Mrs. Livermore had a terrible grief to bear,—the lifelong illness of her daughter from a chronic and incurable disease. She told me, when I was at her house, that she kept on lecturing, and accepting invitations, to divert her mind somewhat. She felt at times that she could not leave her unfortunate child behind, when she should be called from earth, but she was enabled to drive that thought away. From a child, always helping others, self-sacrificing, heroic, endowed with marvellous energy and sympathy, hers was a most exceptional life; now "Victor Palms" are her right.
I spent one day at the famous Concord School of Philosophy during its first season. Of course I understood nothing that was going on.
Emerson, then a mere wreck of his former self, was present, cared for by his wife or his daughter Ellen. Alcott made some most remarkable statements, as: "We each can decide when we will ascend." Then he would look around as if to question all, and add: "Is it not so? Is it not so?" I remember another of his mystic utterances: "When the mind is izzing, it is thinking things. Is it not so? Is it not so?" Also, "When we get angry or lose our temper, then fierce four-footed beasts come out of our mouths, do they not, do they not?"
After Mr. Harris, the great educational light, had closed his remarks, and had asked for questions, one lady timidly arose and inquired: "Can an atom be said to be outside or inside of potentiality?"
He calmly replied that "it could be said to be either inside or outside potentiality, as we might say of potatoes in a hat; they are either inside or outside the hat." That seemed to satisfy her perfectly.
Mr. Frank B. Sanborn read his lecture on American Literature, and I ventured to ask: "How would you define literature?"
He said: "Anything written that gives permanent pleasure." And then as he was a relative, I inquired, but probably was rather pert: "Would a bank check, if it were large enough, be literature?" which was generally considered as painfully trifling.
Jones of Jacksonville was on the program, and talked and talked, but as I could not catch one idea, I cannot report.
It was awfully hot on that hill with the sun shining down through the pine roof, so I thought one day enough.
As I walked down the hill, I heard a man who seemed to have a lot of hasty pudding in his mouth, say in answer to a question from the lady with him: "Why, if you can't understand that, you can have no idea of the first principles (this with an emphatic gesture) of the Hegelian philosophy."