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Show Emerson's Favorite. "The Confessions of St. Augustine" was one of the books which were most precious to Emerson. The spirituality and the lofty philosophy of the saint of Hippo appealed to what was best and most unsatisfied in the soul of the modern mystic. "I have a precious little lit-tle old book," Emerson wrote of the "Confession" to a friend, "that might go into-Alexander's casket with the Iliad. It was translated 200 years ago. in the golden time when all translations seemed to have the fire of original works. You shall not be alarmed at my zeal for your reading. You shall only try your fortune in it. Some cloudy morning when you cannot can-not ride, read twenty lines and send it back without criticism. I push the Lua.iu juu merely out of gratitude to some golden words I read in it last summer. What better oblation could I offer the saint than the opportunity of a new proselyte? It happens us once in a lifetime to be drunk with some book which probably has some extraordinary relative power to intoxicate us and none other." There are a number of "cultured Catholics" who make Emerson himself a fad. Why is it they cannot enjoy the books he liked? Today, if one offers of-fers to lend "The Confessions" to one of those people, he is blandly told that they do not care to read lives of the saints. They do not know what it is they are thrusting aside. Catholic Citizen. |