JST. 30.] TO R. W. EMERSON. 163
ble with him that I may not miss Aim, and lest he should miss you too much. So you must come back soon, or you will be superseded.
Alcott has heard that I laughed, and so set the people laughing, at his arbor, though I never laughed louder than when I was on the ridge pole. But now I have not laughed for a long time, it is so serious. He is very grave to look at. But, not knowing all this, I strove inno cently enough, the other day, to engage his at tention to my mathematics. "Did you ever study geometry, the relation of straight lines to curves, the transition from the finite to the infi nite ? Fine things about it in Newton and Leib nitz." But he would hear none of it, men of taste preferred the natural curve. Ah, he is a crooked stick himself. He is getting on now so many knots an hour. There is one knot at pres ent occupying the point of highest elevation, the present highest point; and as many knots as are not handsome, I presume, are thrown down and cast into the pines. Pray show him this if you meet him anywhere in London, for I cannot make him hear much plainer words here. He forgets that I am neither old nor young, nor anything in particular, and behaves as if I had still some of the animal heat in me. As for the building, I feel a little oppressed when I come near it. It has no great disposition to be beau-
