DR. EDWARD WALDO “EDDIE” EMERSON

EDWARD EMERSON DR.EDWARD WALDO EMERSON EDDIE EMERSON

AUTHOR OF:

HENRY DAVID THOREAU AS REMEMBERED BY A YOUNG FRIEND

EMERSON IN CONCORD

WALDO’S RELATIVES

This medical doctor’s general impression of Henry Thoreau’s physique: “I have never seen a person with more sloping shoulders, and seldom a narrower chest.” — Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1844

July 10, Wednesday: Lidian gave birth to another boy, and Waldo bought some Concord property adjacent to Walden Pond and wrote Thomas Carlyle about a woodlot he had bought: TIMELINE OF WALDEN

Edward we call him, and my wife calls him Edward Waldo. And when shall I show you a pretty pasture and wood- lot which I bought last week on the borders of a lake which is the chief ornament of this town, called Walden Pond?

LIDIAN EMERSON WALDO EMERSON DR.EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

WALDO’S RELATIVES HDT WHAT? INDEX

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NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

Doctor Edward Waldo Emerson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1847

May 4, Tuesday: Annie Shepard Keyes was born, a daughter of John Shepard Keyes and Martha Prescott Keyes (she would get married with Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson). ... our home was blessed with a daughter who brought back life and cheer to our hearts. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At the New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts, Herman Melville viewed Thomas Cole’s “The Course of Empire” (this would influence his next book, MARDI; AND A VOYAGE THITHER). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON HDT WHAT? INDEX

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DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

1848

October 9-17: As Henry Thoreau would relate in CAPE COD, he and Ellery Channing left Concord on the morning of the 9th with the agenda of taking the steamer from Boston to Provincetown and walking “up” Cape Cod (walking, that is, toward the south, toward its connection with the mainland). This was his initial excursion to the Cape, probably upon wrapping up work on Draft C of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS. The storm had, however, interrupted the steamer schedules and had caused, at Cohasset, the wreck of the St. John, one of the “coffin ships” loaded to the gunnels with Irish refugees. Changing their plans the duo boarded the southbound railroad for Cohasset to observe the aftermath of the shipwreck before continuing on to Bridgewater MA, where they spent the night.1

TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS

1. With whom did they spend the night in the little town of Bridgewater MA? Did Thoreau perchance have any Dunbar cousins still residing in this locality? Or, possibly, would the duo have stayed with Thoreau’s Harvard classmate William Allen there? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Meanwhile Ellen Fuller Channing and the Channing children Margaret Fuller Channing and Caroline Sturgis Channing were visiting for three weeks in Rockport, Massachusetts and Mrs. Lidian Emerson and the Emerson children Ellen Emerson and Edith Emerson and Edward Emerson were spending time in Plymouth.

Lidian and Eddie Thoreau walked the shore at Cohasset with the Reverend Joseph Osgood, husband of Mrs. Ellen Sewall Osgood, seeing the gashed bodies of the drowned from the St. John. Thoreau and Channing walked via Cohasset and Sandwich MA, returning on the Provincetown/Boston steamer, and Thoreau, at least, perceived the shore as “naked Nature, –inhumanly sincere, wasting no thought on man.”2

2. If you have scuba gear, you can swim in Henry Thoreau’s and Ellery Channing’s footsteps: the track taken in 1849 by these hikers is now more than 400 feet out, beyond the breakers at the bottom of the ocean. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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WISHING to get a better view than I had yet had of the ocean, which, we are told, covers more than two-thirds of the globe, but of which a man who lives a few miles inland may never see any trace, more than of another world, I made a visit to Cape Cod in October, 1849, another the succeeding June, and another to Truro in July, 1855; the first and last time with a single companion, the second time alone. I have spent, in all, about three weeks on the Cape; walked from Eastham to Provincetown twice on the Atlantic side, and once on the Bay side also, excepting four or five miles, and crossed the Cape half a dozen times on my way; but, having come so fresh to the sea, I have got but little salted. My readers must expect only so much saltness as the land-breeze acquires from blowing over an arm of the sea, or is tasted on the windows and on the bark of trees twenty miles inland after September gales. I have been accustomed to make excursions to the ponds within ten miles of Concord, but latterly I have extended my excursions to the sea-shore. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THOREAU’S 1ST VISIT TO CAPE COD

1st visit, 1849 — by train — by stage — on foot 4th visit, 1857 — on foot HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1854

August: Martin Robison Delany sponsored a national black emigration convention in Cleveland, Ohio, and lectured on “The Political Destiny of the Colored Race on the American Continent.”

The Reverend Samuel Ringgold Ward was accompanied by Richard Griffiths, Esq., who could speak Welsh, on a visit to Wales. We visited Bangor, Holyhead, Beaumaris, Caernarvon, Llanberris, Snowdon, Aberystwyth, Welshpool, and so forth. My stay was so short that I can say but little of Wales, but must say that little with very great pleasure; for no country, no people, ever pleased me so much — excepting black people, of course. I spent a Sabbath at Bangor, preaching three times to audiences of whom some could not understand sufficient English to follow a discourse. They came, however, because they wished to encourage the cause I represented, and to show their interest in the gospel, though preached in a language of which they could understand but few words. In one instance, however, there was a sermon in Welsh from one of the native ministers. This gave those who could not understand me an opportunity to receive benefit in their own tongue. I had a very large anti-slavery meeting in Bangor, and the kind feeling of the audience was peculiar to that most benevolent people.... At Beaumaris I spoke on temperance, part of the evening, and the other part, on anti-slavery; the same at Holyhead and Caernarvon. On one of the days of our sojourn at Bangor we visited the Penryn slate quarries, belonging to the Honourable Colonel Tennant. It is a most gigantic work: the number of men employed would make quite a town, in Canada. The good order, steady industry, and regular habits, of the workmen, were quite evident. The village near the castle, composed of the labourers’ cottages, and the schoolhouse and gardens, are the most beautiful and the most comfortable cottages in North Wales: indeed, I know of none equal to them anywhere. Lady Louisa, Colonel Tennant’s wife, had them erected according to models of her own drawing. The school, I believe, is at her expense. Neglected as the labourers of Wales generally are, it was most gratifying to see this specimen of kind carefulness. Beaumaris is quite a fashionable watering-place, and it is a very quiet, neat little town. It has a most capital hotel, quite HDT WHAT? INDEX

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equal to the great majority of English ones. The same may be true of Bangor; but the kindness of Mr. Edwards, our host, would not allow us to know. Caernarvon is, of course, rich in historic interest: its castle is a fine ruin. I spent some two or three days there very agreeably, being the guest of Mr. Hughes, a most kind and hospitable gentleman. From his house we made up a party to visit Snowdon — ascending it on foot, and returning in the same way. A more fatiguing journey of five miles it was never my fortune, good or ill, to make. What added to the discomfort of it was, that on reaching the top, we saw nothing but a thick Welsh mountain fog! but we had a most delightful view of the neighbouring hills and dales, from a point about half way to the summit. Being obliged to drive eight miles and speak that night at Caernarvon — to travel ninety-seven miles the next day, in a stage coach — and to preach three times the third day — made no small affair of the exercise. Reaching Aberystwyth late on Saturday night, I was glad to take the comfortable quarters offered to the weary in the Royal Hotel. It had rained all day; but, in spite of rain, it was most delightful to travel amid the beautifully diversified scenery betwixt Caernarvon and Aberystwyth. It is bolder than Irish scenery, and the cultivation is far better — though not so good, I thought, as the Scotch; but the farming of Wales is far from being indifferent. I spent some four or five days in Aberystwyth, making some acquaintances I shall ever remember: among them are the excellent pastors of the Churches, and the Rev. Mr. Davies and his excellent mother. I had the honour, too, of making the acquaintance of Mr. Lloyd, one of the leading gentry of the country, now Lord Lieutenant of Cardiganshire. Mr. L. took the chair at a meeting which I addressed; and was kind enough to say, one of his inducements to attend was, that the meeting was to be addressed by a gentleman from Canada. Having been in early life stationed there with his regiment, the gallant gentleman had acquired an interest in my adopted country which did not leave him upon his return to Wales. From Aberystwyth I returned to England by Welshpool, where I spent an evening, and attended a temperance meeting. The drive through that part of Wales is one of the most beautiful in this island of beautiful scenery. It reminds one of the valleys of the Genessee, the Susquehannah, and some portions of the St. Lawrence Valley. I know not when or where I have enjoyed a drive more than those through North and South Wales. Anybody else would be able to describe the scenery: all I can say is, it was most beautiful. What with the waving, ripened corn, the youthful-looking greenness of the recently mown meadows, the sparkling streamlets, the clear sky, and the gorgeously brilliant August sunlight, I was charmed beyond expression. I am sorry I cannot tell it better: please kind reader, accept the best I can perform. Since then, I have passed through portions of Wales in very rapid flying tours, as when returning from Ireland, last autumn and last spring; but have not had the pleasure of making any stay there. I think, however, that I have HDT WHAT? INDEX

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seen enough of Wales and the Welsh to have formed some tolerably correct views of their character. First, however, to record an incident of no small interest to me, which occurred during my sojourn at Aberystwyth. A gentleman named Williams, an agent for one of the wealthiest landlords in Wales, lives about a mile from Aberystwyth. I learned that a little boy, a son of Mr. Williams, who was ill, was anxious to see me, and that his parents wished me to call. The Rev. Mr. Davies kindly consented to accompany me, and we drove there. We found Mr. and Mrs. Williams most kind and affable persons; and upon being introduced to the chamber where their son lay, we were struck with his emaciated appearance; but in spite of this, his eyes beamed with intelligence, and about his lips a most cheerful smile played constantly. His mother told us he had been a great sufferer. His bones were but slightly covered with a wasted colourless skin. He could not stand or walk, from lameness; and I believe there was but one position in which he could lie. When we saw the helplessness of the child, we were glad that we had visited him. He had read “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”; he felt interested in the slaves, and daily prayed for them; he had carefully laid by the little presents of money which had been given him, and had a donation to give me, for the cause of the slave. But what made the deepest impression upon us was, his mother’s telling us that, in the midst of the very severe pains which tortured the little sufferer, he would cry out, but immediately check himself, saying “Mamma, I ought not to complain so. How much more did Jesus suffer, for me!” We left that house feeling that we had been highly privileged. We had learned the lesson of patient suffering at the bedside of that dear child — had seen a babe, as it were, praising God. That the child could long live, seemed out of the question; but the wheat of the surrounding fields was no more ripe for the sickle, than was that child to be gathered unto God. Since that day, I never suffer pain, complainingly, without fancying I see the bright, beaming eye of little Williams rebuking me, as he hushes his own cries, in the midst of anguish, by the recollection of “how much more Jesus suffered for him.” That child may, ere this, have been called to his rest; he may be with Him whose sufferings he learned so early to contemplate: but until I meet him in another world, I shall ever remember the lesson learned at his bedside. Since that time, some of the severest pangs I ever felt have been mine, both in body and mind; but their coming is accompanied by the remembrance of what that beloved child learned, in agony. And, blessed be God! the divine consolations which lulled his pains are abundant, infinite in efficacy! Wales is the most moral and most religious country, and her peasantry the best peasantry, that I know. Doubtless, many will differ from me; but such is my very decided opinion, based on the following reasons: — 1. The courts in Wales have fewer cases of scandalous crimes and misdemeanors to deal with than the courts of any other part of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the kingdom, of the same population. The difference betwixt Wales and Ireland, in this respect, is immense. 2. But go to a Welsh town (such as Bangor), and how quiet and moral is it, compared with any town of the like population you can name in England, Ireland, or Scotland! Not a woman walking the streets for lewd purposes, not a drunkard brawling in the highways, no rows or fights; quietness and order reign everywhere. Holyhead is a seaport; it is the same there, and so in every town I visited. 3. The temperance cause has done more for Wales than for any other part of the kingdom. A drunken peasant is, indeed, a rare sight in Wales. The miners, the farm servants, and the ordinary labourers, all agree, somehow or other, to be temperate. Not that all are abstainers; but a more temperate peasantry, I am free to confess, there is not, even in Maine! 4. There is no begging in Wales. There are children who run after the carriages of tourists and cry, “ha’penny!” about the only English word they know; and this more for sport than halfpence. But there is little or no encouragement given to it by the inhabitants; and there is no such thing as a swarm of beggars at every corner, door, hotel, church-gate, and everywhere else, as in every part of Ireland. 5. The Welsh are poor as well as the Irish; and their landlords sufficiently neglect them, as to their dwellings: but the cleanliness of the peasantry is most striking. The contrast betwixt Holyhead and Kingstown, within four hours’ sail of each other, is most remarkable. One can scarcely believe that he has not been to two opposite sides of the globe, instead of across a narrow channel. The reader will now see why I blame the Irish for their defects, in contrast with the Welsh. 6. The industry of the poorer classes in the Principality is most commendable. I know this has much to do with any people’s moral and religious character. No one believes, as no one ought, in a very high-toned and exemplary morality, or a very devoted religion, conjoined with idleness. I do believe that the Welsh labouring classes are more correct in this than even the Highlanders in Scotland. Patient though not overpaid toil, mitigated by few comforts, is not only the lot, but to all appearance the choice, of the Welsh peasant. I have seen more idlers in one street, in Kingstown — in a circumference of 300 yards, in Glasgow — or in a small village, in Essex or Norfolk — than one can see in the whole of Wales. 7. The Welsh population not only attend divine service, but are religious: I say “the population,” because it is not true, as in England, of a few persons only out of the many, but, like the Scotch, of the people generally. There are some curious and interesting facts in connection with this. In the first place, the Welsh are not Episcopalians: nine tenths of them dissent from the Establishment. It is most ridiculous to tax them for its support, for they do not go near it. Still, they quietly go to their chapels, and as quietly pay for their support. In the next place, they are not mere nominal members of Churches. The HDT WHAT? INDEX

