Ellen Emerson, from The Life of Lidian Jackson Emerson.

I think that this summer Aunt Lucy brought Mr Thoreau to our house. He was early interested in his Mother's new boarder and her knowledge of poetry and literature and flowers. One day a bunch of violets flew in at her window bearing with them a poem by Mr Thoreau who was out in the yard. If I remember rightly she brought the poem to Father who liked it, and that was the beginning of Father's and Mr Thoreau's friendship. The reason I believe it to be 1836 is that I have always understood that it was in their first year that Father & Mother kept chickens.

The miseries of her hens were everpresent to Mother's mind. First she was tormented to think how cold their poor feet must be in the night. They slept on a long roost in the barn cellar which was open on the South and Mother thought the frosty night air must come on them with full force. So she went out and wound the roost with list, the woollen would feel comfortable to them. How glad she was for their sakes when spring came! But too soon they showed such zeal in digging all the roots and seeds out of her garden that they had to be shut up. Mother's heart was now oppressed with a sense of the weariness & cruelty of their imprisonment, if she was a hen she should feel it a flagrant act of injustice and tyranny. Mr Throurea then made some neat little cowhide shoes for them which fitted well and were tied tight round their slender ancles, so that at least they could promenade about the yard[.] One of these shoes remained in our garret till the fire in 1872. But ever new sorrows about the hens kept coming. They showed a desire to sit perpetually and the cure proposed was to keep them in barrels with water under them so that they couldn't sit and had to stand. Then to kill a chicken to eat was to murder a defenceless creature dependent on her care and as to the cannibalism of eating it, she was incapable of it. They gave up keeping hens. Though they must have done it once later, for a hen-house was built in the top of our shed, still there, to keep them in in winter.

In the autumn Aunt Lucy decided to spend the winter in Plymouth. As soon as she arrived every one fell upon her with "What did Mr Emerson mean? He said 'the arrows of Fate stuck fast in Lydia!'" It seemed that all Plymouth had been so mystified and its curiosity so provoked by these oracular words that they had never been forgotten. It was indeed an absurd answer of a bridegroom to the friends of his bride, yet to me it seems amusingly true and natural. In Plymouth she had been quite free from the little difficulties & failures of a housekeeper. It was her nature to take them with a curiously exaggerated view of their importance and to expend on them an amazing amount of indignation and shame. Father, who was comparatively easy and light by nature, looked on puzzled & surprised. He called her Asia, for no New Englander that he knew of had ever possessed such a depth of feeling that was continually called out on such trivial occasions. There was no bluster about it but a tragic, yea awful reality. Mother was evidently an Oriental. "Your mammy has no sense of measure," he often observed. He constantly spoke to us of Mother as "Your Mammy," it is an ugly word, but it wasn't in his mouth. Aunt Mary had always called her nephews, her Sirs, and the nieces whom she liked Queeny. Father, adopting it from her, usually called Mother Queeny, but for the first few years he also often used Asia. . . .

One day Father was going to Waltham to Uncle Ripley's and Mother having heard that one of Aunt Ripley's friends had a newborn baby advised Father to call upon it, for he had perhaps never seen a very little baby. When he came home she eagerly inquired "Did you see the baby?" "Yes," he replied with disgust, "it was nothing at all! It had neither hair nor teeth!" "But when his own baby came," Mother went on when she told me this, "it was quite a different story. He was only astonished that it had hands and feet." Mother's fourpost bedstead which she had inherited from Aunt Lucy had two sets of curtains[;] one was white dimity with ball fring and one was coffee-coloured chintz with bright flowers. I suppose that she had used the chintz, but, when the time of her confinement drew near, she rigged the bed in all its white magnificence and put up white dimity window-curtains with fringe, to match, at her four windows. Grandma and she admired the fresh and handsome appearance of the whole room. But by & by up came Father. "What is all this?" he asked, and said it was too much parade. "So I took them all down and packed them away," she said, "and without any grief at all. 'Husband knows best' was my creed in those days, and I really thought he did. If he saw that it was unwise to have them, I didn't want them. The next time Mother came into the room she stopped, looked round surprised , and said 'Where are your curtains?' 'Waldo though I had better take them down.' 'Why, my dear! You are very good!' said she. Aunt Lizzy afterward told me that I musn't regard him as an oracle for my department; he couldn't be expected to know anything about the housekeeping. She thought I ought to have kept them up and probably he wouldn't have noticed them again,--very likely would have come to like them."

