Chapter V: Spent the Day at Essex Junction

“_August 16, 1868. Came home last night from Vermont with Ellen. Stopped at Middlebury on the 11th, Tuesday, and read my discourse on Greatness, and the good work and influence of heroic scholars. On Wednesday spent the day at Essex Junction, and traversed the banks and much of the bed of the Winooski river, much admiring the falls, and the noble mountain peaks of Mansfield and Camel’s Hump (which there appears to be the highest), and the view of the Adirondacks across the lake._”

One intent on becoming intimate with Emerson might well postpone reading the Oversoul, till he had meditated on the text, “Spent the Day at Essex Junction.” Perhaps no junction point in all New England has been the innocent cause of more vituperation than Essex Junction. Here, for more than a generation, impatient people have alighted and waited for trains which were not arranged for their convenience. To the commercial traveler, Essex Junction represents a sheer waste of time. To the summer tourist it means a postponement of enjoyment. It is a place on the way to somewhere else.

But to Emerson, Essex Junction was not conceived of as a point of departure until the hour came when he must actually depart. This was not till evening. In the meantime, he was living in Essex Junction rather than merely passing through it. There was no hurry, so that he had ample time to enjoy the banks of the Winooski river and the view of the distant mountains.

Emerson was on the way to Mount Mansfield, at which he arrived in due time. The next morning at the Mountain Hotel “a man went through the house ringing a loud bell and shouting ‘Sunrise,’ and everybody dressed in haste and went down to the piazza.” Emerson joined the eager procession and had his look with the rest of them. “After many sharp looks at the heavens and earth, we descended to breakfast. I found in this company many agreeable people.”

In this recital you have a glimpse of his philosophy of life. Essex Junction, Mount Mansfield and the troop of fellow-boarders who snatched a hasty sunrise on the way to breakfast were not all alike. In fact, they were quite different. But they were all equally real. The contemplation of them absorbed successive moments of his conscious life. Each for a little while occupied the foreground of his mind and became the representative of the cosmos. Each in its place and in its time was interesting. When it came to the question which was the most interesting, he would let them fight it out among themselves.

This was the philosophy of the Mountain and the Squirrel.

“I am not so large as you,
You are not so small as I
And not half so spry.”

That talents differ is the fact on which we must agree before there can be any toleration or appreciation. Most of us have a bad habit of taking a personal preference and elevating it into a universal standard of value. Each new object is weighed in the balance and found wanting. We say, this is not that, and therefore it is not worth our attention. The word “discrimination” takes on a hostile meaning. We are likely to say “discriminate _against_.” The word “criticize” has also a suggestion of unfriendliness, for it is concerned with the perception of differences.

Emerson’s habitual point of view was that of appreciative discrimination. This is not that, of course not; it is quite different--that is what makes it interesting. Even where the tubs look alike, it is pleasant to consider that each stands on its own bottom.

What is the most important place in all the world? For you it is the place where you actually are at this moment. This is the only point from which at this particular time the universe is visible to you. If you are truly alive, you do not need a man with a bell to summon you to the sunrise. The day has its clear call.

“The inevitable morning
Finds them who in cellars be
And be sure that all-loving Nature
Will smile in a factory.
Yon ridge of purple landscape,
Yon sky beneath the walls,
Hold all the hidden wonders
In their scanty intervals.”

There is a curious restlessness which is often mistaken for idealism. Not finding satisfaction in our real environment, we are filled with the desire to be somewhere else. When this restlessness becomes chronic, there is “that driven feeling” which transforms the pursuit of happiness into a hurried flight from unhappiness. Even our holidays become nerve-destroying tasks, as with jaded minds we are carried about to the places where we wait for sensations that do not come. And with our eyes on our watches, we know that we must hurry if we are not to miss the next sight that we have paid for.

Palestine was not a tourist country in the days when the author of Ecclesiastes wrote of the various vanities he had seen under the sun; else he might have added a lamentation over the futility of an empty mind going about in search of culture. This is a vanity I have seen. I have seen a rich, foolish man who came to a city strange and old, and that had a great history. Yet did he not seek to know what that history was, nor did he save an hour for quiet meditation on what he saw. He spent much gold to come to the place where the city was, and when he was there he worried over the delay in getting away. And that foolish rich man remembered nothing of the city except a dinner which was not so good as he might have had at home.

Because he found so much to interest him at home Emerson takes a whimsical pleasure in speaking against foreign travel as a means of culture. But he evidently had in mind the excessive value that was in his day put upon Europe and its traditions.

His disparagement of travel did not arise from any incuriosity. He had an eager desire to see all the world. But he was like a small boy who, having learned that the procession is to pass by his own house, takes his position on his own door step. Why should he go away when by staying at home he is sure to see the show?

“It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion, call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet.

“I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.

“Travelling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.”

There are times when the medium at a seance excuses herself for her inability to put the sitter in communication with departed spirits. She does not know what is the matter, but “the conditions are not right.”

Every traveler has experienced a similar difficulty. He has spent time and money to go to a famous spot; his body has been transported but not his soul. There are inhibitions that prevent imaginative communion with the mighty past.

Emerson preferred to be in Essex Junction when the spiritual conditions were right rather than in Rome when his mind was not properly functioning. Essex Junction is a wonderful place if one happens to be in the mood for seeing it.