of the others I will make one or two extracts,--a difficult
task, so closely are the thoughts packed together.

From "Demonology":--

"I say to the table-rappers

'I will believe
Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know,'
And so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate!"

"Meantime far be from me the impatience which cannot brook the
supernatural, the vast; far be from me the lust of explaining away
all which appeals to the imagination, and the great presentiments
which haunt us. Willingly I too say Hail! to the unknown, awful
powers which transcend the ken of the understanding."

I will not quote anything from the Essay called "Aristocracy." But let
him who wishes to know what the word means to an American whose life has
come from New England soil, whose ancestors have breathed New England
air for many generations, read it, and he will find a new interpretation
of a very old and often greatly wronged appellation.

"Perpetual Forces" is one of those prose poems,--of his earlier epoch,
I have no doubt,--in which he plays with the facts of science with
singular grace and freedom.

What man could speak more fitly, with more authority of "Character,"
than Emerson? When he says, "If all things are taken away, I have
still all things in my relation to the Eternal," we feel that such an
utterance is as natural to his pure spirit as breathing to the frame in
which it was imprisoned.

We have had a glimpse of Emerson as a school-master, but behind and far
above the teaching drill-master's desk is the chair from which he speaks
to us of "Education." Compare the short and easy method of the wise man
of old,--"He that spareth his rod hateth his son," with this other, "Be
the companion of his thought, the friend of his friendship, the lover of
his virtue,--but no kinsman of his sin."

"The Superlative" will prove light and pleasant reading after these
graver essays. [Greek: Maedhen agan]--_ne quid nimis_,--nothing in
excess, was his precept as to adjectives.

Two sentences from "The Sovereignty of Ethics" will go far towards
reconciling elderly readers who have not forgotten the Westminster
Assembly's Catechism with this sweet-souled dealer in spiritual
dynamite:--

"Luther would cut his hand off sooner than write theses against the
pope if he suspected that he was bringing on with all his might the
pale negations of Boston Unitarianism.--