"'Thee, Tityrus, even the pine-trees,
The very fountains, the very
Copses are calling.'
Perhaps also your creditors. At all events I am, who am your debtor."
The days were fast approaching when the old things must pass away. He wrote tenderly:—
"I am sorry to hear that you are not quite yourself. I sympathize with you, for I am somebody else. It is the two W's, Work and Weather, that are playing the mischief with us…. You must not open a book; you must not even look at an inkstand. These are both contraband articles, upon which we have to pay heavy duties. We cannot smuggle them in. Nature's custom-house officers are too much on the alert."
In 1880 he again wrote, describing the wedding of the daughter of an old friend:—
"A beautiful wedding it was; an ideal village wedding, in a pretty church, and the Windmill Cottage of our friend resplendent with autumnal flowers. In one of the rooms there was a tea-kettle hanging on a crane in the fireplace.
"So begins a new household. But Miss Neilson's death has saddened me, and yesterday Mrs. Horsford came with letters from Norway, giving particulars of Ole Bull's last days, his death and burial. The account was very touching. All Bergen's flags at half-mast; telegrams from the King; funeral oration by Björnson. The dear old musician was carried from his island to the mainland in a steamer, followed by a long line of other steamers. No Viking ever had such a funeral."
And here the extracts from letters and journals must cease. It was a golden sunset, in spite of the increasing infirmities which beset him; for he could never lose his pleasure in making others happy, and only during the few last days did he lose his own happiness among his books and at his desk. The influence his presence gave out to others, of calm good cheer and tenderness, made those who knew him feel that he possessed, in larger measure than others, what Jean Paul Richter calls "a heavenly unfathomableness which makes man godlike, and love toward him infinite." Indeed, this "heavenly unfathomableness" was a strong characteristic of his nature, and the gracious silence in which he often dwelt gave a rare sense of song without words. Therefore, perhaps on that day when we gathered around the form through which his voice was never again to utter itself, and heard his own words repeated upon the air saying, "Weep not, my friends! rather rejoice with me. I shall not feel the pain, but shall be gone, and you shall have another friend in heaven," it was impossible not to believe that he was with us still, the central spirit, comforting and uplifting the circle of those who were most dear to him.
GLIMPSES OF EMERSON
The perfect consistency of a truly great life, where inconsistencies of speech become at once harmonized by the beauty of the whole nature, gives even to a slight incident the value of a bit of mosaic which, if omitted, would leave a gap in the picture. Therefore we never tire of "Whisperings" and "Talks" and "Walks" and "Letters" relating to the friends of our imagination, if not of our fireside; and in so far as such fragments bring men and women of achievement nearer to our daily lives, without degrading them, they warm and cheer us with something of their own beloved and human presence.