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majority belong to the Calvinistic Methodist denomination, whose rules are highly and properly rigid. No laxity in morals is allowed to pass unrebuked. Besides, in travelling through Wales, it is seen that almost wherever there are a dozen houses, one of them is a chapel. The people feel their religious wants, and supply them. Moreover, the ministers of the denomination alluded to, and all others, take especial care and pains in looking after their flocks. Their preaching is deeply earnest, practical, scriptural, plain, and personal; also, most pathetic and affectionate. These combined influences are in constant operation, and are producing the very best effects upon a remarkably straightforward, simpleminded people. Compare these sturdy, honest preachers, with the priests of Romanism! Compare their flocks with the Papal populations of, I care not what country! I cannot consent to argue the case: in the living history of present fact it stands out in bold relief. It speaks for itself, in language clear and intelligible; its truths are undeniable, unquestionable: and though our fellow subjects of the Principality are less wealthy and less learned than some more flattered inhabitants of other portions of these islands, they excel us all in some of the best, noblest, traits that ever adorned human character. Should they diffuse education more thoroughly, cling with less tenacity to their mother tongue, draw more largely from the “well of English undefiled,” and mingle more with the other elements of British population, then that brave little Principality will one day be more often visited and considered: it will take rank as high in other matters, as in morals; and, in peculiar distinctive character, appear, to its present despisers, beautiful as its own valley scenery, elevated as Snowdon’s loftiest summit! I have spoken mostly of the labouring classes in Wales; and have only to add, that the better and higher classes are essentially Englishmen — with the exception, I must once more remark, of being very far behind Englishmen and Scotchmen (and, according to the papers of the day, behind Irishmen as well!) as landlords. They need to follow more closely the example set by the Honourable Colonel Tennant and the Lady Louisa, in caring for those who minister to their comforts and convenience. I am sure an one who visits the village referred to will join me in this remark. I know what will be said, in other countries than Wales, in reply to what I say of the chastity of the Welsh female peasantry. Reference will be made to the stupid system of courtship called “bundling” — a practice for which there is no defence: most certainly, I have no word to utter in its behalf. That it has not been attended with far worse consequences, is to me a marvel. But I have the great happiness to know, that the pulpit, which is more powerful in Wales than in any Protestant country elsewhere, has turned its whole power and influence against this barbarous practice, so that not even it, to any extent, forms a drawback to the remarks I have made upon the morality of the Welsh peasantry. It is to be hoped that a custom which has HDT WHAT? INDEX

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nothing better than its antiquity for its apology, but is liable to the very gravest objections on the score of morality and decency, will soon be known merely as a matter of history. Surely, when a custom so pernicious shall once be put away, all will rejoice, and all will wonder that a people of such sterling sense should have suffered it to continue so long. It certainly has outlived the former bad taste of the people; and therefore, if for no higher reason, it ought to live no longer. Most earnestly is it to be hoped that this abominable relic of ancient British barbarism will soon be so completely banished, as no longer to mar the otherwise good and exemplary character of the honest youths and maidens of that delightful Principality.

In addition to the Rowse portraits of Henry Thoreau3 and Waldo Emerson from this period, we have a photograph of Eddie, Waldo, and Edith that evidently dates to approximately this year:

DR.EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

[I find I am unable to show you Eddie Emerson’s sketch of his memory of Thoreau.]

3. Unfortunately the original crayon of Henry Thoreau has deteriorated to the point at which its copies are now better than it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1856

June 22, Sunday: Friend Daniel Ricketson spent the forenoon in Henry Thoreau’s room copying titles of books, etc. The Reverend Convers Francis was preaching in Concord that morning, and his prooftext was Colossians 1:27

and his topic “Christ in Us the Hope of Glory.” The thermometer reaching 95 at 3PM. At 4PM Ricketson and Thoreau went over to the Emerson home for tea by prior invitation, stopping by on the way to call on Mrs. Mary Merrick Brooks. Then he, Thoreau, and Emerson went with the Emerson children to Walden Pond.

Thoreau walked back from the pond with Ellen Emerson and Edith Emerson while Ricketson, Waldo Emerson, and 12-year-old Edward Waldo Emerson “bathed” and discussed the birds and flowers that they had met on the way. Upon return to the Emersons, Ricketson had a chance to meet Mrs. Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley with Miss Ripley, Mrs. Marsten Goodwin, and the Reverend Francis. They visited until 9, and Ricketson was in bed back at the Thoreaus’ at 10. He had found the day very satisfactory and mused to his journal about Concord’s opportunity of becoming the famous-author tourist trap it is today: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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My ideas of Mr. Emerson, with whom I had my second interview last night, are that he is a kind, gentle-natured man, even loving, but not what is usually termed warm-hearted. His mind does not strike me as being so great and strong as good in quality; it appears to me also limited as to its power. I should think he could rarely surprise one with any outburst of inspiration — his genius, for what he undoubtedly has, is sui generis. He is thoughtful, original, and only Emerson, and the founder of his race. It does not appear to me that he is even indebted to Carlyle, although the latter has recognized him as a kindred spirit. Emerson’s strength appears to me to lie in his honesty with himself; by his honesty he has produced a genuine article in the way of thought. He is an intelligent philosopher, a recipient of the divine cordial in doses rather homœopathic, but effectual specifics for those seeking a purer and better draught than what the schools afford. He is a blessing to the age. I am much interested in Concord, and should prefer it for a residence to almost any other place. The scenery is very picturesque in and about the village, and all appears quiet and peaceful, none of the stir and bustle of New Bedford. The Concord, or Musketaquid or grass-grown river, as my friend H.D.T. has learned its meaning from the Indians, runs along the edge of the village, which is chiefly on one street, although there are several others. It is a fine stream, and remarkable for its gentle current. With Thoreau I rowed up the river several miles, and had many pleasant views from different points. Walden Pond, by the shore where Thoreau built him a little house and there lived two years, is a small but delightful little lake, surrounded by woods. It is very deep and clear, a kind of well of nature. Concord has been for a long time the home or place of temporary abode for many of our most intellectual men and women, — commencing, so far as I am informed, with Dr. Ripley, then Emerson, Margaret Fuller for a short time as a visitor, Hawthorne, G.W. Curtis, H.D. Thoreau, the true Concord aborigine, William E. Channing, 2d, poet, Hon. Samuel Hoar, and his son, ex-Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar. It is also the home of Mrs. Brooks, a true and stirring abolitionist. Concord has a large number of fine old houses, and the old parsonage, once the home of Dr. Ripley and near the battle-ground, is one of the finest old homes in this county. WALDO EMERSON NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS ELLERY CHANNING SAMUEL HOAR EBENEZER ROCKWOOD HOAR EZRA RIPLEY MARGARET FULLER THOMAS CARLYLE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 24, Wednesday: Friend Daniel Ricketson to his journal, in Concord:

WALDO EMERSON Breakfasted with Mr. Emerson and his daughters Ellen ELLEN EMERSON and Edith, and his son Edward, fine young people. Left EDITH EMERSON Mr. E.’s and walked with Thoreau in the P.M. to Walden EDWARD EMERSON Pond, and through the woods to “Baker Farm,” ELLERY CHANNING immortalized by Thoreau and Channing in prose and verse. The walking hard on account of snow about eight BAKER FARM inches deep; got back at ten. Spent evening in house. T. read Channing’s poem on Baker Farm and some other of C.’s pieces which he thinks better than almost any other poet. Thoreau saw a fox before us and there were numerous traces across the road in the woods. Enjoyed the walk though quite tired out.

JAMES BAKER

WALDEN: O Baker Farm! “Landscape where the richest element Is a little sunshine innocent.” * * “No one runs to revel On thy rail-fenced lea.” * * “Debate with no man hast thou, With questions art never perplexed, As tame at the first sight as now, In thy plain russet gabardine dressed.” * * “Come ye who love, And ye who hate, Children of the Holy Dove, And Guy Faux of the state, And hang conspiracies From the tough rafters of the trees!”

(I don’t know where exactly this material ought to be situated, but while Eddie Emerson was at age 12, he dug a tunnel in the snow about six feet long, got people to come out and watch, and crawled inside with a lamp so that they could see the glow through the snow. He shouted out at the people watching so they could hear how his voice was muffled. The people who assembled for this demonstration included Henry Thoreau.)

December 24: P.M. More snow in the night and to-day, making nine or ten inches. To Walden and JAMES BAKER Baker Farm with Ricketson, it still snowing a little. Turned off from the railroad and went through Wheeler or Owl Wood. The snow is very light, so that sleighs cut through it and there is but little sleighing. It is very DANIEL RICKETSON handsome now on the trees by the main path in Wheeler Wood, where on the weeds and twigs that rise above the snow, it rests just like down, light towers of down with the bare extremity of the twig peeping out above. We push through the light dust, throwing it before our legs as a husbandman grain which he is sowing. It is only in still paths in the woods that it rests on the trees much. Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle. When I push aside the snow with my feet the ice appears quite black by contrast. There is considerable snow on the edge of the pine woods where I used to live. It rests HDT WHAT? INDEX

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on the successive tiers of boughs, perhaps weighing them down so that the trees are opened into great flakes from top to bottom. The snow collects and is piled up in little columns like down about every twig and stem, and this is only seen in perfection, complete to the last flake, while it is snowing, as now. Returned across the pond and went to Baker Farm. Noticed at E. end of westernmost Andromeda Pond the slender spikes of Lycopus with half a dozen distinct little spherical dark brown whorls of pungently fragrant or spicy seeds, somewhat nutmeg-like or even like flagroot when bruised. I am not sure that the seeds of any other mint are thus fragrant now. It scents your handkerchief or pocketbook finely when the crumbled whorls are sprinkled over them. It was very pleasant walking there before the storm was over, in the soft subdued light. We are also more domesticated in nature when our vision is confined to near and familiar objects. Did not see a track of any animal till returning near the Wells meadow field, where many foxes (?) two of whom I had a glimpse of, had been coursing back and forth in the path and near it for 3/4 of a mile; they had made quite a path. I do not take snuff. In my winter walks I stop and bruise between my thumb and fingers the dry whorls of the Lycopus or water-horehound, just rising above the snow, stripping them off, and smell that. that is as near as I come to the Spice Islands. That is my smelling-bottle, my ointment. FRIEND DANIEL RICKETSON

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

Doctor Edward Waldo Emerson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1857

May 24, Sunday: Friend Daniel Ricketson in Concord, to his journal:

Sunday fine and warm — wind light. Thermometer at 86 above zero north side Mr. Thoreau’s house at 2 P.M. Rowed upon the river with Thoreau this forenoon. Walked up Lee’s Hill and visited the old Lee farm, the house having been lately burned. The barn and hen-houses are very complete affairs. Dined at Mr. Thoreau’s; spent ELLERY CHANNING part of the P.M. in my room at Channing’s house talking WALDO EMERSON with Thoreau upon various topics. Took a long walk this LIDIAN EMERSON P.M., leaving at four and returning at seven to the ELLEN EMERSON cliff with Mr. and Mrs. Emerson, their two daughters, Ellen and Edith, son Edward, and my friend Thoreau; had EDITH EMERSON tea and spent the remainder of the evening with the EDDIE EMERSON Emersons. Much pleased with Mrs. E.’s fine sense and sensibility as well as humanity, topics relative to which were the principal part of my conversation with her on the walk this P.M.

May 24. A. M.—To Hill. White ash, apparently yesterday, at Grape Shore but not at Conantum. What a singular appearance for some weeks its great masses of dark-purple anthers have made, fruit-like on the trees! A very warm morning. Now the birds sing more than ever, methinks, now, when the leaves are fairly expanding, the first really warm summer days. The water on the meadows is perfectly smooth nearly all the day. At 3 P. M. the thermometer is at 88°. It soon gets to be quite hazy. Apple out. Heard one speak to-day of his sense of awe at the thought of God, and suggested to him that awe was the cause of the potato-rot. The same speaker dwelt on the sufferings of life, but my advice was to go about one’s business, suggesting that no ecstasy was ever interrupted, nor its fruit blasted. As for completeness and roundness, to be sure, we are each like one of the laciniæ of a lichen, a torn fragment, but not the less cheerfully we expand in a moist day and assume unexpected colors. We want no completeness but intensity of life. Hear the first cricket as I go through a warm hollow, bringing round the summer with his everlasting strain. IRISH POTATO FAMINE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

Doctor Edward Waldo Emerson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1858

June 16, Wednesday: Abraham Lincoln was nominated to be the Republican senator from Illinois, opposing Democratic candidate Stephen A. Douglas. He would deliver his “House Divided” speech at the state convention in Springfield. Also, he would be engaging Douglas in a series of seven debates with big audiences.

The remains of Elisha Mitchell were transferred from his grave in Ashville, North Carolina to the top of the peak that would be named after him, Mt. Mitchell.

Henry Thoreau noted in his journal that Edward Waldo Emerson (about 14 years of age), Edward Jarvis “Ned” Bartlett (about 16 years of age), and Samuel Storrow Higginson (presumably at this point about 15, since he would graduate from Harvard College in 1863) “came to ask me the names of some eggs to-night.” The boys provided information as to the various nests that they had seen.

June 16: To Staple’s Meadow Wood. It is pleasant to paddle over the meadows now, at this time of flood, and look down on the various meadow plants, for you can see more distinctly quite to the bottom than ever.... No doubt thousands of birds’ nests have been destroyed by the flood, –blackbirds’ bobolinks’, song sparrows’, etc. I see a robin’s nest high above the water with the young just dead and the old bird in the water, apparently killed by the abundance of rain and afterward I see a fresh song sparrow’s nest which has been flooded and destroyed. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THEY CALLED HIM DAVE!

Happily for us boys [the Josiah Bartlett sons and Edward Emerson], there was then no law against collecting birds’ eggs, which pursuit, as practiced by a few of us under the friendly interest of Mr. Thoreau, was harmless, for we always left the mother bird her share of the eggs. Mr. Thoreau gave us a knowledge of the beautiful spots in Concord, and the kinds of birds, their habits, and songs; and incidentally also of flowers, trees, animals, and reptiles — a delight at the time and through life. He did not often go with us, except when we were proud to show “Dave” (as he was irreverently called) some special find, but he was always ready to answer our questions and show us his collections, and when Ned and I were big enough to go to Wachusett or Monadnoc, took great interest, like an elder brother, in advising us about our camping. — Edward W. Emerson

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

Doctor Edward Waldo Emerson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1861

July 10, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau and Horace Mann, Jr., age 17, returned home from the Minnesota trip in time for Edward Waldo Emerson’s birthday party. Their fare on the Fitchburg RR from Boston to Concord for the last leg of their long trip was $1.10. The trip cost Thoreau the entire $150.00 he had taken with him but he was not in any better condition than before:

“I have been sick so long that I have almost forgotten what it is to be well.”

