l conversation." We understood each
other and wondered how it was that men so often misunderstood one
another. I told him that it was the badness of our language, he
thought it was the badness of our tempers. Perhaps we were both right.
With him again good-by was good-by for life, and at such moments one
wonders indeed how kindred souls became separated, and one feels
startled and repelled at the thought that, such as they were on earth,
they can never meet again. And yet there is continuity in the world,
there is no flaw, no break anywhere, and what has been will surely be
again, though how it will be we cannot know, and if only we trust in
the wisdom that pervades the whole universe, we need not know.

LVI

HOWELLS CALLS ON EMERSON, AND DESCRIBES LONGFELLOW

In 1860 William Dean Howells, now one of the foremost literary
influences in the English-speaking world, was a young man writing for
the _Ohio State Journal_ of Columbus. Several of his poems had been
kindly received and published by the _Atlantic Monthly_, so that the
young lady from New England who screamed with surprise at seeing the
_Atlantic_ on a western table and cried, "Why, have you got the
_Atlantic Monthly out here_?" could be met with, "There are several
contributors to the _Atlantic_ in Columbus." The several were Howells
and J.J. Piatt. But to be an accepted contributor to the _Atlantic_
was not enough. Howells must see the literary celebrities of New
England. Emerson and Bayard Taylor he had seen and heard in Columbus,
but Longfellow, Hawthorne, Lowell, Holmes, and Whittier were the
literary saints at whose shrine he wished to burn the sacred incense
of his adoring soul.

From Hawthorne he received a card introducing him to Emerson. Emerson
was then about sixty, although nothing about him suggested an old man.
After some conversation on general topics, Emerson began to talk of
Hawthorne, praising Hawthorne's fine personal qualities. "But his
last book," he added, reflectively, "is mere mush." This criticism
related to the _Marble Faun_. Of course, such a comment shocked
Howells, whose sense of literary values was much keener than
Emerson's. "Emerson had, in fact," writes Howells, "a defective sense
as to specific pieces of literature; he praised extravagantly, and in
the wrong place, especially among the new things, and he failed to see
the worth of much that was fine and precious beside the line of his
fancy."

Then Emerson made some