v true that the Jine feelings and in- 
 '- stincts mail prevail in the high and pleasant places for a time; 
 *• /)/// eren these hare reecired their charms from that dirine phi- 
 " losophy which the// are outshining. 
 
 "Xo, — the onli/ hasis of all virtue must he (so divineli/ consti- 
 " tuted is our poor nature, with all its awful capaciti/ for sin J — 
 " ///(// //•(• (//•(• capahle of loving supremelii the Infinite : and on that 
 "capaciti/ is engrafted all hencvolcnt principle: while the criterion 
 '' of virtue in its hitrhest state must ahvai/s he, that one n-oiild not 
 " sin, were the Deiti/ never to know it. But is it not to ohedience unto 
 " His moral law guiding our conscience, that we owe thi,K love of 
 "- Truth, .Justice, Benevolence, — ////•<■(• divine attrihutes? Is it not 
 " thro' a personi/ication of them in Jesus that we have heen cnlight- 
 '• ened, and the charms of these modern philosophers have heen thus 
 ''derived? J continue to desire the correspondence of Norton ami 
 " Ixiplei/, — especialli/ as I have read Furness, and with delight, at 
 " some glimpses he catches of our Master: while his theori/ is often 
 " upset hi/ facts. lie is an idealist, perhaps, and must stand some- 
 '• what tattling. And n'are's sermon I should ///c to horrow, and 
 "the F.din. Heview for Oct. ./N?.''. There is a woeful scarciti/ of 
 " hooks (modern J here. Let Waldo know of the means of sending, 
 " ififou chance to see him. And now, dear S., farewell .' preach as at 
 " Waltham ; the dai/ and the hour of Sahhath e.rcitement I remcmher 
 '' //'/'/// sad pleasure. Love to Sarah, whose hrilliant and coniprchcn- 
 " sive suhjects Lizzie [liiplci/] tells me about. 
 
 "Your ajf Sister, M. M. E. 
 
 [ 2() ] 
 
EMERSON 
 
 " Say not a word of llic contents of this to Waldo, as you 
 " would be true to me. / have alxo a letter to him Inj the same 
 "mail, and forgot to name the means of writing, etc." 
 
 It vvjis this lady who, admiring the brilhant wit 
 (3f Talleyrand, — not unlike her own, except that 
 hers was erowded with devout imaginings, — said 
 with a sigh, "I fear he is not organized for a 
 future state." Her nephew Waldo, whom she 
 trained and inspired, and whom she did not wish 
 to pain by her censures written to his Uncle llip- 
 ley, once said of her, — "Her wit was so fertile, 
 and only used to strike, that she never used it for 
 display, any more than a wasp would parade his 
 sting." He told me tliat "she was in her time the 
 best writer in Massachusetts"; and he gave this 
 parallel in a public lecture, largely made up of 
 his Aunt Mary's writings: — 
 
 "When I read Dante the other day, and his 
 paraphrases to signify with more adequateness 
 Christ or Jehovah, whom do you think I was re- 
 minded of? W^hom but Mary Emerson and her 
 elocjuent theology?" 
 
 Twenty years or so after this thrust at Al- 
 [27] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 cott's theories and her nephew's Transcendental- 
 ism, I saw her rise up in Emerson's parlor and in- 
 veigh with sudden vehemence and success against 
 what she thouglit the antinomian declarations 
 by Henry James, Senior, setting at naught the 
 moral law, and replying to Alcott and Thoreau, 
 in a set conversation, with some of his usual para- 
 doxes. It was in December, 1858, and Thoreau 
 thus sketched the scene in one of his letters to 
 Harrison Blake: — 
 
 " I met Henry James the other night at Emer- 
 son's, at an Alcottian conversation, at which, liow- 
 ever, Alcott did not talk much, being disturbed 
 by James's opposition. The latter is a hearty man 
 enough, with whom you can differ very satisfac- 
 torily, both on account of his doctrines and his 
 good temper. He utters quasi-phihmthropic dog- 
 mas in a metaphysic dress; but they are, for all 
 practical purposes, very crude. He charges society 
 with all tlie crime committed, and praises the 
 criminal for committing it. But T think that all 
 the remedies he suggests out of his head, — for he 
 goes no farther, hearty as he is, — would leave us 
 
 [28] 
 
EMERSON 
 
 about where we are now." 
 
 The question is as new and fresh to-day as it 
 was when Mary Emerson/ with her citations from 
 the Bible and Doctor Samuel Clarke, denounced 
 the smiling and much-amused James for his lax 
 notions, — clasping her hands and raising them 
 above her head, with its odd fillet of black silk, 
 worn to conceal a scar. Enthusiasm, tempered by 
 decorum, seems to have been the mark of the 
 Emerson family; for I have heard Mrs. Sarah 
 Ripley tell how, in the Boston house where the 
 clergyman's widow, assisted by Mary Emerson, 
 was feeding, clothing, and training her orphan 
 sons, Charles Chauncy Emerson, sitting in his 
 low chair near his aunt, while her caller was talk- 
 ing, would start up and interpose a remark, ex- 
 cited by the subject they were discussing, and 
 would need to be quieted by the good lady. 
 
 Of this brother Charles I have heard Emerson 
 speak, but not so much as of his older brother 
 Edward, already mentioned, the handsomest and 
 most brilliant (by report) of this noted family. 
 Doctor Holmes, in his first long poem, read at 
 
 [29] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 
 Harvard Colleoe, mentioned Charles Emerson 
 and his then reeent death, and ai»ain, in address- 
 ing the Historical Society after \\'aldo Emerson's 
 death in 18S2, he said with nuich feeling: — 
 
 "Of Charles, the youngest brother, I knew 
 something in my college days; a beautiful, high- 
 souled, pure, exquisitely delicate nature, in a 
 slight but finely wrought mortal frame. He was 
 for me the very ideal of an embodied celestial in- 
 telligence. Coming into my room one day, he took 
 up a copy of Hazlitt's British Pods, opened it to 
 the poem of Andrew INIarvell, The XijwpJi Com- 
 phiiiiiuij:; J'or the Death of her Fcncn, and read it 
 to me, with delight irradiating his expressive fea- 
 tures. I felt, as many have felt after being with 
 his brother AValdo, that I had entertained an 
 angel visitant. The Fawn of Marvell's imagina- 
 tion sur\ ives in my memory as the fitting image 
 to recall this beautiful youth; a soul glowing like 
 the rose of morning with its enthusiasm, — a char- 
 acter white as the lilies in its purity." 
 
 It must have been some three years after this 
 that Charles Emerson, visiting his grandfather's 
 
 [30] 
 
C^ ^^w), J-yj /f • f''-'^ 
 
 
 I- 
 

 
 
 

 fUir. 4)^. /^/' 
 
EMERSON 
 Old Manse before Waldo went there to write his 
 first book. Nature, wrote the accompanying letter 
 to Doctor Ripley, whose house had been the re- 
 sort of the brothers in their youth, and for whom 
 they cherished a warm affection. It will interest 
 from the rarity of his writings, of which but few 
 have been printed by his more famous brother, 
 and from the allusion made in it to the teaching 
 of Greek to girls at that early date in Concord. 
 One of the "young ladies" was doubtless INIiss 
 Elizabeth Hoar, to whom in after years Charles 
 was affianced. 
 
 This acquaintance begun with Waldo Emerson 
 in the summer of 1853 soon became intimacy. In 
 college with me, though in an earlier class, were 
 the son of his boy-companion and schoolmate, 
 the late Doctor Furness of Philadelphia, — now 
 illustrious as the Shakespearian scholar and edi- 
 tor, Doctor Horace Furness, — and his two class- 
 mates, Charles Russell Lowell, better known as 
 General Lowell, the nephew of the poet, who 
 died in Sheridan's famous fight near Winchester, 
 in 18G4, and the late .John Bancroft, elder son 
 
 [31 J 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 of Bancroft the liistoriMii. Emerson invited the 
 four of us to dine with him in Concord in May, 
 1854, and we visited the town together for that 
 purpose. The occasion was a very pleasant social 
 one; but what dwells most in my recollection, 
 from the oddity of the incident, is the fact that 
 on our way through the village to the Emerson 
 residence we found the dead walls near the old 
 tavern (Middlesex Hotel) placarded with carica- 
 tures and inscriptions derogatory to Doctor 15art- 
 lett, the good old physician who was the lead- 
 ing total-abstinence citizen, and who had been 
 prominent in a recent closure of the hotel bar, 
 where liquors were dispensed contrary to law. This 
 would not have been so noticeable, were it not 
 that among the caricatures and opprobrious words 
 was one great sheet attacking "Rev. R. W. E.," 
 who had been a supporter of Doctor Bartlett in 
 his procedure. This was the day, it seems, which 
 Doctor Edward Emerson, who succeeded Doctor 
 Bartlett for a few years as the village physician, 
 commemorates in his volume, Kmerson in Con- 
 cord, as the only instance of any incivility offered 
 
 [ 32 ] 
 
EMERSON 
 to Emerson in the town which he honored by 
 his residence for nearly half a century. Doctor 
 Emerson says: — 
 
 "It was the practice of the bar-room w'its to 
 revenge themselves for Doctor Bartlett's coura- 
 geous and sincere war upon their temple, by 
 lampooning him in doggerel verse. One morning 
 there was a sign hung out at the Middlesex stable 
 with inscription insulting to Doctor Bartlett. Mr. 
 Emerson came down to the Post Office, stopped 
 beneath the sign, read it, and did not leave the 
 spot till he had beaten it down with his cane. In 
 tlie afternoon when I went to school I remem- 
 ber my mortification at seeing a new board hang- 
 ing there, with a painting of a man with a tall 
 hat, long nose, and hooked cane raised aloft; and 
 lest the portrait might not be recognized, the 
 inscription ran, 'Rev. R. W. E. knocking down 
 the Sign.' " 
 
 As Edward Emerson was then but ten years 
 old, his memory may be a little at fault; for the 
 caricature, as I recall it, was a rough charcoal 
 sketch, and the Bartlett inscriptions, which had 
 
 [33] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OE 
 been renewed, were on pasteboard, nailed to the 
 side of the tavern stable which abutted on the 
 sidewalk across the "Mill Dam," as the short street 
 of shops was then called, because laid out over 
 what had been the village miller's grist-mill dam 
 in Revolutionary days. Of course, we college stu- 
 dents respected the village lampoon. 
 
 There had been an earlier gathering of students 
 from Cambridge in the Emerson drawing-room 
 in October, 1853, to listen to a conversation, in 
 which, I believe, Bronson Alcott was the leader, 
 as he was in May, 1854, when a similar company 
 gathered there. Of this October conversation I 
 have but a dim remembrance, having made no 
 record of it, as I did in the one following. In May, 
 185 i, while most of the party went to Concord 
 by train, four of us walked up along the Cam- 
 bridge Turnpike, and this walk and the follow- 
 ing talk I reported, a few days later, in writing 
 ]Miss Walker, then at Keene, New Hampshire, 
 who w^as as ardent an Emersonian and Platonist 
 as myself. It was on a Saturday, and the record 
 runs thus: — 
 
 [34] 
 
EMERSON 
 
 "At half-past nine in the morning we started 
 from the Colleges to walk up. It was hot at first, 
 and we went with coats and cravats off until we 
 got within two or three miles of the house of 
 'The Sage,' as Frank Barlow, who once lived in 
 Concord, calls INlr. Emerson. We walked fast, 
 through a beautiful country (Cambridge and I^ex- 
 ington mostly), on a lonely road, passing near the 
 birthplace of Theodore Parker, and beguiling the 
 way with talk. The distance is thirteen miles, and 
 we were four hours on the road. By one o'clock 
 our stomachs began to hint of dinner, and, as we 
 had not been thoughtful enough to bring any 
 luncheon, and there were no taverns since stage- 
 coaches ceased to run there, we fell to asking for 
 food at the farm-houses in Concord. Three times 
 we were refused; but at last, within sight of the 
 Emerson house, we came to an Irishman's cot- 
 tage, which had been the home of Ellery Chan- 
 ning ten years before, where the woman of the 
 house was busy painting her kitchen with her own 
 hands. We wished to be able to say, when ques- 
 tioned by Mr. Emerson, that we had dined; and 
 
 [35 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 as this was our last opportunity, we urged our re- 
 quest there; and, though it was at great incon- 
 venience to herself, the good woman (Mrs. Shan- 
 non) gave us a meal of bread and butter and milk, 
 — the milk, she told us, from the Emerson cows. 
 We ate heartily with young appetites, while she 
 was lamenting she had no better fare to offer. 
 ' I 'm shure, boys, it is dreadful that I am so all in 
 a mess here, with the paintin', — and you been 
 walkin' so far,' said she with the kindest of smiles. 
 We told her it was all we needed, — tliat we were 
 going on to JMr. Emerson's, a neighbor of hers. 
 'Ah yes! and the best neighbor I ever had he is 
 too,' — and went on to praise him in good earnest. 
 Hawthorne she remembered, two or three years 
 back, when he lived at the Wayside ; but she did 
 not speak so highly of him. Coming away, we of- 
 fered to pay her, but she refused, and when we 
 were going to give it to her little boy, he also re- 
 fused the money. We left it on the table ; where- 
 upon the lad said with as much dignity as an earl 
 could show, ' Mother, the gentleman has left some 
 money on our table, — I 'm sure I don't know what 
 it's for.' [ 36 ] 
 
EMERSON 
 "13y two o'clock we got to Mr. Emerson's — 
 past the hour set for the conversation, — and it 
 began at once, Emerson being fond of punctual- 
 ity. At first it was about Cambridge and Harvard 
 College and the choice of a profession : Could lit- 
 erature be a young man's occupation? Mr. Emer- 
 son said: 'It has formerly been the opinion that 
 literature by itself will not pay ; but it seems now 
 that this omnivorous passion for lectures, review 
 articles, and other things within the capacity of 
 scholars, has at last made it easy for a man in Eng- 
 land or America to be a scholar and nothing else, 
 — as Thomas Carlyle is. All men of power and 
 originality make their own profession nowadays, — 
 for example, Theodore Parker, Mr. Alcott, here, 
 Charles Brace, with his practical philanthropy, 
 and even Albert Brisbane of New York, who be- 
 lieves in stellar duties, and introduced Fourierism 
 into this country, after aiding Doctor Howe to 
 be released from his Prussian prison twenty years 
 ago. He told me once that he had the good for- 
 tune to silence Carlyle, — a great thing, if it were 
 true, — but Carlyle may have been only bored by 
 
 [37 J 
 
Tin: ri:iis()N A LIT V of 
 
 our countryman, wlio is ji sjid button-holder. The 
 railwjiy train is the phiee to talk witli lirishane, 
 wliere time is h)ni»-, and at your own disposal.' 
 Then we talked of tlie Cambridge ])rofessors, — 
 of Lonofellow and his destined successor, .1. 11. 
 Lowell, who had become acquainted with Knier- 
 son when he was 'rusticated' from the class of 
 1838, and studied in Concord with Reverend Mr. 
 Frost, the parish minister, — and of the Harvard 
 system of instruction and restriction. Emerson 
 thinks rhetoric is now too nuich neglected there ; it 
 was better taught under Professor Edward C ban- 
 ning, who trained a whole generation to be good 
 writers, and sometimes good speakers, — such as 
 Wendell IMiillips. Something led the talk toward 
 Shakespeare, and then it became more deeply in- 
 teresting to me. 1 spoke of the deep mystery of 
 Shakespeare's genius, — so much poetry and phi- 
 losophy and dramatic power, in one of whose life 
 and training we know so little, — cpioting some of 
 the sayings of Emerson in licp?rscntafive Men. 
 Some one brought out the curious fact that, 
 though he uses the language of Christianity a few 
 
 [38] 
 
EMERSON 
 times, as in Measure for Measure and Henry IV, 
 there is so little Christianity in him you would 
 hardly guess from his plays and poems that he 
 lived among Christians, — and his dear friend Mar- 
 lowe was denounced in his short life as an athe- 
 ist. Emerson said 'Shakespeare was a pagan in 
 the best sense of that word'; and quoted Jones 
 Very (the religious devotee, who wrote a remark- 
 able essay on Hamlet) as saying, ' If I can move 
 Shakespeare I can move the world, — and already 
 I begin to see him shake a little.' 
 
