“When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare, muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these.  But the central wisdom which was old in infancy is young in fourscore years, and dropping off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise.  I have heard that whoever loves is in no condition old.  I have heard that whenever the name of man is spoken, the doctrine of immortality is announced; it cleaves to his constitution.  The mode of it baffles our wit, and no whisper comes to us from the other side.  But the inference from the working of intellect, hiving knowledge, hiving skill,—­at the end of life just ready to be born,—­affirms the inspirations of affection and of the moral sentiment.”

Other literary labors of Emerson during this period were the Introduction to “Plutarch’s Morals” in 1870, and a Preface to William Ellery Channing’s Poem, “The Wanderer,” in 1871.  He made a speech at Howard University, Washington, in 1872.

In the year 1871 Emerson made a visit to California with a very pleasant company, concerning which Mr. John M. Forbes, one of whose sons married Emerson’s daughter Edith, writes to me as follows.  Professor James B. Thayer, to whom he refers, has more recently written and published an account of this trip, from which some extracts will follow Mr. Forbes’s letter:—­

    BOSTON, February 6, 1884.

    MY DEAR DR.,—­What little I can give will be of a very rambling
    character.

One of the first memories of Emerson which comes up is my meeting him on the steamboat at returning from Detroit East.  I persuaded him to stop over at Niagara, which he had never seen.  We took a carriage and drove around the circuit.  It was in early summer, perhaps in 1848 or 1849.  When we came to Table Rock on the British side, our driver took us down on the outer part of the rock in the carriage.  We passed on by rail, and the next day’s papers brought us the telegraphic news that Table Rock had fallen over; perhaps we were among the last persons on it!

About 1871 I made up a party for California, including Mr. Emerson, his daughter Edith, and a number of gay young people.  We drove with B——­, the famous Vermont coachman, up to the Geysers, and then made the journey to the Yosemite Valley by wagon and on horseback.  I wish I could give you more than a mere outline picture of the sage at this time.  With the thermometer at 100 degrees he would sometimes drive with the buffalo robes drawn up over his knees, apparently indifferent to the weather, gazing on the new and grand scenes of mountain and valley through which we journeyed.  I especially remember once, when riding down the steep side of a mountain, his reins hanging loose, the bit entirely out of the horse’s mouth, without his being aware that this was an unusual method of riding Pegasus, so fixed was his gaze into space,