horeau that his freedom is in the form, but he
does not disclose new matter. I am very familiar with all
his thoughts,--they are my own quite originally drest. But
if the question be, what new ideas has he thrown into
circulation, he has not yet told what that is which he was
created to say. I said to him what I often feel, I only know
three persons who seem to me fully to see this law of
reciprocity or compensation--himself, Alcott, and myself:
and 't is odd that we should all be neighbors, for in the
wide land or the wide earth I do not know another who seems
to have it as deeply and originally as these three
Gothamites.

A remark of Emerson's upon Thoreau calls up the image of John Muir to
me: "If I knew only Thoreau, I should think cooeperation of good men
impossible. Must we always talk for victory, and never once for truth,
for comfort, and joy?" Then, after crediting Thoreau with some
admirable gifts,--centrality, penetration, strong understanding,--he
proceeds to say, "all his resources of wit and invention are lost to
me, in every experiment, year after year, that I make to hold
intercourse with his mind. Always some weary captious paradox to fight
you with, and the time and temper wasted."

Emerson met John Muir in the Yosemite in 1871 and was evidently
impressed with him. Somewhere he gives a list of his men which begins
with Carlyle and ends with Muir. Here was another man with more
character than intellect, as Emerson said of Carlyle, and with the
flavor of the wild about him. Muir was not too compliant and
deferential. He belonged to the sayers of No. Contradiction was the
breath of his nostrils. He had the Scottish chariness of bestowing
praise or approval, and could surely give Emerson the sense of being
_met_ which he demanded. Writing was irksome to Muir as it was to
Carlyle, but in monologue, in an attentive company, he shone; not a
great thinker, but a mind strongly characteristic. His philosophy
rarely rose above that of the Sunday school, but his moral fiber was
very strong, and his wit ready and keen. In conversation and in daily
intercourse he was a man not easily put aside. Emerson found him
deeply read in nature lore and with some suggestion about his look and
manner of the wild and rugged solitude in which he lived so much.

Emerson was alive to everything around him; every object touched some
spring in his mind; the church spire, the