However, it was not Emerson's manners to which society objected, or could ever object. He had the manners of a king, without the demands of a king. He was a republican king. He stood for equality, in the sense that he looked down on no man. The society view is different. Society exists in order to look down on all who are not within its sacred circle. They must be inferior because they are outside. But its objection to Emerson lay deeper. It recognized in him the natural enemy of privilege and prerogative. There were distinguished members of this distinguished body who regarded a man who took the liberty of examining the substructure on which all societies are built as an anarchist. They were afraid of him. They thought it safer to exclude him. By and by, they compromised. Is not, or was not, Boston the Home of Culture? So, as Emerson's fame grew, the exclusion policy was seen to be feeble. But when the closed doors were opened, what was the astonishment of these excellent persons to discover that Emerson did not seem to care whether they were open or closed. He had his own life to live, and lived it, serenely aloof.

Nothing dies so hard as a prejudice. I have one of my own which lives in spite of my affection for Emerson, and my many debts to him, and my gratitude that he gave me a little of his friendship. I mean that on a too young mind he had, or might have, an influence not entirely for good. He set his ideals so high that, as you looked up to him and them, your feet sometimes went astray, or stumbled. He taught you, though he may not have meant it, to underrate precision of knowledge, and the value of details. When the things of the spirit and the spiritual life mattered so much, how could it be worth while to know all the tenses of Greek verbs or to be aware of the rudiments of toe in the palæontological horse? There are sentences and pages in The Conduct of Life and elsewhere which refute this view, and I do not press it. But I know the effect, not of this or that essay, but of Emerson's attitude toward education, and his philosophic indifference to all but what is highest in thought. And I think even to-day I would not put his books into the hands of a boy who had not settled views about learning, and a conviction of the invincible necessity of an accurate method.

CHAPTER VIII
A GROUP OF BOSTON LAWYERS—MR. OLNEY AND VENEZUELA

A name still remembered in Massachusetts is that of Judge Thomas of the Supreme Court, the court of highest jurisdiction in that State, and one of the few State courts whose decisions have always been cited with respect in the Supreme Court of the United States. It was recruited largely from the Suffolk Bar. The Boston Bar was known as the Suffolk Bar, the name of the county. But, of course, other parts of the State supplied judges, and Worcester County was one. Judge Thomas lived and practised law in the town of Worcester. He practised politics also, of a very energetic kind, being a good platform speaker and a good organizer. There used to be a story that one morning, in the heat of an exciting campaign, Thomas knelt at family prayers and began his invocation to the Almighty: "Fellow-citizens and Whigs of Worcester County."

However that may be, he was a successful lawyer, a successful judge, and had attractive qualities not always to be found at the Bar. I will tell you in a moment in what way he connects himself permanently with national and international history. I came to know about it because it was before Judge Thomas that I tried, at nisi prius, and lost, my first case in the Supreme Court. When the jury had delivered their wrongful verdict, and been sent about their business, Judge Thomas called me up and spoke to me with a kindness I have never forgotten. He thought I had tried my case well, told me I should do well at the Bar, and offered, very generously, to help me if he could. After a time he resigned his seat on the Bench and went into practice in Boston. A little later I called on him and asked whether he had room for a junior in his office. "There would have been room if you had applied earlier," said Judge Thomas. "But I have just been told by my daughter that she has engaged herself to a young lawyer, and he is to have the place I should otherwise have been glad to offer you."

The name of that young lawyer was Richard Olney. It fell to my lot to see something of him in Washington forty years later, when he was Secretary of State under President Cleveland. I saw him for some weeks, during the height of the Venezuela crisis, almost daily. Whether I shall ever be allowed to tell the whole story of what went on during those weeks I do not know. If I were Mr. Olney I would give my assent to the publishing of a complete statement. I say that because, in my judgment, we owe it to Mr. Olney—and among Americans to him only—that a way out of the difficulty in which President Cleveland's Message had landed us was ultimately found. I know how it was found, and except Mr. Olney himself, I don't think any other American knows. I am aware of the explanations which Mr. Cleveland published in The Century Magazine, and I think them models of unintentional disingenuousness. Moreover, I had means of knowing what was said and done on this side, in England, in the Foreign Office and elsewhere, during those dangerous weeks; and I know why the settlement was postponed till next summer, when the American people, at white heat during December, 1895, and January, 1896, had cooled off and forgotten there was any crisis at all.

But if I never had a chance of saying more, I wish to say now that Mr. Olney did a great service to his country, and to both countries; one of the greatest ever done by any man in his position, or in almost any position. I think Mr. Cleveland became aware that he had acted rashly and with no full knowledge of the history of that boundary-line between British Guiana and Venezuela which he announced to the world his intention to re-draw to suit himself, with menace of war to Great Britain. I don't forget Mr. Olney's share in the dispatch of July, 1895, which began the trouble. He and Mr. Cleveland concocted that extraordinary document between them at Gray Gables. I suppose he knew also of Mr. Cleveland's Message to Congress, December 12th, and perhaps approved of it—indeed, he must have approved of it or resigned. He must also have been responsible for the second dispatch calling upon Lord Salisbury to send an answer to the July dispatch before the meeting of Congress in December; a demand perhaps unprecedented as between two Powers of the first rank. I know, too, that some of Mr. Olney's language gave offence. Lord Salisbury thought him rude; an impression due mainly to the different uses made of the English language in Washington and in London, and to the non-existence in Washington, at that time, of that diplomatic freemasonry, in both speech and act, and of those diplomatic conventionalities which prevail in other important capitals of the world.

All that—and there is more—only emphasizes the delicacy with which Mr. Olney subsequently handled the dispute which Mr. Cleveland had envenomed. A new period in the negotiations began. I shall venture to say, even though Mr. Olney, out of loyalty to his President might refuse to admit it, that with the New Year of 1896 the conduct of the negotiations passed into his hands. That he reported to the President what was going on I don't doubt. But a new spirit prevailed. The tone which had been so offensive in the original dispatch, and still more in the Message to Congress, was dropped. Mr. Olney had a wonderful flexibility of mind. When he saw that one set of tactics had failed, he was quick to try another, and not only to try another but to recognize the need of a wholly new departure. He was equally quick in invention, in devising expedients, in looking at facts with a fresh pair of eyes. A trained diplomatist he was not, but in this emergency he showed the qualities of a trained diplomatist; the resource, the tact, the fertility, and the power of divining what was in his adversary's mind.