Perhaps I was deep in social science or
restudyiug some of Fourier's pleasant fancies, such as the rivalries of
groups of nice children with his little hordes of brats and "rushers"--
to use a modern word--and how in nature's scheme their different
talents so balanced one another as to make complete harmony.
I was thinking of the big boulders that join and make a hole we called
"the cave," over which Hawthorne's fancy made the apostle Eliot preach
to the Indians, giving it the name of "Eliot's Pulpit," and describing
it afterward so prettily in his "Blithedale Romance"; a book of which
Emerson speaks, and truly, as "that disagreeable story," and of some of
the sketches in it as "quite unworthy of his genius." And I was
thinking of the retired little dell in the far "Wisconsin Lot," where
doubtless he and others have taken their volumes and note-books,
writing and reading to the music of the hum of the bees, the sighing
pines and the redbreasts.
I was thinking of the unfortunate humanity who lived outside of our
charmed circle, and how little they knew of the magnificent future the
infinite Father has prepared for them and their descendants, and how
from the beginning the plan has been co?rdinate with man's help to his
brother man and his sister woman; and my whole soul was penetrated,
even as it is now, with pity for the blindness, mental and physical,
that cannot see how to use the gifts the Infinite holds out, patiently
waiting for us to take from his indulgent hands.
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