NOTEBOOK
by crippling the other man, but I don't see how I could
do it by letting him cripple me.
Emerson died while we were in New Orleans. So glad
I visited him two or three weeks before.
At first he did not remember me but the voyage with
his son recalled me. (Probably in 1878.)
Story of Bob Toombs who challenged an old deacon,
who resigned from his church, made a will, then went to
practicing with his rifle—whereupon Toombs backed out
and was forever ruined in the eyes of the South.
The romance of boating is gone now. In Hannibal the
steamboatman is no longer a god. The youth don't talk
river slang any more. Their pride is apparently railways—
which they take a peculiar vanity in reducing to initials—
an affectation which prevails all over the West. They roll
these initials as a sweet morsel under the tongue.
No domestic architecture twenty years ago. Now it
booms in the very villages—and improves all the time.
The Stewart mausoleum would not be built now.
Met a passenger who spoke good English, and who
after hearing a good deal of brag about great men said
his country was very small and remote, but had produced
two or three pretty big men; named a couple nobody ever
heard of—then offered to bet that the third had been
heard of, named Jesus Christ. He was born close to the
Grotto, and was familiar with it. It seemed like meeting
a person who had known Him.
On this trip four great men died—Emerson and Long-
fellow here, and Darwin and Dr. John Brown abroad.