sincere reverence, because it was the growth of the national mind. He thought best to stand on its platform, and illustrate, though with keen truth, by received forms: this was his right way, for his influence was naturally private, for individuals who could, in some degree, respond to the teachings of his ‘demon;’ it made no difference to him; he knew the multitude would not understand him; but it was the other way that Jesus took, preaching in the field and plucking ears of corn on the Sabbath day.”[1]
Again, after a day in the woods with Emerson’s “Nature,” — reading it through for the first time to herself, Mr. Emerson himself having originally read it aloud to her, — she thus writes to him (April 12, 1840): —
“The years do not pass in vain. If they have built no temple on the earth, they have given a nearer view of the city of God. Yet would I rather, were the choice tendered to me, draw the lot of Pericles than that of Anaxagoras. And if such great names do not fit the occasion, I would delight more in thought-living than in living thought. That is not a good way of expressing it either, but I must correct the press another time.”[2]
This feeling led her to criticise more than once, as we have seen, her friend’s half cloistered life at Concord. Describing in one of her letters some speech which called for action, perhaps Kossuth’s, she says: —
“Read these side by side with Waldo’s paragraphs and say, is it not deeper and truer to live than to think?
