Concord Academy

THE CONCORD ACADEMY

“I know histhry isn’t thrue, Hinnissy, because it ain’t like what I see ivry day in Halsted Street. If any wan comes along with a histhry iv Greece or Rome that’ll show me th’ people fightin’, gettin’ dhrunk, makin’ love, gettin’ married, owin’ th’ grocery man an’ bein’ without hard coal, I’ll believe they was a Greece or Rome, but not befur.” — Dunne, Finley Peter, OBSERVATIONS BY MR. DOOLEY, New York, 1902

“HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE” BEING A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN TIME (JUST AS THE PERSPECTIVE IN A PAINTING IS A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN SPACE), TO “LOOK AT THE COURSE OF HISTORY MORE GENERALLY” WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE PERSPECTIVE ALTOGETHER. THIS IS FANTASY-LAND, YOU’RE FOOLING YOURSELF. THERE CANNOT BE ANY SUCH THINGIE, AS SUCH A PERSPECTIVE. HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

1820

March 12, Sunday: Caroline Downes Brooks was born, the daughter of Concord lawyer Nathan Brooks. Shortly after her birth, her mother Caroline Downes Brooks would die. She would become the unloved stepdaughter of his 2d wife, Mary Merrick Brooks, president of the Concord Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, would hence avoid sugar produced by slave labor, and would assist her remote step-mother in the making of the famous “Brooks Cake” that was used to raise funds for antislavery purposes. She would marry Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar and thus become a sister-in-law to Elizabeth Sherman Hoar, fiancée of Charles Chauncy Emerson. A fellow-student with the Thoreau children at the Concord Academy taught by Phineas Allen, she would be a girlhood companion of Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau. She would function as an officer of the Concord Female Charitable Society. (However, all this was in the future as of March 12th, 1820 — this infant had not yet become motherless, or an unloved stepdaughter, or a devoted abolitionist, or a fiancée or whatever. On this day this infant was merely an infant.)

NEVER READ AHEAD! TO APPRECIATE MARCH 12TH, 1820 AT ALL ONE MUST APPRECIATE IT AS A TODAY (THE FOLLOWING DAY, TOMORROW, IS BUT A PORTION OF THE UNREALIZED FUTURE AND IFFY AT BEST). HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

1822

During this year and the two following ones it would be Othniel Dinsmore, hired from elsewhere, who would be the schoolmaster for Concord’s grammar students.

1785 Nathaniel Bridge 9 months 1812 Isaac Warren 1 year

1786 JOSEPH HUNT 2½ years 1813 JOHN BROWN 1 year

1788 William A. Barron 3 years 1814 Oliver Patten 1 year

1791 Amos Bancroft 1 year 1815 Stevens Everett 9 months

1792 Heber Chase 1 year 1815 Silas Holman 3 months

1793 WILLIAM JONES 1 year 1816 George F. Farley 1 year

1794 Samuel Thatcher 1 year 1817 James Howe 1 year

1795 JAMES TEMPLE 2 years 1818 Samuel Barrett 1 year

1797 Thomas O. Selfridge 1 year 1819 BENJAMIN BARRETT 1 year

1798 THOMAS WHITING 4 years 1820 Abner Forbes 2 years

1802 Levi Frisbie 1 year 1822 Othniel Dinsmore 3 years

1803 Silas Warren 4 years 1825 James Furbish 1 year

1807 Wyman Richardson 1 year 1826 EDWARD JARVIS 1 year

1808 Ralph Sanger 1 year 1827 Horatio Wood 1 year

1809 Benjamin Willard 1 year 1828 David J. Merrill 1 year

1810 Elijah F. Paige 1 year 1829 John Graham 1 year

1811 Simeon Putnam 1 year 1831 John Brown

Two public school teachers from outside Concord, we learn, had been beating the students and allowing the older boys to terrorize the younger pupils. (Does that piece of information indicate that the “Abner Forbes” in the chart above prepared by Dr. Lemuel Shattuck in 1835, had been involved?) Therefore Squire Samuel Hoar, Dr. Abiel Heywood, Josiah Davis, Nathan Brooks, and Colonel William Whiting in this year had built a two-story structure on Academy Lane, at about the location at which Middle Street was eventually positioned, to begin there a private college-preparatory school, the Concord Academy. The Academy, built in 1822, is 40 feet long, 30 wide, and 2 stories high. The grammar schoolhouse is of the same size, the lower story being occupied as a school-room, and the upper one as a masonic hall. It was built in place of one burnt December 31, 1819, and dedicated, with two other new ones, for primary HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

schools, September 7, 1820. In 1799, seven new school-houses, one in each district, including the centre, were built at an expense to the town of about $4,000.1

We can compare and contrast the schooling which the Thoreau children would be receiving due to the careful concern of their mother Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau and father John Thoreau, Senior in a town near Boston on this side the ocean with the lack of concern for such things in another family of the period in a similar town near London as well as in a similar family financial circumstance. Here is how Charles Dickens, in 1845 or 1846, would be describing his plight in this Year of Our Lord 1822 after having been yanked from the William Giles schoolroom in the dock town of Chatham at the age of approximately ten: [I]n the ease of his [father John Dickens’s] temper, and the straitness of his means, he appeared to have utterly lost at this time the idea of educating me at all, and to have utterly put from him the notion that I had any claim upon him in that regard, whatever. So I degenerated into cleaning his boots of a morning, and my own; and making myself useful in the work of the little house [on Bayham Street in Camden Town]; and looking after my younger brothers and sisters (we were now six in all); and going on such poor errands as arose out of our poor way of living. EDUCATION.— Many of the original inhabitants of Concord were well educated in their native country; and, “to the end that learning be not buried in the graves of the forefathers,” schools were provided at an early period for the instruction of their children. In 1647, towns of 50 families were required to have a common school, and of 100 families, a grammar school. Concord had the latter before 1680. An order was sent to this town, requiring “a list of the names of those young persons within the bounds of the town, and adjacent farms, who live from under family government, who do not serve their parents or masters, as children, apprentices, hired servants, or journeymen ought to do, and usually did in our native country”; agreeably to a law, that “all children and youth, under family government, be taught to read perfectly the English tongue, have knowledge in the capital laws, and be taught some orthodox catechism and that they be brought up to some honest employment.” On the back of this order is this return: “I have made dillygent inquiry according to this warrant and find no defects to return. Simon Davis, Constable. March 31, 1680.” During the 30 years subsequent to this period, which I [Dr. Lemuel Shattuck] have denominated the dark age in Massachusetts, few towns escaped a fine for neglecting the wholesome laws for the promotion of education. Though it does not appear that Concord was fined, a committee was appointed in 1692, to petition the General Court, “to ease us in the law relating to the grammar school-master,”

1. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry David Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

or to procure one “with prudence for the benefit of learning, and saving the town from fine.” From that time, however, this school was constantly maintained. For several years subsequent to 1700, no appropriations were made to any other school. In 1701, grammar scholars paid 4d. and reading scholars 2d. per week towards its support; and from that time to 1712, from £20 to £30 were annually raised. In 1715, it was kept one quarter, in different parts of the town, for £40. The next year £50 were raised for schools; £35 for the centre, and £5 for each of the other three divisions. In 1722, Timothy Minott agreed to keep the school, for ten years, at £45 per year. In 1732, £50 were raised for the centre and £30 for the “out-schools”; and each schoolmaster was obliged to teach the scholars to read, write, and cipher, — all to be free. In 1740, £40 for the centre, and £80 for the others. These grants were in the currency of the times. In 1754, £40 lawful money were granted, £25 of which were for the centre. Teachers in the out-schools usually received 1s. per day for their services. The grammar-school was substituted for all others in 1767, and kept 12 weeks in the centre, and 6 weeks each, in 6 other parts, or “school societies” of the town. There were then 6 schoolhouses, 2 of which were in the present [1835] limits of Carlisle, and the others near where Nos. 1, 2, 4, and 6, now [1835] stand. This system of a moving school, as it was termed, was not, however, continued many years. In 1774 the school money was first divided in proportion to the polls and estates. The districts were regulated, in 1781, nearly as they now [1835] are. The town raised £120, in 1784, for the support of schools, and voted, that “one sixteenth part of the money the several societies in the out-parts of the town pay towards this sum, should be taken and added to the pay of the middle society for the support of the grammar-school; and the out-parts to have the remainder to be spent in schools only.” This method of dividing the school-money was continued till 1817, when the town voted, that it should be distributed to each district, including the centre, according to its proportion of the town taxes. The appropriations for schools from 1781 to 1783, was £100; from 1784 to 1792, £125; 1793, £145; 1794 and 1795, £200; 1796 to 1801, £250; 1802 to 1806, $1,000; 1807 to 1810, $1,300; 1811, $1,600; 1812 to 1816, $1,300; 1817 and since, $1,400. There are 7 districts, among which the money, including the Cuming’s donation, has been divided, at different periods, as follows. The last column contains the new division as permanently fixed in 1831. The town then determined the amount that should be paid annually to each district, in the following proportions. The whole school-money being divided into 100 parts, district, No. 1, is to have 52½ of those parts, or $761.25 out of $1,550; 5 district, No. 2, 7 /8 parts; district, No. 3, 8¼ parts; district, 5 No. 4, 8 /8 parts; district, No. 5, 8¼ parts; district, No. 6, 1 1 7 /8 parts; district No. 7, 7 /8 parts; and to individuals who pay their money in Lincoln and Acton, ½ a part. HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

District. Old Names. 1801. 1811. 1821. 1830. 1832.

No. 1. Central $382.92 $791.48 $646.15 $789.18 $761.25

No. 2. East 95.28 155.45 160.26 109.69 110.56¼

No. 3. Corner 68.49 135.48 142.48 117.00 119.62-½

No. 4. Darby 70.53 130.69 123.10 138.23 125.06¼

No. 5. Barrett 107.29 163.51 145.89 125.11 119.62¼

No. 6. Groton Road 64.63 105.41 93.55 79.16 103.31¼

No. 7. Buttrick 67.64 126.68 114.16 84.77 103.31¼

Individuals 22.22 41.30 24.41 6.86 7.25

$884.00 1,650.00 1,450.00 1,450.00 1,450.00

At the erection of new school-houses in 1799, the first school committee was chosen, consisting of the Rev. Ezra Ripley, Abiel Heywood, Esq., Deacon John White, Dr. Joseph Hunt, and Deacon George Minott. On their recommendation, the town adopted a uniform system of school regulations, which are distinguished for enlightened views of education, and which, by being generally followed since, under some modification, have rendered our schools among our greatest blessings. The amount paid for private schools, including the Academy, was estimated, in 1830, at $600, making the annual expenditure for education $2,050. Few towns provide more ample means for acquiring a cheap and competent education. I [Dr. Lemuel Shattuck] have subjoined the names of the teachers of the grammar-school since the Revolution, — the year usually beginning in September. HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

1785 Nathaniel Bridge 9 months 1812 Isaac Warren 1 year

1786 JOSEPH HUNT 2½ years 1813 JOHN BROWN 1 year

1788 William A. Barron 3 years 1814 Oliver Patten 1 year

1791 Amos Bancroft 1 year 1815 Stevens Everett 9 months

1792 Heber Chase 1 year 1815 Silas Holman 3 months

1793 WILLIAM JONES 1 year 1816 George F. Farley 1 year

1794 Samuel Thatcher 1 year 1817 James Howe 1 year

1795 JAMES TEMPLE 2 years 1818 Samuel Barrett 1 year

1797 Thomas O. Selfridge 1 year 1819 BENJAMIN BARRETT 1 year

1798 THOMAS WHITING 4 years 1820 Abner Forbes 2 years

1802 Levi Frisbie 1 year 1822 Othniel Dinsmore 3 years

1803 Silas Warren 4 years 1825 James Furbish 1 year

1807 Wyman Richardson 1 year 1826 EDWARD JARVIS 1 year

1808 Ralph Sanger 1 year 1827 Horatio Wood 1 year

1809 Benjamin Willard 1 year 1828 David J. Merrill 1 year

1810 Elijah F. Paige 1 year 1829 John Graham 1 year

1811 Simeon Putnam 1 year 1831 John Brown

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

And this was before his father John Dickens would fall into the Marshalsea debtors’ prison south of the river Thames, and before Charles himself would be allowed by his father and mother to fall into the child labor of the Warren’s shoe-blacking factory off the Strand! It would not be until the author had reached 48 years of age, in his GREAT EXPECTATIONS, that he would be able to purge himself of the memories of the helpless child of this period, who had been so victimized by fecklessly improvident loving incompetent parents.

1822/1823 was David Henry Thoreau’s year five. The Thoreaus moved to Chelmsford MA. Little David Henry first went to infant school while they were living there.

Later on in life, in 1851, Thoreau would write about being deprived, during this period, of “interesting books”: When I was young and compelled to pass my Sundays in the house without the aid of interesting books, I used to spend many an hour till the wished-for sundown, watching the martins soar, from an attic window; and fortunate indeed did I deem myself when a hawk appeared in the heavens, though far toward the horizon against a downy cloud, and I searched for hours till I had found his mate. They, at least, took my thoughts from earthly things.

2. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

Per Professor Walter Roy Harding’s THE DAYS OF HENRY THOREAU (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966): “A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”

WALTER HARDING’S BIOGRAPHY Chapter 1 (1817-1823) -Downing gives a cursory account of the Thoreau and Dunbar heritage and more fully traces the nature and movement of the Thoreau family in the first five years of Henry’s life. Thoreau’s father, John, while intellectual, “lived quietly, peacefully and contentedly in the shadow of his wife,” Mrs. Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau, who was dynamic and outspoken with a strong love for nature and compassion for the downtrodden. • 1st Helen -quiet, retiring, eventually a teacher. • 2nd John Jr. -“his father turned inside out,” personable, interested in ornithology, also taught. • 3rd Henry (born July 12,1817) -speculative but not noticeably precocious. • 4th Sophia -independent, talkative, ultimately took over father’s business and edited Henry’s posthumous publications. The Thoreau’s constantly struggled with debt, and in 1818 John Sr. gave up his farm outside Concord and moved into town. Later the same year he moved his family to Chelmsford where he opened a shop which soon failed and sent him packing to Boston to teach school. (Robert L. Lace, January-March 1986)

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

Concord Academy “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

1823

September: The Concord Academy opened under the guidance of George Folsom, who would keep the school for the initial couple of years of its existence and then would be succeeded by Josiah Barnes and Richard Hildreth, each for one year.