 "Mr. Alcott, who was visiting Emerson, his 
 home now being in Boston, had sat in silence all 
 this time; but now Mr. Emerson asked his view 
 of Shakespeare's religion. Mr. Alcott began with 
 a Socratic question, — 'Is not the reason why we 
 of this day see no religion in him, because he was 
 the only religious man whom the Anglo-Saxon 
 race (not much addicted to religion) has yet pro- 
 duced among its writers ? Many others have had 
 an alien religion, — have ingrafted the Hebrew 
 religion upon themselves, as our Puritans did, — 
 wherefore .Jewry yet leads us in chains. But in 
 
 [39 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 Slmkespeare Jewry has no share; his rcHgion is 
 of the blood and the race, and so will only be un- 
 derstood by such as are fine enough to appreci- 
 ate him in this matter.' 
 
 "This was a thought wholly new to us all, es- 
 pecially to three or four students of divinity from 
 the Hall where Emerson in 1838 gave his Divin- 
 ity School Address. Mr. Alcott went on to expand 
 his idea, — that to each race tliere is a religion 
 given, peculiarly its own, and modified by its tem- 
 perament and experiences, as M^as the Hebrew 
 fjiith. But these race-religions are the same in 
 their great essentials, and we of the Anglo-Saxon 
 race are now waiting for ours. Emerson followed 
 this thought up by saying: 'When we shall have 
 got what every man nowadays is seeking, — a Bi- 
 ble which can unite the faiths of all mankind, — 
 Shakespeare's sayings will have a large place in 
 it. The ethics of Shakespeare are vast and rich.' 
 
 "This led naturally to some talk on pulpit 
 preachers. Emerson said, 'In Great Britain I 
 heard no preaching to compare w^ith ours in 
 America; they have no man there like our Chan- 
 
 [40] 
 
EMERSON 
 ning, who was the king of preachers.' He did not 
 hear Chalmers, the great Scotch preacher, when 
 he was in Edinburgh in 1847-48; but had heard 
 Carlyle's early friend, Edward Irving, and posi- 
 tively disliked him. Again we talked of poets and 
 other authors, — of Beaumont and Fletcher, the 
 English metaphysicians, and of Charles Kings- 
 ley and his novels, chiefly Hypatia. JNIr. Alcott 
 introduced that topic ; but it seems Mr. Emerson 
 does not admire Kingsley, though he has not read 
 him much. His reading in novels is not extensive, 
 and he does not always read what Hawthorne 
 writes. Of poesy he said, ' We do not expect poets 
 to come from culture; they come from Heaven,' 
 and he proceeded to inquire whom we have seen 
 in college, thus sent." 
 
 Our party on this occasion, from Cambridge, 
 was ten in number, of whom, after fifty years, 
 only three or four survive: Mr. B. S. Toyman of 
 Philadelphia, Mr. .lames Hosmer, the well-known 
 author, now of Minneapolis, myself, and another 
 whose name escapes me. The latest to die was 
 my dear friend, Edwin JNIorton, of Plymouth, a 
 
 [41 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 townsman of Mrs. Emerson, a musician and poet, 
 who spent his hist quarter-century in Switzerhuid, 
 and died at JNIorges on Lake Geneva in 1900. 
 When Emerson asked tliat searching question 
 about college poets, INIorton was friendly enough 
 privately to name me as one ; whereupon Emer- 
 son expressed a wish to see some of my verses, 
 with which JMorton supplied him. They had been 
 written at Exeter, two or three years before, and 
 printed in a New Hampshire newspaper, — for 
 which I occasionally wrote, from the age of eigh- 
 teen, — except one poem called Patience, which a 
 partial friend had caused to be printed in a Bos- 
 ton journal. He had seen these before this May 
 party, and was good enough to speak kindly of 
 those he had seen, and to request me to send him 
 others. He praised an invective appeal to Daniel 
 Webster, urging him to atone for his apostasy 
 on the slavery question of March 7, 1850, which 
 must have been written that year, before I was 
 nineteen. It was in the iambic measure of Pope 
 and Dryden, and was praised by Emerson — for 
 what, I do not now recall. Another was in praise 
 
 [42] 
 
EMERSON 
 of Kossuth, when visiting New England, and was 
 written a year or two later, perhaps about the 
 time Emerson was welcoming the Hungarian 
 leader in April, 1852, to the first battle-ground 
 of the Revolution — an address now but little 
 known, in which Emerson said: — 
 
 "The people of Concord share with their coun- 
 trymen the admiration of valor and perseverance ; 
 they, like their compatriots, have been hungry to 
 see the man whose extraordinary eloquence is sec- 
 onded by the splendor and solidity of his actions. 
 But, as it is the privilege of this town to keep a 
 hallowed mound which has a place in the story of 
 the country; as Concord is one of the monuments 
 of freedom ; we knew beforehand that you could 
 not go by us. You could not take all your steps 
 in the pilgrimage of American liberty, until you 
 had seen with your eyes the ruins of the bridge 
 where a handful of brave farmers opened our 
 Revolution. Therefore we sat and waited for you. 
 We think that the graves of heroes around us 
 throb to-day with a footstep that sounded like 
 their own: — 
 
 [43] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 
 'The mighty tread 
 Brings from the dust the sound of Liberty.' 
 
 Far be it from us, Sir, any tone of patronage ; we 
 ought rather to ask yours. You, the foremost sol- 
 dier of freedom in this age — it is for us to crave 
 your judgment. Who are we that we should dic- 
 tate to you ? You have won your own. We only 
 affirm it. You have earned your own nobility at 
 home. We admit you ad eundem, as they say 
 at college. We admit you to the same degree, 
 without new trial. You may well sit a doctor in 
 the college of I^iberty. You have achieved your 
 right to interpret our Washington. And I speak 
 the sense not only of every generous American, 
 but the law of mind, when I say that it is not 
 those who live idly in the city called after his 
 name, but those who, all over the world, think 
 and act like him, who can claim to explain the 
 sentiment of Washington. 
 
 "We are afraid that you are growing popular, 
 Sir; you may be called to the dangers of pros- 
 perity. Hitherto you have had in all countries 
 and in all parties only the men of heart. I do not 
 
 [ 44 ] 
 
EMERSON 
 know but you will have the million yet. But 
 remember that everything great and excellent 
 in the world is in minorities. Whatever obstruc- 
 tion from selfishness, indifference, or from prop- 
 erty (which always sympathizes with possession) 
 you may encounter, we congratulate you that 
 you have known how to convert calamities into 
 powers, exile into a campaign, present defeat into 
 lasting victory." 
 
 My verses, in their small youthful way, ex- 
 pressed the same sentiment as this master of elo- 
 quence did soon after; and they had his approval 
 for that, if not for their form. On the Patience 
 he made this single criticism; it began 
 
 In the high Heaven, home of endless glee. 
 Sits a bright angel at the Father's knee ; 
 
 upon which touch of affectation he said, "Your 
 use of 'glee' and 'knee' in the beginning was 
 hardly like Michel Angelo." He remembered 
 enough of my versification two years after to ask 
 me to write for the dedication of Sleepy Hollow 
 Cemetery "an ode that can be sung," and I com- 
 plied. Twenty years later, in 1875, he printed in 
 
 [45 J 
 
rilE PERSONAL irV OF 
 his Pcifvianftiis tins ode, and luy liiver Song, to- 
 gether with two sonnets describing his daughter 
 Ellen, and taking t'or their text Emerson's own 
 sentence, addressed. I have heard, to Carohne 
 Sturgis amid lier snitoi-s, — "O Maiden! come into 
 port bravely, or sail with God the seas." As my 
 verses described with some tidelity a remarkable 
 character anuMig maidens of the yeai-s before our 
 Civil War. 1 may be pardoned for quoting them. 
 The only title 1 gave them, when sending them 
 to Emerson, being Anathcniata (Offerings at a 
 Shrine), he asked me when about to print them 
 in his collection, what meaning I attached to the 
 Greek word, and I gave that above. 
 
 I 
 
 With jop uuknowu, with sadness unooiifessed. 
 
 The generous heart accepts the passing year. 
 Finds duties dear, and labor sweet as rest. 
 
 And for itself knows neither care nor fear. 
 Fresh as the morning, earnest as the hour 
 
 That calls the noisy world to grateful sleep. 
 Our silent thought reveres the nameless Power 
 
 That high sei'lusion round thy life doth keep : 
 So, feigned the poets, did Diana love 
 
 To smile upon her darlings as they slept ; 
 
 [ ^n 
 
EMERSON 
 
 Serene, untoucliod, and walking far above 
 
 The narrow ways wherein the many crept, 
 Alontj her hinely path of luminous air 
 She glided, of her beauty unaware. 
 
 II 
 Yet if they said she heeded not the hymn 
 
 Of shepherds gazing heavenward from the moor. 
 Or homeward sailors, when the waters dim 
 
 Flashed with long splendors, widening toward the shore ; 
 Nor wondering eyes of children cared to see; 
 
 Or glowing face of happy lover upturned. 
 As late he wended from the trysting-tree, 
 
 Lit by the kiiully lamp in heaven that burned ; 
 And heard unmoved the prayer of wakeful pain, 
 
 Or consecrated maiden's holy vow, — 
 Believe them not ! they sing the song in vain ; 
 
 For so it never was, and is not now. 
 Her heart was gentle as her face was fair, 
 With grace and love and pity cloistered there. 
 
 IJut to return to our May piuty (May 20, 1854). 
 At the close of our formal conversation, tea was 
 served by Mrs. Emerson, after which six of the 
 party were taken by that lady to her "pleached 
 garden," where she showed her blossoming flowers, 
 and gave us bouquets of them. Near by we saw 
 the famous Summer House built by Bronson Al- 
 cott while Emerson was abroad in 1847-48, then 
 
 [ 47] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 in good condition, with its harp-adorned gable, 
 and its upper room, to which you mounted by a 
 rustic stairway, winding round the west end, in- 
 side; and which stood for perhaps ten years after 
 our visit, and was sketched by JNIiss Sarah Clarke, 
 Allston's one pupil, from the interior. It was a 
 picturesque addition to the orchard and garden. 
 Delaying too long in this delightful spot, we 
 lost our train on the Fitchburg railroad, and, be- 
 ing unable to find a carriage to take us to the 
 College that evening, the six of us separated, — 
 Morton and Lyman waiting for a later train, 
 while Barlow, Barker, Carroll, and I walked 
 home down what is now Massachusetts Avenue, 
 leaving Barker, a divinity student (afterwards 
 an army chaplain), at East Lexington, where his 
 friend Clarke (a pupil of mine in Greek) was to 
 preach the next day in Doctor FoUen's church, 
 and reaching our rooms after midnight. 
 
 I have dwelt at some length on this golden 
 day in our college year, because it illustrates so 
 well the unselfish interest which Emerson took 
 in the young men who found in his writings in- 
 
 [ 48] 
 
EMERSON 
 spiration and solace. We were in a feeble minor- 
 ity, — perhaps fifty among the five hundred who 
 then were registered at Cambridge as students 
 of Harvard, — the medical students, of whom my 
 elder brother, the late Doctor C. H. Sanborn of 
 New Hampshire, was then one, being lodged and 
 taught in Boston exclusively. We could therefore 
 cordially agree wdth Emerson's dictum to Kos- 
 suth, — that "everything great and excellent in the 
 world is in minorities." Among us for a time was 
 that Oxford scholar, Matthew Arnold's "Thyrsis," 
 who had come to New England for rehef from 
 the distresses and conformities of England, and 
 was editing Plutarch and teaching a few pupils 
 advanced Greek — among them Professor Good- 
 win, now the veteran Greek scholar of America. 
 Arthur Clough had a second home at Emerson's 
 house in Concord, but I only met him in Cam- 
 bridge. Immediately after this Concord conver- 
 sation came the excitement in Boston over the 
 arrest of the fugitive slave Anthony Burns, and 
 I was present at the great meeting in Faneuil 
 Hall, where an unorganized attempt was made 
 
 [49 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 
 to rescue Burns from the Court House near the 
 City Hall, where he was confined under guard. 
 Not being informed of the plan of rescue, I had 
 placed myself so near the platform in the hall 
 that it was impossible to get through the crowd 
 to the door, and thence to Court Square, until 
 the unsuccessful attack had been made and foiled, 
 with one fatal wound, — that given by one of the 
 rescuers with a sword-cane, unsheathed, to Bach- 
 elder, one of the slave's guard. As I finally got 
 to the Court House and ran up the steps, there 
 stood Mr. Alcott, calm and brave, his cane under 
 his arm, ready to make another attack, if needful. 
 It was the first time I had seen him since our 
 philosophic seance in Emerson's drawing-room 
 and study, a week before. Pressing personal duty 
 took me the next day to Keene, whence I wrote 
 to Emerson, May 31, to express our gratitude for 
 his courtesies, but beginning with an acknowl- 
 edgment of our mortification at being seen by 
 his family on our walk back to Cambridge at 
 sunset. 
 
 "We were sorry the other night to expose our 
 [50 ] 
 
EMERSON 
 
 ill-fortune to you by passing your house on our 
 way to Lexington ; but there was no other way ; 
 it turned out, however, to be good fortune — or 
 I thought it so. At any rate, we could afford to 
 pay that price for our afternoon's enjoyment, 
 which we agreed was incomparable. The whole 
 day w^as to me one of the greatest delight. We 
 would be glad to return your hospitality by invit- 
 ing you to Cambridge, to meet there a roomful 
 of young men, and pass the afternoon with us. 
 Would such an arrangement be agreeable to you, 
 at any time during this term ? 1 think you told 
 me last year that there was an inconvenience in 
 it, which may still be the case. I write this from 
 among the Cheshire hills, not far from your Mo- 
 nadnoc, which I climbed our eastern hill this 
 morning to see. Coming here from the conten- 
 tion and noise of Boston, it seems like stepping 
 into a church — so still and cool is it here." 
 
 It must have been in response to this request, 
 in which Moncure Conway of Virginia, then about 
 graduating from the Divinity School, cordially 
 joined, that Emerson did visit Divinity Hall in 
 
 [ 51 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 June, and read to a score of us in Conway's room 
 his lecture on Poeti'y, which was not printed till 
 many years later. It was a distinguished audience 
 of our elder friends; for Arthur Clough came, 
 shortly before his return to England, Longfellow 
 and his wife were there, and Charles Lowell came 
 with his mother, IVIrs. Anna Lowell; and proba- 
 bly Charles Norton and A\^illiam Goodwin were 
 there, if in America, though I do not recall them. 
 In the conversation which followed the reading, 
 Clough took no marked part; he was extremely 
 modest, even shy. 
 
