One of the most delicious parts of reading — and liking — a new book (Theroux’s The Journal Keeper, which I mentioned on Saturday) is discovering — or in this case remembering — other wonderful books to read.

Theroux mentions Emerson several times in The Journal Keeper so I spent some time last weekend scouring the house for a collection of his essays. One was nowhere to be found. Only a copy of “The American Scholar” in the Norton Anthology.

But this morning I realize that I don’t need a hard copy; I can go online. And there they are, familiar words a balm to my flagging spirit:

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society
of your contemporaries, the connection of events.  …

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can
present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s
cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an
extemporaneous, half possession.  

 Ah yes, I feel better now. Ready to take on the day.