e mere freakishness of unrestraint had yielded to a
recognition of the true conditions of liberty, and tolerance was
combined with sincerity.

CHAPTER VII.

MARGARET'S LOVE OF CHILDREN.--VISIT TO CONCORD AFTER THE DEATH OF WALDO
EMERSON.--CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON.--SUMMER ON THE LAKES.

Among Margaret's life-long characteristics was a genuine love of little
children, which sprang from a deep sense of the beauty and sacredness of
childhood. When she visited the homes of her friends, the little ones of
their households were taken into the circle of her loving attention.
Three of these became so especially dear to her that she called them her
children. These were Waldo Emerson, Pickie Greeley, and Herman Clarke.
For each of them the span of earthly life was short, no one of them
living to pass out of childhood.

Waldo was the eldest son of Mr. Emerson, the child deeply mourned and
commemorated by him in the well-known threnody:--

"The hyacinthine boy for whom
Morn well might break and April bloom.
The gracious boy who did adorn
The world whereinto he was born,
And by his countenance repay
The favor of the loving Day,
Has disappeared from the Day's eye."

This death occurred in 1841. Margaret visited Concord soon afterward,
and has left in her journals a brief record of this visit, in which she
made the grief of her friends her own. We gather from its first phrase
that Mr. Emerson, whom she now speaks of as "Waldo," had wished her to
commit to writing some of her reminiscences of the dear one lately
departed:--

"Waldo brought me at once the inkhorn and pen. I told him if he kept me
so strictly to my promise I might lose my ardor; however, I began at
once to write for him, but not with much success. Lidian came in to see
me before dinner. She wept for the lost child, and I was tempted to do
the same, which relieved much from the oppression I have felt since I
came. Waldo showed me all he and others had written about the child;
there is very little from Waldo's own observation, though he was with
him so much. He has not much eye for the little signs in children that
have such great leadings. The little there is, is good.

"'Mamma, may I have this little bell which I have been making, to stand
by the side of my bed?'

"'Yes, it may stand there.'

"'But, mamma, I am afraid it will alarm you. It may sound in the middle
of the night, and it will be heard over the whole tow