Ralph Waldo Emerson and aphasia

On the 24th of July, 1872, Emerson's house burned, and the event precipitated a sharp downturn in his health. In the fall, he went abroad with his daughter Ellen, traveling to Europe and Egypt, and returned just after his seventieth birthday to a cheering crowd and a restored home. But his gentle decline into aphasia had begun. He died on April 27, 1882. Standing by his grave nine days later, Whitman, noted: "A just man, poised on himself, all-loving, all-inclosing, and sane and clear as the sun."