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Emerson Hissed By Harvard Boys

Emerson Hissed By Harvard Boys image
Parent Issue
Day
24
Month
August
Year
1882
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

In all Ernerson's experience as a lecturer there was onlyone occasion when he received that tribute to a radical oratoi's timi'ly eloquence which is expressod in hisses. Tho passage of the Fugitivo Slave Law stirred him into unwonted moral passion and righteous wrath. He accepted an invitation to a lecture in Cambridgepert, called for the purpose of protesting against that infamous anomaly in jurisprudenee and insult to justice which had the impudence to cali itself a law. Those who sympathized with him were thnre in force; but a score or two of foolish Harvard students came down from the college to the hall where the lecture was delivered, determined to assert "the rights of the South," and to preserve the threatened Union of the States. They were the rowdiest, noisiest, most brainless set of young gentleman that ever pretented to bo engaged in studying "the humanities" at the chief university of the country. Their only argumenta were hisses and groans whenevcr-the most illustrious erf American men of lettera uttered a"n opinión which expressed the general' opinión of tho civilized world. If he quoted Coke, Holt, Blackstone, Mausiield.they hissed all these ságes of the law because their .iudgnwñts carne frym tlie illegal Ups of Emerson, It. was curious to watch bim as, &t tiixch point he made, he pausèd to . lot the stotm . pt hisses subsidc. Tli U'.se -was. sohiething he had never heard bei oio-; tliere was a quoer, quiMC,;il, snui-fi-cj-Vike ór bird-like expressiou iu Iris ejtevás bé calmly looked round to":sBo .-■wfiat 3trange human animáis were :]WesPii.t to make such sounds ; and -' wïiën ,he. proceeded to utter another iiiaisputli-. ble truth, and it was responded to Üy: another chorus of hisges,,.he seemed absolutely to en joy the pw ensation he experienced, and waited for thesesigin óf disapprobation to stop gether bef ore he resumed his discourse. I The experience was novel ; still there was nat the slightest tremor in his voice, not even a trace of the passionate resentment which a speaker under such circumstances and impedirnents usually feels, and which urges him into the cheap retort about serpents, but a quiet waiting for the time w'nen he should be allowed to go on with the aext sentence. During the whole evening he never uttered a word which was not w ritten down in manuscript from which he read. Many of us at the time urged Emerson to publish the lecture; ten or fifteenyear after.when he was selecting material for a new volume of essays, I entreated him to include in ït the oíd Jecture at uambridgeport ; but he, after deliberation, refused, feeling probably that being writLen under the impulse of the passion oí the day, it as no fit and fair summary of the characters of tne statesmen he assailed. Of one passage in the leclure.I preserve a vivid remembrance. After aftinning that the eterual law of righteoiianess, which rules all created thiugs, nullilied the enactment of Congress, and after ing the opiniona oí several magnates of jurisprudence, that imaaoral laws are void and no effect, he slowly added, in a Ecorching and biLing irony of tone wbich no word can describe, "but still a little Epiycopalian clergyman assured me yesterday that the Fugitive Slave Lavv rauat be obeyed and enforced," After the Iap3e of thirty years, the immense humor of bringing all the forces of nature, all the principies of religión, and all the deciaiona of jurista to bear with their Atlas weight on the shoulders of oue poor little conceited clergyman to crush him to atoms, and he íd hia iunocence not conscioua of it, makes me laugh now as all the audieuce laughed then, the beligerent Harvard students

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Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Democrat