Every morning after reading the "Boston Advertiser" he would go to his study, to take up the work of the day previous and cross out every word in it that could possibly be spared. This procedure and his taste for unusual words is what gives the peculiar style to his writing. It was characteristic of him physically and mentally. He had a spare figure; was sparing of speech, sparing of praise, and sparing of time; in all things temperate and stoical. He had an aquiline face, made up of powerful features without an inch of spare territory.
"With beams December planets dart
His keen eye truth and conduct scanned."
His eyes were sometimes exceedingly brilliant; his nose was strong and aquiline; and the lower part of his face, especially the mouth, was notably like the busts of Julius Caesar. His voice was a baritone of rapid inflections, and when he was very much in earnest it changed to a deep bass. He once said, "Whenever I look in the glass I feel a depression of spirits"; but his friends did not feel so. He was always an agreeable object to them, even in his last years when he looked in his study like an old eagle in his eyrie. Mental power is more attractive than beauty even to ladies.
He was a modern Stoic, and carried that kind of life to a high degree of perfection. He sometimes smoked a cigar, and sometimes drank a glass of wine, but the only real luxury he indulged in was dining with the Atlantic Club once a month in Boston. During his lecturing tours he was the recipient of a great deal of hospitality, and became the objective centre of many a social gathering; but how much he enjoyed this it would be difficult to tell. He was too modest and genuine to like being lionized. He had neither pride, vanity, nor self-conceit; and his great celebrity never weighed heavily upon him, or discovered itself in his manners. In this respect he carried his stoicism a little too far, for he never would permit any one to talk with him about himself, and enthusiastic admirers of his genius commonly met with a rather cold reception. He repelled everything in the shape of a compliment. Dr. Edward Emerson says somewhere that his father was used to eat whatever was set before him with Spartan-like indifference. This mistake may have arisen from the good quality of Mrs. Emerson's housekeeping, and the excellent fare which she provided for her husband and his friends. Emerson wished to bear the hardships of life without complaining, but he also knew that to make life unnecessarily hard is not only unwise but has an injurious effect on character. As he would have said, it is not according to nature. A horse seeks the best of the road, and a cow the freshest grass in the pasture. Studious people and others who live mostly indoors are obliged to be careful of what they eat. You could not call Emerson an epicure, but he knew how to appreciate a fine dinner. Several witnesses have given their testimony in regard to his partiality for what he called "pie." He was also fond of pears; knew the best varieties and the order in which they ripened. He used to say that there is only ten minutes in which a pear is fairly ripe: before that it is too hard and afterwards too soft. His friend Dr. F. H. Hedge once made a similar remark concerning ripe scholars.
Perhaps the most remarkable trait in his character was his absolute self-poise. He had a balanced mind if there ever was one. Carlyle considered the "Conduct of Life" to be Emerson's best book, and there was reason why it should be. It was the subject of all others which he knew most about. Conduct had been the study of his life. Behavior was a fine art with him, cultivated partly from motives of prudence but more for its own sake. From early morning till bed-time he was always the same, always self-possessed. There was no relaxation of it; he was like an athlete in full training. It was difficult to place him in a position where he did not appear to advantage. But he expected nearly as much from others, and had small patience with those who from ignorance or carelessness infringed the rules of etiquette. One of his expressions was, that death or mutilation was the only excuse for being late to dinner. The notion that poets are an unpractical class of people is pure illusion. The lives of our chief American poets will be sufficient to contradict it; if Dante had not been a just governor of Florence and Aeschylus had not fought like a tiger in the battle of Salamis. Bryant was the able editor of a newspaper; Lowell made an excellent ambassador; and Longfellow also had the reputation with his publishers of being a very shrewd man of business. So was Emerson in all things eminently practical. He would sometimes say, "I allow myself to be cheated by one Irishman"; but I do not think he was cheated very much.
In fair weather he always left his books half an hour or so before dinner and walked out, to get fresh-air and see what was going forward on his little place. The poem called "Hamatreya" and many of his best thoughts were evidently suggested by these short excursions. He says in the "Conduct of Life": "The scholar goes into his garden to obtain a juster statement of his thought. He puts down his hand to pull up a weed. Behind that is a second; behind the second is a third; behind the third a fourth; and beyond that a thousand and four." Who can doubt that this was a personal experience with him, as it has been with some others?
There are many anecdotes of his good sense and sagacity, and the following is perhaps equal to any of them. One summer there was a camp-meeting of spiritualists at Walden Pond, and every evening they held an entertainment of speeches, singing and music, to which a small admittance-fee was charged. It happened, however, that the picnic pavilion was situated close to Mr. Emerson's land, and numbers of Concord people went out of curiosity and leaning against his fence heard and saw everything that went on. A committee of spiritualists consequently called on Mr. Emerson and requested permission to collect fees from those who stole their entertainment in this manner. At first thought this might not seem to be unreasonable; but Emerson replied, "No, I have always enjoyed the privilege of walking upon my neighbors' fields, and I cannot now refuse the same right to them." Could a chief justice have decided the case better?
Emerson's no was always decisive, and if one person could not induce him to change his mind I do not believe twenty millions would have succeeded in doing so. When he was involved in a lawsuit regarding some property, and the suggestion was made that he should compromise it, he said: "By no means. If it is mine I want the whole of it; if it is not mine I do not want any of it."
He avoided controversies and often showed great tact in escaping from an argument. What he had once published was of no consequence to him, and he cared little whether others liked it or not. If people advanced opinions or judgments with which he disagreed he made a plain statement of the fact and then changed the subject of conversation. Opponents who wished to corner him, and had perhaps set snares for him to fall into, found themselves outwitted by his unfailing desire for peace and harmony.
He went to the polls and voted; he attended town-meetings and political caucuses, but never took an active share in them. The prohibition of liquor, the tariff question, the woman suffrage movement, and other like vexatious matters he left severely alone. I doubt if any one discovered from first to last what his real opinions were on these subjects. At the Boston Radical Club in 1868 he was asked to give an opinion on woman suffrage, and he replied that he had no doubt that when all women had agreed as to what they wanted, what was in fact best for them, they could easily obtain it through the home influence. These he would say are questions of judgment. The slavery question was a matter of principle; and on that point he gave forth no uncertain sound. He did not, however, engage actively in the controversy till the passage of the fugitive-slave bill warned him how seriously the republic was in danger. Then he threw himself into the struggle with all the energy of his nature, and stumped the Middlesex district for the free-soil candidate Dr. Palfrey. In one of his speeches at this time referring to Webster's support of the bill, he forged this terrible figure, "Every drop of blood in the man's veins has eyes that look downward."