men. He said, "It is the Immanent God." What Emerson would have called it if he had given it a name, I do not know-God, the Over-Soul, the Unknown, the Unity manifesting itself in beauty, in power, in love, in joy, in duty, existing everywhere, speaking in every age through some prophet of its own, it spoke to our age its high commands through the lips of Emerson. The exercises closed at forty-five minutes after five with the "Seventy-eighth Psalm," sung by the congrega tion to the tune of "St. Martins." THE EVENING THE Social Circle met in the evening of May 25, 1903, at seven o'clock, in the vestry of the First Parish. It had been voted at a meeting February 3, 1903, "that Miss Ellen T. Emerson, Mrs. William H. Forbes and her children, and the family of Edward W. Emerson be invited. . . as guests of the Circle." Other guests were invited by the Committee and by the members individually, and in all one hundred and fifty-two were present. At half-past seven the company took their seats, the guests invited by the vote of the Circle and those invited by the Committee sitting at tables upon the raised platform at the end of the room, with the Chairman of the Committee. The tables were decorated with lady's-slipper and rhodora. A large portrait of Mr. Emerson, framed in branches of pink hawthorn, with a laurel wreath at its base, rested against the head table in front of the Chairman. Branches of wild cornel bush, wild cherry, and pink hawthorn filled the spaces on either side. On the walls hung extracts from Mr. Emerson's writings framed in pine boughs. On the dinner card was the "Concord Hymn," a colored print of the rhodora blossom with four lines from "The Rhodora," and the following tribute to the Social Circle written by Mr. Emerson to a friend December 17, 1844: "Much the best society I have ever known is a club in Concord called the Social Circle, consisting always of twenty-five of our citizens, doctor, lawyer, farmer, trader, miller, mechanic, etc., solidest of men, who yield the solidest of gossip. Harvard University is a wafer compared to the solid land which my friends represent." During the dinner there was music by an orchestra, and then the Chairman, the Hon. John Shep ard Keyes, rose and said: : |