those Emerson maples in Eden Park are glowing like embers, his thought will burn brighter : "The scarlet maple-keys betray : What potent blood hath modest May; The wealth of forms, the flush of hues; Joy shed in rosy waves abroad Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord." And under shade of the Emerson oaks, the children who planted them may teach their finest symbolism in the words which he spoke thirty-nine years ago concerning the conserving and the reforming spirit:-"Nature does not give the crown of its approbation, beauty, to any action, or emblem, or actor, but one which combines both these elements; not to the rock which resists the wave from age to age, nor to the wave which lashes incessantly the rock; but the superior beauty is with the oak, which stands with its hundred arms against the storms of a century, and grows every year like a sapling." Emerson personally planted the spiritual germs of those trees set in Eden Park by the children of Cincinnati, Twenty-three years ago he visited us there, and gave a course of lectures from my pulpit. Evening after evening the church was filled with the families which gave that city, the "Queen of the West," the intellectual character it has preserved. There the best chapters in "The Conduct of Life" were given, and many a child there is this day more fortunate than any wealth can ever make him, because of that visit from the sower of new souls. Soon afterwards I started there a monthly magazine, "The Dial." This effort to light our Western torch at the finest flame of our East,-announced in reproducing the title of the old transcendental Quarterly,-received sympathy from Emerson, who contributed to it his essay on "Domestic Life," "Quatrains," and "The Sacred Dance." All these have since appeared in his works, the last-named in “May Day," as the "Song of Seid Nimetollah of Kuhistan." The Civil War put an end to that little venture of mine, "The Dial," for we all had sterner work to do; but there are many homes in Cincinnati where it carried a regenerating spirit in that matchless essay on "Domestic Life." What Emerson became to these distant homes in which he was read, and to the hearts that cherished his every thought, could never be comprehended by himself. Here is an incident which might have given Carlyle a paragraph on the unconsciousness of genius. I have a letter from Emerson, which came with the manuscript of "Domestic Life," in which he speaks of another essay he had thought of sending, and says:-"Then I kept it to put into what will not admit anything peaceably, my 'Religion' chapter, which has a very tender stomach, on which nothing will lie. They say the ostrich hatches her egg by standing off and looking at it, and that is my present secret of authorship. I long ago rolled up and addressed to you an ancient MS. lecture called 'Domestic Life,' and long ago, you may be sure, familiar to Lyceums, but never printed, except in newspaper reports. But I feared you would feel bound to print it, though I should have justified you if you had not printed a page." Reading these last words, remembering the joy with which I sent forth the "Dial" (October 1860) with that scripture of the sun, and the many grateful responses that came, I have reflected. on the number of Beauties that must be sleeping among Emerson's manuscripts, hedged by the thorns of his selfcriticism. It was to a home in Cincinnati, which he had helped to make happy, that Emerson wrote the following letter: "CONCORD, 6th October 1861. "MY DEAR SIR AND MY DEAR LADY,-I have your note, and give you joy of the happy event you announce to me in the birth of your son. Who is rich or happy but the parent of a son? Life is all preface until we have children; then it is deep and solid. You would think me a child again if I should tell you how much joy I have owed, and daily owe, to my children, and you have already known the early chapters of this experience in your own house. My best thanks are due to you both for the great good-will you show me in thinking of my name for the boy. If there is room for choice still, I hesitate a good deal at allowing a rusty old name, eaten with Heaven knows how much time and fate, to be flung hazardously on this new adventurer in his snow-white robes. I have never encountered such a risk out of my own house, and, for the boy's sake, if there be time, must dissuade. But I shall watch the career of this young American with special interest, born as he is under stars and omens so extraordinary, and opening the gates of a new and fairer age. With all hopes and all thanks, and with affectionate sympathies from my wife.-Yours R. W. EMERSON." ever, 'My wife declares that name or no name her spoon shall go." Alas! this note and the silver cup that came with it, are now memorials of a little grave in England. Could we only have found something not only beloved and beautiful, like the child, but imperishable, to name after Emerson! I will follow the children of the Queen of the West, who gave his name to their group of trees in Eden Park. In my garden grows a sapling of the Glastonbury Thorn. It was sent me by a friend years ago, that its famous habit of flowering at Christmas might be proved beyond all doubts. Sure enough at the close of the last year this thorn clothed itself with green leaves, and the blossoms peeped through their sheath. Legend associated it with Joseph of Arimathea, who wandered from the East eighteen centuries ago, whose staff blossomed amid the snow on the vigil of Christ, and so marked the site for Glastonbury Abbey. But this descendant of it shall connect the deep sense of its mythology,-the budding rod of Aaron, the staff of silent Christopher, which converted men by its fruits, the thorn that canopied Patrick with blossoms, with his name. Some day the wayfarers, seeing it flourishing in winter amid other trees denuded and black, shall say, "Its legend is from the West. It was planted there and named by one who, amid his winter of loneliness and doubt, was surprised by a spring whose leaf never withered, whose blossoms mingled with every snow; a great teacher brought him this fortune and happiness, and wherever he wandered in the world he sought to plant some germ of his teacher's wisdom, that hearts might suffer no blight in life's winter, that faith might flourish amid decay of creeds, and love know the secret of perpetual youth. This is the Emerson tree!" EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. I. MAYFLOWERINGS. THERE is an incident in the life of the Plymouth Pilgrims too trifling to be included in the regular annals of those times. One morning Captain Miles Standish, and John Alden, and Priscilla, whose relations to each other are well known to readers of Longfellow, were walking through a field together. A light snow lay on the ground, but Priscilla's eye perceived a little flower peeping through it. "Stay, Captain Standish," she said, but was too late to prevent his heavy boot from treading on it. John Alden made haste to pick the flower, which the maiden tenderly nursed. Standish cast a vexed glance at Alden and said, "Puritan soldiers have something else to look after besides flowers." "Nay," rejoined Priscilla, "but we need not trample down any beautiful gift of God's earth. Look at it, Captain; it is fragrant as well as pretty; and is it not a sturdy little soldier too, battling with the snow?" The Captain strode on and was presently leading another attack on the Indians; but Priscilla and John wandered about the fields and gathered many of these blossoms, and found in them a still small voice of courage amid the bleakness of that wintry coast. Such courage had led the pilgrims across the sea in the season of snowstorms; so Priscilla named the blossom "Mayflower," after the ship on which they had voyaged, and |