EDUCATION.— Many of the original inhabitants of Concord were well educated in their native country; and, “to the end that learning be not buried in the graves of the forefathers,” schools were provided at an early period for the instruction of their children. In 1647, towns of 50 families were required to have a common school, and of 100 families, a grammar school. Concord had the latter before 1680. An order was sent to this town, requiring “a list of the names of those young persons within the bounds of the town, and adjacent farms, who live from under family government, who do not serve their parents or masters, as children, apprentices, hired servants, or journeymen ought to do, and usually did in our native country”; agreeably to a law, that “all children and youth, under family government, be taught to read perfectly the English tongue, have knowledge in the capital laws, and be taught some orthodox catechism and that they be brought up to some honest employment.” On the back of this order is this return: “I have made dillygent inquiry according to this warrant and find no defects to return. Simon Davis, Constable. March 31, 1680.” During the 30 years subsequent to this period, which I [Lemuel Shattuck] have denominated the dark age in Massachusetts, few towns escaped a fine for neglecting the wholesome laws for the promotion of education. Though it does not appear that Concord was fined, a committee was appointed in 1692, to petition the General Court, “to ease us in the law relating to the grammar school-master,” or to procure one “with prudence for the benefit of learning, and saving the town from fine.” From that time, however, this school was constantly maintained. For several years subsequent to 1700, no appropriations were made to any other school. In 1701, grammar scholars paid 4d. and reading scholars 2d. per week towards its support; and from that time to 1712, from £20 to £30 were annually raised. In 1715, it was kept one quarter, in different parts of the town, for £40. The next year £50 were raised for schools; £35 for the centre, and £5 for each of the other three divisions. In 1722, Timothy Minott agreed to keep the school, for ten years, at £45 per year. In 1732, £50 were raised for the centre and £30 for the “out-schools”; and each schoolmaster was obliged to teach the scholars to read, write, and cipher, — all to be free. In 1740, £40 for the centre, and £80 for the others. These grants were in the currency of the times. In 1754, £40 lawful money were granted, £25 of which were for the centre. Teachers in the out-schools usually received 1s. per day for their services. The grammar-school was substituted for all others in 1767, and kept 12 weeks in the centre, and 6 HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

weeks each, in 6 other parts, or “school societies” of the town. There were then 6 schoolhouses, 2 of which were in the present [1835] limits of Carlisle, and the others near where Nos. 1, 2, 4, and 6, now [1835] stand. This system of a moving school, as it was termed, was not, however, continued many years. In 1774 the school money was first divided in proportion to the polls and estates. The districts were regulated, in 1781, nearly as they now [1835] are. The town raised £120, in 1784, for the support of schools, and voted, that “one sixteenth part of the money the several societies in the out-parts of the town pay towards this sum, should be taken and added to the pay of the middle society for the support of the grammar-school; and the out-parts to have the remainder to be spent in schools only.” This method of dividing the school-money was continued till 1817, when the town voted, that it should be distributed to each district, including the centre, according to its proportion of the town taxes. The appropriations for schools from 1781 to 1783, was £100; from 1784 to 1792, £125; 1793, £145; 1794 and 1795, £200; 1796 to 1801, £250; 1802 to 1806, $1,000; 1807 to 1810, $1,300; 1811, $1,600; 1812 to 1816, $1,300; 1817 and since, $1,400. There are 7 districts, among which the money, including the Cuming’s donation, has been divided, at different periods, as follows. The last column contains the new division as permanently fixed in 1831. The town then determined the amount that should be paid annually to each district, in the following proportions. The whole school-money being divided into 100 parts, district, No. 1, is to have 52½ of those parts, or $761.25 out of $1,550; 5 district, No. 2, 7 /8 parts; district, No. 3, 8¼ parts; district, 5 No. 4, 8 /8 parts; district, No. 5, 8¼ parts; district, No. 6, 1 1 7 /8 parts; district No. 7, 7 /8 parts; and to individuals who pay their money in Lincoln and Acton, ½ a part.

District. Old Names. 1801. 1811. 1821. 1830. 1832.

No. 1. Central $382.92 $791.48 $646.15 $789.18 $761.25

No. 2. East 95.28 155.45 160.26 109.69 110.56¼

No. 3. Corner 68.49 135.48 142.48 117.00 119.62-½

No. 4. Darby 70.53 130.69 123.10 138.23 125.06¼

No. 5. Barrett 107.29 163.51 145.89 125.11 119.62¼

No. 6. Groton Road 64.63 105.41 93.55 79.16 103.31¼

No. 7. Buttrick 67.64 126.68 114.16 84.77 103.31¼

Individuals 22.22 41.30 24.41 6.86 7.25

$884.00 1,650.00 1,450.00 1,450.00 1,450.00 HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

At the erection of new school-houses in 1799, the first school committee was chosen, consisting of the Rev. Ezra Ripley, Abiel Heywood, Esq., Deacon John White, Dr. Joseph Hunt, and Deacon George Minott. On their recommendation, the town adopted a uniform system of school regulations, which are distinguished for enlightened views of education, and which, by being generally followed since, under some modification, have rendered our schools among our greatest blessings. The amount paid for private schools, including the Academy, was estimated, in 1830, at $600, making the annual expenditure for education $2,050. Few towns provide more ample means for acquiring a cheap and competent education. I [Lemuel Shattuck] have subjoined the names of the teachers of the grammar-school since the Revolution, — the year usually beginning in September.

1785 Nathaniel Bridge 9 months 1812 Isaac Warren 1 year

1786 JOSEPH HUNT 2½ years 1813 JOHN BROWN 1 year

1788 William A. Barron 3 years 1814 Oliver Patten 1 year

1791 Amos Bancroft 1 year 1815 Stevens Everett 9 months

1792 Heber Chase 1 year 1815 Silas Holman 3 months

1793 WILLIAM JONES 1 year 1816 George F. Farley 1 year

1794 Samuel Thatcher 1 year 1817 James Howe 1 year

1795 JAMES TEMPLE 2 years 1818 Samuel Barrett 1 year

1797 Thomas O. Selfridge 1 year 1819 BENJAMIN BARRETT 1 year

1798 THOMAS WHITING 4 years 1820 Abner Forbes 2 years

1802 Levi Frisbie 1 year 1822 Othniel Dinsmore 3 years

1803 Silas Warren 4 years 1825 James Furbish 1 year

1807 Wyman Richardson 1 year 1826 EDWARD JARVIS 1 year

1808 Ralph Sanger 1 year 1827 Horatio Wood 1 year

1809 Benjamin Willard 1 year 1828 David J. Merrill 1 year

1810 Elijah F. Paige 1 year 1829 John Graham 1 year

1811 Simeon Putnam 1 year 1831 John Brown HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

3. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835 (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry David Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

1824

April 24, Saturday: Martha Bartlett was born, the 2d child of Dr. Josiah Bartlett and Martha Tilden Bradford Bartlett of Concord.4

In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day — Meeting not very full, but considerable many folks there. — Priscilla engaged in a long testimony & concluded in supplication - know not that any fault could be found - her examplary deportment while I was with her, much in her favour - together with a Savour of life in some part of her testimony at least — Waited on her & her companions who were John Lawton of Athens NYork & Hannah Eddy of Uxbridge, to the West ferry where we were joined by John Weeden, who agreed to conduct them to Tower Hill Meeting, where they expect to be tomorrow — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

December 22, Wednesday: Edward Everett orated at Plymouth, Massachusetts. This would be published by Cummings, Hilliard & Company at 134 Washington Street in Boston and we infer that this publication likely is the source for a declamation that 13-year-old David Henry Thoreau would perform at the Concord Academy in 1830. EVERETT AT PLYMOUTH

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 22 of 12 M / Last evening I recd a long letter from my Ancient frd Moses Brown & this Afternoon one from my friend Thomas Thompson of Liverpool. — There seem like a brook by the way - or refreshment in a dry season. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

4. Martha would be a student at the Concord Academy under the Thoreau brothers. Sophia Thoreau would come to enjoy playing chess with Martha. HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

1825

The Academy committee of Concord hired Mr. Josiah Barnes to be preceptor at the Concord Academy on Academy Lane. He would last out the school year 1825/1826 and be succeeded by Mr. Richard Hildreth for the school year 1826/1827. Then Mr. Phineas Allen would be preceptor from 1827 until 1836, when his anti-Masonic activities would alienate the committee. At this point, by way of contrast with the sort of educational opportunities to be provided somewhat later for the young David Henry Thoreau, the 13-year-old Charles Dickens was being introduced as a day pupil into the ragged Wellington House Academy on Hampstead Road, a strip near London soon to be transgressed by the railway. In a speech in 1857 Dickens would describe this poor school: [T]he respected proprietor ... was by far the most ignorant man I have ever had the pleasure to know ... one of the worst tempered men perhaps that ever lived, whose business it was to make as much out of us and put as little into us as possible.... [T]hat sort of school ... is a pernicious and abominable humbug altogether. Fortunately, when Thoreau reached the age of 13 in Concord he would encounter no such poor excuses for human beings and no such poor schooling, and in adult life would be impelled to deliver no such resentful speeches.

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

1701, grammar scholars paid 4d. and reading scholars 2d. per week towards its support; and from that time to 1712, from £20 to £30 were annually raised. In 1715, it was kept one quarter, in different parts of the town, for £40. The next year £50 were raised for schools; £35 for the centre, and £5 for each of the other three divisions. In 1722, Timothy Minott agreed to keep the school, for ten years, at £45 per year. In 1732, £50 were raised for the centre and £30 for the “out-schools”; and each schoolmaster was obliged to teach the scholars to read, write, and cipher, — all to be free. In 1740, £40 for the centre, and £80 for the others. These grants were in the currency of the times. In 1754, £40 lawful money were granted, £25 of which were for the centre. Teachers in the out-schools usually received 1s. per day for their services. The grammar-school was substituted for all others in 1767, and kept 12 weeks in the centre, and 6 weeks each, in 6 other parts, or “school societies” of the town. There were then 6 schoolhouses, 2 of which were in the present [1835] limits of Carlisle, and the others near where Nos. 1, 2, 4, and 6, now [1835] stand. This system of a moving school, as it was termed, was not, however, continued many years. In 1774 the school money was first divided in proportion to the polls and estates. The districts were regulated, in 1781, nearly as they now [1835] are. The town raised £120, in 1784, for the support of schools, and voted, that “one sixteenth part of the money the several societies in the out-parts of the town pay towards this sum, should be taken and added to the pay of the middle society for the support of the grammar-school; and the out-parts to have the remainder to be spent in schools only.” This method of dividing the school-money was continued till 1817, when the town voted, that it should be distributed to each district, including the centre, according to its proportion of the town taxes. The appropriations for schools from 1781 to 1783, was £100; from 1784 to 1792, £125; 1793, £145; 1794 and 1795, £200; 1796 to 1801, £250; 1802 to 1806, $1,000; 1807 to 1810, $1,300; 1811, $1,600; 1812 to 1816, $1,300; 1817 and since, $1,400. There are 7 districts, among which the money, including the Cuming’s donation, has been divided, at different periods, as follows. The last column contains the new division as permanently fixed in 1831. The town then determined the amount that should be paid annually to each district, in the following proportions. The whole school-money being divided into 100 parts, district, No. 1, is to have 52½ of those parts, or $761.25 out of $1,550; 5 district, No. 2, 7 /8 parts; district, No. 3, 8¼ parts; district, 5 No. 4, 8 /8 parts; district, No. 5, 8¼ parts; district, No. 6, 1 1 7 /8 parts; district No. 7, 7 /8 parts; and to individuals who HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

pay their money in Lincoln and Acton, ½ a part.

District. Old Names. 1801. 1811. 1821. 1830. 1832.

No. 1. Central $382.92 $791.48 $646.15 $789.18 $761.25

No. 2. East 95.28 155.45 160.26 109.69 110.56¼

No. 3. Corner 68.49 135.48 142.48 117.00 119.62-½

No. 4. Darby 70.53 130.69 123.10 138.23 125.06¼

No. 5. Barrett 107.29 163.51 145.89 125.11 119.62¼

No. 6. Groton Road 64.63 105.41 93.55 79.16 103.31¼

No. 7. Buttrick 67.64 126.68 114.16 84.77 103.31¼

Individuals 22.22 41.30 24.41 6.86 7.25

$884.00 1,650.00 1,450.00 1,450.00 1,450.00

THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1826

Pietro Bachi found work in the United States as a teacher of Italian and Spanish at Harvard College, at a salary of $500 per year.

Benjamin Peirce, Senior became Harvard’s librarian.

Doctor John White Webster compiled A MANUAL OF CHEMISTRY.

Richard Hildreth graduated from Harvard and would teach school for one year, at the Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts, before deciding to follow the example of Sir Walter Scott and pursue a career in law and literature.

In about this year Nathaniel Baker arrived at the age of 80 and sold his portion of the Baker farm to Amos Baker’s son James Baker.

Elizur Wright, Junior graduated at Yale College and went to teach in a school at Groton.

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Concord Academy HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January 22, Sunday: Birth, in Concord, Massachusetts, of Gorham Bartlett, 3d child of Dr. Josiah Bartlett and Martha Tilden Bradford Bartlett.5

In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 22nd of 1st M / Our Meetings were both pretty well attended, but Our high seats thin - D Buffum, Father Rodman & Hannah Dennis absent - & in the Afternoon none there but a Poor man how do we feel striped when we find the seats vacant of those on whom we have been used to lean — Set the forepart of the evening at Abigail Robinsons examining & correcting Testimonies concerning our friends Elizabeth Mott & Samuel Thurston deceased, which we are in hopes of presenting to our next Moy [Monthly] Meeting — The latter part called at Cousin Henry Goulds for my wife who spent the evening there — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

5. Gorham would be a student at the Concord Academy under the Thoreau brothers. He would die on June 17, 1854. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Fall: In the fall, 9-year-old David Henry Thoreau returned for a 3d year of instruction at Concord’s Town School. The master there, Edward Jarvis, was appealing to the self-respect of the students and to their love of propriety rather than seeking to make them fearfully obedient. Jarvis, with Lemuel Shattuck, and with the Reverend Hersey B. Goodwin, was attempting to put into practice locally the new educational principles of which they had been reading.

The schoolmaster for the young Concord scholars at the Concord Academy, for this school year of 1826/1827, was a recent Harvard graduate, Mr. Richard Hildreth — whose HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA a 38-year-old Harvard graduate Henry David Thoreau would be perusing as of the Year of Our Lord 1855! HILDRETH’S US, I HILDRETH’S US, II HILDRETH’S US, III

(It seems not to be generally understood, that Richard Hildreth had been one of the predecessor teachers at the Concord Academy, many years before Henry David Thoreau himself became a teacher there! — Well understanding that Henry would not enter the Academy until 1828 after Mr. Hildreth had departed, well understanding that it was instead Mr. Phineas Allen who would be Henry’s preceptor while boarding at the Thoreau boardinghouse, one may well wonder precisely where this previous preceptor had likewise taken up lodgings there in Concord during his own season of teaching. We can imagine that since he was a Hildreth, he HDT WHAT? INDEX

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would have taken his lodging with Jonathan Hildreth and Benjamin Warren Hildreth in Concord, but we presently have no datapoint with which to corroborate that inference. Might there be a possibility, therefore – as yet unrecorded– that he had like his successor Allen up lodgings in the Thoreau boardinghouse and had like his successor Allen at the dinnertable encountered young scholar David Henry Thoreau?)

During this year, not nearly so far along as little David Henry, John Shepard Keyes was attending the private infant school of Miss Phœbe Wheeler, kept in the southwest chamber of the old Peter Wheeler house on the Walden Road. He then also attended a school kept by a Miss Rice, at Deacon Jarvis’s bakehouse. He then also would attend for one winter term at town school in the brick schoolhouse, where his teacher would be John Brown (please note that this happens not to have been any of the famous John Browns).

