Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises, VIII: <a target="_blank" onclick="openPopupWindow(this); return false" href="entityvote?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0001&auth=emerson,ralph,waldo&n=1&type=person">Emerson</a>'s “foot-note person,” --<a target="_blank" onclick="openPopupWindow(this); return false" href="entityvote?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0001&auth=alcott,amos,bronson&n=1&type=person">Alcott</a>, page 86

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19th-Century American

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[86] sometimes developed imperfectly among those who are in other respects wise and good. A curious illustration of this may be found in the published memoirs of Mr. Alcott (1.349), but it is quite surpassed by the following narrative, hitherto unpublished, of a subsequent interview, even more picturesque, and apparently with the self-same creditor. I take it from his Ms. Diary, where it appears with the formality of arrangement and beauty of handwriting which mark that extraordinary work.

（Mammon）

April 18th, 1839. Thursday.-

Things seem strange to me out there in Time and Space. I am not familiar with the order and usages of this realm. I am at home in the kingdom of the Soul alone.

This day, I passed along our great thoroughfare, gliding with Emerson's check in my pocket, into State Street; and stepped into one of Mammon's temples, for some of the world's coin, wherewith to supply bread for this body of mine, and those who depend upon me. But I felt dishonored by resorting to these haunts of Idolaters. I went not among them to dig in the mines of Lucre, nor to beg at the doors of the God. It was the hour for business on 'Change, which was swarming with worshippers. Bevies of devotees were consulting on appropriate rites whereby to honor their divinity.

Houghton Mifflin Press. 1909.

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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises

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（Mammon）