“One incident I will mention which occurred at my last visit to Emerson, only a few months before his death.  I went by Mrs. Emerson’s request to pass a Sunday at their house at Concord towards the end of June.  His memory had been failing for some time, and his mind as you know was clouded, but the old charm of his voice and manner had never left him.  On the morning after my arrival Mrs. Emerson took us into the garden to see the beautiful roses in which she took great delight.  One red rose of most brilliant color she called our attention to especially; its ‘hue’ was so truly ’angry and brave’ that I involuntarily repeated Herbert’s line,—­

      ’Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,’—­

from the verses which Emerson had first repeated to me so long ago.  Emerson looked at the rose admiringly, and then as if by a sudden impulse lifted his hat gently, and said with a low bow, ’I take off my hat to it.’”

Once a poet, always a poet.  It was the same reverence for the beautiful that he had shown in the same way in his younger days on entering the wood, as Governor Rice has told us the story, given in an earlier chapter.

I do not remember Emerson’s last time of attendance at the “Saturday Club,” but I recollect that he came after the trouble in finding words had become well marked.  “My memory hides itself,” he said.  The last time I saw him, living, was at Longfellow’s funeral.  I was sitting opposite to him when he rose, and going to the side of the coffin, looked intently upon the face of the dead poet.  A few minutes later he rose again and looked once more on the familiar features, not apparently remembering that he had just done so.  Mr. Conway reports that he said to a friend near him, “That gentleman was a sweet, beautiful soul, but I have entirely forgotten his name.”

Dr. Edward Emerson has very kindly furnished me, in reply to my request, with information regarding his father’s last years which will interest every one who has followed his life through its morning and midday to the hour of evening shadows.

“May-Day,” which was published in 1867, was made up of the poems written since his first volume appeared.  After this he wrote no poems, but with some difficulty fitted the refrain to the poem “Boston,” which had remained unfinished since the old Anti-slavery days.  “Greatness,” and the “Phi Beta Kappa Oration” of 1867, were among his last pieces of work.  His College Lectures, “The Natural History of the Intellect,” were merely notes recorded years before, and now gathered and welded together.  In 1876 he revised his poems, and made the selections from them for the “Little Classic” edition of his works, then called “Selected Poems.”  In that year he gave his “Address to the Students of the University of Virginia.”  This was a paper written long before, and its revision, with the aid of his daughter Ellen, was accomplished with much difficulty.