"
And again:--
How do you suppose that unskillful scholars are to live, if Fields
should one day die? _Serus in coelum redeat_!
Affectionately yours and his,
R. W. EMERSON.
Surely the grace and friendly charm of these conversational notes
warrant their preservation even to those who are not held by the
personal attraction which lay behind them.
Again he writes:--
"I have been absent from home since the noble Saturday evening, or
should have sent you this book of Mr. Stirling's, which you expressed
a wish to see. The papers on Macaulay, Tennyson, and Coleridge
interest me, and the critic is master of his weapons.
"Meantime, in these days, my thoughts are all benedictions on the
dwellers in the happy home of number 148 Charles Street."
His appreciation of the hospitality of others was only a reflection
from his own. I find a few words in the journal as follows: "Mr.
Emerson was like a benediction in the house, as usual. He was up early
in the morning looking over books and pictures in the library."
I find also the mention of one evening when he brought his own journal
to town and read us passages describing a visit in Edinburgh, where he
was the guest of Mrs. Crowe. She was one of those ladies of Edinburgh,
he said, "who could turn to me, as she did, and say, 'Whom would you
like to meet?' Of course I said, Lord Jeffrey, De Quincey, Samuel
Brown, called the alchemist by chemists, and a few others.
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