of this inspiring beverage; but he told him that Saadi had got the last of it.
"'It was on the coming of Friday in the month Showal, of the Arabian year 690, that the eagle of the immaterial soul of Shaikh Saadi shook from his plumage the dust of his body.'".
Soon after Mr. Emerson had completed his threescore and ten years, a young clergyman in a Western State, whose growth had been helped by his writings, was troubled at an authoritative statement, which he had heard, that Emerson had been led by the preaching of a popular Orthodox divine in Boston to see the error of his ways and teachings, "had accepted Jesus as his Saviour, the Bible as inspired, and had formally joined the Church." Mr. Emerson smiled, but did not think it worth while to deny these assertions, yet allowed his son to answer the letter of inquiry as to whether he had suffered a late conversion. This sentence from Saadi, which he enjoyed, and quotes in Representative Men, would have been a simple and appropriate answer: "It was rumored abroad that I was penitent, but what had I to do with repentance?".
In his lecture on the Fugitive Slave Law, given in New York on March 7, 1854, Mr. Emerson quoted Saadi's saying, "Beware of hurting the orphan. When the orphan sets a-crying, the throne of the Almighty is rocked from side to side."
In the essay on Books, in Society and Solitude, after recommending certain autobiographies, Mr. Emerson says: "Another class of books closely allied to these, and of like interest, are those which may be called Table-Talks: of which the best are Saadi's Gulistan; Luther's Table-Talk; Aubrey's Lives; Spence's anecdotes," etc. This essay was published in the Atlantic Monthly for January, 1858.
Mr. Emerson included in his first book of poems, published
