efforts. I suppose he would have struggled until he fell senseless,
rather than ask his friend to desist. His principle seemed to be, if a
man cannot understand without talking to him, it is quite useless to
talk, because it is immaterial whether such a man understands or not.
His own sympathy was so broad and sure that although nothing had been
said for hours his companion knew that not a thing had escaped his
eye, nor had a single pulse of beauty in the day or scene or society
failed to thrill his heart. In this way his silence was most social.
Everything seemed to have been said. It was a Barmecide feast of
discourse, from which a greater satisfaction resulted than from an
actual banquet.

When a formal attempt was made to desert this style of conversation,
the result was ludicrous. Once Emerson and Thoreau arrived to pay a
call. They were shown into the little parlor upon the avenue, and
Hawthorne presently entered. Each of the guests sat upright in his
chair like a Roman senator. "To them" Hawthorne, like a Dacian king.
The call went on, but in a most melancholy manner. The host sat
perfectly still, or occasionally propounded a question which Thoreau
answered accurately, and there the thread broke short off. Emerson
delivered sentences that only needed the setting of an essay to charm
the world; but the whole visit was a vague ghost of the Monday-evening
club at Mr. Emerson's--it was a great failure. Had they all been lying
idly upon the river brink, or strolling in Thoreau's blackberry
pastures, the result would have been utterly different. But imprisoned
in the proprieties of a parlor, each a wild man in his way, with a
necessity of talking inherent in the nature of the occasion, there was
only a waste of treasure. This was the only "call" in which I ever
knew Hawthorne to be involved.