 Many sad events for me followed these happy 
 days of May and June: I was called away to 
 Peterboro, New Hampshire, by the increasing ill- 
 ness of JNIiss Walker, to whom I was engaged ; and 
 this only terminated with her death in August. 
 We were married upon her death-bed, and I re- 
 mained with her aged and lonely fjither for a 
 month or two, and did not return to college until 
 October. I was invited to Concord by Emerson 
 in November (the twenty-first), 1854, and took 
 my first long walk with him through his Walden 
 
 [52] 
 
EMERSON 
 
 woodlands, on both sides of the pond — meeting, 
 on our way thither, Thomas Cholmondeley, an- 
 other Oxford scholar, who had followed Clough's 
 example, though for different reasons, and come 
 to spend some months in New England. He was 
 from New Zealand not long Ijcfore, whither he 
 had gone to aid in the colonizing career of a rela- 
 tive, had raised sheep there, and written a book 
 about the island — Ultima Thule by name. Emer- 
 son introduced him to Thoreau, at whose father's 
 house Cholmondeley lived while in Concord, and 
 where he afterwards visited in 1858-59, during 
 the last illness of John Thoreau. 
 
 Emerson, who had dined alone that Novem- 
 ber day, was just returned from a lecture in New 
 Hampshire ; it being his habit then, and for more 
 than twenty years after, to give a good part of 
 tiie autumn and winter months to lecturing in 
 New England, New York, Canada, and the Mid- 
 land States, — then called "the West," — Ohio, 
 Michigan, Illinois, and finally Wisconsin, Iowa, 
 and Missouri — going only at intervals to New 
 Jersey, Pennsylvania, and at last to Washington 
 
 [53] 
 
THE PERSON A LIT V OF 
 
 and Viroinia, tVoni ^vhic'h bis pronounced anti- 
 slavery opinions had long excluded him. In these 
 tours he was often absent from Concinxl weeks or 
 nuMiths, and encountered many interesting per- 
 sons. This particular day he told me of an Illinois 
 theorist, l^assnett by name, whom he had met, 
 and whose book. Outlines of a JIt'c//a/iicaI IVicori/ 
 of Stor//is, Emerson lent me. It pro\ ed to be 
 totally at variance with the Newtonian system of 
 gravitation, and, though readable from its start- 
 ling theses, very slenderly supported by the facts 
 of nature. It attached much importance to lunar 
 intluences, exerted, as Hassnett held, by means 
 of "a vorticose motion in the luminiferous ether." 
 which he took to be the same thing, under an- 
 other name, as the electric fluid. Emerson did 
 not accept his conclusions, but found the author 
 entertaining, as he often thought those who break 
 a new path in science, away from the beaten 
 track of the professional scientist, w hom he was 
 apt to criticise humorously — as in that first chap- 
 ter of what was to hiwc been his great work on 
 T/w \atural Ilistori/ of Intellect. The page was 
 
 [54] 
 
EMERSON 
 written, I suppose, before my acquaintance with 
 him began, j^erhaps suggested by the controver- 
 sies in which his brother-in-law, Doctor Charles 
 T. Jackson, the famous Boston chemist and early 
 geologist, found himself involved from time to 
 time. Emerson there said: — 
 
 "Go into the scientific club and hearken. Each 
 savant proves in his admirable discourse that he, 
 and he only, knows now or ever did know any- 
 thing on the subject. 'Does the gentleman speak 
 of Anatomy? Who peeped into a box at the 
 Custom House and then published a drawing of 
 ///// rat?' Poor Nature and the sublime law are 
 quite omitted in this triumphant vindication. 
 Was it better when we came to the philosophers 
 who found everybody wrong? acute and ingenious 
 themselves to lampoon and degrade mankind." 
 
 Emerson, in all my conversations with him, as 
 in his published writings, did not, as Harvey 
 scoffingly said of Bacon, "talk of science like a 
 Lord Chancellor"; but held himself modestly a 
 listener at the shrine of Nature's oracles, and re- 
 ported faithfully, without ostentation or parade, 
 
 [55 ] 
 
Tu 1" r r KSON Ai 1 r \ or 
 
 \vh:it she said in his hcariui;-. Ahvcui) . boUno anil 
 sin».*o his iloath. t'oivniost tliinkoi-s in soioni'o and 
 philosi>phv have t'onnd thiansclxos antioipatc.\l by 
 tliis subtile intelhi^-enee. nuisiUi;- in the woods et' 
 Coneord;and httle that is obsolete or obsoleseent 
 a}^pears in the bright eirele ot' his intelloetual il- 
 hnnination. Ambitious systems. Tositixe. Cosmie. 
 Tsvehieah etc.. arise and \ aunt themselves tor a 
 time, onlv to be laid aside in a lew yeais; while 
 the vital, spiritual philosophy ot" lanei>on gathers 
 streui^th bv "veai-s that brin^- the philosophio 
 nnnd" to those who ha\e been the slaves ot' sys- 
 ten\ and a dead-and-ali\ e loi^ie. "Let the stu- 
 dent." he s;ivs somewhere, "learn to appreeiato 
 this uuniele ot' the mind. He shall eome to kr.ow 
 that in seein^;-. and in no tradition, he nuist tind 
 what truth is: shall eome to trust it entiix^ly. — 
 to elea\ e to Ciod a^-'dnst the name ot" tiod. When 
 he has i">nee known the oraele he will need no 
 priest: He l'ron\ whose hand it ean\e will ouido 
 and diivet it." 
 
 On the Saturd;iy at'ter this c'oneord walk ^No- 
 \ ember "Jo. ISoT. 1 dnu\l with the Aleotts at 
 
 I .M? 1 
 
KM K USON 
 their riiu'kiuT Shitt, Hostoii, lioiisc, niul the 
 host, in liis sliulv Mflerw.nds, ojnc \\\c this ac- 
 coiint of Imjumsoms method ol" writiiii;', whieh 
 was n'tMierallv, hut not ahsojiitely, true: 
 
 *' 1 le puts (lowu in liis eouiniou-plaee hooU lrt)ni 
 (lay to (lay, as 1 do in my .lournal, whatever he 
 thinks worlhv: and wIumi preparini;" his lectures, 
 or writing' or editiiii;" his hook, he i^oes oxer these 
 diaries, notices what topic has heen upj)erniosl in 
 his thoui^hl (or the time covered hy the writin«;\ 
 and arran^'cs his passages with reference to that. 
 Does this not jieeount for the want ot" Ibrnial 
 method in his works? They are erystalli/ations of 
 earlier material. We hold that a theolooy infused 
 into your mind, as in Kmerson's hooks, is better 
 than one more directly taught. The best men, 
 when they ti>ach theology directly, are wont to 
 get harsh and narrow; the indirect way is the 
 best." 
 
 Hut in his style. a})art from the sul)tler mean- 
 ings, Kmerson was direct enough, and did not 
 tolerate in others what he avoided for liiniself. 
 ^Vt this same date. Mr. Alcott showed me tbe 
 
 [ 57 1 
 
THE ri. KS()N Ai.rrv of 
 
 letter of Emerson, written more than a tlo/en 
 veal's betore. eritieisinLj" sineerely the hm^'nage of 
 his friend in that mystieal reN erie ot' his wliieh 
 he ealled l\iH'^t\ bnt >vl\ieh he never printed: — 
 ••I think it possesses, in eertain passages, the 
 rare power to awaken the liigliest faenlties. — to 
 waken the apprehension of the Absohite. It is al- 
 most nniformly eleijant. and eontains many beau- 
 tiful and some splendid pag-es. Its fault arises 
 out of the subtlety and extent oi' its siibjeet; it 
 o-rapples with an Idea whieh it does not subdue 
 and present in just methoil before us. The book 
 has a strouij mannerism. But its eapital fault is a 
 want ot' eompression,^ — 1\ fault almost unavoid- 
 able in treating sueh a subjeet, whii'h not be- 
 ing easily apprehensible by the human faeulties. 
 we are tempted to linger round the Idea, in the 
 hope that what eannot be sharply stated in a 
 few words, may yet ehanee to be suggested by 
 many. . . . Tiie prophet should speak a elear dis- 
 course, straight home to the eonseienee; but your 
 page is often a series of touches. You play with 
 the thought, — never strip olV your coat, and dig 
 
 i --^ ] 
 
EMERSON 
 
 mul strain, and drive into the lieart of the matter. 
 See what a style yours is to balk and disappoint 
 expectation! To use a coarse word, 't is all stir and 
 no go. U" there's a good thing, say it out! there 
 are so few in the world, we can't wait a minute. 
 'Gaberdine' we have had before; say 'frock.' 
 'Lunch' is vulgar, and reminds one of the Bite 
 Tavern" (in Boston). 
 
 "If there is one thing more than another," said 
 Alcott once, "that we should pray for, it is the 
 boon of a severely candid friend." Such did he 
 and others find in Emerson; as those who knew 
 him most intimately would all witness. And his 
 censures were so friendly that, where criticism of 
 writings w^as concerned, he was entitled to the 
 praise Pope gave to the fair Belinda: — 
 
 "Who oft rejects, hut never once offends." 
 
 A week after this visit to the Alcotts, I met with 
 Emerson, Alcott, Cholmondeley, John Dwight, 
 the musical a])])reciator, George Calvert, who 
 had lived in Germany with William Emerson, 
 and others, at an Albion dinner in Boston, and 
 
 [ 59 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 the conversation turned on literary matters and 
 authors. Emerson was in full force, and praised 
 and blamed with equal sincerity. He urged JNIr. 
 Dwight to print, as a publishing venture, the 
 then new^ novel of Christie Johnstone by Charles 
 Reade; it ought to be printed in Boston, for it 
 was much better than Jane EyiT. It was soon 
 after published by Mr. Fields, of the fu-m of 
 Tick nor. George Bancroft, whose son John had 
 lately graduated at Harvard, his father's col- 
 lege, was mentioned, in connection with an ad- 
 dress he had recently given in New York, in 
 which he lauded Calvinism, and larded his page 
 with phrases like "Arrogant Arius," "Devout 
 Athanasius," and the "Triune God" — Bancroft 
 being a Unitarian, if anything, in religion. Emer- 
 son, who had first met Bancroft as a Senior in 
 Harvard, in 1818, and who had known him w^ell 
 almost ever since, told us: — 
 
 "]Mr. Bancroft is hardly a religious man: his 
 Trinitarianism w^as perhaps assumed out of def- 
 erence to the sentiment of New York, where he 
 now lives, and which is mainly Presbyterian and 
 
 [ 60 ] 
 
EMERSON 
 Episcopalian. In conversation he will take any 
 side, and defend it skilfully ; he is a soldier of for- 
 tune, as we see by his political connection. His 
 profession of Jacksonian democracy in Boston, 
 where he was ostracized for it, was rewarded by 
 appointment to office; but Boston should have 
 been more tolerant of political differences. As 
 American minister in London he was a credit to 
 our country; and his speech some years earlier, 
 at a Phi Beta dinner in Cambridge, where Lord 
 Ashburton, who negotiated with Webster the 
 Maine Boundary treaty, was feted, was the best 
 of the oratory on that occasion. The elder Quincy 
 and Judge Story had spoken, but rather coldly 
 and stiffly; but Bancroft warmed up the audi- 
 ence. Edward Everett was not present, having 
 preceded Bancroft, under Tyler's presidency, as 
 minister to Saint James's." 
 
 Soon after Mr. Alcott came into the Albion 
 dining-room, he being the oldest person present, 
 though only fifty-five at that time, our conversa- 
 tion turned on old age; and Mr. D wight said he 
 could not understand why, in this earthly course 
 
 [61 ] 
 
'rill- rr KSc>N A 1 I r Y ov 
 
 i>t" ours, voiith must bo Ictt bcliiud, •'Tluit is. in- 
 deed, ineoniprchousiblo :uul sad." said Knicrson; 
 "this man here" ^turnin^' toward AK'ott"» •"used 
 to assure us, Nvhat e\ crv days expcricneo is dis- 
 proN in^-, that the beauty ot" youth turned in- 
 ward." *• I have the triek." lie added. "o( behe\ ino- 
 every man I talk with. wliate\er his a^e. to be at 
 least as old as myselt": so 1 warn you all. yinmi;- 
 men," The point then in question was the ai^e ot' 
 Cliarlos Sunmer. who had sueeeeded Daniel \\'eb- 
 ster in the Senate at \\'ashinnton. As we lett the 
 Albion, I walked with Aleott and C'hi^lmondeley 
 to the boc^kstore ot'. lames Munroe on \\'ashinL;'- 
 ton Street, who had been Kuierson's publisher tor 
 some years, and who had published Kllery Cdum- 
 nings tirst \ olumes ot' poems, w hieh C'hcilmonde- 
 lev. w ho had met C'hanniuL;' at C\Mieord. wished to 
 purehase and take baek to Shn^pshire with him, 
 Munroe himselt'was at the shop, and, bein^- ipies- 
 tioned. told us that three-t'ourths of all Ameri- 
 ean poetry was then published at the poets ex- 
 pense. 'Phis was trueot' Kmerson's \olume<.>t' 1S17, 
 and Channing\ poems ot' the same year; his tirst 
 
 I &-^ 1 
 
KMKRSON 
 
 voliiint', issued l)y Mtiuroc in lSi.*{, wiis paid for 
 by ClKiniiing's IVicrKl, S. (i. Ward. It seems that 
 the eiistom of poetry-printiiif^ has not iiiueh va- 
 ried since 18.54; in spite of the popular success of 
 Longfellow, Holmes, and Whitticr, and finally of 
 Lowell and VVhitcomb lliley. 
 
 l)eeeml)er 1*J, 1854, Mr. Aleott eame out to 
 our College to call on Morion and myself, and we 
 went together to Morion's room in Massachusetts 
 JIall, where we found him writing his paper on 
 Thoreau, which I printed for him in the llarvard 
 Magazine for January. This led Aleott to talk of 
 Thoreau: — 
 
 "It is a pity that he and Emerson live in the 
 same age; l)oth are original, but they borrow from 
 each other, being so near in time and space. Rich- 
 ard Dana says he has not read Thoreau, but al- 
 ways supposed him to be a man of abstractions. 
 On the contrary, your old Librarian in the Col- 
 lege, Doctor Harris, told me with a groan, 'If 
 Emerson had not spoiled him, Thoreau would 
 have made a good entomologist.'" 
 
