Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises

[91] at the evening receptions of the Rev. Joseph Cook, who flattered Alcott to the highest degree and was met at least halfway by the seer himself. Having been present at one or two of these receptions, I can testify to the disappointment inspired in Alcott's early friends at his seeming willingness to be made a hero in an attitude quite alien to that of his former self. The “New international,” for instance, recognizes that “in later years his manner became more formal and his always nebulous teaching apparently more orthodox.” Be this as it may, the man whom Emerson called “the most extraordinary man and highest genius of the time,” and of whom he says, “As pure intellect I have never seen his equal,” such a man needed only the fact of his unprotected footsteps under fire up the stairs of the Boston Court House to establish him in history as a truly all-round man,--unsurpassed among those of his own generation even in physical pluck.