My reforms include theirs:  I must go my way; help people by my strength, not by my weakness.  But if a storm threatened, he felt bound to appear and show his colors.  Against the crying evils of his time he worked bravely in his own way.  He wrote to President Van Buren against the wrong done to the Cherokees, dared speak against the idolized Webster, when he deserted the cause of Freedom, constantly spoke of the iniquity of slavery, aided with speech and money the Free State cause in Kansas, was at Phillips’s side at the antislavery meeting in 1861 broken up by the Boston mob, urged emancipation during the war.

He enjoyed his Concord home and neighbors, served on the school committee for years, did much for the Lyceum, and spoke on the town’s great occasions.  He went to all town-meetings, oftener to listen and admire than to speak, and always took pleasure and pride in the people.  In return he was respected and loved by them.

Emerson’s house was destroyed by fire in 1872, and the incident exposure and fatigue did him harm.  His many friends insisted on rebuilding his house and sending him abroad to get well.  He went up the Nile, and revisited England, finding old and new friends, and, on his return, was welcomed and escorted home by the people of Concord.  After this time he was unable to write.  His old age was quiet and happy among his family and friends.  He died in April, 1882.

Edward W. Emerson.

January, 1899.

* * * * *

I

POEMS

* * * * *

GOOD-BYE

Good-bye, proud world!  I’m going home: 
Thou art not my friend, and I’m not thine. 
Long through thy weary crowds I roam;
A river-ark on the ocean brine,
Long I’ve been tossed like the driven foam: 
But now, proud world!  I’m going home.

Good-bye to Flattery’s fawning face;
To Grandeur with his wise grimace;
To upstart Wealth’s averted eye;
To supple Office, low and high;
To crowded halls, to court and street;
To frozen hearts and hasting feet;
To those who go, and those who come;
Good-bye, proud world!  I’m going home.

I am going to my own hearth-stone,
Bosomed in yon green hills alone,—­
secret nook in a pleasant land,
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned;
Where arches green, the livelong day,
Echo the blackbird’s roundelay,
And vulgar feet have never trod
A spot that is sacred to thought and God.

O, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;
And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools and the learned clan;
For what are they all, in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?