“How is your son John, the little fellow with whom I was so much pleased when I was at your house last?” enquired Squire Foster.
“He is a unique adolescent—a heavenly cherub. His excessively prodigious development of juvenile intellectual and religious numerous tendencies produce within me the largest, the greatest, the richest exquisite emotions of deep pleasurability, and profoundest sensations of unparalleled wonderment.”
“You are very eloquent this morning,” said the Squire, rather sarcastically.
Mr. Hill, considering himself a little flattered by this encomium, said, “My eloquence, sir, is the natural, the habitual, the spontaneous, the unprompted infusions of my own individuality of mental hallucinations, sparkling out in the scintillations which you do me the honour of denominating, and calling, and epithetising as eloquence.”
Mr. Hill was something of a transcendentalist in his way. The Squire was aware of his tendency in this direction, and not having a distinct idea of what his transcendentalism was, he ventured to ask him during the conversation to give him a definition of it. After a brief pause, as though Mr. Hill was meditating for a succinct and clear definition, he said,—
“I would define transcendentalism as the spiritual cognoscence of psychological irrefragability, connected with concuitant ademption of encolumnient spirituality, and etherealized contention of subsultory concretion.”
“That is transcendentalism, indeed!” exclaimed the Squire. “It goes beyond my understanding and comprehension.”
“I feel myself in the same predicament,” observed Mr. Pope, who up to this time had been silent during the desultory conversation of the Squire and Mr. Hill.
“From what stand-point (as the Germans would call it) do you gain that view of transcendentalism?” asked Mr. Pope.
“I have gained it from the esoteric stand-point of Christian exegetical analysis; and agglutinating the polsynthetical ectoblasts of homogeneous asceticism, I perceive at once the absolute individuality of this definition.”