You can never get away from it.
One evening I asked a man what the bottle meant up there.
"It's a memorial to Emerson," he told me.
"Are they so fond of Emerson down here ?" "I don't know as they are so all-fired fond of him," he answered.
"But they _must_ be fond of him to put up such a big memorial.

Why, even in Boston, where he was born, they have no such memorial as that." "He put it up himself," said the man.
That struck me as strange.

It seemed somehow out of character with the great philosopher.

Also, I could not see why, if he did wish to raise a memorial to himself, he had elected to fashion it in the form of a bottle and put it on top of an office building.
"I suppose there is some sort of symbolism about it ?" I suggested.
"Now you got it," approved the man.
I gazed at the tower for a while in thought.

Then I said: "Do you suppose that Emerson meant something like this: that human life or, indeed, the soul, may be likened to the contents of a bottle; that day by day we use up some portion of the contents--call it, if you like, the nectar of existence--until the fluid of life runs low, and at last is gone entirely, leaving only the husk, as it were--or, to make the metaphor more perfect, the shell, or empty bottle: the container of what Emerson himself called, if I recollect correctly, 'the soul that maketh all'-- do you suppose he meant to teach us some such thing as that ?" The man looked a little confused by this deep and beautiful thought.
"He _might_ of meant that," he said, somewhat dubiously.