ALCOTT MEMOIRS 
 
 POSTHUMOUSLY COMPILED FROM PAPERS 
 JOURNALS AND MEMORANDA OF THE LATE 
 
 DR. FREDERICK L. H. WILLIS 
 
 BY E. W. L. & H. B. 
 
 BOSTON: RICHARD G. BADGER 
 
 TORONTO: THE COPP, CLARK COMPANY, LIMITED 
 
Copyright, 1915, by Richard G. Badger 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 THE GORHAM PRESS, BOSTON, U. S. A. 
 
PRELUDE 
 
 SO much has been written of the famous men 
 and women of New England whose lives 
 compassed approximately the years 1800 
 to 1870, that little if anything remains to 
 be told. No pretense is here made to supply such 
 deficiency if it exists. 
 
 This little book aims at naught else than a pre 
 sentation of a personal point of view wherein alone 
 lies whatever of originality it may contain. It in 
 no sense presumes to offer original matter save 
 from the angle of individually recorded impres 
 sion. I offer its pages as a tribute to my father 
 and not as a contribution to the already extensive 
 literature concerning the early literary period of 
 New England. So far as possible dates and facts 
 have been verified, but no exhaustive effort has 
 been made to present historic or biographic mat 
 ter, the object being to preserve neither people nor 
 events, but my father s memory of them. 
 
 I have eliminated all references that might be 
 deemed critical or over-laudatory, that might create 
 controversy, or that touched upon the more sacred 
 human relationships, believing this would have been 
 
 3 
 
Prelude 
 
 my father s wish. For some years prior to his 
 death, my father planned writing his personal 
 recollections of a long, varied and unusual life dur 
 ing which he was associated more or less intimately 
 with distinguished men and women in America and 
 Europe. To this end he made many notes from 
 some of which the following pages have been 
 educed. The infirmities of age made writing a 
 great exertion and prevented the carrying out of 
 his purpose save in a preliminary way, and his pa 
 pers were left in great confusion. Through the pa 
 tient effort of Henri Bazin these notes and memo 
 randa, many of them hardly legible because of the 
 tremulous handwriting sometimes employed dur 
 ing sleepless nights and hours of great pain, have 
 been copied, arranged in sequential and chronolog 
 ical order, and brought into a presentable whole. It 
 may be that my father has quoted some of the mat 
 ter herein presented ; it is not claimed that the notes 
 he left were in any way ready for the presentation 
 he intended. I offer no apology along these lines 
 because I well know the following pages are frag 
 mentary and merely suggestive of what he would 
 have written. They have been gathered as one 
 would gather the fallen petals of a rose to make fra 
 grant a roseless hour. 
 
 My father s long life can best be described in the 
 words, charity, integrity, courtesy. Through the 
 
 4 
 
Prelude 
 
 vicissitudes of an unusually active, cosmopolitan 
 life, through a long period of ill health and phys 
 ical infirmity, up to the last moments of his last 
 illness he never faltered in his thought of others, 
 in his chivalrous bearing and in the kindliness and 
 love that radiated from his personality, and his life 
 was crowned w r ith the best of earth s blessings the 
 love of all who knew him. 
 
 EDITH WILLIS LINN. 
 
 Eden Glen, Glenora, N. Y. 
 November, 1915. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. CHILDHOOD 11 
 
 II. How I MET THE ALCOTT FAMILY .... 19 
 
 III. FAMILY LIFE 24 
 
 IV. LOUISA AND HER SISTERS 35 
 
 V. ALCOTT THE PHILOSOPHER 46 
 
 VI. ALCOTT THE ABOLITIONIST 65 
 
 VII. FRUITLANDS 80 
 
 VIII. EMERSON 87 
 
 IX. THOREAU 91 
 
 X. MARGARET FULLER 95 
 
 XI. HAWTHORNE 98 
 
 XII. THOMAS STARR KING 100 
 
 POSTSCRIPT THE INFLUENCES THAT MOLD 104 
 
ALCOTT MEMOIRS 
 
ALCOTT MEMOIRS 
 
 CHILDHOOD 
 
 FREDERICK LLEWELLYN HO- 
 VEY WILLIS, a learned and mod 
 est man beloved of all who knew 
 him, died in Rochester, N". Y., on Eas 
 ter Sunday, April 12th, 1914, aged eighty-four 
 years and three months. He was a Unitarian 
 clergyman, a doctor of medicine, a lecturer of some 
 renown, a nature lover, and a writer of power and 
 charm. 
 
 From the age of fourteen to that of nearly twen 
 ty-four, he was constantly and intimately connected 
 with the Alcott family, as friend, boarder, or guest 
 in their home. During that period he was loved 
 and regarded as a son by the Sage of Still River 
 Village and Concord and by his wife, the "Mar- 
 mee" of "Little Women," and was also, during 
 the Still River summer of 1844 and the several 
 successive summers at Concord, the only boy play 
 mate of Louisa Alcott and her sisters, with the 
 
 11 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 single exception of William, son of Charles Lane. 
 
 Despite this authenticated fact, Dr. Willis never 
 laid positive claim to the character of "Laurie," the 
 hero of Louisa Alcott s classic, although he would 
 smile in his charming manner when, now and then, 
 in public print or conversation, the claim was made 
 for him by others. 
 
 The purpose of this little book is not to do so 
 either. It aims but to carry out the intention of 
 his declining years: the recording of memoirs of 
 an interesting period in his childhood and youth, 
 with his retrospect of this period s influences upon 
 a sensitive and beautiful nature through close asso 
 ciation with Mr. and Mrs. Alcott and contact in 
 the Alcott homes with Emerson, Thoreau, Mar 
 garet Fuller, and other New Englanders who have 
 left fame and name in American Letters. 
 
 Dr. Willis was born in Cambridge, Mass., Jan 
 uary 29th, 1830. He was the only child of Lo 
 renzo Dow Willis and his wife Eleanor Hovey. 
 Lorenzo Dow Willis was a cousin of Nathaniel 
 Parker Willis of early New England literary fame, 
 and the ancestors of both him and his wife were 
 among the early settlers of New England. He 
 was a liberal in religion and the marriage was 
 strongly opposed by the Hovey family upon re 
 ligious grounds, but love prevailed. Lorenzo 
 Dow Willis was a prosperous merchant of Cam- 
 
 12 
 
Childhood 
 
 bridge at the time of his marriage, but shortly 
 after, his partner in business absconding with all 
 the funds of their enterprise, he was thrown into 
 a debtor s prison. 
 
 The Hovey family consisted of several brothers 
 who were men of more than usual wealth and could 
 have easily settled the affairs of their sister s hus 
 band had they been so inclined, but in those days 
 to be a liberal was an unpardonable crime, and 
 the prisoner for debt was in their eyes receiving 
 what he richly deserved. Dr. Willis s father was 
 released from the debtor s prison only in time to be 
 present at the birth of his son. The young wife 
 and mother died the third day after at the age of 
 twenty-two. 
 
 Llewellyn, as he was known, was brought up by 
 his grandmother, the wife of Ebeneza Hovey, who 
 before her marriage was Sally Greenwood of Sa 
 lem, the granddaughter of Colonel Darby of Sa 
 lem, a famous trader of whom it was said, that he 
 could count nearly a hundred ships in the different 
 ports of the world loading or discharging cargo at 
 any time. 
 
 The atmosphere of the Hovey household was 
 one of extreme bigotry. Ebeneza Hovey was one 
 of the founders of the Baptist Church of Cam 
 bridge and the society met at his house for service 
 until they were financially strong enough to build 
 
 13 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 the First Baptist Church in Cambridge. He and 
 his eight children constituted the choir of this 
 church. All possessed fine voices and several 
 played upon instruments. Indeed, the music of 
 the family seems to have been its one bright fea 
 ture. The grandmother had a remarkable voice 
 and sang many curious old hymns now obsolete, 
 among them: 
 
 THE STRANGER AND His FRIEND 
 
 A poor wayfaring man of grief 
 Hath often crossed me on my way,, 
 Who sued so humbly for relief, 
 That I could never answer "nay": 
 I had not power to ask his name, 
 Whither he went or whence he came, 
 Yet was there something in his eye 
 That won my heart, I knew not why. 
 
 Once when my scanty meal was spread 
 He entered; not a word he spake; 
 Just famishing for want of bread, 
 I gave him all; he blessed it, brake 
 And ate, but gave me part again ; 
 Mine was an Angel s portion then, 
 For while I fed with eager haste, 
 That crust was manna to my taste. 
 
 And so on through all the seven verses of James 
 Montgomery s quaint old poem set to music of a 
 lilting, haunting, murmurous melody; and another 
 beginning, 
 
 14 
 
Childhood 
 
 The Lord into his garden comes,, 
 The spices yield a rich perfume, 
 The lilies grow and thrive-ive-ive, 
 The lilies grow and thrive. 
 Refreshing showers of grace divine, 
 From Jesus flows to every vine, 
 Which makes the dead revive-ive-ive, 
 Which makes the dead revive. 
 
 As an infant Llewellyn was given to a mother 
 of twins to nurse, who nourished and raised all 
 three children. When the boy was old enough to 
 be weaned, he was, because he was a delicate child 
 and his father had died meanwhile, sent to board 
 with an old woman in the country. This woman, 
 of whose name there is no record, gloried in a 
 lovely old-fashioned garden in which she raised a 
 profusion of medicinal herbs, and every flower that 
 would grow in the climate of Eastern Massachu 
 setts. Here the first lasting impression came to 
 the brain of the boy, for he remembered toddling 
 after her as she labored in the garden among her 
 loved flowers, his reward for good behavior being 
 the privilege of patting the camomile bed to pro 
 duce more luxuriant growth. While he was too 
 young to remember her name, since he was taken 
 from her care while yet very tiny, it was in this 
 garden and in the company of this old woman that 
 he gained his initial love of flowers and his in 
 terest in plants which not only grew to a science 
 
 15 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 with him and remained a loved passion all his life, 
 but was the original stepping stone towards his 
 unique and fascinating lectures upon materia-med- 
 ica, when Professor of that Chair in Mrs. Lozier s 
 Medical College for Women in New York City, the 
 first Woman s Medical College in the United 
 States; lectures in which his rare knowledge of 
 plants played so interesting and instructive a part. 
 
 When he was about four years of age he was 
 brought into the household of his grandmother and 
 grandfather in Cambridge. Preparation for the 
 life hereafter was the dominating factor there. The 
 fear of God s wrath was constantly impressed upon 
 all the family, including the sensitive, delicate boy, 
 who was of their blood yet alien to them. Prayers 
 were constant; the most rigorous censorship was 
 maintained regarding books, and upon Saturday 
 nights every printed thing was placed out of sight 
 except the Bible, Pilgrim s Progress," and Bax 
 ter s "Saint s Rest." 
 
 But from the New England attic have emerged 
 many wonderful fairies with gifts to the lives of 
 men, and this boy whose nature was dwarfed and 
 narrowed by the severity of his surroundings was 
 led by them to discover a box of books that had be 
 longed to his atheistic father. No complete record 
 remains of their titles ; memory holds some of them. 
 There was the "Mysteries of Udolpho," "Swiss 
 
 16 
 
Childhood 
 
 Family Robinson," "The Boy s Own Book,""Alon- 
 zo and Melissa," "Robinson Crusoe," Sir Walter 
 Scott s and Charles Dickens s novels and, probably 
 the books that most helped to mold and fashion 
 the mind of the boy, all the writings of that arch- 
 infidel, that great lovable, brave, patriotic man, 
 Tom Paine. There in the attic the boy pored over 
 these pages and, not content with the hours stolen 
 from lessons or play, read nights by candle light. 
 Xo lights were allowed in the bedrooms of himself 
 or his cousins, so he picked up discarded pieces of 
 brass and iron which he sold to a junk dealer and 
 with the proceeds bought candles. In the same 
 way he secured money for surreptitious visits to 
 the Boston Museum, where his soul was awakened 
 and stirred by the fine old English tragedies acted 
 by William Warren and Mrs. Vincent and the 
 Shakespearean reproductions of Forrest and Kean, 
 and his imagination thrilled by the awesome wax 
 works with which the mysterious upper portions 
 of the Museum were stored. 
 
 The boy received his first instruction in the pub 
 lic schools of Cambridge, and was later apprenticed 
 to a Cambridge apothecary. When he was seven, he 
 "got religion" in the old-fashioned sense. It was 
 a great struggle to make himself feel all the emo 
 tions that were deemed necessary in his grandfa 
 ther s house, but he thought he achieved it and was 
 
 17 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 very proud. 
 
 He was so very devout that the women of the 
 Baptist Society patted him upon the cheek and 
 called him "a little lamb of God." Yet he did not 
 quite understand, and there was in his nature an 
 unconscious resistance to the bigotry and fanati 
 cism of the household ; for he remembered sitting up 
 in his little bed upon Sunday nights, after listen 
 ing to the portrayal of the wrathful God of the 
 Puritans, and shaking his little fist at the darkness, 
 saying aloud, "God, I hate you," and then being 
 very much afraid. 
 
 At the age of twelve, because of his assertion of 
 his disbelief in foreordination he was expelled from 
 the church as a heretic. He said, "I told them I 
 could not fore-ordain a creature to eternal damna 
 tion and I was quite sure God was as loving as I, 
 and they put me out of the church." That such 
 a thing could happen to a child of such tender years 
 seems to us to-day impossible. Its effect upon the 
 boy s character was to sadden and subdue and en 
 hance a natural tendency to introspection and sub 
 jective study. His meeting with the Alcotts two 
 years after came to him as a burst of sunshine upon 
 a gray day and in a field already prepared, the 
 seeds of Mr. Alcott s philosophy and the loving in 
 fluence of Mrs. Alcott s motherly care found ready 
 root. 
 
 18 
 
II 
 
 HOW I MET THE ALCOTT FAMILY 
 
 DR. WILLIS thus describes his meeting 
 with the Alcott family in 1844. The ac 
 count is in his own handwriting, tremu 
 lous yet firm withal, written very shortly 
 before his death, and after he had passed his eighty- 
 third year: "A delicate boy of fourteen, I was 
 journeying in early June, 1844, from Boston to 
 Still River Village in the town of Harvard, in one 
 of the lumbering stage-coaches which at that time 
 had not been displaced by the steam railway, save 
 upon a few important thoroughfares, to spend my 
 long summer vacation as boarder in the home of a 
 relative. 
 
 It chanced after one of the stops made by the 
 stage, that upon starting again, the fingers of my 
 right hand were caught in the closing door. I 
 fainted from the intense pain and upon my con 
 sciousness returning, I opened my eyes upon what 
 seemed the dearest, kindest, most motherly face I 
 had ever beheld, looking into mine, as a lady held 
 me in an embrace as tender and as pitying as if 
 I had been one of her own bantlings, rather than 
 
 19 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 a little orphan stranger traveling alone of whom 
 she knew nothing. 
 