 This same month of December, in my Senior 
 [63] 
 
Tin: rKKSONALITV OF 
 college year, proved to be tuU of serious events 
 in niv youthful life. Toward the end of it my 
 father-in-law. worn down with aoe and sorrow, 
 felt his death approaching, and I was sent for 
 to be with him in the last hours. On my way 
 thither (to Peterboro in New Hampshire) I passed 
 through l>oston and bade farewell to our friend 
 Cholmondeley, who hastily decided to go home 
 and raise a company of volunteers for the Crimean 
 War — as he did. And it was in this month that 
 Emei*son formed the purpose of inviting me to 
 take charge of a small school in Concord, mainly 
 devoted to his children and those of Judge Hoar 
 and his neighbors, in a schoolhouse built by the 
 Judge, and not far from his fathers house — Hon- 
 orable Samuel Hoars, who had married a daugh- 
 ter of Roger Sherman, and Avas, in my time, that 
 Dantesque figure in the village streets which none 
 could see without respect. At his death, in No- 
 vember, 185(), Emerson wrote his eidogy, and 
 adorned it with a quatrain of his verse, which I 
 have in its first form — perhaps not inferior to 
 that which the poet afterwards printed: — 
 
 [ G^ ] 
 
EMERSON 
 
 "W'itli beams tliat stars at (liristiuas dart 
 His cold eyes truth and conduct scanned; 
 July was in his sunny heart, 
 October in his liberal hand." 
 
 Here the allusion to Christmas suggests the old- 
 fashioned religion of this aged Christian, a true 
 follower of Emerson's grandfather, Parson Ripley. 
 It was after one of his lectures in East Boston, 
 but whether in December or January I am not 
 certain, that Emerson proposed to me this task, 
 or rather privilege, of educating his children and 
 their playmates. I had gone with a few of my 
 classmates, among whom I remember AVillard 
 Bliss, now of Rosemond, Illinois, to hear him read 
 one chapter in his forthcoming English Ti^aits to 
 a small audience in that island ward of Boston. 
 At the close, as we came forward to express our 
 pleasure at the reading, he said to me, after a few 
 words to my comrades, "Will you get into my 
 carriage, and let me take you to the American 
 House in Hanover Street, where I pass the night?" 
 I accepted the fjivor, and, while we crossed the 
 East Boston ferry, he unfolded to me the plan he 
 
 [65] 
 
riiv: rKusoNAi.rrv of 
 
 had tonncd. I ^vas to Livt lea\o of absciu'o tVom 
 college, and open the little school in March: its 
 duties would not keep me tVoni pursuing- the Se- 
 nior studies in tlieir last three months, and 1 ^vas 
 then to continue the school atter graduation, if 
 nuitually satisfactory. The salary otfered. though 
 not large, was ample for my single needs, and 
 niig"ht be increascil if the school grew in numbers, 
 as he was kind enough to say it would, under my 
 direction. I was to ha\ e a mouth or six weeks to 
 make my decision and arrangements; and when 
 I found that my kinsman by marriage. President 
 Walker, then at the head of the College, would 
 let my studies go on at C\>nccM-d. I lost no time in 
 deciding to take the place otVered. Karly in March. 
 IS.'n). 1 visited the village, to call on the families 
 o{ my expected pu}Mls. and to secure rooms for 
 mvself and mv sister, who. 1 stipulated, should 
 be mv assistant, at my own expense. Kmerson 
 escorted me on these visits; and when I asked him 
 where 1 cmdd tind rooms, he said. "Mr. Fdlery 
 Channing has a large old house, with no inmates 
 but himself and his housekeeper; we will go and 
 
 [ ()l> ] 
 
KMKKSON 
 see if he will take you in." We went to the house, 
 opposite the residenee of the Thorenu fumily; 
 knoeked, and were answered by Mr, Clianning in 
 person, wearing tlie oldest dressing-gown I had 
 seen up to that tinie (I have sinee seen liini come 
 down to tea in an older one in my own liouse), 
 who reeeived us courteously, and was willing to 
 lease nie three furnished rooms, and to allow the 
 service of his housekeeper, who was rather his 
 tenant than his servant. That point settled, and 
 the terms agreed on, I returned to take tea with 
 the Emersons, and a week later began my school 
 with seventeen pupils, girls and boys together 
 (always the Concord custom), three of whom were 
 Emerson's own children. 
 
 Having no previous experience with a school, 
 though 1 had taught Latin and Greek pupils pri- 
 vately, much margin and courtesy must be al- 
 lowed for my mistakes; but I received from all 
 the families the kindest consideration, and was at 
 home in the village and the woods from the first. 
 One of our earliest callers was Henry Thoreau, 
 whom I had met at Emerson's ; a!id with his close 
 
 I iu 1 
 
riiF, ri: K SON A I irv ov 
 
 tVicnd. Chiuumvj:. 1 be^'aiuo vorv intimate. 1 was 
 soon introdiKwi at the Old Manso. then occupied 
 by that gentle seliohn- and excellent housekeeper 
 Mrs. Sarah Kiplev. the a\ idow of Ixeverend Sam- 
 uel Kipley. Kmerson'> halt-unele. and her daugh- 
 ters, all a^Teeable ladies, of nuieh culture. From 
 that acquaintance to Meekly Cu-eek reading's with 
 Mrs. Kipley was but an easy step, and thus my 
 interest in that lan^uao-e was kept up. Mv colle^v 
 studies came out well; indeed, though 1 valued 
 class-rank but little. 1 believe my ••marks" were 
 higher, from infrequent examinations, than if I 
 had been at the daily recitations: and 1 graduated 
 seventh in a class ot' eighty. 
 
 This is a good place to pause and speak o1i the 
 scholarship o\^ Emerson and his Concord triends. 
 He entered Harvard at the age of fourteen, and 
 graduated at eighteen, in ISiM. In those days, and 
 with his slender constitution, this did not im- 
 ply much reading either in Latin or Cireek. and 
 French was then but little taught. In his own 
 school-keeping, for a tew years atter graiiuation. 
 and in his theological studies. Emerson extended 
 
 [ (>^^ ] 
 
E INI 1<: K S N 
 his use of Latin, and acquired both ehissic and 
 New Testament Greek so as to read it with httle 
 difficulty; but his famiharity with the language 
 was never so great as IMrs, Kipley's, or (I fancy) 
 JMiss Hoar's, mIio had been better taught and 
 more diligent in reading the originals. 15ut from 
 the Attic cast of his genius, Emerson entered into 
 the spirit of Greek thought and literature more 
 profoimdly than many better-equipped technical 
 scholars — more even than Thoreau, who was a 
 thorough Greek and Latin scholar. Emerson early 
 acquired French, both for reading and speak- 
 ing, though not very fluent in conversation in 
 French. German he learned later, for the sole pur- 
 pose of reading Goethe in the original. Italian 
 he read, and had some knowledge of Spanish. 
 Persian and Sanscrit he never attempted; but 
 made his translations from the German version 
 of Oriental authors, or such English or French 
 versions as were more accessible. Alcott read no 
 language but his own and a little French; but 
 Channing was versed in Latin, Greek, and all the 
 modern tongues of Europe, though not critically 
 
 [ 69] 
 
THE ri:u>oNAi.riv of 
 
 a scholar. The same fould bo said of Margaret 
 Fuller, whom I never knew. 
 
 Emerson had at all times the habit of a selmhu-, 
 but one ^vho, like \\'ordsworth. made the open 
 air his library nuieh of the time. Though not so 
 thorouii'h a walker and investig'ator o( nature as 
 his friends. Channing" and Thoreau. who would 
 spend whole days and nights in the forest or 
 among the mountains, he had similar tastes, and 
 in youth had mueh practised upon the scale they 
 afterwards followed. \\'hen I once remarked to 
 him that the passage in his U\HHhiott\^, 
 
 '•And siu-h 1 knew, a torest-seer, 
 A luinstrel ot" the natural year."' ttc. 
 
 was generally thought to be aimed at Henry 
 Thoreau, Emerson rather sharply negatived that 
 notion, and told me the whole remarkable pas- 
 sao'o was conceived, largely from his own experi- 
 ence, and mainly written out. before he ever knew 
 Thoreau, except as a promising boy. He was fa- 
 miliar with the near forests of Maine and New 
 Hampshire, and had early seen the forest scenery 
 of the Carolinas and Florida. In later life, when 
 
 L '0 j 
 
EMERSON 
 I first knew him, his custom was to walk every 
 day for some hours, and in tliese walks I was 
 first made acquainted with several of his favorite 
 haunts in Concord: the Walden woods, leaker 
 Farm, Copan, and Peter's Field, leading there- 
 to, Columbine llock, — one of several crags thus 
 named, — and the Estabrook country. He hud 
 composed nnicli of his verse in these walks in 
 field and woodland, as, indeed, the verse itself 
 sometimes declares; and his friends were often 
 invited to join him in his excursions, or to show 
 him their favorite resorts. Alcott enjoyed the 
 converse thus promoted, but hardly the walk it- 
 self; for Emerson told me, whenever they came to 
 a farmer's fence or a convenient seat, his friend 
 would halt, to continue their philosophic debate 
 at rest. Alcott, at eighty-two, thus described in 
 his Sonnets and Ca?izonets these early walks, forty 
 years before: — 
 
 "IMeused I recall those hours so fair and free, 
 \\'heu, all the lon^ forenoons, we two did toss 
 From lip to lip, in lively colloquy, 
 Plato, I'lotinus, or famed Schoolman's gloss, — 
 Disporting in rapt thoug-ht and ecstasy; 
 
 [ ^1 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 
 Then by tlio tiltiuir rail Millbrook wo cross. 
 And s;illy through the tleUls to A\'ahlon wave. 
 There phiniring in the Cove, or swimmiuir o'er. 
 Tlirouirh woodpaths wendinir. lie with gesture nuiok 
 Khyines dettly in mid-air with oireling stick, 
 Skims the smooth pebbles from the leat'y shore. 
 Or deeper ripples raises as we lave." 
 
 These lines well picture Emerson's habit of fore- 
 noons in the study and afternoons in the woods, 
 together with his manner of twirling his walking- 
 stick, customarily carried, and his fondness for 
 swinuning in AValden, or skating there in winter. 
 I have so skated with him, and have swum there 
 with Alcott, when he was approaching his eigh- 
 tieth birthday. The Concord authors, except Tho- 
 reau, who inherited a tendency to consumption 
 and had weakened his frame by outdoor hard- 
 ships, were robust comrades as I knew them; for 
 Emei-son, in his fii*st Atlantic voyage, to Sicily, 
 in 1833, was said to have overcome his early ten- 
 dency to phthisis, of which his brothers died. He 
 was not expert at manual laboi*s, as Alcott, Chan- 
 ninjr, and Thoreau were, and for that reason em- 
 ployed them occasionjilly in such tasks: Tho- 
 
 [72] 
 
EMERSON 
 reau in his gardening and tree-planting, Channing 
 in wood-cutting, from which experience came 
 Channing's poem The Woochnan, printed in his 
 Poems of Siiiiy-five Years, and Alcott in choos- 
 ing crooked sticks and making a summer house 
 of them, — for which quaint task, satirized by 
 Channing and Thoreau in their letters to Emer- 
 son in England, he was paid fifty dollars. 
 
 Emerson's relations with Alcott are to the last- 
 ing honor of both. Each saw the defect of the 
 other; but Emerson, aware, as few others could 
 be, of the profound originality of Alcott's mind 
 and the nobility of his character, at which the 
 worldly mocked, and even friendship sometimes 
 wearied, never failed to stand by his friend, while 
 dealing frankly with his foibles. He said to me, 
 more than once, "I hope it may please the 
 Powers to let me survive Alcott, and write his 
 biography; for I think I can do that better than 
 any one." It was not so ordered, and the task of 
 biographer fell mainly to me ; for Louisa Alcott 
 died but a day or two after her father. I then re- 
 minded Doctor Emerson of what his father had 
 
 [73] 
 
THE PERSONALITY O F 
 told me of the records he had made of Alcott's 
 traits and felicities, and he was good enough to 
 copy out for me, from the diaries, most of the 
 entries that concerned Alcott. Among them was 
 this statement of the intrinsic manliness of char- 
 acter which makes the attraction of some literary 
 men, and which Emerson, like Carlyle, recognized 
 in Doctor Johnson: — 
 
 "The attitude is the main thing. John Brad- 
 shaw, as JNlilton says, was all his Ufe a consul 
 sitting in judgment on kings. Carlyle, best of 
 all men in England, has kept this manly atti- 
 tude in his time. His errors of opinion are as 
 nothing in comparison with this merit, in my 
 opinion. If I look for a counterpart in my neigh- 
 borhood, Thoreau and Alcott are the best; and 
 in majesty Alcott excels. This aplomb cannot be 
 mimicked." 
 
 Had Emerson looked in his mirror, he would 
 have seen the face of as marked an example of 
 this quality as Alcott was — yet not so majestic 
 in aspect, nor so graceful in manners. Our friend 
 Cholmondelcy said of Alcott, ''He has the man- 
 
 [ ^^ ] 
 
EMERSON 
 
 ners of a very great Peer' — the highest compH- 
 ment an EngUsh Squire could pay. As Ben Jon- 
 son said of Bacon, " In his adversity I ever prayed 
 that God would give him strength, for greatness 
 he could not want"; so might his friends have 
 said of Bronson Alcott. Emerson stood ready to 
 aid him in every available way; yet said of him, 
 "With his hatred of labor and his command- 
 ing contemplation, a haughty beneficiary, Alcott 
 makes good to this nineteenth century Simeon 
 the Stylite, the Thebais, and the first Capuchins." 
 This hatred of labor was only of intellectual la- 
 bor; for Alcott, like many men brought up on 
 ancestral acres in New England, had a real love 
 of manual toil, and often exhausted himself with 
 it in his old age, when Louisa's success had made 
 hand-labor needless at the Orchard House, which 
 Emerson had helped him purchase. Yet there was 
 a certain humorous truth, as often in Emerson's 
 compliments, in another entry in the diary about 
 1840, when his friend was supporting himself by 
 day-labor in the Concord grain-fields: — 
 
 "Alcott astonishes by the grandeur of his angle 
 [ 75 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 of vision, and the heaps of particnhirs. I tell him 
 he is the Bonaparte of speculators [speculative 
 philosophers], born to rout the Austrians of the 
 soul. But his day-labor has a certain emblematic 
 air, like the annual plowing of the Emperor of 
 Chhia." 
 
 Ten years or more at\er my early weeks in 
 Concord, I was present at a conversation of Al- 
 cott's which drew from Emerson these comments 
 in his diary (18(36): — 
 
 "Last night hi the conversation Alcott ap- 
 peared to great advantage, and I saw again, as 
 often before, his singular superiority. As pure in- 
 tellect I have never seen his equal. The people 
 with whom he talks do not ever understand him. 
 Thev interrupt him with clamorous dissent, or 
 what they think verbal endorsement of what they 
 fancy he may have been saying; or with 'Do 
 you know, Mr. Alcott, I think so and so,' — some 
 whim or sentimentalism : and do not know that 
 they have interrupted his large and progressive 
 statement; do not know that all they have in 
 their baby brains is incoherent and spotty; that 
 
 [ 'M 
 
EMERSON 
 all he sees and says is like astronomy, lying there 
 real and vast — and every part and fact in eternal 
 connection with the whole; and that they ought 
 to sit in silent gratitude, eager only to hear more, 
 — to hear the whole, and not interrupt him with 
 their prattle. His activity of mind is shoAvn in 
 the perpetual invention and felicity of his lan- 
 guage ; the constitutionality of his thought is ap- 
 parent in the fact that last night's discourse only 
 brousrht out with new conviction the fundamental 
 thoughts which he had when I first knew him. 
 The moral benefit of such a mind cannot be told." 
 To this high conception of Alcott's character 
 and intellect Emerson was faithful to the last, 
 and Alcott was one of the friends to whom he 
 bade a characteristic farewell on his death-bed 
 in 1882. Recalled for a few moments from that 
 wandering of mind which prevailed in the last 
 days, he grasped Alcott's hand warmly, saying, 
 *'You have a strong hold on life; be firm!" It 
 was true, but the weight of years and the loss of 
 his best friend weakened that hold, and it was 
 but six months after Emerson's death that the 
 
 [77] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 illness of which he died six years later fell upon 
 the vitrorous frame of Alcott. 
 
