Answer:For example, when you get those weird chewy caramel things on Halloween; given out of kindness but really no good. I'm thinking of something that is a "false gift", almost like the inverse of a blessing in disguise (which this thread discusses, but none of those are what I'm thinking of).
The intentionality of the giver is not so important as the properties of the thing itself: it is supposed to be good, but really isn't.
Explanation:
The three allusions Ralph Waldo Emerson makes are Francis Bacon, Irish dayworkers, Coeur-de Lions.
In the beginning of the "Society and Solitude" he talks about the capital and mentions how it is the want of animals spirits and in this excerpt appears all these three.
"The capital defect of cold, arid natures is the want of animal spirits. They seem a power incredible, as if God should raise the dead. The recluse witnesses what others perform by their aid, with a kind of fear. It is as much out of his possibility as the prowess of <em>Coeur-de-Lion</em>, or an <em>Irishman's day's-work</em> on the railroad. [...] As <em>Bacon</em> said of manners, “To obtain them, it only needs not to despise them,"
C. requiring us to wear uniforms is unnecessary
