"Parched corn eaten to-day that I may have roast fowl to my dinner Sunday is a baseness; but parched corn and a house with one apartment, that I may be free of all perturbations, that I may be serene and docile to what the mind shall speak, and quit and road-ready for the lowest mission of knowledge or good-will, is frugality for gods and heroes." This was the sort of frugality that Thoreau practised in his hut on Walden Pond, and it is a frugality which has made him famed throughout the hero-worshipping world. The charm of Emerson's home life lay largely in his manners, which were simple, yet faultless. He greeted his friends with all the mildness and serenity of the very god of repose, and induced in them that most enjoyable sensation, a feeling of entire contentment with all the world. No heat, no fret, no hurry, no great call to strenuous exertion to appear well or make a fine impression. All was ease, calm, unstudied attention to every little want, and talk fit for the noblest and the best. He was an example of what he himself honored most. "I honor that man whose ambition it is, not to win laurels in the state or the army, not to be a jurist or a naturalist, not to be a poet or a commander, but to be a master of living well, and to administer the offices of master or servant, of husband, father, and friend." In all these relations Emerson shone resplendently, and in the old-fashioned relation of neighbor he was always at his best. To the family of his old friend Alcott he was as a special providence for many years, and beautiful indeed was the affection in which he was held by them. When, during Emerson's absence in Europe, his house was partly burned, his neighbors promptly rebuilt it, ready for his return. Of these helpers Emerson wrote, in accepting their gift:-- "Judge Hoar has up to this time withheld from me the names of my benefactors; but you may be sure I shall not rest till I have learned them, every one, to repeat to myself at night and at morning."