occasional descriptive writer at fifty dollars a week, which enabled me to save all the money coming to me from Lawrence.
One day Smith talked to me of Emerson and confessed he had got an introduction to him and had sent it on to the philosopher with a request for an interview. He wished me to accompany him to Concord: I consented, but without any enthusiasm: Emerson was then an unknown name to me; Smith read me some of his poetry and praised it highly though I could get little or nothing out of it. When young men now show me a similar indifference, my own experience makes it easy for me to excuse them. They know not what they do! is the explanation and excuse for all of us.
One bright fall day Smith and I went over to Concord and next day visited Emerson. He received us in the most pleasant, courteous way: made us sit and composed himself to listen. Smith went off at score, telling him how greatly he had influenced his life and helped him with brave encouragement: the old man smiled benignantly and nodded his head, ejaculating from time to time: "Yes, yes!" Gradually Smith warmed to his work and wanted to know why Emerson had never expressed his views on sociology or on the relations between Capital and Labor. Once or twice the old gentleman cupped his ear with his hand; but all he said was: "Yes, Yes! or I think so" with the same benevolent smile.
I guessed at once that he was deaf; but Smith had no inkling of the fact for he went on probing, probing while Emerson auswered pleasant nothings quite irrelevantly. I studied the great man as closely as I could. He looked about five feet nine or ten in height, very thin, attenuated even, and very scrupulously dressed: his head was narrow though long,