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

Concord Academy “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1827

At an earlier point any Englishman who could read and write had been presumed to be a cleric, a member of the clergy, and so, if he were suspected of a crime, he would be turned over to an ecclesiastical court instead of being processed through the secular judicial system. He received “benefit of clergy,” as the phrase then was. He would be given what we termed the “neck verse” in a Latin manuscript psalter to read aloud, that verse being the 1st verse of the 51st Psalm, Miserere mei, &c. A thief or murderer who could read would get this “benefit of clergy,” and instead of being hanged by the neck until he was dead — would merely get his thumbs branded. Over the course of years the English government had been making this “benefit of clergy” more and more difficult to obtain, and since 1823 the secular system of justice had been retaining jurisdiction over all who were accused manslaughter. Finally, in this Year of Our Lord 1827, while David Henry Thoreau was at the age of ten, the privilege which had been awarded to those who could read and write was being cancelled altogether. Every accused person would in the future be “without benefit of clergy.” We can compare and contrast the schooling which David Henry was receiving at this age on this side the ocean due to the careful concern of his mother and father in a town near Boston with the lack of concern for such things which had been exhibited in another family containing another budding writer, a few years earlier when Charles Dickens had reached approximately the same age and had been deprived of the William Giles schoolroom in the dock town of Chatham near London: [I]n the ease of his [father John Dickens’s] temper, and the straitness of his means, he appeared to have utterly lost at this time the idea of educating me at all, and to have utterly put from him the notion that I had any claim upon him in that regard, whatever. So I degenerated into cleaning his boots of a morning, and my own; and making myself useful in the work of the little house [on Bayham Street in Camden Town]; and looking after my younger brothers and sisters (we were now six in all); and going on such poor errands as arose out of our poor way of living. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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It would not be until this diminutive British author had reached 48 years of age, in his GREAT EXPECTATIONS, that he would be able to purge himself of the memories of the hapless child of this period, who had been so victimized by fecklessly improvident loving incompetent parents. –Fortunately, Henry would have zero such bitter memories to carry from childhood into his adult years as a writer.

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

Concord Academy “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September: The Concord Academy in Concord had been established in 1822, by several gentlemen who were desirous of providing means for educating their own children and others more thoroughly than they could be at the grammar-school (attended, as it usually was, by a large number of scholars) or by sending them abroad. A neat, commodious building had been erected, in a pleasant part of the town, by these proprietors (the Hon. Samuel Hoar, the Hon. Abiel Heywood, and Mr. Josiah Davis, who owned a quarter each, and the Hon. Nathan Brooks and Colonel William Whiting, who owned an eighth each). Their intention has always been to make the school equal to any other similar one. The new establishment had opened for business during September 1823 under the instruction of Mr. George Folsom, who had kept it for its initial two years (school years 1823/ 1824 and 1824/1825). He had been succeeded by Mr. Josiah Barnes, for one year (school year 1825/1826), and by Mr. Richard Hildreth, for one year (school year 1826/1827). Mr. Phineas Allen, son of Mr. Phineas Allen of Medfield, who had been born on October 15, 1801 and had graduated at Harvard College in 1825, at this point was hired as the preceptor (school years 1827/1828 on until 1836, when his anti-Masonic activities would alienate the school board).6

1785 Nathaniel Bridge 9 months 1812 Isaac Warren 1 year

1786 JOSEPH HUNT 2½ years 1813 JOHN BROWN 1 year

1788 William A. Barron 3 years 1814 Oliver Patten 1 year

1791 Amos Bancroft 1 year 1815 Stevens Everett 9 months

1792 Heber Chase 1 year 1815 Silas Holman 3 months

1793 WILLIAM JONES 1 year 1816 George F. Farley 1 year

1794 Samuel Thatcher 1 year 1817 James Howe 1 year

1795 JAMES TEMPLE 2 years 1818 Samuel Barrett 1 year

1797 Thomas O. Selfridge 1 year 1819 BENJAMIN BARRETT 1 year

1798 THOMAS WHITING 4 years 1820 Abner Forbes 2 years

1802 Levi Frisbie 1 year 1822 Othniel Dinsmore 3 years

1803 Silas Warren 4 years 1825 James Furbish 1 year

1807 Wyman Richardson 1 year 1826 EDWARD JARVIS 1 year

1808 Ralph Sanger 1 year 1827 Horatio Wood 1 year

1809 Benjamin Willard 1 year 1828 David J. Merrill 1 year

1810 Elijah F. Paige 1 year 1829 John Graham 1 year

1811 Simeon Putnam 1 year 1831 John Brown

6. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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EDUCATION.— Many of the original inhabitants of Concord were well educated in their native country; and, “to the end that learning be not buried in the graves of the forefathers,” schools were provided at an early period for the instruction of their children. In 1647, towns of 50 families were required to have a common school, and of 100 families, a grammar school. Concord had the latter before 1680. An order was sent to this town, requiring “a list of the names of those young persons within the bounds of the town, and adjacent farms, who live from under family government, who do not serve their parents or masters, as children, apprentices, hired servants, or journeymen ought to do, and usually did in our native country”; agreeably to a law, that “all children and youth, under family government, be taught to read perfectly the English tongue, have knowledge in the capital laws, and be taught some orthodox catechism and that they be brought up to some honest employment.” On the back of this order is this return: “I have made dillygent inquiry according to this warrant and find no defects to return. Simon Davis, Constable. March 31, 1680.” During the 30 years subsequent to this period, which I [Dr. Lemuel Shattuck] have denominated the dark age in Massachusetts, few towns escaped a fine for neglecting the wholesome laws for the promotion of education. Though it does not appear that Concord was fined, a committee was appointed in 1692, to petition the General Court, “to ease us in the law relating to the grammar school-master,” or to procure one “with prudence for the benefit of learning, and saving the town from fine.” From that time, however, this school was constantly maintained. For several years subsequent to 1700, no appropriations were made to any other school. In 1701, grammar scholars paid 4d. and reading scholars 2d. per week towards its support; and from that time to 1712, from £20 to £30 were annually raised. In 1715, it was kept one quarter, in different parts of the town, for £40. The next year £50 were raised for schools; £35 for the centre, and £5 for each of the other three divisions. In 1722, Timothy Minott agreed to keep the school, for ten years, at £45 per year. In 1732, £50 were raised for the centre and £30 for the “out-schools”; and each schoolmaster was obliged to teach the scholars to read, write, and cipher, — all to be free. In 1740, £40 for the centre, and £80 for the others. These grants were in the currency of the times. In 1754, £40 lawful money were granted, £25 of which were for the centre. Teachers in the out-schools usually received 1s. per day for their services. The grammar-school was substituted for all others in 1767, and kept 12 weeks in the centre, and 6 weeks each, in 6 other parts, or “school societies” of the town. There were then 6 schoolhouses, 2 of which were in the present [1835] limits of Carlisle, and the others near where Nos. 1, 2, 4, and 6, now [1835] stand. This system of a moving school, as it was termed, was not, however, continued many years. In 1774 the school money was first divided in proportion to the polls and estates. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The districts were regulated, in 1781, nearly as they now [1835] are. The town raised £120, in 1784, for the support of schools, and voted, that “one sixteenth part of the money the several societies in the out-parts of the town pay towards this sum, should be taken and added to the pay of the middle society for the support of the grammar-school; and the out-parts to have the remainder to be spent in schools only.” This method of dividing the school-money was continued till 1817, when the town voted, that it should be distributed to each district, including the centre, according to its proportion of the town taxes. The appropriations for schools from 1781 to 1783, was £100; from 1784 to 1792, £125; 1793, £145; 1794 and 1795, £200; 1796 to 1801, £250; 1802 to 1806, $1,000; 1807 to 1810, $1,300; 1811, $1,600; 1812 to 1816, $1,300; 1817 and since, $1,400. There are 7 districts, among which the money, including the Cuming’s donation, has been divided, at different periods, as follows. The last column contains the new division as permanently fixed in 1831. The town then determined the amount that should be paid annually to each district, in the following proportions. The whole school-money being divided into 100 parts, district, No. 1, is to have 52½ of those parts, or $761.25 out of $1,550; 5 district, No. 2, 7 /8 parts; district, No. 3, 8¼ parts; district, 5 No. 4, 8 /8 parts; district, No. 5, 8¼ parts; district, No. 6, 1 1 7 /8 parts; district No. 7, 7 /8 parts; and to individuals who pay their money in Lincoln and Acton, ½ a part.

District. Old Names. 1801. 1811. 1821. 1830. 1832.

No. 1. Central $382.92 $791.48 $646.15 $789.18 $761.25

No. 2. East 95.28 155.45 160.26 109.69 110.56¼

No. 3. Corner 68.49 135.48 142.48 117.00 119.62-½

No. 4. Darby 70.53 130.69 123.10 138.23 125.06¼

No. 5. Barrett 107.29 163.51 145.89 125.11 119.62¼

No. 6. Groton Road 64.63 105.41 93.55 79.16 103.31¼

No. 7. Buttrick 67.64 126.68 114.16 84.77 103.31¼

Individuals 22.22 41.30 24.41 6.86 7.25

$884.00 1,650.00 1,450.00 1,450.00 1,450.00 HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

Winter: Concord’s school committee consisted of the Reverend Ezra Ripley, Dr. Abiel Heywood, Esq., Deacon John White, Dr. Joseph Hunt (perhaps a son of the Joseph Hunt who had died in 1812?), and Deacon George Minott. Horatio Wood was from September 27th to August 28th the teacher of the grammar-school in the town center (among his pupils was William Stevens Robinson, and, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn would allege, John Thoreau, Jr.; in the following year he would teach instead at Newburyport) and was Edward Jarvis’s principal companion out of school and study hours, walking together on many mornings. Henry Swasey McKean had charge of the #3 “out-school” in Concord, that is, the one-room wooden school located in the Nine-acre Corner district (this was during the winter of his senior year at Harvard College).

However, the Thoreau brothers 13-year-old John Thoreau, Jr. and 9-year-old David Henry Thoreau were neither with schoolmaster McKean nor with schoolmaster Wood — they were instead being schooled at the Town School in the center district under schoolmaster Edward Jarvis to prepare them for their transfer to the Concord Academy under preceptor Phineas Allen. REVEREND HORATIO WOOD

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Concord Academy HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1828

Richard Hildreth had left off teaching at the Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts, being succeeded as preceptor there by Mr. Phineas Allen, and was reading for the law in the offices of attorneys in Newburyport and Boston.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

D. Junii Juvenalis. SATIRÆ EXPURGATÆ. ACCEDUNT NOTÆ ANGLICÆ. IN USUM SCHOLÆ BOSTONIENSIS. CURA F. P. LEVERETT (Bostoniæ, Hilliard, Gray, Little et Wilkins). DECIMUS IUNIUS IUVENALIS

The 16 satires of Juvenal, in this expurgated Latin, would be required reading during David Henry Thoreau’s period of formal instruction at the Concord Academy, or at Harvard College. FREDERIC PERCIVAL LEVERETT

[Now here’s something I’d like to check out with you. My question to you will be, am I over-interpreting?]

In studying about this edition offered for use in an all-male school context, I have certain suspicions about a textbook title that boasts of expurgation. I say to myself, these schoolteachers do know about their pubescent lads –they themselves had once upon a time been pubescent lads– and so they were fully aware that this amounts to a dare. They knew that their charges were bound to seek out an unexpurgated edition to specifically look up the lacunae and give to the accurate translation of these lacunae their undivided interest. In other words, rather than constituting any sort of tactic for suppression of information, the tactic they were deploying was a tactic guaranteed to focus attention.

“Damn the expurgated books! I say damn ’em! The dirtiest book in all the world is the expurgated book!” — Walt Whitman

Concord Academy “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Consider what we find in the recent book CLASSICAL BEARINGS (Berkeley: U of California P, 1989). The author informs us of the great lengths to which he and other of his Sixth Form fellows at the Charterhouse School in Godalming in Surrey had gone, to sniff out the meanings of obscenities and foulnesses omitted from

their texts of Juvenal, for instance vetulae vesica beatae in Satire #1, and then Satires #2, #6, #9, .... Peter Green confesses on his page 242 that this had been “how I first acquired the basic techniques of scholarly research.”

What sort of material historically has been kept from the eyes of such as Henry Thoreau and thus, in all actuality, emphatically brought before his attention? Typically, Satires #7 and #9, the satires that deal heavily with homosexual deeds. Here are lines 27-37 of Satire #6: Postumus marrying? You used to be sane; no doubt about that. What Fury, then, with her maddening snakes is hunting you down? Can you bear to be the slave of a woman, when so much rope is at hand, when those vertiginous top-floor windows are standing open, and when the Aemilian bridge nearby offers assistance? If none of these means of deliverance seems to have any appeal, don’t you think it better to sleep with a little boyfriend? A boyfriend doesn’t argue all night or ask you for presents as he lies beside you, or complain that you are not giving a hundred percent and are not producing the requisite panting and puffing.

Lines 27-46 of Satire #9 have the narrator provide sympathetic attention to a male homosexual prostitute as he complains about the downside of butt-fucking one of his repeat clients: Many have made a profit from this kind of life, but I have had no return for my efforts. […] Men are governed by fate, including those parts hidden beneath their clothes. For if the stars are not in your favor, the unheard-of length of your dangling tool will count for nothing, even though, when you’re stripped, Virro stares at you drooling and sends you a continuous stream of coaxing billets-doux. […] And yet, what creature is more grotesque than a miserly pervert? “I paid you this; I gave you that; and then you got more.” As he tots it up he wriggles his rump. Well, set out the counters; send for the slaves and the abacus. Put down five thousand in all as paid to me. And then put down my heavy exertions. Do you think it’s nice and easy to thrust a proper-sized penis into a person’s guts, encountering yesterday’s dinner? The slave who plows the field has a lighter task that the one HDT WHAT? INDEX

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who plows its owner.

I can think of only one explanation for this phenomenon. Here we have a privileged intellectual education being offered to the privileged youth, to make of them top-quality young gentlemen who knew very well that they were top-quality young gentlemen, a caste of the entitled few. And, by ostensibly denying salacious material to them, salacious material was being most forcefully forwarded to their attention. Part of the message here is in the material itself –to wit a notice that such things do indeed go on in this world although no proper person would ever speak of that– and part of the message here is the very medium in which this message is being transmitted encoded — the method of transmission actually offers itself as an example, a model, for our conduct. You entitled gentlemen may kiss but you do not tell — you entitled gentlemen are entitled to kiss one another but you do not ever tell. The operative rule is, conduct is one thing and discourse another, another thing entirely. You may follow your bliss whatever your bliss may be — but if this leads you to be a black swan, you are to disguise yourself in white plumage. The serious business of life involves having a wife and a home and children but what you do for fun on Saturday in town is merely what you do for fun. It is not to define you. You are not to allow it to define you. You are to preserve deniability not only for yourself but also for all of us, the caste of well-educated and entitled gentlemen.7

[Remember my question to you is, am I over-interpreting? You need to let me know.]

