Evening star., 1932-07-16
THE LIBRARY TABLE
BY SARAH C. BOWERMAN.

A suggestive and more appropriate
title for Van Wyck Brooks Life of
Emerson would have been "A Portrait
with Background" The facts In the
book are entirely incidental; dates there
are almost none. From the slowly mov-
ing, dreamy pages a portrait does
emerge, an impressionistic portrait.
And for background there is all Con-
cord, with its inhabitants, literary and
eccentric. The scene shifts several
times and we have group portrait,
Emerson and Carlyle, against the back
grounds of CraigenputtOck and of Chel-
sea. Table of contents and index are
both missing in this biography. 1t is a
book to read for pleasure and inspira-
ton. not for information. Emerson's
life drifts along, from the boyhood of
dire poverty, when he and his brother
Edward wore their one overcoat BY
turns, to the serene, forgetful old age,
when the sage Of Concord, looking down
at the poet of Cambridge in his coffin,
said: Il cannot remember his name,
but he was a good man" Emerson
survived Longfellow but few months
During his last days, when actualitv
had grown very dim, he often looked up
at the portrait of Carlyle on his study
wall and said: That is my mani" OF
his slow, peaceful ending. Mr.. Brooks
says: Gradually, year by year. the
outline had grown indistinct and the
halo gayer and brighter, till at last
there was left only sense of presence
And the strong gods pined for his
abode: for the universe had become his
house in which to live"
The Concord of Emerson's time was
as wild as Wordsworth's Windermere. a
place of simple cottages amid fields. or
chards, woods, streams and ponds.
though only 18 miles from Boston. And
here in Concord were the men that
make republics. Emerson
had found a circle, or the nucleus of a
circle, that would call out in time all
his natural faculties. A few persons
prepared to understand him, who en-
bodied in some degree the ideas he
wished to utter, who would serve him
as models and stir him to formulate
these ideas, pique and provoke him, ex-
pect him to do his best, nourish the
courage and insight his nature con-
tanned" Margaret Fuller was there.
drawn by Emerson. and soon she was
editing the Dial In l84l Henry Thoreau
became a member of the Emerson
household, "as a steward, an adopted
SON. a master of rural arts-chief1v,
perhaps, to give Emerson lessons in
gardening. He had his little room at
the head of the sairs and worked. when
he chose. about the yard and barn,
banked up the fruit trees against the
ho ny TO
when a pale was loose in the fence or
a nail dropped from its place, set up
the stoves and put the shutters to
rights" He and Emerson spent long
afternoons together, walking to the top
of the ridge from which they could
see the dim outline of Monadnoc. or
strolling. lingering bathing, reading in
the woods on the shores of Walden
Pond. Bronson Alcott and his family
lived near the Emersons, in the little
red house at Fruitlands. Alcott lectured
on his own system Of Neo-Platonic
philosophy and the family just escaped
starving through timely generosities of
friends. Mrs. Alcott was often exas-
perating to her socialistic husband, for
she declared without shame that she
cared only for her own family and
its needs. So Alcott lectured on and
discussed with fellow philosophers such
subjects as What Is Prophecy" while
Emerson collected a purse to pay his
expenses and friends brought in bundles
of clothes for the children and food
that was often passed on by Alcott to
poorer families.
As the calm life at Concord flowed
on. Emerson sometimes forced himself
to leave it for a day in order to retain
and renew his contacts with the larger
world, represented by Boston Nothing
so fearsOme as too much solitude" "
Saturday wes the dav usually chosen
by Emerson for his Boston visits. In
well brushed black suit and silk hat
he entered the stage which numbered
past his door and after three hours
was driving through the slums of the
North End; then he was at the
Athenaeum. where he joined Margaret
Fuller in the sculpture gallery. After
an hour among the casts Of the La
cocoon, the Discobolus, and the Phidian
Zeus, he would go to DR.. Peabody 5
book shop where all the new foreign
books were to be found You could
STOP and chat for while, then carry
of the latest German or French re-
the illuminate, talking and strolling
DR.. Charming and Washington Allston,
perhaps, the veterans, or George Rip
ley. or Hedge, or those two grave
suitors of the Peabody girls. Horace
Mann and the shy Nathaniel Haw-
thorne." When there was time. he
would turn in at the Masonic Temple,
where the tall. blue-eyed Alcott was
shaking his corn-colored locks and
lecturing. Such were the rewards
when Emerson left his study and
Slipped into town for the day" Greater
and more prolonged were the rewards
when he made his visit to England in
1888 Never in all his life had he
dreamed of so many dinners. break
fasts, receptions In addition to
Carlyle. his great hero. he met Disraeli,
Prince Albert. Lord Palmerston. Roths-
child, Dickens, Turner. Thackersy,
Leigh Hunt. Samuel Rogers, Clough,
Froudc, Matthew Arnold and De
Ouincev. "a gentle little elf. with an
old old face, shabbily dressed, with
exquisite speech and manners
y X X 4
So long as the human body goes
right it takes care of itself so effl-
ciently that its possessor may almost
forget it. 1t maintains its own stabil-
itv by hidden processes, the secrets OF
which have only-to a small extent been
discovered bv the doctors. One doc
tor who. after a life lime of study, Is
impressed with great respect for the
human body, has written book on the
subject, The Wisdom of the Body" by
Walter B. Cannon. M. D.. professor OF
physiology at Harvard Medical School
Laboratory studies have given him a
mass of material, from which principles
have emerged. Some of the interesting
facts about the body to which attention
is called are that. outside the blood
there is no storage place for oxygen
because oxygen surrounds us at all