idn't quite satisfy
him, an uncertain mark of erasure leaving the approved portion in doubt:
"Read proudly. Put the duty of being read invariably on the author. If
he is not read, whose fault is it? I am quite ready to be charmed--but I
shall not make believe I am charmed." Dear man! he never would "make
believe." Transparent, sincere soul, how he puts to shame all
affectation and pretense! Mr. Jackson says his townsmen found it hard to
realize that he was great. They always thought of him as the kindly
neighbor. One old farmer told of his experience in driving home a load
of hay. He was approaching a gate and was just preparing to climb down
to open it, when an old gentleman nimbly ran ahead and opened it for
him. It was Emerson, who apparently never gave it a second thought. It
was simply the natural thing for him to do.

Walden Pond is some little distance from the Emerson home, and the time
at our disposal did not permit a visit. But we had seen enough and felt
enough to leave a memory of rare enjoyment to the credit of that
precious day in Concord.

FIVE DAYS

There are several degrees of rest, and there are many ways of resting.
What is rest to one person might be an intolerable bore to another, but
when one finds the ultimate he is never after in doubt. He knows what
is, to him, _the real thing_. The effect of a sufficient season, say
five days, to one who had managed to find very little for a
disgracefully long time, is not easy to describe, but very agreeable to
feel.

My friend [Footnote: Horace Davis] has a novel retreat. He is fond of
nature as manifested in the growth of trees and plants, and some
seventeen years ago he bought a few acres, mostly of woods, in the Santa
Cruz Mountains. There was a small orchard, a few acres of hillside
hayfield, and a little good land where garden things would grow.

There was, too, a somewhat eccentric house where a man who was trying to
be theosophical had lived and communed with his mystified soul. To
foster the process he had more or less blue glass and a window of Gothic
form in the peak of his rambling house. In his living-room a round
window, with Sanskrit characters, let in a doubtful gleam from another
room. In the side-hill a supposedly fireproof vault had been built to
hold the manuscript that held his precious thoughts. In the gulch he had
a sacred spot, where, under the majestic redwoods, he retired to write,
and in a small building he had a small printi