AN EGOTISTICAL CHAPTER 249 



nature. It probably gave him more pleasure to 

 open his door to a woodchuck than to a man. 



Let me confess that I am too conscious of per- 

 sons, — feel them too much, defer to them too 

 much, and try too hard to adapt myself to them. 

 Emerson says, "A great man is coming to dine with 

 me: I do not wish to please him, I wish that he 

 should wish to please me." I should be sure to 

 overdo the matter in trying to please the great man : 

 more than that, his presence would probably take 

 away my appetite for my dinner. 



In speaking of the men who have influenced me, 

 or to whom I owe the greatest debt, let me finish 

 the list here. I was not born out of time, but in 

 good time. The men I seemed to need most were 

 nearly all my contemporaries; the ideas and influ- 

 ences which address themselves to me the most 

 directly and forcibly have been abundantly current 

 in my time. Hence I owe, or seem to owe, more 

 to contemporary authors than to the men of the 

 past. I have lived in the present time, in the 

 present hour, and have invested myself in the ob- 

 jects nearest at hand. Besides the writers I have 

 mentioned, I am conscious of owing a debt to Whit- 

 man, Euskin, Arnold, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and 

 Tennyson. To Whitman I owe a certain liberaliz- 

 ing influence, as well as a lesson in patriotism 

 which I could have got in the same measure from 

 no other source. Whitman opens the doors, and 

 opens them wide. He pours a flood of human 

 sympathy which sets the whole world afloat. He 



