1871.

IX

Emerson was so drawn to the racy and original that it seems as if
original sin had a certain fascination for him. The austere, the
Puritanical Emerson, the heir of eight generations of clergy-men, the
man who did not like to have Frederika Bremer play the piano in his
house on Sunday, seems at times to covet the "swear-words" of the
common people. They itch at his ears, they have flavor and reality. He
sometimes records them in his Journal; for example, this remark of the
Canadian wood-chopper who cut wood for his neighbor--he preferred to
work by the job rather than by the day--the days were "so damned
long!"

The mob, Emerson says, is always interesting: "A blacksmith, a
truckman, a farmer, we follow into the bar-room and watch with
eagerness what they shall say." "Cannot the stinging dialect of the
sailor be domesticated?" "My page about Consistency would be better
written, 'Damn Consistency.'" But try to fancy Emerson swearing like
the men on the street! Once only he swore a sacred oath, and that he
himself records: it was called out by the famous, and infamous,
Fugitive Slave Law which made every Northern man hound and huntsman
for the Southern slave-driver. "This filthy enactment," he says, "was
made in the Nineteenth Century by men who could read and write. I will
not obey it, by God!"

Evidently the best thing the laboring people had to offer Emerson was
their racy and characteristic speech. When one of his former neighbors
said of an eclipse of the sun that it looked as if a "nigger" was
poking his head into the sun, Emerson recorded it in his Journal. His
son reports that Emerson enjoyed the talk of the stable-men and used
to tell their anecdotes and boasts of their horses when he came home;
for example, "In the stable you'd take him for a slouch, but lead him
to the door, and when he lifts up his eyes, and looks abroad,--by
thunder! you'd think the sky was all horse." Such surprises and
exaggerations always attracted him, unless they took a turn that made
him laugh. He loved wit with the laugh taken out of it. The genial
smile and not uproarious laughter suited his mood best.

He was a lover of quiet, twinkling humor. Such humor gleams out often
in his Journal. It gleams in this passage about Dr. Ripley: "Dr.
Ripley prays for rain with great explicitness on Sunday, and on Monday
the showers fell. When I spoke of the speed with which his prayers
were answered, the good man looked modest." Th