man alive as if expecting to receive more than he would impart. It was impossible to dwell in his vicinity without inhaling more or less the mountain atmosphere of his lofty thought."

Emerson himself has told us that "Rectitude scatters favors on every side without knowing it, and receives with wonder the thanks of all people." So it was with him; as it is written of one whom no man was more like, "There went virtue out of him and healed them all." He who knew sorrow yet was glad, who knew self-distrust yet stood self-reliant, who knew weakness yet remained strong, who knew bitternes yet kept sweet, whose love of man and of nature and of nature in man, shone through his face, and through every page he wrote, - he seemed to those near him the very prophet of God, preaching hope, freedom, courage, the glory of a high and simple life. "The sublime vision," he says, "comes to the pure and simple soul

in a clean and chaste body." "If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong as it is for the weak to be weak."

"Teach me your mood, O patient stars!
Who climb each night the ancient sky,
Leaving on space no shade, no scars,
No trace of age, no fear to die.”

In his presence weak men were ashamed that they had ever wondered whether it was worth while to live; for in his presence, even in the presence of what he had written, it was harder to be a coward than to be brave.

Of young people— not children, but young men and women he was the supreme helper; and we must remember that it was not only neighbors and friends who loved him, not only those that touched the hem of his garment who were made whole. His voice, his manner, his presence, charmed and refined all who came near him; but his written words put courage into ten thousand hearts.

"Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string."

"We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.”

"If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts and there abide, the huge world will come round to him."

"We are parlor soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate where strength is born."

"But we sit and weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty saith, ‘Up and onward forever more!'"

"Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say, 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day."

"I call upon you, young men, to obey your heart and be the nobility of this land."

Here is the star to which many an awkward and timid country lad has hitched his wagon; the strong and steady light to which the lights that flickered in a thousand hearts have flashed their bravest answer. This gentle scholar was a man, and a man who inspired others with his own manliness. There was in his philosophy no room for the weak and lazy. With all his visions he had a keen sense of the value of time, and expressed it (with more truth than poetry) in "The Visit:

"Askest, 'How long thou shalt stay?

Devastator of the day!"

"Do your work," he says, "and I shall know you. Do your work and you shall reinforce yourself. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much."

"The distinction and end of a soundly

constituted man is his labor. Use is inscribed on all his faculties. Use is the end to which he exists. As the tree exists for its fruit, so a man for his work. A fruitless plant, an idle animal, does not stand in the universe."

He believed in work that left no time for worrying:

"But blest is he who playing deep yet haply asks not why,

Too busied with the crowded hour to fear to live or die."

And he believed in work through everything,

"On bravely through the sunshine and the showers!

Time hath his work to do and we have ours."

Such was the courage of his preaching and of his life. We are to be ourselves in the present, not to make ourselves like anybody else or like what we ourselves have been. If we are inconsistent, no matter; if we are misunderstood, no matter. "With consistency," he says, "a