neutralized all Hawthorne's efforts. I suppose he would have struggled
until he fell senseless, rather than ask his friend to desist. His
principle seemed to be, if a man cannot understand without talking to him,
it is useless to talk, because it is immaterial whether such a man
understands or not. His own sympathy was so broad and sure that, although
nothing had been said for hours, his companion knew that nothing had
escaped his eye, nor had a single pulse of beauty in the day or scene or
society failed to thrill his heart. In this way his silence was most
social. Everything seemed to have been said. It was a Barmecide feast of
discourse from which a greater satisfaction resulted than from an actual
banquet.

"When a formal attempt was made to desert this style of conversation, the
result was ludicrous. Once Emerson and Thoreau arrived to pay a call. They
were shown into the little parlor upon the avenue, and Hawthorne presently
entered. Each of the guests sat upright in his chair like a Roman senator.
'To them,' Hawthorne, like a Dacian King. The call went on, but in a most
melancholy manner. The host sat perfectly still, or occasionally
propounded a question which Thoreau answered accurately, and there the
thread broke short off. Emerson delivered sentences that only needed the
setting of an essay to charm the world; but the whole visit was a vague
ghost of the Monday Evening Club at Mr. Emerson's--it was a great failure.
Had they all been lying idly on the river brink or strolling in Thoreau's
blackberry pastures, the result would have been utterly different. But
imprisoned in the proprieties of a parlor, each a wild man in his way,
with a necessity of talking inherent in the nature of the occasion, there
was only a waste of treasure. This was the only 'call' in which I ever
knew Hawthorne to be involved.

"In Mr. Emerson's house I said it seemed always morning. But Hawthorne's