shortly before Mr.
Burroughs's death.

THE LAST HARVEST

I

EMERSON AND HIS JOURNALS

I

Emerson's fame as a writer and thinker was firmly established during
his lifetime by the books he gave to the world. His Journals,
published over a quarter of a century after his death, nearly or quite
double the bulk of his writing, and while they do not rank in literary
worth with his earlier works, they yet throw much light upon his life
and character and it is a pleasure to me, in these dark and
troublesome times,[1] and near the sun-down of my life, to go over
them and point out in some detail their value and significance.

[Footnote 1: Written during the World War.--C.B.]

Emerson was such an important figure in our literary history, and in
the moral and religious development of our people, that attention
cannot be directed to him too often. He could be entirely
reconstructed from the unpublished matter which he left. Moreover,
just to come in contact with him in times like ours is stimulating and
refreshing. The younger generation will find that he can do them good
if they will pause long enough in their mad skirting over the surface
of things to study him.

For my own part, a lover of Emerson from early manhood, I come back to
him in my old age with a sad but genuine interest. I do not hope to
find the Emerson of my youth--the man of daring and inspiring
affirmation, the great solvent of a world of encrusted forms and
traditions, which is so welcome to a young man--because I am no longer
a young man. Emerson is the spokesman and prophet of youth and of a
formative, idealistic age. His is a voice from the heights which are
ever bathed in the sunshine of the spirit. I find that something one
gets from Emerson in early life does not leave him when he grows old.
It is a habit of mind, a test of values, a strengthening of one's
faith in the essential soundness and goodness of creation. He helps to
make you feel at home in nature, and in your own land and generation.
He permanently exalts your idea of the mission of the poet, of the
spiritual value of the external world, of the universality of the
moral law, and of our kinship with the whole of nature.

There is never any despondency or infirmity of faith in Emerson. He is
always hopeful and courageous, and is an antidote to the pessimism and
materialism which existing times tend to foster. Open anywhere in the
Journals or in the Essays and we find the m