"FULL CIRCLE"
103
pleasantest of residences. Emerson's utterances on the
subject are of varying tenor and temperature; of the in
many
it is
one
topics in one's traffic with the philosopher
which you can take your estimate, hot from the oven
or cold from the refrigerator, at your choice.
At one
point 1 "the parching air burns frore," but the ice dissolves in other places,
"Brook Farm" descending.
He
and the tone
of his review of
benignant though amused and con-
is
with a good nature that
calls it,
"a
perhaps quite as destructive as malice, picnic,
in
a French Revolution in small, an Age of Reason
a patty-pan."
objections to the
On the subject of the married women's common nursery, he almost chuckles:
"Eggs might be hatched
in ovens, but the
own account much preferred
the old way.
out her chickens was but half a hen."
He
Mr. Ripley's pregnant anecdote: "There complished friend
day
if
I
would
make him do
let
it
hen on her
A hen withappreciates
he would hoe corn
:
him, but
Holmes
as "tangential."
tion of joining the association
do who
is
all
Sun-
Massachusetts could not
all
Emerson's own relation to the movement
his intelligence
your ac-
is
on Monday."
described by Dr.
to
is
perpetual
is
happily
The
ques-
had deeply exercised both
and conscience. What is a philosopher by strong forces at the
lured and repelled
same time, who worships courage but distrusts organization, who loves mankind but who prefers the race cut up into diminutive morsels,
own way, but who
placid wontedness of his 1
who
favors revolution in his
finds that his soul ripens best in the
own study? He
See Journals,
vi,
373-74.
writes to Miss