he season of flood, and was full of floating fragments from
an endless variety of sources. He drew ashore whatever he wanted that
would serve his purpose. He makes no secret of his mode of writing. "I
dot evermore in my endless journal, a line on every knowable in nature;
but the arrangement loiters long, and I get a brick-kiln instead of
a house." His journal is "full of disjointed dreams and audacities."
Writing by the aid of this, it is natural enough that he should speak of
his "lapidary style" and say "I build my house of boulders."

"It is to be remembered," says Mr. Ruskin, "that all men who have sense
and feeling are continually helped: they are taught by every person they
meet, and enriched by everything that falls in their way. The greatest
is he who has been oftenest aided; and if the attainments of all human
minds could be traced to their real sources, it would be found that the
world had been laid most under contribution by the men of most original
powers, and that every day of their existence deepened their debt to
their race, while it enlarged their gifts to it."

The reader may like to see a few coincidences between Emerson's words
and thoughts and those of others.

Some sayings seem to be a kind of family property. "Scorn trifles"
comes from Aunt Mary Moody Emerson, and reappears in her nephew, Ralph
Waldo.--"What right have you, Sir, to your virtue? Is virtue piecemeal?
This is a jewel among the rags of a beggar." So writes Ralph Waldo
Emerson in his Lecture "New England Reformers."--"Hiding the badges of
royalty beneath the gown of the mendicant, and ever on the watch lest
their rank be betrayed by the sparkle of a gem from under their rags."
Thus wrote Charles Chauncy Emerson in the "Harvard Register" nearly
twenty years before.

"The hero is not fed on sweets,
Daily his own heart he eats."

The image comes from Pythagoras _via_ Plutarch.

Now and then, but not with any questionable frequency, we find a
sentence which recalls Carlyle.

"The national temper, in the civil history, is not flashy or whiffling.
The slow, deep English mass smoulders with fire, which at last sets all
its borders in flame. The wrath of London is not French wrath, but has a
long memory, and in hottest heat a register and rule."

Compare this passage from "English Traits" with the following one from
Carlyle's "French Revolution":--

"So long this Gallic fire, through its successive changes of color and
character