Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/244

226 much, painted a striking portrait of Emerson, which is now in the Concord, Massachusetts, public library: —

[September, 1846.] “At Robert Chambers’s. Saw there beautiful book of Highlanders in their costumes. Hopes of chemistry as to making food. Remark of R. C. as to the clumsiness of nature’s means of providing for that purpose, etc. Mrs. C. with her fifteen children and three pair of twins among them.

“Monday. Visit to the Bank of Scotland. To [David] Scott’s room. He is a severe, earnest man with high imaginations. I liked him much, and his pictures from him, though there was not one which, taken by itself, could be called really good.

“Note here, not that it has to do anything with these matters, but because I happen to think of it here, that the tune of ‘Scots wha hae’ is, according to tradition, the original one of ‘Hey Tutti Taiti,’ to which the Scots did actually march to the field of Bannockburn. Shoemaker amazed at the N. Y. [New York] shoes. Evening at Mrs. Crowe’s. S. B. [Samuel Brown.] D. S. [David Scott.] Mr. De Quincey. Pleasant flow of talk, but the Opium Eater did not get into his gorgeous style. Good story told by S. B. about Burns. Write it out for ‘Tribune’ and quote the pertinent verse. I was very sorry to leave Edina now; might have had such good times with the two friends.”

Her view of Mary Queen of Scots is put in too striking a manner to be omitted: —

[September, 1846.] “Holyrood. Prince Labanoff.