Some of the men who frequented the tavern, posted in the barroom a scurrilous libel upon old Dr.Bartlett, the venerable physician, who had incurred their hostility by his zeal in enforcing the prohibitory laws.

Emerson heard of it and repaired to the spot and tore down the offensive paper with his own hand.
After Wendell Phillips made an equally scurrilous attack on Judge Hoar, Emerson refused to take his hand.
In his lament for his beautiful boy he uttered the voice of parental sorrow in immortal accents.

In the poems, "In Memoriam," and in "The Dirge," he records how lonely the lovely Concord Valley is to him since his brothers are gone as he wanders there in the long sunny afternoon: Harken to you pine warbler, Singing aloft in the tree! Hearest thou, O, traveller, What he singeth to me?
Not unless God made sharp thine ear With sorrow such as mine, Out of that delicate lay couldst thou Its heavy tale divine.
But I think that the life of his younger brother Charles, though he died so early, was felt as an even greater force in Concord than that of Waldo.
I hope I may be pardoned if I put on record here a slight and imperfect tribute to the memory of Charles Emerson, who was betrothed to my eldest sister.

It is nearly seventy years ago.

Yet the sweet and tender romance is still fresh in my heart.