New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1913-05-03

to take his recollections Of Emerson as
a friend of his fathers. Of other old
celebrities, literary and artistic. more
or less vicariously met" and Of play
mates almost as shadow in the retro
spect. They count, if they count at
ali, only as they just brushed and
stirred that visiting mind.
Not always. but sometimes. the re-
sultant memory is worth while. Thus
he looks back at that remote circle and
cites Poe, mot so much because he
was personally present (the extremity
Of personal absence had just overtakcn
him) as by reason Of that predominant
lustre in him which our small open
ing minds themselves already recog-
nized and which makes me wonder to-
day at the legend of the native neglect
of him. lie goes on in some detail TO
show how, in his time at all events.
Poe was very much in favor And
once, just once, he brings back out OF
the past famous figure, painting il
! so well and so naturally that for "a
moment We forget all about his analy-
/ teal hobby 1t seems a special bit Of
! good fortune that this vignette should
, be OF the great man of whom we can
never hear too much. The Jacket. by
the way, that appears in the. passage,
/ is the one worn in the photograph Of
! 1874, which serves as frontispiece.
/ Here is the precious memory:
! 1t was but short time before those
! days that the great Mr. Thackeray had
come to America TO lecture on Tine Eng
4 llsh HumOurists,' and still present To me
/ is the voice proceeding IRON my father S
I library. In when some glimpse Of me
! lowering. at an opening of the door. IN
/ passage or on staircase. prompted him to
/ the formidable words: Come mere little
J boy, and show me your extraordinary
Jacket My sense of my Jacket became
/ from that hour 1t heavy one-further en-
richcd as my vision is by my shyness Of
posture before the seated. the celebrated
, visitor. who struck me. In the sunny light
Of the animated room, as enormously big,
ana who, though he laid on my shoulder
/ the hand OF beneyOlence, bent on my ma
/ tive costume the spectacles of wonder
was TO know later on why ne had been
| 50 amused and why, after asking me If
this We're the common uniform of my age
and class. he remarked that in England.
were | to go there, ! should be addressed
| as Buttons. II had leen revealed 10
me thus in a fash that we were somehow
/ queer, and though never exactly crushed
I by II, | became aware that at least felt
/ 50 a. | stood with my head in Mr. Brady s
wise. Beautiful most decidedly the lost
art Of the dacuerreotype; ! remember the
exposure" as on this occasion inter
mnably long, yet with the result of a
! facial anguish far less harshly reproduced
] than my suiSred snapshots OF later age.
Too few. | may here interiect. were TO
! remain my gathered impressions of the
great humourist. but one of item. indeed
| almost the only other bears again on the
| play OF his numOur over our perversities
! OF dress. IL belongs to later moment
an occasion on which | see him famiiiarlv
seated with US. in paris. during the soring
| of 1851, at some rcpaSt at which I e
Younger Of us. too. 10y that time, habitu-
ally focked in our affucnce of five. our
youngest was beside him. a small sister.
then not quite I'm her eighth year, and
arrayed apparently after the fashion OF
the period and place. and the tradition
! fingered long Of his having suddenly laid
his hand on her little fiounccd person and
exclaimed with ludicrous horror: "Crino-
line?-I was suspecting it! So young and
so depraved"
Though there is little i'm the book so
conveniently quotable as this there is
great deal through which we get
flashes Of that power Of evocation
which the passage suggests. The au-
thor's relatives and friends pass swift
ly and sometimes very dimly before us.
but even at their dimmest they have
certain reality. The ancient lady
who TOHid read holding her book out
Il f.t. 10
comprehensibly straight between the
page and her eyes; the school fellow.
Louis De Coppet, who was so natural
ly and incorruptibly' French; the ac-
tors on the New York stage half a
century ago; the lean. elderly tutor in
Paris, whose verses had been sympa-