the academic champion of freedom, Andrew, 'the great War Governor' of Massachusetts, Dr. Howe, the philanthropist, William Hunt, the painter, with others not unworthy of such company. And with these, generally near the Longfellow end of the table, sat Emerson, talking in low tones and carefully measured utterances to his neighbor, or listening, and recording any stray word worth remembering on his mental phonograph. Emerson was a very regular attendant at the meetings of the Saturday Club, and continued to dine at its table, until within a year or two of his death.
"Unfortunately the Club had no Boswell, and its golden hours passed unrecorded."
Although there is no question of the profit in health and pleasure that Mr. Emerson found in the Club, proved by his regular attendance, and the happy report which he made of the meetings to his family, sometimes his belief of his unfitness for social gatherings weighed on him:—
Journal. "Most of my values are widely variable: My estimate of America, etc.; estimate of my mental means and resources is all or nothing,—in happy hours, life looking infinitely rich; and sterile at others. My value of my Club is as elastic as steam or gunpowder,—so great now, so little anon;" and it must have been when the pressure was low that he wrote in the journal of 1861: "I know the hollowness and superstition of a dinner, yet a certain health and good repair of social status comes of the habitude and well-informed chat there, which have great market value, though none to my solitude."
The quality of mind and the manners, friendly, simple yet reserved, of his friend James Elliot Cabot—I think Mr. Emerson said of him "Cabot is a Greek"—were very attractive to him. It is probably of Mr. Cabot that he wrote in the journal of 1869:—