The baby came, his little head was all out of shape and he was indeed an ugly sight but Father could only see his perfections. Aunt Lizzy hastened down to see him and brought him a rattle of silver bells with a mother-of-pearl handle. What should he be named? "Waldo," said Father, "the oldest son should always be named for his Father." Mother had thought he would of course be named for Uncle Charles Emerson. So had Aunt Lizzy. "I don't care anything about the baby now," she exclaimed with tears, "I never doubted that his name was Charles." But Father was immoveable, the eldest son should always be named for his Father. Little Waldo's head soon came right and Aunt Lizzy was not slow to learn to love him for his own sake. I thought Aunt Lucy had gone to Plymouth, but she hadn't, for she told me that Dr Ripley called and desired to see the child. She brought him down; Dr Ripley laid him on his knees, rolled him out on his blanket onto his face and proceeded to push down his little lownecked slip towards his shoulder-blades. Aunt Lucy thought Dr Ripley thought something was wrong about his attire and anxious & expecting to be mortified she drew near saying "What is it, Sir?" "I've been told," said Dr Ripley "that the child of this couple would probably have wings; and I'm looking to ascertain whether they have sprouted." He satisfied himself that they had not and returned the baby. . . .

Mother had one lesson in housekeeping from Grandma which she never forgot, but it was most gently given. When Grandma was helped to meat one day she said, "Is it lamb?" "Yes." "No I thank you" said Grandma, "I'm a little tired of lamb. I think we've had it rather often lately." Mother felt badly, she searched her mind, and could not recall having ordered beef. The moment she left the table she sent for the butcher's book. All up the last page was an even column leg of lamb

leg of lamb

She turned back. There was another whole page of it. She found that whenever she was asked what she would have from the butcher she had mechanically made the same answer. She at once began to set her wits to work. She read the Cook's Oracle she visited the butcher's cart, she discovered that it was a good plan to ask the price beforehand, and soon became a good judge of meat and had variety, and smaller bills too. She was indignant at the butcher's tricks, at his calling anything at all over a pound a pound and a quarter; and at his invariably bringing in a pound or more over & above what she had ordered. On one occasion when she was sick in bed she found he had committed an unusually great sin of this kind. So she had him sent up to her door and talked very plainly to him through the crack, ending off "It isn't the money value thatI care for, it is that I will not consent to be cheated." "Oh don't be afraid I shall lay it up against you," returned the butcher very pleasantly "I make it a rule never to lay things up." "Lay up!!!" cried Mother, amazed, "That is not what I am considering. What I say is that I will not allow you to cheat me." "I never lay things up," repeated the butcher, withdrawing. For forty years Mother stoutly withstood & endeavored to checkmate all the butchers & force them to honest dealing, but with limited success, for she always had a bill, and that gave them an advantage. Mother had a Concord man helping her in the garden, I think his name was Peter White. In the course of their talk Mother said something which caused him to suddently turn round and stare, and stopping with his foot on his spade he informed her "Mr Emerson had seventy thousand dollars with his first wife and twenty thousand with you! I guess he's got enough." Mother concluded that all Concord regarded them as rich and very mean. . . .

Both Father & Mother were hospitably disposed, they had two guest-chambers and when Grandma went to N. Y. they had three, and many people besides their invited guests came to see them and were asked to spend the night. Nancy Colesworthy, the cook, said one day, "I'm going to put a poster out at the gate 'This House is not a Hotel.' for folks to see when they come in." Mother's excellent Hitty was followed by a new chambermaid named Harriet who was very plain, and Nancy made merry about her want of beauty which seemed to impress her more powerfully than the rest of the family. Hearing someone speak of burglars she said "You needn't be afraid of anyone's entering this house. If I wake up and hear them trying the door, I'll light my lamp and look out of the window. I guess I'm ugly enough to scare 'em away by the sight of me. But if they don't run then I'll tell them I've got a sister in here as much uglier'n I am, as I am than the rest of the world then if she should look out they'd say, like the Queen of Sheba, that the half hadn't been told 'em." Father & Mother loved to remember these smart speeches of Nancy and were sorry that no more had been preserved. She was a bright and sharp character and amused while she often displeased them. She never was reconciled to Mother and was very trying. Mother said "I did not treat her as she should have been treated. Non-resistance was a part of any Christian creed, and I carried it further than was wise. One day the study-door was open and your Father heard on of the servants answer me back impudently. Out he came, but she had already got away. "Lidian, send that woman instantly out of this house." But I told him I didn't mind it, I knew she was only out of temper and she would obey finally. I used to make excuses for them, I didn't for a long time see that I ought not to allow them to misbehave. I think if I had managed Nancy as I ought she would never have gone away." I had heard Mother say these last words several times in reminiscenses of early days before, some time in my teens, Mother and I met Nancy in Boston on Washington St., the only time Mother ever saw her after she left her service or I at all. They shook hands very cordially. "I have always regretted your leaving us," began Mother. "I never regretted it, Mrs Emerson, not for a moment," said Nancy briskly. . . .

