Exertion...

This from Sir Walter Scott in his "Waverly "

"Exertion, like virtue, is its own reward "

Unfailing courtesy...

This from Annie Sawyer Downs' recollection of Ralph Waldo Emerson:

We were immensely entertained by the odd people who came from all parts of the world to see him (Emerson.) Not only men with beards which hung below their waists, but men who chose to go without shoes and stockings and who, if they condescended to wear hats at all, insisted on keeping them on in the house as well as in the street. We felt a kind of personal pride as we were told how Mr. Emerson's unfailing courtesy and personal dignity managed one of these pseudo reformers. Mr. Emerson, on seeing him about to seat himself still wearing his hat offered to relieve him of it, but was met by a flat refusal. Mr. Emerson then took his own hat and saying, "Well, then, if you prefer it, we will talk in the yard," led the way out!"

How d' ye do?

This from Oliver Wendell Holmes' biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson...

"Among the stray glimpses we get of Emerson between the time when he
quitted the pulpit of his church and that when he came before the public
as a lecturer is this, which I owe to the kindness of Hon. Alexander H.
Rice. In 1832 or 1833, probably the latter year, he, then a boy, with
another boy, Thomas R. Gould, afterwards well known as a sculptor, being
at the Episcopal church in Newton, found that Mr. Emerson was sitting in
the pew behind them. Gould knew Mr. Emerson, and introduced young Rice
to him, and they walked down the street together. As they went along,
Emerson burst into a rhapsody over the Psalms of David, the sublimity of
thought, and the poetic beauty of expression of which they are full, and
spoke also with enthusiasm of the Te Deum as that grand old hymn which
had come down through the ages, voicing the praises of generation after
generation.

When they parted at the house of young Rice's father, Emerson invited
the boys to come and see him at the Allen farm, in the afternoon. They
came to a piece of woods, and, as they entered it, took their hats off.
"Boys," said Emerson, "here we recognize the presence of the Universal
Spirit. The breeze says to us in its own language, How d' ye do? How d'
ye do? and we have already taken our hats off and are answering it with
our own How d' ye do? How d' ye do? And all the waving branches of
the trees, and all the flowers, and the field of corn yonder, and the
singing brook, and the insect and the bird,--every living thing and
things we call inanimate feel the same divine universal impulse while
they join with us, and we with them, in the greeting which is the
salutation of the Universal Spirit."

let it go...

The past couple of years have included some highly publicized visions of the end of the world. Alan D. Hodder, in his book "Emerson's Rhetoric of Revelation," recalls Emerson's response to this perennial human preoccupation...

"When a certain Millerite (a 19th century movement that predicted 1843 and then 1844 as the year of the second coming) confronted him (Emerson) with news of the end of the world, Emerson replied mildly, 'Well, let it go; we can get on just as well without it."

the "Clothes Philosophy"

Alan Hodder's "Emerson's Rhetoric of Revelation" makes the case that "Nature" Emerson's first and very influential book, is written in the form of an apocalyptic revelation. One example is his use of the "Clothes Philosophy."

"...Emerson (writes Hodder) like Carlyle, was very much preoccupied with the whole question of clothing. Professor Teufelsdrockh entitled his magnum opus, we might recall, "Clothes: Their Origin and Influences." And this is because he considered all language and nature itself to be a form of clothing. To this extent, at least, Emerson himself may be seen as an advocate of and commentator on the "Clothes Philosophy." 'The moment our discourse (wrote Emerson) rises above the ground line of familiar facts, and is inflamed with passion or exalted by thought, it clothes items in images.' Inspired thought spontaneously 'clothes' itself in its 'natural garment' which is why 'good writing and brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories.' The virtue of such expression, whether in the form of type, symbol or allegory, is that it means what it says. Properly read, it's meaning is transparent, like the stars in the night sky which the writer of "Nature" so reveres."

sometimes...you need a hat

I love a good hat. My favorite is a Country Gentleman Raider that has seen some life. So I loved this recollection today from Edward Everett Hale's "Ralph Waldo Emerson."

"Mr. Emerson himself had a story — I forget whether I heard it in a lecture or in conversation — about a New England come-outer who went into a hat-shop and selected for himself a costly hat. The hat was put up and the dealer supposed he was to be paid, but the man whom he had thought to be a purchaser said simply, "Oh, I pay nothing for anything. I am the man who does not believe in money." The poor dealer had a note to meet at the bank that day, and hardly knew how to do it; he looked with dumb delight upon his customer, and said, "I wish to God, sir, that nobody else believed in money! Take the hat, with my thanks to you for coming for it." Mr. Emerson would say this was all spontaneous, it was natural, on the part of the customer and on the part of the trader. But when, the next day, another man, who had heard the story, came into the shop and selected for himself his hat and said that he did not believe in money, the dealer refused the imitator, where he had accepted so readily the inventor. And Emerson drew the moral from the story which I want to draw now. A prophet who speaks the word that comes to him from the living God speaks, I may say, with the living God's power. But he who imitates the prophet has no spell."

Forgive my unbelief...

On this day in 1842 Thoreau wrote:

"Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe..."

amen