Emerson, then a mere wreck of his former self, was present, cared for
by his wife or his daughter Ellen. Alcott made some most remarkable
statements, as: "We each can decide when we will ascend." Then he
would look around as if to question all, and add: "Is it not so? Is it
not so?" I remember another of his mystic utterances: "When the mind
is izzing, it is thinking things. Is it not so? Is it not so?" Also,
"When we get angry or lose our temper, then fierce four-footed beasts
come out of our mouths, do they not, do they not?"
After Mr. Harris, the great educational light, had closed his remarks,
and had asked for questions, one lady timidly arose and inquired: "Can
an atom be said to be outside or inside of potentiality?"
He calmly replied that "it could be said to be either inside or
outside potentiality, as we might say of potatoes in a hat; they are
either inside or outside the hat." That seemed to satisfy her
perfectly.
Mr. Frank B. Sanborn read his lecture on American Literature, and I
ventured to ask: "How would you define literature?"
He said: "Anything written that gives permanent pleasure." And then
as he was a relative, I inquired, but probably was rather pert: "Would
a bank check, if it were large enough, be literature?" which was
generally considered as painfully trifling.
Jones of Jacksonville was on the program, and talked and talked, but
as I could not catch one idea, I cannot report.
It was awfully hot on that hill with the sun shining down through the
pine roof, so I thought one day enough.
As I walked down the hill, I heard a man who seemed to have a lot of
hasty pudding in his mouth, say in answer to a question from the lady
with him: "Why, if you can't understand that, you can have no idea of
the first principles (this with an emphatic gesture) of the Hegelian
philosophy."
Alcott struck me as a happy dreamer. He said to me joyously: "I'm
going West in Lou's chariot," and of course with funds provided by his
daughter.
An article written by her, entitled "Transcendental Wild Oats," made a
great impression on my mind.
It appeared in a long-ago _Independent_ and I tried in vain to find it
last winter. Houghton and Mifflin have recently published Bronson
Alcott's "_Fruitlands_," compiled by Clara Endicott Sears, with
"Transcendental Wild Oats" by Louisa M. Alcott, so it is brought to
the notice of those who will appreciate it.
I called once on Miss Hosmer, who then was living with relatives in
Watertown, Massachusetts, her old home; the house where she was born
and where she did her first modelling. Recently reading in Miss
Whiting's record of Kate Field's life, of Miss Hosmer as a universal
favourite in Rome, a dearly loved friend of the Brownings, and
associated with the literary and artistic coterie there, a living part
of that memorable group, most of whom are gone, I longed to look in
her eyes, to shake her hand, to listen to her conversation. Everyone
knows of her achievements as a sculptor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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