produce." He was a poet, a genius, and had the face of an angel. He had gone early to England, and knew Carlyle, Wordsworth, Landor, Coleridge, and that fine group of literary men. He grew too liberal for the Unitarians, and left the parish over which be was settled to become a lecturer and literary man. He seems to have been the first man in America to recognize Carlyle, and he spoke of "Craigenputtock," with its desolate, feathery hills, as "the spot where the lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart." He became the Sage of Concord; around him were Thoreau, Curtis, Hawthorne, Ripley, W. H. Channing, Parker, Phillips, Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. The little agricultural village began to put forth germs and growths. The author of the Humble Bee gave it a tropical climate. The prophet was most honored in his own country, and pilgrimages were made to this modern Mecca.
I had heard this great thinker lecture, but had never known him personally until about 1858, when I met him at a party at Mr. Bancroft's. To my amazement, he showed a curiosity to know "who people were."
James Russell Lowell, who had the discernment to read Emerson's character, regarded his head as a well-balanced sphere. "One pole on Olympus and t'other on 'change" is his witty line describing this prince of dreamers, this "simple child and worldly wise, who so largely raised the value of real estate in Concord." I remember asking Mr. Emerson if Hawthorne (whom, with other young novel-readers, I was then adoring) ever went into society. "Oh no," said Emerson. "It would take a forty-dowager power to drag him to such a party as this."
His great friend, the devout idealist Alcott, I never saw, although I read many of his Orphic Sayings.
