The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-08-01
Emerson Grille.

l do not know In Just what sort he made me welcome. but am aware Of sitting with him in his study or library. and Of his presently speaking Of flaw thorne. whom prJ,ably celebrated AS l best could. and whom he praised for his personal excellence and for hIs fine qualities as a neighbor But his ins; book." he added. refectivey, "is q mere mush." and I perceived that this great man was no better equipped to judge an artistic fiction than the groundlings who were then crying out upon the in- definite close of the Marble Faun. Apparently he had read 1t as they had. [. for the story. but 1t seems to me now. if 1t did not seem to me then. that as far as the problem of evil was involved. the book must leave 1t where 1t found 1t. That is for ever insoluble, and 1t was rather with that than with his more or less shadowy people that the ioAidiiSSi "oc SoHSclHth ISHti sotl had, in fact, a defective sense as to specific pieces of literature; he praised extravagantly, and in the wrong place. especially among the new things. and he failed to see the worth of much that was fine and precious beside the line of his fancy.
 After dinner we walked about in his tnlaa rhod rdonp Ntt1a nd we came again into his library where I meant to finger only till could fitly get away. He questioned me of what had seen of Concord, and whom beside Hawthorne had met, and when I told him only Thoreau. he asked me if I knew the poems of Mr William Henry Charming. I have know them since. and felt their quality, which I have gladly owned a genuine and original poetry, but I answered then truly that knew them only from Poe's criticisms; cruel and spiteful things which should be ashamed of enjoying as once did.
 Whose criticisms?" asked Emerson.
 "Poe's," I said again.
 "Oh," he cried out, after a moment, as if he had returned from far search for my meaning, you mean the jingle manw
 l do not know why this should have put me to such confusion. but If had written the criticisms myself do not think I could have been more abashed. Perhaps I felt an edge of reproof, of admonition, in chara cterzation of Poe which the world will hardly agree with; though do not agree with the world about him, myself, in its admira- tion. At any rate, it made an end of me for the time, and I remained as if already absent, while Emerson ques- tioned me as to what I had written in the Atlantic Monthly. He had evident ly read none of my contributions, for he looked at them in the bound volume of the magazine which he got down, with the effect of being wholly strange to them, and then gravely affixed my initials to each. He followed me to the door, still speaking of poetry, and as he took a kindly enough leave of me, he said one might give a very pleasant hour to it now and then.
 A pleasant hour to poetry. I was meaning to give all time and all eter- nifty to poetry, and I should by no means have wished to find pleasure in it; I should have thought that a proof of inferior quality in the work i; I should have preferred anxiety, an- guish even, to pleasure But if Elmer son thought from the glance he gave my verses that had not better lavish myself upon that kind of thing, unless there was a great deal more, of me than could have made apparent in our meeting, no doubt he was right.-Wil- liam Dean Howells in Harper's.