 One of the first of Emerson's volumes which I 
 read in youth was that reprint of Nature, Ad- 
 dresses and Lectures appearing in the summer 
 of 1849, and directly followed by Represent ative 
 Men later in the year. While these books were 
 going through the press in Boston, Alcott had fre- 
 quent colloquies with Emerson on their theories 
 of "Genesis" (as Alcott styled what is now termed 
 Evolution), and one of the most distinct expres- 
 sions of the evolutionary theory was handed by 
 Emerson to Alcott in August, 1849, — who pasted 
 into his diary the remarkable verse, about to be 
 used as the new motto for Nature: — 
 
 "A subtle chain of countless rings 
 Tlie next unto the farthest brings ; 
 Tlie eye reads omens where it goes, 
 And speaks all languages the Rose ; 
 And, striving to be man, the worm 
 Mounts through all the spires of form." 
 
 How much earlier this was written is yet un- 
 known ; but it was the conclusion to which Emer- 
 son had been coming for a dozen years, helped by 
 
 [78] 
 
EMERSON 
 the discoveries and theories of Oken, Goethe, and 
 Sweden borg. In 1855, when I was one day with 
 Emerson in his study, he read me these Hnes, 
 and asked me how I should interpret them: — 
 
 ''Caught among the blackberry vines. 
 Feeding on the Ethiops sweet. 
 Pleasant fancies overtook me. 
 I said, 'What influence me preferred. 
 Elect, to dreams thus beautiful?' 
 The vines replied, 'And did'st thou deem 
 No wisdom to our berries went?'" 
 
 I hardly knew what to reply, where several mean- 
 ings were possible; but said that he must have 
 meant that Nature does not leave her least par- 
 ticle without a lesson for Man ; that the moral of 
 the delicious flavor of the low blackberry was, 
 "Even so, what seems black to you in Man's des- 
 tiny may have as fair an issue; as Cowper says: — 
 
 "The bud may have a bitter taste. 
 But sweet will be the flower." 
 
 Without commenting on this, it seemed to please 
 him; and I inferred it was an illustration of his 
 philosophic principle: — 
 
 "The eye reads omens where it goes." 
 
 [79 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 It may have been this incident that determined 
 me, the next year, to set my advanced class of 
 girls reading Emerson's Poems of 1847, then but 
 httle known, and commenting on them myself, 
 by way of intei'pretation. This was, so far as I 
 know, the first example of what has since become 
 a frequent practice, in which my friend Charles 
 Malloy of Waltham is a past master ; he being an 
 older Emersonian than myself. Emerson seldom 
 commented his own verses, except by way of cor- 
 rection of a mistaken reading; and, like all poets, 
 he did not always know which the best word Avas. 
 Thus, when he read me that fine group of poems 
 which, at much urgency on their part, he gave to 
 the beginners of The Atlantic Monthly for their 
 first number, the best of them all, Days, began : — 
 
 "Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days;" 
 
 and so he printed it in The Atlantic, a year after- 
 wards. But when he afterwards printed it, the be- 
 ginning shocked me with its 
 
 " Damsels of Time. " 
 
 Now "damsels" is a good word in some connec- 
 
 [80] 
 
EMERSON 
 tions, but not in a grave, finished Greek epigram, 
 which this poem is; just as Thoreau's Smoke is, 
 — graceful as INIeleager, and profound as Simoni- 
 des. The better reading is now restored in the 
 posthumous volume of Poems. But omissions oc- 
 curred there which I cannot quite understand. 
 In that strangely admirable JVoodfiotes a slight 
 change is made in the lines, 
 
 ''He shall see the speeding year 
 Without wailing, without fear," 
 
 by altering "see" to "meet" — perhaps to make it 
 less apparently a version (a much improved one) 
 of those lines of Horace which Emerson once told 
 me were the grandest of that smiling poet: — 
 
 " Hunc solem et stellas et decedentia certis 
 
 Temporn momentis, sunt qui,formidine nulla 
 
 Imbuti, spectent." 
 
 (Epistle VI. To Numicius.) 
 
 Horace gave us the majestic Lucretian rhythm, 
 and, like Dante, introduced the stars effectively ; 
 but the pith of the passage is in Emerson's short 
 couplet. It might be rendered without so much 
 compression: — 
 
 [81 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 
 "You Sun aud Star.*, aud fatal iliijht of days, — 
 Thoro are, my Friend, wlio \iow witli foarless gaze." 
 
 But the Greeks would have shortened the expres- 
 sion as Emerson did. In the same IVood notes dc- 
 scrihing the same "eoniing man," 
 
 " \\ lioin Naturo iii\'otli for dofouce 
 His forniidaMo innooouoo," 
 
 this hyperbole is omitted, perhaps wisely, where 
 so much is hyperbole: — 
 
 '•He shall never be old. 
 Nor his fate shall he foretold." 
 
 But why leave out this magical sketch of the sor- 
 ceress ? 
 
 *'The robe of silk in \vhieh she shines. 
 It was woven of many sins ; 
 And the shreds which she sheds 
 
 In the wearina: of the same, 
 Sliall be irrief on irrief aud shame on shame." 
 
 There is an imperfect rhyme, to be sure, and the 
 thouo'ht is incoherent — but so is the creature de- 
 picted ; and like to like is good, to say nothing of 
 the pleasing rhythm. 
 
 I have mentioned hyperbole. It was Emerson's 
 most familiar trope and prevailed in his speeches 
 
 [82] 
 
EMERSON 
 and his daily conversation. In fact, Concord might 
 be styled the land of Hyperbole and Humor, — 
 so abundant are they in the writings of all the 
 famous authors there, except Hawthorne, who 
 substituted a rhetorical vitascope. In the summer 
 of 185G I was mostly engaged in visiting Middle- 
 sex towns, holding meetings, and raising money 
 to keep Kansas free from negro slavery. Our col- 
 lege tutor in elocution, Mr. Jennison, for a Cam- 
 bridge committee, arranged a meeting in I^yceum 
 Hall, opposite the Colleges (September 10, 1856), 
 at which Emerson consented to speak, so much 
 was he concerned for our national political situa- 
 tion. In his speech, which I heard, he introduced 
 a passage, not set down in his notes, and which 
 does not appear in the printed report. Speaking 
 of the anti-slavery opinions of the founders of 
 the Republic (Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, 
 Madison), and the absence of such men from the 
 ranks of the conspirators against liberty to-day, 
 he quoted the antithesis of Tacitus, remarking on 
 the absence of the busts of Brutus and Cassius 
 from the funeral procession of Junia, who was 
 
 [ 8'3 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 wife of Cassius and sister of Brutus: "Sed pree- 
 fulgebant Cassius atque Brutus, eo ipso, quod 
 effigies eorum non visebantur," — "Eo ipso prge- 
 fulgebant," cried Emerson, "quod non visebantur! 
 Yes, they glared out of their absence.'" Here was 
 hyperbole again, and compression of the already 
 concise Roman annalist. 
 
 In conversation it was the same. I was taking 
 tea one evening at the Emersons' before the Civ- 
 il War, when Mrs. Emerson, just returned from 
 Boston, where some of her friends were ardent 
 Episcopalians, had been ruffled by the spiritual 
 pride of some dignitary of Henry the Eighth's 
 church, whose quoted remark implied there was 
 no true religion anywhere in New England out- 
 side of what he styled "The Church," with a 
 capital C. She was telling us what her reply had 
 been to the lady quoting the dictum. "And did 
 you tell her, Queenie" (Emerson's domestic title 
 for his wife), "that it is the church of all the 
 donkeys in America?" with his most benevolent 
 smile. Now he did not mean that all that class 
 of our people were Anglicans, — only to satirize a 
 
 [84] 
 
EMERSON 
 sect which at that time had not its fair share of 
 the ideas and scientific truth of the American 
 people; but was still apt to think that geology 
 was an atheistic attack on JNIoses and the Book 
 of Genesis. 
 
 Without being a partisan in his turn of mind, 
 as the brothers Hoar of Concord were, Emerson 
 was frank and direct in his advocacy of what he 
 thought the national cause at any time; and this 
 made him earnest in behalf of Charles Sumner 
 and the exclusion of slavery from Kansas. He 
 spoke warmly at the meeting in Concord Town 
 Hall (where he must have read lectures or made 
 speeches fifty times from 1852 till his death, thir- 
 ty years later) to protest against the assault on 
 JVIassachusetts through her senator, when he was 
 almost assassinated by Brooks of Carolina. And 
 when, a few days later, our first Kansas meeting 
 was held there, resulting in a general subscription 
 of money to aid the Free-State men in Kansas, 
 Emerson was one of the large givers. As secre- 
 tary of the meeting, I retained the subscription 
 paper, and some of the names may be mentioned. 
 
 [85] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 Concord was then a town of less than half its 
 present population, — not twenty-three hundred 
 in 1855, — and contained few persons of wealth, 
 the largest property not exceeding two hundred 
 and fifty thousand dollars probably. Yet the first 
 subscription for Kansas was nearly one thousand 
 dollars, and there were four givers of one hun- 
 dred dollars each : Samuel Hoar, and his son Judge 
 Hoar, John S. Keyes, and F. B. Sanborn. Four 
 gave fifty dollars each : R. W. Emerson, Colonel 
 Whiting, Nathan Brooks (father-in-law of Judge 
 Hoar), and Ozias Morse; six gave twenty-five 
 dollars each : George M. Brooks, Samuel Staples, 
 John Brown, Jr., Daniel B. Clarke, Reuben Rice, 
 and "A Lady" — probably either ^Irs. Emerson 
 or Miss Hoar; then followed subscriptions of 
 twenty, ten, and five dollars; while a few chil- 
 dren and poor men gave from fifty cents to two 
 dollars each. These subscriptions were afterwards 
 increased by gifts of money, clothing, etc., until 
 before a year passed they had amounted to nearly 
 or quite two thousand dollars — or almost a dol- 
 lar each for every inhabitant. When in the sum- 
 
 [86] 
 
EMERSON 
 mer following I became a member and secretary 
 of the State Kansas Committee, and in that ca- 
 pacity visited the National Committee's office in 
 Chicago, and then went further west, to call on 
 the Governor of Iowa, and traverse that State 
 as far as to Nebraska City on the west of the 
 Missouri River, I corresponded with Emerson. 
 The next winter, he made the acquaintance of 
 John Brown, the Kansas hero, who had come 
 to visit me in Concord, and Emerson invited 
 him to his house for a night. In this visit was ac- 
 quired that full knowledge of Brown's character 
 (though not of his secret plans) which enabled 
 Emerson at the time of the A^irginia foray and 
 capture of Brown, to tell his story effectively be- 
 fore large audiences in Boston and Salem. INIr. 
 Alcott, in 1878, gave me this account of Emer- 
 son's and Thoreau's reception of the news of the 
 Harper's Ferry affiiir. 
 
 "When the tidings came that John Brown was 
 captured, I was with Henry Thoreau at Emer- 
 son's house. It was startling to all of us. Thoreau 
 spoke of it then much as he soon afterwards did 
 
 [87] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 
 publicly — addressing his to^\Tismen in the parish 
 vestry, and the people of Worcester and Boston, 
 with his Pica for Captain John Broicn. [Mr. Al- 
 cott thoiioht Thoreau rang the bell himself for 
 this Concord address, but he probably confounded 
 the occasion with that in August, 1844, when 
 Emerson was to give his address on JJ\'st India 
 Emancipation, mentioned earlier in this book. At 
 that time Thoreau not only rang the bell, but 
 previously had gone about the village, giving 
 notice at the house-doors that Emerson would 
 speak at the vestry.] 1 said that Brown's death 
 would be a new crucifixion, and dwelt upon the 
 ftict of Brown's martyrdom. Emerson said little 
 then ; it seemed to be a painful subject to him. 
 Some weeks after, when he had returned fi'om 
 Salem, where he made that much-quoted speech 
 in praise of Brown (of which he gave you the 
 manuscript), he said to me, with an air of relief, 
 'AVe have had enough of this dreary business.' 
 But when we were making arrangements, with 
 Thoreau and yourself and others, for that 'Ser- 
 vice for the Death of a Martyr' which we held 
 
 [88] 
 
EMERSON 
 at the Concord Town Hall, the day of Brown's 
 execution, Emerson made some of the best se- 
 lections used, and read them himself at the meet- 
 ing, as Thoreau did his selections from ^Nlarvell 
 and Tacitus." 
 
 In truth, as Hazlitt says of Sir Francis Bur- 
 dett, there was no honest cause Emerson dared 
 not avow, no oppressed person whom he was not 
 forward to succor. He did not wholly agree with 
 the Garrisonian Abolitionists, but he supported 
 their mam cause, as he did Brown's. 
 
 It was during my first residence in Concord, 
 and while Hawthorne was our consular represen- 
 tative at Liverpool, that I became acquainted 
 through Emerson with the theories and caprices 
 of ^liss Delia Bacon, of New Haven, who may be 
 said to have invented, as much as any one person 
 did, that craze now grown to such magnitude, — 
 that Bacon of Saint Albans ^\Tote the plays and 
 poems of Shakespeare. This was not exactly ]Miss 
 Bacon's first whirn, but that the plays came as the 
 product of a circle of great men of Elizabeth's 
 court, — Raleigh, Bacon, and others ; a theory that 
 
 [89] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 finds some countenance, though very shght, in 
 John Toland's odd letter of two centuries ago 
 declaring that there was such a circle, and that 
 Giordano Bruno, then in England, belonged to it 
 in 1585. Bruno dedicated one of his quaint books 
 to Sidney, whom Toland thought one of the com- 
 pany; and there are certain faint indications that 
 Shakespeare had read and understood Bruno's 
 ideas. JMiss Bacon, a brilliant, unhappy person, 
 came to Emerson with her theory in 1852; he lis- 
 tened to her with patience and interest, though 
 not persuaded. When she was aided by a citizen 
 of New York to pursue her inquiries in England, 
 Emerson gave her letters to Carlyle, Doctor Chap- 
 man, and other English friends, and in her des- 
 titution he commended her to Hawthorne at 
 Liverpool. He procured for her first essays on 
 the subject a publisher in America, as Carlyle did 
 in London. Putnains Magazine, then flourishing, 
 and having among its contributors Henry James, 
 G. W. Curtis, and (rarely) Thoreau and Emerson 
 himself, accepted an article or two from INIiss 
 Bacon. One such appeared there; another, in a 
 
 [90] 
 
EMERSON 
 manuscript or half-printed state, was lost on the 
 way from New York to Concord, intrusted to a 
 relative of Emerson. This loss, later, led to re- 
 proaches from Miss Bacon which Emerson did not 
 wholly escape. Her proud and whimsical char- 
 acter, verging toward insanity, made these favors 
 from her friends useless to her; and when she 
 turned upon him (as later upon Hawthorne) with 
 these reproaches, Emerson's angelic patience did 
 not resent it. Finally, her insanity declared itself 
 without disguise, and she was committed to an 
 asylum not far from Shakespeare's grave. It fell 
 to Emerson to communicate this dismal fact to 
 her brother, Reverend Doctor Bacon of New 
 Haven, who had been less tolerant of her infirmi- 
 ties than the Concord authors had. Here is his 
 noble letter: — 
 
 "Concord, February 18, 1858. 
 "Dear Sir: 
 
 " I have received from Mrs. Flower, of Stratford-on-Avon, the en- 
 " closed note, which I hasten to forward to you. I could heartily 
 " wish that I had very different news to send you of a person who 
 " has high claims on me, and all of us who love gefiius and elevation 
 " of character. These qualities have so shone in Miss Bacon that, 
 
 [91 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 
 " fvhile their present eclipse is the greater calamity, it seems as if the 
 " care of her in these present distressing circumstances ought not to 
 " be at private, but at the public charge of scholars and friends of 
 " learning and trtdh. If I can serve you in any manner in relation 
 " to her, you will please to command me. 
 
