asceticism.

Emerson's natural asceticism is revealed to us in almost every form in
which history can record a man. It is in his philosophy, in his style,
in his conduct, and in his appearance. It was, however, not in his
voice. Mr. Cabot, with that reverence for which every one must feel
personally grateful to him, has preserved a description of Emerson by
the New York journalist, N.P. Willis: "It is a voice with shoulders in
it, which he has not; with lungs in it far larger than his; with a walk
which the public never see; with a fist in it which his own hand never
gave him the model for; and with a gentleman in it which his parochial
and 'bare-necessaries-of-life' sort of exterior gives no other betrayal
of. We can imagine nothing in nature (which seems too to have a type for
everything) like the want of correspondence between the Emerson that
goes in at the eye and the Emerson that goes in at the ear. A heavy and
vase-like blossom of a magnolia, with fragrance enough to perfume a
whole wilderness, which should be lifted by a whirlwind and dropped into
a branch of aspen, would not seem more as if it could never have grown
there than Emerson's voice seems inspired and foreign to his visible and
natural body." Emerson's ever exquisite and wonderful good taste seems
closely connected with this asceticism, and it is probable that his
taste influenced his views and conduct to some small extent.

The anti-slavery people were not always refined. They were constantly
doing things which were tactically very effective, but were not
calculated to attract the over-sensitive. Garrison's rampant and
impersonal egotism was good politics, but bad taste. Wendell Phillips
did not hesitate upon occasion to deal in personalities of an
exasperating kind. One sees a certain shrinking in Emerson from the
taste of the Abolitionists. It was not merely their doctrines or their