h her in his little one-horse wagon to his home, the gray square
house, with dark green blinds, set amidst noble trees. A glimpse of the
family,--"the stately, white-haired Mrs. Emerson, and the beautiful,
faithful Ellen, whose figure seems always to stand by the side of her
august father." Then the picture of Concord itself, lovely and smiling,
with its quiet meadows, quiet slopes, and quietest of rivers. She meets
the little set of Concord people: Mr. Alcott, for whom she does not
share Mr. Emerson's enthusiasm; and William Ellery Channing, whose
figure stands out like a gnarled and twisted scrub-oak,--a pathetic,
impossible creature, whose cranks and oddities were submitted to on
account of an innate nobility of character. "Generally crabbed and
reticent with strangers, he took a liking to me," says Emma Lazarus.
"The bond of our sympathy was my admiration for Thoreau, whose memory he
actually worships, having been his constant companion in his best
days, and his daily attendant in the last years of illness and heroic
suffering. I do not know whether I was most touched by the thought of
the unique, lofty character that had inspired this depth and fervor of
friendship, or by the pathetic constancy and pure affection of the poor,
desolate old man before me, who tried to conceal his tenderness and
sense of irremediable loss by a show of gruffness and philosophy. He
never speaks of Thoreau's death," she says, "but always 'Thoreau's
loss,' or 'when I lost Mr. Thoreau,' or 'when Mr. Thoreau went away from
Concord;' nor would he confess that he missed him, for there was not a
day, an hour, a moment, when he did not feel that his friend was still
with him and had never left him. And yet a day or two after," she goes
on to say, "when I sat with him in the sunlit wood, looking at the
gorgeous blue and silver summer sky, he turned to me and said: 'Just
half of the world died for me when I lost Mr. Thoreau. None of it looks
the same as when I looked at it with him.'... He took me through the
woods and pointed out to me every spot visited and described by his
friend. Where the hut stood is a little pile of stones, and a sign,
'Site of Thoreau's Hut,' and a few steps beyond is the pond with
thickly-wooded shore,--everything exquisitely peaceful and beautiful in
the afternoon light, and not a sound to be heard except the crickets or
the 'z-ing' of the locusts which Thoreau has described. Farther on he
pointed out to me, in the distan