One Sunday morning Mother found her June pinks had just opened and were beautifully fresh and fragrant. She gathered a little bunch and carried them up to Grandma as a present, asking her to admire them. "Yes, my dear, thank you, they are very beautiful, but, my dear! it is Sunday!" Grandma hated to be ungracious, but she could not have the Sabbath broken. . . .

I have not said a word about Aunt Mary M[oody]. E[merson]. since her visit to Plymouth. I don't know how soon she began to come to our house, nor how often, but she began her usual course of conduct and found in intercourse with Mother a sensation wholly new to her. All her relations were more or less afraid of her, but here it was diamond cut diamond. Father & Grandma trembled when Mother answered her back and enjoyed the combat; and were astonished and most thankful to find that it was pure pleasure ot Aunt Mary to find a foeman worthy of her steel. How they did fight! The earth shook under them! But Mother proved quite to Aunt Mary's taste and when they weren't quarrelling they were of one mind and really affectionate. I remember several set-tos, Aunt Mary growing more and more violent, and Mother undismayed and laughing at her shafts. . . .

When Waldo was two he got hold of a lump of sugar. Mother told him not to eat it now but carry it to the table till supper-time. He started, but instantly she heard behind her "the crash of the dear little teeth on the sugar." She turned round and asked him if he had bitten the sugar. He held it out of her sight and said no. Then Mother said he trembled. It was his first sin, and a sense of its dreadfulness seemed to fill the little creature, and Mother was much, much, impressed; it was to her as if she beheld the fall of the angels. Aunt Lizzy one day was in the East entry waiting for him to come down stairs, he stumbled and fell down the last four. I don't remember whether he cried, but she said he turned round, climbed up those four stairs and came down them properly. He wished to do what he did well. In helping him at dinner, someone was careless and let his squash lie partly over his potato. This made him cry till, finding he couldn't be stopped, Father carried him out to the front gate to look at the clouds. He came back serene but when Father put him down again in the high chair and he saw the dreadful contiguity of the squash and the potato again he broke forth afresh in screams. I don't know how it ended. Mother always told this as a proof of his inborn love of propriety. It used to entertain Father & Mother to hear Grandma say to him after meals "Now jump down, Waldo, Grandma is going to jump down."

Mother asked Father questions about his first wife. In one of his journals he says "I had a long, long remembering talk with Lidian about Ellen, which brought back that delicious relation." Mother once told me that I was happy in my name, that she hoped Ellen was my guardian angel. "Your Father gave me all her letters to read. She was a holy creature, truly religious."

One night she dreamed that she and Father were together in heaven and they met with Ellen and she went away and left him with her. She told Father in the morning and he said "None but the noble dream such dreams." Mother had her pretty plan and I believe it was a profound secret. One day in February 1839 she had got every inch of her house and all her possessions in absolutely perfect order, but the barn had been neglected, and the weather being mild she went out and cleaned that up too most beautifully. We had no animals[.] I don't know what was in the barn. That night about ten o'clock she sent Father for the doctor & nurse and called the two girls telling them the baby had sent compliments and they must come and help get ready. I believe she had not yet put up the curtains that were resigned so willingly when Waldo was born, but this time she meant to have them. The chambermaid was much frightened and wanted to sit and cry, but seeing Mother so busy and delighted she at last took hold and the curtains went up with expedition.

