RALPH WALDO EMERSON. WH HEN Frederika Bremer visited Boston, and Emerson called upon her, she wrote, "He came with a sunbeam on his countenance. He is a born gentleman." George William Curtis said, "A smile broke over his face like day over the sky," and, "At Emerson's house it is always morning." How could it have been otherwise with a man who loved humanity; whose whole life was spent in making the world happier and better; whose every sentence was full of hope and sweetness and courage. Who wrote, "To help the young soul, add energy, inspire hope, and blow the coals into a useful flame; to redeem defeat by new thought, by firm action, that is not easy; that is the work of divine men." And he was one of the divine men whose work in life it was to do this. "Don't hang a dismal picture on the wall," he said, "and do not daub with sables and glooms in your conversation. Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and bemoan. Don't waste 1 yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. Never worry people with your contritions, nor with dismal views of politics or society. Never name sickness. . . Set down nothing that will not help somebody." "Help somebody!" That was the key-note of his life and his teaching. "He who digs a well, constructs a stone fountain, plants a grove of trees by the roadside, plants an orchard, builds a durable house, reclaims a swamp, or so much as puts a stone seat by the wayside, makes the land so far lovely and desirable, makes a fortune which he cannot carry away with him, but which is useful to his country long afterwards. . . . A man is a man only as he makes life and nature happier to us." He preached a gospel of cheerfulness. "Goodnature is stronger than tomahawks,” he said. . . . "How often it seems the chief good to be born with a cheerful temper, and well adjusted to the tone of the human race. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. . . . The scholar must be a bringer of hope." ... How often he said to the young, "They can conquer who believe they can. He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear. . Hitch your wagon to a star. No god will help. We should find all their teams going the other way, Charles's Wain, Great Bear, Orion, Leo, Hercules: every god will leave you. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. . . . The man that stands by himself the universe will stand by him also. . . . Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. . . . The basis of good manners is self-reliance. . . . Self-trust is the first secret of success, the belief that, if you are here, the authorities of the universe put you here, and for cause, or with some task strictly appointed you in your constitution. . . . Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide, him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him, and embraces him because he did not need it." 66 I once heard Edward Everett Hale say, "You can never lead unless you lift," and Emerson always lifted. "When a man lives with God, his voice shall be sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn. . . . Do not rely on heavenly favor, or on compassion to folly, or on prudence, on common-sense, the old usage and main chance of men: nothing can keep you, not fate, nor health, nor admirable intellect; none can keep you, but rectitude only, rectitude for ever and ever! . . . Civilization depends on morality. . . . I am of the opinion of the poet Wordsworth, 'that there is no real happiness in this life, but in intellect and virtue.' I am of the opinion of Pliny, 'that, whilst we are musing on these things, we |