Emerson's serenity is often spoken of as evidence of the power of his religious faith. It may allow of this construction, but it may be accounted for on other and different grounds which lie nearer at hand and proceed immediately from more obvious sources. How far may a long ancestral experience in devout meditations, practices, longings, worked into the system and producing a sedate, calm, interior temperament, go in explaining that almost imperturbable tranquillity? The piety of his forefathers was so genuine that it drove him from the church of his adoption, and rendered another calling sacred. Their descendant exhibited the same saintliness which they possessed but in a different fashion. And he was probably saintlier than they were, because he was their child. His brothers had the same characteristic of equanimity by virtue of the same parentage. His brother William, whom I knew intimately in New York, showed in his daily life a similar dignity, and tradition reports the same of Charles. It was the perfect fruitage of centuries of heavenly-minded men, not the peculiarity of an individual soul. This predisposition to inwardness was favored by the long seclusion of Concord, which kept Emerson aloof from the world and prevented the friction which is so damaging to serenity. He saw those only who respected, loved, honored, and revered him. He came into collision with none. Men of thought, unambitious men, students, farmers, were his fellow-townsmen. Several hours in each day he was alone with his books or his mind. When he visited the city it was for an intellectual or social purpose, as one who had dropped from a star and was soon to vanish. His contact was with men of letters, clergymen, publishers, friends, gentlemen interested in mental pursuits who had left their business in order to disport themselves in the fields of thought. These added to his stores of wisdom, and sent him home replenished rather than drained. The gains of his day were not dissipated either by business occupation or pleasure. Then, whether from disposition or philosophy we cannot tell, this man avoided everything dark, evil, unwholesome, unpleasant. Sickness of all kinds, complaint, depression, melancholy, was an abomination to him. He turned away from ugly sights and sounds, thus evading conflict. He never argued, never discussed, but said his word as well as he could, and encouraged others to say theirs, in this way hoping to get at the truth. By this course he escaped the usual provocations to ill-temper, and was forced upon an undisturbed equipoise of mind. Nothing helps serenity so much as avoidance of contest, and when one can thoroughly convince himself that there is no rooted evil in the world to be fought against, an even condition of soul is not hard to maintain; optimism is proverbially cheerful, but an optimism that is grounded in principle must be unconquerable by any force that circumstances can bring against it.