Ralph Waldo Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

The New York Times profiles the young, latter-day hippie couple, Taylor Bemis and Andrea Lieberg, who are currently caretakers of the Ralph Waldo Emerson House in Concord, Massachusetts. They’re 27, very sweet and a little clueless about the celebrated Transcendentalist, even though they seem like the type of people who would embrace his philosophy about individualism.

At any rate, here’s a brief description of the house’s history from Paige Williams’ article:

“Emerson and his second wife, Lidian, moved into the home in 1835. Over the next 47 years, they hosted a stream of distinguished guests at the house, fulfilling Emerson’s hope to ‘crowd so many books and papers and, if possible, wise friends, into it that it shall have as much wit as it can carry.’ Margaret Fuller, a pioneering feminist, spent hours talking with Emerson in his study. Louisa May Alcott practiced painting by copying the pictures that still hang on the Emersons’ walls. Henry David Thoreau lived with the family off and on for years and is believed to have stayed in what is now Ms. Lieberg and Mr. Bemis’s guest bedroom.

‘The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it,’ Emerson wrote.”