brought him into relationship with half the families on Beacon Street,
and which may have exercised a determining influence on the future course
of his life. Doctor Holmes was always liberally inclined, and ready to
welcome such social and political improvements as time might bring; but
he never joined any of the liberal or reformatory movements of his time.
Certain old friends of Emerson affirmed, when Holmes published his
biography of the Concord sage in 1885, that no one else was so much given
to jesting as Emerson in his younger days. This may have been true; but
it is also undeniable that Emerson himself had changed much during that
time, and that the socialistic Emerson of 1840 was largely a different
person from the author of "Society and Solitude." Holmes had already
composed one of the fairest tributes to Emerson's intellectual quality
that has yet been written.

"He seems a winged Franklin, heavenly wise,
Born to unlock the secrets of the skies."

Emerson began his course in direct apposition to the conventional world;
but he was the great magnet of the age, and the world could not help
being attracted by him. It modified its course, and Emerson also modified
his, so that the final reconciliation might take place. Meanwhile Doctor
Holmes pursued the even tenor of his way. Concord does not appear to have
been attractive to him. He had a brother, John Holmes, who was reputed by
his friends to be as witty as the "Autocrat" himself, but who lived a
quiet, inconspicuous life. John was an intimate friend of Hon. E. R. Hoar
and often went to Concord to visit him; but I never heard of the Doctor
being seen there, though it may have happened before my time. He does not
speak over-much of Emerson in his letters, and does not mention
Hawthorne, Thoreau or Alcott, so far as we know, at all. They do not
appear to have attracted his attention.