AN EGOTISTICAL CHAPTER 247 



good send-off in this direction. But the master- 

 enchanter of this period of my life and of many- 

 following years was Emerson. While at school, in 

 my nineteenth year, in my search for essays I had 

 carried to my room one volume of his, but I could 

 do nothing with it. What, indeed, could a John- 

 sonian youth malse of Emerson? A year or so later 

 I again opened one of his books in a Chicago book- 

 store, and was so taken with the first taste of it 

 that I then and there purchased the three volumes, 

 — the Essays and the Miscellanies. All that sum- 

 mer I fed upon them and steeped myself in them : 

 so that when, a year or two afterwards, I wrote an 

 essay on "Expression" and sent it to the ''Atlan- 

 tic," it was so Emersonian that the editor thought 

 some one was trying to palm off on him an early 

 essay of Emerson's which he had not seen. Satis- 

 fying himself that Emerson had published no such 

 paper, he printed it in the November number of 

 1860. It had not much merit. I remember this 

 sentence, which may contain some truth aptly put: 

 "Dr. Johnson's periods act like a lever of the third 

 kind: the power applied always exceeds the weight 

 raised. " 



It was mainly to break the spell of Emerson's 

 influence and get upon ground of my own that I 

 took to writing upon outdoor themes. I wrote half 

 a dozen or more sketches upon all sorts of open-air 

 subjects, which were published in the New York 

 "Leader." The woods, the soil, the waters, helped 

 to draw out the pungent Emersonian flavor and 



