several others, show the attracting power of his personality. To some of these he has been a friend in the largest sense possible, a confidant in difficulties, a helper in times of need. They bear most ardent testimony to the strength of his sympathies and the largeness of his generosity. His fine devotion to his brothers, and his faithful service to many other members of his family, show the largeness of his heart and the loyalty of his nature. He has written much of the sacred joys of friendship, but he has written nothing equal to his own exemplification of its qualities. In this, as in all things else, he has been what he preached; preaching only what he found to be real in his own rich and many-sided experience of the highest things which life can give.

Of a retiring and diffident nature, he has kept aloof from a public life. Yet all the more strongly has he therefore been drawn to the circle of friends with whom he has been in sympathy. Among these persons was the friend of his youth, Sarah Bradford, who became the wife of the Rev. Samuel Ripley. In her old age she went to live in Concord, and was wont to pass each Sunday evening at Emerson's house. With other friends such as this one, long trusted and admired, he was accustomed for many years to spend that evening in conversation on subjects dear to them all. Perhaps he valued no friend more than Mrs. Ripley, and none ever influenced him so long and deeply. After her death, in July, 1867, he said of her,

...

"At a time when perhaps no other woman read Greek, she acquired the language with ease, and read Plato, - adding soon the advantage of German commentators. After her marriage, when her husband, the well-known clergyman of Waltham, received boys in his house to be fitted for college, she assumed the advanced instruction in Greek and Latin, and did not fail to turn it to account by extending her studies in the literature of both languages. She became one of the best Greek scholars in the country, and continued, in her latest years, the habit of reading Homer, the tragedians, and Plato. But her studies took a wide range in mathematics, in natural philosophy, in psychology, in theology, as well as in ancient and modern literature. She had always a keen ear open to whatever new facts astronomy, chemistry, or the theories of light or heat had to furnish. Any knowledge, all knowledge, was welcome.

Her stores increased day by day. She was absolutely without pedantry. Nobody ever heard of her learning until a necessity came for its use, and then nothing could be more simple than her solution of the problem proposed to her. The most intellectual gladly conversed with one whose knowledge, however rich and varied, was always with her only the means of new acquaintance. She was not only the most amiable, but the tenderest of women, wholly sincere, thoughtful for others. She was absolutely without appetite for luxury or display or praise or influence, with entire indifference to trifles."

Emerson has taken a keen interest in all which concerned the culture and advancement of his townsmen. He was long a zealous friend of the Concord Lyceum, devoting to it much of his time and thought. When its fiftieth anniversary was celebrated, E. R. Hoar bore testimony as follows to Emerson's influence throughout the town:

"It was the felicity of the Lyceum, as it was the good fortune of the town, that Mr. Emerson came to live among us. He has deliv ered before the Concord Lyceum in the last fifty years ninety-eight lectures. Distant be the day when this community shall be free to give full expression to its gratitude to him, and to the love and honor which his townsmen bear to him! But our ceremony would be incomplete if I did not ask you to pause for a moment, and to think what the simple statement of those ninety-eight lectures means. What a wealth of intellectual treasure has been spread out before this people! What keenness of analysis, what treasures of wit and wisdom, what lofty and inspiring thought, what results of a noble life, are contained in those manuscript pages which he has read to us! The presence of Mr. Emerson in Concord has been the education of the town. It has given it its principal distinction in our generation."

He has for many years been a member of the Social Circle, a Concord club organized in 1782, growing out of the revolutionary committee of safety. Societies of a wider character have honored themselves by making him a member. He is connected with the Massachusetts Historical Society and various other American institutions. The French Academy has made him a member of its section of Moral and Political Sciences. He has belonged to several clubs succeeding that organized by the transcendentalists. In 1849 the Transcen

dental Club was succeeded by the Town and Country Club, mainly organized by the efforts of Alcott. Emerson gave it its name; and he read before it the first essay to which it listened, on Books and Reading. This was on May 2, 1849. Among its members were Garrison, Parker, W. H. Channing, W. E. Channing, Alcott, Phillips, Hedge, Howe, King, Lowell, Weiss, Whipple, Higginson, Very, Pillsbury, and Thoreau. Subsequently he frequently attended the meetings of the contributors to The Atlantic Monthly, where his apt and pointed words were listened to gladly. He was not there or elsewhere a frequent talker, being always reticent, and not easy to come into free intercourse with other minds; but when he did speak, it was out of a full and exact mind. He has been an occasional attendant at the Radical Club and other similar gatherings. Strongly inclined to shun society and publicity, he has not for many years taken an active part in the social and literary efforts of this kind.

Emerson is characterized for modesty and simplicity, for guilelessness of character, and for a remarkable loyalty of nature. He has a loyal love for truth, and is: eager in the search for it. Fame has not affected, nor has criticism hurt him. Whatever the praise or blame, he has kept steadily on his way, in the same child-like, sincere, and trustful manner. His life has been above reproach; and he has been constantly devoted to human good, steadily loyal to his own ideals. Withdrawn from the strifes and the passions of a public career, living the quiet, peaceful life of the scholar, he has yet been faithful to the great human interests of his time. His life has been as moral, as ethically true, as his teaching has been; he has practiced his own precepts, exemplified his own doctrines. 66 Beyond almost all literary men on record, Higginson says, his life has been worthy of his words."

He is a Puritan, with all that is harsh, repulsive, and uncomfortable in Puritanism removed; but quite as loyal to moral purposes, as uncompromising in his devotion to the right and the true, as unconcerned for the

beauty and the culture and the ease that are not moral. As earnest a lover of culture as Goethe, he yet has none of Goethe's culture for its own sake. As severe a critic as Carlyle, he has none of Carlyle's despair, He has been kind, tender, and sympathetic in his criticisms, though earnest in his condemnation of evil. As a moral teacher, none can refuse to admire him more than Goethe or Carlyle, for the humanness of his manner, method, and aim. By his neighbors, those who have known him longest and most intimately, he is regarded with reverence and devotion. They see in him what constantly reminds them of the saint. He has been called a sage, but he has more than wisdom; he has that loftiness and wholeness of character, that loyalty and self-forgetfulness, that simplicity and wideness of sympathy, and especially that high sense of human faithfulness to the Divine, which characterizes the saintly life.

Τ

XV.

LITERARY METHODS.

IT has been Emerson's habit to spend the forenoon in his study, with constant regularity. He has not waited for moods, but caught them as they came, and used their results in each day's work. He has been a diligent though a slow and painstaking worker. It has been his wont to jot down his thoughts at all hours and places. The suggestions which result from his readings, conversations, and meditations are transferred to the note-book he carries with him. In his walks many a gem of thought is thus preserved; and his mind is always alert, quick to see, his powers of observation being perpetually awake. The results of his thinking are thus stored up, to be made use of when required. The story is told, that his wife suddenly wakened in the night, before she knew his habits, and heard him moving about the room. She anxiously inquired if he were ill. "Only an idea," was his reply, and proceeded to jot it down. Curtis humorously says, the villagers "relate that he has a huge manuscript book, in which he incessantly records the ends of thoughts, bits of observation and experience, the facts of all kinds,-a kind of intellectual and scientific scrap-bag, into which all shreds and remnants of conversation and reminiscences of wayside reveries are incontinently thrust."

After his note-books are filled, he transcribes their contents to a larger commonplace book. He then writes at the bottom, or in the margin, the subject of each paragraph. When he desires to write an essay, he turns to his note-books, transcribes all his paragraphs

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