There are indications that Mann had gone on this adventure among other reasons also for his health, and a few years later he also would die — of tuberculosis.

Since Waldo Emerson was giving a commencement address “Celebration of Intellect” in Ballou Hall at Tufts College in Medford, at a distance of 14 map miles on the Concord Turnpike, it seems possible that he was able to return by a 2-to-3-hour carriage ride and be present for his son’s birthday party in Concord:

When you say the times, the persons are prosaic; where is the feudal, or the Saracenic, or the Egyptian architecture? where the romantic manners? where the Romish or the Calvinistic religion, which made a kind of poetry in the air for Milton, or Byron, or Belzoni? but to us it is barren as a dry goods shop; — you expose your atheism.

However, Thoreau filled in for Waldo by offering Eddie a memorable piece of fatherly reassurance:

On my birthday, in the early summer, just before I went to take my examination for Harvard, my father and mother invited Thoreau and Channing, both, but especially Thoreau, friends from my babyhood, to dine with us. When we left the table and were passing into the parlour, Thoreau asked me to come with him to our East door — our more homelike door, facing the orchard. It was an act of affectionate courtesy, for he had divined my suppressed state of mind and remembered that first crisis in his own life, and the wrench that it seemed in advance, as a gate leading out into an untried world. With serious face, but with a very quiet, friendly tone of voice, he reassured me, told me that I should be really close to home; very likely should pass my life in Concord. It was a great relief.

The likely story, and the official story, is that Fanny Appleton Longfellow, as the result of the skin burns she had sustained on her body the previous day (her face was unmarked), went into a coma and died. In any event, for the rest of his life Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would need to wear a full beard in order to conceal the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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facial scars he sustained as he rolled her in the carpet. And he would write his wife a memorial poem titled

“Cross of Snow,” remembering that her white soul had been as pure as snow and equating being hurt with being martyred: “soul more white never through martyrdom of fire was led to its repose.” I must confess, however, that there seems to me to be a more likely story. Of course no-one will ever know for sure, but I feel it to be plausible that Fanny was taking an elixir because of the heat, that summer day in sweltering Cambridge, and that when her dress caught fire she was in no condition to do anything but sit and stare at the pretty flames, and that after she realized how seriously burned she was she went right back to the bottle of elixir and took what turned out to be an overdose. We must bear in mind that in those days there was a discreet and friendly dope pusher in every neighborhood, and his name was “chemist” and his place of business was “apothecary shop” and his main stock in trade was opium — and this tradesman kept no records and told none of the neighbors what decent people needed to do in order to get the most out of their day. Like so many things –like everything sexual– it wasn’t a problem and yet just wasn’t talked about.

The grieving husband/poet would write her, evidently on the anniversary date July 10, 1879, a memorial poem titled “Cross of Snow,” remembering not that before his second wife had gotten herself burned all black, she had been a white lady, but rather that her white soul had been as pure as snow: “soul more white never through martyrdom of fire was led to its repose.” Note that in such a frame of reference just about any sort of extreme pain (incurable cancer for instance) can get you termed not a mere sufferer but a martyr, and you don’t even need to display extreme fortitude — if your husband be a poet.4

THE CROSS OF SNOW In the long, sleepless watches of the night, A gentle face –the face of one long dead– Looks at me from the wall, where round its head The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light. Here in this room she died; and soul more white Never through martyrdom of fire was led 4.But, as we understand, if not, unfortunately, not. Incidentally, if you go on a guided tour of the mansion, which is a National Historical Landmark, please don’t ask the guide about the fire. She won’t say anything about it in front of the tourists and you shouldn’t either. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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To its repose; nor can in books be read The legend of a life more benedight. There is a mountain in the distant West That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines Displays a cross of snow upon its side. Such is the cross I wear upon my breast These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

September: During the Civil War, Senator Benjamin Wade would be one of the leaders of the group known as the Radical Republicans, who were highly critical of President Abraham Lincoln. At this point he wrote to Zachariah Chandler that Lincoln’s views on slavery “could only come of one, born of poor white trash and educated in a slave State.” Wade would be especially angry with Lincoln when he was slow to support the recruitment of black soldiers into the Union Army.

In accordance with the Canby Treaty, rations had been being distributed to the Navajos at Fort Fauntleroy (also known as Fort Lyon) by a volunteer regiment of New Mexico. After Chief Manuelito had taken part in a horserace against an army lieutenant, a fight had broken out. The had soldiers swung the gates of the fort shut, trapping the Navajos inside, and had begun an indiscriminate extermination. Some 30 to 40 native Americans, men, women, and children, had been slaughtered. In the next stage of these hostilities, during this month, there were a number of native American raids on isolated white settlements, then Canby sent in volunteers with Kit HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Carson to deal with the situation that had been created. WHITE ON RED, RED ON WHITE

Horace Mann, Jr. and Edward Waldo Emerson started their college studies.

Before dying of TB at an early age, a TB which he may have contracted from Thoreau, Mann would major in botany at Harvard College and become curator of the Harvard Herbarium. (He may well have contracted his interest in plants from Thoreau as well!)

This was the year in which our nation, having so many problems pressing upon it, elected to postpone them all, and instead have a national extended holiday from the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, etc. Among the final unedited jottings in Thoreau’s journal during the September-November period, we find this remark about some newborn kittens:

Four little kittens just born; lay like stuffed skins of kittens in a heap, with pink feet; so flimsy and helpless they lie, yet blind, without any stiffness or ability to stand.... The kitten can already spit at a fortnight old, and it can mew from the first, though it often makes the motion of mewing without uttering any sound. The cat about to bring forth seeks out some dark and secret place for the purpose, not frequented by other cats. The kittens' cars arc at first nearly, concealed in the fur, and at a fortnight old they are mere broad-based triangles with a side foremost. But the old cat is ears for them at present, and comes running hastily to their aid when she hears them mew and licks them into contentment again. Even at three weeks the kitten cannot fairly walk, but only creeps feebly with outspread legs. But thenceforth its ears visibly though gradually lift and sharpen themselves. At three weeks old the kitten begins to walk in a staggering and creeping manner and even to play a little with its mother, and, if you put your ear close, you may hear it purr. It is remarkable that it will not wander far from the dark corner where the cat has left it, but will instinctively find its way back to it, probably by the sense of touch, and will rest nowhere else. Also it is careful not to venture too near the edge of a precipice, and its claws are ever extended to save itself in such places. It washes itself somewhat, and assumes many of the attitudes of an old cat at this age. By the disproportionate size of its feet and head and legs now it reminds you [of] a lion. I saw it scratch its ear to-day, probably for the first time; yet it lifted one of its hind legs and scratched its ear as effectually as an old cat does. So this is instinctive, and you may say that, when a kitten's car first itches, CAT Providence comes to the rescue and lifts its hind leg for it. You would say that this little creature was as perfectly protected by its instinct in its infancy as an old man can be by his wisdom. I observed when she first noticed the figures on the carpet, and also put up her paws to touch or play with surfaces a foot off. By the same instinct that they find the mother's teat before they can see they scratch their cars and guard against falling. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October: Edward Waldo Emerson returned to Concord, the Harvard College program turning out to be too rigorous. Waldo Emerson wrote that Eddie “showed himself so feeble when shut up in a college room & routine, that I have had him at home now for a fortnight & have almost decided to withdraw him altogether for this year.” To toughen himself, Eddie began to help survey lots for Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

Doctor Edward Waldo Emerson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1862

At some point that Spring: At some point during this spring, shortly before his death, Henry Thoreau gave to Edmund Hosmer his personal copy of A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS, pointing out the lock of John’s hair pasted into the front and the poem that accompanied it, and said:

You know how a pregnant woman has to eat for two. I have felt that I needed to live for John.

According to Raymond R. Borst, this happened on May 5th: “At Thoreau’s request, his friend Edmund Hosmer spends the night with him” and “In appreciation for this kindness, Thoreau asks his sister to give Hosmer his memorial copy of A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS with a lock of his brother John’s hair taped in it.” Borst’s reference is to the Concord Saunterer, 11, Number 4 for Winter 1976, page 16.

Thoreau was then in the process of revising A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS for Ticknor & Fields to reissue it.

At some point, also, Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau presented Henry with a handwritten list of people to whom, she suggested, he might want to leave some special gift. Her list included in no particular sequence Bronson Alcott, H.G.O. Blake, Theophilus Brown, Ellery Channing, Aunt Louisa Dunbar, Edith Emerson, Edward Waldo Emerson, Edmund Hosmer, Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, Elizabeth Sherman Hoar, Horace Mann, Jr., Friend Daniel Ricketson, Mrs. Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, the Concord Town Library, and the Boston Society of Natural History. Thoreau worked at this list, jotting down alongside the names various small gifts (such as his two-volume edition of Froissart’s CHRONICLES for Ellery), FROISART’S CHRONICLES, I FROISART’S CHRONICLES, II

until he got down to the entry for Ellen Emerson. Evidently at this point he was unable to proceed, for the bequest to her (of his volume on the mineralogy of Maine and Massachusetts, evidently because it was by her uncle Charles T. Jackson), and all the remainder, are not in his handwriting but instead in Sophia’s.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

Doctor Edward Waldo Emerson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 9, Friday: In preparing the body, they had placed a wreath of the local Andromeda on its rib cage.

They had missed a fine opportunity: they should also have placed in the body’s hand that sprig of wild American crab-apple Malus angustifolia, that our guy had just traveled so far to recover. Against the better judgment of surviving members of the family, Waldo Emerson had insisted that the 3PM HDT WHAT? INDEX

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funeral service be staged at the 1st Parish Church of Concord from which Henry David Thoreau had resigned. (The Unitarians got him at last.) H.G.O. Blake and Theophilus Brown came from Worcester. The Unitarian reverend who had been the 1st person to plunk down one dollar and purchase a copy of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS, the Reverend William Rounseville Alger, came out to Concord from Boston specifically to attend (this reverend would demean him as “constantly feeling himself, reflecting himself, fondling himself, reverberating himself, exalting himself, incapable of escaping or forgetting himself”). Nathaniel Hawthorne attended. The Emersons had invited James T. and Annie Fields to their home for dinner. At the funeral, at which the Reverend Grindall Reynolds officiated, Waldo, being the sort of person who can find a way to turn a profit even in the death of a friend, used the opportunity to deliver himself of a judgmental lecture singularly unsuitable as a remembrance upon such an occasion, and, on the church steps after the funeral, he cut a deal with his publisher guest James Thomas Fields for its distribution by Ticknor & Fields as “Thoreau.” Ross/Adams commentary

Emerson’s charge of Stoicism

What Emerson should have said:

Son of John Thoreau and Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau. He helped us to gain our independence, instructed us in economy, and drew down lightning from the clouds.

Bronson Alcott, more appropriately, read a few passages from A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS, one of America’s first treatises on comparative religion: “Does not that which is within HDT WHAT? INDEX

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make that which is without also? May we not see God?”

A WEEK: We need pray for no higher heaven than the pure senses can furnish, a purely sensuous life. Our present senses are but the rudiments of what they are destined to become. We are comparatively deaf and dumb and blind, and without smell or taste or feeling. Every generation makes the discovery, that its divine vigor has been dissipated, and each sense and faculty misapplied and debauched. The ears were made, not for such trivial uses as men are wont to suppose, but to hear celestial sounds. The eyes were not made for such grovelling uses as they are now put to and worn out by, but to behold beauty now invisible. May we not see God? Are we to be put off and amused in this life, as it were with a mere allegory? Is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is commonly taken to be the symbol merely? When the common man looks into the sky, which he has not so much profaned, he thinks it less gross than the earth, and with reverence speaks of “the Heavens,” but the seer will in the same sense speak of “the Earths,” and his Father who is in them. “Did not he that made that which is within, make that which is without also?” What is it, then, to educate but to develop these divine germs called the senses? for individuals and states to deal magnanimously with the rising generation, leading it not into temptation, — not teach the eye to squint, nor attune the ear to profanity. But where is the instructed teacher? Where are the normal schools? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The funeral bell tolled his 44 years and the coffin was lowered into a hole in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.5

5. Not in the current family plot on Authors Ridge, as in the photo, nor with the current stone. The original stone was red and bore his name and his date of death. When the body was later moved to Authors Ridge, the stone was put with many another stone to be recycled, and used to cover over one or another drainage gutter in the cemetery. It is probably still there somewhere alongside one of the cemetery paths, with its inscription facing downward: “HENRY / MAY 6, 1862.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Here is how Professor Scott A. Sandage, in BORN LOSERS: A HISTORY OF FAILURE IN AMERICA, would describe the scene of this day: The American Dream died young and was laid to rest on a splendid afternoon in May 1862, when blooming apple trees heralded the arrival of spring. At three o’clock, a bell tolled forty-four times, once for each year of a life cut short. Dismissed from school, three hundred children marched to the funeral under the bright sun. Those with luck and pluck would grow up to transform American capitalism during the Gilded Age. But on this day the scent in the air was not wealth, but wildflowers. Violets dotted the grass outside the First Parish Church. The casket in the vestibule bore a wreath of andromeda and a blanket of flowers that perfumed the sanctuary with the sweetness of spring. Townsfolk and visiting notables crowded in to hear the eulogist admit what many had thought all along: the dearly departed had wasted his gifts. Neither a deadbeat nor a drunkard, he was the worst kind of failure: a dreamer. “He seemed born for greatness ... and I cannot help counting it a fault in him that he had no ambition,” the speaker grieved. Rather than an engineer or a great general, “he was the captain of a huckleberry-party.” When not picking berries, the deceased had tried his hand at a variety of occupations: teacher, surveyor, pencilmaker, housepainter, mason, farmer, gardener, and writer. Some who congregated that day in Concord, Massachusetts thought it tactless to say such things of Henry Thoreau at his own funeral, however true Mr. Emerson’s sermon about his dear friend was: Henry’s quirky ambitions hardly amounted to a hill of beans. Perhaps no one present fully understood what Ralph Waldo Emerson was saying about ambition, least of all the children fidgeting and daydreaming in the pews. Someday they would rise and fall in the world the sermon presaged, where berry picking was a higher crime than bankruptcy. If a man could fail simply by not succeeding or not striving, then ambition was not an opportunity but an obligation. Following the casket to the grave, stooping here and there to collect petals that wafted from it, the children buried more than the odd little man they had seen in the woods or on the street. Part of the American Dream of success went asunder: the part that gave them any choice in the matter. We live daily with Emerson’s disappointment in Thoreau. The promise of America is that nobody is a born loser, but who has never wondered, “Am I wasting my life?” We imagine escaping the mad scramble, yet kick ourselves for lacking drive. Low ambition offends Americans even more than low achievement. How we play the game is the important thing, or so we say. Win or lose, Thoreau taunts us from the dog-eared pages and dogwooded shores of WALDEN: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” We sprint as much to outrun failure as to catch success. Failure conjures such vivid pictures of lost souls that it is hard to imagine a time, before the Civil War, when the word commonly meant “breaking in business” — going broke. How did it become a name for a deficient self, an identity in the red? Why do we manage identity the way we run a business — by investment, risk, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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profit, and loss? Why do we calculate failure in lost dreams as much as in lost dollars?