 It was Mrs. Alcott, who was returning from Bos 
 ton, w r here she had been to solicit aid in her then con 
 stant extremity from wealthy relatives and friends. 
 With ready tact, to divert my mind from my suffer 
 ing fingers, she began to describe to me in lovable 
 manner her four girls at home ; and she told me sto 
 ries of their juvenile pranks until the pain was a 
 forgotten thing and the remaining hours of the 
 journey had been delightfully whiled away. 
 
 When the stage drew up at her door there burst 
 out four merry-hearted, bright-eyed, laughing girls 
 Anna, Louisa, Lizzie and May my first sight 
 of the Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, immortalized after 
 wards in "Little Women." Then ensued the pret 
 tiest possible struggle, while the driver was taking- 
 down the old haircloth trunk, for "Marmee s" first 
 kiss. The next day, as I had promised, I called 
 upon the "Little Women." School had just closed 
 in Still River and the long summer vacation had be 
 gun. I shall never forget the awkwardness of this 
 first call. The mother was absent, only the children 
 were at home. I was a city boy a new genus to 
 the young ladies widely different in dress and 
 manner from the boys of the village school, and as 
 I stood, a focus of concentrated gaze from four 
 pairs of bright mischievous eyes, not a syllable be- 
 
 20 
 
How I Met the Alcott Family 
 
 ing uttered meanwhile by any one of their owners, 
 I felt as if I were being weighed in the balance. 
 I could feel the hot blood mounting to my cheek 
 and brow. At length Louisa, w r ho suddenly seemed 
 to realize the embarrassment of the situation for me, 
 proposed an adjournment to the garden. There 
 the ice was broken, relieving seemingly strained re 
 lations, and w y e were comrades from that time forth. 
 This first interview was ever after the subject of 
 laughing comment with us. Within a week I had 
 secured my grandmother s permission to change 
 my boarding place, and thus live at Mrs. Alcott s 
 house. 
 
 There was a beautiful sheet of water in among 
 the hills about a mile from the village, unprosaic- 
 ally called Bare Hill Pond. Here w r as our favorite 
 resort. Thither we went, Anna, Louisa and my 
 self, the other two girls being deemed too young, 
 passing day after day, carrying our luncheon and 
 whatever Mrs. Alcott thought wise in the way of 
 wraps, and story books, in a little four-wheeled 
 cart. And here, through all the bright days of 
 July and August, we lived in the fairy land of 
 imagination, a life of childish romance. We chris 
 tened a favorite nook, a beautiful rocky glen car 
 peted with moss and adorned with ferns opening 
 upon the water s edge, "Spiderland." I was the 
 King of the realm, Anna was the Queen, and Lou- 
 
 21 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 isa, the Princess Royal; we never laid these char 
 acters aside as long as we were in the "Royal 
 Realm." Louisa had even then begun to string 
 her rhymes and weave her little romances, though 
 but twelve years old. For years afterwards we 
 talked of that summer as the golden era of our 
 lives. 
 
 I was then too young to realize the financial 
 struggle Mrs. Alcott was passing through to keep 
 her little family together; but after they removed 
 to Concord I spent the vacations of several suc 
 cessive summers with them, when I realized the 
 whole situation most forcibly; and as much as I 
 reverenced and admired Mr. Alcott he had a pe 
 culiar charm for the young I remember feeling 
 a burning sense of indignation at his seeming in 
 difference to the domestic burden that was resting 
 upon his devoted wife and the actual poverty that 
 enshrouded the little family. Mrs. Alcott became 
 very fond of me and truly looked upon me as a son. 
 As I look back I can think of but one other woman 
 w r ith whom I came in contact during my entire life 
 who so fully represented sympathy, love, and ten 
 derness. 
 
 During the times when burdens pressed heavily 
 upon Mrs. Alcott through the poverty and frequent 
 actual want that was ever at the door, she had 
 always a word of counsel, encouragement and 
 
 22 
 
How I Met the Alcott Family 
 
 cheer. She never turned a deaf ear to an appeal 
 from whomsoever it might have been and frequently 
 shared her own scanty store with others aside from 
 her own. 
 
 I think I was the only person, apart from her 
 family, in whom she confided, a confidence years 
 alone did not warrant. I remember one occasion 
 while she was talking to me she suddenly burst into 
 tears, which was a thing quite unusual. Just then 
 Anna came in announcing a caller. A most kindly 
 looking and motherly woman entered, garbed sim 
 ply as a Quakeress. Seeing the tears upon Mrs. 
 Alcott s cheeks, she said: 
 
 "Abba Alcott, what is the matter with thee?" 
 
 "Oh, nothing much. But much or little, this dear 
 boy is my little comforter." 
 
 It was thus that I met for the first time Lydia 
 Maria Child, whose brother, Dr. Converse Francis, 
 was afterwards my instructor at Harvard. He and 
 Mrs. Child were my warm friends the remainder 
 of their lives." 
 
 23 
 
Ill 
 
 FAMILY LIFE 
 
 THE following summers, four in number, 
 Dr. Willis passed with the Alcotts at Con 
 cord, and later, when they moved to Bos 
 ton, boarded with them while preparing 
 for Harvard College Divinity School, and acting 
 as amanuensis for Thomas Starr King. He be 
 came their most intimate young friend and was 
 closely associated with every detail of their life 
 struggle with the poverty that only ceased with 
 the success of "Little Women" in 1868. Through 
 this intimate association he was informed in full de 
 tail of the financial perplexities as they had existed 
 before he met the Alcotts in 1844. 
 
 In his notes upon the Concord period, Dr. Willis 
 records : 
 
 "Through continued and dire poverty Mrs. Al- 
 cott was sunshine itself to her children and to me, 
 whom she looked upon as a son. No matter how 
 weary she might be with the washing and ironing, 
 the baking and cleaning, it was all hidden from the 
 group of girls with whom she was always ready to 
 enter into fun and frolic, as though she never had 
 
 24 
 
Family Life 
 
 a care. Afternoons we usually gathered in the 
 quaint, simple, charming, old-fashioned parlor at 
 Hillside Hawthorne s old home bought by Mrs. 
 Alcott with the pittance she received from her fa 
 ther s estate made sufficient for the purpose by a 
 donation of $500 from Ralph Waldo Emerson. To 
 this day, over all the years, that simple Concord 
 room with its pretty chintz curtains, its cool mat 
 ting, its few fine engravings, its Parian busts of 
 Clytie and Pestalozzi, and of Una and the Lion 
 (the latter given Mrs. Alcott by Una Hawthorne) , 
 its books and cut flowers, and its indescribable at 
 mosphere of refinement, is deeply engraved within 
 my memory as an expression of inherent simplicity 
 and charm. 
 
 One of our number, usually myself, would read 
 aloud while the mother and the two elder daugh 
 ters engaged in the family sewing. Thus we read 
 Scott, Dickens, Cooper, Hawthorne, Shakespeare 
 and the British poets, and George Sand s "Con- 
 suelo." Mrs. Alcott s comments upon and expla 
 nations of our reading, when we questioned, were 
 most instructive to us in beauty of expression, 
 and revealed the wealth of her own richly stored 
 mind. Mr. Alcott s table talks were constantly de 
 lightful. It was particularly at these times he took 
 especial care to so discourse that the youngest lis 
 tener might comprehend and fully understand. I 
 
 25 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 have seen him take an apple upon his fork, and 
 while preparing it for eating, give a fascinating 
 little lecture as to its growth and development from 
 germ to matured fruit, his language quaintly beau 
 tiful and charmingly poetical. 
 
 A child in speaking of him in my hearing said: 
 "I love to hear him talk. He is so plain and tells 
 me much I didn t know, fastening it on to what 
 I know." 
 
 He rarely talked of else at table but nature s 
 wonderful and benevolent processes in preparing 
 food for the maintenance of man and in minister 
 ing to his taste through her countless presentations 
 of the beautiful. Indeed his great love of nature, 
 his keen, close observation of all her processes and 
 his power of expression, all combined to make him 
 charmingly instructive and entertaining. 
 
 Even in my youth Mr. Alcott seemed to me 
 always strangely out of place in the midst of the 
 practical utilitarianism of the 19th century, and 
 out of place, too, clad in modern broadcloth. He 
 should have been of the days of Socrates or Seneca 
 and worn the flowing robes of classic Greece or the 
 toga of ancient Rome. He was possessed of a cap 
 tivating yet almost childlike simplicity of manner 
 and bore about with him an air of serene repose, 
 contrasting sharply with the bustling, business-like 
 manner of most of the literary men of those days. 
 
 26 
 
Family Life 
 
 In person he was tall and spare, his fine head 
 crowned with silvery locks, his complexion remark 
 able for its clearness and purity, the flesh tints be 
 ing as clearly white and red as those of an infant. 
 I have fancied this was due, in large measure, to 
 the simplicity of his diet, which was principally 
 fruit and cereals. He was fond of some varieties 
 of vegetables, giving preference to those that ma 
 tured above the ground, saying, "Man, like the 
 gods, should pluck his food from on high." Meat 
 he positively abhorred. Morally and physically he 
 was the cleanest and sweetest of men. His entire 
 sphere radiated purity. He was exceedingly ten 
 der towards all animals, having that reverence for 
 life, even in its most insignificant forms, that char 
 acterizes the followers of Buddha. He would not 
 crush a worm. 
 
 He was endowed with rich intellect and a broad 
 humanitarian spirit; but he was also sui generis; 
 a rare and elevating model of a man, not to be 
 measured by ordinary standards. His sublime in 
 difference to the practical affairs of life and ap 
 parently to the heroic struggles of his devoted wife 
 was not indicative of his lack of affection for her 
 or for his children. For no man loved his family 
 better, and although at times he sorely tried them 
 by his utter lack of practicability their affection 
 and reverence for him never faltered. Mrs. Alcott 
 
 27 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 struck the keynote of his character when I heard 
 her say: "He carries his head in the clouds." 
 
 Mrs. Alcott was Abba May, daughter of Col. 
 Joseph May, for many years one of the wardens 
 of Kings Chapel, Boston. He was a strikingly 
 handsome old gentleman and I well remember him 
 as a conspicuous figure in the streets of Boston in 
 my early boyhood, not only because of his fine car 
 riage, but because he wore until his death the pic 
 turesque Continental costume which, at that time, 
 w r as practically obsolete. The "small clothes," with 
 knee and shoe buckles set with brilliants, made a 
 fine setting for his shapely limbs. He stood as a 
 model for the body of Stuart s portrait of Wash 
 ington, a picture, for aught I know, still hanging in 
 Faneuil Hall. It has been said he was the figure 
 O. W. Holmes refers to in his poem, "The Last 
 Leaf." 
 
 By descent Mrs. Alcott was a Jewett, one of the 
 most ancient of Boston families. She was one of 
 the noblest and most practical women I ever knew, 
 large-brained and whole-souled, with the manners 
 of a queen; a head like Harriet Martineau, but a 
 heart incomparably larger, and endowed with fas 
 cinating powers of conversation. She bore Mr. 
 Alcott s utter impracticability with wonderful pa 
 tience; equal to any emergency in any direction, 
 no matter how exceedingly tried. I can remember 
 
 28 
 
Family Life 
 
 but two or three instances where she manifested 
 impatience. Once, at some outrageously impracti 
 cal thing her husband had done, she exclaimed im 
 petuously : "I do wish people who carry their heads 
 in the clouds would occasionally take their bodies 
 with them." And I recall her saying upon another 
 occasion: "If I should send my husband for a 
 quart of milk, I should fully expect to have him 
 drive home a cow." 
 
 It w^as at Concord, in the refined, simple room 
 where the family gathered for mutual happy com 
 munion, for under all circumstances happiness 
 reigned supreme in this household, that Dr. Wil 
 lis, now regarded with the affection centered upon 
 a son and brother by the entire family, was in 
 formed by Mrs. Alcott as to the life at Fruitlands. 
 
 In so far as it is consistently possible it is the 
 purpose of this book to follow a chronological re 
 cording of the continuous period, of a trifle less 
 than ten years, during which Dr. Willis was either a 
 guest or a boarder in the Alcott family: the three 
 periods of Still River Village, Concord, and the 
 Pinckney and High Street houses in Boston ; touch 
 ing in a general manner upon the impressions re 
 ceived in these homes ; impressions that formed in 
 a large manner the man of charm, beauty of thought 
 and expression ; and then to return in a series of 
 more complete individual records formed in after 
 
 29 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 years riper years of Mr. Alcott and his daugh 
 ters, as well as some of the distinguished people 
 whom he met through them. 
 
 Of Fruitlands, Dr. Willis s notes say: "It was 
 in Concord in 1846, that Mrs. Alcott told me the 
 story of the failure of Mr. Alcott s Tremont 
 Street school conducted in the Masonic Temple, 
 a failure she largely attributed to the merciless 
 ridiculing of Harriet Martineau, saying, I well 
 remember, Thus Harriet Martineau took the bread 
 from the mouths of my family, and then spoke of 
 Fruitlands. In substance her story, told me with 
 smiling emotion, was as follows : After the failure 
 of the school, Mr. Alcott, upon visiting England, 
 became acquainted with an Englishman of some 
 means, Charles Lane, a man who was thoroughly 
 imbued with his own transcendentalism, and was 
 also a believer in Robert Owen s Communistic 
 ideas. Together, after returning to America, Mr. 
 Alcott and Mr. Lane attempted to found an Uto 
 pian community in the town of Harvard. They 
 bought a land-worn farm of about ninety acres 
 with an old house and barn upon it, which they 
 repaired and christened Fruitlands, Mrs. Alcott 
 said in subtle irony, since there was no fruit 
 upon the place save what little might be looked 
 for from a few venerable apple trees, less than 
 a dozen in number, and Mr. Alcott, his family, 
 
 30 
 
Family Life 
 
 Mr. Lane and his young son, with at the out 
 set five others, took up their abode there. With 
 the single exception of Mrs. Alcott, no adult among 
 them possessed a modicum of common sense, there 
 was but one practical agriculturist among them and 
 he an old man, and to any thinking person the ex 
 periment was foredoomed to failure. Under the 
 ideals forecast but one ending could be possible. 
 
 Indeed in any age the scheme of Fruitlands 
 would have been impossible since it was eminently 
 impractical of application to the simple principles 
 of common sense. The original pkn, which for 
 obvious reason to even these visionaries could not 
 be adhered to verbatim, was a remarkable one. All 
 labor was to be manual, man to supersede ox or 
 horse, and the spade to entirely replace the plow. 
 The pastures were to be transformed into bearing 
 orchards as if by the magic touch of the gods and 
 naught was to be raised save fruit, grain, and veg 
 etables. These were not to be cultivated, but 
 would, it was firmly believed, mature and ripen in 
 substance for the needs of the community through 
 Nature s processes alone, unaided by any fertiliza 
 tion or even any labor saving the sowing and reap 
 ing. No living thing upon the ninety acres of 
 Fruitlands was to be destroyed, neither weed nor 
 worm, since all living things were God s creatures 
 entitled to their natural or preferred sustenance. 
 
