From the Easy Chair, vol 1 | Page 6

the stoves in their cowhide boots, and
laughed and buzzed and ate apples and peanuts and giggled, and grew
suddenly solemn when the grave men and women looked at them. At
the desk stood the lecturer and read his manuscript, and all but the boys
sat silent and inthralled by the musical spell.
Some of the hearers remembered the speaker as a boy, as a young man.
Some wondered what he was talking about. Some thought him very
queer. All laughed at the delightful humor or the illustrative anecdote
that sparkled for a moment upon the surface of his talk; and some sat
inspired with unknown resolves, soaring upon lofty hopes as they heard.
A nobler life, a better manhood, a purer purpose wooed every listening
soul. It was not argument, nor description, nor appeal. It was wit and
wisdom, and hard sense and poetry, and scholarship and music. And
when the words were spoken and the lecturer sat down, the Easy Chair
sat still and heard the rich cadences lingering in the air, as the young
priest's heart throbs with the long vibrations when the organist is gone.
The same speaker had been heard a few years previously in the
Masonic Temple in Boston. It was the fashion among the gay to call
him transcendental. Grave parents were quoted as saying, "I don't go to
hear Mr. Emerson; I don't understand him. But my daughters do." Then
came a volume containing the discourses. They were called Essays.
Has our literature produced any wiser book?

As the lyceum or lecture system grew, the philosopher whom "my
daughters" understood was called to speak. A simplicity of manner that
could be called rustic if it were not of a shy, scholarly elegance; perfect
composure, clear, clean, crisp sentences; maxims as full of glittering
truth as a winter night of stars; an incessant spray of fine fancies like
the November shower of meteors; and the same intellectual and moral
exaltation, expansion, and aspiration, were the characteristics of all his
lectures.
He was never exactly popular, but always gave a tone and flavor to the
whole lyceum course, as the lump of ambergris flavors the Sultan's
cups of coffee for a year. "We can have him once in three or four
seasons," said the committees. But really they had him all the time
without knowing it. He was the philosopher Proteus, and he spoke
through all the more popular mouths. The speakers were acceptable
because they were liberal, and he was the great liberalizer. They were,
and they are, the middle-men between him and the public. They
watered the nectar, and made it easy to drink.
The Easy Chair heard from time to time of Proteus on the
platform--how he was more and more eccentric--how he could not be
understood--how abrupt his manner was. But the Chair did not believe
that the flame which had once been so pure could ever be dimmer,
especially as he recognized its soft lustre on every aspect of life around
him.
After many years the opportunity to hear him came again; and although
the experiment was dangerous the Chair did not hesitate to try it. The
hall was pretty and not too large, and the audience was the best that the
country could furnish. Every one came solely to hear the speaker, for it
was one lecture in a course of his only. It was pleasant to look around
and mark the famous men and the accomplished women gathering
quietly in the same city where they used to gather to hear him a quarter
of a century before. How much the man who was presently to speak
had done for their lives, and their children's, and the country! The
power of one man is not easily traced in its channels and details, but it
is marked upon the whole. The word "transcendentalism" has long
passed by. It has not, perhaps, even yet gone out of fashion to smile at
wisdom as visionary, but this particular wise man had been acquitted of
being understood by my daughters, and there were rows of

"hardheads," "practical people," curious and interesting to contemplate
in the audience.
The tall figure entered at a side door, and sat down upon a sofa behind
the desk. Age seemed not to have touched him since the evenings in the
country Sunday-school room. As he stood at the desk the posture, the
figure, the movement, were all unchanged. There was the same rapt
introverted glance as he began in a low voice, and for an hour the older
tree shook off a ceaseless shower of riper, fairer fruit. The topic was
"Table-Talk, or Conversation;" and the lecture was its own most perfect
illustration. It was not a sermon, nor an oration, nor an argument; it was
the perfection of