Dedicated

ΤΟ

MRS. RALPH WALDO EMERSON,

AND HER CHILDREN,

ELLEN, EDITH, AND EDWARD,

WHO MADE KINDLY AND BEAUTIFUL

MY SECOND BIRTHPLACE.

A VIGI L.

Ir is the vigil of Emerson. To-morrow (May 25, 1882)

he will be seventy-nine years of age. I cannot bear to

write "he would be." This day, gazing on a picture of

Emerson's funeral, picking out from beneath their grey

hairs faces of some with whom I have sat at his feet,

there comes home to me the secret of that longing out of

which were born myths of men that never died, of Yami

and Arthur, of Enoch and Saint John. The love of a

Madonna is in his own interpretation. "The fable of the

Wandering Jew is agreeable to men because they want

more time and land in which to execute their thoughts.

But a higher poetic use must be made of the legend.

Take us as we are with our experience, and transfer us to

a new planet, and let us digest for its inhabitants what

we could of the wisdom of this. After we have found

our depth there, and assimilated what we could of the

wisdom of the new experience, transfer us to a new scene.

In each transfer we shall have acquired, by seeing them

at a distance, a new mastery of the old thoughts, in which

we were too much immersed. In short, all our intellectual

action not promises, but bestows a feeling of absolute

existence. We are taken out of time and breathe a purer

air."

Such duration did Emerson devise; but one source of

the longing for immortality he could not know so fully as

we who cannot leave his grave. It needed this night to

bring out the star of that hope.

A