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ever since," said Mr. Emerson, "there | able him to get home somewhere, promishas been a chorus of birds singing his ing to return it. Alcott told him that he praises." When he first went to reside on had not a five-piece, but if a twenty would the pleasant little farm at Concord, his do he had that. The man naturally achouse was unprotected from the keen winds cepted the alternative, and went his way of winter, and the intense heats of sum- rejoicing. Mrs. Alcott, on hearing of the mer, for which New England is remarka- transaction, was much provoked, and did ble. A gentleman, with whom Emerson not share her husband's hope of again seehad no acquaintance, riding by, paused, ing the money. On the next day the and saw what was needed. On the next newspaper contained a full description of day a wagon loaded with young firs came, the rogue, and an account of how he had and several workmen occupied the day in on false pretences swindled several others. planting them in front of the house, on Nevertheless, a few days afterwards Aleach side. Since their growth the house cott received a letter containing the monhas been comfortable at all seasons, and ey, in which the swindler declared that the yard remarkable for its beauty. though he had taken the money of other people whenever he could, without compunction, he could not make up his mind to retain the money of a man so simplehearted and generous as to give him four times the amount that he had asked for.

Alcott was without public reputation for a long time, except among the schoolchildren of Boston, among whom he was the hero of heroes. He had an idea that the children were new arrivals from a higher world, and that, could their ideas and intuitions only be got at and interpreted before they should "fade into the light of common day," we should have the highest revelations. With these ideas he visited many schools, and was freely permitted to occupy a portion of their time with his "Conversations." The children in the schools which he visited were of ages ranging from four to fourteen years. I have reports of two or three of these conversations, which I know to have been genuinely made: they are interesting enough for me to give a specimen here, though they would have been much more interesting if we could have, with the name of each child whose answer is re

But one day a tall, slender, blonde, and white-haired man was found busily engaged upon Mr. Emerson's grounds, contriving and building with a pile of sticks, which he had heaped together, a fantastic something which might be called arbor, or bower, or summer-house. The architect was A. Bronson Alcott, and this the first and last house evolved from his inner consciousness. Alcott is an institution of Concord and of Transcendentalism, and no account of them would be complete which did not include some sketch of him. Since Wordsworth has celebrated the pedlar in an epic, it may not be thought disparaging to say that this singular individual was in early life a traveler through the Southern States in that capacity, even within a short time of his appearance as builder of the ideal bower in Emerson's garden. But his experience certainly did not whet in him any shrewdness which would entitle him to be considered an exemplary Yankee. Alcott, with a large and interesting family, one daughter of which has become distinguished as an authoress, was, humanly speaking, utterly unable to support it. He was utterly un-peated, his or her exact age. Mr. Alcott's able to do any thing for which the great world was willing to trade; it (with exception of the little Emersons) did not wish his summer-houses, still less those mystical ideas which his genius only authorized him to utter, not to write. But Alcott, despite certain inconveniences, believed that there were still kindly ravens who would feed prophets in extremity. On one occasion he in some way became possessed of a twenty-dollar gold piece, whereat there was rejoicing in his household. On the same day a traveler in distress knocked at his door, and telling a Samuel T. (spoke)-"I was most interpiteous story, besought five dollars to en-ested in this verse: He that drinks of

plan was to read some passage, generally from the New Testament, and then call upon each of the children to declare what portion of such passage made the deepest impression upon his mind, and the reason of that impression.

In the conversation of which I shall give a portion, the children were all between the ages of six and twelve years of age. Mr. Alcott began by reading that portion of the conversation of Jesus with the woman of Samaria, contained in John 4: 16–30.

this water shall thirst again, but he that drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.' He means by this that those who heard what he taught, and did it, should live always; should never die; their spirits should never die."

Mr. Alcott." Can a spirit die ?" Samuel T.-"For a spirit to die is to leave off being good."

enthusiast's conversation over Michael Wigglesworth's Domesday Booke, with its meditations on the divine glory manifested in the damnation of infants, which was a children's school-book in New Englaud in early times, that I will give it as my conviction that rarely has a chaplet been more gracefully bestowed, or more fitly worn, than upon those white hairs that, on this child-like man, recall the phrase in which Orpheus describes such as the white blossom of old age." The reader has doubtless recalled the similar conversations, held for an hour each day, by Jean Paul Richter, with the little children of his school at Schwarzenbach, and Samuel R.-"Water is an emblem of the record of it which he called his "Bonholiness."

I

Edward J.-"I was interested in the words, For the water that I shall give him will be in him a well of water.' think it means that when people are good, and getting better, it is like water spring. ing up always. They have more and more goodness."

mot Anthology." My belief is that Al

Mr. Alcott. "Water means spirit, pure cott knew nothing of this experiment and unspoiled."

when his own was undertaken; but it is, as Richter's English biographer remarks,

Edward J.-"It is holy spirit." Later in the same conversation Mr. Al- "curious to see that German children and cott puts the question:

"When a little infant opens its eyes upon this world, and sees things out of itself, and has the feeling of admiration, is there in that feeling the beginning of worship?"

Josiah (seven years of age.)-"No, Mr. Alcott; a little baby does not worship. It opens its eyes on the world, and sees things, and perhaps wonders what they are; but it don't know any thing about them or itself. It don't know the use of any thing; there is no worship in it."

