The apprehensions which assailed him before his public addresses or
readings were not of a kind to affect either speech or behavior. He
seemed to be simply detained by his own dissatisfaction with his work,
and was forever looking for something better to come, even when it was
too late. His manuscripts were often disordered, and at the last
moment, after he began to read, appeared to take the form in his mind
of a forgotten labyrinth through which he must wait to find his way in
some more opportune season.
In the summer of 1867 he delivered the address before the Phi Beta at
Harvard. He seemed to have an especial feeling of unreadiness on that
day, and, to increase the trouble, his papers slipped away in
confusion from under his hand as he tried to rest them on a poorly
arranged desk or table. Mr. Hale put a cushion beneath them finally,
after Emerson began to read, which prevented them from falling again,
but the whole matter was evidently out of joint in the reader's eyes.
He could not be content with it, and closed without warming to the
occasion. It was otherwise, however, to those who listened; they did
not miss the old power: but after the reading he openly expressed his
own discontent, and walked away dissatisfied. Miss Emerson writes to
me of this occasion: "You recall the sad Phi Beta day of 1867. The
trouble that day was that for the first time his eyes refused to serve
him; he could not see, and therefore could hardly get along.
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