“Church? What is church? I do not see church, I do not hear church, I do not smell church!” It is very possible that he did make them, yet he was a man essentially devout, the descendant of a line of clergymen. When a distinguished clergyman of the Church of England came to America, some years later, he declared that, whoever occupied the pulpit, Emerson was always the preacher! Time thus brought to the latter a splendid revenge for the small satires of earlier days. His table talk was fresh, quaint and delightful. Yet he was, on the whole, rather silent than talkative in company, as became the author of this passage: “When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don’t _say_ things. What you are stands over you the while and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.” If this saying bears too hard upon women, we may comfort ourselves with another dictum of his, “Woman, if not the queen, is the lawgiver of conversation.” While great men like Mr. Emerson may sit serenely silent, the feminine instinct bids us try, at least, to be agreeable! The Sage of Concord, as he was called, staying one night at a hotel in Boston, received a long visit from a literary man who, rising to go at a late hour, said, “I am to give a lecture on Plato to-morrow and I haven’t written the first word of it yet.” To which Mr. Emerson, horrified at such carelessness, replied, “Good God!” This gentleman was Emanuel Scherb, a habitué of our house at one time. His negligence perhaps arose from the fact that he had once been insane. He then imagined that he was a monkey. A knowledge of this lingered in my mother’s subconscious mind. She once talked with him about monkeys, until she suddenly remembered his former delusion! Mr. Emerson did not answer the persons who wrote to him asking for his autograph, even if they generously enclosed a stamp. It was said that his family found these stamps useful for their correspondence. Mrs. Emerson foresaw, at the beginning of the Civil War, that there would be a great rise in the price of cotton cloth. Hence she wisely laid in a closetful of this important commodity.