Some wondered what he was talking about. Some thought him very queer.
All laughed at the delightful humor or the illustrative anecdote that
sparkled for a moment upon the surface of his talk; and some sat
inspired with unknown resolves, soaring upon lofty hopes as they
heard. A nobler life, a better manhood, a purer purpose wooed every
listening soul. It was not argument, nor description, nor appeal. It
was wit and wisdom, and hard sense and poetry, and scholarship and
music. And when the words were spoken and the lecturer sat down, the
Easy Chair sat still and heard the rich cadences lingering in the air,
as the young priest's heart throbs with the long vibrations when the
organist is gone.

The same speaker had been heard a few years previously in the Masonic
Temple in Boston. It was the fashion among the gay to call him
transcendental. Grave parents were quoted as saying, "I don't go to
hear Mr. Emerson; I don't understand him. But my daughters do." Then
came a volume containing the discourses. They were called _Essays_.
Has our literature produced any wiser book?

As the lyceum or lecture system grew, the philosopher whom "my
daughters" understood was called to speak. A simplicity of manner that
could be called rustic if it were not of a shy, scholarly elegance;
perfect composure, clear, clean, crisp sentences; maxims as full of
glittering truth as a winter night of stars; an incessant spray of
fine fancies like the November shower of meteors; and the same
intellectual and moral exaltation, expansion, and aspiration, were the
characteristics of all his lectures.

He was never exactly popular, but always gave a tone and flavor to the
whole lyceum course, as the lump of ambergris flavors the Sultan's