He smiled readily and most charmingly, but never laughed. As a
young man his personality was most attractive, serene loving-kindness
illumining his comely countenance! My mother, also a serene spirit,
thought his face the most beautiful she ever saw; and she was sure that
laughter would be unseemly and disturbing.
Emerson liked to be with us at times, but never to be one of us. In the
beginning Dr. Ripley wrote him a cordial invitation to join the
association, the only invitation of the kind he ever gave, I believe.
The invitation was declined in a note quoted by Rev. O. B. Frothingham
in his admirable biography of Dr. Ripley, as follows:
"It is quite time that I made an answer to your proposition that I
should venture into your new community. The design appears to me noble
and generous, proceeding as I plainly see from nothing covert or selfish
or ambitious but from a manly heart and mind. So it makes all men its
friends and debtors. A matter to be entertained in a friendly spirit and
examined as to what it has for us.
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