of sables made him, in that society, the black thread of mystery which
he weaves into his stories, while the shifting presence of the
Brook-Farmer played like heat-lightning around the room.

I recall little else but a grave eating of russet apples by the erect
philosophers, and a solemn disappearance into night. The club struggled
through three Monday evenings. Plato was perpetually putting apples of
gold in pictures of silver; for such was the rich ore of his thoughts,
coined by the deep melody of his voice. Orson charmed us with the
secrets won from his interviews with Pan in the Walden woods; while
Emerson, with the zeal of an engineer trying to dam wild waters, sought
to bind the wide-flying embroidery of discourse into a web of clear
sweet sense. But still in vain. The oracular sayings were the unalloyed
saccharine element; and every chemist knows how much else goes to
practical food--how much coarse, rough, woody fibre is essential. The
club struggled on valiantly, discoursing celestially, eating apples,
and disappearing in the dark, until the third evening it vanished
altogether. But I have since known clubs of fifty times its number,
whose collective genius was not more than that of either one of the
Dii Majores of our Concord coterie. The fault was its too great
concentration. It was not relaxation, as a club should be, but tension.
Society is a play, a game, a tournament; not a battle. It is the easy
grace of undress; not an intellectual full-dress parade.

I have already hinted this unbending intellectual alacrity of our
author. His sport is serious--his humor is earnest. He stands like a
sentinel. His look and manner and habit of thought cry "Who goes
there?" and if he does not hear the countersign, he brings the
intruder to a halt. It is for this surprising fidelity and integrity
that his influence has been so deep and sure and permanent upon the