Otherworldliness

Nora kept her letter secret from all except Jessie. She did not even tell Mrs. Hurley, though she had taken a fancy for spending a great part of her days with Jim's mother. Mrs. Hurley turned warmly to the girl's new affection for her. Her own daughters, in their otherworldliness, seemed at times too remote from her.

We forget, sometimes, because our natures are shallow and all experiences that do not touch our skin are lost upon us. Sometimes because the cares of the world and the struggle for wealth and the lusts of other things enter in and choke every influence and memory that would help to redeem us. Sometimes we forget because we are at no pains to remember. And this indifference costs us dear. We lose thereby our sense of perspective in life, thinking too highly of the things that are seen and too little of the greater things unseen. We lose that otherworldliness which imparts to character a tender and gracious beauty. We lose our familiarity with the facts which we ourselves shall have to face, and for which we need to prepare in meditation and silence. So we cannot live our highest life without our dead. The thought of them will possess us with the conviction of eternity and home.

Now we have all met these two characters — the one eminently respectable, upright, virtuous, a trifle cold perhaps, and generally, when critically examined, revealing somehow the mark of the tool ; the other with God's breath stilt upon it, an inspiration ; not more virtuous, but differently virtuous ; not more humble, but different, wearing the meek and quiet spirit artlessly as to the manner born. The otherworldliness of such a character is the thing that strikes you ; you are not prepared for what it will do or say or become next, for it moves from a far-off centre, and in spite of its transparency and sweetness, that presence fills you always with awe.

It will lapse in short, into the theory- of illusion, into a thorough-going 'metaphysical otherworldliness,' in which the things that are held to be truly real and of genuine worth are, not the fulfilment, nor yet the explanation, of the things of our common temporal experience, but only the blank negation of them all.

He had not the less passionately admired the General's attractive daughter because he had not in the least understood her. She was always to him a beautiful enigma, plaguing the mind, but full of fascination. Often, with much dwelling on the subject, he had flattered himself he was getting to know her, — her mixture of worldliness and otherworldliness, her languor and her unexpected energy, her strength and her weakness,— only to find her in an absolutely unrecognised mood which had shaken him out of his conceit.

The greater part of his voluminous journal was published in 1906 and 1907, though extensive selections had been previously printed in four volumes bearing respectively the names of the four seasons of the year. More than any other well-known American author, Thoreau strove to get at Nature's inmost heart. Withdrawing to Walden Pond, he spent the larger part of his time for two years in reading and meditation; feeling then that his object had been accomplished, he returned to town life. For a brief period, Thoreau lived as an inmate of Emerson's household and became an unconscious disciple of the man who entertained him. A transcendentalist imbued with a strong spirit of otherworldliness, he may perhaps be best summed up in Emerson's words.