abate the evening coolness that was gathering in the room. At the same
time his mood was playful. Mrs. Emerson sat at hand, a woman in her
old age of striking beauty, with her silver hair beneath a cap of
lace, her violet eyes, and her white face. Miss Ellen Emerson, too,
was present, shielding her father in his decline like a guardian
angel. Mrs. Emerson spoke with pleasure of her old life at Plymouth.
"Ah, Plymouth," broke in Emerson, "that town of towns. We shall never
hear the last of Plymouth!" And so he rallied his wife merrily over
her patriotic love for her birthplace. The time was coming for him
to go and he went serenely, the vital cord softly and gradually
disengaged. In Sleepy Hollow lie near each other the four memorable
graves, Hawthorne's, Thoreau's, Louisa Alcott's, and Emerson's. I know
the spot well, on the ridge which slopes up from the lower ground,
for there my own kin lie buried. Upon the same ridge rise the tall
oracular pines and there is always a sweet murmur which the feeling
heart understands as a sub-conscious requiem breathed by the "Nature"
of which these fine spirits were the interpreters.

A day or two after entering college I made one of a group of freshmen,
who, as the dusk fell, were working off their surplus energy by
jumping over the posts along the curbstone of a quiet street. One of
our number had an unfair advantage, his length of leg being so great
that as he bestrode the post, he scarcely needed to take his feet from
the ground, while for the rest of us a good hop was necessary fairly
to clear the top. That is my earliest memory of Phillips Brooks. Big
as he was, he was a year, perhaps two years, younger than most of us,
and had the boyishness proper to his immaturity. He had come from his
long training in the Boston Latin School, was reputed, like the rest
of his class, to be able to repeat the Latin and Greek grammars from
beginning to end, exceptions, examples, and all, and to have at his
tongue's end other acquirements equally wonderful in the eyes of us
boys who in our distant Western homes had had a smaller chance. He was
an excellent scholar without needing to apply himself, and perhaps
had more distinction in the student societies than in the class-room.
Socially he was good-natured and playful, never aggressive, too modest
to be a leader, rather reticent. It was with surprise that I heard
Brooks for the first time in a college society. The quiet fellow of a
sudden poure