RALPH WALDO EMERSON

VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES

Published and in Preparation

Edited by Will D. Howe

Arnold Stuart P. Sherman

Browning William Lyon Phelps

Burns William Allan Neilson

Carlyle Bliss Perry

Dante Alfred M. Brooks

Defoe William P. Trent

Dickens Richard Burton

Emerson Samuel McChord Crothers

Hawthorne George Edward Woodberry

The Bible George Hodges

Ibsen Archibald Henderson

Lamb Will D. Howe

Stevenson Richard A. Rice

Tennyson Raymond Macdonald Alden

Whitman Brand Whitlock

Wordsworth C. T. Winchester

RW Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

HOW TO KNOW HIM

By

Samuel McChord Crothers

Author of

THE GENTLE READER, THE PARDONER’S WALLET OLIVER WENDEL HOLMES AND HIS FELLOW BOARDERS ETC., ETC.

WITH PORTRAIT

INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1921 The Bobbs-Merrill Company

Printed in the United States of America

PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOK MANUFACTURERS BROOKLYN, N. Y.

INTRODUCTORY

The mind of Emerson was a searchlight revealing not itself but the various objects on which it successively turned. An intense and narrow beam of light would shoot through the darkness and reveal some object. Then it would pick up another object which would have its brief moment of visibility. The landscape was never revealed in any one view.

The only way to know Emerson is to join him in his intellectual exercises. In spite of his personal aloofness I know of no one with whom we can more readily come to a feeling of intellectual intimacy. He had no pretensions and no reserves. In clear sentences he told us what from time to time he thought. He made no attempt to connect these thoughts into a coherent system. For any one else to attempt to do this would be to misrepresent him.

In the short chapters which follow I have treated Emerson as a contemporary rather than as a writer of the last generation. His thought is as pertinent to the twentieth century as to the nineteenth. Indeed I think that in many respects we may be nearer to him than were those who first listened to him. The prejudices which he encountered have largely died away. The problems over which he was meditating remain.

I wish to make grateful acknowledgment to Houghton Mifflin Company for special permission to make extracts from their authorized and copyright editions of Emerson’s works. Also to Doctor Edward Emerson for the use of his edition of his father’s journals.

S. M. M.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I The Approach to Emerson 1

II A Discriminating Optimist 16

III The Opener of Doors 29

IV The Parish of Young Men 40

V Spent the Day at Essex Junction 47

VI Friendship without Intimacy 56

VII I Hate This Shallow Americanism 68

VIII The Poet 75

IX The Poetry of Science 95

X Piety 108

XI Thou Shalt Not Preach 116

XII The Lure of the West 122

XIII Emerson’s Elusive Smile 133

XIV The Quiet Revolutionist 142

XV Meditations on Politics 158

XVI The Candid Friend of England 172

XVII Among His Books 181

XVIII Emerson’s Historic Sense 197

XIX Peace and War 209

XX The Fortunes of the Poor 215

XXI The Cutting Edge 223

XXII Terminus 230

EMERSON