The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-05-19
dno
 SOCIETY.
HRS. !. N. de CoTrEs.

and to feel the great charm of his char acter. have enjoyed his hospitality. and have also had the great privilege of receiving him as a guest. In society, he was gracious and responsive after his own manner. equally content, 1t seemed, to converse or to listen, when conversa- tion was on a rational level. His humor was not that of the circus or theatre, yet have heard him read a farcical poem (the Old Cave) with good effect.
 His courtesy to his wife was charming. "Queenie," he called her. and Queenie she always remained. met this couple once when they were visiting Hon. George Bancroft and his wife at their Newport villa. The two ladies had been school mates, but their later lives had been widely divergent. The Bancrofts had been much in the great world. while Mrs. Emerson had lived mostly in the seclusion of her Concord residence I still have a vivid recollection of the dignity and simplicity of her manner and appearance in these, to her. unaccustomed surround ings.
 Mir. Emerson was a man of friendship, scarcely of intimacies. I recall him as always self-eontained, like perfect crystal enclosing a perfect flame. think on the whole that Margaret's simile of the palm tree was not inapplicable to him. His life throughout was uplifted and up- lifting. and imagine that his New Eng land conscience so filled every nook and cranny of his being as to leave no room for the desipere in loco so dear to most I recognised in him an eminent instance of 'the strenuous life" as applied to literary work. Yet I was at times sur prised at his familiarity with light htera- ture. even with French novels. If l re- member rightly. his early audiences in Boston were largely composed of women. This impression is confirmed in my mind by taA mo','-nown saying of an eminent Boston a (. 5f some fifty or more years ago.
 "I can't understand the man, but my daughters do.''
 The period in which Margaret Fuller and Mir. Emerson most nearly encounter ed each other was one of contradictions which were destined to assert themselves witS ever increasing force until new aspect of affairs should bring them to a partial reconciliation. The ascendency of the old theology had done much to paralyze in the community the side Of human nature which responds to the beau- tiful and pleasurable depressing view of the futility of existence sapped the love of life at it's source, and made the appointed three-score and ten years a time of patient endurance rather than of natural and rational happiness. Many brave spirits rebelled against this super annuated tyranny. Among them, Mar saret felt herself called upon to voice the protest of the rest. It was this obliga- ton which placed her in an attitude of opposition to much of the society Of her time. The energetic nature rose up against the passivity of mind, the pas sion of prejudice which resisted any in- noyation in the old routine. We must remember that in preaching for better state of things she did not complain as one without hope, but as one who felt more than most impressed with the great ness of human possibilities, the splendid destiny of the race.
 Margaret drew around her many warm | friends of either sex, not a few of whom have lived to reap in icy the seed sown | in sorrow.
 The Concord of that time possessed a group of noble women, fit associates for l the poet and philosopher. The Emerson | and Hoar ladies, Louisa Alcott and her mother, the wonderful Mrs. Ripley and I her daughters. We can imagine our poet
 after his cry of Goodbye. proud world | I'm going home," returning to Concord | to sun him self in the warmth Of such | sympathetic society.
 Julia Ward Howe