EMERSON 163 
how attentive; what an inquisitor; always ready 
with some test question, with some fact or idea to 
match or verify, ever on the lookout for some choice 
bit of adventure or information, or some anecdote 
that has pith and point! No tyro basks and takes 
his ease in his presence, but is instantly put on trial 
and must answer or be disgraced. He strikes at an 
idea like a falcon at a bird. His great fear seems 
to be lest there be some fact or point worth knowing 
that will escape him. He is a close-browed miser 
of the scholar’s gains. He turns all values into in- 
tellectual coin. Every book or person or experience 
is an investment that will or will not warrant a good 
return in ideas. He goes to the Radical Club, or 
to the literary gathering, and listens with the closest 
attention to every word that is said, in hope that 
something will be said, some word dropped, that has 
the ring of the true metal. Apparently he does not 
permit himself a moment’s indifference or inatten- 
tion. His own pride is always to have the ready 
change, to speak the exact and proper word, to give 
to every occasion the dignity of wise speech. You 
are bartered with for your best. There is no profit 
in life but in the interchange of ideas, and the chief 
success is to have a head well filled with them. 
Hard cash at that; no paper promises satisfy him; 
he loves the clink and glint of the real coin. 
His earlier writings were more flowing and sug- 
gestive, and had reference to larger problems; but 
now everything has got weighed and stamped and 
converted into the medium of wise and scholarly 
