years. It is as
it should be--Memory is the police-officer of the universe.' 'Architects
say that the arch never rests, and so the past never rests.' (Was it,
never sleeps?) 'When I talk with my friend who is a genealogist, I feel
that I am talking with a ghost.'

"The little vestry, fitted perhaps for a hundred people, was packed with
two hundred,--all people of an intellectual cast of face,--and the
attention was intense. The thermometer was ninety in the shade!

"I did not speak to Mr. Emerson; I felt that I must not give him a bit
of extra fatigue.

"July 12, 1880. The school of philosophy has built a shanty for its
meetings, but it is a shanty to be proud of, for it is exactly adapted
to its needs. It is a long but not low building, entirely without
finish, but water-tight. A porch for entrance, and a recess similar at
the opposite end, which makes the place for the speakers. There was a
small table upon the platform on which were pond lilies, some shelves
around, and a few busts--one of Socrates, I think.

"I went in the evening to hear Dr. Harris on 'Philosophy.' The rain
began to come down soon after I entered, and my philosophy was not
sufficient to keep me from the knowledge that I had neither overshoes
nor umbrella; I remembered, too, that it was but a narrow foot-path
through the wet grass to the omnibus. But I listened to Dr. Harris, and
enjoyed it. He lauded Fichte as the most accurate philosopher following
Kant--he said not of the greatest _breadth_, but the most acute.

"After Dr. Harris' address, Mr. Alcott made a few remarks that were
excellent, and said that when we had studied philosophy for fifteen
years, as the lecturer had done, we might know something; but as it was,
he had pulled us to pieces and then put us together again.

"The audience numbered sixty persons.

"May, 1880. I have just finished Miss Peabody's account of Channing. I
have been more interested in Miss Peabody than in Channing, and have
felt how valuable she must have been to him. How many of Channing's
sermons were instigated by her questions! ... Miss Peabody must have
been very remarkable as a young woman to ask the questions which she
asked at twenty.

"April, 1881. The waste of flowers on Easter Sunday distressed me.
Something is due to the flowers themselves. They are massed together
like a bushel of corn, and look like red and white sugar-plums as seen
in a confectioner's window.

"A pillow of flowers is a monstr