 31 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 Water was to be the only beverage, tea and 
 coffee tabooed since their production in the lands 
 from whence they came involved the use of slave 
 labor. For the same reason sugar or even salt 
 were not to be used. Milk, butter, and cheese 
 were considered as polluting as the flesh which 
 was their source, and eggs condemned for the 
 same reason. The day was to begin with the dawn, 
 when every one, young or old, should arise. Every 
 day was planned upon the lines of its predecessor; 
 beginning by bathing the body, this to be followed 
 by music prior to the breakfast of fruit, bread made 
 from unbolted flour, and water. From breakfast to 
 the midday meal every one was to find an useful 
 and congenial occupation, not essentially one that 
 urgently needed to be done but rather to the daily 
 taste and pleasure of the worker. After the midday 
 meal rest for the body from the labor of the morn 
 ing was to be found in serious conversation that 
 would, too, develop the mind. From thence to the 
 evening meal the same congenial labor of the morn 
 ing was to be engaged in, the company then assem 
 bling for exchange of thought and conversation un 
 til sundown, when every one was to retire. 
 
 No candles or oil were to be allowed since they 
 were of animal source. Despite this edict, Mrs. 
 Alcott told me, she kept a sperm oil lamp which 
 she used only after all had retired for light upon 
 
 32 
 
Family Life 
 
 the needed mending of clothing or for the single 
 pleasure of reading. Covering for the body was 
 to be of linen only, since cotton, wool, and silk 
 were not only the product of slave labor, but secur- 
 able only through the murder of worms and sheep. 
 With the coming of autumn the bubble burst. 
 The community of Fruitlands decreased person by 
 person until but the Lanes and Alcotts remained. 
 Towards early winter Mr. Lane and his son took 
 their departure, there remaining but Mr. Alcott, his 
 wife and the four girls, the philosopher still stead 
 fast and faithful to his dream. Mr. Lane as owner 
 of the property permitted the Alcotts to remain 
 until a tenant could be found, but denied them the 
 privilege of cutting wood or grinding any more 
 grain. It was then Mr. Alcott s health gave way 
 under the strain. He had firmly believed he was 
 to found in Fruitlands the Kingdom of Heaven 
 upon earth, and so solve for all time the life prob 
 lem for struggling humanity. His principles were 
 ever a religion to him, and unable to admit defeat 
 even in the face of it, he took to his bed to die. 
 Turning his face to the wall, he refused food and 
 water and silently, with the resignation of a phi 
 losopher, waited for death. Mrs. Alcott ministered 
 to him in devotion, silence, and suffering. For 
 weeks, taking but little food at her urgent sup 
 plications, his life hovered in the balance ; but when 
 
 33 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 death seemed close at hand, with all else within him 
 faltering, his quality of love for his wife and off 
 spring sustained him as a bird upon a fluttering 
 wing ; and with all else within him weary and worn, 
 death even beckoning, through the very quality of 
 his tender passion for his own, he rallied. Thus he 
 struggled back to life again. His heroic wife en 
 couraged and comforted him, sold everything she 
 could spare from their slender stock of household 
 goods, and rented four rooms from a neighbor who 
 owned a house in a village near by. Thither they 
 moved upon a December day and there Mrs. Alcott 
 sewed and Mr. Alcott chopped wood, together 
 making meager ends meet. 
 
 It was thus the family left Fruitlands in poverty 
 to reside in the half of the humble but homelike 
 house in the lovely little village of Still River, still 
 in the town of Harvard, where I made their ac 
 quaintance the year following in the manner I have 
 described and through which there came to me the 
 most beautiful friendship of my early life, a friend 
 ship lasting through many years. As I write it 
 all comes back to me like a golden halo resting 
 upon the fields of memory. 
 
IV 
 
 LOUISA AND HER SISTERS 
 
 LOUISA MAY, the Author, the "Joe" of 
 "Little Women," had a clear olive-brown 
 complexion with brown hair and eyes. 
 She answered perfectly an ideal of the 
 "Nut Brown Maid"; she was full of spirit and life; 
 impulsive and moody, and at times irritable and 
 nervous. She could run like a gazelle. She was the 
 most beautiful girl runner I ever saw. She could 
 leap a fence or climb a tree as well as any boy and 
 dearly loved a good romp. We have many times 
 clambered together into the topmost branches of 
 the tall trees at Hillside. She was passionately 
 fond of Nature, loved the fields and the forests 
 and was in special harmony with animal life. Her 
 brief and racy description of herself in the opening 
 chapter of "Little Women" is most accurately true: 
 "Fifteen-year-old Joe was very tall, thin and brown 
 and reminded one of a colt, for she never seemed to 
 know what to do with her long limbs which were 
 very much in her way. She had a decided mouth, 
 a comical nose, and sharp gray eyes which appeared 
 to see everything and were by turn fierce, funny, 
 
 35 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 or thoughtful. Her long thick hair was her one 
 beauty, but it was usually bundled into a net out 
 of the way. Round shoulders had Joe, big hands 
 and feet, a fly-away look to her clothes and the un 
 comfortable appearance of a girl who was rapidly 
 shooting up into a woman, and didn t like it." 
 
 Louisa had great love of personal beauty and 
 wide open eyes were her especial admiration. Her 
 own were rather small and, as mine were also, we 
 heartily sympathized with each other on this point. 
 One day after the family had moved to Boston 
 she was walking upon Washington Street. The 
 thought came to her: "Now if I keep my eyes 
 open people will think that I have beautiful large 
 eyes"; so she fixed her eyes in the manner she 
 thought would impart the most captivating expres 
 sion to her face and continued her promenade. She 
 began to notice that many looked at her intently, 
 and thought as a child might, they were admiring 
 her beautiful eyes, mentally congratulating herself 
 upon the success of her efforts. I had called dur 
 ing her absence and upon her return sat chatting 
 with Anna and her mother. As she entered the 
 room I exclaimed, "Why, Louisa, what on earth 
 ails you?" She made no reply, but walked directly 
 to the mirror, giving, the instant she looked into it, 
 a shriek of horror. She had retained the expression 
 upon her face that she had imagined so enhanced 
 
 36 
 
Louisa and Her Sisters 
 
 its beauty until she could get to a mirror and ob 
 serve for herself its effect, discovering, to her dis 
 may, that she had been parading Washington 
 Street with an insane stare upon her face. Her 
 effort to keep her eyelids open to their widest pos 
 sible extent had contracted the skin of her fore 
 head into wrinkles and the effect produced was 
 as of an insane person. As she explained to us 
 we burst into shouts of laughter and for a long 
 time afterwards we chaffed her unmercifully upon 
 the "well open eyes." 
 
 Louisa was an enthusiastic admirer of Dickens. 
 She reveled in his works and could recite many 
 chapters from memory. His literary style made an 
 indelible impression upon hers and the effect of 
 his humor is very perceptible in all her works. 
 His characters were living beings to her and she 
 was on terms of remarkably close intimacy with 
 all of them. She and her sister Anna often acted 
 in costume, inimitably, the quarrel scene between 
 Sairy Gamp and Betsey Prigg over the imaginary 
 Mrs. Harris, with all the accessories of the "tea 
 podge," and the pickled salmon, Anna taking the 
 part of Betsey Prigg and Louisa of Sairy Gamp. 
 I have rarely seen anything better in comedy by 
 professionals and I recall many instances of Mrs. 
 Alcott laughing until tears came to her eyes over 
 the girls performances. 
 
 37 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 I carried the first manuscript to press that Louisa 
 ever offered for publication, a story entitled "The 
 Prince and the Fairy." I took this story to the 
 "Boston Olive Branch," a paper published for 
 many years under the auspices of the Methodist de 
 nominations. Rev. and Mrs. C. W. Dennison, at 
 that time well known in the literary circles of Bos 
 ton, were the editors. Mrs. Dennison read the story 
 in my presence, accepted it, and paid me, for the 
 young author, the munificent sum of $5.00. I re 
 member well how I bore it to her with as much 
 exultation as if it had been $5,000. This story 
 filled about one and a half columns of the paper. 
 In comparatively a few years the lowest price 
 received for any article of equal length, she told 
 me, was $100. 
 
 Louisa always lamented she was not born a boy. 
 With the exception of rope skipping, at which she 
 excelled all of us in power of endurance, she pre 
 ferred boys games to those of her sex. But nothing 
 gave her more pleasure than plays arid tableaux. 
 She would conceive an idea and write a little drama 
 about it, cast all of us in well-chosen parts and di 
 rect, with her sister Anna, a fairly creditable chil 
 dren s performance. 
 
 One evening during the first summer at Concord 
 Mrs. Alcott mentioned Hamilton Willis of Boston, 
 whom her sister married. I knew well the story 
 
 38 
 
Louisa and Her Sisters 
 
 of my father s family and from what I said Mrs. 
 Alcott discovered he was a distant cousin of Ham 
 ilton Willis and, that consequently, I was remotely 
 related in law but not in blood. This last decision 
 of "Marmee s" was a source of regret to the two 
 elder sisters, but they decided very seriously that I 
 was a "real cousin" notwithstanding, and that a 
 play should be written telling the story. Louisa 
 forthwith spent two days upon a play she entitled 
 "The Long Lost Cousin," which we performed be 
 fore Mr. and Mrs. Alcott and Mr. Emerson under 
 the trees about Hillside and in which, under my own 
 name, I was given the principal part. At its end 
 we were to raise our flag upon the cupola of the 
 house. But as we did not have a flag, nor know 
 where we could borrow one, Louisa and Anna, with 
 an old red flannel skirt and some strips of muslin, 
 together with an old blue flannel cape upon which 
 were sewn white muslin stars, made a very credit 
 able looking National banner which was raised with 
 enthusiasm and flew for many days afterwards, to 
 our childish joy and admiration. 
 
 Louisa M. Alcott left to the young people of her 
 own and coming generations the legacy of her clean, 
 sweet, and pure books. One might look in vain 
 for any great art in them, but their ethics cannot 
 be questioned nor the brilliancy and sparkling qual 
 ity of her style. All her books should live. But, 
 
 39 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 as is often the case, the fame of an author finally 
 rests enshrined within a certain work. Louisa s is 
 "Little Women." Its immense popularity and 
 steadily continued sale through all the years, as well 
 as the wonderful success of the play recently 
 adapted from it, is due directly to its truth and 
 fidelity to real life. But the very slenderest thread 
 of fiction runs through it. And truth, genuine truth 
 sincerely stated, will live within or without the cov 
 ers of a book. In most of the scenes portrayed in 
 "Little Women" up to the time of Lizzie s death, I 
 enacted a part. Just after this book was published, 
 and when the first edition w r as selling rapidly, I 
 met Louisa s proud and happy father in the Fitch- 
 burg Station in Boston. He came up to me, beam 
 ing, and rubbing his hands together in a manner 
 quite peculiar to himself when well pleased, saying : 
 "Well, my boy, did you recognize yourself as Lau 
 rie in Louisa s book?" I had just returned from 
 abroad, the book having been issued while I was 
 away, and I had to confess I had not read it. I 
 immediately procured a copy and absorbed w r ith 
 delight its realistic descriptions of familiar, well 
 remembered scenes. 
 
 Louisa M. Alcott was noble and true in her 
 impulses. She had a tender and beautiful side to 
 her nature. This quality was charmingly expressed 
 in her hospital experiences during the Civil War, 
 
 40 
 
Louisa and Her Sisters 
 
 and in her pathetic "Hospital Sketches" there are 
 very true glimpses of it. She made a brave, heroic, 
 winning struggle through adversity to success and 
 fame, lifting, through this success, the entire family 
 from poverty and deprivation to comfort and af 
 fluence. She had a naturally vivacious, keen-witted 
 view of life and was extraordinarily quick at repar 
 tee. From my matriculative year at Harvard, until 
 shortly before my marriage, I maintained a corre 
 spondence with Louisa. It is a matter of deep 
 regret to me that, together with many papers of 
 value, her letters, which w r ere among my most 
 valued treasures, were stolen. They were full of 
 a sparkling wit and humor, particularly the series 
 written to me during my college life, wherein she 
 was "Mrs. Propriety Coreander" and I was her 
 only son, "Thomas Propriety Coreander." They 
 were full of frolicsome and serious advice and ad 
 monition suitable for every occasion of my college 
 experience and daily conduct. 
 
 If I were asked to designate two words best 
 describing Louisa I should say wit and tenderness. 
 Her witticisms were sparkling as a brook and as 
 continuous as its flow. Once when asked a defini 
 tion of a philosopher she instantly replied, "A man 
 up in a balloon with his family at the strings tug 
 ging to pull him down." Her big heart ached at the 
 burden of poverty under which her family rested 
 
 41 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 and it was due to the element of tenderness in her 
 nature that she persisted in her literary work 
 through all sorts of failures and disappointments 
 until success crowned her efforts with "Little Wo 
 men." It has been said that genius is the capacity 
 of taking infinite pains. If so, it is also the capacity 
 of indomitable perseverance. Louisa owed her great 
 success as much to these qualities as to any talent or 
 natural endowment. The "blood and thunder" sto 
 ries written by her and sold to inferior magazines 
 and newspapers brought a pittance for the family 
 exchequer, but were of more value as practice in 
 the art of story writing. To these she owed her 
 ready style when it came to the writing of her 
 masterpiece. She was ashamed of these stories in 
 later years, but she need not have been, for while 
 they catered to a crude taste they were never un 
 clean or unworthy, or in violation of any canon 
 of propriety or morality. 
 
 Her muse was dramatic and had she lived in 
 these days and formulated her talent along dra 
 matic lines her success would have been a marked 
 one. 
 
 Elizabeth Sewell, the third daughter, the "Beth" 
 of "Little Women," was aptly named by her father 
 "Little Tranquillity." Pages would not better de 
 scribe her. She was possessed of an even, lovable 
 disposition, a temperament akin to Mr. Alcott, in- 
 
 42 
 
Louisa and Her Sisters 
 
 deed more than akin, since it was a very counter 
 part. Under any and all conditions she was as sunny 
 and serene as a morning in June. Her appearance 
 was that of a typical Puritan maid. In her book 
 Louisa calls her "a rosy, smooth-haired, bright-eyed 
 girl with a shy manner, a timid voice, and a peaceful 
 expression which was seldom disturbed ; she seemed 
 to live in a world of her own, only venturing out to 
 meet the few whom she loved and trusted." She 
 loved music, played the piano with more ease than 
 any of her sisters and with something of real appre 
 ciation. 
 
 She was possessed of her mother s practicality 
 and housewifely qualities, and at a very early age 
 aided in the preparation of the simple family re 
 pasts ; later, and particularly while the family lived 
 in Boston and Mrs. Alcott was directing her Intel 
 ligence Offices, taking full charge of the family 
 kitchen. She died upon the threshold of woman 
 hood. Her fame rests in the purity and innocent 
 charm of memory she bequeathed to those who 
 knew her and, in the broader sense, the perpetua 
 tion of these same qualities to the thousands who 
 have read "Little Women," and hence know her 
 as a wholesome character in a sweet and whole 
 some story. 
 
