Your slight account of Mr. E.'s "Address" is
enough to wake the dead, and I do not know what the original utterance
must have done. I told Mary I thought Mr. Emerson was the Word again.
She exclaimed, "You blasphemer!" "Do you really think it blasphemy?"
said I. "Oh no," she replied. "It is the gospel according to you." Was
not that a happy saying? While the maid was at Miss Hurley's on an
errand, she saw Mr. Hawthorne enter, probably for a take-leave call.
He was here also, looking radiant. He said he took up my Journal
[written in Cuba] to bring it back, but my "works were so voluminous
that he concluded to send them!"
Elizabeth Peabody makes, upon her return to 'Salem for the winter, an
heroic move towards gaining a still more affectionate advantage over
the solitaries in Herbert Street. A little smile must have given her
face its most piquant expression as she wrote:--
Saturday, November 10, 1838.
DEAR LOUISA,--You know I want to knit those little stockings and
shoes,--I think I will do it in the course of time at your house,--and
would thank you to buy the materials for me, and I will pay you what
they cost, when I know what it is. I suppose the four or five evenings
which I shall anticipate spending with you (in the course of the
winter!) will complete the articles.
When Elizabeth wakes, please give her this note and rose and book; and
when Nathaniel comes to dinner please give him the note I wrote to
him. He said he was going to write to-day, and therefore I should
prefer that he should not be interrupted on purpose to read it.
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