or writer kept to the "dry light." But Emerson, I saw, sorely tried him. Two ladies by his side evidently enjoyed every word they heard. The next day Mr. Mason, it is said, being asked how he liked Emerson, replied: "Oh, I could n't understand him at all. You must ask my daughters about him; they took it all in."

Meeting him one day, after one of his lectures, at the store of Little & Brown, where Rev. Dr. Francis and others were present, we were expressing our satisfaction at what we had heard from him, when Dr. Francis remarked: "You must have spent a long time in preparing your lectures, they are so full of thought and of historical material.” "Oh, no," said Mr. Emerson; "I never write until I am driven to it by the time each week." And sometimes, while listening to his lectures, they seemed almost extemporaneous. They struck one as full of thoughts entirely fresh and original, and in some passages as if the inspiration of the hour. There was sometimes, in the beginning of a sentence, a little hesitancy, as if he was waiting for a word or words to be given him for utterance at the moment. Still they must have been, we know, the result of long premeditation. as well as extensive reading. If there was ever an appearance of disregard of manner in his utterances, this was not true of him. I recollect hearing him, while he was a student in Divinity Hall, reading aloud, evidently for the benefit of his voice; and he would occasionally take up a vol

ume from his table in which he had the speeches of Webster and Everett bound together. "Everett," he once said to me, "is a great wordcatcher."

Mr. Emerson's interest in antislavery was profound and unremitting. I remember only one instance in which his sweet serenity seemed for an instant to leave him. After the execution of John Brown, a meeting was called in Boston for indignant denunciation of that act. Mr. Emerson was one of the speakers. Sitting quite near the platform and in front of him, I saw his face wore a passing shade and a slight frown, as if the terror of the deed we had met to consider and comment upon was too great for human endurance.

Mr. Emerson always took the broadest view of every subject before him. At a meeting of the Sunday-school Society in Concord, a few years since, the people opened their houses liberally, and invited those at the church to dine with them. The invitation to his table was most cordial. It gives one no ordinary pleasure to be told, under such a roof, that his name is "familiar as household words." And the country was not forgotten, for I noticed under each plate was a slip on which was written "National Unitarian Sunday-school Convention."

In a book on the families of men of the Revolution it would be unjust to pass by another name, associated with his own,— that of his brother, Edward Bliss Emerson, a college classmate of

mine. He bore a name honored in American history, and especially so in his brother, since then of world-wide fame. Had his life been prolonged, he would have given to that name an enhanced and imperishable lustre. I see him to-day as then, more than half a century ago, gifted with rare personal beauty, an eye large and beaming with genius, and a face radiant not more with a surpassing intellect than a fascinating sweetness. He had a mind uniting strength and fertile resources, and even then stored with ample reading, a character manly and influential, and a reverence for divine things seldom equalled at his age. I recall an oration of his at one of our "exhibitions," mature in thought, sparkling with illustration, full of Scriptural allusions, and delivered with a grace and power which showed him destined to stand in the front rank, as of scholarship, so of oratory. Alas that, within the brief space of ten years, the frail body overmastered by a peerless although at last clouded intellect, he passed on, and left an irremovable shadow over the class of 1824 !

Meeting Mr. Emerson occasionally toward his last days, and finally at the funeral of a kindred poetic genius, the lamented Longfellow, - children's friend, and a friend honored and cherished wherever our language is spoken, -I saw no change, save that the smile of his youth and manhood had become sweeter with his approaching end, and the grasp of his hand had become warmer. And

when, at his own so soon following obsequies, I looked on that noble form, fitly robed in his angel apparel of white, the placid face spoke of the upper serenities in which he had trusted, and on which he had now entered.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE SOLDIER OF THE REVOLUTION.

THESE pages have been devoted largely to the officers of the Revolutionary army. I think, in a work of this description, we ought not to lose sight of the men who constituted the rank and file of our military forces. The common soldier, who did his work well in a subordinate position, deserves a distinct notice in the annals of that period. What could the ablest general have accomplished without the support of the men in each separate command below him, as they stood shoulder to shoulder in the ranks?

We are hardly aware of the disadvantages under which our officers were placed, at many points of the contest, in regard to the forces under their command. The British army was made up, not only of good officers, but of men who had been thoroughly drilled and fitted for the service; while our army was composed largely of raw troops, coming from the farm or the workshop, with no military discipline or experience. They were destitute even of common clothing in many cases, provided with no proper arms, and in no