* * * * *
You will pardon me, gentlemen, if I say I think that we have need of a
more rigorous scholastic rule; such an asceticism, I mean, as only the
hardihood and devotion of the scholar himself can enforce. We live in
the sun and on the surface--a thin, plausible, superficial existence,
and talk of muse and prophet, of art and creation. But out of our
shallow and frivolous way of life, how can greatness ever grow? Come
now, let us go and be dumb. Let us sit with our hands on our mouths, a
long, austere, Pythagorean lustrum. Let us live in corners and do
chores, and suffer, and weep, and drudge, with eyes and hearts that love
the Lord. Silence, seclusion, austerity, may pierce deep into the
grandeur and secret of our being, and so living bring up out of secular
darkness the sublimities of the moral constitution. How mean to go
blazing, a gaudy butterfly, in fashionable or political saloons, the
fool of society, the fool of notoriety, a topic for newspapers, a piece
of the street, and forfeiting the real prerogative of the russet coat,
the privacy, and the true and warm heart of the citizen! EMERSON.