When the baby was born at six the next morning and Father came to see it Mother said "Her name is Ellen," and he was as much pleased as she had hoped. Mother had told the girls the night before what to prepare for the gala breakfast, and all hands went down to enjoy it at once leaving Mother quite alone and the baby wrapped up in an eider-down under her work-table on the floor near the fire. "And I lay there hearing all you cunning little baby-noises," Mother always concluded the tale, with a smile of delight. . . .

I think it was in this year that Mr Jones Very came to Concord. Mother sympathized fully with him; and Aunt Lucy and she often recalled together the pleasures of his visits. They used to say he had been indeed restored to a state of childlike simplicity and always there was some speech like this "How he sat there with a piece of gingerbread in each hand, so innocent and unconscious! and how beautifully he was talking!" I think Miss Margaret Fuller made her first visit and that Mr [Bronson] Alcott came too in this year, and Mother found both very interesting. She retained through life much sympathy with Mr Alcott, they were very good friends. She had visits from several of her Plymouth friends quite often in these times too. Once Mrs Captain Russell the Mother of Miss Mary Howland Russell came and showed much interest in the house. Mother took her all over it, and let her see how and where she kept everything, and Mrs Russell not only approved but told her she had never seen a house in such order in her life. This compliment did Mother's very heart good, and she never forgot it. Whenever she spoke of it she said "And Mrs Russell was a capital housekeeper herself." . . .

Now began what Mother called Transcendental Times. Either now or earlier Father gave up family prayers. Mother and Grandma mourned together, and together read the Bible and a hymn for a long time. I remember that. Mother had always felt as if Father's & her religious views were the same, and, she said, had become "unconsciously warped" herself by him. Now it was clear to her that he was not a Christian in her sense of the word, and it was a most bitter discovery. All sorts of visitors with new ideas began to come to the house, the men who thought money was the root of all evil, the vegetarians, the sons of nature who did not believe in razors nor in tailors, the philosophers and all sorts of come-outers. Mother's receipt-book is a sort of confirmation to the impression I received from her that she had a goodly family to cook for. All the receipts begin "take 3pts. of sour milk," or "beat 2 doz. eggs[.]" They are all of three times the quantity that we have cooked since I had charge. She used to say "Poor Grandma and I were never half through eating our meat before the whole company of Grahamites, having bolted their potatoes and squash and beans, were sitting looking hungrily for the pudding, which to them was the main dinner. Grandma was a very slow eater and it was uncomfortable for her."

One day a certain new light arrived in the morning, and in the course of conversation mentioned that he was going in the afternoon stage (which always went at three, I think) for he must be in Boston that night. In due time Father heard the stage approaching, and supposed his guest had told it to stop, but, as he showed no sign of taking leave, Father rose and said "Here comes the stage, I’ll stop it for you." By this time it had passed. Father darted from the door, gave chase and caught it. [I]t stopped at last and the guest, who meanwhile had got his hat and was ambling after Father, ascended and departed. Mother who had watched all with sympathy and infinite amusement from her window, looked over the banisters when Papa came in and said "How you did run! You flew! There was zeal--and desperation--in it!" "Yes," laughed Father, "my running was like the running of Ahimaaz the son of Zadok." "I could see that you were running for liberty—that you saw clearly that ‘twas your only chance of saving the rest of the day, and tomorrow." Father and she always remembered it.

I should imagine that Mother somewhat overdrew the number and the queerness of Father’s visitors but that Aunt Lizzy called them "Waldo’s Menagerie," and she said to me after I grew up "Oh! when I looked into the parlour one day and saw him sitting in that circle,—it gave me a feeling of horror--men with long beards, men with bare feet"—

One gentleman said that his principles forbade him to use money, so that though he was in need of a handkerchief he could not provide himself with one. Mother got him one of Father’s[.] Another who was spending the night came to Mother just after he had gone to his room to tell her there was a wasp on his bed. She went up with him and took it up on a handkerchief to throw out the window. "Poor creature! Poor creature! Don’t hurt him!" cried the guest. Mother thought his anxiety turned in the wrong direction.

At tea-time one night Mother offered one of these gentlemen a cup of tea "Tea! I!" he exclaimed. The next minute Father undertook to help him to butter. "Butter! I!" he exclaimed again.

One of the philosophers wrote after going away that he had fallen in love with a most estimable young lady and they wished to marry but she was in delicate health and they both were poor. Would father send them a competence?

