ould give so good and concise a
definition. There is a portrait of him by Rowse, who knew and loved
him well, which renders this side of Emerson in a way that makes
it the most remarkable piece of portraiture I know, the listening
Emerson.

His insatiability in the study of human nature was shown curiously in
our first summer's camp. He had the utmost tenderness of animal life
and had no sympathy with sport in any form,--he "named the birds
without a gun,"--and when we were making up the outfit for the outing
he at first refused to take a rifle; but, as the discussion of make,
calibre, and quality went on, and everybody else was provided, he at
length decided, though no shot, to conform, and purchased a rifle.
And when the routine of camp life brought the day of the hunt, the
eagerness of the hunters and the passion of the chase, the strong
return to our heredity of human primeval occupation gradually involved
him, and made him desire to enter into this experience as well as the
rest of the forest emotions. He must understand this passion to kill.
One Sunday morning, when all the others went out for the drive of
the deer,--necessary for the larder, as the drive the day before had
failed,--Emerson asked me to take him out on the lake to some quiet
place for meditation. We landed in a deep bay, where the seclusion was
most complete, and he went into the woods to meditate. Presently we
heard the baying of the hound as he circled round the lake, on the
hillsides, for the deer at that season were reluctant to take to the
water, and gave a long chase; and, as he listened, he began to take in
the excitement of the hunters, and finally broke out abruptly, "Let us
go after the deer;" and down the lake we went, flying at our best, but
we arrived too late,--Lowell had killed the deer.

He said to me later, and emphatically, "I must kill a deer;" and
one night we went out "jack-hunting" to enable him to realize that
ambition. This kind of hunting, as most people know, is a species
of pot-hunting, much employed by the hunters for the market, and so
destructive to the deer that it is now forbidden by the law in all the
Adirondack country. The deer are stalked by night along the shores,
where they come in to feed, the hunter carrying in his boat a light
so shaded that it illuminates only the space directly in front of the
boat, the glare blinding the animal so that he does not see the boat
or the boatman. In this way the deer may be