He refused.
"Alcott promised that he would, but he did not, and I think Emerson dissuaded him.

After a time, however, a priest, a church, and a congregation of some six or seven hundred Catholics grew up in Concord, and I was invited to lecture, and I went.

The pastor attended another station that Sunday, and I said the Mass and meant to give a homily by way of sermon.

But as I was going to the altar, all vested for the Mass, two men came into my soul: one, the man who lived in that village in former years, a blind man, groping about for light, a soul with every problem unsolved; the other a man full of light, with every problem solved, the universe and the reason of his existence known as they actually are.

Well, there were those two men in my soul.