have said to Margaret Fuller, "Careful of health, careless of life, should be our motto."
Page 352, note 1. I quote from Mr. John Albee's Remembrances of Emerson this just remark: "Emerson refused to dogmatize about what is necessarily obscure at present. So some thought the obscurity lay in him."
In conclusion I quote this pleasant passage from A Western Journey with Emerson,1 1.1 written by his friend the late Professor James Bradley Thayer of the Harvard Law School:—
"'How can Mr. Emerson,' said one of the younger members of the party to me that day, 'be so agreeable, all the time, without getting tired!' It was the naive expression of what we all had felt. There was never a more agreeable travelling-companion; he was always accessible, cheerful, sympathetic, considerate, tolerant; and there was always that same respectful interest in those with whom he talked, even the humblest, which raised them in their own estimation. One thing particularly impressed me,—the sense that he seemed to have of a certain great amplitude of time and leisure. It was the behaviour of one who really believed in an immortal life, and had adjusted his conduct accordingly; so that, beautiful and grand as the natural objects were among which our journey lay, they were matched by the sweet elevation of character and the spiritual charm of our gracious friend. Years afterwards, on that memorable day of his funeral at Concord, I found that a sentence from his own essay on Immortality haunted my mind and kept repeating itself all the day long; it seemed to point to the sources of his power: 'Meantime the true disciples saw, through the letter, the doctrine of eternity, which dissolved the poor corpse and Nature also, and gave grandeur to the passing hour.'.