In the summation paragraphs to a general derogation of the author and all his works in 1866 (considering Henry, for example, to have led a life that consisted primarily of “fondling himself”), the Reverend William Rounseville Alger would describe this day’s procession, bells, funeral, and interment: While we walked in procession up to the church, though the bell tolled the forty-four years he had numbered, we could not deem that he was dead whose ideas and sentiments were so vivid in our souls. As the fading image of pathetic clay lay before us, strewn with wild flowers and forest sprigs, thoughts of its former occupant seemed blent with all the local landscapes. We still recall with emotion the tributary words so fitly spoken by friendly and illustrious lips. The hands of friends reverently lowered the body of the lonely poet into the bosom of the earth, on the pleasant hillside of his native village, whose prospects will long wait to unfurl themselves to another observer so competent to discriminate their features and so attuned to their moods. And now that it is too late for any further boon amidst his darling haunts below, There will yet his mother yield A pillow in her greenest field, Nor the June flowers scorn to cover The clay of their departed lover.

Shortly after Henry David Thoreau had been buried, the Emerson family would feel that an adventure in California would assist their son in the slow recovery of his health, and Edward Waldo Emerson would set off on the overland route.

June 12, Thursday: Waldo Emerson wrote to Edward Waldo Emerson and mentioned that he had been reading in Henry Thoreau’s journal. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 29, Tuesday: There was fighting at Savage’s Station. Waldo Emerson repeated his funeral oration on Henry David Thoreau for the benefit of the Reverend Theodore Parker’s “Fraternity” in Boston.

After Thoreau’s death, Louisa May Alcott wrote a poem “Thoreau’s Flute” for The Atlantic Monthly. According to Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson she wrote the poem while she was nursing in the military hospital in Washington DC where she had received the news of Henry Thoreau’s death:

We sighing said, “Our Pan is dead— His pipe hangs mute beside the river, Around it friendly moonbeams quiver, But music’s airy voice is fled. Spring comes to us in guise forlorn, The blue-bird chants a requiem, The willow-blossom waits for him, The genius of the wood is gone” Then from the flute, untouched by hands, There came a low, harmonious breath: For such as he there is no death. His life the eternal life commands. Above men’s aims his nature rose. The wisdom of a just content Make one small spot a continent, And turned to poetry life’s prose Haunting the hills, the stream, the wild, Swallow and aster, lake and pine To him seemed human or divine, Fit mates for this large-hearted child. Such homage nature ne’er forgets; And yearly on the coverlid ’Neath which her darling lieth hid Will write his name in violets. To him no vain regrets belong Whose soul, that finer instrument, Gave to the world no poor lament, But wood-notes ever sweet and strong. Oh lonely friend, He still will be A potent presence, though unseen, Steadfast, sagacious and serene. Seek not for him: he is with Thee.

At that time the magazine was withholding the names of contributors, and Louisa was informed by her father Bronson Alcott that one day while he was visiting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the poet had picked up the The Atlantic Monthly and had read aloud a few lines from her poem, and had asked her father whether he had read “Emerson’s fine poem on Thoreau’s Flute?” THE ALCOTT FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In “Chiefly about War Matters,” edited and expurgated by Ticknor & Fields, Nathaniel Hawthorne revealed that he had been utterly at odds with Emerson’s and Thoreau’s attitude toward John Brown while Brown was awaiting execution in 1859.

I shall not pretend to be an admirer of old John Brown, any farther than sympathy with Whittier’s excellent ballad about him may go; nor did I expect ever to shrink so unutterably from any apophthegm of a sage, whose happy lips have uttered a hundred gold sentences, as from that saying (perhaps falsely attributed to so honored a source), that the death of this blood-stained HANGING fanatic has “made the Gallows as venerable as the Cross!” Nobody was ever more justly hanged.

August 31, Sunday: Winthrop E. Faulkner mustered at Camp Wilson near Lowell, Massachusetts with Company E of the 6th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, for the Nine Months’ Campaign, at the rank of Captain.6

Edward Waldo Emerson arrived in Sacramento after his overland trip to California.

At some point during August or September or October of this year, Waldo Emerson jotted into his journal what appears to have been his synopsis of what he had taken away from various conversations he had had from time to time with Henry Thoreau:

Henry said, “I wish so to live as to derive my satisfactions & inspirations from the commonest events, so that what my senses hourly perceive, my daily walk, the conversation of my neighbors may inspire me, & I may dream of no heaven but that which lies above me.

6. The unit would relocate to Washington DC on September 9th to the 12th. From there it would relocate to Virginia on September 14th and 15th, where it would be attached to Foster’s Provisional Brigade, Division at Suffolk, 7th Army Corps, Department of Virginia until April 1863, and then to 2nd Brigade, 1st Division, 7th Army Corps, Department of Virginia until June 1863. It would participate in an expedition to Western Branch Church on October 3-4, 1862 and in expeditions to Blackwater on October 24-26 and on November 17-19 involving a skirmish at Lawrence’s Plantation on November 17th. It would participate in an expedition to Beaver Dam Church on December 1-3. It would see action on the Blackwater River near Franklin on December 2d. It would participate in an expedition to Zuni on December 11-13, taking part in an action at Zuni on December 11th, 1862. It would take part in an action at Deserted House on January 30, 1863. It would participate in the siege of Suffolk from April 12th to May 4th, when the siege would be raised. It would take part in operations on the Seaboard & Roanoke Railroad from May 12th to the 26th, being at the action at Holland House on May 15-16. It would relocate to Boston on May 26-29, and there muster out as of June 3, 1863. This entire regiment would lose during these nine months of service two officers and 11 enlisted men killed or mortally wounded, and in addition 18 enlisted men would succumb to illness. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Whittier-Holmes-Emerson-Motley-Alcott-Hawthorne-Lowell-Agassiz-Longfellow HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Plan of Fort Ridgely as it was in 1862 during the race war HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1864

July 12, Tuesday: Denmark sued for peace with Prussia and Austria.

Le fitre enchanté, ou Le soldat magicién, an opéra-comique by Jacques Offenbach to words of Nuitter and Tréfeu, was performed for the first time, at Bad Ems.

Edward Waldo Emerson informed his father Waldo Emerson that the war news had resolved him to leave college and enlist in a militia company which was being formed in Acton.

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

Doctor Edward Waldo Emerson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1874

Edward Waldo Emerson finished his training as a physician and returned to America, marrying Annie Shepard Keyes of Concord. Late in the year Edith Emerson Forbes helped her father bring out, under his name, an anthology PARNASSUS of the poetry which the Emerson family most favored for parlor reading. There were no poems by Waldo himself, or by Channing or by Poe or by Whitman, although Thoreau was represented. Included were such poets as John Quincy Adams, Calidasa, Waldo’s brother Edward, Jean Ingelow, Lucy Larcom, Sarah H. Palfrey, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Julia C.R. Dorr, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Simonides, and Jones Very.

Emma Lazarus’s novel ALIDE: AN EPISODE OF GOETHE’S LIFE focused on the young Goethe and a country woman. These lovers are made to part so the great poet can fulfill his “sacred office.”

(Lazarus would see that her friend Emerson had neglected to include any of her stuff in PARNASSUS, and post him an indignant letter.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1878

October 29, Tuesday: At a “Club” meeting at the Emerson home attended by Ellery Channing, the Franklin Benjamin Sanborns, and Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, Waldo Emerson read from his journals on the topic of Henry Thoreau. EMERSON TO HIS JOURNAL HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1882

April 16, Sunday: On about this date, according to his son Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, Waldo Emerson caught a cold.

April 17, Monday: Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson dropped by the Emerson home in Concord and noticed that his father Waldo Emerson was very hoarse.

April 18, Tuesday: Annie Shepard Keyes Emerson, Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson’s wife, made a telephone call to the Emerson home in Concord and was informed that Waldo Emerson was no worse.

Arthur Sullivan returned to London from a four-month tour of Egypt and Italy and immediately took up residence at 1 Queen’s Mansions. He would reside there for the remainder of his life. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1888

Houghton, Mifflin chose “WILD APPLES” and ““SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES” ” and Waldo Emerson’s eulogy of the dead Henry Thoreau, to use in representing Thoreau as the first “nature author” of their Riverside Literature Series. For two decades this schoolbook would sell almost as well as WALDEN itself, and American readers would be seeing Thoreau primarily through the Emerson optics as “the bachelor of thought and Nature.”

Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson wrote EMERSON IN CONCORD for the amusement of Concord’s all-male “Social Circle.” Although the son instanced that his father had visited California, he made no mention of any encounter with John Muir.

Garnett, Richard. LIFE OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON. NY: Thomas Whittaker, 1888 “A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”

BIOGRAPHY Written just seven year’s after Emerson’s death, this highly apologetic biography elevates Emerson to the level of near-deity. The author knew Emerson personally and his acquaintance often gets in the way of his objectivity. In the midst of his analysis of Emerson’s life and works, Garnett often wanders of into glassy-eyed reminiscing about “old Waldo.” While this is interesting to view how Emerson was perceived by his contemporary admirers, its worth as a legitimate piece of biography and/or criticism, which it portends to be, is rather limited.

(Stephen R. Webb, February 20, 1986) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October: MEMOIRS OF MEMBERS OF THE SOCIAL CIRCLE IN CONCORD; SECOND SERIES, FROM 1795 TO 1840 ... PRIVATELY PRINTED, by John Shepard Keyes and Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson (Cambridge: Privately Printed, The Riverside Press [includes a book-length memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson by his son, entitled EMERSON IN CONCORD, separately paged but bound in following the other memoirs of this series]). CONCORD’S SOCIAL CIRCLE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1889

7 Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson’s EMERSON IN CONCORD was published by Houghton, Mifflin.

7. Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson. EMERSON IN CONCORD. Houghton, Mifflin, 1889 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1892

December 13, Tuesday: According to a typed transcript in Box 1, Folder 15 of the Allen French papers at the Concord Free Public Library, on this day Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson interviewed Ann Bigelow in regard to Concord’s participation in the Underground Railroad (the interpolations in the transcript are Dr. Emerson’s, and also there is a note by Dr. Emerson in the margin of the first page of the manuscript that reads “See also R.H. Dana’s diary at the time of Fugitive slave law doings in Boston in C.F. Adams’s biography. The juror there mentioned as having driven Shadrach was Edwin Bigelow.”): I called on Mrs. Edwin Bigelow widow of the good blacksmith & citizen and friend of the slave. Mrs. Bigelow, be it said, knew Henry Thoreau well from the time when he taught school in Concord to the time of his death, and valued and honours his life & character. When asked about his connection with the Underground R.R. she said: The Thoreaus in those days lived in the “Parkman House” where now the Library stands [a private tenement but bearing the name of its former owner Dea. Parkman a relative of Francis Parkman the historian]. Squire Brooks & his wife lived next door at the parting of the roads and we [the Bigelows] just across the [Sudbury] Street from them. So we were close together & all anti slavery people, although Squire Brooks believed that it was his duty as a good citizen to obey the law. From the day of the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, the Underground R.R. was organized & active and nearly every week some fugitive would be forwarded with the utmost secrecy to Concord to be harbored over night and usually was sped on his way before daylight. They were escorted to West Fitchburg [never to Fitchburg, a large town] a small station where they got aboard the North- bound train. Dr. Bartlett often drove them from Concord in his chaise with his swift horse. Sometimes they went by cars from Concord, & then Henry Thoreau went as escort probably more often than any other man. He would look after the tickets, &c., but in the cars did not sit with the fugitive so as not to attract attention to the companionship [I think Mrs. B. said that H.D.T. also sometimes drove them to W. Fitchburg]. The fugitives were harboured in Concord at Mrs. Thoreau’s, Mrs. Bigelow’s or Miss Mary Rice’s. This last lady lived in a little house in a field behind the old Hill Burying Ground. She had a little nook built by old Francis Buttrick the carpenter in her attic projecting over the eaves & ventilated by auger-holes. While Henry Thoreau was in the woods the slaves sometimes were brought to him there, but obviously there was no possible concealment in his house [H.D.T. built his house, like Marcus Scaurus’s into which all Rome could look]. So he HDT WHAT? INDEX

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would look after them by day, & at night-fall —no street lamps in Concord in those days— get them to his mother’s or other house of hiding. He was always ready to help with service and didn’t count risk, & also, although he had little money, always gave or advanced money to a slave who needed it. Sometimes this was repaid from the fund. It was no part of his plan in making the Walden hermitage to make there a refuge for fugitives. That was only incidental. But when they came to him there, he acted more independently and by his own good judgment than while living in his mother’s house. There she had sway & he took only a second place as helper. There never was any pursuit to Concord or domiciliary search. Shadrach a slave who had for some time been at work in Boston [U.S. Hotel? no that was Sims] was identified [by his master] & seized by officers & handcuffed & carried to the U.S. Court house early in the morning before many officers or people were there. Word went abroad among the Abolitionists and in half an hour a crowd rushed in and surrounding him & the officers took him out of their hands & brought him to the door [looking out on Court Square]. There Mr. ————— cried out to the crowd “For the love of Heaven, if you have any pity for this man, disperse in all directions!” So they shouted and put up their umbrellas & scattered: This man then with Shadrach, slipping among the men, went by by-ways to the Cambridge bridge, crossed it (walking apart, but keeping within sight of each other) into Cambridgeport & so to the house of Mr. Lovejoy [brother of the Alton martyr!] when the handcuffs were removed, & thence they came to Concord. At about 3 in the morning of March 17th a little before dawn, Shadrach was brought to the Bigelow’s house. Mrs. Bigelow was not well. Her husband however made a fire in the air-tight stove in her room to get the slave & his rescuer some breakfast & meantime went over to get Mrs. Brooks a most ardent abolitionist saying that Mrs. Bigelow was sick & wanted her: but the kind hearted though law-abiding Squire Brooks said “But if she is very sick they may want me for something so I’ll go over with you.” When the door opened Mr. Bigelow heard Mr. Brooks voice down stairs with his wife’s he said “What shall we do now?” But Mrs. Bigelow said “there must be no concealment: let Mr. Brooks come up.” Mr. Brooks with his wife entered Mrs. Bigelows chamber and to their surprise found Mr. & Mrs. Bigelow, Mr. ————— and Shadrach the fugitive. Squire Brooks saw what was going on at once, but here was an abstract matter hitherto presented to him in a more concrete form. They were fitting Shadrach out with clothes. Mr. Bigelow’s hat wouldn’t fit him, but the man of law straightway zealously ran across the road to his house HDT WHAT? INDEX

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& fetched his own hat, sheltered by which Shadrach departed for the North Star, driven by Mr. Bigelow with a Horse got from the stable near by [his own horse was white, well known & hence unadapted for contraband service] in the wagon of Lowell Fay, another near neighbor. Next day Mr. Cheney, a Webster Whig, said sharply to Mr. Brooks “Shadrach was brought to Concord,” which statement the Squire had to bluff off as best he might, but he was now liable to fine and imprisonment for violating the sacred law of the land. RESISTING THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1897

November 30, Tuesday: Paul, Baron Gautsch von Frankenthurn replaced Kazimierz Felix, Count Badeni as chancellor of Austria.

