Arguments not unlike these were doubtless used by Emerson, for we know that he discussed this problem; and Whitman listened attentively to them, explaining himself at times, but generally weighing them in silence. Perhaps they were not new to him, but they were rendered the more powerful and well-nigh irresistible by the persuasive and beautiful spirit, the whole magnetic personality of his friend.
Walt was deeply moved, and when, after a couple of hours, Emerson concluded the statement of his case with the challenge, “What have you to say to such things?” could but reply, “Only that while I can’t answer them at all, I feel more settled than ever to adhere to my own theory and exemplify it”. “Very well,” responded Emerson cheerfully, “then let us go to dinner.”[264]
They had been pacing up and down the Long Walk by Beacon Street, from which one looks across the broad, park-like stretch of the Common—that Common whose grey, bright-eyed squirrels are so confiding, and whose air is so good from the sea. To-day the oldest of the elms, that kept record of the past as wisely as any archives, have yielded to the winds and to the tooth of time. The growth of these trees is very different from that of our English species, and their long, curving branches rib the vault of sky overhead. The two men went over the historic hill—where now the gilded dome of the State House glows richly against the sky—descending through picturesquely narrow streets, full of memories and echoes of old days, to their destination at the American House.
FOOTNOTES:
[239] Cf. useful ed. of his speeches recently added to “Unit Library”.
[240] Thoreau’s A Plea for Captain J. B., and The Last Days of J. B.
[241] Kennedy, 49.
[242] Address at Cooper Inst., 27th February, 1860.
[243] Among the MSS. Traubel is a first draft for a novel (?) dealing with a woman of this class.