CHAPTER XII. "Desatir Summer at Concord-Thoreau-Oriental Books-Persian The "Rose Garden " of Saadi-Hon. Samuel Hoar-Judge Rockwood Hoar-Elizabeth Hoar-Mrs. Ripley and the "Old Manse "Goethe-William Emerson-Concord Children-A Spiritist Adventure-Agassiz at Harvard College-Agassiz, Alcott, and Emerson in Symposium. BEING homeless in the North, my summer vacation (1853) was passed at Concord. The Emersons found for me a very pleasant abode at "Hillside," on Ponkawtasset Hill, about a mile out of the village, where Ellery Channing once lived, and where he wrote his poem on New England. Two sisters, the Misses Hunt, educated ladies, received me into this pleasant cottage, where I was the only boarder. These ladies were cousins of Miss Martha Hunt, whose suicide in Concord River and the recovery of her body are described in Hawthorne's "Blithedale Romance." They were troubled because G. W. Curtis, in his "Homes of American Authors," had suggested that Martha's suicide was due to the contrast between her transcendental ideals and the coarseness of her home. They described the family of their cousin as educated people. One of these sisters walked with me to the river and pointed out all the places connected with the tragedy, and some years later another cousin drowned herself there. Emerson introduced me to his friends. First of all he took me to Henry Thoreau, who lived in the village with his parents and his sister. The kindly and silent pencil-maker, his father, John Thoreau, was French in appearance, and Henry resembled him physically; but neither parent impressed me as possessing mental qualities that could account for such a rare spirit as Henry. He was thirty-six when I met him. He received me pleasantly, and asked what we were studying at Cambridge. I answered, "The Scriptures." "Which?" he asked. Emerson said, "You will find our Thoreau a sad pagan." Thoreau had long been a reverent reader of Oriental scriptures, and showed me his Bibles, translated from various races into French and English. He invited me to come next day for a walk, but in the morning I found the Thoreaus agitated by the arrival of a coloured fugitive from Virginia, who had come to their door at daybreak. Thoreau took me to a room where his excellent sister Sophia was ministering to the fugitive, who recognised me as one he had seen. He was alarmed, but his fears passed into delight when after talking with him about our county I certified his genuineness. I observed the tender and lowly devotion of Thoreau to the African. He now and then drew near to the trembling man, and with a cheerful voice bade him feel at home, and have no fear that any power should again wrong him. That whole day he mounted guard over the fugitive, for it was a slave-hunting time. But the guard had no weapon, and probably there was no such thing in the house. The next day the fugitive was got off to Canada, and I enjoyed my first walk with Thoreau. He was a unique man every way. He was short of stature, well built; every movement was full of courage and repose; his eyes were very large, and bright, as if caught from the sky. "His nose is like the prow of a ship,” said Emerson one day. He had the look of the huntsman of Emerson's quatrain : He took the colour of his vest From rabbit's coat and grouse's breast; For as the wild kinds lurk and hide, The cruellest weapons, however, which this huntsman took with him were lenses and an old book in which to press plants. He was not talkative, but his occasional monologues were extraordinary. I remember being surprised at every step with revelations of laws and significant attributes in common things-as a relation between different kinds of grass and the geological characters beneath them, the variety and grouping of pineneedles and the effect of these differences on the sounds they yield when struck by the wind, and the varieties of taste represented by grasses and common herbs when applied to the tongue. He offered me a peculiar grass to chew for an instant, saying, "It is a little sharp, but an experience." Deep in the woods his face shone with a new light. He had a mental calendar of the flora of the neighbourhood, and would go some distance around to visit some floral friend. We were too early for the hibiscus, a rare flower in New England, which I desired to see. He pointed out the spot near the river where alone it could be found, and said it would open about the following Monday, and not stay long. I went on Wednesday or Thursday, but was too late-the petals were scattered on the ground. Thoreau ate no meat; he told me his only reason was a feeling of the filthiness of flesh-eating. A bear-huntsman he thought was entitled to his steak. He had never attempted to make any general principle on the subject, and later in life ate meat in order not to cause inconvenience to the family. On our first walk I told him the delight with which I read his book. "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers." He said that the whole edition remained on the shelf of his publisher, who wished to get rid of them. If he could not succeed in giving them away they would probably be sold as old paper. I got from him valuable hints about reading. He had studied carefully the old English Chronicles, and Chaucer, Froissart, Spenser and Beaumont and Fletcher. He recognised kindred spirits in George Herbert, Cowley, and Quarles-considering the latter a poet but not an