of the law because their judgments came from the illegal lips of Emerson. It was curious to watch him as, at each point he made, he paused to let the storm of hisses subside. The noise was something he had never heard before; there was a queer, quizzical squirrel-like or bird-like expression in his eye as he calmly looked round to see what strange human animals were present to make such sounds; and when he proceeded to utter another indisputable truth, and it was responded to by another chorus of hisses, he seemed absolutely to enjoy the new sensation he experienced, and waited for these signs of disapprobation to stop altogether before he resumed his discourse. The experience was novel; still there was not the slightest tremor in his voice, not even a trace of the passionate resentment which a speaker under such circumstances and impediments usually feels, and which urges him into the cheap retort about serpents, but a quiet waiting for the time when he should be allowed to go on with the next sentence. During the whole evening he never uttered a word which was not written down in the manuscript from which he read. Many of us at the time urged Emerson to publish the lecture; ten or fifteen years after, when he was selecting material for a new volume of essays, I entreated him to include in it the old

lecture at Cambridgeport; but he, after deliberation, refused, feeling probably that being written under the impulse of the passion of the day, it was no fit and fair summary of the characters of the statesmen he assailed. Of one passage in the lecture I preserve a vivid remembrance. After affirming

that the eternal law of righteousness, which rules all created things, nullified the enactment of Congress, and after citing the opinions of several magnates of jurisprudence, that immoral laws are void and of no effect, he slowly added, in a scorching and biting irony of tone which no words can describe, "but still a little Episcopalian clergyman assured me yesterday that the Fugitive Slave Law must be obeyed and enforced." After the lapse of thirty years, the immense humour of bringing all the forces of nature, all the principles of religion, and all the decisions of jurists to bear with their Atlas weight on the shoulders of one poor little conceited clergyman to crush him to atoms, and he in his innocence not conscious of it, makes me laugh now as all the audience laughed then, the belligerent Harvard students included. Some Recollections of Emerson, by Edwin P. Whipple, in "Harper's Monthly Magazine," September, 1882.

A MOTHER'S CONVERSATION WITH EMERSON

IN A RAILWAY CAR.

Many years ago, I was one day journeying from Brattleboro to Boston, alone. As the train went on from station to station, it gradually filled, until there was no seat left unoccupied in the car excepting the one by my side. At Concord, the door of the car opened, and Mr. Emerson entered. He advanced a few steps into the car, looked down the aisle, turned, and was about to go out, believing the car to be entirely full. With one of those sudden impulses which are acted upon almost before they are consciously realised, I sprang up, and said, Oh, Mr. Emerson, here is a seat.”

As he came towards me, with his serene smile slowly spreading over his face, my courage faltered. I saw that he expected to meet in me an acquaintance, and as he looked inquiringly and hesitatingly in my face I made haste to say, "You do not know me, Mr. Emerson; I never had the pleasure of seeing you before. But I know your face, and I could not resist the temptation of the opportunity to speak with you. You know that so many people, who are strangers to you, know you very well."

"Perhaps there should not be the word stranger

in any language," he answered slowly, in a tone and with a kindly look which at once set my timidity at ease, "I do not know any good reason for it."

In a short time, with that rare faculty which he had for drawing out of each his inmost thought, he had led me into speaking to him, with half-familiar freedom, of my own personal history, and of my experience as a mother. Hardly by question so much as by tone and expression, he made me feel at liberty to confide to him some of the many perplexities and doubts with which every young mother's heart is burdened.

His replies were more in the form of suggestions than of solutions to the doubts, or direct meeting of the perplexities. He told me much of his own theories, somewhat of his own experience. Many of his words remained vividly present with me for years, and more than once recurred to my mind in situations when they bore the weight and came in with the appropriateness of specific advice, in immediate emergencies. One point I recollect, as most earnestly dwelt upon, was the unspeakable value of simplicity of life and surroundings as an agency in the formation of character. Of this he spoke at length, and with great fervour. He said that the children of rich men were born at such

disadvantage in this respect that it was a question if all their other advantages, such as educational faculties, travel, etc., could make up for it.

"This is the true meaning," he said, half humorously, "of a scripture which is much misquoted, that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. It does not mean that the rich man must necessarily find it harder not to sin than another man; on the contrary, he is removed from some of the deadliest forms of temptation to sin. But the kingdom of heaven, which the creative worker knows, is shut against him. Into that heaven we have to be driven, either by need or by the narrowing of the ministering horizons of our lives."

One sentence which he spoke in connection with this was said with such lingering emphasis that it stamped itself indelibly on my memory. He said, "When I think how I am sparing my boy all that made me,—the barefooted chambers and the stern denials of poverty,─I know I am making a mistake. But," he added after a pause," "I cannot help it."

In later years I had the privilege and pleasure of seeing Mr. Emerson frequently. At one time I spent a few days with him in a friend's house at