something in me that cried, 'Ha! ha!' to the sound of the trumpets."

It is nothing for any man sitting in his chair to be overcome with the
sense of the immediacy of life, to feel the spur of courage, the victory
of good over evil, the value, now and forever, of all great-hearted
endeavor. Such moments come to us all. But for a man to sit in his chair
and write what shall call up these forces in the bosoms of others--that
is desert, that is greatness. To do this was the gift of Emerson. The
whole earth is enriched by every moment of converse with him. The shows
and shams of life become transparent, the lost kingdoms are brought
back, the shutters of the spirit are opened, and provinces and realms of
our own existence lie gleaming before us.

It has been necessary to reduce the living soul of Emerson to mere dead
attributes like "moral courage" in order that we might talk about him at
all. His effectiveness comes from his character; not from his
philosophy, nor from his rhetoric nor his wit, nor from any of the
accidents of his education. He might never have heard of Berkeley or
Plato. A slightly different education might have led him to throw his
teaching into the form of historical essays or of stump speeches. He
might, perhaps, have been bred a stonemason, and have done his work in
the world by travelling with a panorama. But he would always have been
Emerson. His weight and his power would always have been the same. It is
solely as character that he is important. He discovered nothing; he
bears no relation whatever to the history of philosophy. We must regard
him and deal with him simply as a man.

Strangely enough, the world has always insisted upon accepting him as a
thinker: and hence a great coil of misunderstanding. As a thinker,
Emerson is difficult to classify. Before you begin to assign him a