Another sent a letter setting forth that he needed more education but could not pay for it, would Father enclose to him the money? He "should like it the last of this week or the fore part of next."

I should say this kind of company passed away before long, and was succeeded by another set, among them people whom Father and Mother loved and enjoyed, people who were friends all the rest of their lives.

There were some who ceased soon to come but those whom I remember as visiting Concord often between 1840 & 1845 were Mr [Charles King] Newcomb, Miss Fuller, Miss Caroline Sturgis, Mr Alcott and Mr [Charles] Lane, and occasionally Dr Hedge, Mr William Henry Channing, Mr Caleb Stetson and once or twice Mr Sam Ward & Mr Christopher Cranch. Uncle George Bradford and Mr Thoreau were always constant visitors.

The talk began to be of a kind which we can guess at from Mother’s "Transcendental Bible," a document which pleased Father and which was mentioned often. I always in childhood dumbly wondered what it was that Mother would speak of by that name and Father called "The Queen’s Bible." He always laughed when he thought of it. In their old age I one day discovered the paper. It is on a sheet of square paper written with pencil by Mother as she lay on her bed when she was staying one day at Uncle Charles Jackson’s. She brought it home and read it to the circle in the parlour. I think it should come in here.

"Whole Duty of Man."

Never hint at a Providence, Particular or Universal. It is narrow to believe that the Universal Being concerns itself with particular affairs, egotistical to think it regards your own. Never speak of sin. It is of no consequence to "the Being" whether you are good or bad. It is egotistical to consider it yourself; who are you?

Never confess a fault. You should not have committed it and who cares whether you are sorry?

Never speak of Happiness as a consequence of Holiness. Do you need any bribe to well-doing? Cannot you every hour practise holiness for its own sake? Are you not ashamed to wish to be happy? It is egotistical--mean.

Never speak of the hope of Immortality. What do you know about it? It is egotistical to cling to it. Enough for the great to know that "Being" Is. He is quite content to drop into annihilation at the death of the body.

Never speak of affliction being sent and sent in kindness; that is an old wives’ fable. What do you know about it? And what business is it of ours whether it is for our good or not?

Duty to your Neighbour

Loathe and shun the sick. They are in bad taste, and may untune us for writing the poem floating through our mind.

Scorn the infirm of character and omit no opportunity of insulting and exposing them. They ought not to be infirm and should be punished by contempt and avoidance.

Despise the unintellectual, and make them feel that you do by not noticing their remark and question lest they presume to intrude into your conversation.

Abhor those who commit certain crimes because they indicate stupidity, want of intellect which is the one thing needful.

Justify those who commit certain other crimes. Their commission is consistent with the possession of intellect. We should not judge the intellectual as common men. It is mean enough to wish to put a great mind into the strait-jacket of morality.

It is mean and weak to seek for sympathy; it is mean and weak to give it. Great souls are self-sustained and stand ever erect, saying only to the prostrate sufferer "Get up, and stop your complaining." Never wish to be loved. Who are you to expect that? Besides, the great never value being loved.

If any seek to believe that their sorrows are sent or sent in love, do your best to dispel the silly egotistical delusion.

If you scorn happiness (though you value a pleasant talk or walk, a tasteful garment, a comfortable dinner) if you wish not for immortal consciousness (though you bear with impatience the loss of an hour of thought or study) if you care not for the loss of your soul (though you deprecate the loss of your house) if you care not how much you sin (though in pain at the commission of a slight indescretion) if you ask not a wise Providence over the earth in which you live (although wishing a wise manager of the house in which you live) if you care not that a benign Divinity shapes your ends (though you seek a good tailor to shape your coat) if you scorn to believe your affliction cometh not from the dust (though bowed to dust by it) then, if there is such a thing as duty, you have done your whole duty to your noble self-sustained, impeccable, infallible Self.

If you have refused all sympathy to the sorrowful, all pity and aid to the sick, all toleration to the infirm of character, if you have condemned the unintellectual and loathed such sinners as have discovered want of intellect by their sin, then are you a perfect specimen of Humanity.

Let us all aspire after this Perfection! So be it.