We may well note that mere misogyny in Satire #6 passed readily through the editor’s filter: “From all the crowds of women, can you not find one who is decent?” Suppose she is beautiful, graceful, wealthy, fertile, and also has ancient ancestors dotting her hallway; suppose she is purer than any Sabine with streaming hair who stopped a war— a rare bird, as strange to the earth as a black swan; who could endure a wife who was such a paragon? Better, better, I say, a common slut than you, Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, if you combine with your massive virtues a disdainful expression, and count your triumphs as part of your dowry. Take your Hannibal, please; take your Syphax, who lost that battle in his camp; take all of Carthage; and then, take off!

The young scholar Thoreau was of course able to familiarize himself, unimpeded by any censorship, with Satire #10 and the prime importance of maintaining a mens sana in corpore sano. Still, that you may have something to ask for — some reason to offer the holy sausages and innards of a little white pig in a chapel-- you ought to pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body. Ask for a valiant heart which has banished the fear of death, which looks upon the length of days as one of the least of nature’s gifts; which is able to suffer every kind of hardship, is proof against anger, craves for nothing, and reckons the trials and grueling labors of Hercules as more desirable blessings than the amorous ease and the banquets and cushions of Sardanapallus. The things that I recommend you can grant to yourself; it is certain that the tranquil life can only be reached by the path of goodness. Lady Luck, if the truth were known, you possess no power;

7. This sort of thing would lead us toward Victorianism, which we now incorrectly presume to have been an age of inhibition — simply because their rule was that they never spoke of any of their unspeakable acts. We tend to think of this era as the era of prudery, in which they dressed up the legs of their pianos with prim skirts (but that happens to be an urban legend, and utterly unfounded). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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it is we who make you a goddess and give you a place in heaven.

The young scholar Thoreau was able to learn from the pages of this book, not only about the above impossibility (or actuality) of black swans,8 but also about the dangerous propensity of a democratic public for its panem et circenses: But what’s the reaction of Remus’s mob? It supports the winner, as always, and turns on whoever is condemned. […] Long ago, the people cast off its worries, when we stopped selling our votes. A body that used to confer commands, legions, rods, and everything else, has now narrowed its scope, and is eager and anxious for two things only: bread and circuses. “I hear that a lot are going to die.” “No question about it. The kitchen is sure to be hot.” “My friend Bruttidius looked a bit pale when I met him beside Mars’ altar. I’ve an awful feeling that the mortified Ajax may take revenge for being exposed to danger. So now, as he lies by the river, let’s all run and kick the man who was Caesar’s enemy. But check that our slaves are watching; then no one can say we didn’t, and drag his terrified master to court with his head in a noose.” Such were the whispers and the common gossip concerning Sejanus.

The young scholar Thoreau was able to learn from the pages of this book, of the reality of the always present political conundrum, quis custodiet ipsos custodes, who is going to protect us from the tender mercies of our protectors? You cannot, however, always trust [a eunuch]. Although he sets off his eyes with soot, and dresses in yellow and wears a hair-net, he’s still an adulterer. The more effeminate his voice, and the more he goes in for resting his hand on his rounded hip, the more you should have him watched. In bed he will prove most virile; there the ballet is forgotten. “Thais” puts off her mask to reveal the accomplished Triphallus. “Who are you fooling? Save the pretence, and lets have a wager. I bet you’re a genuine man; I bet you. Do you admit it? Or are the maids to be sent to the torturer’s stall? I know the advice my old friends give and their prudent recommendations: 8. Juvenal’s rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno seems to be the literary source, by way of John Stuart Mill, for Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s THE BLACK SWAN. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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‘Bolt the door and keep her in.’ But who is to guard the guards themselves? They are paid in kind for concealing the shady tricks of the naughty girl. Complicity promises silence. One’s wily wife anticipates this, and begins with them.”9

9. This volume would be the source for the article on Aulus Persius Flaccus that Thoreau would prepare for the July 1840 issue of THE DIAL, that would make its way into the “Thursday” chapter of A WEEK. THE DIAL, JULY 1840

“AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS”: The life of a wise man is most of all PEOPLE OF extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity that includes all A WEEK time. He is a child each moment, and reflects wisdom. The far darting thought of the child’s mind tarries not for the development of manhood; it lightens itself, and needs not draw down lightning from the clouds. When we bask in a single ray from ZOROASTER the mind of Zoroaster, we see how all subsequent time has been an idler, and has no apology for itself. But the cunning mind travels farther back than Zoroaster each instant, and comes quite down to the present with its revelation. All the thrift and industry of thinking give no man any stock in life; his credit with the inner world is no better, his capital no larger. He must try his fortune again to-day as yesterday. All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself. The word that is written may be postponed, but not that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says, let the occasion say it. From a real sympathy, all the world is forward to prompt him who gets up to live without his creed in his pocket.

PERSIUS

A WEEK: The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, PEOPLE OF for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time. The cunning mind travels further back than Zoroaster each A WEEK instant, and comes quite down to the present with its revelation. The utmost thrift and industry of thinking give no man any stock in life; his credit with the inner world is no better, his capital no larger. He must try his fortune again to-day as yesterday. All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself. The word that is written may be postponed, but not that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says, let the occasion say it. All the world is forward to prompt him who gets up to live without his creed in his pocket.

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Fall: This was the end of David Henry Thoreau’s period of instruction in Concord’s Town School in the center district under schoolmaster Edward Jarvis. Apparently at some point during this school term John Thoreau, Jr. and his 11-year-old brother David Henry were transferred by their parents from the public system to the Concord Academy at which the fees were $5.00 per student per quarter, to study not only Virgil, Caesar, Sallust, Marcus Tullius Cicero, and Horace, but also botany. According to this new arrangement, the preceptor there, a recent Harvard College graduate named Phineas Allen, was to board at the Thoreau boardinghouse — presumably in lieu of cash tuition. David Henry would be attending this academy until 1833. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Since Thoreau’s own copy of Virgil, now in the Special Collections department of the Minneapolis Public Library, is signed “D.H. Thoreau, Hollis 20, Sept. 4th,” the copy of Virgil from which he studied at this point would likely have been not this volume but instead a school copy. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1829

February 25, Wednesday: After a benefit performance at the Theatre Favart in which both of them took part, Harriet Smithson asked Hector Berlioz, through her landlord M. Tartes, please to desist from pestering her — she wanted nothing to do with him. Berlioz persisted: “Then it’s quite impossible?” She explained: “Oh, monsieur, nothing was more impossible.”

The completion of David Henry Thoreau’s 1st quarter of instruction at the Concord Academy. It seems plausible that it would have been at this point that Thoreau delivered “The Death of Leonidas,” his first attempt at what was termed, at that time, the “declamation.” Preceptor Phineas Allen found the effort “good.”

“A meeting of the [Concord] Lyceum was held this evening in the lower room of the Academy. At the suggestion of the Curators, the Lyceum voted to have a lecture this evening and Edward Bliss Emerson Esq. gave an interesting one on The Geography and History of Asia....”

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.

Fall: A deal was cut whereby Preceptor Phineas Allen was to board at the boarding house of the Thoreaus in Concord and John Thoreau, Jr. and David Henry Thoreau were to attend his Concord Academy, a private college-preparatory alternative to the public school system, to study Virgil, Sallust, Caesar, Euripides, Homer, Xenophon, Volt air e, Molière, and Racine in the original languages.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Concord Academy HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 9, Friday: At a meeting of the new Concord Academy Debating Society that had recently been organized by Preceptor Phineas Allen, David Henry Thoreau debated Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar on the topic “Does it require more talents to make a good writer than a good extemporaneous speaker?” Our David took the affirmative position and would be judged to have lost the contest.10

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 9th of 10 M 1829 / In the Steam boat B Franklin My H returned from Newport I went with our Institute Chaise to the Boat & found her well & brought her home - She gave a pleasnt account of her visit with John to our friends there & that he according to calculation Sailed yesterday for NYork & expects to be in Hudson on 2nd day [Monday] next. - - Our visit from John has been a truly comofting one, for which I desire to cherish a grateful sense & pray that he may continue to be presebrved from evil, as I trust he has in good measure been. — This eveng we had the company of several & among them Our friends Jonathon Dennis & Moses Brown, the latter was remarkably pleasant & interesting in conversation. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

November 5, Thursday: At a meeting of the new Concord Academy Debating Society that had recently been organized by Preceptor Phineas Allen, David Henry Thoreau debated Edward Wright on the topic “Is a good memory preferable to a good understanding in order to be a distinguished scholar at school?” Neither contestant having made any preparation, the record of the encounter reads “Such a debate, if it may be called so, as we have had, this evening, I hope never again will be witnessed in this house or recorded in this book.”

In Providence, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day was the Meeting at large which was larger & I think it may be said a solid favourd time, tho’ we had quite as much preaching as I thought was necessary - The Preachers were in quick succession & early in the commencement of the Meeting & I think in rotation as follows - Wm almy - Obadiah Davis long Anne Wing late Dennis - Ruth Davis & Hannah Dennis - some of them made short rejoinders & considering the number of Appearances the Meeting ended well — The Meeting for buisness was well conducted & After Meeting we rode home without dinner - Br David Rodman & wife in company. — We found a large accession of our Family & Friends expecting to attend the General Committee tomorrow - RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

10. According to Dorothy Nyran’s “The Concord Academy Debating Society” in the Massachusetts Review 4 (1962): 83. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 17, Thursday: Jose Maria Bacanegra replaced Vicente Ramon Guerrero Saldana as interim President of Mexico.

At a meeting of the new Concord Academy Debating Society that had recently been organized by Preceptor Phineas Allen, in the absence of the designated secretary, David Henry Thoreau was appointed to be the society’s “secretary pro-tem.” Evidently the 12-year-old failed to comprehend what was expected of him in such a post, for when the secretary returned it was necessary to reconstruct what had taken place on the basis of hearsay.

December 24, Thursday: At a meeting of the Concord Academy Debating Society that had been organized by Preceptor Phineas Allen, the debate was between Edward Wright and Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar for the affirmative, and Moore, Davis, and David Henry Thoreau for the negative, on the issue “Ought lotteries be granted for any use?” The negative carried the day (soon this debating society would be discontinued as the activities of the new Concord Lyceum began to pick up).

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Concord Academy HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1830

This was a year of transition in the public school systems of New England. Prior to this point it was an unchallenged standard that a grammar school would be staffed by one reading master and one writing master, each drawing down a salary of $1,200.00 per annum, plus several “ushers,” male, who would receive $600.00 each. So, salaries being by far the biggest expense of running a school, the yearly budget of a New England grammar school would run in the $4,000.00-to-$5,000.00 range. Roughly half the elementary students at this point were girls, so the boys would be being instructed by one master in one room while the girls were being instructed by the other master in another room. At this point the model began to shift as the population of New England grew more dense, toward a scheme in which boys and girls would be educated in separate schools so that there could be only a single teacher drawing down the $1,200.00 salary. There would be one assistant teacher in such a gender-segregated school, drawing down a salary of $600.00, plus any number of assistants who might be paid perhaps $200.00. How to get someone to work for a mere $200.00 per year? Hire women, they will work damn cheap! Thus the total school budget could be lowered into the $2,000.00-$3,000.00 range.

In contrast with the sort of education that had been provided earlier for the 13-year-old Charles Dickens in the ragged Wellington House Academy near London, however, the educational opportunity offered to David Henry Thoreau in Concord must have been pretty doggone good. In a speech in 1857 Dickens would describe this school he had experienced: [T]he respected proprietor ... was by far the most ignorant man I have ever had the pleasure to know ... one of the worst tempered men perhaps that ever lived, whose business it was to make as much out of us and put as little into us as possible.... [T]hat sort of school ... is a pernicious and abominable humbug altogether. Fortunately, David Henry at the age of 13 was encountering no such poor excuses for human beings and no such poor schooling, and in adult life would be impelled to deliver no such resentful speeches.

So, what was David Henry’s education like at the Concord Academy? One thing we know is that in this year he delivered a declamation based upon the oration that Edward Everett had delivered at Plymouth on December 22, 1824. EVERETT AT PLYMOUTH

NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Concord Academy HDT WHAT? INDEX

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For an unknown reason Lemuel Shattuck, in his history of Concord, neglected to state the name of the town schoolmaster of the grammar school for this year:

1785 Nathaniel Bridge 9 months 1812 Isaac Warren 1 year

1786 JOSEPH HUNT 2½ years 1813 JOHN BROWN 1 year

1788 William A. Barron 3 years 1814 Oliver Patten 1 year

1791 Amos Bancroft 1 year 1815 Stevens Everett 9 months

1792 Heber Chase 1 year 1815 Silas Holman 3 months

1793 WILLIAM JONES 1 year 1816 George F. Farley 1 year

1794 Samuel Thatcher 1 year 1817 James Howe 1 year

1795 JAMES TEMPLE 2 years 1818 Samuel Barrett 1 year

1797 Thomas O. Selfridge 1 year 1819 BENJAMIN BARRETT 1 year

1798 THOMAS WHITING 4 years 1820 Abner Forbes 2 years

1802 Levi Frisbie 1 year 1822 Othniel Dinsmore 3 years

1803 Silas Warren 4 years 1825 James Furbish 1 year

1807 Wyman Richardson 1 year 1826 EDWARD JARVIS 1 year

1808 Ralph Sanger 1 year 1827 Horatio Wood 1 year

1809 Benjamin Willard 1 year 1828 David J. Merrill 1 year

1810 Elijah F. Paige 1 year 1829 John Graham 1 year

1811 Simeon Putnam 1 year 1831 John Brown

This was the state of the town’s finances: In consequence of having to maintain eight bridges, and the liberal appropriations for schools and other objects, the taxes in Concord are supposed to be higher, in proportion to its wealth, than in many towns, amounting to about $3 on every inhabitant. In 1803, the roads and bridges, independent of a highway tax of $1000, cost $1,244; in 1805, $967; in 1807, $1,290; and on an average, for the last 40 years, about one eighth of all the town expenses. The following table will HDT WHAT? INDEX

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exhibit the appropriations for several periods since.

Year. State Tax. County Tax. Minister. Incidental. Total.

1785 £711. 6s. 4d. £25. 3s. 3d. £100. 10s. 9d. £748. 8s. 1d. £1,585. 8s. 5d.

1790 £128. 9s. 4d. £32. 16s. 6d. £113. 19s. 6d. £596. 2s. 11d. £871. 18s. 3d.

1795 $613.33 $233.16 $646.66 $2,327.15 $3,820.31

1800 $611.33 $161.56 $567.26 $2,763.52 $4,103.78

1810 $662.14 $398.92 $633.05 $3,010.47 $4,704.58

1820 $568.94 $331.13 $794.17 $4,243.92 $5,938.16

1830 $222.00 $417.17 $709.00 $4,072.01 $4,781.01

The amount of debts due from the town, in 1825, was $3,284.04, and in 1831, $5,288.65.11 Concord paid about $600 for education during this year, including grammar education at its Town School and college preparation at its Concord Academy, in Concord, making its annual expenditure for education sum up to $2,050.

