me and leisure. It
was the behavior of one who really _believed_ in an immortal life,
and had adjusted his conduct accordingly; so that, beautiful and
grand as the natural objects were, among which our journey lay, they
were matched by the sweet elevation of character, and the spiritual
charm of our gracious friend. Years afterwards, on that memorable
day of his funeral at Concord, I found that a sentence from his own
Essay on Immortality haunted my mind, and kept repeating itself
all the day long; it seemed to point to the sources of his power:
'Meantime the true disciples saw through the letter the doctrine of
eternity, which dissolved the poor corpse, and Nature also, and gave
grandeur to the passing hour.'"

This extract will be appropriately followed by another alluding to the
same subject.

"The next evening, Sunday, the twenty-third, Mr. Emerson read his
address on 'Immortality,' at Dr. Stebbins's church. It was the first
time that he had spoken on the Western coast; never did he speak
better. It was, in the main, the same noble Essay that has since
been printed.

"At breakfast the next morning we had the newspaper, the 'Alta
California.' It gave a meagre outline of the address, but praised it
warmly, and closed with the following observations: 'All left the
church feeling that an elegant tribute had been paid to the creative
genius of the Great First Cause, and that a masterly use of the
English language had contributed to that end.'"

The story used to be told that after the Reverend Horace Holley had
delivered a prayer on some public occasion, Major Ben. Russell, of ruddy
face and ruffled shirt memory, Editor of "The Columbian Centinel,"
spoke of it in his paper the next day as "the most eloquent prayer ever
addressed to a Boston audience."

The "Alta California's" "elegant tribute" is not quite up to this
rhetorical altitude.

"'The minister,' said he, 'is in no danger of losing his position;
he represents the moral sense and the humanities.' He spoke of his
own reasons for leaving the pulpit, and added that 'some one had
lately come to him whose conscience troubled him about retaining the
name of Christian; he had replied that he himself had no difficulty
about it. When he was called a Platonist, or a Christian, or a
Republican, he welcomed it. It did not bind him to what he did
not