Abstract of New Bible"

When I found this I brought it down into the Study and read it in the evening to Father and Mother. Father laughed all the way through and said "Yes, it was a good squib of your Mammy’s." Mother at once fell into the strain of it and made a few remarks on those views and those times.

But to return to the company of which I was speaking, Mother really valued, and had some intimacy with, Miss Fuller and Miss Sturgis, and Mr Newcomb even more; and Mr Alcott, Uncle George and Mr Thoreau were to her near personal friends. The other gentlemen she liked very well but they cared especially for Father. Miss Fuller brought Miss Anna Barker once. Father had seen her and was delighted that she was coming. He told Waldo that a Beautiful Lady would arrive tomorrow--said so much about it that Waldo and Mother were worked up to great expectations.

They met her in the East entry when she came. She exclaimed, "Is this little Waldo? Really?" She stooped to kiss him, but he backed. "I’m afraid of the Beautiful Lady. I’m afraid of her curls," he said to Mother after Miss Barker had gone into the redroom. That visit was occupied chiefly in walking and driving and Mother lost most of it.

In 1841 Mother waked to a sense that she had been losing--had lost-- that blessed nearness to God in which she had lived so long, and she never regained it. Her religion was still the foundation of her life, but its fullness was gone.

"She gleaned a berry here & there

But mourned the vintage past"

As I have said before, she was always more sensitive to suffering than to happiness, now this became more true of her than ever before. She read the papers faithfully and their pro-slavery tone made her hate her country. She learned all the horrors of slavery and dwelt upon them, so that it was as if she continually witnessed the whippings and the selling away of little children from their mothers. She joined the Anti-Slavery Society and remained a zealous member till Slavery was abolished.

Her health was worse than before, her old griefs and anxieties about animals returned. I shall a little later enter upon the subject of her sad thoughts once more, and to me it seemed that for the next thirty years sadness was the ground-colour of her life, but it was not unrelieved. Many rays of kindness and gratitude illumined her path. Father often rejoiced her weary spirit. I remember one pretty story which she told me. One day when Miss Fuller had been staying with us and departed the stage Father said to Mother

"Happy--happier far than thou

With the laurel on thy brow—

She who makes the humblest hearth

Happy but to one on earth."

that seemed to Mother very sweet.

Again, when Aunt Lizzy had invited our household to spend the evening at her house to hear Miss Jane Tuckerman sing, (and, Mother, as usual, not being ready in season, they went off without her), as she came crawling after, weak and forlorn, and reached Squire Hoar’s gate, Sarah Hoar, now Mrs Storer, ran out to meet her, threw her arms round her and kissed her. It was heavenly balm to her. She never forgot it. At this time she made acquaintance with Miss Sarah Searle of Brookline, a Swedenborgian lady who came very near to her heart and gave her more sympathy and consolation than she had had from anyone for a long time, a Christian who knew what real religion was, so that they understood each other’s language. I think it was at her suggestion that Mother took up Swedenborg, read some of his books and for many years regularly the New Jerusalem magazine. She made a visit to Plymouth and carried me. She was delighted there to find that a set of the young ladies had "made a paction ‘twixt themselves" to reduce each her expenditure to $100. a year that they might give all the rest of their income to the Anti-Slavery Society, and that some people had given up rice and sugar & molasses because they were products of slave-labour. She returned prouder than ever of her native town, "good old Plymouth." . . .

Mother had a dream which she told to Aunt Lizzy suggested by the difficulties she experienced with her housekeeping. She thought she had died and was in her coffin which had been deposited in the parlour all ready for the funeral, but the room needed brushing up and the chambermaid and nursery-girl came to sweep it. Mother felt the hour for the funeral fast approaching and was dismayed to see the girls stop sweeping, lean on their brooms, talk and get into a frolic quite regardless of the flight of time. At last she could stand it no longer, she sat up and said "The people will be here in a few minutes! Make haste! you can hardly get the room swept before they come!" Her anxiety waked her. Aunt Lizzy when we were grown referred to it,--"Just as you sat up to dust your own coffin yourself at the last minute in your dream, Lidian,"—"No, no," said Mother, "I didn’t dust my coffin"—and she told over the dream, which otherwise I shouldn’t have known of. . . .

On the 27^th, Thursday, [Waldo] was delirious. Mother left him to take a little rest but they came for her saying he called her persistently. He didn’t recognize her, but the sound of her voice quieted him. Doctor Bartlett was there and she asked him if he would soon be better[.] "I had hoped to be spared this," was his answer. Mother understood. She had not thought before of losing the child. He died some hours later. . . .