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

committee was appointed in 1692, to petition the General Court, “to ease us in the law relating to the grammar school-master,” or to procure one “with prudence for the benefit of learning, and saving the town from fine.” From that time, however, this school was constantly maintained. For several years subsequent to 1700, no appropriations were made to any other school. In 1701, grammar scholars paid 4d. and reading scholars 2d. per week towards its support; and from that time to 1712, from £20 to £30 were annually raised. In 1715, it was kept one quarter, in different parts of the town, for £40. The next year £50 were raised for schools; £35 for the centre, and £5 for each of the other three divisions. In 1722, Timothy Minott agreed to keep the school, for ten years, at £45 per year. In 1732, £50 were raised for the centre and £30 for the “out-schools”; and each schoolmaster was obliged to teach the scholars to read, write, and cipher, — all to be free. In 1740, £40 for the centre, and £80 for the others. These grants were in the currency of the times. In 1754, £40 lawful money were granted, £25 of which were for the centre. Teachers in the out-schools usually received 1s. per day for their services. The grammar-school was substituted for all others in 1767, and kept 12 weeks in the centre, and 6 weeks each, in 6 other parts, or “school societies” of the town. There were then 6 schoolhouses, 2 of which were in the present [1835] limits of Carlisle, and the others near where Nos. 1, 2, 4, and 6, now [1835] stand. This system of a moving school, as it was termed, was not, however, continued many years. In 1774 the school money was first divided in proportion to the polls and estates. The districts were regulated, in 1781, nearly as they now [1835] are. The town raised £120, in 1784, for the support of schools, and voted, that “one sixteenth part of the money the several societies in the out-parts of the town pay towards this sum, should be taken and added to the pay of the middle society for the support of the grammar-school; and the out-parts to have the remainder to be spent in schools only.” This method of dividing the school-money was continued till 1817, when the town voted, that it should be distributed to each district, including the centre, according to its proportion of the town taxes. The appropriations for schools from 1781 to 1783, was £100; from 1784 to 1792, £125; 1793, £145; 1794 and 1795, £200; 1796 to 1801, £250; 1802 to 1806, $1,000; 1807 to 1810, $1,300; 1811, $1,600; 1812 to 1816, $1,300; 1817 and since, $1,400. There are 7 districts, among which the money, including the Cuming’s donation, has been divided, at different periods, as follows. The last column contains the new division as permanently fixed in 1831. The town then determined the amount that should be paid annually to each district, in the following proportions. The whole school-money being divided into 100 parts, district, No. 1, is to have 52½ of those parts, or $761.25 out of $1,550; 5 district, No. 2, 7 /8 parts; district, No. 3, 8¼ parts; district, 5 No. 4, 8 /8 parts; district, No. 5, 8¼ parts; district, No. 6, 1 1 7 /8 parts; district No. 7, 7 /8 parts; and to individuals who HDT WHAT? INDEX

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pay their money in Lincoln and Acton, ½ a part.

District. Old Names. 1801. 1811. 1821. 1830. 1832.

No. 1. Central $382.92 $791.48 $646.15 $789.18 $761.25

No. 2. East 95.28 155.45 160.26 109.69 110.56¼

No. 3. Corner 68.49 135.48 142.48 117.00 119.62-½

No. 4. Darby 70.53 130.69 123.10 138.23 125.06¼

No. 5. Barrett 107.29 163.51 145.89 125.11 119.62¼

No. 6. Groton Road 64.63 105.41 93.55 79.16 103.31¼

No. 7. Buttrick 67.64 126.68 114.16 84.77 103.31¼

Individuals 22.22 41.30 24.41 6.86 7.25

$884.00 1,650.00 1,450.00 1,450.00 1,450.00 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1785 Nathaniel Bridge 9 months 1812 Isaac Warren 1 year

1786 JOSEPH HUNT 2½ years 1813 JOHN BROWN 1 year

1788 William A. Barron 3 years 1814 Oliver Patten 1 year

1791 Amos Bancroft 1 year 1815 Stevens Everett 9 months

1792 Heber Chase 1 year 1815 Silas Holman 3 months

1793 WILLIAM JONES 1 year 1816 George F. Farley 1 year

1794 Samuel Thatcher 1 year 1817 James Howe 1 year

1795 JAMES TEMPLE 2 years 1818 Samuel Barrett 1 year

1797 Thomas O. Selfridge 1 year 1819 BENJAMIN BARRETT 1 year

1798 THOMAS WHITING 4 years 1820 Abner Forbes 2 years

1802 Levi Frisbie 1 year 1822 Othniel Dinsmore 3 years

1803 Silas Warren 4 years 1825 James Furbish 1 year

1807 Wyman Richardson 1 year 1826 EDWARD JARVIS 1 year

1808 Ralph Sanger 1 year 1827 Horatio Wood 1 year

1809 Benjamin Willard 1 year 1828 David J. Merrill 1 year

1810 Elijah F. Paige 1 year 1829 John Graham 1 year

1811 Simeon Putnam 1 year 1831 John Brown HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Concord Academy had been established, in 1822, by several gentlemen, who were desirous of providing means for educating their own children and others more thoroughly than they could be at the grammar-school (attended, as it usually is, by a large number of scholars) or by sending them abroad. A neat, commodious building had been erected, in a pleasant part of the town, by the proprietors, consisting of the Hon. Samuel Hoar, the Hon. Abiel Heywood, and Mr. Josiah Davis, who owned a quarter each, and the Hon. Nathan Brooks and Colonel William Whiting, who owned an eighth each. Their intention always was to make the school equal to any other similar one. It had been opened during September 1823 under the instruction of Mr. George Folsom, who kept it two years. He had been succeeded by Mr. Josiah Barnes and Mr. Richard Hildreth, each one year. Mr. Phineas Allen, son of Mr. Phineas Allen of Medfield, born October 15, 1801, who had graduated at Harvard College in 1825, had been the preceptor since September, 1827.12

In Concord, beginning in this year, Cyrus Stow, Daniel Clark, and Elisha Wheeler were Selectmen.

Nathan Brooks of Concord was of the Council.

Samuel Hoar, Jr. of Concord was a Senator.

Reuben Brown, Jr. and Daniel Shattuck were Concord’s deputies and representatives to the General Court.

12. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At about this time the family of Marpiyawicasta Man of the Clouds began to racially integrate, that is, began to intermarry with prominent whites such as Indian Agent Lawrence Taliaferro at Fort Snelling in the

Louisiana Purchase. (Marpiyawicasta had a “civilized” name, and it was by this name that Henry Thoreau would eventually hear of him: “L.O. Skyman.”) Wakaninajinwin Stands Sacred (or, Stands Like a Spirit), the daughter of Marpiyawicasta who had been baptized as “Lucy,” in this her 15th year met Seth Eastman of Fort Snelling, a West Point graduate and artist, and gave birth to a racially mixed daughter, Wakantankanwin

Goddess, who was baptized as Mary Nancy Eastman. The white soldier set up an account at the local trading HDT WHAT? INDEX

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post upon which his red bride could draw for the sustenance of their daughter while living with her family at the farming settlement on the east bank of Lake Calhoun (such an interracial union, rather than being in defiance of military policy, could well be said to have been considered locally to be in furtherance of it).

Elsewhere, however, 1830 was the year of the “Indian Removal Act.” Dakota women studying ornithology in their cornfields, per Captain Seth Eastman of Fort Snelling (it displeased the missionaries that the savages could not comprehend: maize must be planted in disciplined rows, not in undisciplined hills)

In America’s schoolbooks, between 1830 and 1860, one very popularly reproduced text was a speech delivered by Justice Joseph Story on Native Americans: “What can be more melancholy than their history? By a law of nature they seem destined to a slow but sure extinction. Everywhere at the approach of the white man they fade away.”13 I wonder, would Thoreau, who later wrote a book that he was determined not to turn into an ode to melancholy, have been presented with this stuff in Preceptor Phineas Allen’s Concord Academy college-

13. Refer to Ruth Miller Elison’s GUARDIANS OF TRADITION: AMERICAN SCHOOLBOOKS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (Lincoln NB: U of Nebraska P, 1964), pages 69 and 79. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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preparatory school in Concord, and with this sort of usage of the term “melancholy”?

According to Mary Helen Dunlop’s SIXTY MILES FROM CONTENTMENT: TRAVELING THE NINETEENTH- CENTURY AMERICAN INTERIOR (NY: HarperCollins BasicBooks, 1995, page 97), the actual native American was well on its way to being replaced in non-native American experience, through poverty of experience, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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by the idea of the primitive and by the artistic representation of the Indian (emphasis added): In 1822, after a residence of one year in Illinois, John Woods wrote, “I have not seen one Indian.” Passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830 further decreased the likelihood that a traveler in the interior would encounter any Indian: by 1838 only 26,700 Indians remained resident east of the Mississippi. Travelers who entered the interior after 1830 had seen more Indians immobilized in murals and marble in the United States Capitol than they would see in the flesh on the landscape of the interior, and they had read more ornate metaphors spoken by Indians on the pages of James Fenimore Cooper’s novels than they would hear syllables uttered by Indians. Fully aware, however, that their worldwide reading audience expected descriptions of so famous a North American fact as its Indian population, travelers wrote in answer to that expectation — and if they were writing as much about Horatio Greenough’s sculpted Indians as about any real persons, they could nonetheless cling to the peculiar confidence that arises from presuming that their subjects were unlikely ever to hear of what travelers said or wrote about them.

A NARRATIVE OF THE CAPTIVITY AND ADVENTURES OF JOHN TANNER (published in New-York), recounting thirty years among the Ottawa and Ojibwa tribes: JOHN TANNER’S NARRATIVE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau would copy the following materials into his Indian Notebook:14

AS COPIED INTO THOREAU’S INDIAN NOTEBOOK Wain-je-tah We koon-de-win — Feast called for by dreams. Feasts of this kind may be held at any time, and no particular qualifications are necessary in the entertainer or his guests. The word Wain-je-tah means common, or true, as they often use it in connexion with the names of plants or animals, as Wainje-tah, O-muk-kuk-ke, means a right or proper toad, in distinction from a tree frog, or lizzard [sic]. Ween-dah-was-so-win — Feast of giving names, i.e. to children — where the guests eats all in his dish. Reason given that hawks “never return a 2d time to what they have killed.” Menis-se-no We-koon-de-win. War feast. These feasts are made before starting, or on the way towards the enemy’s country. 2, 4, 8, or 12 men, may be called but by no means an odd number. The whole animal, whether deer, bear, or moose, or whatever it may be is cooked, and they are expected to eat it all. [Henry Thoreau added “ — and they drink bears grease.”]

14. The original notebooks are held by the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, as manuscripts #596 through #606. There are photocopies, made by Robert F. Sayre in the 1930s, in four boxes at the University of Iowa Libraries, accession number MsC 795. More recently, Bradley P. Dean, PhD and Paul Maher, Jr. have attempted to work over these materials. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Objibiwai Metik-goag — trees Shingo-beek — Ever greens, or cone bearing trees Netish-un — trees with broad leaves Nin-au-tik — Sugar maple (our own tree) Ne-be-min-ah-ga-wunje — high cranberry bush Wis-seg-ge-bug — Bitter leaf Munino-mun-ne-chee-heeg — Red panit root Meen — Blue berry Weah-gush-koan — dust; or that which is mixed together O-kun-dum-moge — Pond lillies Nah-nom-o-ne-gah-wah-zheen — wild rice We-nis-se-bug-goon — Wintergreen O-gris-e-mawn — Squashes. — O-zaw-waw-o-gruis-se-mawn — yellow squash Mis-kwo-de-se-min — Bean As-ke-tum-moong — melons Shah-ho-ze-gun — Milkweed Wah-ko-nug — Lichens O-zhush-kwa-to-wug — Fungi Ah-wes-sie-ug — animals HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1831

In Concord, the Selectmen began to function in addition as Assessors. One Surveyor of Highways and Bridges replaced eleven.

Joseph Barrett was Concord’s deputy and representative to the General Court.

Nathan Brooks and Samuel Hoar, Jr. of Concord were of the Senate.

John Brown, hired from elsewhere, became the schoolmaster for Concord’s grammar students.

1785 Nathaniel Bridge 9 months 1812 Isaac Warren 1 year

1786 JOSEPH HUNT 2½ years 1813 JOHN BROWN 1 year

1788 William A. Barron 3 years 1814 Oliver Patten 1 year

1791 Amos Bancroft 1 year 1815 Stevens Everett 9 months

1792 Heber Chase 1 year 1815 Silas Holman 3 months

1793 WILLIAM JONES 1 year 1816 George F. Farley 1 year

1794 Samuel Thatcher 1 year 1817 James Howe 1 year

1795 JAMES TEMPLE 2 years 1818 Samuel Barrett 1 year

1797 Thomas O. Selfridge 1 year 1819 BENJAMIN BARRETT 1 year

1798 THOMAS WHITING 4 years 1820 Abner Forbes 2 years

1802 Levi Frisbie 1 year 1822 Othniel Dinsmore 3 years

1803 Silas Warren 4 years 1825 James Furbish 1 year

1807 Wyman Richardson 1 year 1826 EDWARD JARVIS 1 year

1808 Ralph Sanger 1 year 1827 Horatio Wood 1 year

1809 Benjamin Willard 1 year 1828 David J. Merrill 1 year

1810 Elijah F. Paige 1 year 1829 John Graham 1 year

1811 Simeon Putnam 1 year 1831 John Brown HDT WHAT? INDEX

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It would have been in approximately this year that Moses Barnard Prichard would have begun to attend the Concord Academy at which Henry Thoreau. was studying. A text that would be required at the school was published in this year, the 2d edition of Benjamin Franklin Fisk’s A GRAMMAR OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins). IT’S ALL GREEK TO ME

A text that Thoreau would check out from the Harvard Library on February 5, 1834 was also published in this year, GREEK EXERCISES; CONTAINING THE SUBSTANCE OF THE GREEK SYNTAX, ILLUSTRATED BY PASSAGES FROM THE BEST GREEK AUTHORS, TO BE WRITTEN OUT FROM THE WORDS GIVEN IN THEIR SIMPLEST FORM. BY BENJAMIN FRANKLIN FISK. CONSUETUDO ET EXERCITATIO FACILITATEM MAXIME PARIT. QUINTIL (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins). GREEK EXERCISES

Nathan Stow died and the partnership “Stows & Merriam” made up of Nathan Stow, Cyrus Stow, and Ephraim Merriam was dissolved. At the time Merriam was in business in Lowell, Massachusetts with Reuben Moore, dealer in wood and lumber, and was in addition speculating in real estate in Lowell in loose association with Daniel Shattuck. He was successful. He began life with four or five hundred dollars. He left to his heirs not much less than forty thousand dollars, a large estate in those days for a small country town. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1832

The National Bank of Concord was founded. Before this national bank was started (and before a savings bank would be started, in 1835), a Samuel Burr of the green store in Concord on the site of the present Catholic Church, who had been acting as a savings banker for the village, had died. He had been using the moneys that people had been placing with him at interest in the operation of his store, and had been very kind in allowing credit to his customers — but upon his death, without embezzlement, his store had been discovered actually to be bankrupt.

