EMERSON
Many years ago I had the chance of laying up an interesting reminiscence. Lowell took me to visit Emerson in his house at Concord, and, as it happened, had to leave me to perform the function of an interviewer by myself. But instead of recording an impression, I have to make a confession. I was young enough at that time to believe in great authors, and to desire to offer acceptable incense. Unluckily, I had not read a word of Emerson, and on the way I had innocently confided to Lowell that I took him to be a kind of Carlyle. I did not know that Lowell had drawn an inimitably witty contrast between the two, beginning—
There are persons mole-blind to the soul's make and style,
Who insist on a likeness 'twixt him and Carlyle.
Though he did not accuse me of 'mole-blindness,' Lowell managed to intimate courteously that I was somehow in the dark. The sense of my
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