ry.
I suppose all of them were surprised at this rumor of a school or
sect, and certainly at the name of Transcendentalism, given, nobody
knows by whom, or when it was applied."

Emerson's picture of some of these friends of his is so peculiar as to
suggest certain obvious and not too flattering comments.

"In like manner, if there is anything grand and daring in human
thought or virtue; any reliance on the vast, the unknown; any
presentiment, any extravagance of faith, the Spiritualist adopts
it as most in nature. The Oriental mind has always tended to this
largeness. Buddhism is an expression of it. The Buddhist, who thanks
no man, who says, 'Do not flatter your benefactors,' but who in his
conviction that every good deed can by no possibility escape its
reward, will not deceive the benefactor by pretending that he has
done more than he should, is a Transcendentalist.

"These exacting children advertise us of our wants. There is no
compliment, no smooth speech with them; they pay you only this one
compliment, of insatiable expectation; they aspire, they severely
exact, and if they only stand fast in this watch-tower, and persist
in demanding unto the end, and without end, then are they terrible
friends, whereof poet and priest cannot choose but stand in awe; and
what if they eat clouds, and drink wind, they have not been without
service to the race of man."

The person who adopts "any presentiment, any extravagance as most in
nature," is not commonly called a Transcendentalist, but is known
colloquially as a "crank." The person who does not thank, by word or
look, the friend or stranger who has pulled him out of the fire or
water, is fortunate if he gets off with no harder name than that of a
churl.

Nothing was farther from Emerson himself than whimsical eccentricity or
churlish austerity. But there was occasionally an air of bravado in some
of his followers as if they had taken out a patent for some knowing
machine which was to give them a monopoly of its products. They claimed
more for each other than was reasonable,--so much occasionally that
their pretensions became ridiculous. One was tempted to ask: "What
forlorn hope have you led? What immortal book have you written? What
great discovery have you made? What heroic task of any kind have you
performed?" There was too much talk about earnestness and too little
real work done. As