EDUCATION.— Many of the original inhabitants of Concord were well educated in their native country; and, “to the end that learning be not buried in the graves of the forefathers,” schools were provided at an early period for the instruction of their children. In 1647, towns of 50 families were required to have a common school, and of 100 families, a grammar school. Concord had the latter before 1680. An order was sent to this town, requiring “a list of the names of those young persons within the bounds of the town, and adjacent farms, who live from under family government, who do not serve their parents or masters, as children, apprentices, hired servants, or journeymen ought to do, and usually did in our native country”; agreeably to a law, that “all children and youth, under family government, be taught to read perfectly the English tongue, have knowledge in the capital laws, and be taught some orthodox catechism and that they be brought up to some honest employment.” On the back of this order is this return: “I have made dillygent inquiry according to this warrant and find no defects to return. Simon Davis, Constable. March 31, 1680.” During the 30 years subsequent to this period, which I [Dr. Lemuel Shattuck] have denominated the dark age in Massachusetts, few towns escaped a fine for neglecting the wholesome laws for the promotion of education. Though it does not appear that Concord was fined, a committee was appointed in 1692, to petition the General Court, “to ease us in the law relating to the grammar school-master,” or to procure one “with prudence for the benefit of learning, and saving the town from fine.” From that time, however, this school was constantly maintained. For several years subsequent to 1700, no appropriations were made to any other school. In 1701, grammar scholars paid 4d. and reading scholars 2d. per week towards its support; and from that time to 1712, from £20 to £30 were annually raised. In 1715, it was kept one quarter, in different parts of the town, for £40. The next year £50 were raised for schools; £35 for the centre, and £5 for each of the other three divisions. In 1722, Timothy Minott agreed to keep the school, for ten years, at £45 per year. In 1732, £50 were raised for the centre and £30 for the “out-schools”; and each schoolmaster was obliged to teach the scholars to read, write, and cipher, — all to be free. In 1740, £40 for the centre, and £80 for the others. These grants were in the currency of the HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

times. In 1754, £40 lawful money were granted, £25 of which were for the centre. Teachers in the out-schools usually received 1s. per day for their services. The grammar-school was substituted for all others in 1767, and kept 12 weeks in the centre, and 6 weeks each, in 6 other parts, or “school societies” of the town. There were then 6 schoolhouses, 2 of which were in the present [1835] limits of Carlisle, and the others near where Nos. 1, 2, 4, and 6, now [1835] stand. This system of a moving school, as it was termed, was not, however, continued many years. In 1774 the school money was first divided in proportion to the polls and estates. The districts were regulated, in 1781, nearly as they now [1835] are. The town raised £120, in 1784, for the support of schools, and voted, that “one sixteenth part of the money the several societies in the out-parts of the town pay towards this sum, should be taken and added to the pay of the middle society for the support of the grammar-school; and the out-parts to have the remainder to be spent in schools only.” This method of dividing the school-money was continued till 1817, when the town voted, that it should be distributed to each district, including the centre, according to its proportion of the town taxes. The appropriations for schools from 1781 to 1783, was £100; from 1784 to 1792, £125; 1793, £145; 1794 and 1795, £200; 1796 to 1801, £250; 1802 to 1806, $1,000; 1807 to 1810, $1,300; 1811, $1,600; 1812 to 1816, $1,300; 1817 and since, $1,400. There are 7 districts, among which the money, including the Cuming’s donation, has been divided, at different periods, as follows. The last column contains the new division as permanently fixed in 1831. The town then determined the amount that should be paid annually to each district, in the following proportions. The whole school-money being divided into 100 parts, district, No. 1, is to have 52½ of those parts, or $761.25 out of $1,550; 5 district, No. 2, 7 /8 parts; district, No. 3, 8¼ parts; district, 5 No. 4, 8 /8 parts; district, No. 5, 8¼ parts; district, No. 6, 1 1 7 /8 parts; district No. 7, 7 /8 parts; and to individuals who HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

pay their money in Lincoln and Acton, ½ a part.

District. Old Names. 1801. 1811. 1821. 1830. 1832.

No. 1. Central $382.92 $791.48 $646.15 $789.18 $761.25

No. 2. East 95.28 155.45 160.26 109.69 110.56¼

No. 3. Corner 68.49 135.48 142.48 117.00 119.62-½

No. 4. Darby 70.53 130.69 123.10 138.23 125.06¼

No. 5. Barrett 107.29 163.51 145.89 125.11 119.62¼

No. 6. Groton Road 64.63 105.41 93.55 79.16 103.31¼

No. 7. Buttrick 67.64 126.68 114.16 84.77 103.31¼

Individuals 22.22 41.30 24.41 6.86 7.25

$884.00 1,650.00 1,450.00 1,450.00 1,450.00 HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

1785 Nathaniel Bridge 9 months 1812 Isaac Warren 1 year

1786 JOSEPH HUNT 2½ years 1813 JOHN BROWN 1 year

1788 William A. Barron 3 years 1814 Oliver Patten 1 year

1791 Amos Bancroft 1 year 1815 Stevens Everett 9 months

1792 Heber Chase 1 year 1815 Silas Holman 3 months

1793 WILLIAM JONES 1 year 1816 George F. Farley 1 year

1794 Samuel Thatcher 1 year 1817 James Howe 1 year

1795 JAMES TEMPLE 2 years 1818 Samuel Barrett 1 year

1797 Thomas O. Selfridge 1 year 1819 BENJAMIN BARRETT 1 year

1798 THOMAS WHITING 4 years 1820 Abner Forbes 2 years

1802 Levi Frisbie 1 year 1822 Othniel Dinsmore 3 years

1803 Silas Warren 4 years 1825 James Furbish 1 year

1807 Wyman Richardson 1 year 1826 EDWARD JARVIS 1 year

1808 Ralph Sanger 1 year 1827 Horatio Wood 1 year

1809 Benjamin Willard 1 year 1828 David J. Merrill 1 year

1810 Elijah F. Paige 1 year 1829 John Graham 1 year

1811 Simeon Putnam 1 year 1831 John Brown HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

15. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

1835

September: As William Whiting (Junior) began to attend the Harvard Law School, his replacement as preceptor in the Concord Academy would be Charles C. Shackford, who had just graduated there as the top scholar in the class and would go on to become a professor of Rhetoric at Cornell University. NEW “HARVARD MEN”

John Shepard Keyes, one of the pupils, would report: Mr. C.C. Shackford the first scholar in the class of 1835, succeeded in September of that year Mr Whiting, who began then the study of law Mr S was a very different man, as bright and keen, but without ambition, and bilious, moody, and very unequal in his instruction, at times thrilling and inspiriting and at others sour and cross and depressing Our training under the first teacher and the impulse carried the older scholars through the second year, but the newcomers of whom there were several didnt have that help and the school so far ran down that it closed with Mr Shuckfords twelve month. He was a strange compound, and rather an exciting mystery to the older girls, to whom he paid great deference, and soon became blindly in love first with my charmer and then when rejected, by her, with the next prettiest but most wayward of them all. How he fared in this pursuit was the theme of endless discussion of the older scholars and took much time from our studies to watch the traces of success or despair. Some of us thought them engaged definitely others that she refused, and it ended in smoke if there was ever more to it. And he has been married twice, and is a Professor at Cornell, and she a matron of a large family and high position in Concord, of course like a dutiful pupil and the oldest boy in the school I was bound to follow such an example, and did my utmost to plague his life, and make him feel the jealousy from which I suffered, as much as he did. But alas how time cures all wounds.— J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

David Henry Thoreau was back at Harvard College for his Junior year as of the age of eighteen, living in 31 Hollis Hall. This month his assigned composition was on classroom discipline, “The comparative moral policy of severe and mild punishments.” The end of all punishment is the welfare of the state — the good of community at large — not the suffering of an individual. It matters not to the lawgiver what a man deserves, for to say nothing of the impossibility of settling this point, it would be absurd to pass laws against prodigality, want of charity, and many other faults of the same nature, as if man was to be frightened into a virtuous life, though these in a great measure HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

constitute a vicious one. We leave this to a higher tribunal. So far only as public interest is concerned, is punishment justifiable — if we overstep this bound our own conduct becomes criminal. Let us observe in the first place the effects of severity. Does the rigor of the punishment increase the dread operating upon the mind to dissuade us from the act? It certainly does if it be unavoidable. But where death is a general punishment, though some advantage may seem to arise from the severity, yet this will invariably be more than counterbalanced by the uncertainty attending the execution of the law. We find that in England, for instance, where, in Blackstone’s day,16 160 offences were considered capital, between the years 1805 and 1817 of 655 who were indicted for stealing, 113 being capitally convicted, not one was executed; and yet no blame could attach to the conduct of the juries, the fault was in the law. Had death, on the other hand, been certain, the law could have existed but a very short time. Feelings of natural justice, together with public sentiment, would have concurred to abolish it altogether. In fact wherever those crimes which are made capital form a numerous class, and petty thefts and forgeries are raised to a level with murder, burglary, and the like, the law seems to defeat its own ends. The injured influenced, perhaps, by compassion, forbear to prosecute, and thus are numerous frauds allowed to escape with impunity, for want of a penalty proportionate to the offense. Juries too, actuated by the same motives, adopt the course pointed out by their feelings. As long as one crime is more heinous and more offensive than another, it is absolutely necessary that a corresponding distinction be made in punishing them. Otherwise, if the penalty be the same, men will come to regard the guilt as equal in each case. It is enough that the evil attending conviction exceed the expected advantage. This I say is sufficient, provided the consequences be certain, and the expected benefit be not obtained. For it is the hope of escaping punishment — a hope which never deserts the rogue as long as life itself remains, that renders him blind to the consequences, and enables him to look despair in the face. Take from him this hope, and you will find that certainty is more effectual than severity of punishment. No man will deliberately cut his own fingers. The vicious are often led on from one crime to another still more atrocious by the very fault of the law, the penalty being no greater, but the certainty of escaping detection being very much increased. In this case they act up to the old saying, that “one may as well be hung for stealing an old sheep as a lamb.” Some have asked, “cannot reward be substituted for punishment? Is hope a less powerful incentive to action than fear? When a political pharmacopoeia has the command of both ingredients, wherefore employ the bitter instead of the sweet?” This reasoning is absurd. Does a man deserve to be rewarded for

16. Sir William Blackstone’s 1765-1769 COMMENTARIES ON THE LAWS OF ENGLAND. HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

refraining from murder? Is the greatest virtue merely negative, or does it rather consist in the performance of a thousand everyday duties, hidden from the eye of the world? Would it be good policy to make the most exalted virtue even, a subject of reward here? Nevertheless, I question whether a pardon has not a more salutary effect, on the minds of those not immediately affected by it, vicious as well as honest, than a public execution. It would seem then, that the welfare of society calls for a certain degree of severity; but this degree must bear some proportion to the offence. If this distinction be lost sight of, punishment becomes unjust as well as useless — we are not to act upon the principle that crime is to be prevented at any rate, cost what it may; this is obviously erroneous. HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

1836

By this point the Reverend Hersey B. Goodwin had died and Dr. Edward Jarvis and Lemuel Shattuck had left Concord. The attempt made by these three educators to put the educational principles of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi into practice at the Town School was a thing of the past. The School Committee had fallen into the hands of conservatives who seemed much more interested in their own local internecine political struggles than in the welfare of the students. The cream of the college crop was being skimmed by the private Concord Academy, leaving in the public system the children of the poor, the dullards, and the discipline problems. Too bad. Phineas Allen, the Preceptor at the Concord Academy, who had alienated the Academy Committee through his anti-Masonic activities, ran for Town Clerk, and was elected. In order to understand how such a change of power in the little town of Concord could be related to the torching of the Ursuline Convent near Boston, and in order to understand how rioters who had committed an anti-religious arson could be acquitted in the Middlesex County courts, it is necessary to understand something of the anti-Masonic fervor which was sweeping the nation. Here is the story, in brief: William Morgan, a Mason, had become disaffected in a struggle internal to the fraternity and had published, in defiance of his oath of secrecy, the rites of the order. He had then, in Canandaigua NY, mysteriously disappeared, and it was rumored that the Masons had ordered that he be executed. John Quincy Adams, former president of the US, lost his head and published an attack on this fraternal organization. Then, while visiting Boston, Adams had happened to meet Squire Samuel Hoar of Concord, and had asked for his opinion. Old Sam had given it to him straight between the headlights:

It seems to me, Mr. Adams, there is but one thing in the world sillier than Masonry. That is Antimasonry.

But in Concord, a 3d-degree Mason and the owner of the Gazette, Hermon Atwill, resigned from the fraternity and republished the secrets published by the defector William Morgan. Concord became as bitterly divided as the nation. The sheriff of Middlesex County, Abel Moore, collected and consolidated all the outstanding bills that could be charged against the Gazette, and presented them for immediate payment in cash in an attempt to drive the paper out of existence. The Concord Bank, newly founded, called for payment of its note. John Keyes attempted to foreclose the mortgage. Atwill was no longer the owner of the Gazette, which became the Whig paper, and so he funded the Freeman in order to continue his Antimasonic crusade. With the harmlessness of the Masonic conspiracy and the ridiculousness of the Antimasonic evil-mongering becoming more and more obvious to everyone, Francis Richard Gourgas soon took over this undercapitalized gazette and turned it into a Democratic newspaper.

At the Concord Town Meeting, the citizens were so bitterly divided that it took them four ballots before they could even agree on a presiding officer. In the election of public officials, all the old Masonic affiliates were unseated and replaced with new Antimasonic officials. On the first ballot for the main position, Clerk of the Town of Concord Phineas Allen, representing the Antimasons, tied with Dr. Abiel Heywood, who had been clerk for 38 years and was sympathetic with Masonry. On the second ballot, Allen was elected by a margin of seven votes. The electorate was then persuaded to give Dr. Heywood a vote of thanks for 38 years of uninterrupted service to the town.