Edvard Grieg made his only concert appearance in Scotland, in Edinburgh.

Four songs for voice, viola and piano by Charles Martin Loeffler were performed for the first time, in Steinert Hall, Boston: La cloche félée and Harmonie du soir to words of Beaudelaire, and Dansons la gigue! and Sérénade to words of Verlaine.

The Brooklyn Eagle ran a story about Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson’s childhood memories of Henry Thoreau: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1903

Waldo Emerson. THE COMPLETE WORKS OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON (“Centenary Edition”), 12 volume, ed. Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903-1904) (reprinted 1968 AMS Press NY). On page 308 of Volume III there is a footnote which might easily be missed, which might provide us with some slight evidence that at some point Emerson took a look inside Thoreau’s WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS: Thoreau in his Walden humorously tells of his “half- witted and one-and-a-half-witted visitors” there. (Another very slight piece of evidence that Emerson looked at Thoreau’s book is that the copy that Thoreau presented to Emerson, inscribed on the front free endpaper with “R.W. Emerson / from / H.D.T.,” is still in existence at the Concord Free Public Library, and we can see that in this copy some unknown person has at some unknown time made manuscript notes in pencil on the back paste-down endpaper and its opposite page, plus some pencil notes and markings in the text itself. However, whether this mark-up was done by Waldo Emerson, or by some other person who had access to the library in the Emerson home, and when it was done, is of course a very open question).

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn’s THE PERSONALITY OF EMERSON (Boston: Charles E. Goodspeed). “A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”

BIOGRAPHY Unlike the Garnett text [Garnett, Richard. LIFE OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON NY: Thomas Whittaker, 1888], this book makes no claims to be a definitive statement on the life and works of Emerson. Quite to the contrary, Sanborn almost completely ignores critical discussion of life and writings. Instead, we are given a long anecdotal essay on one man’s memories of Emerson. Although Sanborn doesn’t make Emerson’s acquaintance until rather late in Emerson’s career (1852), one nevertheless is given an entertaining, albeit limited, sense of what Emerson would say to all his admirers (Sanborn among them) who would hang around his home, what he would chat about over dinner to his wife, and generally what the man, not the writer/ philosopher was like.

( Stephen R. Webb, February 20, 1986)

(Sanborn reported that one of Harvard’s natural historians had remarked in exasperation to Bronson Alcott that “if Emerson had not spoiled him, Thoreau would have made a good entomologist.”) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1905

December 27, Wednesday: The cornerstone for Emerson Hall at Harvard University was laid with appropriate ceremony. The speaker was Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson and his topic was “Emerson and Scholars.” This more-than-adequately-pious address would appear in the Harvard Graduates Magazine.8 WALDO EMERSON

8. Thus far, they have not seen fit to provide similar honor to their most illustrious graduate. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1909

During this year and the following one, publication of Waldo Emerson’s “Journals,” edited by son Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson and grandson Waldo Emerson Forbes. EMERSON’S JOURNAL, I EMERSON’S JOURNAL, II EMERSON’S JOURNAL, III EMERSON’S JOURNAL, IV EMERSON’S JOURNAL, V EMERSON’S JOURNAL, VI EMERSON’S JOURNAL, VII EMERSON’S JOURNAL, VIII EMERSON’S JOURNAL, IX EMERSON’S JOURNAL, X HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In Boston, publication of a “Bibliophile” edition of Henry Thoreau’s WALDEN in two volumes “printed for members only”: TIMELINE OF WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

1911

Daniel Chester French sculpted the seated figure of Waldo Emerson that is in the Concord Free Public Library. (He had done a clay model from life, of this friend of his father Henry Flagg French, and from this clay model in 1879 had already created two busts and a head. We may note that although as a young sculptor he had done portrait work of local people he knew personally –among them Simon Brown who was married to Henry Flagg French’s sister Ann, and Elizabeth Rockwood Hoar– since he had been only twelve when Henry Thoreau had died, he had never had a chance to get to know him.)

Allen French’s THE SIEGE OF BOSTON.

VIEW THE PAGE IMAGES

Moorfield Storey’s and Edward Waldo Emerson’s EBENEZER ROCKWOOD HOAR: A MEMOIR (Houghton Mifflin) made a passing mention of the Concord mass-murderer Lieutenant Daniel Hoar. EBENEZER ROCKWOOD HOAR

The two daughters of Joanna Hoar [the 1st American ancestress], by marriage with Henry Flint and Edmund Quincy, became the sources of the Adams and Quincy families. Her youngest son, Leonard Hoar, was educated at Harvard College, where he graduated in 1650, and of which he became the President in 1672, the first who was a graduate of the college. Thus early was the relation established between Harvard College and the Hoar family. The eldest son who accompanied her to this country, John Hoar, when he grew up settled in Concord, which was then “the extreme western frontier town of English settlement in New England.” Thenceforward the family dwelt in Concord, Lincoln, Lexington, Waltham and Watertown, within a circle of six miles’ radius. John Hoar was a lawyer and a citizen, whose thought, speech, and action were fearlessly independent of others in a day when magistrates and ministers were formidable. His humane and brave conduct in sheltering and protecting the poor group of “Praying Indians” of Nashobah, when, in King Philip’s War, a HDT WHAT? INDEX

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cruelty begotten of fear took momentary possession of Concord, is recorded in Walcott’s “Concord in the Colonial Period.” In 1 676, he went into the wilderness and redeemed Mrs. Rowlandson from captivity, a very dangerous expedition. His independence in the matter of church-going, and his remarks on the preaching of Rev. Edward Bulkeley, proved “an expensive luxury” to him, as Mr. Walcott says, for he was fined and temporarily disbarred; but his life reflected honor on his name. John Hoar’s son Daniel was a lieutenant and presumably had some military experience, but Daniel’s son John “was a soldier in the old French War and was a prisoner among the Indians for three months,” serving also as selectman of Lexington. From him came Samuel Hoar of Lincoln, who, as a Lieutenant of the Lincoln Company, was at Concord bridge on April 19, 1775, where also were two great-grandfathers and three great-uncles of Judge Hoar. Lieutenant Hoar served in the Provincial and Continental forces, and fought at Saratoga. Later he was a magistrate and sat in the Legislature of Massachusetts, first, as a representative from Lincoln, and afterwards as senator. He married Susannah Pierce, whose father was Colonel Abijah Pierce of Lincoln, one of the town’s Committee of Safety in the days preceding the outbreak of the Revolution, and colonel of a regiment of Minute-men. Their first-born son was Samuel, who through a long life sustained and advanced the simple and brave ideals of Massachusetts. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1917

Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, HENRY THOREAU AS REMEMBERED BY A YOUNG FRIEND, EDWARD WALDO EMERSON. 1917

HENRY DAVID THOREAU AS REMEMBERED BY A YOUNG FRIEND

(Note: When the son Edward Waldo Emerson here wrote of his father Waldo Emerson that “when the Thoreau family, after Henry’s death, submitted the journals to his friend’s consideration, he, coming from his study, day by day, would tell his children his joyful surprise at the merit and the beauty which he found everywhere in those daily chronicles of Nature and of thought,” presumably he wasn’t exactly making this up out of whole cloth but also he wasn’t recounting anything he personally experienced: he had left Concord shortly after Thoreau’s burial on an overland trip to California, and was nowhere near the Emerson home while his father was doing this telling about the reading of Thoreau’s journal.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1918

Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson’s THE EARLY YEARS OF THE SATURDAY CLUB. AT THE PARKER HOUSE

October 11, Friday: Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson wrote to Dr. Loring Holmes Dodd: “We always called my friend Thó- row, the h sounded, and accent on the first syllable.”

On the island of Puerto Rico, the city of Mayagüez and adjacent towns were nearly destroyed by a 7.5 earthquake that produced a tsunami. HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

1929

Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson. EMERSON’S COMPLETE WORKS. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1929 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1930

Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson put out a volume of his essays, addresses, and poems. B.W. Lee of Newport, New York, said, “The year I was sixteen, I went to the Thoreau school in the Old Academy for two months. Henry Thoreau had a very small class of boys in Greek and Latin and maybe had young ladies in French. He used to come in just before recess both morning and afternoon. He came in at a rapid pace, commenced work at once in his peculiar odd way and the boy that had not got his lesson did not receive much mercy or taffy. He was very strict in that matter. As well as I can remember, he was a thin, spare man, thin-faced, light complexion[ed], and weighed perhaps 140 pounds, rather on his dignity, and so far as I can remember not inclined to joking and fun, with his scholars outside of the school house.” William Ellery Channing says that the work that Henry did in the family pencil factory was just in proportion to the needs of the family. When they were straitened in means because of any special needs, like building the house, then he would go to work and do more; but, for himself, he would never have done any of the mechanical work. Benjamin Tolman told me, “Once or twice Thoreau came to my printing office to look over the proof of something of his that I was printing — his Cattle Show address and some other things, and I went to his home, too, about proof. He was agreeable and pleasant, but I didn’t see much of him or talk with him because he knew so much more and was so superior a man to me that I didn’t feel like it.” But when I asked, “But you don’t mean that he put on airs of superiority; he was companionable and friendly, wasn’t he?” He replied, “Always! Oh, yes, he was a very pleasant person.” Warren Miles, who worked in the Thoreau pencil factory, when asked if he knew Henry, replied, “Yes, I knew him very well.” “What should you say of him?” “He was a good mechanic — rather inclined to improvements of arts as well as mechanical matters. He was better educated on Nature than any man I ever saw. I remember a long talk we had about mud turtles and about wildflowers. He would almost always get up some argument so as to get one interested. He liked creatures. He told me that he rather tamed a squirrel that lived close by him, and that he was about as much company as a person after he got him used to him.” George Keyes told me that he attended the Academy when it was taught by the Thoreau brothers. “How were they as schoolmasters?” “Very pleasant indeed. Yes, I have a very pleasant impression left in my mind of that school. I remember how interesting his stories were. One evening shortly after his return from Cape Cod, he told us about that expedition and about the old worn copper coin he found on the beach. Another time he was delighted because, being out very early in the morning, he HDT WHAT? INDEX

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had found the track of some very rare wild animal in the snow leading right up the meadow. He was light-haired, better looking than his portraits, had a healthy complexion with a bright color, though rather pale for an out-of-doors man. He had a strong prominent nose and good eyes; a face that you would long remember.” Talked with James Garty about H.D.T. I asked, “Suppose I did not know of him and asked you what kind of man he was, what would you say of him?” “Well, it wouldn’t do to have everybody like him, of his way of thinking. Oh, he was a good sort of man and was straight and I think would pay every cent he owed to any man — I don’t know whether he had any debts — but what I mean when I say it would be bad if everybody thought as he did that he didn’t believe in government.” Frank C. Brown remembers Thoreau’s singing “Tom Bowline” and “that he put his heart into it.” He knew that he used to entertain his mother (Mrs. Lucy Jackson Brown) by singing and by dancing (pas seul). Thoreau used to give Frank natural history information, especially about the forest trees, and found him always willing, even eager, to impart. He doesn’t clearly recollect his personal appearance, except his prominent nose and that his skin seemed dark, probably from out-of-door exposure, tan. (Mrs. Frank Brown said that his look and complexion and eye reminded one of a longshoreman.) Frank said that the principal impression left by Thoreau was his universal knowledge — that he went to him with every question as to birds, trees, etc., and he could tell him about them. He recalls him as good-humored and talkative and as habitually in good spirits. Mrs. Edwin Bigelow knew the Thoreau family well for years, when they lived opposite in the Parkman House. Her first recollection of Henry is seeing him a youth with fair hair and erect, a serious face with mouth drawn together in a characteristic curve, come out of the yard and walk towards the Academy where he then taught. She knew at once by his gait and bearing that he was a gentleman. As a neighbor, Henry was pleasant and helpful, but by no means aggressive or vain or egotistical, dropping in and out and lending a hand naturally as it came his way to do so. He was friendly to his Irish neighbors and good to stray cats and dogs and always humane to animals, and more than this, respected them. Mrs. Bigelow tells how at the “Little Woods” picnics, Henry would tell all to sit absolutely quiet and close together — then he would go forward cautiously, sprinkle crumbs before them, and then, retreating, seat himself a little before the others and begin a sort of rolling or humming sound and would draw squirrels to come and eat at last out of his hands. He would open his hands in the river and let the fish swim into them. One Sunday as the congregations were coming home from church, Thoreau’s came up the street with a tree in his hand which he had dug up to plant. His old aunt, the Orthodox Miss Louisa Dunbar, hastened out to reprove him and abate this scandal in the family, but he answered her pleasantly, “Aunt Louisa, I have HDT WHAT? INDEX