 Anna Bronson, the eldest of the four girls and 
 the "Meg" of "Little Women," had a clematis 
 
 43 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 and wild rose complexion, wide open blue eyes, 
 and a wealth of golden hair. The Still River 
 summer, I had nicknamed her "The Ox-eyed Juno" 
 and for years after so called her. She had the calm 
 poise of her father, a more amiable disposition than 
 any of her sisters, was possessed of a quiet, keen 
 sense of humor, and while taking full part in our 
 play enjoyed the fun and frolic with a certain dig 
 nified zest that was in no sense a pose but rather a 
 part of her. 
 
 She was possessed of genuine dramatic ability 
 and would, as Louisa, have brought honor and 
 credit to the stage had she adopted it as a profes 
 sion. She married John Pratt, son of Minot Pratt 
 of Concord, and was early left a widow with two 
 sons whom Louisa educated. I had not seen her 
 for many years when shortly after the death of 
 Louisa and Mr. Alcott I called upon her at her 
 home in Boston. She was then the sole surviving 
 member of the famity. We spent a pleasant after 
 noon together talking over the halcyon days of our 
 youth and early friendship. As she bade me good- 
 by she said: "You know you always were our 
 Laurie." 
 
 Abba May, the youngest, and the "Amy" of 
 "Little Women," was a slender girl with the clear 
 complexion of her father and had blue eyes and 
 golden hair. Being the baby of the family and 
 
 44 
 
Louisa and Her Sisters 
 
 much petted she was inclined to be childishly tyran 
 nical at times. "Abby" May, as she was called by 
 all, was very active and, after Louisa, the biggest 
 romp among her sisters. She was fond of sketch 
 ing and her little drawings were a source of admi 
 ration to all of us. That she had genuine talent 
 as an artist was evidenced in her studies abroad 
 after the success of Louisa s book, where it was 
 said she won honors at her chosen profession. She 
 died young, never returning to America, after her 
 marriage, I think in Switzerland, to Ernest Nieri- 
 ken, an artist, by whom she had one child. I never 
 saw or heard from her after she crossed the At 
 lantic. 
 
ALCOTT THE PHILOSOPHER 
 
 AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT above all 
 other things is distinguished as the 
 founder of the first American School of 
 Philosophy. He was "vera causa" of the 
 New England School of Transcendentalism, and 
 the most earnest advocate of its religio-philosophi- 
 cal ideas. He enlisted for it the sympathies and 
 active support of his personal friend, Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson, and others. This philosophy had little in 
 concord with Kantism despite the latter doctrine is 
 generally classified as transcendentalistic. 
 
 Mr. Alcott s mental and philosophical attitude, 
 and a distinguished authority s definition of New 
 England Transcendentalism, are one: "character 
 ized by the absence of a formal system of belief, a 
 somewhat mystical phraseology, the exaltation of 
 the spiritual in a general sense over the material, a 
 tendency to synthesis of God, Nature and man, an 
 acceptance of all human manifestations as natural 
 and not immoral, an apotheosis of Nature, and a 
 belief in the self-sufficiency of the individual and 
 individual insight." 
 
 46 
 
Alcott the Philosopher 
 
 Mr. Alcott aimed at a construction of substances, 
 elements, and average mentalities into new forms, 
 and had the sublime courage of his convictions to 
 such an extent as to make an earnest effort to bring 
 them about. This pure, good, impractical dreamer 
 literally carried his head in the heavens until his 
 dying day. He was as firmly convinced of the 
 practicality of his philosophy after a disastrous ex 
 periment, as before it. But he was a true philoso 
 pher nevertheless. Long ere his death he realized 
 in a spirit of rare humor his fame would go down 
 to posterity not as an expounder of the science of 
 principles but as his daughter s father. After the 
 phenomenal success of "Little Women," while he 
 was traveling in the middle West, he wrote home 
 to his wife: "I am having a delightful time riding 
 about in Louisa s chariot and being adored every 
 where, not for myself nor my beliefs, but as the 
 grandfather of Little Women. " 
 
 Practicality and Mr. Alcott were as wide apart 
 as the poles. He was utterly incapable of earning 
 a livelihood and, in consequence, of supporting his 
 family, w r hom he nevertheless loved in a deeply gen 
 uine manner. He had no conception or understand 
 ing of the poverty and need in his home, even when 
 straits were dire indeed. Upon one occasion, typ 
 ical of many ere the success of "Little Women," 
 he was presented by Emerson with $25. Without 
 
 47 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 a thought as to the necessities lacking in his house 
 hold, he expended every penny upon elaborate sta 
 tionery, which he smilingly brought home as a child 
 would a new toy. I should define Mr. Alcott s 
 philosophy as the extreme polar opposite of Mate 
 rialism. He gave unequivocal supremacy to spirit ; 
 it was Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the 
 ending, in which all things and all beings are in 
 volved and out of which, evolved. This was really 
 his basic foundation. Of Nature he says, "Nature 
 is not fixed, but fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, makes 
 it." 
 
 I was altogether too young to grasp much of 
 his system of philosophy in those days. It was 
 too abstract for my young mind to even attempt 
 to comprehend. But I remember that his Orphic 
 sayings were an unknown tongue to the majority 
 of mature years. A few will serve as illustra 
 tive of all of them. 
 
 Of organization he said: "Possibly organiza 
 tion is not a necessary function or mode of spir 
 itual being. The time may come in the endless 
 career of the soul when the facts of incarnation, 
 birth, death, descent into matter, and ascension 
 from it, shall comprise no part of her history; 
 when she herself shall survey this human life with 
 emotions akin to those of the naturalist on examin 
 ing the relics of extinct races of beings; when 
 
 48 
 
Alcott the Philosopher 
 
 mounds, sepulchres, monuments, epitaphs, shall 
 serve but as memoirs of a past state of existence; 
 as reminiscences of one metempsychosis of her life 
 in time." 
 
 Of the Teacher: "The true teacher defends his 
 pupils against his own personal influence. He in 
 spires self-trust. He guides their eyes from him 
 self to the spirit that quickens him. He will have 
 no disciples. A noble artist, he has visions of excel 
 lence and revelations of beauty which he has neither 
 impersonated in character nor embodied in words. 
 His life and teachings are but studies for yet nobler 
 ideals." This recognizes the grand truth that the 
 ultimate of all educational processes or systems 
 should be the preservation and development of the 
 individuality of the pupil. 
 
 Of Life: "Life, in its initial state, is synthetic; 
 then feeling, thought, action, are one and indivis 
 ible; love is its manifestation. Childhood and wo 
 manhood are samples and instances. But thought 
 disintegrates and breaks this unity of soul; action 
 alone restores it. Action is composition; thought, 
 decomposition. Deeds executed in love are grace 
 ful, harmonious, entire; enacted from thought 
 merely, they are awkward, dissonant, incomplete, 
 a manufacture, not creations, not works of genius." 
 
 Of Genesis: "The popular genesis is historical. 
 It is written to sense not to the soul. Two prin- 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 ciples, diverse and alien, interchange the Godhead 
 and sway the world by turns. God is dual. Spirit 
 is derivative identity. Unity is actual merely. The 
 poles of things are not integrated: creation globed 
 and orbed. Yet in the true genesis Nature is globed 
 in the material, souls orbed in the spiritual, firma 
 ment. Love globes, wisdom orbs, all things. As 
 magnet the steel, so spirit attracts matter, which 
 trembles to traverse the poles of diversity and rest 
 in the bosom of unity. All genesis is of love. Wis 
 dom is her form, beauty her costume." 
 
 This is perhaps the most paradoxical of his nu 
 merous Orphic sayings and the one most violently 
 opposed to generally accepted tenets. When pro 
 mulgated it met with a storm of ridicule and con 
 tempt from the leading papers of Boston, the aris 
 tocratic literary coterie of Beacon Street, the entire 
 materialistic school of thought of the day, and even 
 by many who in after years became Mr. Alcott s 
 warmest friends and admirers. This criticism gave 
 keen distress to his devoted wife and contributed 
 very largely to the breaking up of his Boston Philo 
 sophical School. A letter of Mrs. Alcott s to her 
 brother, Rev. Samuel J. May, says in part: "You 
 have seen how roughly they have handled my hus 
 band. He has been a sufferer but not the less a 
 sufferer because quiet. He stands to it, through 
 all, that this is not an ungrateful, cruel world. I 
 
 50 
 
Alcott the Philosopher 
 
 rail; he reasons and consoles me as if I were the 
 injured one. I do not know a more exemplary hero 
 under trials than this same Visionary. He has 
 more philosophy than half the persons who are 
 afraid he is thinking too much. His school is very 
 small, or will be at the commencement of the next 
 quarter. He will begin with about ten or a dozen 
 here for the summer term. I sometimes think ex 
 treme poverty awaits us. With the idea comes 
 before my mind a thousand enterprises and expe 
 dients. But oh! my girls! what exposure may they 
 be subjected to! I do not woo doubt but I wed 
 sorrow and I surely do not need that alliance to 
 promote either my faith or hope. How ready men 
 are to accuse ; how slow to defend ! I am no angel, 
 though I expect to be one of these days. I have 
 never aspired to any kind of a pinion but a goose- 
 quill and I shall be very apt to flop that about when 
 there is anybody who cares to see my flight." 
 
 During the second summer that I lived with them 
 at Concord an elaborately bound volume addressed 
 to Mr. Alcott arrived by post from Germany. I 
 do not remember the name of the author or the 
 title of the book save that it was written by a then 
 famous German Philosopher. Imprinted upon the 
 cover was a bust of Mr. Alcott and beneath it, in 
 letters of gold, one of his "Orphic Sayings." I 
 have never forgotten the ecstatic expression that 
 
 51 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 came upon Mrs. Alcott s face as she looked upon 
 it, realizing it was something more than a mere 
 compliment. To her it was a token of recognition 
 from a high authority of her husband s fitness to 
 rank among the famous thinkers of the day. She 
 trod veritably upon air for days; and the manner 
 in which she exhibited the book to friends who 
 called was, I remember, in an indescribable blend 
 ing of pride, dignity, and intense satisfaction. 
 
 I recall, in this connection, that it was but a few 
 years after that Emerson s poem "Brahma" was 
 published in an early number of the then new 
 Atlantic Monthly. I am not certain but what it 
 was in the initial number. I well recall that the 
 storm of ridicule this poem caused, almost equaled 
 in intensity that which descended upon Mr. Al 
 cott s Orphic Sayings. It was as equally incom 
 prehensible to the average reader. For a reason 
 which immediately follows I insert here : 
 
 BRAHMA 
 
 If the red slayer think he slays, 
 
 Or if the slain think he is slain, 
 They know not well the subtle ways 
 
 I keep, and pass, and turn again. 
 
 Far or forgot to me is near; 
 
 Shadow and sunlight are the same. 
 The vanished gods to me appear; 
 
 And one to me are shame and fame. 
 
 52 
 
Alcott the Philosopher 
 
 They reckon ill who leave me out; 
 
 When me they fly, I am the wings; 
 I am the doubter and the doubt, 
 
 And I the hymn the Brahma sings. 
 
 The strong gods pine for my abode, 
 
 And pine in vain the sacred seven ; 
 But thou, meek lover of the good ! 
 
 Find me, and turn thy back on Heaven. 
 
 As a remarkable evidence of the sympathy be 
 tween the poet and the philosopher another of the 
 latter s Orphic Sayings seems to me most appro 
 priate, not only for similarity s sake as an interest 
 ing example of a prose and poetical treatment of 
 the same thought, but because the prose outlines 
 the fundamental principles of Mrs. Eddy s Chris 
 tian Science almost uncannily, despite its predating 
 this doctrine very many years. 
 
 "Evil has no positive existence. It has usurped 
 a positive place and being in the popular imagina 
 tion and by the imagination must be made to flee 
 away into negative life. How shall this be done? 
 By shadowing forth in vivid colors the absolute 
 beauty and phenomena of good; by assuming evil 
 not as positive but as negative; the dark back 
 ground and blot in the picture by contrast. God 
 alone is eternal good, eternal truth. Evil, like 
 its prototype darkness, is not a thing at all but the 
 absence of a thing." 
 
 53 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 During years of adversity Mr. Alcott con 
 ducted his school in Boston. It was not a success, 
 due as much to Harriet Martineau s scathing and 
 merciless ridicule as to the methods and system of 
 the teacher, whose ideas of instruction were based 
 upon the Pestalozzi method. This was so novel, 
 strange, and totally different from anything in 
 American education, that all manner of derision 
 was made of it. Mr. Alcott was really the pioneer 
 of this kindergarten system in America and merely 
 lived ahead of his day. 
 
 As an interesting example of the School s meth 
 ods, I copy from my journal notes of the last ses 
 sion I attended in 1853. These sessions were al 
 ways conversational and, in this instance, outlined 
 the teacher s idea of a philosophical career. The 
 subject of the evening was Plato, the discussion 
 ensuing after Mr. Alcott s preliminary remarks 
 upon the Greek and his philosophy. 
 
 Some one asked: "Do you think it makes any 
 difference in regard to Oneness as a person or as 
 a thing?" 
 
 Mr. Alcott: "I do not see how I could worship 
 a thing, nor the thing, nor the thought. I don t 
 see how I could worship a principle. I don t see 
 how I could worship a law. I don t see how I 
 could worship an idea. I do see how I could wor 
 ship the Oneness that contains them all and out 
 
 54 
 
Alcott the Philosopher 
 
 of which they all flow. Worship is not only neces 
 sary but essential. There was never a soul that 
 did not worship. The very essence and life of the 
 soul is worship. The babe, according to its capac 
 ity, worships the fair face that looks upon it and 
 the orb from which it takes its nourishment. The 
 belief in reminiscence or pre-existence, is not Pla 
 to s alone. It did not originate with him. He bor 
 rowed it from Egypt or the East and incorporated 
 it into his philosophy believing it to be an unques 
 tionable truth. If any one can remember when he 
 did not remember himself, then must he be left 
 to question and reason it out as he may; but if 
 any one remembers when he did not remember, 
 then it is plain there is a depth of memory in him 
 that he has not sounded and that he is older than 
 he knows. If his grandmother insists that she 
 knows his age and has marked it in the family reg 
 ister grandmother may be pardoned for her de 
 lightful superstition about her grandchild s origin, 
 even though present at his bodily advent. My im 
 pression is that the babe is as old as his grand 
 mother; not that the babe descends into time and 
 takes his body in the same period of the world 
 that she does. Here is good history, correct chro 
 nology, important to family folk in these senses, 
 but as soon as these transcend their senses by 
 thought, they find themselves, babe and all, older 
 
 55 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 than they can tell." 
 
 Some one asked : "Did not Plato base his theory 
 upon the fact that we have intuitions? That we can 
 compare the ideas we receive consciously through 
 the senses with the intuitions that come we know 
 not whence?" 
 
