sent we have no country.... New England is really
quite as large a lump of earth as my heart can take in. I have no
kindred with or leaning toward the abolitionists." But his coolness to
his country's welfare was of a piece with the general coolness toward
well and ill in the affairs of the world. Humanity rolls before him
as it did before Shakespeare, sometimes weak, sometimes heroic,
depressed, exultant, suffering, happy. He did not concern himself to
regulate its movement, to heighten its joy, or mitigate its sorrow.
His work was to portray it as it moved, and in that conception of
his mission he established his masterfulness as an artist, though it
abates somewhat, does it not? from his wholeness as a man.

Some years ago in introducing Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson to an audience
in St. Louis, I said that our great-grandfathers had stood together
with the Minute Men of Concord at the North Bridge on the 19th of
April, 1775. His ancestor as their minister inspiring them with the
idea of freedom, my ancestor as an officer, who by word and deed kept
the farmers firm before the British volleys. The old-time connection
between the two families persisted. Ralph Waldo Emerson and my father
were contemporaries coming through the Harvard gate into the small
company of Unitarian ministers at about the same period and somewhat
associated in their young manhood. Mrs. Emerson had been Lydia Jackson
of Plymouth, baptised, into the old Pilgrim Parish by the father of my
mother. Lydia Jackson and my mother had been girls together, and good
friends. It was natural, therefore, that, with these antecedents when
I as a young boy arrived in Concord, I should come into touch with the
Emersons. They were indeed pleasant friends to me, both Mr. and Mrs.
Emerson receiving with kindness the child whose parents they had known
when children. The Emerson house on the Lexington Road is to-day a
world-renowned shrine, sixty years ago it was the quiet home of a
peaceful family, lovely as now through its natural beauty but not
yet sought out by many pilgrims. The fame of Emerson, only recently
established by his _Nature_ and the earlier poems, was just
beginning to spread into world-wide proportions.

I have before me his image, in his vigorous years, the sloping rather
narrow shoulders, the slender frame erect and sinewy but never robust,
and a keen, firm face. In his glance was complete kindliness and also
profound penetration. His nose was markedly