EMERSON AND THE PEOPLE.
I think I could get every worthy citizen of the Back Bay who at present feels the deepest distrust of us to applaud with tepid decorum [laughter] the following two lines of Emerson, provided only that I merely read them, in the course of a lecture on Emerson, and did not ask to translate them into action. [Laughter and applause.] The lines are:
For fishers and choppers and plowmen
Shall constitute a State.
He is describing the birth of Massachusetts, the birth of the United States, and he describes this country as being foreordained through the ages to show the kings, the aristocracy, the powers of privilege in the Old World, that here in the New World we could have a true and real democracy, a democracy where fishers and choppers and plowmen constitute a State. [Applause and cheers.]
As I say, friends, I could get decorous applause in any part of the Back Bay for that sentiment so long as I treated it purely as poetry of the past and not as politics of the present. [Applause.]