 Mr. Alcott: "If Plato were to speak he might 
 say it is because we contain all things within our 
 selves, we are older than all things visible, we pre 
 date all things visible because we preceded timt and 
 space, therefore can we translate ourselves out of 
 time into space and look down upon our immortal 
 ity. Why should it not be so? Why not have a 
 perspective opening into eternity as well as an open 
 ing before us into futurity? Why should not the 
 Godhead reveal himself through the retrospects of 
 memory as well as through the prospects of imagi 
 nation? Through the recollections as well as 
 through the instincts of faith and hope ? If the soul 
 is not older than the body it cannot be proven it will 
 survive the body. So the fathers of the church be 
 lieved; asserting that unless you can prove its pre- 
 existence you have no evidence that it may not 
 decay ; for if the soul be an atom, or a coalesced body 
 of atoms, matter only, mere perishable stuff, then 
 what evidence is there it shall not dissolve? But if 
 every atom of matter is animated, God embracing, 
 then we are as immortal as Himself. So Plato 
 
 56 
 
Alcott the Philosopher 
 
 taught. So Christ taught. Whoever needs other 
 proof has none. Whoever hopes to prove his im 
 mortality by miracle or logic fails. The proof 
 transcends understanding. It cannot be proved by 
 one faculty alone but requires the united action of 
 all the faculties." 
 
 This school of Mr. Alcott s, despite its failure, 
 brought from all parts of the country very many 
 distinguished men of learning who evinced a genu 
 ine respect for the man, his method, and his work. 
 Some years afterwards when the success of "Little 
 Women" made it financially possible, Louisa, 
 whose love for her father was very devoted despite 
 she had little sympathy with his transcendentalism, 
 had erected in Concord a little house which was 
 known as "The Alcott School of Philosophy." It 
 was very simple and primitive following her father s 
 wishes; resembling a tiny mission chapel with no 
 ornament whatsoever, even the lumber remaining 
 unpainted. It was no more successful than the 
 Boston School, although it had the prestige and 
 attendance of many noted people, including 
 Emerson, Thoreau, F. L. Harris, Julia Ward 
 Howe, and Louise Chandler Moulton. 
 
 Mr. Alcott lived his philosophy. He believed in 
 it so thoroughly that to his intimates his daily life 
 exemplified this point far more than his teachings 
 or writings. I have read everything his able pen 
 
 57 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 has uttered. My most lasting impressions, how 
 ever, are the memories of his simple Sunday after 
 noon talks. Upon these occasions he laid aside the 
 language of his public utterances, substituting sim 
 ple concise English expressed with such charm and 
 direction that we elder children had no difficulty in 
 fully comprehending him. I recall the general 
 tenor and much of the phraseology of some of these 
 delightful conversations; of one instance my jour 
 nal records: "There are no limitations to ideas 
 but there are certain principles from which must 
 spring all true ideas and on the basis of which all 
 principles must rest. A departure from these is 
 an emergence at once into difficulties and doubts, 
 into uncertainties and mischances." 
 
 "But," I asked, "how can one know these prin 
 ciples?" 
 
 "They are the light that light eth every man that 
 cometh in the world," he replied; "they appeal to 
 every consciousness. It is not because men mistake 
 them that they build upon them errors of philos 
 ophy or religion, but because they seek to bend 
 these simple truths to suit conditions that do not 
 accord with them. That is, they endeavor to take 
 these foundation stones out of the Temple of Truth 
 and fit them into a structure of their own. I will 
 give you two or three principles that will be suffi 
 cient for your guidance through life, but will be of 
 
 58 
 
Alcott the Philosopher 
 
 no avail unless you strive to fit them to your life 
 and make them the foundation stones upon which 
 to build your character. 
 
 First: The Infinite Supreme, the creator of all 
 life. God, our Father, and His inseparable co-rel 
 ative man, our brother. 
 
 Second: The divine in the human. This is the 
 undying force within every human soul and its 
 means of growth. It is the destiny of this divine 
 spark to glow and finally shine forth in splendor. 
 There is no power nor circumstance here or here 
 after, that can control the development of this 
 force. 
 
 Third: The spirit and all its attributes in man 
 are eternal." 
 
 Mr. Alcott believed it w r as upon these principles, 
 true in themselves, that false structures, false theo 
 logical conceptions, among them total depravity, 
 an endless hell of physical torture, immediate sanc- 
 tification that permitted a murderer from a scaf 
 fold to enter the highest heaven, had been built. 
 The result of all these he believed to be the shaping 
 of the future into unnatural condition ; a dead fu 
 ture separated from a living present. As he spoke, 
 he became wonderfully radiant, I well remember. 
 He defined the soul as an entity that, after the body 
 was dead, lived on subject to a higher strata of the 
 same moral, social, and intellectual laws as governed 
 
 59 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 the body ere dissolution. For Jesus the man, Mr. 
 Alcott manifested a loving admiration and a tender 
 regard. It was not worship. 
 
 One day I asked him if he thought Jesus held 
 any vital relation to the living present. I cannot 
 recall the details of his reply and my journal does 
 not record it; but I remember that he believed 
 Jesus held as real and significant a relation to hu 
 manity as He did when He died centuries before; 
 and unfaltering faith in all the attributes, faculties, 
 and power of the spirit of man compelled him to 
 believe in the interpenetration of two spheres of 
 being; that the law of sympathy alone was suffi 
 ciently possible to bring a man under the individual 
 guidance and influence of Jesus Himself. 
 
 I remember this was to me an intensely interest 
 ing conversation. I was startled by his declaring 
 any living man might truthfully assert, as did 
 Jesus in substance, "I am the cause and producer 
 of all things, for you can place no man outside of 
 infinity." I think more than any other one thing 
 Mr. Alcott s philosophy influenced my life course. 
 I look back over the hills and valleys of memory 
 and, seeing this, I gratefully acknowledge. As I 
 write the vividness of imprint he made upon my 
 boy mind in many conversations comes back to me 
 as fresh and green as the first leaves in an April 
 wood. 
 
 60 
 
Alcott the Philosopher 
 
 I made copious notes in my journal without at 
 the time fully realizing their consequence. This 
 man was in many senses as a father to me as his 
 wife was a mother to me. I had been brought up 
 in extreme bigotry and here was a breadth of view 
 that seemed to go to the other extreme coming from 
 the lips of one I revered and loved, showing me 
 a God quite different from the One my grand 
 mother pointed out to me as constantly threaten 
 ing fire and brimstone. 
 
 Later in my life, while still a young man, I 
 evolved from these notes the theme and substance 
 of a public utterance I delivered from a Michigan 
 pulpit. I have been a practitioner of the two so- 
 called learned professions. Before I began the 
 study of medicine in New York City at the out 
 break of the Civil War I had been a settled clergy 
 man for a period of six years in Coldwater, Michi 
 gan. After my resignation as Professor of 
 Materia-Medica at the New York Homoeopathic 
 Medical College for Women, where I spent five 
 years of my life, I practiced medicine in New York, 
 Boston, and my summer home in Glenora, N. Y., 
 on Seneca Lake, until a few months ago when I 
 reached my eighty-third year. It is nearly half 
 a century, therefore, since I followed the ministry 
 as a profession. But I well recall the particular 
 address I refer to as having delivered from my 
 
 61 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 Coldwater pulpit. The Alcott philosophy upon 
 which it was based is as purely and wholly true 
 to-day as it was then, as unchanged in lovely beauty 
 as the philosophy of Epictetus. In small part, I 
 quote it here: 
 
 "Events record themselves as facts but progress 
 as principles. The voice of true progress calls to 
 every attribute of the soul and bids it come up 
 higher. The prophetic voice of the future speaks 
 to intellect, conscience, and heart alike. It reaches 
 the beauteous domain of art; it echoes through the 
 writings of all the ages; it is the source of every 
 creative inspiration; it permeates in its demand for 
 better mechanism and higher achievements the 
 workshop, factory and farm. It evolves the hon 
 est man, who to be such, must believe in the honesty 
 of others, as it evolves the virtuous man, whom to 
 be such must first believe in the virtue of others. 
 To talk learnedly of God may be considered the 
 mark of a Christian; but he only truly knows any 
 thing of God who reveals Him in his own life. 
 Christianity is a power inasmuch and but just to 
 the extent that it is a living fact. Christianity 
 does not make Christians but Christians make 
 Christianity. We wonder what life means with 
 its cares and struggles, its trials and sorrows. In 
 age or youth we can look back upon an unattained 
 goal, a dreariness of routine, a tyranny of demand. 
 
 62 
 
Alcott the Philosopher 
 
 But if we would see that the whole of life s busi 
 ness tends towards growth, that growth is just 
 experience molding us into better men and 
 women, then we truly look over petty mountains 
 at the beautiful valley below. When we can fully 
 realize this great truth, and then only, we welcome 
 every experience, joyous or grievous, that comes 
 to us." 
 
 Mr. Alcott s last literary effort was the poem 
 written after the death of his beloved friend Emer 
 son, which he read at Emerson s funeral. It was 
 his final public word of mouth. Emerson was his 
 nearest, dearest, most faithful and most genuine 
 friend. He never recovered from the shock of the 
 poet s death. Not long after the funeral, while 
 he was correcting the proofs of a memorial, he 
 was stricken with paralysis. The preceding spring 
 he had written forty sonnets arid the summer fol 
 lowing delivered fifty lectures. He was then 
 eighty-three years of age. For a period of six 
 years he lived on, but as a helpless invalid. Louisa 
 devoted herself unceasingly to his care until com 
 pelled by her own rapidly declining health to leave 
 him in the care of others. 
 
 As soon as I heard of his paralysis I hastened 
 to Boston. I wanted to see him again and tell 
 him once more what an inestimable blessing I con 
 sidered my connection with him and his family 
 
 63 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 had been to me. But I was unable. His attend 
 ing physician had strictly ordered he should see 
 no one save his attendants. This denial of a last 
 opportunity to see Amos Bronson Alcott alive was 
 one of the keen disappointments of my life. 
 
 "As the twig is bent the tree inclines." During 
 the most impressionable period of my youth this 
 kindly good man shaped and molded me. He 
 instilled within me elements of character that now 
 as an octogenarian I can truthfully say I have 
 aimed, with I hope a tiny success, to make the 
 ruling principles of my life. 
 
VI 
 
 ALCOTT THE ABOLITIONIST 
 
 MR, ALCOTT at a very early period 
 became deeply interested in William 
 Lloyd Garrison s Anti-Slavery move 
 ment. It at once appealed to his 
 broad humanitarian spirit and he became one of 
 its most ardent advocates. 
 
 In 1830, Garrison was arrested in Baltimore for 
 "assault upon the person" of a sea captain who was 
 taking a party of slaves from that city to New 
 Orleans. He was released from prison through 
 the efforts of Arthur Tappan, a Boston merchant, 
 and subsequently came to Boston with the inten 
 tion of creating his famed Abolitionist paper, the 
 "Liberator." Desirous of giving three lectures in 
 the city, he could find neither church nor theater 
 that would open its doors to him. He thereupon 
 decided to address an open air meeting on the 
 Common, but an "infidel preacher" who had rented 
 a hall in which he was holding meetings hospitably 
 offered its use to the young orator and the lectures 
 were given there. 
 
 65 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 Mrs. Alcott s brother, Rev. Samuel J. May, then 
 in Boston on a visit, writes in his "Recollections" 
 the following account of the impression he received 
 from the first lecture: "I had not then seen this 
 resolute young man. I had heard of his imprison 
 ment, was eager to hear him, and went to Julien 
 Hall on the appointed evening. My brother-in- 
 law, A. Bronson Alcott, and my cousin, Samuel 
 A. Sewall, accompanied me. Never was I so af 
 fected by the speech of man. When he had ceased 
 speaking I said, This is a providential man, we 
 ought to know him, we ought to help him. Come, 
 let us go and give him our hands. Mr. Sewall 
 and Mr. Alcott went with me and we introduced 
 each other. Mr. Alcott invited Garrison to his 
 house. He came and we sat with him until past 
 midnight listening to his discourse. That night 
 my soul was baptized in his spirit and ever since 
 I have been a disciple of and fellow laborer with 
 William Lloyd Garrison." 
 
 Then followed five years during which Mr. 
 Alcott, absorbed in other matters, remained 
 quiescent in the Anti- Slavery cause but still as 
 true as steel to principles imbibed from Garrison. 
 Finally, in 1835, Garrison was mobbed in Boston. 
 By strategy he was rescued from the fury of an 
 angry pro-slavery mob that was bent upon lynch 
 ing him and taken to Leverett Street jail. I think 
 
 66 
 
Alcott the Abolitionist 
 
 it was upon this occasion he gave utterance to the 
 famous sentence: "I will not hesitate, I will not 
 prevaricate, and I will be heard." He was soon 
 liberated, the excitement died down, and there was 
 another period of comparative quiet. 
 
 In the meantime the Abolitionists were steadily 
 gaining ground through the unwearied efforts of 
 Garrison, the silver-tongued orator Wendell Phil 
 lips, and the "Boanerges of New Hampshire," Par 
 ker Pillsbury, whose nature was as rugged as the 
 granite hills that encircled his birthplace, yet as ten 
 der in its depth as a woman s. He believed with 
 Wesley, that slavery was the sum total of human 
 villainies and some of his invectives against it were 
 vigorously masterly in power of expression. Sarah 
 and Angelina Grymke, South Carolina slave 
 holders, became ardent converts to Abolition, liber 
 ated their slaves under due process of law, sold 
 their Southern estate, and removed to Philadelphia, 
 where they joined the Society of Friends. They 
 were both cultured women gifted with a brilliant 
 oratory, and became well known in the North as 
 anti-slavery lecturers. One of them afterwards 
 married Theodore Weld, a distinguished New 
 England educator, a compeer of Horace Mann, 
 Stephen and Abbie Kelley Foster, Lucretia Mott, 
 Lucy Stone, Theodore Parker and George Thomp 
 son, the brilliant Englishman who participated in 
 
 67 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 the crusade instituted by William Wilberforce re 
 sulting in the banishment of slavery from all British 
 possessions. Later in my life I became personally 
 acquainted with all I have here mentioned, save, 
 of course, Wilberforce, who died a little after my 
 birth. 
 
 I was a red-hot little Abolitionist myself when 
 but ten years of age. My grandmother sent me 
 one afternoon to a little variety store in the vicinity 
 of our home to purchase some few notions she was 
 in need of. The store was kept by an old couple 
 who were ardent Abolitionists. In its rear they 
 kept a small circulating library containing all the 
 Anti- Slavery books that had been published at 
 that early period. While waiting my turn to be 
 served I spied a book lying upon the counter. I 
 took it up and was soon immersed in the horrors 
 of slavery portrayed in most vivid language. I 
 was fascinated, horror-stricken. There was a stool 
 in a corner formed by a turn in the counter. I sank 
 down upon it and read on and on, oblivious of my 
 errand, of the lapse of time, and of everything else 
 but the text before my eyes. I sat unnoticed until 
 a maid came running in. She had been sent in 
 search of me by my grandmother, who had become 
 alarmed at my long absence. 
 
