The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Letters and social aims [Vol. 8]

of his brow, in the majesty of his mien, Nature has marked her son; and in that artificial and perhaps unworthy place and company shall remind you of the lessons taught him in earlier days by the torrent in the gloom of the pine-woods, when he was the companion of the mountain cattle, of jays and foxes, and a hunter of the bear.1 Or you may find him in some lowly Bethel, by the seaside, where a hard-featured, scarred and wrinkled Methodist becomes the poet of the sailor and the fisherman, whilst he pours out the abundant streams of his thought through a language all glittering and fiery with imagination; a man who never knew the looking-glass or the critic; a man whom college drill or patronage never made, and whom praise cannot spoil,—a man who conquers his audience by infusing his soul into them, and speaks by the right of being the person in the assembly who has the most to say, and so makes all other speakers appear little and cowardly before his face. For the time, his exceeding life throws all other gifts into shade,—philosophy speculating on its own breath, taste, learning and all,—and yet how every listener gladly consents to be nothing in his presence, and to share this surprising emanation, and be steeped and ennobled

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Title: The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Letters and social aims [Vol. 8]
Author: Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882.
Canvas: Page 114
Publication: Boston ; New York :: Houghton, Mifflin,; [1903-1904].

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Full citation: "The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Letters and social aims [Vol. 8]." In the digital collection The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/4957107.0008.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed June 14, 2025.

The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Letters and social aims [Vol. 8]

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