But the com

art, and the secular work of the world. mon people heard him gladly. Pisgah and Tabor rose up against the horizon around Concord and Lexington. In his twenty-second year Emerson, at the anniversary of the Concord fight, proposed the toast, "The little bush that marks the spot where Captain Davis fell: 'tis the burning bush where God spake for his people." Now he kindles every bush for the people. He persuades the farmer, so anxious not to be cheated, that when he is equally anxious not to cheat, his marketIcart will shine like a chariot of the sun. The correspondences which Swedenborg saw between biblical and natural forms are fossils beside those which Emerson shewed between nature and the heart, mind, life, of every man; over every flower hovered its soul, and the farm was a sermon that never wearied. Thus the descendant of Thomas Emerson, baker, did not seek to feed the hunger of his villagers with tidings of heavenly bread harvested in ancient times and far lands. Beside his "Labour-in-vain Creek," as the retrospective fathers found it, he lived and laboured as in the living garden of a living God, and gave of its fruits to all whom he met; and such made it manifest that his prophecy was true - that which was ecstasy shall become daily bread.

XIV.

THE HOME.

WISE old friend of mine used to say that in

A marriage one should seek a soul that came into

the world about the same time as himself." So Emerson once said to me. Lidian Jackson, whom he married in September, 1835, exceeded him a little in age, and the spiritual breath of the same era was upon her. Born beside Plymouth Rock, she had become of such marked devoutness in the Church there founded by the Pilgrims, dedicated by her ancestors to the God of Calvin, and ascended to the God of Channing,— and so unwearied in her charities that she was known as "the Saint of Plymouth." Yet, whenever the "Last Supper" was to be celebrated in this church, its saint arose, and, from the old family pew near the pulpit, walked down the aisle and out of the church. This was not because she did not honour the rite, but because she held its maintenance as a condition of church-membership to be its perversion and dishonour. Mrs. Emerson brought some pecuniary addition to his means, and the house, with its pleasant garden, in which he loved to work, and several acres were purchased. Emerson now regarded himself as a rich man, with his homestead, about twenty thousand dollars in

money, and an increasing demand for his lectures. Then, as always, he and his wife knew the art of spending. Simplicity, good taste, comfort, hospitality, sincerity, were the furniture of this Concord home. There were business men in Boston who revered the scholar and philosopher, and perhaps then as later, if they had a good chance for an investment were glad to get Emerson's surplus into it and forward him good dividends. His mother may have been a little distressed at first by the strange opinions which had separated him from the Church, but she soon found that he had chosen the better part. Surrounded thus by all the resources of happiness, Emerson sorrowed most for his friend Carlyle in his lonely home on the bleak moors, and again urged him to come. He offered Carlyle his home, and even his own destiny. He prophesied and pictured for him a career in America singularly resembling the career afterwards fulfilled by himself. "He used to write," said Carlyle to me, "of solid and honest farmers, and said, 'Horace Greeley does their thinking for them at a dollar a head.' Whereat Carlyle was mirthful; but one can now see a sad contrast in the environments which the Old World and the New had severally assigned to these representatives of the same era. Carlyle praises poverty, while every posthumous page bears witness to its miserable effects upon himself and his life. Emerson never knew real poverty; even while he drove his mother's cow to pasture, there were prospects of plenty around him in every direction, and no room for fear or misgiving about the future. To a healthy intelligent youth America was already a fortune. Carlyle's

"Blessed be poverty" is not so wise as Solomon's "Give me neither poverty nor riches." After all it is a mean thing, this struggle for existence, to a thinker whose mind should be free to detach the poetic dream of its youth from the local mould, and sound a melody for the young world. "Concordia" lost nothing from its notes by not having passed through that furnace-smoke.

Much more will have to be said about Emerson's home as the birthplace of many souls, but I insert here reminiscences written by Louisa Alcott, whose tales have carried far the morning breath of Concord.

his answer.

was

"My first remembrance is of the morning when I was sent to inquire for little Waldo, then lying very ill. His father came to me, so worn with watching and changed by sorrow, that I was startled, and could only stammer out my message. Child, he is dead!' Then the door closed, and I ran home to tell the sad tidings. I was only eight years old, and that was my first glimpse of a great grief, but I never have forgotten the anguish that made a familiar face so tragical, and gave those few words more pathos than the sweet lamentation of the Threnody.'

"Later, when we went to school with the little Emersons in their father's barn, I remember many happy times when the illustrious papa was our good playfellow. Often piling us into a bedecked hay-cart, he took us to berry, bathe, or picnic at Walden, making our day charming and memorable by showing us the places he loved, the wood-people Thoreau had introduced to him, or the wildflowers whose hidden homes he had discovered. So that when, years after

wards, we read of 'the sweet rhodora in the woods,' and the burly, dozing humble-bee,' or laughed over "The Mountain and the Squirrel,' we recognised old friends, and thanked him for the delicate truth and beauty which made them immortal for us and others.

"When the book mania fell upon me at fifteen, I used to venture into Mr. Emerson's library and ask what I should read, never conscious of the audacity of my demand, so genial was my welcome. His kind hand opened to me the riches of Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, and Carlyle; and I gratefully recall the sweet patience with which he led me round the book-lined room, till 'the new and very interesting book' was found, or the indulgent smile he wore when I proposed something far above my comprehension. Wait a little for that,' he said. 'Meantime try this, and

if you like it, come again.' For many of these wise books I am waiting still, very patiently, because in his own I have found the truest delight, the best inspiration of my life.

"When these same precious volumes were tumbled out of the window while his house was burning some years ago, as I stood guarding the scorched wet pile, Mr. Emerson passed by, and surveying the devastation with philosophic calmness, only said in answer to my lamentations, 'I see my library under a new aspect. Could you tell me where my good neighbours have flung my boots?'

"In the tribulations of later life this faithful housefriend was an earthly Providence, conferring favours so beautifully that they were no burden, and giving