 " With great respect, 
 "11. W. Emerson. 
 "Dr. Leonard Bacon." 
 
 "Osman," said Emerson, sketching himself, 
 whether consciously or not, "had a humanity so 
 broad and deep that, although his speech was so 
 bold and fi'ee with the Koran as to disgust all the 
 dervishes, yet there was never a poor outcast, ec- 
 centric or insane man, — some fool who had cut 
 off his beard, or who had been mutilated under 
 a vow, or had a pet madness in his brain, — but 
 fled at once to him. That great heart lay there so 
 sunny and hospitable in the centre of the coun- 
 try that it seemed as if the instinct of all suf- 
 ferers drew them to his side. And the madness 
 which he harbored he did not share." 
 
 Instances confirmatory of this might be multi- 
 plied. The milder eccentricities of genius, seen in 
 his friends Alcott, Thoreau, and Channing, were 
 
 [92] 
 
EMERSON 
 of course more easily borne with, and were only 
 spoken of by Emerson for instruction to a younger 
 friend, or for a harmless smile. He told his daugh- 
 ter Ellen that if he should die before Alcott and 
 Channing "two good books will be lost." He 
 formed the acquaintance with the three in the 
 order followed above, — Alcott first and Chan- 
 ning third. JVIr. Alcott told me in 1878, after we 
 had bathed together in Walden, one hot August 
 day, that he first heard Emerson preach in Doc- 
 tor Channing's church in Federal Street, Boston, 
 in 1829, on llie Universality of the Moral Senti- 
 ment. "I was greatly struck with the youth of 
 the preacher, the beauty of his elocution, and the 
 direct, sincere manner in which he addressed his 
 hearers. But I did not become acquainted with 
 the young clergyman till after my return from 
 Philadelphia (where Anna and Louisa were born) 
 in 1834, when I established my Temple School in 
 Boston. We became intimate, and soon after, I 
 went with Emerson to hear him read a Phi Beta 
 poem at Harvard College, in which was a strik- 
 ing passage about Washington. As the proces- 
 
 [93 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 sion was forming to enter the church where the 
 oration and poem were to be given, Emerson took 
 my arm (I not being a member of the Society, 
 nor even a graduate of Yale) and saying, ' Come, 
 we will not mince matters,' stepped briskly along 
 with me at his side into the church. When his 
 time came to read the poem from the platform, 
 Emerson read smoothly for a while; then, not 
 feeling satisfied with what he had written, closed 
 his reading abruptly and sat down." 
 
 The next day, as I was sitting with Emerson 
 to entertain him while Wyatt Eaton was sketch- 
 ing his portrait for Scribners 3Iagazine, I asked 
 him about this poem. He said he had composed 
 such a poem, and it may have had a passage in it 
 about Washington; but he had quite forgotten 
 the facts about its delivery in Cambridge. After 
 his father's death, Doctor Emerson told me that 
 this poem was written for delivery in 1834; that 
 it contained two striking passages, one on Wash- 
 ington and another on Lafayette, besides the lines 
 on Webster which are printed among the posthu- 
 mous poems (edition of 1884). The whole poem 
 
 [94] 
 
EMERSON 
 is in the measure of Pope and Dryden, with an 
 occasional Alexandrine; and I fancy that the re- 
 markable lines in Woodnotes beginning 
 
 " In unplowed Maine he sought the lumberers' gang/' 
 
 were intended for this poem, which has never 
 been printed entire. Channing entered Harvard 
 this year (1834) and Thoreau had entered the 
 year before. 
 
 At various dates from 1860 to 1880, Emerson 
 spoke to me of Thoreau, saying, among other 
 things: "He was a person who said and wrote 
 surprising things, not accounted for by anything 
 in his antecedents, — his birth, his education, or 
 his way of life. But why is he never frank ? That 
 was an excellent saying of Elizabeth Hoar's about 
 him: 'I love Henry, but I can never like him.' 
 What is so cheap as politeness? I have no social 
 pleasure with Henry, though more than once the 
 best conversation. Yes, I know he needs cherish- 
 ing and care. Yet who can care and cherish, when 
 we are so driven with our own affairs ? Longfellow 
 and Lowell have not appreciated Thoreau as a 
 
 [95] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 
 thinker and writer, and Judge Hoar has confirmed 
 them in their scepticism. Henry makes an instant 
 impression, one way or the other. He met Thomas 
 Cholmondeley in my house, in 1854, — you also 
 met that singularly verdant Englishman there, 
 — who was so pleased with the nonchalant man- 
 ner of Thoreau that he went at once and engaged 
 to board at INIrs. Thoreau's, where his admiration 
 of Henry grew greater by daily contact. Thoreau 
 did not at first appreciate his Shropshire friend, 
 but came to value him highly." 
 
 In 1874-75, Emerson was much in favor of 
 printing Thoreau's journals entire, particularly the 
 natural history in them. He said that he advised 
 ^liss Thoreau (who died in 1876) to put the jour- 
 nals in my charge, as they had been for a time, 
 while I was living in her house, where the manu- 
 scripts remained for many years after Thoreau's 
 death. He told her that I could well select the 
 passages for printing, and could call on INIr. Chan- 
 ning to aid in editing them, as she had done, soon 
 after Henry's death. The mention of Channing 
 displeased her; she told Emerson that, without 
 
 [96] 
 
EMERSON 
 
 asking her consent, or giving her knowledge of 
 what he was to do with them, Channing had 
 gone to Henry's room in the west attic, taken the 
 journals, or some of them, and kept them for a 
 time. Fearing that he would have access to them 
 in my custody, she had requested Emerson to 
 have them removed to the town library. At her 
 death she left them to Mr. Blake. Emerson re- 
 gretted this ; he had read the selections made by 
 Mr. Blake and printed in The Atlantic, and did 
 not think the best selections had been made, or 
 the best arrangement followed. He said he read 
 Channing's Thoreau, the Poet- Naturalist when it 
 came out in 1873, but did not wholly like it; he 
 would read it again, since I praised it.^ 
 
 When Emerson's edition of Thoreau's Letters 
 and a few poems came out, I remonstrated with 
 him for printing so few of the verses. He replied 
 that he had chosen the best, and that it would 
 do Thoreau no credit to print them all, as I sug- 
 gested, — every line, whether good or bad, as we 
 do with the verse of the Greeks, whom Thoreau 
 in some points so resembled. He remained firm 
 
 [97] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 in his view, and afterwards told me (in 1878) that 
 Thoreau's best poem was the earUest one, Sym- 
 pathy, pubhshed first in The Dial in 1840. 
 
 In his early relations with Alcott in Concord 
 (1840-41), there were incidents that have escaped 
 notice, I think. Soon after the Alcott family- 
 reached Concord, spending the first night at the 
 Middlesex tavern, INIr. Emerson was summoned 
 there to perform the wedding ceremony for the 
 landlord's daughter, JNIiss Wesson, who married 
 Sam Staples, then an assistant in the tavern, 
 but afterwards deputy sheriff and jailer; and at 
 this ceremony Mr. Alcott was a witness. At INIr. 
 Emerson's own Plymouth wedding in 1835, Sam, 
 as the stable boy, had taken to him at the Old 
 Manse the horse and chaise which was to convey 
 the bridesjroom to JNIiss Jackson's Winslow INIan- 
 sion for the ceremony. He was then living with 
 his mother at Doctor Ripley's, and was paying for 
 the board of both the sum of eight dollars only 
 a week — with a stipulation that when both were 
 at home, they should have a fire together in one of 
 the parlors, and when Mr. Emerson was absent, 
 
 [98] 
 
EMERSON 
 his mother should have a fire in her own chamber. 
 Considering that he was thus the more expensive 
 of the two, he proposed to his grandfather that he 
 should pay five dollars of the eight, and his mo- 
 ther but three. In 1841, before the Alcotts had 
 been in Concord a year, Emerson proposed, with 
 the approval of his wife, that Mr. Alcott and his 
 family (a wife and four children) should occupy 
 "half our house and store-room free"; Mr. Alcott 
 to work in the garden, and Mrs. Alcott to share 
 the household labors with Mrs. Emerson. The 
 families and tables were to be separate, "save one 
 oven to bake our puddings and the same pot for 
 our potatoes; but not the same cradle for our 
 babies." Mrs. Alcott had the practical good sense 
 to decline this generous but embarrassing offer; 
 which was as near as Emerson ever came, I think, 
 to the project of a community for himself. 
 
 It was a little earlier than this that Emerson 
 had formed his friendship with the shy and capri- 
 cious poet Ellery C banning. They were brought 
 together in Boston, in December, 1840, by the 
 good offices of Samuel Gray Ward of Boston 
 
 [99] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 (now of Washington), who had for some years 
 shared with INIiss CaroUne Sturgis of Boston the 
 hazardous position of Channing's intimate. Em- 
 erson, who had seen some of his early verses, and 
 even printed them in the October Dial, had long 
 been eager to meet the poet; but he was either 
 on the prairies of Illinois, or on the road to or 
 from the West, or shunning society in Boston, or 
 at Curzon's ^lill, or at "Aunt Becky Atkins's" in 
 Newburyport. Finally they came together, these 
 two poets, and each enjoyed the other. Their 
 correspondence, fitful and moody on Channing's 
 part, brief and wise from Emerson's pen, displays 
 a singular friendship, extending over more than 
 forty years, and, so far as Emerson is concerned, 
 justifying his sweet verse in the Essays: — 
 
 ''I fancied he was fled, 
 And, after many a year. 
 Glowed unexhausted kindliness 
 Like daily sunrise there." 
 
 On Channing's part the conditions vary greatly. 
 He never loses his admiration for Emerson's 
 genius, nor quite fails in gratitude for the con- 
 
 [ 100 ] 
 
EMERSON 
 stant services which Emerson renders; but the 
 moods of a disappointed man are hard to restrain. 
 That remoteness and aloofness of Emerson at 
 times, of which I spoke early in this book, gave 
 Channing real agony; he was formed for the 
 closest intimacy with a very few persons, he had 
 fixed his affection upon Emerson, and it did not 
 seem to him to be returned. "Unappreciated! It is 
 this," he said, in a letter to another friend, "which 
 strikes through the soul of a man like a slow fire. 
 It is no longer Nature ; persons begin to assume 
 a terrific value to me. I thought I had done with 
 persons. No — they rise and tear me, year after 
 year." But this is only one of the phases of this 
 long friendship. At other times, and for the most 
 part, there was cordiality in Emerson, and a nearer 
 approach to sympathy than with a somewhat so- 
 cially rude nature, such as Thoreau's was, in con- 
 trast with Emerson's centuries of social culture. 
 
 Channing's special gift was aesthetic ; he could 
 take his friends, and he often took Emerson, to 
 scenes in the landscape which opened new ideas in 
 art, and new views of Nature. In literature, too, 
 
 [101 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 as in art, his scope was wide and his jiidginent 
 manly and deUcate. His humor was suffusing 
 and irresistible ; the wretchedness of which he so 
 often spoke, and which indeed haunted him, was 
 soothed and often dispelled by his love of Victor 
 Cousin's trinity: the Good, the Beautiful, and the 
 True. These abstractions, as with Shakespeare 
 and Homer, floated in a sea of humor, softly laps- 
 ing or noisily mirthful, — the anerithmon gclasma 
 of a Greek poet. To Emerson, whose study was 
 JNIan and Nature, and whose life craved variety, 
 C banning furnished that element of the unex- 
 pected which is so apt to be lost in a long friend- 
 ship, and perhaps was finally lost in this one. 
 
 Thus, about 1878, when I was relating to Em- 
 erson what constant topics of enlivening conver- 
 sation Channing brought with him to his walks 
 and talks with me, Emerson sighed and said, '* It 
 used to be so with me, but of late he says little 
 or nothing, and I do not find in him that 'in- 
 exhaustible fund of good fellowship' of which 
 Thoreau told Ricketson, and which was once in 
 him." Probably there was a fault on both sides, 
 
 [ 102 ] 
 
EMERSON 
 — a little lack of confidence on Emerson's part, 
 after C banning had printed, without consulting 
 him, some passages copied with his consent from 
 Emerson's journals, years before; and on Chan- 
 ning's part some grief at this withdrawal. Tho- 
 reau, in a similar experience, had confided to his 
 journal the suffering he felt, but Channing, who 
 kept journals but semi-occasionally, had no such 
 resource. His letters to Emerson which are pre- 
 served, and may some time be published, contain 
 many passages showing deep insight and frequent 
 grace of expression. During his short residence in 
 New York in 1844-45, he thus described his way 
 of letter-writing, and his preference for the coun- 
 try over the city (December 19, 1844): — 
 
 "Would to God I had something to tell you 
 worth your hearing! Don't thank me in any of 
 your letters for mine. When I am at home I run 
 into your house; when I am away I run in by 
 means of a letter. Do not look upon it in any 
 other light, for Heaven's sake. I have no idea of 
 being estranged at all from your house by coming 
 a few paltry hundred miles and taking up my 
 
 [103 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 quarters here. I fear I shall have a barren winter 
 in New York. I do not require the city; it is no 
 tug on my faculties. It does tug me to live in the 
 country, — in the hard, still, severe, iron-bound 
 fields of New England. There, in solitude, I paced 
 many a day, treading wearily the lone avenues of 
 the silent woods, sustained only in life by the 
 breath of the sky. To dwell there is sufficient to 
 test and reduce all the powers of a man, — a soli- 
 tary, severe Ufe, a time of wailing and barrenness. 
 There is not a field in that village but I have 
 watered it with my tears." 
 
 Few of Emerson's letters have been published; 
 many of them should be. Those which appear in 
 these pages will indicate what treasures they con- 
 tain. That which I am now to give illustrates his 
 constant generosity toward other authors, and his 
 high appreciation of this poet of whom we have 
 been hearing. It relates to the incomplete manu- 
 script of Channing's "colloquial poem," as he 
 quaintly called it, The Wanderer, which had been 
 in my hands some months when I submitted it 
 to Emerson, a year before it was printed by Os- 
 
 [ 104 ] 
 

 ..^i.tr^Cr^A'^— ;«^ /7c^^^ ^^--z^^^^ ^^r^o^^ 
 

 
 
n r 
 
 r 
 /^^^...^^ .^^^^^^ ^---^^'^^^ 
 
 /> 
 
 
 /y^-c^cA^ 
 
 y-l^ci^^t^ ^^^^L^i^j^^^^t^ '^^^^^y^^ 
 a^^uO:^ /^ "^^^-^^^rt^ ^i:^^^^^ ^^^fe^ 
 
EMERSON 
 good in Boston. He returned it to me, after some 
 weeks, with this letter, sent to Springfield, where 
 I was living from 1868 to 1872, in which year I 
 returned to Concord. 
 
