period, by the whooping-cough, which seized upon all of us together,
and I well remember my father almost climbing up the wall of the room
in some of his paroxysms; but he treated it all as a joke, and was
always ready to laugh as soon as he got through coughing. It left no
ill effects except upon my mother, who had bronchial trouble which, as
I have intimated, finally led to the breaking-up of our household. She
was not made for England.




IX


Two New England consciences--Inexhaustible faith and energy--Deep and
abiding love of England--"How the Water Comes Down at Lodore"--"He
took an' he let go"--Naked mountains--The unsentimental little
quadruped--The human element in things sticks--The coasts of
England--A string of sleepy donkeys--Unutterable boy-thoughts--Grins
and chuckles like an ogress--Hideous maternal parody--The adorable
inverted bell-glass--Strange things happen in the world--An ominous
clouding of the water--Something the world has never
known--Overweening security--An admonition not to climb too high--How
vice may become virtue by repetition--Corporal Blair's
chest--Black-Bottle Cardigan--Called to Lisbon.

Emerson, as a matter of principle, was rather averse from travel,
though he made the trip to England twice; but he fortified his theory
by his practice of searching out great men rather than historic or
picturesque places. Ruskin's Modern Painters had not been written when