invited me to a place on it
beside him, and at intervals of a minute or so he talked while he smoked.
Heaven preserved me from the folly of trying to tell him how much his
books had been to me, and though we got on rapidly at no time, I think we
got on better for this interposition. He asked me about Lowell, I dare
say, for I told him of my joy in meeting him and Doctor Holmes, and this
seemed greatly to interest him. Perhaps because he was so lately from
Europe, where our great men are always seen through the wrong end of the
telescope, he appeared surprised at my devotion, and asked me whether I
cared as much for meeting them as I should care for meeting the famous
English authors. I professed that I cared much more, though whether this
was true, I now have my doubts, and I think Hawthorne doubted it at the
time. But he said nothing in comment, and went on to speak generally of
Europe and America. He was curious about the West, which he seemed to
fancy much more purely American, and said he would like to see some part
of the country on which the shadow (or, if I must be precise, the damned
shadow) of Europe had not fallen. I told him I thought the West must
finally be characterized by the Germans, whom we had in great numbers,
and, purely from my zeal for German poetry, I tried to allege some proofs
of their present influence, though I could think of none outside of
politics, which I thought they affected wholesomely. I knew Hawthorne
was a Democrat, and I felt it well to touch politics lightly, but he had
no more to say about the fateful election then pending than Holmes or
Lowell had.

With the abrupt transition of his talk throughout, he began somehow to
speak of women, and said he had never seen a woman whom he thought quite
beautiful. In the same way he spoke of the New England temperament, and
suggested that the apparent coldness in it was also real, and that the
suppression of emotion for generations would extinguish it at last. Then
he questioned me as to my knowledge of Concord, and whether I had seen
any of the notable people. I answered that I had met no one but himself,
as yet, but I very much wished to see Emerson and Thoreau. I did not
think it needful to say that I wished to see Thoreau quite as much
because he had suffered in the cause of John Brown as because he had
written the books which had taken me; and when he said that Thoreau
prided himself on coming nearer the heart of a pine-tree than any othe