654 JAMES ELLTOT CABOT. 



Though a life-long student, he wrote little for the press, — a fact 

 which recalls Theodore Parker's remark about him that he " could make 

 a good law argument, but could not address it to the jury." He rendered, 

 however, a great and permanent service, far outweighing that performed 

 by most American authors of his time, as volunteer secretary to Ralph 

 Waldo Emerson, a task which constituted his main occupation for five 

 or six years. After Emerson's death, Cabot also wrote his memoirs, by 

 the wish of the family, — a book which will always remain the primary 

 authority on the subject with which it deals, although it was justly 

 criticised by others for a certain restricted tone which made it seem to 

 be, as it really was, the work of one shy and reticent man telling the 

 story of another. In describing Emerson the biographer often uncon- 

 sciously described himself also ; and the later publications of Mr. Emer- 

 son's only son show. clearly that there was room for a more ample and 

 varied treatment in order to complete the w r ork. 



Under these circumstances Cabot's home life, while of even tenor, was 

 a singularly happy one. One of his strongest and life-long traits was his 

 love of children, — a trait which he also eminently shared with Emerson. 

 The group formed by him with two grandchildren in his lap, to whom he 

 was reading John Gilpin or Hans Andersen, is one which those who knew 

 him at home would never forget. It was characteristic also that in his 

 German copy of Kant's " Critique of Pure Reason," already mentioned, 

 there were found some papers covered with drawings of horses and carts 

 which had been made to amuse some eager child. Akin to this was his 

 strong love of flowers, united with a rare skill in making beautiful shrubs 

 grow here and there in such places as would bring out the lines and 

 curves of his estate at Beverly. Even during the last summer of his life 

 he was cutting new little vistas on the Beverly hills. His sketches of 

 landscape in water-color were also very characteristic both of his delicate 

 and poetic appreciation of nature and of his skill and interest in drawing. 

 In 1885, while in Italy, he used to draw objects seen from the car win- 

 dow as he travelled ; and often in the morning, when his family came 

 down to breakfast at hotels, they found that he had already made an 

 exquisite sketch in pencil of some tower or arch. 



His outward life, on the whole, seemed much akin to the lives led by 

 that considerable class of English gentlemen who adopt no profession, 

 dwelling mainly on their paternal estates, yet are neither politicians nor 

 fox hunters; pursuing their own favorite studies, taking part from time 

 to time in the pursuits of science, art, or literature, even holding minor 

 public functions, but winning no widespread fame. He showed, on the 



