Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/114

92 The children of the Emerson household, and others within his environment, have recalled the marvelous skill with which he would narrate stories from mythology, history and classic poems, or would feed their knowledge and fancy alike by recital of Indian legends and customs. With the true instinct of a teacher he found exhaustless pleasure and profit, throughout life, in the comradeship of young minds, even when their wisest elders offered counter-attractions. Mr. Albee, in his recent "Remembrances of Emerson," recalls the memorable day spent at the Emerson home where Thoreau was an inmate and where he devoted himself during the entire evening to the children and cornpopping.

When Thoreau abandoned teaching in 1841 he accepted an invitation to become one of the Emerson household; he was there from April, 1841 to May, 1843 and again for a year, during the absence of Emerson in England in 1847–8. This arrangement, often misinterpreted, in each case, seems to have been at Mr. Emerson's request, though its benefits to Thoreau were evident. A Concord friend of both families, in recent allusion to the subject, said,—"It was a favor on Thoreau's part to go to Mr. Emerson's home and remain with his family." The relations between the men had become friendly,