Mr. Alcott.-"But in this feeling of wonder and admiration which it has, is there not the beginning of worship that will at last find its object?"

Josiah. "No; there is not even the beginning of worship. It must have some temptation, I think, before it can know the thing to worship."

Such conversations as the above, it must be remembered, were undertaken in the theoretical interest of Mr. Alcott and a few of his acquaintances, not in that of the children; amongst these, however, the philosopher became famous, and, on one occasion, at the end of a conversation, the children overpowered him, and placed on his head a wreath of flowers which some of the larger girls had carefully contrived from various contributions. And, though I have a lurking suspicion that these children would have been better employed (especially Josiah) eating gingerbread and spinning tops in the back lot, nevertheless, there is such a grand advance in the mild

Boston children, making allowance for difference of age, make very much the same observations."

Since this time Mr. Alcott has held his conversations with circles of grown-up people. And he has certainly not escaped the trials which an energetic Platonist would naturally incur in disseminating his ideas in a very practical age and country.* The logician and the humorist were his mortal foes. On one occasion the simplehearted philosopher, having divided the entity Man into the Knower, the Thinker, the Actor, was interrupted by a religiously-trained lady with the question, whether the Knower, which she understood phonetically, was the same that was saved in the Ark. Some student of Cambridge was wicked enough to mystify the philosopher and the company by inquiring what

*Profane parodies floated about, of which the following is a specimen:

"The world-soul rusheth
Into the world's strife,-
Hope gusheth
Anew for life.
From the sky
Stars

Fall;

In the wood

Bars
Growl:-

But what of that, O brave heart?
Art thou laborer?

Labor

On!

Art thou Poet?

Go it
Strong!"

its inhabitants, and during a portion of which I have resided there.

It was some fifteen years ago that I first met with a sentence from the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Into old Virginia, where I was born and then lived, literary importations from England were permitted, and sometimes occurred; but the quarantine on all that hailed from New England was very strict. This single sentence came to me in an English magazine, as I lay under the shade-the Virginian's normal position—on the banks of the beautiful Rappahannock, since then reddened with brave blood. Thenceforth the world was for me changed! I went to the bookstores in Fredericsburg, and inquired for Emerson's works. No bookseller there had ever heard of any writer of that name. They had Emerson's arithmetic! At length, by bringing over from Falmouth the magazine in which I encountered the sentence, I persuaded a bookseller that there was such a writer, and he promised to try and get his works for me. And one day I actually did find myself locked in my room with the Essays in my hand! But already, in that one great sentence-which I can never bring myself to

he thought "of the late theory of Verdantius Grün, that the moon is a mass of sweitzerocaseous matter, congealed from the uberous glands of the lacteal nebula?" which one of his accomplices earnestly maintained to be the philosophy of Xeno modernized. Some earthly minds also set afloat the following as one of the "Orphic utterances:" "And why, too, we may tremblingly ask, is the nose placed in the front of the countenance, stretching toward the infinite, but that it may attain, as it were, a fore-smell of the illimitable!" It would scarcely be just if I did not give the reader some of the extemporaneous sayings of this devout idealist, taken down from time to time, to suggest the more important elements in these conversations, which have made them acceptable in the most intelligent American communities to this day. "Action translates death into life; fable into verity; speculation into experience; freeing man from the sorceries of tradition and the torpor of habit. The eternal Scripture is thus expurgated of the falsehoods interpolated into it by the supineness of the ages. Action mediates between conscience and sense: it is the gospel of the understanding." "Choice implies apostacy. The pure, un-quote-my Prospero had waved his wand, fallen soul is above choice." "In the theocracy of the soul majorities do not rule." "Beelzebub marshals majorities. Prophets and Reformers are always special enemies of his and his minions. Multitudes ever lie. Every age is a Judas, and betrays its Messiahs into the hands of the multitude. The voice of the private, not popular heart, is alone authentic." "The hunger of an age is alike a presentiment and a pledge of its own supply." "Prudence is the foot-print of wisdom." "To benefit another, either by word or deed, you must have passed from the state in which he is to a higher. Experience is both law and method of all tuition, all influence." "Opinions are life in foliage; deeds, in fruitage. Always is the fruitless tree accursed." "To apprehend a miracle, a man must have wrought it." "The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust." "Obedience is the mediator of the soul." What further I have to say concerning the society into which I have tried to introduce the reader, can best be given directly as personal reminiscences. These relate to the last twelve years, during which I have known much of Concord and

and my revels were ended: the fowlingpiece and the law-book, which had before divided my days, were laid aside for ever. To my anxious parents and friends the word "Emerson" conveyed no impression whatever, until, on one occasion, a lady, who heard that I had turned hermit to study Emerson, was interested to come and warn them that her father had once employed a young man from the North as instructor in his household; that this young man read Emerson; that he was a general unbeliever of the doctrines of the Church, and, in fact, they feared, a skeptic; that he had died of consumption, and that his last words were "Send my love to R. W. Emerson, who has done more for me than any other on earth." This created a serious panic in our household; and it did appear, when the catechetical test was applied, that I was absorbed in very different reflections from those which had been instilled by early training. Three or four years given to the bitter work of uttering the eternal adieu to the hereditary Church and State, and to the untwining of restraining arms, and I am ready to listen to whatever still small voice may be sent. This brings me to Cambridge Divinity College.