Quickly turning over the leaves, Emerson picked up the pen, and pushing aside the slip, wrote without a moment's hesitation: [Illustration: Ralph Waldo Emerson's second signature.] The boy was almost dazed at the instantaneous transformation in the man! Miss Alcott now grasped this moment to say: "Well, we must be going!" "So soon ?" said Emerson, rising and smiling.

Then turning to Miss Alcott he said: "It was very kind of you, Louisa, to run over this morning and bring your young friend." Then turning to the boy he said: "Thank you so much for coming to see me.

You must come over again while you are with the Alcotts.

Good morning! Isn't it a beautiful day out ?" he said, and as he shook the boy's hand there was a warm grasp in it, the fingers closed around those of the boy, and as Edward looked into those deep eyes they twinkled and smiled back.
The going was all so different from the coming.

The boy was grateful that his last impression was of a moment when the eye kindled and the hand pulsated.
The two walked back to the Alcott home in an almost unbroken silence.
Once Edward ventured to remark: "You can have no idea, Miss Alcott, how grateful I am to you." "Well, my boy," she answered, "Phillips Brooks may be right: that it is something to have seen him even so, than not to have seen him at all.
But to us it is so sad, so very sad.