EDUCATION.— Many of the original inhabitants of Concord were well educated in their native country; and, “to the end that learning HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

be not buried in the graves of the forefathers,” schools were provided at an early period for the instruction of their children. In 1647, towns of 50 families were required to have a common school, and of 100 families, a grammar school. Concord had the latter before 1680. An order was sent to this town, requiring “a list of the names of those young persons within the bounds of the town, and adjacent farms, who live from under family government, who do not serve their parents or masters, as children, apprentices, hired servants, or journeymen ought to do, and usually did in our native country”; agreeably to a law, that “all children and youth, under family government, be taught to read perfectly the English tongue, have knowledge in the capital laws, and be taught some orthodox catechism and that they be brought up to some honest employment.” On the back of this order is this return: “I have made dillygent inquiry according to this warrant and find no defects to return. Simon Davis, Constable. March 31, 1680.” During the 30 years subsequent to this period, which I [Lemuel Shattuck] have denominated the dark age in Massachusetts, few towns escaped a fine for neglecting the wholesome laws for the promotion of education. Though it does not appear that Concord was fined, a committee was appointed in 1692, to petition the General Court, “to ease us in the law relating to the grammar school-master,” or to procure one “with prudence for the benefit of learning, and saving the town from fine.” From that time, however, this school was constantly maintained. For several years subsequent to 1700, no appropriations were made to any other school. In 1701, grammar scholars paid 4d. and reading scholars 2d. per week towards its support; and from that time to 1712, from £20 to £30 were annually raised. In 1715, it was kept one quarter, in different parts of the town, for £40. The next year £50 were raised for schools; £35 for the centre, and £5 for each of the other three divisions. In 1722, Timothy Minott agreed to keep the school, for ten years, at £45 per year. In 1732, £50 were raised for the centre and £30 for the “out-schools”; and each schoolmaster was obliged to teach the scholars to read, write, and cipher, — all to be free. In 1740, £40 for the centre, and £80 for the others. These grants were in the currency of the times. In 1754, £40 lawful money were granted, £25 of which were for the centre. Teachers in the out-schools usually received 1s. per day for their services. The grammar-school was substituted for all others in 1767, and kept 12 weeks in the centre, and 6 weeks each, in 6 other parts, or “school societies” of the town. There were then 6 schoolhouses, 2 of which were in the present [1835] limits of Carlisle, and the others near where Nos. 1, 2, 4, and 6, now [1835] stand. This system of a moving school, as it was termed, was not, however, continued many years. In 1774 the school money was first divided in proportion to the polls and estates. The districts were regulated, in 1781, nearly as they now [1835] are. The town raised £120, in 1784, for the support of schools, and voted, that “one sixteenth part of the money the several HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

societies in the out-parts of the town pay towards this sum, should be taken and added to the pay of the middle society for the support of the grammar-school; and the out-parts to have the remainder to be spent in schools only.” This method of dividing the school-money was continued till 1817, when the town voted, that it should be distributed to each district, including the centre, according to its proportion of the town taxes. The appropriations for schools from 1781 to 1783, was £100; from 1784 to 1792, £125; 1793, £145; 1794 and 1795, £200; 1796 to 1801, £250; 1802 to 1806, $1,000; 1807 to 1810, $1,300; 1811, $1,600; 1812 to 1816, $1,300; 1817 and since, $1,400. There are 7 districts, among which the money, including the Cuming’s donation, has been divided, at different periods, as follows. The last column contains the new division as permanently fixed in 1831. The town then determined the amount that should be paid annually to each district, in the following proportions. The whole school-money being divided into 100 parts, district, No. 1, is to have 52½ of those parts, or $761.25 out of $1,550; 5 district, No. 2, 7 /8 parts; district, No. 3, 8¼ parts; district, 5 No. 4, 8 /8 parts; district, No. 5, 8¼ parts; district, No. 6, 1 1 7 /8 parts; district No. 7, 7 /8 parts; and to individuals who pay their money in Lincoln and Acton, ½ a part.

District. Old Names. 1801. 1811. 1821. 1830. 1832.

No. 1. Central $382.92 $791.48 $646.15 $789.18 $761.25

No. 2. East 95.28 155.45 160.26 109.69 110.56¼

No. 3. Corner 68.49 135.48 142.48 117.00 119.62-½

No. 4. Darby 70.53 130.69 123.10 138.23 125.06¼

No. 5. Barrett 107.29 163.51 145.89 125.11 119.62¼

No. 6. Groton Road 64.63 105.41 93.55 79.16 103.31¼

No. 7. Buttrick 67.64 126.68 114.16 84.77 103.31¼

Individuals 22.22 41.30 24.41 6.86 7.25

$884.00 1,650.00 1,450.00 1,450.00 1,450.00 HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

At the erection of new school-houses in 1799, the first school committee was chosen, consisting of the Rev. Ezra Ripley, Abiel Heywood, Esq., Deacon John White, Dr. Joseph Hunt, and Deacon George Minott. On their recommendation, the town adopted a uniform system of school regulations, which are distinguished for enlightened views of education, and which, by being generally followed since, under some modification, have rendered our schools among our greatest blessings. The amount paid for private schools, including the Academy, was estimated, in 1830, at $600, making the annual expenditure for education $2,050. Few towns provide more ample means for acquiring a cheap and competent education. I [Lemuel Shattuck] have subjoined the names of the teachers of the grammar-school since the Revolution, — the year usually beginning in September.

1785 Nathaniel Bridge 9 months 1812 Isaac Warren 1 year

1786 JOSEPH HUNT 2½ years 1813 JOHN BROWN 1 year

1788 William A. Barron 3 years 1814 Oliver Patten 1 year

1791 Amos Bancroft 1 year 1815 Stevens Everett 9 months

1792 Heber Chase 1 year 1815 Silas Holman 3 months

1793 WILLIAM JONES 1 year 1816 George F. Farley 1 year

1794 Samuel Thatcher 1 year 1817 James Howe 1 year

1795 JAMES TEMPLE 2 years 1818 Samuel Barrett 1 year

1797 Thomas O. Selfridge 1 year 1819 BENJAMIN BARRETT 1 year

1798 THOMAS WHITING 4 years 1820 Abner Forbes 2 years

1802 Levi Frisbie 1 year 1822 Othniel Dinsmore 3 years

1803 Silas Warren 4 years 1825 James Furbish 1 year

1807 Wyman Richardson 1 year 1826 EDWARD JARVIS 1 year

1808 Ralph Sanger 1 year 1827 Horatio Wood 1 year

1809 Benjamin Willard 1 year 1828 David J. Merrill 1 year

1810 Elijah F. Paige 1 year 1829 John Graham 1 year

1811 Simeon Putnam 1 year 1831 John Brown HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

The Concord Academy was established, in 1822, by several gentlemen, who were desirous of providing means for educating their own children and others more thoroughly than they could be at the grammar-school (attended, as it usually is, by a large number of scholars) or by sending them abroad. A neat, commodious building was erected, in a pleasant part of the town, by the proprietors, consisting of the Hon. Samuel Hoar, the Hon. Abiel Heywood, and Mr. Josiah Davis, who own a quarter each, and the Hon. Nathan Brooks and Colonel William Whiting, who own an eighth each. Their intention has always been to make the school equal to any other similar one. It was opened in September, 1823, under the instruction of Mr. George Folsom, who kept it two years. He was succeeded by Mr. Josiah Barnes and Mr. Richard Hildreth, each one year. Mr. Phineas Allen, son of Mr. Phineas Allen of Medfield, who was born October 15, 1801, and graduated at Harvard College in 1825, has been the preceptor since September 1827.17 I [the young John Shepard Keyes] had played truant every afternoon that previous winter spending the school hours at the foundry or the shops or the stables with no rebuke from the teacher, report to my parents or effect on my lessons. The nervous irritable Phineas had been worsted in a regular fight with Isaac Fiske a big boy from Weston whom he attempted to ferule, and who took away the ruler and broke it over the teachers head, ruining the gold spectacles, and the little discipline there had been in the school with a single blow. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

17. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

1837

August 27, Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 27 of 8 M / Both Meetings were solid good comfortable ones - father Rodman had short offerings in each. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Felix Mendelssohn once again arrived in England.

Anton Bruckner was admitted to the elementary school at the monastery of St. Florian.

John Shepard Keyes, who had been a onetime schoolmate of Henry Thoreau’s at the Concord Academy, stayed for several nights in his room in Stoughton Hall while taking the Harvard College entrance examinations. ... the summer slipped away and the dreaded examination was at hand. The Monday before commencement then the last Wednesday in August was the appointed time. To reach Cambridge in season involved then going down Sunday night and my arrangements to spend the nights with David Henry Thoreau as we all called him then, had all been comfortably agreed upon. Armed with Parson Frosts certificate of good moral character, (precious little he knew about mine) and a carpet bag well stored with lunches and books I gladly mounted the mail stage about 5 PM & rode off. Nothing memorable can I remember happened on that momentous ride bearing a green boy to the first of his decisive trials in real life and I was dropped at the yard gate where Thoreau met me and took me to his room in Stoughton. I was anxious of the morrows fate overawed by the dull old college walls, and not a little inclined to be over thoughtful at the sudden change it all implied. But these fancies were soon dispelled, a burst of Thoreaus classmates into his room headed by Chas. Theodore Russell, Trask, and others who chaffed Thoreau and his freshman in all sorts of ways, and took down some of our local pride, and Concord self conceit for which I soon found out that my host was as distinguished for in college as afterwards These roaring seniors fresh from vacation’s fun and with no more college duties to worry about made a sharp contrast with a Sunday evening at home. It was seeing something of the end before even the beginning. There had been some kind of a row with the faculty and the trouble was carried into the Criminal Court and I had heard the county side of it at home, and now was told the students side by some of the actors or sympathizers and got some ideas of college discipline that varied essentially from the home notion It was startling and novel to hear ’Old Prex and the other nicknames familiarly applied to such dignitaries as Concord had almost worshipped, and I fear that the introduction wasnt of the most useful sort to just such a boy as I was. I had that evening recalled to mind scores of times since when I have HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

met the laughing chaff of C.T. Russell who perhaps remembered it too. Early next morning after breakfast at the meagre commons, not yet filled at any but the seniors table, and so poorer than at regular term time, I reported at Old Massachusetts, and as Mr Frosts scholar was assigned to a section with Mr. Hedges scholar of Plymouth, and Mr. ’s scholar of Boston, and ordered to an instructors room in university. Here on giving our names I found myself between Abraham Jackson and Samuel F McCleary Jr, and as our names thus accidentally came alphabetically, I touched elbows with them for the whole four years at prayers & recitations, no one ever coming in to alter the order of our names, a curious and remarkable instance! So we went on from teacher to tutor all that day, and at night I slept better than the previous one, as I was tired out and not disturbed by seniors that I remember. The next day my father appeared anxious to hear of his boy and while I finished the examinations, he strolled about the yard and found another father anxious like himself for his boy. The two struck up an acquaintance though as unlike as their sons, agreed to put them together in the tutors freshman room that I had secured by some introductory letter to Charles Mason, the Latin tutor. I was disgusted enough at the plan when announced as I had seen several much more agreeable fellows to chum with, but the result of the examination in which I had one or two conditions, didnt encourage me in an effective rebellion and I rode home in the chase with Father not quite so elated as I should have been if things had gone more to my liking I was admitted, and I had got the promise of driving to Phi Beta with my particular charmer, in Shepherds white chaise and bob tailed horse, if I succeed in passing examinations and the anticipations of such bliss were enough to make me forget other troubles. Mother was radiantly delighted and aided my hopes all in her power. But alas for boy’s felicity, how I never exactly knew, but it fell through and I didnt go, and my beloved went with quite another party, whether by her own choice or through the manoeuvres of our respective fathers I cannot tell. Perhaps a little of both, as she was soon after engaged to that other fellow, and married him before I was out of college. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONCORD ACADEMY CONCORD ACADEMY

September 7, Thursday: In South Scituate, Edmund Quincy Sewall, Jr. attended a Sunday school celebration organized by his father’s cousin, the Reverend Samuel Joseph May, pastor of the Second Parish Unitarian Church.18

James Richardson, Jr. of Dedham, Massachusetts wrote to his classmate Henry Thoreau of Concord for help in coming to teach at the Concord Academy:

I heard from you, also, that Concord Academy, lately under the care of Mr Phineas Allen of Northfield, is now vacant of a preceptor; should Mr. Hoar find it difficult to get a scholar — college-distinguished, perhaps he would take up with one, who, though in many respects a critical thinker, and a careful philosopher of language among other things, has never distinguished himself in his class as a regular attendant on college studies and rules, if so, would you do me the kindness to mention my name to him, as of one intending to make teaching his profession, at least for a part of his life.

(This would come to nothing, and Richardson eventually would become a minister. Thoreau himself would teach at the academy subsequent to his resignation from the Concord public school system.)

Dedham, September 7th, 1837.

Friend Thoreau, After you had finished your part in the Performances of Commence- ment, (the tone and sentiment of which by the way I liked much, as being of a sound philosophy,) I hardly saw you again at all. Neither at Mr Quincy’s levee, neither at any of our Classmates’ evening en- tertainments, did I find you, though for the purpose of taking a fare- well, and leaving you some memento of an old chum, as well as on matters of business, I much wished to see your face once more. Of course you must be present at our October meeting, — notice of the time and place for which will be given in the Newspapers. I hear that you are comfortably located, in your native town, as the guardian of its children, in the immediate vicinity, I suppose, of one of our most distinguished Apostles of the Future — R.W. Emerson, and situated under the ministry of our old friend Rev Barzillai Frost, to whom please make my remembrances. I heard from you, also, that Con- cord Academy, lately under the care of Mr Phineas Allen of North- field, is now vacant of a preceptor; should Mr Hoar find it difficult

18.Scituate’s two Unitarian ministers, the Reverends Edmund Quincy Sewall, Sr. and Samuel Joseph May, were related by marriage through Sewall’s aunt Dorothy and May’s father, Colonel Joseph May. In 1830 Bronson Alcott had married Samuel May’s sister Abigail (Abba). Alcott visited the Mays in South Scituate in 1839 to recuperate from the Temple School debacle, and apparently had visited at least once before, since Edmund noted that he began his journal in 1837 “by the suggestion of Mr. Alcott.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to get a scholar — college-distinguished, perhaps he would take up with one, who, though in many respects a critical thinker, and a careful philosopher of language among other things, has never distinguished himself in his class as a regular attendant on college studies and rules. If so, could you do me the kindness to mention my name to him, as of one intending to make teaching his profession, at least for a part of his life. If recommendations are necessary, Presi- dent Quincy has offered me one, and I can easily get others. My old instructor Mr Kimball gave, and gives me credit for having quite a genius for Mathematics, though I studied them so little in College; and I think that Dr Beck will approve me as something of a Lati- nist.— I did intend going to a distance, but my father’s and other friends’ wishes, beside my own desire of a proximity to Harvard and her Library, has constrained me. I have had the offer and opportunity of several places, but the distance or smallness of salary were objections, I should like to hear about Concord Academy from you, if it is not engaged. Hoping that your situation affords you every advantage for continuing your mental education and developement I am with esteem & respect yr classmate & friend James Richardson jr

P. S. I hope you will tell me something about your situation, state of mind, course of reading, &c; and any advice you have to offer will be gratefully accepted. Should the place, alluded to above, be filled, any place, that you may hear spoken of, with a reasonable salary, would perhaps answer for your humble serv’t —R— HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1838

June 15, Friday: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts began a long speech before the US House of Representatives on the topic of Texas.

At the middle of the month the Concord Academy opened (t would close prior to the completion of 3 years of instruction, on April 1st, 1841).

