Emerson belonged not to Concord only, but to the whole world,--"his thought was the thought of Christendom." To these plain rooms as to an intellectual court came, from his own and other lands, hundreds famed in art, literature, and politics. Here came Curtis and Bartol to sit at the feet of the sage; Charles Sumner and Moncure Conway to bear hence--as one of them has said--"memories like those Bunyan's pilgrim must have cherished of the Interpreter." Here "came Theodore Parker from the fight for free thought," and Wendell Phillips and John Brown from the conflict for free men; here came Howells, bearing the line from Hawthorne, "I find this young man worthy;" here came Whittier, Agassiz, Hedge, Longfellow, Bradford, Lowell, Colonel Higginson, Elizabeth Peabody, Julia Ward Howe, as to a fount of wisdom and purity. In this unpretentious parlor have gathered such guests as Stanley, Walt Whitman, Bret Harte, Henry James, Louis Kossuth, Arthur Clough, Lord Amberley, Jones Very, Fredrika Bremer, Harriet Martineau, and many others who, like these, would have felt repaid for their journey over leagues of land and sea by a hand-clasp and an hour's communion with the intellect that has been the beacon of thousands in mental darkness and storm. With these came another class of pilgrims, the great army of impracticables, "men with long hair, long beards, long collars,--many with long ears, each in full chase after the millennium," and each intent upon securing the endorsement of Emerson for his own pet scheme. The wonder is that the little library saw any work accomplished, so many came to it and claimed the time of the master; for to every one--scholar, tradesman, and "crank"--were accorded his never-failing courtesy and kindly interest. Any one might be the bearer of a divine message, so he listened to all,--the most uncouth and _outré_ visitant might be the coming man for whom his faith waited, therefore all were admitted.
Here all were "assayed, not analyzed." Emerson's habitual quest for only the divinest traits and his quickened perception of the best in men enabled him to recognize excellencies which were yet unseen by others. While Hawthorne, the shy hermit at the Manse, was unheeded by the world and thought crazed by his neighbors, Emerson knew and proclaimed his transcendent genius. He first recognized the inspiration of Ellery Channing, and made for his exquisite verse exalted claims which have been fully justified, and which the world may yet allow. While to others Henry Thoreau was yet only an eccentric egotist, Emerson knew him as a poet and philosopher, and made him the "forest seer, the heart of all the scene," in his lyrical masterpiece "Wood-Notes." He promptly hailed Walt Whitman as a true poet while many of us were yet wondering if it were not charitable to think him insane.