 "Concord, 13 November, 1870. 
 "My dear Sir: 
 
 " / ought not to have returned the Manuscript you were so good and 
 "careful to lend me, without special acknowledgmeiit. Bid on the 
 " day when I receixied your note, I was busy with work which I was 
 " to carry in the morning to Boston, to he more busy there in Jin- 
 " ishing the same. Indeed, I have been such a hack lately with my 
 " things, and as it happened, a sick hack, too, that I have not done 
 "justice to that Manuscript in all this time. 
 
 " Yet I read the tivojirst parts not only with great pleasure, but 
 "with surprise at the power and thejidelity of the writing. When 
 "you can see through the handnrriting, the thought is so active and 
 " original^ the observation of nature so incessant, that it must be 
 " attractive, I think, to all good readers. It absolves the writer in- 
 " stantly from the charge of idleness or solitariness, by showing that 
 " his immense vacation is all well spent. What botany a?id omi- 
 " thology and tvonderful eye for landscape he has! I long to see 
 " and read it all in fair print. 
 
 " The third paii, the 'Sea' I did not finish, — perhaps did not 
 " read far, — it seemed to me not nearly so happily ivritten; and 
 " being, as I have said, myself preoccupied, I did not return to it. 
 " I could not resist the showing 'Monadnoc' to Ellen and Edward, 
 " who read it with loud joy. I heartily hope that the hook can and 
 
 [105] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 
 " will he printed, as it nill, I think, conquer to itself a valuable pnb- 
 
 " lie, a?id thereby essentially benejit the author in more ways than a 
 
 "good sale. 
 
 " With great regard yours, 
 
 "R.W.Emerson. 
 "F. B. Sanborn, Esq." 
 
 The Emerson children here mentioned as read- 
 ing the descriptions of "Cheshire's haughty hill," 
 as Emerson styled his favorite mountain in the 
 Concord prospect, had themselves spent days and 
 nights on Monadnoc with Channing and their 
 younger friends; and a part of the poem dealt 
 with them and their adventures there. The plea- 
 sure they took in the reading had one inconven- 
 ience for me. They could not refrain from quot- 
 ing some of his own verses to the author, when 
 taking tea at the Emerson house, and this re- 
 vealed to the quick-witted poet that his manu- 
 script, which he had intrusted to me to find him 
 a publisher, had been in Emerson's hands, to 
 whom he had not himself intended to show it till 
 it should appear "in fair print." He therefore in- 
 stantly wrote to me in Springfield, asking the 
 return of the sheets. I had got a part of them 
 
 [ 106] 
 
EMERSON 
 copied, but not all, and I replied that I would 
 bring them with me to Concord at an early date, 
 when the copy was completed; and this I did, 
 without explaining to him what use Emerson had 
 made of the first part of the poem. Afterwards, 
 when we had found a publisher, it was agreed 
 that Emerson should write a preface, as he did 
 — using some of the same expressions found in 
 the above letter. 
 
 During their long familiarity EUery Channing 
 noted down a few of the remarks which Emerson 
 made in a thousand conversations, and Emerson 
 did the like by Channing. Some of these appear 
 in the chapters of Channing's Thoreau which he 
 called "Walks and Talks" and "Characters"; 
 others will be given here. Some of Emerson's 
 comments came out in The Atlantic Monthly last 
 July (1902), but with misprints that injured their 
 effect. The passage dated in 1859, for instance, 
 where it relates to Channing's poem of Near 
 Home, printed in 1858, should read thus: — 
 
 "Channing, who writes a poem for our fields, 
 begins to help us. That is construction, and better 
 
 [ 107 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 than running to Charlemagne and Alfred for sub- 
 jects. \car Home is a poem which would delight 
 the heart of Wordsworth, though genuinely ori- 
 ginal, and with a simplicity of plan which allows 
 the writer to leave out all the prose. 'T is a series 
 of sketches of natiu-al objects such as abound in 
 New England, en wreathed by the thoughts they 
 suggest to a contemplative pilgrim, — 
 
 'Unsleeping truths by which wheels on Heaven's prime.' 
 
 There is a neglect of superficial correctness which 
 looks a little studied, as if perhaps the poet chal- 
 lenged notice to his subtler melody ; and strokes 
 of skill which recall the great masters. There is 
 nothing conventional in the thought or the illus- 
 tration ; but 
 
 'Tlioughts that voluntary move 
 Harmonious numbers' 
 
 and pictures seen by an instructed eye." 
 
 In his mention of "two notable acquaintances 
 of mine, not else to be approximated," Emerson 
 had in mind, I suppose, Henry Thoreau and Wil- 
 liam Tappan, in whose acquaintance '*W. E. C. 
 
 [ 108 ] 
 
EMERSON 
 served as a companion of H. D. T., and Tappan 
 of C banning." This, at any rate, is wliat occurred. 
 Again, in the earhest mention of Channing in 
 these Atlantic passages, the date should be 1840, 
 not 1841, and the remark, "C.'s eyes are a com- 
 pUment to the human race," etc., was meant to 
 apply to Caroline Sturgis, to whom and of whom 
 Channing wrote some of his best early poems. On 
 this point Emerson said to me in 1874, and sub- 
 sequently: "Ellery Channing's earliest friends 
 were Caroline Sturgis and S. G. Ward, by whom 
 he was introduced to me in 1840, after I had 
 printed some of his verses in The Dial as 'New 
 Poetry.' You know his father, Doctor Walter 
 Channing; his uncle, Doctor Channing the min- 
 ister, was the patron of my early studies in divin- 
 ity. He was one of three persons whom I have 
 heard speak more eloquently than any others; and 
 I never could find in the hymns what I heard 
 Doctor Channing read from them in his high 
 pulpit. Ellery 's mother dying early [in 1822, 
 while Doctor Channing was in England], he was 
 brought up for a while by his mother's aunt, INlrs. 
 
 [ 109] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 Bennett Forbes, sister of Colonel T. H. Perkins, 
 who lived at ^lilton and was the mother of our 
 friend, John ^lurray Forbes. Mrs. WiUiam Hunt 
 [wife of the painter], who was herself a Perkins, 
 ascribes all Ellery's peculiarities to the Perkins 
 blood, of which she tells sad stories. His father. 
 Doctor AValter Channing, went abroad for his 
 medical education; when he went again in our 
 time, and, returning from Russia, came here to 
 Concord to see his son, he found Ellery just start- 
 ing out for an afternoon walk. He did not give 
 it up for the sake of seeing his father, but left 
 him in the house where you once lived, to enter- 
 tain himself as he might with his grandchildren. 
 I have seldom heard Ellery speak of ]Mr. Al- 
 cott otherwise than as a fool ; yet he has wTitten 
 me some of the best things in praise of Alcott. I 
 do not remember hearing of Majoi^ Leviticus, a 
 long prose sketch, in which Alcott is satirized; 
 but I now have in my possession a thick prose 
 manuscript which Channing brought me many 
 years ago, but which I did not think good enough 
 to print, and in which probably Alcott is men- 
 
 [110] 
 
EMERSON 
 tioned. EUery began by being very intimate with 
 INliss Elizabeth Hoar; then suddenly broke off 
 the acquaintance, and would not look at her 
 when he met her in the street; but he has re- 
 cently [1874] renewed his intimacy with her." 
 
 In this conversation, among others, Emerson 
 said to me "I hope it will please INIr. Alcott to 
 die first, so that I can write his biography." He 
 added : " I formerly and usually took the greatest 
 pleasure in his conversation. It is no longer so, 
 but I suppose that is my own fault. I ain in the 
 habit of saying that he cannot write ; but he has 
 this gift of conversation, and the most distin- 
 guished manners. Of this I have seen surprising 
 instances at his conversations, in meeting the an- 
 noyances of unappreciative interrupters; Alcott 
 parrying their frivolous questions with great wdt 
 and delicacy of tact." In 1878, w^hen Emerson was 
 asked to send verses to be printed anonymously 
 in A Masque of Poets, which Roberts was soon 
 to publish, I told him that Mr. Alcott had some 
 verses there, and that he had before printed sev- 
 eral poems; to which he replied, "JNIr. Alcott is 
 
 [ 111 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 a brilliant talker, but he cannot write anything; 
 I should know he could never write a line of 
 verse." It was in this conversation that Emerson 
 assured me it was settled that he could not him- 
 self write poetry; and a few moments after he 
 added, "Others have found this out at last, but 
 1 could have told them so long ago." His daugh- 
 ter whispered that he had taken this idea from 
 something Carlyle had said about John Sterling, 
 whom he would not allow to be a poet, though 
 he had written some fine verses. It was soon after 
 this that Alcott began to compose those Sonnets 
 and Canzonets published in 1882, just before Em- 
 erson's death, which disprove the absolute nega- 
 tive of this friend on his power of writing verse; 
 for these octogenarian sonnets have a peculiar 
 merit, not often found in portrait-sketches in 
 metrical form. The earliest of the poems in this 
 book came to my notice under affecting circum- 
 stances, as this entry from my journal shows: — 
 
 {Sunday, January 4, 1880.) "At half-past three 
 to-day, INIr. Alcott called at my house by the 
 river, to spend the afternoon, and read me some 
 
 [ 112 ] 
 
EMERSON 
 'notes' as he said. These proved to be the stanzas 
 of a new poem on the death of his daughter 
 JNIay (Madame Nieriker, the wife of Ernst Nie- 
 riker of Baden in Switzerland, temporarily resid- 
 ing in Paris), who died near Paris, on December 
 30, 1879. She had been absent from Concord for 
 nearly three years, and was married in London a 
 year ago. The poem he calls Love's Morrow and 
 it has been written in the nights and mornings 
 since he had tidings of this youngest daughter's 
 death, on the last day of the old year. He was 
 himself eighty years old on the twenty-ninth of 
 November last; his daughter Louisa forty-seven 
 on the same day, and INIay thirty-nine years old 
 last July. It seemed to me the finest of Mr. Al- 
 cott's many poems which I have seen ; expressing 
 with simplicity and pathos the grief he now feels. 
 He desired me to counsel him as to the form in 
 certain lines, and the use of particular words; 
 some of these, at his suggestion or mine, were 
 changed. He spoke touchingly and with discrimi- 
 nation of May ; saying that he felt her loss more 
 than that of his wife two years before. 'There was 
 
 [ 113 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 an earthly future for May, with her child, but 
 none for Mrs. Alcott at her age' (seventy-seven). 
 As I was making for him a copy of the poem, 
 with the changes, Mr. Emerson, who had called 
 at JNIr. Alcott's house near by, to sympathize with 
 him in his bereavement, finding he was with me, 
 came over, and they had a long conversation by 
 themselves. 
 
 "It was now five o'clock and more, and, after 
 some urging, he stayed to tea, and with him his 
 daughter Ellen, who had called to escort him 
 home, at the other end of the village. Mr. Alcott 
 also stayed, and the conversation soon became 
 general, and reminiscent, as it often is with Emer- 
 son of late years. He said that a classmate of his 
 brother William, John Everett, a younger bro- 
 ther of Edward and Alexander Everett, was a 
 superior person, with as much genius as Edward, 
 and of a more imposing appearance. He was noted 
 in College, as Edward had been, for eloquence in 
 declamation, 'and I remember exactly how he 
 uttered Byron's lines in Childe Harold, which we 
 all knew by heart then: — 
 
 [ 114 ] 
 
EMERSON 
 
 ''Three hosts combine to oiFer sacrifice, 
 Three tongues prefer strange orisons on high, 
 Three gaudy standards flout the pale blue skies; 
 The shouts are France ! Spain ! Albion ! Victory ! 
 The foe, the victim, and the fond ally," etc. 
 
 When Byron had nothing to say, which was 
 often, he yet said it magnificently. John Ever- 
 ett's address to his classmates, on graduating, 
 was printed at the time, and is a very good piece 
 of writing. Edward Hale, his nephew, has lately 
 sent me a copy, and I read it, after many years, 
 with new pleasure. He became a tutor in the 
 Transylvania University in Kentucky; but in a 
 visit to Boston in 1826, after speaking eloquently 
 in Faneuil Hall, he went home to a house where 
 Miss Ellen Tucker was then living, and she heard 
 him fall dead in a room over hers. 
 
 " ' William Emerson, after graduating and teach- 
 ing a school in Boston, went to Germany to com- 
 plete his studies for the ministry; but had his 
 opinions so much modified by what he learned 
 there that he had doubts of his fitness for the 
 pulpit. He went to see Goethe at Weimar, to 
 ask his advice about preaching, and the old poet 
 
 [ 115 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 urged him to conform to custom and preach in 
 spite of his doubts. JNIy brother could not do 
 that; he returned to Boston and came to see me 
 in Chelmsford, where I had a school, — telling me 
 that "he could not be a minister." I was very sad, 
 for I knew how much it would grieve my mother, 
 as it did. We were all ministers for generations. 
 She was a lady of the old stock, my mother, — 
 had been a member of Doctor Gardiner's Epis- 
 copal Church in Boston, and was converted to 
 Unitarianism by her husband, my father. Aunt 
 JNIary Emerson was a genius and a great writer. 
 
 '"Afterwards, when I was studying for the 
 ministry at Divinity Hall in Cambridge, Profes- 
 sor Andrews Norton was lecturing there ; and he 
 allowed me, who for a year could use my eyes 
 but little, to hear the lectures without being ex- 
 amined on the subjects. If they had examined 
 me, they would perhaps not have let me preach 
 at all. Professor Norton was then a scholastic per- 
 son, who had the air of living among his books at 
 Shady Hill, near the College; he was not a man 
 of society, as I think. Edward Everett, a younger 
 
 [116] 
 
EMERSON 
 
 scholar, who had studied in Germany, was ad- 
 mired by all the young men when he taught 
 Greek at Cambridge; we were sorry when he 
 went into political life, and was sent to Congress, 
 for which he was not fitted. Alexander Everett 
 seemed to me a heavy person; his brothers had 
 genius, but he had only talent.'" 
 
 At this date, little more than two years before 
 his death, Emerson seldom took part any longer 
 in public conversations, being distrustful of his 
 memory; which, however, was good for remote 
 events, such as those above mentioned. He often 
 spoke of his college days, and on one occasion 
 related to Elizabeth Peabody, in the presence of 
 his brother Charles, an incident of his intercourse 
 with the professor of rhetoric, Edward Channing, 
 a brother of the preacher, who had a great name 
 for improving the style of his pupils. Emerson 
 had written a poem for a college exhibition, and, 
 being required to submit it to Professor Chan- 
 ning, got only this remark by way of criticism, — 
 "You had better write another poem." "What 
 a useless remark that was!" said Emerson; "he 
 
 [ in ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 might have pointed out to me some things in my 
 work that were better than others, for all could 
 not have been equally bad." Charles Emerson said, 
 " He did not treat me so unhandsomely ; for when 
 I took him a prose exercise once, he said to me, 
 'Emerson, if Burke had wished to express such a 
 thought as yours, he would have written so-and- 
 so.'" "That was much better," said Waldo Emer- 
 son, "for the very name of Burke is inspiring ; and 
 what you had written could not have been wholly 
 worthless, if it suggested any comparison with 
 Burke." He was sure he had got little instruction 
 or criticism from his professors that was of value, 
 but he ascribed much to the stimulus and ex- 
 ample given by his Aunt Mary. A friend once 
 asked him, "What would have happened in the 
 development of your mind if you had been born 
 and grown up in the small town of Harvard, 
 where your father was first settled as parish min- 
 ister?" "That circumstance would have made 
 little difference; Nature and books would have 
 been with me." "But what if your Aunt Mary 
 had not taken part in your training?" "Ah, that 
 
 [ 118] 
 
EMERSON 
 would have been a loss ! she was as great an ele- 
 ment in my life as Greece or Rome." He told me 
 once that she was never fairly just to her step- 
 father, Doctor Ripley, because he could not write 
 well, — being so good a writer herself. 
 
