. American lands and letters. s own piquant flavors, queries, andhumor, bubble up through all the chinks of thestory and make us forget the subject — in the nar-rator. A man who is so used to drawing attentionto his own end of the table, cannot serve safelyas a pointer at some one else. Emerson was pure in thought as he was high inthought, and his thought often reached spiritualaltitudes where even the front rank of preachersnever climbed : hence there was lacking that highfellowship which might have strengthened andstayed him, and the Avant of which sometimesbroke over him with a blighting se
. American lands and letters. s own piquant flavors, queries, andhumor, bubble up through all the chinks of thestory and make us forget the subject — in the nar-rator. A man who is so used to drawing attentionto his own end of the table, cannot serve safelyas a pointer at some one else. Emerson was pure in thought as he was high inthought, and his thought often reached spiritualaltitudes where even the front rank of preachersnever climbed : hence there was lacking that highfellowship which might have strengthened andstayed him, and the Avant of which sometimesbroke over him with a blighting sense of lone-liness. The Eev. Henry James (father of the better-known H. James, Jr.) talks in connection withEmerson—about his prim and bloodless friend-ship. But James—with the warmth of the NewJerusalem in him—craved sympathetic speechin those who talked theologies with him—a mostacute, eager man with transcendental ranges ofthought. The estimate agrees with that of many ;few could get near Emerson; the marchioness. Emerson in 1847. EMERSON AT MASS. 153 Ossoli never ; Hawthorne never ; James never ; animplacable acquiescence closed the doors betweenhim and very many earnest talkers. He says inhis journal* (1837): I approach some Carlylewith desire and joy ... but it ends with. . only so feeble and remote action as read-ing a Mirabeau or a Diderot paper. And again, most of the people I see in my own house, I seeacross a gulf. About the weather, or his neighbors pigs, orThoreaus bean-patch, he could warm ; but if onedropped such topics for talk about the soul, orimmortality, he froze ; on such trail his thoughtwas too intense for any battle-dore and shuttle-cock interchange of phrase. It would be a mistake to suppose that he hadnot his saltations of belief on grave as well asminor subjects. He goes on one occasion to HighMass in Baltimore with much content. Tisa dear old churchf, he says, the Roman, Imean, and to-day I detest the Unitarians, andMartin Luther, and all t
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