A Puritan Plus Poetry by Henry Van Dyke — Read

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A friend of mine, one of the Elder Bookmen of Harvard, told me some / twenty years ago that he had only once seen Ralph Waldo Emerson vexed out / of his transcendental tranquillity and almost Olympian calm. It was a / Sunday afternoon in Concord, and the philosopher had been drawn from his / study by an unwonted noise in the house. On the back porch he found his / own offspring and some children of the neighbours engaged in a romping, / boisterous game. With visible anger he stopped it, saying, "Even if you / have no reverence for the day, you ought to have enough sense and manners / to respect the traditions of your forefathers."