 Emerson had preserved the only mention I 
 ever heard of a college duel fought by his uncle, 
 Daniel Bliss Ripley, the doctor's younger son, 
 which caused his expulsion from Harvard, and 
 his withdrawal to Alabama, where, at a town 
 called Saint Stephens, he lived and died, without 
 returning to his native land. "I once saw a letter," 
 said Emerson, "from my father, William Emer- 
 son, to George Cabot, the senator, and friend of 
 Washington, asking him to interpose and pre- 
 vent the duel between his half-brother, Ripley, 
 and young X. But it was impossible to prevent 
 the meeting; they fired one shot each, and the 
 consequence fell heavily on my grandfather."^ 
 He added that he had once dined at Waltham 
 with Governor Gore, a "great gentleman," and 
 Doctor Ripley's classmate. 
 
 I have thus given many samples of Emerson's 
 [ 119 ] 
 
THE P E R S O x\ A L I T Y OF 
 
 table-talk, and will only add here those which 
 Ellery Channing noted down: — 
 
 Foreign Travel. 
 
 "It is the American malady, — lues Americana; 
 it is the cholera. I have been visiting in the coun- 
 try, as I thought, — and behold, a lady, a profes- 
 sor's w4fe in a little college, began to talk to 
 me about the Bernese Alps! The Americans are 
 wTctched, go where they wdll. George Bradford 
 was miserable in Europe; he had left Rome and 
 gone to Paris wdthout a reason, save that others 
 were going; and now he wished to go back. I 
 do not know that he should have gone even to 
 Rome ; that is something exceptional. Paris does 
 not seem good till you have left it." 
 
 George Sand. 
 
 "I have already lost her. According to my 
 
 comprehension, good taste does not consist in 
 
 magnifying the little, as she does, but in the 
 
 selection of good things that can be properly 
 
 magnified." 
 
 [ 120] 
 
EMERSON 
 Burns. 
 
 "I was greatly surprised at the applause that 
 greeted my speech at the Burns dinner in Boston 
 the other day. Not having had a very good opin- 
 ion of this Scottish songster, I renewed my ac- 
 quaintance with him by a fresh reading, and to a 
 better pui-pose. But I had only a few moments 
 to prepare myself for speaking." 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 "Walking out in the autumnal woods this after- 
 noon with George Bradford, he thought that all 
 Maud was filled with descriptions of these golden 
 colors ; but when he looked in the book he found 
 only these two lines, 
 
 'And out he walked when the wind like a broken worldling wailed. 
 And the flying gold of the ruined woodlands drove thro' the air.' 
 
 Tennyson has not the fulness of Wordsworth. 
 Milton would have hardly lifted his eyelids to see 
 such things as Maud. Yet these Idylls of his show 
 that the Ideal may still be built in England." 
 
 Reading. 
 
 "I like reading as well as ever I did in my 
 
 youth. That is one thing that has lost no charm 
 
 [121 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 for me. Give me my book and candle, and I am 
 alone with the universe." 
 
 Writing- 
 
 (Said of a course of Lectures repeated). 
 
 "All I have learned of writing is to scratch out 
 
 a little. I have learned to omit the word 'very.' 
 
 These published discourses of mine do not read 
 
 as they did when they were delivered, so many 
 
 years ago, — fourteen years, is it? Yes, I have that 
 
 vanity of Doctor Ripley, who used without fail 
 
 to read his sermons over to the family after the 
 
 service in the afternoon. And so I repeat my old 
 
 discourses." 
 
 Future Life. 
 
 "I think well of Goethe's saying, — that if Na- 
 ture has given us these faculties, and I have em- 
 ployed mine well, and faithfully to the end, she 
 is bound still further to explain the questions 
 which they put." 
 
 Of a Little Lady. 
 
 "She is such a perfect little Serenity! 'Her Se- 
 rene Lowness,' we might call her." 
 
EMERSON 
 
 Parker Pillsbury, the Abolitionist Orator. 
 " He lives in the other Concord, our New Hamp- 
 shire namesake, and has much of the New Hamp- 
 shire vigor about him. He talks well in his chair, 
 but does not read as well from his paper." 
 
 Richard Cobden. 
 
 "I dined with JNIr. Cobden at John Forbes's in 
 Milton the other day, but he did not speak much 
 directly. I saw he had the true English feeling, 
 and was talking aside about his six per cents. He 
 spoke interrogatively, and 1 thought was grow- 
 ing seedy. I asked him why he did not let us 
 make an occasion for him to speak ; but he said 
 when he came over it was to keep his ears open 
 and his mouth shut."* 
 
 Nirvana. 
 
 "Different persons among the Buddhists take 
 their special views of the meaning of the doctrine 
 of Nirvana. They have their Kants and Hegels, 
 of course, who make each his own interpretation." 
 
 Sickness. 
 
 "James Burke, my man, when he is sick is 
 
 [ 123 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 spleeny. He thinks he shall die, that he cannot 
 earn half his wages, must go to his sister, — and 
 it is all very dreadful. Strange how differently 
 people view their colics and belly-aches! Some 
 laugh at their dumps, and see the joke, as they 
 should. JMrs. A and Mrs. B really believe that 
 they are ill; and I have no doubt it is true for 
 the moment. But let anything occur to tempt 
 JSIrs. B out, and she goes at once." 
 
 Debt 
 
 "When my debts begin to grow clamorous I 
 think I must take some means of satisfying them. 
 I have now in my pocket three cents and a coun- 
 terfeit half-dollar." 
 
 To his PuhUsher 
 
 (On being paid twice Jbr the same Essay). 
 
 "Mr. Fields! I ought not to take this money; but 
 
 I was a thief from the foundation of the world." 
 
 South Carolina. 
 
 "Think of a country where there is but one 
 opinion ! where there is no minority. Fisher Ames 
 was right in saying that the best majority was 
 
 [ 124 ] 
 
EMERSON 
 where there was but one over, — that is, where 
 opinion was most evenly divided." 
 
 This remark about South Carohna, of which it 
 used to be said that "when Calhoun took snufF, 
 the whole State sneezed," was not made in 1844, 
 at the time of Samuel Hoar's expulsion from 
 Charleston, but later, in connection with the out- 
 break of the Civil War, in which, from first to 
 last, Emerson took the side of Union and Lib- 
 erty. But in connection with Mr. Hoar's affair, 
 a characteristic citation may be given. Ellery 
 Channing, writing from New York in the win- 
 ter of 1844-45, had inquired of Emerson if the 
 conduct of the "old Squire" (as he was called in 
 Concord) had been quite brave enough in with- 
 drawing. To this Emerson gave substantially the 
 same reply which he gave to Channing's friend, 
 S. G. Ward, as printed in the little volume, Let- 
 ters from Emerson to a Friend, four years ago. 
 He said (December 17, 1844): — 
 
 "Mr. Hoar has just come home from Carolina, 
 and gave me this morning a narrative of his visit. 
 
 [ 125 j 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 He has behaved admirably well, I judge. One ex- 
 pression struck me, which he said he regretted a 
 little, afterwards, as it might sound a little vapor- 
 ing. A gentleman who was very much his friend 
 called him into a private room to say that the 
 danger from the populace had increased so much 
 that he must now insist on Mr. Hoar's leaving 
 the city at once; and he showed him where he 
 might procure a carriage, and where he might 
 safely stop on the way to his plantation, which he 
 would reach the next morning. JNIr. Hoar thanked 
 him, but told him again that he could not and 
 would not go, — and that he had rather his broken 
 skull should be carried to INIassachusetts by some- 
 body else, than to carry it home safe himself 
 whilst his duty required him to remain. He did 
 not consent to depart, but in every instance re- 
 fused, — to the sheriff, and acting mayor, to his 
 friends, and to the Committee of the South Caro- 
 lina Association, — and only went when they came 
 in crowds with carriages to conduct him to the 
 boat, and go he must. Then he got into the coach 
 himself, not thinking it proper to be dragged." 
 
 [ 126 ] 
 
EMERSON 
 
 It must be remembered that this venerable 
 gentleman was in Charleston as the envoy of 
 Massachusetts, to protest against the imprison- 
 ment of her free colored seamen, while their ves- 
 sel lay in port, — so fearful were the proud gentry 
 of that State lest the contagion of liberty might 
 be communicated to their slaves. Poetic justice 
 required that the insult to Massachusetts, and to 
 Kansas in 1856, should be requited in less than 
 twenty years by the presence in South Carolina 
 of Colonel Higginson's black regiment, recruited 
 from slaves, and of Colonel Montgomery's sol- 
 diers, also recruited from slaves. Emerson viewed 
 this recompense with satisfaction; and when, a 
 few years earlier, I had carried Captain Mont- 
 gomery, then a Kansas partisan leader, to his 
 house, he received the gallant descendant of the 
 Scotch Montgomeries, bearing himself like a 
 French Chevaher, with much hospitality. 
 
 Hospitality, in the usual sense, and also in the 
 broader meaning of liberality of soul toward 
 other men's thought, was a distinguishing trait 
 of Emerson. Though far from wealthy, and at 
 
 [ 127 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF 
 times much narrowed in his income by bad in- 
 vestments, his house was open to more guests 
 than any other in Concord, and he also enter- 
 tained his visitors from a distance very often in 
 Boston. In his earher acquaintance with Walt 
 Whitman, he desired to bring him to Concord, 
 in the spring of 1860, when Whitman was in 
 Boston, printing a new edition of his Leaves of 
 Grass; and Alcott and Henry Thoreau had the 
 same wish, to invite him to their houses. But 
 it was found that Mrs. Emerson, Mrs. Alcott, 
 and Sophia Thoreau were so prejudiced against 
 Whitman by some things in his book, that they 
 would not join in the invitation. Twenty-one 
 years later, in September, 1881, when Whitman 
 did make his only visit to Concord, as my guest, 
 Mrs. Alcott and Miss Thoreau were dead, but 
 INlrs. Emerson came with her husband to an 
 evening conversation at my house, and cordially 
 invited him to dine with her the next day, as he 
 did; and Louisa Alcott, who had much admira- 
 tion for Whitman, came with her father, and 
 bore her part in the colloquy. Whitman has de- 
 
 [ 128 ] 
 
EMERSON 
 
 scribed this visit in one of his books ; it occurred 
 but a few months before Emerson's death. Emer- 
 son had told me, long before, that when he pro- 
 posed to Doctor Holmes and Mr. Longfellow to 
 invite Whitman to one of the monthly dinners 
 of the Boston Saturday Club, of which all three 
 were members, neither of these poets manifested 
 any wish to meet Whitman, and he was not in- 
 vited. 
 
 I have dwelt, in this book, chiefly on personal 
 traits and events well known to me, in the life of 
 this great man, leaving them to bear their own 
 testimony to his character. Fitly to delineate that, 
 on the broader canvas of a biography, though I 
 should wish to do so, would be beyond my powers, 
 as it has proved to be with most who have at- 
 tempted it. No adequate memoir (though several 
 excellent sketches have appeared) preserves for 
 those who knew him, or for those who read him 
 thoughtfully, his remarkable traits in their com- 
 pleteness ; while many writers have misconceived 
 him gi'eatly. Time is needed, even the distance of 
 a century, to show his colossal portraiture in due 
 
 [ 129 ] 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF EMERSON 
 perspective. One quality in him impressed all who 
 met him: his freedom from the common defects. 
 Henry James, Senior, with his theologic vocabu- 
 lary, called him "the unfallen man," and Alcott, 
 with others, used the same figure of speech. My 
 dear friend Ednah Cheney, writing to Ariana 
 Walker in 1852, after hearing him in Boston, 
 said: "Emerson's lectures are finished. He never 
 was higher or nobler; never so clear, humane, 
 and practical. He looks like an angel fresh from 
 Paradise, and speaks as if he had never been 
 at the Tower of Babel, but had retained his first 
 heavenly accents." This youthful estimate has a 
 touch of Concord hyperbole, but goes to the root 
 of the matter. He had something in his mind 
 and heart which could so be described. I must 
 say, as did Sir Robert Harley's chaplain of that 
 grand Englishman: "My language is not a match 
 for his excellent virtues: his spiritual lineaments 
 and beauties are above my pencil. I want art to 
 draw his picture." 
 
NOTES 
 
NOTES 
 
 Note 1 (page 29). 
 
 Like Emerson's own character, which had surprising contra- 
 dictions in it, Mary Emerson could be differently viewed from 
 diverse standpoints. A relative of hers, still living, who spent 
 some time with Doctor Ripley in the Old Manse, was about 
 to leave Concord, and her aged kinsman thus addressed her; 
 "I will give you a short lecture, my dear. In your future course 
 of life, remember to follow Duty rather than Inclination; a 
 good rule, of which your Aunt Mary has always held the op- 
 posite." She certainly believed that she did her whole duty, 
 however disagreeable it was to others. At her death in May, 
 1863, in her ninetieth year, I wrote of her in the Boston Co7n- 
 monwealth (to which Alcott, Channing, Thoreau, posthumously, 
 and Emerson contributed — the last sparingly): "Her con- 
 versation was a singular melange of sincere devotion, worldly 
 wisdom, wit, and anecdote; and she was thought to have the 
 power of saying more disagreeable things in a half-hour than 
 any person living. Reproof was her mission, she thought, and 
 she fulfilled it unsparingly. But she knew how to be tolerant, 
 was a great humorist, and loved to meet forcible persons who 
 would not agree with her." A kinswoman thought a young 
 editor ought not to have told so much truth of the deceased, 
 and complained to Emerson, who read the paragraph, and 
 merely said (as was reported to me by another niece), " I see 
 that he was well acquainted with Aunt Mary." 
 
 Note 2 (page 97). 
 
 This was said in 1878; but in 1880 he did not remember hav- 
 ing x'ead it at all. 
 
 [ 133 ] 
 
NOTES 
 Note o (page 119). 
 
 The portrait of this handsome young duellist has long hung 
 in the hall at the Old Manse. 
 
 Note 4 (page 123). 
 
 Emerson had heard Mr. Cobden in England in 1847, and de- 
 
 seribed the speeeh in a letter to Thoreau. 
 
A LiMiTEi> EniTioN of five hundred copies of this book was 
 printed on French hand-made paper, and twenty-five copies on Japan 
 paper, by D. B. Updike, The Merrymount Press, Boston, 
 in March, 1903. This is copy N^- ^_ >-x. 
 

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