artist. He explored the old books of voyagesDrake, Purchas, and others who assisted him in his circumnavigation of Concord. The Oriental books were his daily bread; the Greeks (especially Eschylus, whose "Prometheus" and "The Seven against Thebes "he translated finely) were his luxuries. He was an exact Greek scholar. Of moderns he praised Wordsworth, Coleridge, and to a less extent Carlyle and Goethe. He admired Ruskin's "Modern Painters," though he thought the author bigoted, but in the "Seven Lamps of Architecture" he found with the good stuff "too much about art for me and the Hottentots. Our house is yet a hut." He enjoyed William Gilpin's "Hints on Landscape Gardening." He had read with care the works of Franklin. He had as a touchstone for authors their degree of ability to deal with supersensual facts and feelings with scientific precision. What he admired in Emerson was that he discerned the phenomena of thought and functions of every idea as if they were antennæ or stamina. It was a quiet joke in Concord that Thoreau resembled Emerson in expression and in tones of voice. He had grown up from boyhood under Emerson's influence, had listened to his lectures and his conversations, and little by little had grown this resemblance. It was the more interesting because so superficial and unconscious. Thoreau was an imitator of no mortal; but Emerson had long been a part of the very atmosphere of Concord, and it was as if this element had deposited on Thoreau a mystical moss. During that halcyon summer I read the Oriental books in Emerson's library, for he not only advised me in my studies, but insisted on lending me books. To my hesitation about taking even to Ponkatasset the precious volumes, he said, "What are they for?" In my dainty little room, whose window opened on a beautiful landscape with the Musketaquit wandering through it to the Merrimac, or perhaps seated in the vine-covered veranda, I read Wilkins' "Bhagavat Geeta," which thenceforth became part of my canon. Close indeed to my heart came the narrative of the charioteer (the god Krishna in disguise) driving Arjoona to the battlefield, where the youth sees that his struggle is to be with his parents, teachers, early companions. Emerson also introduced me to the Persian "Desatir." In lending me this he said that he regarded the ancient Persian scriptures as more intellectual than the sacred writings of other races. I found delight in these litanies uttered in the beginning of our era, amid whose exaltations there was always the happy beam of reason. "Thy knowledge is a ray of the knowledge of God." "O my Prophet ever near me, I have given thee an exalted angel named Intelligence." How can we know a prophet? By his giving you information regarding your own heart." Emerson also in that summer introduced me to Saadi of Schiraz, who has been to me as an intimate friend through life's pilgrimage. For the "Rose Garden" (Gulistan) I had been prepared by my garden in Frederick Circuit, my "Seclusaval " Saadi was its interpreter, and restored it to me. For I could not enter deeply into wild nature, but dearly loved a garden. J One day when I was walking with Emerson in his garden, he stopped near a favourite plum and said, "This is when ripe a fruit of paradise." He then discovered one that was ripe and managed to pluck it for me. How simply was this man fulfilling all my youthful dreams! He personally loved Saadi, and later edited the "Gulistan." One day he told me he had found somewhere a story about him. Saadi was travelling on foot towards Damascus, alone and weary. Presently he overtook a boy travelling the same way, and asked him to point out the road. The boy offered to guide him some distance, and in the course of conversation Saadi spoke of having come from Persia and from Schiraz. "Schiraz!" exclaimed the boy; "then perhaps you can tell me something of Sheik Saadi of Schiraz." The traveller said, "I am Saadi." Instantly the boy knelt and with tears kissed the hem of his skirt, and after that could not be parted from Saadi, but guided and served him during his stay in Damascus. (And lo, here I am with my grey hairs seeing my own Saadi as he told me the little tale that filled my eyes, all unconscious that my soul was that of the Damascus boy and was kissing the hem of his garment!) I made the acquaintance of several elderly persons in Concord who told me incidents related by their grandparents concerning the Concord fight of April 19, 1775, but I was too much interested in the heroes of 1853 to care much for those of the old Revolution. One day Emerson pointed out to me across the street the venerable Hon. Samuel Hoar and his daughter Elizabeth, and told me the story of their visit to Charleston, S.C. (1844), the eminent lawyer being commissioned by his State to plead for the release of Massachusetts seamen seized from ships and imprisoned there because of their colour. Amid threats of violence the lawyer and his daughter were driven out of Charleston unheard. I had not known this, and thenceforth bowed low whenever I passed the old lawyer. Without any historic halo the Hon. Samuel Hoar would have arrested the attention of a stranger not only by his very tall thin form and the small face-blonde and beardless-that looked as if come out of Bellini's canvas, but also by his dreamy look and movement. He was seventy-five, but no indications of age explained that absorbed look. Probably |