from him, and lost all interest in his conversation. A few days
afterward some one was heard to say, "Mr. Emerson, how did you like
Professor ----?"

"Let me see," he replied; "is not he the man who was at the same
university with Matthew Arnold, and who could tell us nothing of him?"

"How about Matthew Arnold?" he said to B---- on his return from
England.

"I did not see him," was the somewhat cool reply.

"Yes! but he is one of the men one wishes not to lose sight of," said
Emerson.

"Arnold has written a few good essays," rejoined the other, "but his
talk about Homer is all nonsense."

"No, no, no!" said Emerson; "it is good, every word of it!"

When the lecture on Brook Farm really came, it was full of wit and
charm, as well as of the truth he so seriously desired to convey. The
audience was like a firm, elastic wall, against which he threw the
balls of his wit, while they bounded steadily back into his hand.
Almost the first thing he said was quoted from Horatio Greenough, whom
he esteemed one of the greatest men of our country. But there is
nothing more elusive and difficult to retain than Emerson's wit. It
pierces and is gone. Some of the broader touches, such as the clothes-
pins dropping out of the pockets of the Brook Farm gentlemen as they
danced in the evening, were apparent to all, and irresistible. Nothing