year in good health and hope, and joined
his mother and youngest brother Charles in Newton. Frequent invitations
to preach still came, and were accepted, and he even was sounded as to
succeeding Dr. Dewey in the church at New Bedford; but, as he stipulated
for freedom from ceremonial, this came to nothing.

In the autumn of 1834 he moved to Concord, living with his kinsman, Dr.
Ripley, at the Manse, but soon bought house and land on the Boston Road,
on the edge of the village towards Walden woods. Thither, in the autumn,
he brought his wife. Miss Lidian Jackson, of Plymouth, and this was
their home during the rest of their lives.

The new life to which he had been called opened pleasantly and increased
in happiness and opportunity, except for the sadness of bereavements,
for, in the first few years, his brilliant brothers Edward and Charles
died, and soon afterward Waldo, his firstborn son, and later his mother.
Emerson had left traditional religion, the city, the Old World, behind,
and now went to Nature as his teacher, his inspiration. His first book,
"Nature," which he was meditating while in Europe, was finished here,
and published in 1836. His practice during all his life in Concord was
to go alone to the woods almost daily, sometimes to wait there for
hours, and, when thus attuned, to receive the message to which he was to
give voice. Though it might be colored by him in transmission, he held
that the light was universal.

"Ever the words of the Gods resound,
But the porches of man's ear
Seldom in this low life's round
Are unsealed that he may hear."

But he resorted, also, to the books of those who had handed down the
oracles truly, and was quick to find the message destined for him. Men,
too, he studied eagerly, the humblest and the highest, regretting always
that the brand of the scholar on him often silenced the men of shop and
office where he came. He was everywhere a learner, expecting light from
the youngest and least educated visitor. The thoughts combined with the
flower of his reading were gradually grouped into lectures, and his main
occupation through life was reading these to who would hear, at first in
courses in Boston, but later all over the country, for the Lyceum sprang
up in New England in these years in every town, and spread westward to
the new settlements even beyond the Mississippi. His winters were spent
in these rough, but to him interesting journeys, for he loved