leaves, sounding like a shower of rain. The applause was never very
great; it is said that Rachel feels this as a Boston peculiarity, but
she ought also to feel the compliment of so large an audience in a city
where foreigners are so few and the population so small compared to that
of New York.

"Nov. 14, 1855. Last night I heard Emerson give a lecture. I pity the
reporter who attempts to give it to the world. I began to listen with a
determination to remember it in order, but it was without method, or
order, or system. It was like a beam of light moving in the undulatory
waves, meeting with occasional meteors in its path; it was exceedingly
captivating. It surprised me that there was not only no commonplace
thought, but there was no commonplace expression. If he quoted, he
quoted from what we had not read; if he told an anecdote, it was one
that had not reached us. At the outset he was very severe upon the
science of the age. He said that inventors and discoverers helped
themselves very much, but they did not help the rest of the world; that
a great man was felt to the centre of the Copernican system; that a
botanist dried his plants, but the plants had their revenge and dried
the botanist; that a naturalist bottled up reptiles, but in return the
man was bottled up.

"There was a pitiful truth in all this, but there are glorious
exceptions. Professor Peirce is anything but a formula, though he deals
in formulae.

"The lecture turned at length upon beauty, and it was evident that
personal beauty had made Emerson its slave many a time, and I suppose
every heart in the house admitted the truth of his words....