AN EGOTISTICAL CHAPTER 5 



period, stimulating. Higginson had just begun to 

 publish his polished essays in the "Atlantic," and 

 I found much help in them also. They were a 

 little cold, but they had the quality which belongs 

 to the work of a man who looks upon literature 

 as a fine art. My mind had already begun to turn 

 to outdoor themes, and Higginson gave me a 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 nine- 

 teenth 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 Johnso- 

 nian youth make 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 