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been worshipping in my way, and I don’t trouble you in your way.” I asked Mrs. Bigelow about Thoreau’s’s connection with the Underground Railroad. While Henry Thoreau was in the woods, the slaves sometimes were brought to him there, but obviously there was no possible concealment in his house, so he would look after them by day, and at nightfall, get them to his mother’s or another house of hiding. He was always ready to help with service and didn’t count risk, and also, although he had little money, always gave or advanced money to a slave who needed it. Sometimes this was repaid from the fund. It was no part of his plan in making the Walden hermitage to make there a refuge for fugitives, that was only incidental. Dr. Thomas Hosmer of Bedford ... went with the Thoreaus in search of Indian relics. Once he found a sort of hollow, scooped like a small amphitheatre, on the side of the bluff over the Great Meadows and showed it to Thoreau’s who said, “This is artificial, made by the Indians, and we ought to find evidences of their fires here.” They accordingly dug at the center and found charcoal and Indian relics, a mortar and pestle, etc. Hosmer also found a large block of the dark-grey flint with white specks such as most of the arrow and spearheads found in the neighborhood were made of, the mass weighing nearly fifty pounds. He showed it to the Thoreaus who told him that the nearest place where that stone was native to the soil, geographically, was Norwich, Connecticut. [Reminiscing further of his days as a student in the Thoreau school] Horace Rice Hosmer said Thoreau’s spoke of the certainty we must feel of a wise and friendly power over us. He bade the boys and girls think, if any of them should go into a shop and see all the nicely finished wheels, pinions, springs and frame pieces of a watch lying spread out on a bench and again came to find them exactly put together and working in unison to move the hands on a dial and show the passage of time — whether they could believe that this had come by chance or rather should know that somebody with thought and plan and power had been there. This, I believe, used to be a familiar argument and example in philosophical and religious treatises, but its use in the Grammar School by the young schoolmaster showed that he knew himself there to teach broadly and awaken thought and not merely his lessons in the rudiments of letters. There was a class in Natural Philosophy. If any pupil seemed to care for the study and took pains with [his] drawings on the blackboard illustrating the principles, Henry would take much interest and pains to help him along. The brothers would sometimes come out into the school yard at recess and join the children in their amusements; John Thoreau, Jr. more than Henry who was not so familiar with all the children as his elder brother but was interested in individual children. Sometimes in winter the Bedford boys came swiftly and smoothly up the frozen river on skates. One day three Concord boys derided their old-fashioned skates and strapping which the Bedford boys defended by appealing to the test of best performance. Henry, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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hearing this, said, “Come boys, that’s a good challenge. I move we accept it and go down to the river in the afternoon. If they find fault with the skates they must show that they can do better on theirs.” It was agreed on and as they went to the river, Hosmer argued with Thoreau’s that the race ought to begin from the moment they knelt on the ice to buckle on the skates, saying that in the quality of the skates should properly be included the care and speed with which they could be put on. But Henry said, “No, I shall overrule that: the question is now of speed in skating.” Afterward he visited Thoreau [who was] living at Walden [and] who talked with him, inquiring of him of what use he found his school studies in life. Edward Neally9 told me that when he was a boy he carried the chain for Thoreau’s on a survey near Fairhaven. Later he did so often, and his interest in natural history (birds, beasts and fishes; he never took to botany) was first awakened by him and afterwards he cared greatly for it and collected for the Natural History Society and sometimes for the Smithsonian Institute at Washington. Thoreau’s seemed a careful manager, and he found him very different from what some people think; he always seemed jolly and social, liked a joke. The difference between him and other scientific men that he had seen, like Agassiz and Horace Mann, was they liked to have the creature killed and dissect and examine it carefully in every way to see how it was made, “but Thoreau liked to study ’em living. He didn’t like to have ’em killed (oh, he didn’t mind if I’d shoot a duck when we were out together), but he would rather know what they’d do. He had more patience than any man I ever knew. He would keep still and watch what they would do for more than an hour and a half. I would get tired waiting, but he wouldn’t. He was a very strong man for his size, thick-set though he wasn’t very large. He always walked 9. This Edward Nealy or Neally or Nealey would eventually be buried beneath an Indian grindstone which he would allege he and Thoreau had found together. There seems, however, to be a lack of evidence as to said grindstone: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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with easy long steps; it would tire me well to keep up with him.” “How did people in general like him; what did the folks on the Milldam [Concord’s main street] think of him?” “They rather liked him as a rule. Some of them couldn’t understand him. He had a few who were his enemies. One of them was a farmer, a good man, too, but he thought ill of Thoreau’s and always spoke badly of him. But the trouble began years ago when the Thoreaus set his woods afire by accident and they was burned over. Another thing he never liked was that Thoreau said to him one day when he met him on his farm that he got all the hard work and trouble out of it and Thoreau got all the beauty out of it. You see, he didn’t know how to take it. Thoreau didn’t mean any harm. There was another man that was always down on Thoreau, but then for that matter, he lost wood by that same fire. Most people rather liked him, but many didn’t understand him.” Neally said (in answer to my inquiry as to whether he thought Thoreau a helpful, friendly man to his kind), “Yes, if I had been in trouble and needed assistance I don’t know but I’d have turned to him as quick as to any man.” Sam Staples told me, “I used to go surveying with Thoreau a great deal. We’ve run a great many lines together. He was a good surveyor and very careful. Albert Wood’ll tell you that he never in his surveying finds any better work done than that that Henry Thoreau did. “When I bought that farm next to your father’s, I had him run the lines for me. I guess ’twas about the last work he did. Well, the line against your father’s pear orchard and meadow running down to the brook I’d always supposed was right, as his hedge ran, and so I dug that ditch between his meadow and mine, right in the line of the hedge. Well, when we come to run the line, the corner of the hedge on the Turnpike was right, but when we got to the other end of the hedge, ’twas several feet over on to what I’d bought. And at the brook, the ditch which I’d dug to it from the hedge-corner, supposing that was the line, came much as a rod into my meadow by the deed. That tickled Thoreau mightily. ’We’ll call Waldo Emerson down and show it to him,’ says he. ’Oh, never mind,’ says I, ’he don’t know about it; let it be as it is.’ ’No,’ says he, ’I’ll get Emerson down.’ So he went up to the house and told him we got something to show him down at the meadow, and he put on his hat and came down along with Henry. Well, when we got him down there, Thoreau, says he, ’I didn’t think this of you, Mr. Emerson stealing so much land of Staples here.’ Well, your father was troubled when he saw where the ditch was over in my land. ’I’ll pay you for the land,’ says he, ’what’s it worth?’ ’Oh, no,’ says I, ’I dug the ditch there supposing the hedge was the line. ’Twan’t your fault. ’Twas the man you bought of showed you where to put the hedge. Let it be as the ditch is now.’ It pleased Thoreau to get that joke on him.” Elizabeth J. Weir went to school (1843) to Miss Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau in the Parkman House. She saw John Thoreau, Jr. and Henry as not alike: John had less pronounced features and was plumper. HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

Henry had fair hair, large eyes — with outer parts of lids drooping, and large pupils — very blue. She listened eagerly for stories of birds and squirrels. He had a pleasing appearance to young people and children. So much life! She can see him with the children around him standing on the door-steps with one foot on the upper step telling stories and a circle of children about him. People misunderstood him — on the street he didn’t always stop “to pass the time of day,” but sometimes passed on his business without noticing people — thinking. At his mother’s house with Sophia, all the little everyday things were made funny and agreeable. Henry would give such pleasant turns to conversation, make things spicy and interesting. He saw the ludicrous side; enjoyed the unusual. Like twins — he and Sophia; he opened his thought to her. [Miss Weir worked much at Mr. Emerson’s.] Henry would come in and offer to mend things. He saw what was waiting, as an odd job, and mended it. If Mrs. Emerson were there, they would have pleasant little conversations; get on deep subjects. Henry was a help to Mrs. Emerson in all ways, being younger — he appreciated her fine mind and beautiful thought, and she thus helped educate him. He loved her elder sister Mrs. Lucy Jackson Brown, and was as a son to her. She depended on him; she would say “Run over to Mr. Emerson’s and see if Henry is there. Get him to come over and see if anything can be done about my stove’s smoking.” He would look at the damper or latch and mend and fit. While at work at these jobs, he would prolong the conversation. It seemed a favour to him to ask him to do something. He burned out the chimneys on rainy days, the excited children watching the process. I met Daniel F. Potter this morning, November 17, 1904, and said to him, “Mr. Potter, I understand that Henry Thoreau once give you a thrashing.” He was passing me to go into the post office, but turned instantly and said, “Yes, he did, and it smarts still.” He spoke with energy, and I thought with a little feeling. “Then it wasn’t justly given?” I asked. “No, sir, it wasn’t,” he replied. “I can tell you all about it if you want to know.” And standing in the doorway to the post office, with a particularly sharp wind doing no good, I am sure, to his inflamed right eye, he told me the following, which I give in words as near to his as I can. He spoke as if he remembered the incident perfectly. “I was a little fellow of ten, and was going to school in the brick school house that is now the Masonic Hall. There were men teachers there, but I’d just come from the district school, where I had a woman teacher. Now the women teachers taught, when we’d finished with a lesson, to put away our books and fold our arms.” And the little old man illustrated, blinking through his spectacles. “Well, the rule at the Academy was that a boy should always have a book before him. First thing I knew, Henry Thoreau called me up and thrashed me. He thrashed twelve other boys that day, thirteen in all, and resigned the day after. “I didn’t understand the reason for this then, but I found out HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

later. It seems he’d been taken to task by someone — I think ’twas Deacon Ball — for not using the rod enough. So Thoreau thought he’d give the other way a thorough trial, and he did, for one day. The next day he said he wouldn’t keep school any longer, if that was the way he had to do it. “When I went to my seat, I was so mad that I said to myself, ’When I’m grown up, I’ll whip you for this, old feller.’ But,” and Mr. Potter chuckled, “I never saw the day I wanted to do it. — Why, Henry Thoreau was the kindest hearted of men. He only kept school in Concord for two weeks.” Horace Rice Hosmer, another student in the school, states, “Henry told his mother to buy gold and plumbago at the commencement of the war; Louis F. Ball told me that he should have made twice as much as he did had he followed Henry’s advice.”

January 27, Monday: Edward Waldo Emerson died in his home on Lowell Road in Concord, Massachusetts. HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

1932

October 22, Saturday: W. Stephen Thomas, who would become the director of the Rochester NY Museum of Arts and Sciences, made some notes of a conversation he had about Henry Thoreau with a local man named Frank Pierce on this date: Mr. Pierce said he remembered Thoreau well, though he himself was only a boy of twelve when he died. Apparently, he had not talked with him much, but says he was a familiar figure about town, and was much respected by the villagers for his upright character and general integrity. What surprised me was that he did not allude to the fact many of his townspeople regarded him as odd and eccentric. Mr. Pierce said that Thoreau was a close friend of young Edward Emerson, son of the philosopher, and that the two of them volunteered for service in the Union Army but were rejected for poor physical condition. He added that Thoreau was anxious to get into the army. It is hard to believe what Pierce could base this on, for there is no allusion to it in any of the biographies or the latest and most intensive studies of Thoreau. An incident Mr. Pierce remembers more than any other one in connection with Thoreau was the latter’s prominent part in the John Brown Commemoration Service held in Concord on a Sunday evening in December, 1859. Thoreau gave a stirring address on that occasion, while Emerson, Alcott, Channing, and others contributed to the program. Evidently Thoreau was chairman and arranged the ceremonies. Mr. Pierce recalls helping his father move a piano or an organ into the hall where the meeting took place. Mr. Pierce said he always tried to account in his mind for the reason behind Thoreau’s daily wanderings through the fields and woods about Concord. He came to the conclusion he did it to be out of doors, exercising for his health which was none too good, and which resulted in death by consumption in 1862. He also mentioned the many inquiries about Thoreau of late years and seemed a trifle amazed at the great interest in him, but thought that he certainly must have been a great man because of it.

EDWARD EMERSON HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

1933

March 4, Saturday morning: Franklin Delano Roosevelt replaced Herbert Clark Hoover as president of the United States. Frances Perkins was sworn in as Secretary of Labor (the first female member of a United States cabinet). FDR deployed Henry Thoreau’s “fear of fear” trope obtained ultimately from THE BOOK OF PROVERBS (Chapter 3, verse 25 ):

Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh.

in accordance with the manner in which it was conveyed, through Montaigne’s

The thing I fear most is fear.

as of 1580 and through Sir Francis Bacon’s

Nothing is terrible except fear itself.

as of 1623 and on to the Duke of Wellington’s remark of Thoreau’s own generation,10

The only thing I am afraid of is fear.

This is what Thoreau had had to offer on September 7, 1851:

It is not so much the music as the marching to the music that I feel.... Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.

“Fear of Fear” Trope

10. Sir Francis Bacon’s 1623 “De Augmentis Scientiarum,” Book II, “Fortitudo” and Montaigne’s 1580 “Essais,” Book I, Chapter 17. THE BOOK OF PROVERBS, Chapter 3, verse 25, records this commonplace — which must be indeed ancient. I got Wellesley’s wording from the “Notes of Conversations With the Duke of Wellington” that the Earl of Stanhope published in 1888. HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

President Roosevelt in delivering his inaugural address may well have supposed that he was merely using a snippet from Thoreau in his address.11 But not really.

The problem is that Thoreau had been quoting this famous aphorism merely by mentioning it — as today we would say “oh yeah, let’s let a thousand flowers bloom” and bring everyone’s mind to Mao’s quote-by-mention of this well-known line from a Chinese classic essay.

