FIFTY YEARS

On April 27, 1882 the bell on the Unitarian Church in Concord tolled seventy-nine strokes, for Raiph Waldo Emerson had died. Well might Concord and all New England mourn, for that death marked the high tide of New England's leadership in the world of belles lettres. Hamlin Garland has told of the change. But Emerson was the flesh and blood of America's first native literature, and as such he has become a myth, godly, mysterious, and sacred. Moderns do not read Emerson much, perhaps because they fear the myth, perhaps because they cannot understand his strength.

But it is much to its loss that the world has forgotten Emerson. The Journal shows the true man, who was human and "not at all intimidating." He was the man who sorrowed because he could not use the salty swearing of sailors. He recommended that morphine be served in liberal doses at the Dartmouth college commons. And more delightful still, he divided his world into Big-Endians and Little-Endians. He said, "Beware of Tradition!" and "Damn consistency!", which explain a great deal.

In the troubled times of today the need of such a man is all too sorely felt. He was an optimist, filled with a tremendous and awful faith in the possibilities of man. Yet the flaws of human contrivance did not escape him: he shunned Bronson Alcott's Brook Farm, not from a lack of interest, but because the communal ideal was repugnant Emerson was an individualist. Intellectually the quiet minister of Concord was a swashbuckler whose doctrine his neighbors feared, but "the tone was so well-bred withal that much dangerous doctrine was overlooked for the manner of the presentation." Such was the man who swayed rustic and school-girl, scrub-woman and Thomas Carlyle: now he rests ignored by a busy world in the quiet grave at Concord.