 I have looked back upon this experience as a 
 genuine influence upon my life. It introduced me 
 
 68 
 
Alcott the Abolitionist 
 
 to a much broader sphere of life than I could have 
 otherwise attained. The old lady at the store was 
 very kind to me. Seeing that I w r as interested in 
 the subject that lay so near her heart, she encour 
 aged me to call as often as I liked and prepared 
 for me a little secluded nook in the rear of the store 
 where I could read to my heart s content. Soon 
 she told me of the lectures that were being given 
 by Garrison, Phillips, and others. At once I was 
 eager to attend them. My grandmother after 
 much hesitation permitted me to do so, accom 
 panied by a maid. I can therefore justly claim 
 to have been figuratively brought up at the feet of 
 these truly great men and women with whom I 
 became later on personally acquainted, and several 
 of whom remained my warm friends the remainder 
 of their lives. I have never heard from other mortal 
 lips such eloquence as theirs ; it echoes still through 
 the corridors of my memory. As they plead the 
 cause of the oppressed black it seemed to me as if 
 their lips had been touched with living coals from 
 the altar of inspiration. 
 
 Events began to develop rapidly towards the 
 crisis that culminated in the Civil War. The mur 
 der of Love joy, at Alton, 111., stirred even the 
 gentle Emerson to a white heat. Love joy was the 
 editor and proprietor of an Abolitionist paper and 
 his editorial denunciations of slavery so enraged 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 the pro-slavery element in Alton that his plant was 
 destroyed, his press thrown in the river and he him 
 self murdered. Emerson, usually honey-tongued, 
 denounced this crime in bitter terms, and the serene 
 and dignified Alcott was stirred to the depths of 
 his being. This crime drew from Wendell Phillips 
 his first public speech for the cause of Abolition. 
 It was a scathing rebuke to the many merchants 
 in Boston who were in sympathy with Southern 
 slaveholders. Boston at this time was strongly 
 pro-slavery and the Abolitionists were much in the 
 minority. 
 
 Daniel Webster in his ambition to become Presi 
 dent of the country changed his political views 
 against, I fully believe, his own convictions. With 
 the idea of Southern influence he coalesced with his 
 political opponents in Congress and threw his able 
 efforts in favor of the Fugitive Slave Bill which, 
 becoming a law, empowered a slave holder to pur 
 sue a fugitive slave into any state in the Union, 
 empowering him also to call upon the aid of a 
 state s authorities in the recapture of his chattel 
 and the forcing of him back into bondage. This 
 was the death-blow of the Whig party. Webster 
 was defeated for the Presidential nomination. I 
 saw him as he passed through Boston on his way 
 to his summer home at Marshfield after the Na 
 tional Convention. He was met at a station just 
 
 70 
 
Alcott the Abolitionist 
 
 outside of the city and escorted to his residence 
 on Summer Street. I think he remained in the 
 city but one night. The most vivid impression of 
 this occasion remaining with me is the expression 
 upon his face. It haunted me for a long time. 
 His large, luminous eyes had lost their fire and 
 seemed sunken deep in their sockets and his fea 
 tures worn and haggard. 
 
 The defection of Webster was a heavy blow to 
 the Abolitionist party, for they had looked upon 
 him as their strongest and most able ally, their 
 Gibraltar in their fight against slavery. The Fugi 
 tive Slave Bill, now a law, filled them with conster 
 nation. Eventually, however, it proved their 
 strongest ally, since the efforts pursued in enforc 
 ing it so opened the eyes of thinking people to a 
 policy that was bent upon making a slave-owning, 
 slave-holding Oligarchy of the entire United States, 
 that the ranks of the Abolitionists increased by tens 
 of thousands. 
 
 The first attempt made to enforce this law was 
 in 1851. An escaped slave, Shadrach, was arrested 
 in Boston and held in confinement awaiting the ar 
 rival of his master, who had been notified of his 
 arrest. Through a well-planned assault by some 
 of the Abolitionists, Shadrach w r as rescued and the 
 law frustrated. 
 
 In 1854 occurred the famous Anthony Burns 
 
 71 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 episode. The Alcotts had returned to Boston 
 again and were living at the old house near the 
 corner of High and Summer Streets. I was with 
 them at the time. Burns, an escaped Virginia 
 slave, was arrested in Boston and imprisoned in 
 the court house. This created great indignation 
 among Abolitionists, who protested that the court 
 house should not be converted into a slave-pen. 
 Judge Shaw, a most dignified jurist, condemned 
 Burns to be returned to his master and, until the 
 latter s arrival from Virginia, to remain imprisoned 
 in the court house. The sentence was received with 
 an intense excitement by no means confined to the 
 city alone but pervading the whole state of Massa 
 chusetts. 
 
 To my astonishment I saw the serene, gentle, 
 non-resistant Alcott transformed into a warlike bel 
 ligerent. As soon as Burns was arrested he imme 
 diately started for Worcester to enlist for the work 
 of rescue the assistance of Thomas Wentworth 
 Higginson, returning with him to Boston. An 
 Abolitionist vigilance committee had been formed 
 soon after the Shadrach affair to meet like emer 
 gencies. Mr. Alcott had been faithful in his at 
 tendance upon all the meetings of this committee 
 from its incipiency. A plan was at once formed for 
 the rescue of Burns. At the appointed time for 
 this rescue, an Anti-Slavery Convention was being 
 
 72 
 
Alcott the Abolitionist 
 
 held in Faneuil Hall, bringing together many peo 
 ple from all over the state. The authorities became 
 suspicious that an attempt at rescue was possible 
 and stationed a marshal in the court house with a 
 strong force of men. Previously to the trial the en 
 trances had been protected with strong iron chains. 
 The rumor that the rescue would be attempted 
 flew like wild-fire, bringing to the vicinity of the 
 Court Square the greater number of an audience 
 of curiosity mongers from the Anti-Slavery meet 
 ing being held in Faneuil Hall. The Abolitionist 
 portion of the audience at this meeting were, with 
 their leaders, nearest the platform and consequently 
 their fellows, posted about the court house, found 
 themselves surrounded by an antagonistic or in 
 different crowd instead of their sympathizers and 
 fellow rescuers. But a door was forced open never 
 theless, two Abolitionists rushed through it, were 
 overpowered, and ejected by the guards. During 
 the melee a sheriff s deputy named Batchelder was 
 slain. Thus was shed the very first blood in the 
 direct issue that was to result in the Civil War. In 
 a few moments the confusion was over, the sheriff s 
 posse within the court house and the rescuers 
 huddled about the court house stairway, inactive, 
 but with drawn pistols covering the broken door. 
 Within could be seen the brilliantly lighted empty 
 hallway. After a moment of tense, nerve-racking, 
 
 73 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 silence there emerged from the crowd, deliberately 
 and with an attitude of great peace in his venerable 
 manner, Amos Bronson Alcott, philosopher, poet, 
 writer, dreamer. As he ascended the steps alone, 
 his familiar cane tapping the stone with a start- 
 lingly clear and leisurely sound, he paused. Turn 
 ing to one of the ejected rescuers, he asked calmly: 
 "Why are we not within?" 
 
 "Because," came the answer, "these people will 
 not stand by us." 
 
 Without a word Mr. Alcott placidly continued 
 his ascent, still slowly tapping his cane from step 
 to step. A revolver shot was heard within, the 
 bullet speeding past him without injury or in any 
 sense affecting his motion. But just ere entering 
 the door he paused again, turned, and without in 
 the slightest manner accentuating or retarding his 
 pace, retraced his steps. Marcus Aurelius or Epic- 
 tetus might have been garbed in broadcloth upon 
 the Boston court house steps, so like to their at 
 titude was that of this venerable man. 
 
 The excitement about the city intensified. A 
 crowd constantly filled Court Square by day and 
 by night. The slave prisoner was guarded with 
 most zealous care. Access to him was even denied 
 lawyers and judges who had no connection with 
 the case. Wealthy citizens offered to buy the man 
 from his owner but he refused all offers. He w r as 
 
 74 
 
Alcott the Abolitionist 
 
 bent, he said, upon winning the prestige of having 
 defeated "the damned Abolitionists," and was 
 "bound to take the nigger back if all hell stood in 
 my way." 
 
 One day it was rumored the residence of Wen 
 dell Phillips would be mobbed upon the next even 
 ing and a delegation was chosen from the Vigi 
 lance Committee to guard the house and family. 
 Mr. Alcott was one of the number and, as the oth 
 ers, was armed with a revolver. Just after dark 
 Theodore Parker came to the house and went up 
 to Mrs. Phillips room where she, being an invalid, 
 was confined, telling her she must arise and go with 
 him as the house was liable to attack any moment. 
 Mr. Phillips was not at home. For a moment Mrs. 
 Phillips was badly frightened ; then the true mettle 
 within her asserted itself and she refused to leave. 
 While Mr. Parker was pleading Mr. Phillips re 
 turned and, upon learning of the situation, sus 
 tained his wife in her attitude, scoffing at the idea 
 of flight. 
 
 The body guard had by that time arrived and, 
 despite Mr. Phillips protestations, went upon duty. 
 Nothing occurred; and it was afterwards learned 
 the mayor had placed a strong force of policemen 
 within a wide circle about the house to frustrate 
 any lawless action. The next morning, Mr. Al 
 cott, having breakfasted with Mr. Phillips, arrived 
 
 75 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 home just as we were rising from the table. He 
 laid his pistol upon a side table and we gathered 
 about him eager for the news of the night. The 
 picture of the two younger girls comes vividly be 
 fore me as I write. They stood with an expression 
 of wonder and awe upon their faces glancing first 
 at the revolver and then up at their father. I do 
 not suppose either of them had ever before seen 
 such a weapon. As for Mr. Alcott, I doubt if he 
 knew the breech of the weapon from the barrel. 
 With his Buddhistic reverence for life he had never 
 trampled upon an insect. As I look back, I can 
 not imagine either Mr. Alcott or Mr. Emerson in 
 connection with firearms and I do not believe 
 either of them knew how to even manipulate a 
 trigger. Yet both possessed in an eminent degree 
 the qualifications that, in emergency, would give 
 birth to true courage. This they both exemplified, 
 as did Thoreau also, all through their Abolition 
 experience. 
 
 Finally came the crucial hour in the excitement 
 that had held the city in thrall for days ; an excite 
 ment, it was said, unequaled since the Tea Party in 
 Boston Harbor; the day Anthony Burns was to 
 be legally returned to bondage by a government 
 that constitutionally guaranteed to all its citizens 
 the inalienable right "to life, liberty, and the pur 
 suit of happiness." All business was suspended this 
 
 76 
 
Alcott the Abolitionist 
 
 Friday, June 2nd, 1854. I stood in Court Square 
 a witness to this never-to-be-forgotten scene. The 
 streets were thronged with people notwithstanding 
 the mayor s proclamation warning the populace to 
 stay within their homes. Through Court Square, 
 Court Street, and the entire length of State Street 
 to Long Wharf, where a United States Revenue 
 cutter lay ready to carry back to Virginia this 
 negro slave, many houses were draped in black, and 
 the sidewalks were a seething mass. 
 
 First in the procession marched a force of militia 
 followed by a strong body of openly-armed police. 
 Behind these came a detachment of marines from 
 a fort in Boston Harbor, dragging two field pieces. 
 Directly behind these marched over a hundred ma 
 rines with drawn cutlasses. They were formed in 
 a hollow square, in the center of which walked An 
 thony Burns, the black, with his white master hold 
 ing a handcuff to his slave s wrist. I could look 
 directly into the negro s face. He had a well- 
 shaped head, more Caucasian than African in out 
 line, and an intelligent face with the saddest of 
 expression upon it. The procession was greeted 
 until it turned into State Street with hoots, groans, 
 and hisses by the Abolitionists, which in turn 
 drowned and were drowned by the cheers of the 
 pro-slavery element in the crowd. 
 
 As the flash light of my memory is turned back 
 
 77 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 to that scene after a lapse of fifty-eight years, it 
 stands out as vividly as yesterday and I can re-feel 
 the impression it produced upon me. Upon some 
 faces there rested an intense concentrated look as if 
 the soul within were being stirred to its prof oundest 
 depths. Upon others, a sullen determined expres 
 sion suggestive of drawn weapon and clenched fist. 
 I wormed my way behind the hollow square. Less 
 than half-way to the wharf there was complete si 
 lence, a sort of awesome hush, as if by a grave, save 
 but for the clank of scabbard and the tramp of 
 marching feet. A man close to me said : "It s like 
 a military funeral without a military dirge." I can 
 hear that man s voice still, so solemn and intense it 
 was. 
 
 When I returned home quivering with excite 
 ment at the history I had witnessed, Mr. Alcott 
 listened to me intently without a word of comment. 
 He spoke not a word the rest of the day, except the 
 grace at evening meal which came from his lips in 
 slow and measured phrase. 
 
 I am perforce writing history as I trace these 
 lines; but not calmly, phlegmatically, as historians 
 record. As I have previously said and will likely 
 say again ere this book is completed, these pages 
 are in the main but partial memories of my boy 
 hood and young manhood. That history which is 
 interwoven therewith has been immortally chron- 
 
 78 
 
Alcott the Abolitionist 
 
 icled by abler hands than mine. As I lay down 
 my pen at the end of this page I see and think 
 of but intimate personal detail dating back many 
 years and not the historical facts connected thereto. 
 
 79 
 
VII 
 
 FRUITLANDS 
 
 CHARLES LANE, the Englishman 
 whose means permitted the launching of 
 the Fruitlands experiment, was a con 
 tributor to the Dial, an enthusiastic 
 transcendentalist, and a keen admirer of Emerson, 
 Thoreau, and Alcott, particularly the latter. 
 
 Fruitlands was about three miles from the town 
 of Harvard, and scarcely a full mile from Still 
 River Village. Its distance from Boston was about 
 thirty miles. It had been an unnamed land-worn 
 farm of about ninety acres ere Mr. Lane and Mr. 
 Alcott bought it for the purpose of creating a 
 modern utopia. The persons actually becoming 
 members of the community they aimed to establish 
 were, in addition to Mr. Lane and his son, William, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Alcott and their four daughters- 
 eight in number one woman, Anna Page, arid 
 seven men, Isaac Hecker, afterwards known as 
 "Father" Hecker, Christopher Green, Joseph 
 Palmer, Abraham Everett, Samuel Lamed, 
 Charles Bowers, and H. C. Wright, an English 
 man, who remained but a few weeks. The entire 
 
 80 
 
Fruitlands 
 
 experiment lasted less than a year and ere the ex 
 piration of that time some of the party left the com 
 munity for a practical mode of life elsewhere, leav 
 ing, at the final abandonment of the scheme, but the 
 Alcotts. 
 
 Mr. Lane s enthusiasm at the outset is exam- 
 pled in a letter to Thoreau in which he said: "Fruit- 
 lands is very remotely placed without a road, sur 
 rounded by a beautiful green landscape of fields 
 and woods. On the estate are about fourteen acres 
 of wood ; a very sylvan realization which only needs 
 a Thoreau s mind to elevate it to classic beauty. 
 The nearest little copse we have designed as the 
 site for little cottages. Fountains can be made to 
 descend from their granite sources on the hill-slope 
 to every cottage. Gardens are to displace the 
 warm grazing grounds on the south ; and numerous 
 human beings, instead of cattle, shall here enjoy 
 existence. The farther wood offers to the natural 
 ist and the poet an exhaustless haunt; and a short 
 cleaning of the brook would connect our boat with 
 the Nashua. Such are the designs which Mr. Al- 
 cott and I have just sketched as resting from plant 
 ing we walked around this reserve." 
 
