paced to and fro, as my father was fond of doing. But the two men were
almost equally addicted to outdoor walking, and both preferred to walk
alone. Emerson formed the habit of betaking himself to Walden woods,
which extended to within a mile or so of his door; thence would he
return with an exalted look, saying, "The muses are in the woods
to-day"; and no one who has read his Woodnotes can doubt that he found
them there. Occasionally Channing, Thoreau, or my father would be his
companion; Alcott preferred to busy himself about his rustic fences
and summer-houses, or to sit the centre of a circle and converse, as
he called it; meaning to soliloquize, looking round from face to face
with unalterable faith and complacency.

My father read Emerson with enjoyment; though more and more, as he
advanced in life, he was disposed to question the expediency of
stating truth in a disembodied form; he preferred it incarnate, as it
appears in life and in story. But he could not talk to Emerson; his
pleasure in his society did not express itself in that form. Emerson,
on the other hand, assiduously cultivated my father's company, and,
contrary to his general habit, talked to him continuously; but he
could not read his romances; he admitted that he had never been able
to finish one of them. He loved to observe him; to watch his silence,
which was full of a kind of speech which he was able to appreciate;
"Hawthorne rides well his horse of the night!" My father was Gothic;
Emerson was Roman and Greek. But each was profoundly original and
independent. My father was the shyer and more solitary of the two, and
yet persons in need of human sympathy were able to reach a more
interior region in him than they could in Emerson. For the latter's
thought was concerned with types and classes, while the former had the
individual touch. He distrusted rules, but had faith in exceptions and
idiosyncrasies. Emerson was nobly and magnanimously public; my father,