11. It is merely a hypothesis, that FDR supposed he was using a quote from Thoreau. Also possible is that the throwaway line “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” in his 1st inaugural address derived from nothing more sophisticated than a department store ad he had recently glimpsed in a newspaper, an ad which had also relied upon this very familiar “nothing to fear but fear” trope! HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

Having quoted-by-mentioning, Thoreau went directly on to mock the sort of attitude that had produced such a sentiment, and to mock the mind of the Duke of Wellington, by a caustic deduction about atheism. HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

But his comment was trivialized by Waldo Emerson after his death, when he could no longer defend the

sophistication of his irony, and then it was the “quotation” in this trivialized form that was utilized by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his famous first inaugural address on March 4th, 1933, as part of his totally anti-Thoreauvian legitimation of American progress-thinking:

This is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly, nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

The gist of Thoreau’s deduction had been that, were it really true and meaningful that nothing is so much to be feared as fear, then atheism, something other than fear, would be something not so much to be feared as fear, and therefore even for God –who of course knows as well as anyone that atheism is a silly doctrine– would prefer being atheistic over being fearful. And we note that this reductio ad absurdum occurs in a context in which Thoreau has been ruminating about his mysterious

It is not so much the music as the marching to the music that I feel. HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

which was tied of course to the mysterious “distant drummer” passage at the end of WALDEN.

DIFFERENT DRUMMER

I will quote the usual account of the development of this extrapolation, from Kenneth C. Davis’s DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT AMERICAN HISTORY BUT NEVER LEARNED:

Most of Roosevelt’s campaign speeches had been written for him, but a handwritten first draft of the inaugural address shows this to be Roosevelt’s own work. Yet the speech’s most famous line was old wine in a new bottle. Similar sentiments about fear had been voiced before. The historian Richard Hofstadter notes that Roosevelt read Thoreau in the days before the Inauguration and was probably inspired by the line “Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

This DON’T KNOW MUCH simplification elides the fact that Roosevelt was not reading Thoreau directly, but reading him as filtered through the sensibilities of Emerson. Essentially, it can fairly be said, it was Emerson that FDR was reading. And the preacher, sorry to say, couldn’t figure out how the trout got in the milk.

Emerson’s son Eddie Emerson, who became Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, also had attempted to interpret this passage from Thoreau’s JOURNAL. However, Dr. Eddie’s cut at this quote was not superior to that of his father. The way the son recorded it, approvingly, on page 72 of his little 1917 book about Thoreau,12 was:

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. The sin that God hates is fear: he thinks Atheism innocent in comparison.

Now it is readily seen, this is nothing like what Thoreau had written. In fact it is more like the Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway’s famous Unitarian sermon of Sunday, January 27, 1856 in Washington DC, “The One Path, or, The Duties of The North and South” .13 The changes in wording which Dr. Emerson originated have created a metaphysic which is utterly wrong and inappropriate for Thoreau. He made Thoreau out to be writing a comment about some sort of daddy-in-the-sky deity of Eddie’s own perfervid imagination — and Thoreau’s distancing himself from such trivial and cute self-reflexive remarks and Thoreau’s total sarcasm about such religious creations were apparently quite as opaque to the Emerson son as they had been to the Emerson father. HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

If you want an apposite remark about fear, you’ll have to look to Eleanor Roosevelt rather than to her husband. Here’s one:

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.… You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

Or, if you want an apposite remark about fear, you might look to former president George Herbert Walker Bush, who would parody his own ineptitude in 1997 after completing a geriatric parachute jump:

The only fear I felt was fear itself.

Well, anyway, here’s what Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to say to the American people on March 4th, 1933, with the relevant pseudo-Thoreauvian passage in rubric font:

12. Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, HENRY THOREAU AS REMEMBERED BY A YOUNG FRIEND, EDWARD WALDO EMERSON. 1917

HENRY DAVID THOREAU AS REMEMBERED BY A YOUNG FRIEND

(Note: When the son Edward Waldo Emerson here wrote of his father Waldo Emerson that “when the Thoreau family, after Henry’s death, submitted the journals to his friend’s consideration, he, coming from his study, day by day, would tell his children his joyful surprise at the merit and the beauty which he found everywhere in those daily chronicles of Nature and of thought,” presumably he wasn’t exactly making this up out of whole cloth but also he wasn’t recounting anything he personally experienced: he had left Concord shortly after Thoreau’s burial on an overland trip to California, and was nowhere near the Emerson home while his father was doing this telling about the reading of Thoreau’s journal.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

INAUGURAL SPEECH OF FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT

GIVEN IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

MARCH 4TH, 1933

PRESIDENT HOOVER, MR. CHIEF JUSTICE, MY FRIENDS:

THIS IS A DAY OF NATIONAL CONSECRATION, AND I AM CERTAIN

THAT MY FELLOW-AMERICANS EXPECT THAT ON MY INDUCTION INTO THE

PRESIDENCY I WILL ADDRESS THEM WITH A CANDOR AND A DECISION WHICH

THE PRESENT SITUATION OF OUR NATION IMPELS.

THIS IS PRE-EMINENTLY THE TIME TO SPEAK THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH,

FRANKLY AND BOLDLY. NOR NEED WE SHRINK FROM HONESTLY FACING CONDITIONS

IN OUR COUNTRY TODAY. THIS GREAT NATION WILL ENDURE AS IT HAS ENDURED,

WILL REVIVE AND WILL PROSPER.

SO FIRST OF ALL LET ME ASSERT MY FIRM BELIEF THAT

THE ONLY THING WE HAVE TO FEAR...IS FEAR ITSELF... 13. The Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway announced that although he did not agree that the North should leave the Union, he also did not believe that the North should be paying any attention to the South’s threats to leave the Union: “Let us, with Montaigne, fear nothing so much as fear.”

1580: “The thing I fear most is fear.”

The Washington Evening Star reported that “this city was thrown into a state of unusual excitement.” The sermon would be promptly printed in full in The National Era, The National Anti-Slavery Standard, and The Liberator. Horace Greeley would report, in the Tribune, that the Reverend Conway “expects to lose his pastorate on account of it.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

NAMELESS, UNREASONING, UNJUSTIFIED TERROR WHICH PARALYZES

NEEDED EFFORTS TO CONVERT RETREAT INTO ADVANCE.

IN EVERY DARK HOUR OF OUR NATIONAL LIFE A LEADERSHIP

OF FRANKNESS AND VIGOR HAS MET WITH THAT UNDERSTANDING

AND SUPPORT OF THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES WHICH IS ESSENTIAL TO VICTORY.

I AM CONVINCED THAT YOU WILL AGAIN GIVE THAT SUPPORT TO LEADERSHIP

IN THESE CRITICAL DAYS.

IN SUCH A SPIRIT ON MY PART AND ON YOURS WE FACE OUR

COMMON DIFFICULTIES. THEY CONCERN, THANK GOD, ONLY MATERIAL THINGS.

VALUES HAVE SHRUNKEN TO FANTASTIC LEVELS: TAXES HAVE RISEN,

OUR ABILITY TO PAY HAS FALLEN, GOVERNMENT OF ALL KINDS IS FACED BY

SERIOUS CURTAILMENT OF INCOME, THE MEANS OF EXCHANGE ARE FROZEN

IN THE CURRENTS OF TRADE, THE WITHERED LEAVES OF INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE

LIE ON EVERY SIDE, FARMERS FIND NO MARKETS FOR THEIR PRODUCE,

THE SAVINGS OF MANY YEARS IN THOUSANDS OF FAMILIES ARE GONE.

MORE IMPORTANT, A HOST OF UNEMPLOYED CITIZENS FACE THE GRIM PROBLEM

OF EXISTENCE, AND AN EQUALLY GREAT NUMBER TOIL WITH LITTLE RETURN.

ONLY A FOOLISH OPTIMIST CAN DENY THE DARK REALITIES OF THE MOMENT.

YET OUR DISTRESS COMES FROM NO FAILURE OF SUBSTANCE.

WE ARE STRICKEN BY NO PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS. COMPARED WITH HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

THE PERILS WHICH OUR FOREFATHERS CONQUERED BECAUSE THEY BELIEVED

AND WERE NOT AFRAID, WE HAVE STILL MUCH TO BE THANKFUL FOR.

NATURE STILL OFFERS HER BOUNTY AND HUMAN EFFORTS HAVE MULTIPLIED IT.

PLENTY IS AT OUR DOORSTEP, BUT A GENEROUS USE OF IT LANGUISHES

IN THE VERY SIGHT OF THE SUPPLY.

PRIMARILY, THIS IS BECAUSE THE RULERS OF THE EXCHANGE OF MANKIND'S GOODS

HAVE FAILED THROUGH THEIR OWN STUBBORNNESS AND THEIR OWN INCOMPETENCE,

HAVE ADMITTED THEIR FAILURES AND ABDICATED. PRACTICES OF THE

UNSCRUPULOUS MONEY CHANGERS STAND INDICTED IN THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION,

REJECTED BY THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF MEN.

TRUE, THEY HAVE TRIED, BUT THEIR EFFORTS HAVE BEEN CAST

IN THE PATTERN OF AN OUTWORN TRADITION. FACED BY FAILURE

OF CREDIT, THEY HAVE PROPOSED ONLY THE LENDING OF MORE MONEY.

STRIPPED OF THE LURE OF PROFIT BY WHICH TO INDUCE OUR PEOPLE

TO FOLLOW THEIR FALSE LEADERSHIP, THEY HAVE RESORTED TO EXHORTATIONS,

PLEADING TEARFULLY FOR RESTORED CONDITIONS. THEY KNOW ONLY THE RULES

OF A GENERATION OF SELF-SEEKERS.

THEY HAVE NO VISION, AND WHEN THERE IS NO VISION THE PEOPLE PERISH.

THE MONEY CHANGERS HAVE FLED THEIR HIGH SEATS IN THE TEMPLE

OF OUR CIVILIZATION. WE MAY NOW RESTORE THAT TEMPLE HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

TO THE ANCIENT TRUTHS.

THE MEASURE OF THE RESTORATION LIES IN THE EXTENT TO WHICH

WE APPLY SOCIAL VALUES MORE NOBLE THAN MERE MONETARY PROFIT.

HAPPINESS LIES NOT IN THE MERE POSSESSION OF MONEY, IT LIES

IN THE JOY OF ACHIEVEMENT, IN THE THRILL OF CREATIVE EFFORT.

THE JOY AND MORAL STIMULATION OF WORK NO LONGER

MUST BE FORGOTTEN IN THE MAD CHASE OF EVANESCENT PROFITS.

THESE DARK DAYS WILL BE WORTH ALL THEY COST US IF THEY

TEACH US THAT OUR TRUE DESTINY IS NOT TO BE MINISTERED UNTO

BUT TO MINISTER TO OURSELVES AND TO OUR FELLOW-MEN.

RECOGNITION OF THE FALSITY OF MATERIAL WEALTH AS THE STANDARD

OF SUCCESS GOES HAND IN HAND WITH THE ABANDONMENT OF THE FALSE

BELIEF THAT PUBLIC OFFICE AND HIGH POLITICAL POSITION ARE TO BE VALUES

ONLY BY THE STANDARDS OF PRIDE OF PLACE AND PERSONAL PROFIT,

AND THERE MUST BE AN END TO A CONDUCT IN BANKING AND IN BUSINESS

WHICH TOO OFTEN HAS GIVEN TO A SACRED TRUST THE LIKENESS

OF CALLOUS AND SELFISH WRONGDOING.

SMALL WONDER THAT CONFIDENCE LANGUISHES, FOR IT THRIVES ONLY ON HONESTY,

ON HONOR, ON THE SACREDNESS OF OBLIGATIONS, ON FAITHFUL PROTECTION, HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

ON UNSELFISH PERFORMANCE. WITHOUT THEM IT CANNOT LIVE.

RESTORATION CALLS, HOWEVER, NOT FOR CHANGES IN ETHICS ALONE.

THIS NATION ASKS FOR ACTION, AND ACTION NOW.

OUR GREATEST PRIMARY TASK IS TO PUT PEOPLE TO WORK. THIS IS

NO UNSOLVABLE PROBLEM IF WE FACE IT WISELY AND COURAGEOUSLY.

IT CAN BE ACCOMPANIED IN PART BY DIRECT RECRUITING BY THE

GOVERNMENT ITSELF, TREATING THE TASK AS WE WOULD TREAT THE

EMERGENCY OF A WAR, BUT AT THE SAME TIME, THROUGH THIS

EMPLOYMENT, ACCOMPLISHING GREATLY NEEDED PROJECTS TO STIMULATE

AND REORGANIZE THE USE OF OUR NATIONAL RESOURCES.

HAND IN HAND WITH THIS, WE MUST FRANKLY RECOGNIZE THE OVER-BALANCE

OF POPULATION IN OUR INDUSTRIAL CENTERS AND, BY ENGAGING ON A NATIONAL

SCALE IN A REDISTRIBUTION, ENDEAVOR TO PROVIDE A BETTER USE OF THE LAND

FOR THOSE BEST FITTED FOR THE LAND.

THE TASK CAN BE HELPED BY DEFINITE EFFORTS TO RAISE THE VALUES

OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS AND WITH THIS THE POWER TO PURCHASE

THE OUTPUT OF OUR CITIES.

IT CAN BE HELPED BY PREVENTING REALISTICALLY THE TRAGEDY

OF THE GROWING LOSS, THROUGH FORECLOSURE, OF OUR SMALL HOMES

AND OUR FARMS. HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

IT CAN BE HELPED BY INSISTENCE THAT THE FEDERAL, STATE, AND

LOCAL GOVERNMENTS ACT FORTHWITH ON THE DEMAND THAT THEIR COST

BE DRASTICALLY REDUCED.

IT CAN BE HELPED BY THE UNIFYING OF RELIEF ACTIVITIES WHICH TODAY

ARE OFTEN SCATTERED, UNECONOMICAL AND UNEQUAL. IT CAN BE HELPED

BY NATIONAL PLANNING FOR AND SUPERVISION OF ALL FORMS OF TRANSPORTATION

AND OF COMMUNICATIONS AND OTHER UTILITIES WHICH HAVE A DEFINITELY

PUBLIC CHARACTER.

THERE ARE MANY WAYS IN WHICH IT CAN BE HELPED, BUT IT CAN NEVER

BE HELPED MERELY BY TALKING ABOUT IT. WE MUST ACT, AND ACT QUICKLY.

