lay by every curious
book or letter that I can think might interest you. My cousin Louisa, I
know, would be glad to see this old town, and the old [158] man at the
parsonage whilst he is yet alive. My mother joins me in sending love to
her.

Yours affectionately,

R. WALDO EMERSON.

Mr. Dewey's mind was too logical in its methods for entire intellectual
sympathy with Mr. Emerson; but that he thoroughly appreciated his
spiritual insight is shown by the following passage from a manuscript
sermon on Law, preached 13th August, 1868, on the occasion of the
earthquake of that year in South America: "But the law [of retribution]
does stand fast. Nothing ever did, ever shall, ever can escape it. Take
any essence-drop or particle of evil into your heart and life, and you
shall pay for it in the loss, if not of gold or of honor, yet of the
finest sense and the finest enjoyment of all things divinest, most
beautiful and most blessed in your being. I know of no writer among us
who has emphasized this fact, this law, more sharply than Waldo
Emerson, and I commend his pages to you in this view. Freed from all
conventionalism, whether religious or Scriptural, though he has left the
ranks of our faith, yet he has gone, better than any of us, to the very
depth of things in this matter."

To Rev. William Ware.

NEW YORK, Nov. 7, 1836.

MY DEAR WARE,--Shall I brood over my regrets in secret, or shall I tell
you of them? I sometimes do not care whether any human being knows what
is passing in [159] me; and then again my feelings are all up in arms
for sympathy, as if they would take it by storm. I declare I have a good
deal of liking for that other,--that sullenness, or sadness, or what
you will; it is calmer and more independent. So I shall say nothing,
only that I miss you even more than I expected.' Never, in all this
great city, will a face come through my door that I shall like to see
better than yours,--I doubt if so well.

The next nearest thing to you is Furness's book. Have you got it? Is
it not charming? It is a book of beauty and life. Spots there are upon
it,--they say there are upon the sun. Certes, there are tendencies to
naturalism in Furness's mind which I do not like,--do not think the
true philosophy; but it is full of beauty, and hath much wisdom in it
too.

I write on the gallop. My dinner is coming in three minutes, and a wagon
is coming after that to carry me to Berkshire, that is, by steamboat to
Hudson