166 BIRDS AND POETS 
great characters, perhaps the greatest, have more or 
less neutral or waste ground. You must penetrate 
a distance before you reach the real quick. Or 
there is a good wide margin of the commonplace 
which is sure to put them on good terms with the 
mass of their fellow-citizens. And one would think 
Emerson could afford to relax a little; that he had 
earned the right to a dull page or two now and then. 
The second best or third best word sometimes would 
make us appreciate his first best all the more. Even 
his god-father Plato nods occasionally, but Emerson’s 
good breeding will not for a moment permit such a 
slight to the reader. 
Emerson’s peculiar quality is very subtle, but 
very sharp and firm and unmistakable. It is not 
analogous to the commoner, slower-going elements, 
as heat, air, fire, water, etc., but is nearer akin to 
that elusive but potent something we call electricity. 
It is abrupt, freaky, unexpected, and always com- 
municates a little wholesome shock. It darts this 
way and that, and connects the far and the near in 
every line. There is always a leaping thread of 
light, and there is always a kind of answering peal 
or percussion. With what quickness and suddenness 
extremes are brought together! ‘The reader is never 
prepared for what is to come next; the spark will 
most likely leap from some source or fact least 
thought of. His page seldom glows and burns, but 
there is a never-ceasing crackling and discharge of 
moral and intellectual force into the mind. 
His chief weapon, and one that he never lays 