FINALLY, IN OUR PROGRESS TOWARD A RESUMPTION OF WORK WE REQUIRE

TWO SAFEGUARDS AGAINST A RETURN OF THE EVILS OF THE OLD ORDER:

THERE MUST BE A STRICT SUPERVISION OF ALL BANKING AND CREDITS AND INVESTMENTS;

THERE MUST BE AN END TO SPECULATION WITH OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY, AND THERE MUST

BE PROVISION FOR AN ADEQUATE BUT SOUND CURRENCY.

THESE ARE THE LINES OF ATTACK. I SHALL PRESENTLY URGE UPON A NEW CONGRESS

IN SPECIAL SESSION DETAILED MEASURES FOR THEIR FULFILLMENT, AND I SHALL SEEK

THE IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE OF THE SEVERAL STATES.

THROUGH THIS PROGRAM OF ACTION WE ADDRESS OURSELVES TO PUTTING HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

OUR OWN NATIONAL HOUSE IN ORDER AND MAKING INCOME BALANCE OUTGO.

OUR INTERNATIONAL TRADE RELATIONS, THOUGH VASTLY IMPORTANT,

ARE, TO POINT IN TIME AND NECESSITY, SECONDARY TO THE ESTABLISHMENT

OF A SOUND NATIONAL ECONOMY.

I FAVOR AS A PRACTICAL POLICY THE PUTTING OF FIRST THINGS FIRST.

I SHALL SPARE NO EFFORT TO RESTORE WORLD TRADE BY INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC

READJUSTMENT, BUT THE EMERGENCY AT HOME CANNOT WAIT ON THAT ACCOMPLISHMENT.

THE BASIC THOUGHT THAT GUIDES THESE SPECIFIC MEANS OF NATIONAL RECOVERY

IS NOT NARROWLY NATIONALISTIC.

IT IS THE INSISTENCE, AS A FIRST CONSIDERATION, UPON THE INTERDEPENDENCE

OF THE VARIOUS ELEMENTS IN AND PARTS OF THE UNITED STATES...

A RECOGNITION OF THE OLD AND PERMANENTLY IMPORTANT MANIFESTATION

OF THE AMERICAN SPIRIT OF THE PIONEER.

IT IS THE WAY TO RECOVERY. IT IS THE IMMEDIATE WAY. IT IS THE STRONGEST

ASSURANCE THAT THE RECOVERY WILL ENDURE.

IN THE FIELD OF WORLD POLICY I WOULD DEDICATE THIS NATION TO THE POLICY

OF THE GOOD NEIGHBOR...THE NEIGHBOR WHO RESOLUTELY RESPECTS HIMSELF AND,

BECAUSE HE DOES SO, RESPECTS THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS...THE NEIGHBOR

WHO RESPECTS HIS OBLIGATIONS AND RESPECTS THE SANCTITY OF HIS AGREEMENTS HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

IN AND WITH A WORLD OF NEIGHBORS.

IF I READ THE TEMPER OF OUR PEOPLE CORRECTLY, WE NOW REALIZE,

AS WE HAVE NEVER REALIZED BEFORE, OUR INTERDEPENDENCE ON EACH OTHER:

THAT WE CANNOT MERELY TAKE, BUT WE MUST GIVE AS WELL,

THAT IF WE ARE TO GO FORWARD WE MUST MOVE AS A TRAINED AND LOYAL

ARMY WILLING TO SACRIFICE FOR THE GOOD OF A COMMON DISCIPLINE,

BECAUSE, WITHOUT SUCH DISCIPLINE, NO PROGRESS IS MADE,

NO LEADERSHIP BECOMES EFFECTIVE.

WE ARE, I KNOW, READY AND WILLING TO SUBMIT OUR LIVES AND PROPERTY

TO SUCH DISCIPLINE BECAUSE IT MAKES POSSIBLY A LEADERSHIP WHICH AIMS

AT A LARGER GOOD.

THIS I PROPOSE TO OFFER, PLEDGING THAT THE LARGER PURPOSES

WILL HIND UPON US ALL AS A SACRED OBLIGATION WITH A UNITY

OF DUTY HITHERTO EVOKED ONLY IN TIME OF ARMED STRIFE.

WITH THIS PLEDGE TAKEN, I ASSUME UNHESITATINGLY THE LEADERSHIP OF THIS GREAT

ARMY OF OUR PEOPLE, DEDICATED TO A DISCIPLINED ATTACK UPON OUR COMMON PROBLEMS.

ACTION IN THIS IMAGE AND TO THIS END IS FEASIBLE UNDER THE FORM OF GOVERNMENT

WHICH WE HAVE INHERITED FROM OUR ANCESTORS.

OUR CONSTITUTION IS SO SIMPLE AND PRACTICAL THAT IT IS POSSIBLE

ALWAYS TO MEET EXTRAORDINARY NEEDS BY CHANGES IN EMPHASIS HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

AND ARRANGEMENT WITHOUT LOSS OF ESSENTIAL FORM.

THAT IS WHY OUR CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM HAS PROVED ITSELF

THE MOST SUPERBLY ENDURING POLITICAL MECHANISM THE MODERN WORLD

HAS PRODUCED. IT HAS MET EVERY STRESS OF VAST EXPANSION OF TERRITORY,

OF FOREIGN WARS, OF BITTER INTERNAL STRIFE, OF WORLD RELATIONS.

IT IS TO BE HOPED THAT THE NORMAL BALANCE OF EXECUTIVE

AND LEGISLATIVE AUTHORITY MAY BE WHOLLY ADEQUATE TO MEET

THE UNPRECEDENTED TASK BEFORE US. BUT IT MAY BE THAT AN

UNPRECEDENTED DEMAND AND NEED FOR UNDELAYED ACTION MAY CALL

FOR TEMPORARY DEPARTURE FROM THAT NORMAL BALANCE OF PUBLIC PROCEDURE.

I AM PREPARED UNDER MY CONSTITUTIONAL DUTY TO RECOMMEND THE MEASURES

THAT A STRICKEN NATION IN THE MIDST OF A STRICKEN WORLD MAY REQUIRE.

BUT IN THE EVENT THAT THE CONGRESS SHALL FAIL TO TAKE ONE OF THESE COURSES,

AND IN THE EVENT THAT THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY IS STILL CRITICAL,

I SHALL NOT EVADE THE CLEAR COURSE OF DUTY THAT WILL THEN CONFRONT ME.

I SHALL ASK THE CONGRESS FOR THE ONE REMAINING INSTRUMENT

TO MEET THE CRISIS...BROAD EXECUTIVE POWER TO WAGE A WAR

AGAINST THE EMERGENCY AS GREAT AS THE POWER THAT WOULD BE GIVEN

TO ME IF WE WERE IN FACT INVADED BY A FOREIGN FOE. HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

FOR THE TRUST REPOSED IN ME I WILL RETURN THE COURAGE

AND THE DEVOTION THAT BEFIT THE TIME. I CAN DO NO LESS.

WE FACE THE ARDUOUS DAYS THAT LIE BEFORE US IN THE WARM

COURAGE OF NATIONAL UNITY, WITH THE CLEAR CONSCIOUSNESS

OF SEEKING OLD AND PRECIOUS MORAL VALUES, WITH THE CLEAN

SATISFACTION THAT COMES FROM THE STERN PERFORMANCE OF DUTY

BY OLD AND YOUNG ALIKE.

WE AIM AT THE ASSURANCE OF A ROUNDED AND PERMANENT NATIONAL LIFE.

WE DO NOT DISTRUST THE FUTURE OF ESSENTIAL DEMOCRACY.

THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES HAVE NOT FAILED.

IN THEIR NEED THEY HAVE REGISTERED A MANDATE

THAT THEY WANT DIRECT, VIGOROUS ACTION.

THEY HAVE ASKED FOR DISCIPLINE AND DIRECTION UNDER LEADERSHIP.

THEY HAVE MADE ME THE PRESENT INSTRUMENT OF THEIR WISHES.

IN THE SPIRIT OF THE GIFT I WILL TAKE IT.

IN THIS DEDICATION OF A NATION WE HUMBLY ASK THE BLESSING OF GOD.

MAY HE PROTECT EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US! MAY HE GUIDE ME IN THE

DAYS TO COME! HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

(In his “First 100 Days,” FDR would initiate New Deal programs to provide immediate relief, create jobs, and foster economic recovery. In next few years, he would lead reform efforts in civil rights, labor relations, banking, and civil service, creating a Social Security Administration in 1935.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

1936

November: Any number of readers have been thrown off stride by the manner in which Henry Thoreau critiqued a hapless family of Irish ecological refugees in the “Baker Farm” chapter of WALDEN, and have drawn an adverse conclusion as to Thoreau’s general sociability. But consider, this book had begun with a pointed discussion of household economy, of aims and manners of living. The record is more complex than what is contained in just this one chapter, in regard to Thoreau’s attitudes toward and dealings with people, common or otherwise, and such a mere excerpt should not be tendentiously taken out of its evocative context to make a point that could only be sustained by carefully disregarding other evidence. What comes to light in the aggregate, not only on the basis of Thoreau’s own reports but also on the basis of the testimonies of the many who knew him, is that he was a gentle and considerate man whose dealings with common people were predominantly marked by neighborly interest and fellow feeling. Although WALDEN happens to have become the primary repository of his cultural legacy, in fact Thoreau didn’t spend his whole life as a youth at Walden Pond, or crowing about that early experiment in living, or condemning others for failing to live as skillfully as he himself lived. He had found that he had several more lives to live, and had been in the process of living them, when snuffed by TB in 1862 — howevermuch the popular imagination seems intent upon containing this changing person at Walden Pond and in the years 1845-1846. There was so much more, and part of this is the nature and extent of Thoreau’s relations with his neighbors and passing strangers (including runaway slaves and poor Irishmen) during the years that he was no longer elaborating his early manuscript A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS while in residence at Walden Pond.

MEN OF CONCORD AS PORTRAYED IN THE JOURNAL OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU, ed. Francis Henry Allen with illustrations by Newell Convers Wyeth, issued in this year, is simply a 240-page compilation of excerpts from the JOURNAL in which Thoreau is allowed to describe and discuss, and report his walks and talks with, various of his neighbors, as a corrective for this general misperception of Thoreau’s neighborliness: Many readers, thinking of Henry Thoreau as the stanch individualist, the apostle of wild nature, the rebel against man-made institutions, the “hermit of Walden,” forget that he had any but the most formal relations with human beings outside of his own family. And yet his JOURNAL records many and many a conversation with fellow-townsmen, and its readers encounter much shrewd and understanding comment on the ways and manners of this and that individual or group. He talked familiarly with farmers, hunters, and fishermen — as familiarly as he did with his friend Ellery Channing, with Edward Sherman Hoar, Friend Daniel Ricketson, and H.G.O. Blake. Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, in his

HENRY DAVID THOREAU AS REMEMBERED BY A YOUNG FRIEND

has testified to the regard in which Thoreau’s humbler neighbors held him.... [A]fter speaking of Thoreau’s propensity for taking the other side in conversation “for the joy of the intellectual fencing,” Dr. Emerson goes on to say: “Thoreau held this trait in check with women and children, and with humble people who were no match for him. With them he was simple, gentle, friendly, and amusing.” “His simple, direct speech and look and bearing HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

were such that no plain, common man would put him down in his books as a fool, or visionary, or helpless, as the scholar, writer, or reformer would often be regarded by him.... He loved to talk with all kinds and conditions of men if they had no hypocrisy or pretense about them, and though high in his standard of virtue, and most severe with himself, could be charitable to the failings of humble fellow-men.” A man who lived on a farm and had worked in the Thoreaus’ plumbago-mill told Dr. Emerson that Thoreau was the best friend he ever had. “He was always straight in his ways: and was very particular to be agreeable.... When I saw him crossing my field I always wanted to go and have a talk with him.... He liked to talk as long as you did, and what he said was new.”

Although the matter was not publicized, MEN OF CONCORD’s pen-and-ink drawings had been done by his son Andrew Wyeth, rather than by the painter himself. Wyeth hoped to induce the Concord Free Public Library to pay him $5,000 for the entire set of a dozen original painted panels that had been used to create this book, but that was something that would not come about. The paintings would be sold individually on the general market, and eventually the library would come into possession of five of them, “The Carpenters Repairing Hubbard’s Bridge,” “Thoreau and Miss Mary Emerson,” “Johnny and His Woodchuck-Skin Cap,” “Fishing Through the Ice,” and “The Muskrat Hunters....” Other of the paintings would go to: • pen-and-ink drawings — privately held • jacket illustration — Brandywine River Museum

• endpaper illustration — Canajoharie Library and Art Museum • “Mr. Alcott in the Granary Burying Ground” — Boston Athenaeum • “A Man of a Certain Probity...” — privately held • “Barefooted Brooks Clark Building Wall” — privately held • “Thoreau and the Three Reformers” — privately held • “Barefooted Brooks Clark Building Wall” — privately held • “Thoreau Fishing” — location unknown HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

According to the Preface, “Wyeth was a lifelong admirer of Thoreau, whose spirit has become a part of him. His work for this book, therefore, is a tribute from an intellectual disciple to an author who has had an important formative influence on his character and work.” One of the pieces of material selected is from the journal of February 13, 1841: A Lean Farm

February 13, 1841: My neighbor says that his hill-farm is poor stuff and “only fit to hold the world together.” He deserves that God should give him better for so brave a treatment of his gifts, instead of humbly putting up therewith. It is a sort of stay, or gore or gusset, and he will not be blinded by modesty or gratitude, but sees it for what it is; knowing his neighbor’s fertile land, he calls his by its right name. But perhaps my farmer forgets that his lean soil has sharpened his wits. This is a crop it was good for, and beside, you see the heavens at a lesser angle from the hill than from the vale. HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

1980

Ellen Tucker Emerson. THE LIFE OF LIDIAN JACKSON EMERSON. Edited by Delores Bird Carpenter. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980 (written late in the 19th Century). We learn that: • Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson nearly named one of his sons in honor of Henry David Thoreau. •Mrs. Lidian Emerson and Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau sometimes mutually annoyed one another. • Sophia Foord refused to help Lidian Emerson mend carpets because floor coverings were vanity. • Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau and Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau were impressed by table-stunt Spiritualists.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

Doctor Edward Waldo Emerson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: October 3, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON DR. EDWARD WALDO EMERSON

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.