164 BIRDS AND POETS 
conversation. It is of great value; these later essays 
are so many bags of genuine coin, which it has taken 
a lifetime to hoard; not all gold, but all good, and 
the fruit of wise industry and economy. 
I know of no other writing that yields the reader 
so many strongly stamped medallion-like sayings and 
distinctions. There is a perpetual refining and re- 
coining of the current wisdom of life and conversa- 
tion. It is the old gold or silver or copper, but how 
bright and new it looks in his pages! Emerson loves 
facts, things, objects, as the workman his tools. He 
makes everything serve. The stress of expression 
is so great that he bends the most obdurate element 
to his purpose; as the bird, under her keen neces- 
sity, weaves the most contrary and diverse materials 
into her nest. He seems to like best material that 
is a little refractory; it makes his page more piquant 
and stimulating. Within certain limits he loves 
roughness, but not to the expense of harmony. | He 
has a wonderful hardiness and push. Where else in 
literature is there a mind, moving in so rare a me- 
dium, that gives one such « sense of tangible resist- 
ance and force? It is a principle in mechanics that 
velocity is twice as great as mass: double your speed 
and you double your heat, though you halve your 
weight. In like manner this body we are consider- 
ing is not the largest, but its speed is great, and the 
intensity of its impact with objects and experience 
is almost without parallel. Everything about a man 
like Emerson is important. I find his phrenology 
and physiognomy more than ordinarily typical and 
