V.
FINDING A FRIEND.
The personal influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson was so marked, during Miss Fuller’s early career, that a separate chapter may well be devoted to delineating it. The first trace of him that I have found among her voluminous papers is this from one of her lively and girlish letters to Mrs. Barlow, dated October 6, 1834. She describes an interview with the Rev. Dr. Dewey, who was, with herself, a guest at Mrs. Farrar’s in Cambridge, and adds: —
“He spoke with admiration of the Rev. W. Emerson, that only clergyman of all possible clergymen who eludes my acquaintance. But n’importe! I keep his image bright in my mind.”[1]
Again, she writes to another correspondent about the same time: —
“I cannot care much for preached elevation of sentiment unless I have seen it borne out by some proof, as in case of Mr. Emerson. It is so easy for a cultivated mind to excite itself with that tone!”[2]
More than a month later she writes to the Rev. F. H. Hedge, from Groton (November 30, 1834).
