Emerson when he gave his mind to it could sing as harmoniously as the best.  Possibly we ought to regret that he did not write for the most part in verse.  It is verse which comes and clings most closely to our souls and which memory holds most permanently.  Prose is the inferior medium when a great utterance is addressed to men, it is the singer pre-eminently who holds our hearts and lives forever.  But Emerson chose to be what he was and we are thankful for him.  Many were vexed with Matthew Arnold whom we thought depreciatory, but I find no fault with his summing up of Emerson, “as the friend of all those who seek to live in the spirit.”  His prose and poetry are a precious possession and we should be grateful for both, and for him.  But my purpose here as always is not to criticise but only to touch the light outside things, pausing at the edge of profundities.

I knew Emerson when I was a child and I also knew him when I was well advanced in years at a time when, of course, he was close upon his end.  His old age was pathetic.  As often happens his memory failed while his other faculties were strong and the embarrassment of the thinker aroused sadness in those who came near him as the trusty servant fell short, though the mind in general was active.  Emerson felt that I had put him under some obligation by giving him the first portrait he had ever seen of his faithful German disciple and translator Hermann Grimm.  Perhaps that helped the welcome with which I was received when I went to see him not far from the end.

I had as a fellow-guest a man who had long been intimate with him and whom he was very glad to see; talking after tea in the library Emerson said, “I want to tell you about a friend in Germany, his name I cannot remember,” and he moved to and fro uneasily, in his effort to recall it.  “This friend with whom we have taken tea to-night, whose name also I cannot remember,” here again came a distressed look at the failure of his faculty, “I cannot remember his name either, but he can tell you of this German friend whose name I have also forgotten.”  It was a sorrow to see the breaking down of a great spirit and his agitation as he was conscious of his waning power.  And yet so far as I could see, it was only the memory that was going; the intellectual strength was still apparent and the amiability of his spirit was perhaps even more manifest than in the years when he was in the full possession of himself.  This came out in little things; he was over-anxious at the table lest the hospitality should come short, troubled about the supply of butter and apple-sauce, and soon after I saw him on his knees on the hearth taking care that the fire should catch the wood to abate the evening coolness that was gathering in the room.  At the same time his mood was playful.  Mrs. Emerson sat at hand, a woman in her old age of striking beauty, with her silver hair beneath a cap of lace, her violet eyes, and her white face.