They told Mother afterwards that the day of Waldo’s death Dr Bartlett walked from patient to patient making gestures of despair, thinking of Waldo, he was so sorry for Father. That night as the baby lay on Mother’s lap by the fire in her room she kept stretching ‘way over to look at something behind her little head and smiling most brightly at it. There was nothing there but the bedstead. Mother hoped it was the angel Waldo smiling to his innocent little sister still able to see him. Another time a few days later I started and listened and asked "What was ‘at’ at said Ah?" "I didn’t hear it," said Mother. "I fought it was an angel in e corner of e room."

Some school-children knocked at Aunt Lizzy’s door to ask "Did you know Waldo Emerson died last night?" It was a sharp blow to Aunt Lizzy. She came at once to Father and Mother. Waldo’s face as he lay dead had an expression Mother said "as if he were taking a long, long look into Eternity." They were at dinner the day of the funeral when the door from the front entry into the dining-room opened and dear Aunt Susan Jackson came in with such a look of sympathy as broke Mother down. Aunt Susan had just lost her little Susy. Everyone mourned with them and gave them the sense that their loss was understood and shared. Miss Margaret Fuller had felt like Father that this child had been born to lift higher his fellow men. She could not get over it that he had died and I was left. He was buried in Doctor Ripley’s tomb, but after our lot in the new cemetery was bought Father removed the coffin there and had him buried with his family. He said he had looked into the coffin but he said no more. . . .

A mile further from Concord on our road lived Mr Edmund Hosmer, a farmer of the oldest Concord stock, who became a friend of Father’s. Each interested the other every time they met. He had ten children, four sons. The youngest boy was five, Waldo’s age. Father & Mother liked his face, they began to wish they had him and considered very seriously asking Henry Hosmer of his parents and adopting him as their own, but they did not. Mother went often to see Mrs Hosmer, who, unassistated, was doing all the work for the family of thirteen (for her husband’s insane father, himself a great care lived with them) and making thirty pounds of butter a week to sell. Mother asked "What do you do when the two-year-old and the year-old and the little baby are all crying at once?" "I have to let them cry," was the answer. At one of the evening Conversations Mr Alcott was holding at our house he proposed that Mr Hosmer should do--I forget what--and, to Mother’s surprise, Mr Hosmer answered, "I couldn’t do it, I don’t have time. Mrs hosmer has nothing to do, perhaps she would."

But on another occasion when Mr Lane, who was exhorting the company to study and meditate that their souls might grow, turned to Mr Hosmer and said, "You ought not to spend your days ploughing behind your oxen. You ought to withdraw into solitude & cultivate your mind," Mr Hosmer’s reply, "I don’t know what Mrs Hosmer would say to that," made Mother forgive him for his former remark. . . .

One morning one of the babies a little over a year old escaped from the nursery all naked and of course trotted--more probably staggered-- right across the upper East entry and into Mother’s room while Father was shaving. He was in ecstasies at the sight. "Oh! waves of marble! waves of marble!" he cried. "See what you lose by not dressing your children yourself!"

He used to be very sportive and poetical always when he was upstairs with Mother. I saw in one of his journals "A man needs a wife to be silly unto," and he fully enjoyed the privilege himself. I remember he once broke forth

"How beautiful in the morning is the human race

Getting up to breakfast"--

and there stopped short, his inspiration not carrying him further. When Mother had waited a minute and saw no more was coming, she took up the strain

"Head foremost tumbling

Out of bed, grumbling

They wash their face and neck first."

It charmed Louisa Snow when she first came to our house to hear Father call it the East entry. "The dinner waits, O Queen!" and Mother answer "One moment, O King, and I will come."

Mother one night thought she was making too many impatient ejaculations as she was trying to clear up her room and go to bed "I scold because I’s cold—ice-cold!" she apologized.

Miss Margaret Fuller at this time held Conversations -- I think in the forenoon--in Boston. Mother liked to go, and the stage left Concord at 7. She loved to recall that she used to get up before light on those winter mornings, jump into her tub of cold water and take a fearfully cold bath, and be dressed and ready to go in that 7 o’clock stage. . . .