Emerson at home and abroad Author:Moncure Daniel Conway Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II. FORERUNNERS. OF the founder of Concord, Peter Bulkeley, a very interesting account is given by Mr. W. Hale White in the " Athenaeum " of May 13, 1882 :... more » — " He wrote Latin verse with ease, and yet he was as fervent as Bunyan in all matters touching the soul and the soul's welfare. He loved his learning, and never forsook it, but it was subdued into the service of a Divine Master. His neighbours observed of him that whenever they canie into his company, no matter what the business might be, he would ' let fall some holy, serious, divine, and useful sentences on them ere they parted ;' and it is also recorded of him that, ' by a sort of winning and yet prudent familiarity, he drew persons of all ages to come and sit with him.' There was a quarrel in the church while he was minister over it, but he healed it at last, and afterwards he told his friends that he ' thereby came — 1. to know more of God ; 2. to know more of himself; 3. to know more of men.' His contemporaries seem to have been impressed with his kindness to his servants, for it remains on record, although the details of his life are so few. When they had lived with him a number of years, it was his practice to dismiss them, and bestow farms upon them.FORERUNNERS. 29 ' Thus he cast his bread both upon the waters and into the earth, not expecting the return of this his charity to a religious plantation until after many days. With all his culture and gentleness, it is distinctly said of him by Neal, in a chance notice of him in the ' History of New England,' that he was a ' thundering preacher.' In other words, although he had in him something of the ' Essays,' there was also in him something of the temper which more than two centuries and a half afterwards re-appeared in the ' Voluntaries' of one who felt ' O...« less