Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Olde Cambridge

[34] is that while they were ready to accept fame and prosperity as they came, they did not copy the tricks of politicians, pulling their own wires, lauding their own achievements, asking puffs from others, and exhibiting themselves in attitudes. There was also in their immediate circle the heartiest mutual regard and not a trace of jealousy. They may have been called a Mutual Admiration Society, but this was incomparably better than to belong to one of those societies for Mutual Defamation which literary history has much oftener seen. Even Concord, in spite of its soothing name, did not always exhibit among its literary men that relation of unbroken harmony which marked the three most eminent of those here classed as Cambridge authors. It is well known that Emerson distrusted the sombre tone of Hawthorne's writings and advised young people not to read them; and that Judge Hoar, Emerson's inseparable friend, could conceive of no reason why any one should wish to see Thoreau's Journals published. Among the Knickerbocker circles in New York it seems to have been still worse,