ked the
doing him much mischief by putting him in print,--a trial few
persons can sustain without losing their unconsciousness. But,
after all, a man gifted with thought and expression, whatever his
rank in life and his mode of uttering himself, whether by pen or
tongue, cannot be expected to go through the world without finding
himself out; and, as all such discoveries are partial and
imperfect, they do more harm than good to the character. Mr.
Hosmer is more natural than ninety-nine men out of a hundred, and
is certainly a man of intellectual and moral substance. It would
be amusing to draw a parallel between him and his admirer,--Mr.
Emerson, the mystic, stretching his hand out of cloudland in vain
search for something real; and the man of sturdy sense, all whose
ideas seem to be dug out of his mind, hard and substantial, as he
digs his potatoes, carrots, beets, and turnips out of the earth.
Mr. Emerson is a great searcher for facts, but they seem to melt
away and become unsubstantial in his grasp."

They took that extraordinary creature, Margaret Fuller, seriously,
and they took a vast deal of poor poetry seriously. Because a few
could write, nearly every one in the village seemed to think he or
she could write, and write they did to the extent of a small
library most religiously shelved and worshipped in its own
compartment in the town library.

Genius is egotism; the superb confidence of these men, each in the
sanctity of his own mission, in the plenitude of his own powers,
in the inspiration of his own message, made them what they were.
The last word was Alcott's because he outlived them all, and his
last word was that, great as were those who had taken their
departure, the greatest of them all had fallen just short of
appreciating him, the survivor. A man penetrates every one's
disguise but his own; we deceive no one but ourselves. The insane
are often singularly quick to penetrate the delusions of others;
the man who calls himself George Washington ridicules the claim of
another that he is Julius Caesar.

Between Hawthorne and Thoreau there was little in common. In 1860,
the latter speaks of meeting Hawthorne shortly after his return
from Europe, and says, "He is as simple and childlike as ever."

Of Thoreau, Mrs. Hawthorne wrote in a letter, "This evening Mr.
Thoreau is going to lecture, and will stay with us. His lecture
before was so enchanting; such a revelation of nature in all its
exquisite details