 It was but a little time, however, ere Mr. Lane s 
 enthusiasm began to wane. Mrs. Alcott, who had 
 to bear the full burden of housework for a family 
 of sixteen people, told me a great deal about it 
 
 81 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 in after years, saying she marveled she came out 
 of it alive. She could not afford help, the other 
 adults were engaged in the manual labor attached 
 to working the place, her children were young, the 
 oldest thirteen and the youngest three. "I worked 
 like a galley slave, Llewellyn," she said, "but 
 mercifully the crash came in a few months or I 
 should have died." In after years, Louisa, being 
 asked in my presence if there had been any beasts 
 of burden at Fruitlands, replied, "There was but 
 one and she a woman." 
 
 The bill of fare was a dietetic curiosity, Mrs. 
 Alcott told me. Mr. Alcott would not tolerate 
 any food derived directly or indirectly from any 
 animal and was enthusiastically autocratic in de 
 manding obedience to his wishes. Animal food or 
 its substances, he claimed, were poisonous, pol 
 luted the body, and through it penetrated and de 
 filed the soul. Tea and coffee were tabooed and 
 water the only beverage. All bread was made from 
 unbolted flour or a mixture of barley and graham 
 meal. Mr. Alcott insisted too that preference be 
 given vegetables that matured above the ground, 
 though they did eat potatoes, beets, and radishes. 
 
 I was staying at the Bowles Willard farm in the 
 town of Harvard in the early summer of 1843. 
 Shortly after my arrival there I heard a deal of 
 gossip concerning some very strange people who 
 
 82 
 
Fruitlands 
 
 were living about three miles out. Much of this 
 gossip was exaggeration, some of it, fiction, but 
 many points about it were based upon fact and 
 confirmed to me within the next few years by 
 Mrs. Alcott. The farmers of the surrounding 
 neighborhood were uproariously hilarious over the 
 methods of this craft as pursued at Fruitlands and 
 particularly because Mr. Alcott would not permit 
 the land-worn acres to be enriched upon the theory 
 that it was an insult to nature to scatter any fer 
 tilizer upon her bosom and that the forcing of her 
 processes was wholly unjustifiable. Much sarcas 
 tic comment was occasioned too over the fact that 
 there was neither a horse, nor a cow, nor a pig, 
 nor even any poultry upon the place. Mr. Al- 
 cott s reasons for this convulsed the surrounding 
 tillers of the soil. He contended animals had equal 
 rights as to life, liberty, and happiness, with man 
 kind. The cow should not be robbed of her milk 
 which belonged to her calf. Chickens had the same 
 right to life as human babies. He even went to 
 the extreme of directing that the canker worms in 
 festing the ancient apple trees at Fruitlands should 
 in no wise be disturbed, saying they had the same 
 right to the fruit he had. All of these things were 
 commented upon in Harvard, the farmers saying: 
 "They have a lot of crazy fools out there." 
 
 I was in the habit of taking frequent walks with 
 
 83 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 a young woman some years my senior while at 
 Bowles Willard farm and upon one of them told 
 her of what I had heard. She replied: "You 
 must not believe all the idle gossip of the country 
 side. I have been to see these people and they are 
 refined, educated folk. Mrs. Alcott is a fascinating 
 woman, her husband is a man of charm, and the 
 second daughter is as bright as a new steel trap." 
 I suggested we walk in their direction and that she 
 present me. She agreed, but upon looking for her 
 gloves, found she had left them at home. She 
 would not listen to my importuning that she go 
 without them and, to my disappointment, decided 
 our walk should continue in the direction we had 
 originally planned. That evening she was taken ill 
 and shortly after returned to Boston. I could not, 
 boy that I was, very well go to Fruitlands alone, 
 so I not only lost the opportunity but a full year 
 elapsed ere I made acquaintance with the family. 
 Many people at that time deemed Mr. Alcott 
 and Mr. Lane insane. This belief has been dis 
 cussed in a book by Dr. Tuke, an English alienist, 
 who visited this country in 1885. He says: "Was 
 Alcott insane? That such a man could induce 
 others to imitate him and found such a community 
 as at the farm of Fruitlands in Massachusetts 
 would astonish were it an isolated case. But other 
 persons passed through very similar phases about 
 
 84 
 
Fruitlands 
 
 the same period in America. In an exhaustive 
 study of Mr. Alcott, who interested me very much, 
 I find no evidence whatsoever of mental disease, 
 and I regard his Fruitlands idea as but an illustra 
 tion of that peculiar psychological condition which 
 under abnormal religious thought, will develop ec 
 centric courses. A cold winter was sufficient to 
 convert Mr. Alcott to common sense notions." 
 
 Mr. Alcott himself in after years looked back 
 upon Fruitlands with a philosophical smile as he 
 spoke of the extreme Utopianism of his acts there. 
 One day, while I was with him upon the street in 
 Boston, he met a friend who had experienced fail 
 ure in a long cherished plan of business, and said 
 to him: "That is failure when a man s ideas ruin 
 him, when he is dwarfed mentally by it. But when 
 he is ever growing by it, does not lose himself in 
 any partial or complete failure, his substance is 
 success, whatever it may seem to the world." 
 
 In her "Transcendental Wild Oats," Louisa, 
 speaking of Fruitlands, says: "Brother Lion (Mr. 
 Lane) domineered over the whole concern, for 
 having the most money in the speculation, was re 
 solved to make it pay, as if anything founded upon 
 an ideal basis could be expected to do so, except 
 by enthusiasts. Abel Lamb (her father) simply 
 reveled in the newness, firmly believing that his 
 dream was to be beautifully realized, and in time, 
 
 85 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 not only little Fruitlands but the whole earth would 
 be turned into a Happy Valley. He worked with 
 every muscle in his body, for he was deeply in 
 earnest. He taught with his whole head and heart, 
 planned and sacrificed, preached and prophesied, 
 with a soul full of the purest aspirations, most un 
 selfish purposes and desires for a life devoted to 
 God and man, too high and tender to bear the 
 rough usage of the world." 
 
 Ere the collapse of the scheme Mr. Lane and 
 Mr. Alcott visited New York and called upon Mrs. 
 Child, who in a letter said : "Alcott and Lane have 
 called to see me. I asked: What brings you to 
 New York? We do not know ourselves, replied 
 Alcott. My husband and John Hopper were pres 
 ent the next day at a discussion between Alcott, 
 Lane, and W. H. Channing. tTpon his return I 
 asked him what the conversation was about. Lane, 
 he said, divided man into three states, the discon- 
 scious, the conscious, and the unconscious. The dis- 
 conscious was the state of swine, the conscious a 
 baptism by water, the unconscious a baptism by 
 fire. I laughed and said, I cannot get that clear in 
 my mind. Well, he replied, after I heard them 
 talk for a few minutes I did not think I had any 
 mind at all. They talked about mind and body, but 
 as far as I could understand they seemed to think 
 the body was a sham. 
 
 86 
 
VIII 
 
 EMERSON 
 
 1 SHALL never forget the impression made 
 upon my boyish mind at my first meeting 
 with Ralph Waldo Emerson. I was too 
 young to form an opinion of value at the 
 time, but in later years I sensed the meaning of it 
 to me and realized the part this man of kindly and 
 charming personality had, consciously or uncon 
 sciously to him, played in shaping my life course 
 and helping me to do what it has been given me to 
 do in the something over seventy years that have 
 intervened. 
 
 I came in contact with him many times ere reach 
 ing maturity; in every instance with a recurrence, 
 to a less profound degree, of this first impression. 
 I did not quite know upon any of these occasions 
 what this meant. I only recall wdth a keen vivid 
 ness, as if it were yesterday, the sweet, gracious 
 personality of the man, his wonderfully benevolent 
 face, the tender sunshine of his eye, the indescrib 
 able gentleness of his voice. Without knowing or 
 even wondering why, I felt as if under the soothing 
 
 87 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 spell of all I describe. 
 
 It has been written that "a vast number of ob 
 jects must lie before us ere we can think about them 
 with understanding." So are vast funds of ex 
 perience essential ere we can realize the one or the 
 ten that have molded our mental and moral quali 
 ties into whatever they may be. I look back upon 
 my contact with this greatest American man of 
 letters as if a window had been thrown open and 
 through it entered all that was sweet and lovely, 
 gracious and true. Years afterwards, long ere this 
 impression had become as a part of me, when hear 
 ing of or reading Emerson, I read Carlyle s de 
 scription of Emerson s first visit to him : 
 
 "He came from Dumfries in an old rusty gig- 
 came one day and vanished the next. I had never 
 heard of him. He gave us his brief biography. 
 We took a walk while dinner was being prepared. 
 We were glad to see him and gave him welcome. 
 I did not then adequately recognize his genius 
 but we thought him a beautiful transparent soul 
 and he was ever after a very pleasant object to us 
 in the distance. Now and then a letter comes from 
 him amid the smoke and dust of the world ; it is al 
 ways as a window thrown open to the azure." 
 
 I had gone with Mr. and Mrs. Alcott and the 
 four girls to tea at Emerson s home. As I was 
 presented to him and looked up into his strong, 
 
 88 
 
Emerson 
 
 sweet face he placed his hand upon my head and 
 said a few words to me. I do not now remember 
 what they were. But I still feel their kindly flower- 
 like fairness and, later in my life, I understood 
 what Margaret Fuller meant when she said: "It 
 is his beautiful presence that I prize more than his 
 intellectual companionship." 
 
 I remember upon that first occasion, as well as 
 many others, either at his home or the home of 
 the Alcotts, his tender, chivalrous devotion to his 
 aged mother whose countenance expressed all the 
 beatitudes in a dignified, gentle manner. I have 
 many times seen Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau 
 together. The friendship between them was very 
 profound; and between Alcott and Emerson a 
 very beautiful thing that seemed to spring from a 
 deeply understanding sympathy and a staunch 
 steadfastness at the time when Alcott was much 
 maligned and ridiculed. 
 
 Alcott has written of Emerson: "His life is 
 like an antique marble full of undying beauty." 
 
 And Emerson has written of Alcott: "He is 
 the most Godlike man I have ever seen. His pres 
 ence rebukes, threatens and uplifts." 
 
 Much has been written of Ralph Waldo Emer 
 son. Nothing I could add would matter. It was 
 my high privilege to have received the blessing of 
 his influence when a little boy and I bow my sil- 
 
 89 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 vered head in gratitude. To use his own words he 
 gave to me: 
 
 "That great and grave transition, 
 Which may not king or priest or conqueror spare, 
 And yet a babe can bear." 
 
 90 
 
IX 
 
 THOREAU 
 
 I HAVE a keen recollection of the first time 
 I met Henry David Thoreau. It was upon 
 a beautiful day in July, 1847, that Mrs. Al 
 cott told us we were to visit Walden. We 
 started merrily a party of seven, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Alcott, the four girls and myself, for the woods 
 of oak and pine that encircled the picturesque lit 
 tle lake called Walden Pond. We found Thoreau 
 in his cabin, a plain little house of one room con 
 taining a wood stove. 
 
 He gave us gracious welcome, asking us within. 
 For a time he talked with Mr. Alcott in a voice and 
 with a manner in which, boy as I was, I detected a 
 something akin with Emerson. He was a tall and 
 rugged-looking man, straight as a pine tree. His, 
 nose was strong, dominating his face, and his eyes 
 as keen as an eagle s. He seemed to speak with 
 them, to take in all about him in one vigorous 
 glance. His brows were shaggy as in people 
 who observe rather than see. 
 
 He was talking to Mr. Alcott of the wild flowers 
 in Walden woods when, suddenly stopping, he 
 
 91 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 said: "Keep very still and I will show you my 
 family." Stepping quickly outside the cabin door, 
 he gave a low and curious whistle; immediately a 
 woodchuck came running towards him from a 
 nearby burrow. With varying note, yet still low 
 and strange, a pair of gray squirrels were sum 
 moned and approached him fearlessly. With still 
 another note several birds, including two crows, 
 flew towards him, one of the crows nestling upon 
 his shoulder. I remember it was the crow resting 
 close to his head that made the most vivid impres 
 sion upon me, knowing how fearful of man this 
 bird is. He fed them all from his hand, taking 
 food from his pocket, and petted them gently be 
 fore our delighted gaze; and then dismissed them 
 by different whistling, always strange and low and 
 short, each little wild thing departing instantly at 
 hearing its special signal. 
 
 Then he took us five children upon the Pond in 
 his boat, ceasing his oars after a little distance from 
 the shore and playing the flute he had brought with 
 him, its music echoing over the still and beautifully 
 clear water. He suddenly laid the flute down and 
 told us stories of the Indians that "long ago" had 
 lived about Walden and Concord; delighting us 
 with simple, clear explanations of the wonders of 
 Walden woods. Again he interrupted himself sud 
 denly, speaking of the various kinds of lilies grow- 
 
 92 
 
Thoreau 
 
 ing about Walden and calling the wood lilies, 
 stately wild things. It was pond lily time and from 
 the boat we gathered quantities of r their pure white 
 flowers and buds; upon our return to the shore he 
 helped us gather other flowers and laden with many 
 sweet blossoms, we wended our way homewards re 
 joicingly. As we were going he said to me: "Boy, 
 you look tired and sleepy; remember, sleep is half 
 a dinner." 
 
 I saw him afterwards very many times in the 
 company of his most intimate friends, Mr. Emer 
 son and Mr. Alcott. He often came to our home; 
 indeed, aside from visits to his father, mother, sis 
 ters, and Mr. Emerson, he visited no one else. 
 Upon some of these occasions I remember him say 
 ing "that he had a great deal of company in the 
 morning when nobody called;" and "I have never 
 found the companion who is so companionable as 
 solitude." I also remember, "in Walden Woods I 
 hunt with a glass ; for a gun gives you but the body 
 while a glass gives you the bird." He possessed to 
 an uncanny degree a knowledge of flowers, plants, 
 and trees. He kept a careful calendar of the 
 shrubs and flora about Walden and showed it me 
 in explanation many times. 
 
 The land upon which his cabin was built had 
 been given him by Emerson; the cabin he built 
 himself at a cost of less than thirty dollars and for 
 
 93 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 the first nine months of his life in it his expenses 
 amounted to sixty-two dollars. He thus proved 
 that most of us waste our time and substance upon 
 superficialities, that one hundred dollars per year 
 will suffice for one s living expenses, and that, best 
 of all, one could really live and still have two-thirds 
 of one s time to one s self. 
 
 Perhaps no single figure among American liter 
 ary men has moved so many able pens in essay 
 and biography as Henry David Thoreau. Here 
 again, as in my reminiscences of Emerson, aught 
 I could add would not matter. 
 
 This is but a record of youthful memory; its 
 aim is to compass nothing else. During the nearly 
 sixty years since Thoreau s death I have read, I 
 think, all that has been said about him. But among 
 it nothing has, nor do I believe ever will, be bet 
 ter said than a paragraph from Emerson s funeral 
 tribute to his dead friend: "He has in a short life 
 exhausted the capabilities of this world; wherever 
 there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wher 
 ever there is beauty, he will find a home." 
 
