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the people his life.' The phrase may explain his own secret. He had, for one thing, to depend upon popular lecturing, a trade which, it must be granted, has its drawbacks. He had, he complained, to go about 'peddling with his literary pack of notions,' dropping pearls before superficial hearers, who would turn them into twaddle and extravagance. Still, he took his mission simply and seriously, gave what he had, and tried to indicate 'the ideal and holy life,' … to 'celebrate the spiritual powers,' in contrast to the mechanical philosophy of the time, and 'appeal to the great optimism self-affirmed in all bosoms.' His simplicity and sincerity moved congenial hearers to aspire to regions of thought higher than those of the counting-house or the market, and impressed upon them at least the beauty and dignity of Emerson's own character. His aphorism—it has, I fear, a twang of the popular lecturer about it—'hitch your waggon to a star' sums up the moral, and the power depends as much upon the sweetness of disposition as upon the mystical doctrine. The charm appears in his best poetry, in spite of its admitted shortcomings. His characteristic want of continuity made him as incapable of evolving a central idea as of expounding