He looked full as young as
he did twenty years ago, when he gave us a 'conversation' in Lynn.
Elizabeth Peabody came into the room, and walked up to the seat of the
rulers; her white hair streamed over her shoulders in wild carelessness,
and she was as careless as ever about her whole attire, but it was
beautiful to see the attention shown to her by Mr. Alcott and Mr.
Sanborn.
"Emerson entered,--pale, thin, almost ethereal in countenance,--followed
by his daughter, who sat beside him and watched every word that he
uttered. On the whole, it was the same Emerson--he stumbled at a
quotation as he always did; but his thoughts were such as only Emerson
could have thought, and the sentences had the Emersonian pithiness. He
made his frequent sentences very emphatic. It was impossible to see any
thread of connection; but it always was so--the oracular sentences made
the charm. The subject was Memory.' He said, 'We remember the
selfishness or the wrong act that we have committed for years. It is as
it should be--Memory is the police-officer of the universe.' 'Architects
say that the arch never rests, and so the past never rests.' (Was it,
never sleeps?) 'When I talk with my friend who is a genealogist, I feel
that I am talking with a ghost.'
"The little vestry, fitted perhaps for a hundred people, was packed with
two hundred,--all people of an intellectual cast of face,--and the
attention was intense.
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