X 
 
 MARGARET FULLER 
 
 OF gifted Margaret Fuller I retain a 
 most vivid impression. She often visited 
 the Alcptts during my life with them. I 
 remember one occasion when at tea in 
 the Alcott s Concord home, Emerson, Thoreau, 
 Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller sat at the table 
 with Mr. and Mrs. Alcott, Louisa, her three sisters, 
 and myself. I have long since realized this was a 
 golden hour in my life; that six of the eleven peo 
 ple about that kindly board were destined, each in 
 their own particular literary sphere, to ultimate 
 lofty status in American letters. 
 
 Margaret Fuller was a "beautifully plain" young 
 woman. Physically she was a robust person, tall, 
 and with a certain stateliness though inclined to 
 corpulency. She w T as possessed of expressive gray 
 eyes, a wealth of reddish brown hair, a colorless 
 complexion, and magnificent teeth, which she 
 showed constantly while speaking. Despite a 
 queenly carriage to the head she had nothing of 
 what is called "handsome" in its application to a 
 woman. She had a habit of incessantly opening 
 
 95 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 and closing her eyes, rather than "winking," and 
 her voice was nasal in tone. But her whole face, 
 notwithstanding her mannerisms, was stamped 
 with individuality and her manner full of a studious 
 dignity. Her genius found its best expression in 
 conversation wherein she had a most extraordinary 
 ability. Before she was thirty she was thoroughly 
 conversant with French, German, Spanish, and 
 Italian, as well as her native English, and was 
 also an accomplished Greek, Latin, and Hebrew 
 scholar. She had Plato, Seneca, Epictetus, and 
 Horace at her fingers ends. She had a most keen 
 regard for Mr. Alcott and discoursed much with 
 him upon the writings and philosophy of these an 
 cient masters. 
 
 I remember hearing her speak with Mr. Alcott 
 of her experiences in teaching French and Latin 
 in that philosopher s Boston school in 1837, and 
 mentally recording I was only seven years old at 
 that time. As a little boy and a recognized mem 
 ber of the family, Margaret Fuller has spoken to 
 me perhaps forty times, simple words of greeting 
 whose substance I do not remember save that upon 
 one occasion she mentioned she was twenty-one 
 years my senior and that her birthplace in Cam 
 bridge was within a stone s throw of the house in 
 which I first saw the light upon January 29th, 1830. 
 
 Her career as advisory professor to Harvard 
 
 96 
 
Margaret Fuller 
 
 students, as editor of the Dial co- jointly with 
 Emerson, her famous Boston "conversaziones," 
 her connection with the New York Tribune, her 
 Italian experiences with her marriage in Italy to 
 the Marquis Ossoli, and her tragic death at sea 
 have no place in these memoirs of my boyhood 
 days. With her young brother, Arthur Fuller, I 
 attended on Nov. 26, 1844, one of the last of her 
 six and final series of "conversaziones" in Miss 
 Peabody s rooms, West Street, Boston. I cannot 
 recall its substance but I well remember the deep 
 and fascinating general impression left upon my 
 young mind. 
 
 (The above is quoted from my father s Alcott Paper in his 
 handwriting.) 
 
 97 
 
XI 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE I met 
 but twice, upon occasions of his visits to 
 the Alcott house in Concord, during my 
 first summer with the family there and 
 the second of my acquaintance with them. The 
 house had been his property and home ere accept 
 ing the position of Collector of Customs at Salem 
 and his first visit was in partial connection with 
 the sale of this house to his friends, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Alcott. 
 
 I remember that he smiled and touched my shoul 
 der when Mr. Alcott in presenting me said, "Na 
 thaniel, this is little Llewellyn." He was a strik 
 ingly handsome man, I thought, with wonderfully 
 luminous eyes. After his departure Mr. Alcott 
 said to me: "Llewellyn, that gentleman is a su 
 premely gifted writer." 
 
 The second occasion was some weeks later when 
 with Emerson he came to tea. He touched my 
 shoulder again and said: "Greeting, my boy." He 
 took little part in the conversation and I remem 
 ber he impressed me as a silent and reserved gen- 
 
 98 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 tleman with whom I thought it would be very dif 
 ficult for a boy to reach familiar terms. His place 
 in these memoirs is perforce but a recording of his 
 illustrious name. 
 
 99 
 
XII 
 
 THOMAS STARR KING 
 
 I COUNT it as a high privilege to have been 
 constantly associated for ten months of each 
 year for four successive years with Thomas 
 Starr King. During this time he prepared 
 me for Harvard College Divinity School and I, in 
 return, acted as his amanuensis, writing at his dic 
 tation his eloquent sermons, lectures, and inspiring 
 magazine articles. 
 
 At a meeting of the Harvard Club in Rochester 
 in 1912, I mentioned this fact to President Eliot, 
 who was present, when he remarked: "That was 
 a liberal education in itself." 
 
 Although Mr. King was but six years my senior 
 his ability as a sympathetic instructor and his charm 
 of manner are an abiding memory with me. Most 
 skillfully did he pilot me through the intricacies of 
 Latin and Greek and wonderfully clear, I remem 
 ber, were his comments and elucidations upon the 
 writings of Locke, Jeffrey, and Stuart. He many 
 times told me that to him the most fascinating study 
 in all literature was that of ancient Greece. He 
 had the keenest admiration for a people who, he 
 
 100 
 
Thomas Starr King 
 
 said, "are the first we meet at the dawn of Euro 
 pean history and whose influence in the arts of 
 sculpture and architecture is our keynote to the 
 beautiful." It was through Mrs. Alcott that I was 
 originally brought in contact with Mr. King and 
 in this presentation was born a friendship that 
 ceased only at his death in 1864, although we never 
 met after 1858, when I removed to Coldwater, 
 Michigan. 
 
 Thomas Starr King was truly an orator. He 
 w r as slight of build, active and agile of movement, 
 with expressive gray eyes and a wealth of blonde 
 hair. I never saw as beautiful golden hair upon 
 a man s head. He was neither a handsome nor 
 a homely man. He had a most kindly, gentle 
 speaking voice in every-day conversation and a con 
 stant winning smile. His whole scheme of life was 
 to live "doing the right," and I think he succeeded 
 as near as any man can. His heart was overflow 
 ing with benevolent, tender thought for all man 
 kind and the entire influence he radiated was of 
 a high and wide nobility. His intellectual wealth 
 was very vast and constantly distributed wherever 
 he went in a seeming prodigal manner with a per 
 sonal charm quite indescribable. At his home in 
 Burroughs Place, Boston, he was like the sunlight 
 and as lovely as a May flower in his tenderness 
 and devotion to his mother. I cannot recall an 
 
 101 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 hour during the forty months I was a student 
 under him when he was not genial, gentle, and 
 frank. The subjects of the sermons and lectures 
 I wrote as he dictated were very varied, full of 
 glowing and creative imagination, clear reasoning, 
 and earnest eloquence. They were practically de 
 livered as he dictated, requiring but the veriest 
 iota of editing. 
 
 The most brilliant work of his short life was in 
 California. The liberal faith that he went to ex 
 pound upon the shores of the Pacific was languish 
 ing upon his arrival there, but in a relatively short 
 time he built upon a firm foundation a rich and 
 popular church and, ere his death, made from its 
 pulpit a mark for all the ages in favor of liberal 
 theology. But the most noble and brilliant work 
 he did in California was the personal influence he 
 brought to bear in keeping the State loyal at the 
 time of the Rebellion. It has been admitted that 
 no one single man or issue wielded more powerful 
 and successful effort in this direction. 
 
 His biography, save in the brief outline I have 
 given, has no place in these memoirs yet, in a sense, 
 is a certain part of them, for I count his influence 
 upon my life as one of great good which, please 
 God, I pray I have profited in and by. 
 
 After his death Bret Harte wrote a poem which 
 gracefully and with lyrical quality expresses the 
 
 102 
 
Thomas Starr King 
 
 man and his work. It was entitled: "On a Pen 
 of Thomas Starr King s." It seems to me fitting 
 that I append it here: 
 
 This is the reed the dead magician dropped, 
 With tuneful magic in its sheath still hidden, 
 The prompt allegro of its music stopped, 
 Its melodies unbidden. 
 
 But who shall finish the unfinished strain, 
 Or wake the instrument to awe and wonder, 
 And bid the slender barrel breathe again, 
 An organ pipe of thunder? 
 
 His pen ! what humble memoirs cling about 
 Its golden curves ! what shapes and laughing graces 
 Slipped from its point when his full heart went out 
 In smiles and courtly phrases ! 
 
 The truth, half jesting, half in earnest flung, 
 The word of cheer, with recognition in it; 
 The note of alms, whose golden speech outrung 
 The golden gift within it. 
 
 But all in vain the enchanter s wand we wave; 
 No stroke of ours recalls his magic vision; 
 The incantation that its power gave 
 Sleeps with the dead magician. 
 
 103 
 
POSTSCRIPT 
 
 THE INFLUENCES THAT MOLD 
 
 FROM a mass of fascinating data cover 
 ing a wide range of beautifully recorded 
 thought extending over a period of 
 seventy years in the life of Dr. Willis, 
 I have selected, arranged, and classified the fore 
 going papers. I have read vast quantities of mat 
 ter, journals, essays and lectures upon many sub 
 jects, sermons, philosophical and general comment 
 upon recent and by-gone topics, in orderly sequence 
 and rough memoranda, hand written upon all sorts 
 of paper, even in some instances the backs of cor 
 respondence and envelopes. I have noted the form 
 ing hand of youth, the vigorous hand of manhood, 
 the feeble hand of three score and ten, the tremu 
 lous hand of an octogenarian; and withal, never 
 failed to find upon or between the lines, the human 
 ity and integrity of the man, the kindliness and 
 courtesy that predominated within him. 
 
 My work, originally approached as an interest 
 ing literary task, developed into a labor of love in 
 which I have sensed very acutely a close intimacy, 
 formed a genuine friendship, felt the true beauty 
 
 104 
 
The Influences That Mold 
 
 of a personality with whom I never had personal 
 contact. As amid the peace and charm of this 
 beautiful Seneca country I write these words in 
 valediction, in a tiny cottage upon Dr. Willis s 
 acres, upon the shore of the noble lake he loved full 
 well, within a few minutes stepping from the house 
 in which much of his work was accomplished, the 
 aroma of all that was good, and fine, and high, and 
 noble, yet most of all kindly in the man, rises faintly 
 strong as a subtle perfume about me. 
 
 Since this little book is but the recording of Al- 
 cott impressions and associations I have perforce 
 laid aside, not without some effort and always with 
 full regret, very much of literary charm having 
 other application. 
 
 Upon the wall over my writing table are two 
 memoranda tremulously written upon the backs of 
 envelopes which, from their postmarks, prove their 
 penciling less than a year prior to Dr. Willis s 
 death. They seem to me, above all other matter, 
 the keynotes to his character, as they seem to me 
 also exemplary of the foundation, upbuilding, and 
 realizations of his life s aims. One bears directly 
 upon these memoirs. The other is the speaking 
 man to whom I here pay tribute: 
 
 "During the most impressionable period of my youth 
 they had stimulated within me all those nobler elements of 
 
 105 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 character that I ever afterwards struggled to make the ruling 
 principles of my life." 
 
 "The old age of heart and the old age of mind are the 
 only old ages to be feared and dreaded. Never let them 
 trespass upon you. Kindness and consideration in all weather 
 towards all mankind are the armors against them." 
 
 Nothing in the writings of Dr. Willis has im 
 pressed me as this last thought penciled, no doubt, 
 the moment his mind formed it. And nothing 
 could make more clear the fact of the continuity 
 of good and evil through the influences of other 
 lives. Courtesy, chivalry, sympathy, the constant 
 radiation of kindliness in a life, have their direct 
 and indirect influences upon every other life with 
 whom it comes in contact. It requires no great 
 stretch of imagination, then, to see and understand 
 that Mr. and Mrs. Alcott, their home life, their 
 mutual high ideals, the motherly, loving nature of 
 the woman, the liberal theology and gentle philos 
 ophy of the man, made Dr. Willis what he was 
 and through his mental inheritance from them, in 
 turn influenced for betterment, for emancipation, 
 for uplift, the hundreds of other lives with whom 
 in a dual professional capacity he came in contact. 
 
 Here was an old man as measured in years, yet 
 ever young in an eternal youth of mind and heart. 
 
 106 
 
The Influences That Mold 
 
 Here was constant kindliness from boyhood 
 through manhood to nearly fifteen years past the 
 allotted three score and ten. Here was full exem 
 plification that with these qualities there is for any 
 of us but the mere old age of years. And here too 
 is proof inviolate that all the millions of the earth 
 hold within keeping the means to these ends. There 
 is no man in any clime but can ever be as young 
 as the beauty of a Spring morning, as full of radi 
 ance and gentle vigor as the new leaves and blos 
 soms upon the apple and cherry trees rising in 
 charming beauty upon the Glenora hills behind me. 
 
 As in Dr. Willis so in every one of us, lives the 
 manna which, mocking at mere years, can nourish 
 a lifelong youth. For the earnest seeker this youth 
 of the head and the heart is as easily found as a 
 wild violet in May. But brush aside the leaves of 
 envy, malice, greed, anger, and ruthless ambition, 
 and the violets of human love are found waiting 
 with drooping stem ready, if watered from the 
 springs of human kindness, to arise in simple glory. 
 Ever within the soul this undrying spring awaits, 
 to be uncovered by a kindly smile, a kindly word, 
 a kindly deed, a loving and unselfish action. 
 
 No man lives but has at his command that which 
 is perpetual law to a flower. Not a flower blooms 
 that does not say : do something to express the beau 
 tiful. Not a breath of a flower s incense reaches a 
 
 107 
 
Alcott Memoirs 
 
 nostril that does not say: breathe out the inner 
 life in some act of gentleness. 
 
 To carry into daily life, no matter what its 
 sphere, the comprehension that the most apparently 
 unimportant expression may be kindly uttered is 
 pregnant with deep meaning. To his intimates it 
 was Emerson s personality more than his giant in 
 tellect that made them love him. 
 
 To translate love into simple action means a 
 magical transformation in mental horizon. Dull, 
 commonplace, prosaic things are touched as by a 
 magician s wand. A "smile follows as the night 
 the day." Labor, physical or mental, ceases to be 
 a burden, a mere bread-winning thing. Every task, 
 high or low, menial or supreme, will then point to 
 a high nobility. To feel and understand this law 
 of love means knowledge, which also means for 
 bearance, which spells kindliness. By a law of 
 spiritual gravitation this kindliness will mingle with 
 kindliness in others, assimilate it, diffuse itself, re 
 turn to the giver as "bread upon the waters," soften 
 lives that are cold, hard, stern, concerned only with 
 selfish to-days, and create here in this life a real 
 to-morrow. 
 
 HENRI BAZIN. 
 
 Hope Cottage, Glenora, N. Y. 
 May, 1915. 
 
 108 
 
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