July 8, Sunday: Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin was born.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 8th of 7 M / Our friend Richard Mott attended Our Meeting in Newport this Morning in which he was favoured to get hold of our State & administer comfort to some who were heavy hearted - at the close of the Meeting he requested the Afternoon Meeting should be defered till 5 OClock & a general invitation given to the people of the Town — which was done. a very large meeting gathered, it was rather long in getting together but it consisted of the most respectable inhabitants of the Town who were very attentive to a truly gospel testimony, in which our friend was much favoured — a number of the Ministers of the Town were present as well as some of the Most religious & well informed of their persussions — West the Minister of the New episcopal Church gave out the Meeting at the close of his afternoon Meeting, & defered his evening Meeting on the occasion - This is a view of liberality never before done by that persuasion - it was once asked but refused — Richard took tea & lodged at Mary Williams but our friend Abraham Sherman Jr who came with him from New Bedford returned home with us, again lodged & took tea RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Henry Thoreau wrote to John Thoreau, Jr. about the prospect of teaching private school there in Concord. Concord July 8th 38— Dear John, [We] heard from Helen today and she informs us that you are coming home by the first of August, now I wish you to write, and let me know ex- HELEN LOUISA THOREAU HDT WHAT? INDEX

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actly when your vacation take[ ]place, that I may take one at the same time. I am in school from 8 to 12 in the morning, and [form] 2 to 4 in the afternoo[n]; after that I read a little Greek or English, or for variety, take a stroll in the fields. We hav not had such a year for berries this long time —the earth is actually [b]lue with them. High bluberries, three kinds of low—thimble and

Page 2 rasp-berries constitute my [diet] at present. (Take notice—I only diet between meals.) Among my deeds of charity I may reckon the picking of a cherry tree for two helpless single ladies who live under the hill[-]—but i’faith it was robbing Pet[er] to pay Paul—for while I was exalted in charity towards them, I had no mercy on my own [stomach]. Be advised, my love for currants continues. The only addition that I have made of late to my stock of ornithological information—is in the shape, not of a Fring. [M]elod. but surely a mel- odious Fringilla--the F. [J]uncorum, or rush sparrow. I had long know him by his note but never by name. Report says that Elijah Stearn[s] is going to take the town school.

Page 3 I have four [scholars], and one more engaged. Mr. [Fenner] left town [yest-] terday. Among occurrences of ill omen, may be mentioned the cra falling out and cracking of the inscription stone of Concord monument. Mrs Lowell and children are at Aunt’s. Peabody walked up last Wednesday— HDT WHAT? INDEX

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spen[t] the night, and took a stroll in the woods. Sophia says I mu[ ] leave off and pen a few lines for her to Helen. S Good bye. Love from all and among them yr aff brother H D T

Postmark: CONCORD Jul 10 Address: John Thoreau West Roxbury Mass. Postage: 6

September: Henry Thoreau wrote out a receipt which still exists. It was for $7.19 paid by the prominent lawyer, Squire Nathan Brooks, for Thoreau’s instruction of his son George Merrick Brooks (a boy who would go on to become a lawyer, a member of the House of Representatives, and then a judge) at the Concord Academy.

During the late 1830s, presumably during this period, Squire Nathan Brooks’s daughter Caroline Downes Brooks was a Sunday school student in Lidian Emerson’s class at the First Parish.

The rotting hulk of the fighting Temaire, long since stripped first of her guns as a supply vessel and then, in 1812, of her masts as a prison hulk moored in a mudflat, was at this point hauled by two steam tugs to the ship- dismantling yards at Rotherhilde. The Temaire had been the vessel behind Admiral Nelson’s Victory in the line of battle at Trafalgar. J.M.W. Turner had painted this in his 1806 “The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizzen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory.” He would paint a second image, of the ship being hauled its last 55 miles in the sunset, in 1839. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 14, Friday: In the morning the Harvard College tutor in Greek, Jones Very, began to inform his classes of his divine inspiration: “Flee to the mountains, for the end of all things is at hand.”19 According to a letter of a student, which had been posted to the student’s family before Very’s announcement of his inspiration:

[Very] bases all these instructions on the submission of our will to that of God: to adapt everything to that: to act, to speak, to move only as it is conformable to his will: then, when we have arrived at the degree of excellence, we shall see God; we shall be able to form ideas of him suitable to his nature and attributes; one glance into the works of Creation will afford us more instruction than a life of intense study of Greek and Latin, of arts and sciences: We are not to consider our bodies as our own, Mr. Very tells us, but as given us by God to be subservient to our souls; that is to say, to the influence of the spirit of God in us; and this is manifested in the conscience, which is His voice speaking to us, when we are doing our own will: he knocks, and too often is refused admittance: “he comes unto his own, and his own receives him not”: Now this is to be revolutionized. Whatever we are called upon to do, we must consider if it is God or our own evil desires which call on us to act thus: Conscience will tell us in a moment: and we must act accordingly: then God will take up his abode in us, and we shall feel his presence, which we cannot immediately do in our present state: Study is not to be a mechanical performance, but a duty imposed on us by the will of God, to render us better and happier: thus we must always consider it, without regards to marks of merit or demerit.

Very’s deportment on that infamous day was such as to make this student regret that the letter had already been posted. For, very clearly, something was going seriously awry in this inspiration business, and Tutor was self- combusting.

Later that day Very delivered an unscheduled address to the debating club at the Divinity School, pointing out to them that while they were merely doing their own wills, he himself was “no longer a man.” It was the Holy Spirit which spoke to him and through him, and he was merely passing on what was being imparted to him, which was “eternal truth” insofar as he had become convinced that he was at least temporarily able to transmit it without altering it in any way.20 That night one of the students who had been present at several of Very’s outbursts wrote in his diary that it was “very much as Geo Fox is represented to have done, and to have very

19. Presumably this was a reference to the White Mountains in which Very had recently vacationed. No, maybe it was “flee to the mountain” that Very had hollered, and maybe it was a reference to the vicinity of solitary Mount Monadnock, which was closer than New Hampshire and at which the Narragansetts had taken refuge during the race riot known as “King Philip’s War.” Well, whatever. 20. Recent research into this Joan of Arc phenomenon suggests that it has something to do with unconscious “subvocalization,” in which the muscles of the voicebox exercise themselves without the blast of air which produces audible speech and in which the patient, instead of disregarding this phenomenon, for purpose of achieving a higher social status or for purpose of becoming the center of attention attempts to interpret what he or she is perceiving and ascribes it as a communication from holy authority. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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similar views.” On the evening of the 14th, also, President Josiah Quincy, Sr. appeared at the dormitory room of Charles Stearns Wheeler to ask that he immediately assume responsibility for Very’s classes in Greek, and to describe Very as being in a state of “nervous collapse.”

Very’s discourse … sounds surprisingly like a recast of Emerson’s Address. While Very colored the “instructions” with his own non-Emersonian diction and qualifications, and interpreted and applied Emerson’s remarks in a more literal and specific way than Emerson intended, the relationship is clear. This was Very’s less formal equivalent of the declaration of independence for man teaching, delivered to freshman students instead of Divinity School graduates. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Henry Thoreau advertised in the Concord Freeman, announcing the second term of the Concord Academy.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 14th of 9th M 1838 / Father Rodman was so low last night that I thought it best to stay in the house Anthony V Taylor being there to Watch with him — At about 35 minutes part one this Morning he breathed his last, his departure being so easy & calm that it was difficult to tell whether he was gone, or in a quiet sleep RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

September 22, Saturday: Henry Thoreau’s advertisement about the second term of the Concord Academy appeared in the Yeoman’s Gazette. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 29, Saturday: Henry Thoreau’s advertisement about the 2d term of the Concord Academy appeared a second time in the Yeoman’s Gazette. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1839

During roughly this year, one pupil at the Concord Academy was Thomas Hosmer of Bedford, who would grow up to be a dentist in Boston, but who at this time was walking daily to Concord for classes. Many years later, in his instar as “adult Boston dentist,” this Thomas Hosmer would write to Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson and relate of his teacher Henry Thoreau that:

I have seen children catch him by the hand, as he was going home from school, to walk with him and hear more.

Another of the boys being taught in this year, presumably about 12 years of age, was the Cyrus Warren whom Thoreau would years later chance upon as a grown man walking along the sidewalk:

November 10, Monday, 1851: … In relation to politics–to society–aye to the whole out-ward world I am tempted to ask–Why do they lay such stress on a particular experience which you have had?– That after 25 years you should meet Cyrus Warren again on the sidewalk! Haven’t I budged an inch then?– 21 This daily routine should go on then like those–it must be conceded–vital functions of digestion–circulation of the blood &c which in health we know nothing about. A wise man is as unconscious of the movements in the body politic as he is of digestion & the circulation of the blood in the natural body. …

21. Thoreau was later to copy this into his early lecture “WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT” as:

[Paragraph 61] In relation to politics, to what is called society—aye, often to the whole outward world, I am often tempted to ask—why such stress is laid on a particular experience which you have had?—that after twenty-five years you should meet Hobbins—registrar of deeds, again on the side-walk?1 Haven’t I budged an inch then?

1. There were no County Registrars of Deeds by the name of Hobbins in Massachusetts from 1823 to 1862. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 9, Saturday: John Thoreau, Jr. came and took over the duties of Preceptor at the Concord Academy, and his name began to appear as such in advertisements in the Yeoman’s Gazette:

Concord Academy. / The Above School will be continued under the care of the subscriber, after the commencement of the spring term, Monday, March 11th. / Terms for the Quarter: / English branches, $4.00 / Languages included 6.00 / He will be assisted in the classical department by Henry D. Thoreau, the present instructor. / N.B. Writing will be particularly attended to. / John Thoreau, Jr., Preceptor. / Concord, Feb. 9, 1838

Hector Berlioz was appointed deputy curator of the Paris Conservatoire Library (the appointment and salary were retroactive to January 1st).

On an expedition led by English explorer John Balleny, Captain Thomas Freeman landed at what are now deemed the Balleny Islands, just long enough to collect some rock specimens (this happened to be the initial landing south of the Antarctic Circle).

February 16, Saturday: On this evening Henry Thoreau would encounter Bronson Alcott for the 1st time.

Advertisement for the Concord Academy under Preceptor John Thoreau, Jr.:

String Quartet no.3 op.44/1 by Felix Mendelssohn was performed for the initial time, in Leipzig. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 23, Saturday: Advertisement for the Concord Academy under Preceptor John Thoreau, Jr.:

March 2, Saturday: Advertisement for the Concord Academy under Preceptor John Thoreau, Jr.:

When Pascal et Chambord, a vaudeville by Jacques Offenbach to words of Bourgeois and Brisebarre, was performed for the initial time, at the Palais-Royal in Paris, it flopped. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 9, Saturday: The war between Mexico and France was brought to an end as Mexico promised to pay compensation and French troops began to withdraw.

Prussia limited the work week, for children, to 51 hours.

Oliver Brown, the youngest of John Brown’s sons to reach adulthood, was born in Franklin, Ohio. He would be a bookish lad.

(This son would be shot dead at the age of 20 while standing as a sentinel at the river bridge in Harpers Ferry.)

Advertisement for the Concord Academy under Preceptor John Thoreau, Jr.:

March 16, Saturday: Advertisement for the Concord Academy under Preceptor John Thoreau, Jr.: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 23, Saturday: At this point in journalism, it was a fad to use humorously incorrect initialisms. They tried out for instance “K.Y.,” meaning “know yuse” or “no use,” an innovation that would not catch on. However, in this day’s issue the Boston Morning Post pioneered something that would indeed catch on, catch on big time, world wide: “o.k. — all correct” (so, despite whatever you have heard, the term “OK” did not originate as a misspelling by Andrew Jackson, or as a Choctaw word, or as a superior brand of Army biscuit — it stood, quite simply, for “oll korrekt”).

Advertisement for the Concord Academy under Preceptor John Thoreau, Jr.: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 30, Saturday: Advertisement for the Concord Academy under Preceptor John Thoreau, Jr.:

April 6, Saturday: Abba Alcott gave birth to a “fine boy, full grown, perfectly formed” who lived only a few minutes. The anniversary of April 6th would become, for the next two decades, a sad gray-tinged day with a “draught of bitterness to taste, yes to drink from death’s bitterest beaker.... Ah Me! My Boy!” Bronson Alcott always wanted a boy, and Abba always wanted to give him one, but it would never be. Senile old Joseph May asked to accompany Bronson to the May family vault in the Old Granary burying ground on that Sunday, because, as Bronson was laying down the body of the baby, Joseph desired to look at his wife’s remains. THE ALCOTT FAMILY

Advertisement for the Concord Academy under Preceptor John Thoreau, Jr.:

April 7, Sunday: The little bundle, the “fine boy, fully grown, perfectly formed” who had lived only a few minutes, had been laid down in the crypt at the Old Granary burying grounds in Boston. Senile old Joseph May had gotten his peek at his wife’s remains. Back at his journal, Bronson Alcott wrote:

The tombs are dank with fetor; doubt sharpens the teeth of decay; corruption feeds his greedy gorge. Let me tread the sweet plots of Hope and breathe the incense of her flowering glories. There is no past in all her borders.

Rail service began between Dresden and Leipzig. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 13, Saturday: Advertisement for the Concord Academy under Preceptor John Thoreau, Jr.:

(Several more such advertisements would appear during this year.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 29, Thursday: At the Convention of Vergara conservatives in the north of Spain gave up their struggle to place Don Carlos on the throne and recognized Isabella as queen, in return for their pay and promotion.

John Shepard Keyes, who had been a schoolmate of Henry Thoreau at the Concord Academy, commented in his diary on a melon party, the first melons to ripen that year, that was being thrown by Thoreau in anticipation of his and his brother John Thoreau, Jr.’s departure for an adventure from Concord MA to Concord, New Hampshire by boat and on into the White Mountains:

Went up to see Henry Thoreau who is about starting on his expedition to the White Mts[.] in his boat. He has all things arranged prime and will have a glorious time if he is fortunate enough to have good weather. He showed me all the minutiae of packing and invited me up there to eat some fine melons in the evening.... I spent ... the rest of the time getting the fellows ready to go to the Thoreaus[’] melon spree. We went about 9 and saw a table spread in the very handsomest style with all kinds and qualities of melons and we attacked them furiously and I eat [sic] till what with the wine & all I had quite as much as I could carry home.

This is perhaps the Thursday evening party mentioned by Professor Walter Roy Harding as in “a recently discovered letter”:

David had a party of gentlemen, Thursday evening, to eat melons. I went in to see the table, which was adorned with sunflowers, cornstalks, beet leaves & squash blossoms. There were forty-six melons, fifteen different kinds; & apples, all the production of his own garden. This is the only thing of interest that has happened in town this week. When we went in to see the tables, Mrs. Thoreau felt called upon to apologize for Henry having a party, it having been spread abroad by her that such customs met with his contempt & entire disapprobation. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1840

March 6, Friday: The newspaper advertisement for the Concord Academy still showed John Thoreau, Jr. as the Preceptor:

April 1, Wednesday: For the first time the Alcott girls began to attend a school not taught by their own father. Anna Alcott was a student, probably a scholarship student, of John Thoreau, Jr. and Henry David Thoreau at Concord Academy, while Elizabeth Sewall Alcott and Louisa May Alcott were at the kinder-school run by Mary Russell in the Emerson home. We have a record of this period from a 10-year-old new student that summer who was John Junior’s student rather than Henry’s, Horace Rice Hosmer. Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson described Horace as a child who “craved affection.” As a grown-up, Horace would inform Dr. Emerson that

Henry was not loved in the school. He had his scholars upstairs. I was with John only. John was the more human, loving; understood and thought of others. Henry thought more about himself. He was a conscientious teacher, but rigid. He would not take a man’s money for nothing: if a boy were sent to him, he could make him do all he could. No, he was not disagreeable. I learned to understand him later. I think that he was then in the green-apple stage.

Another pupil was Thomas Hosmer of Bedford, who would grow up to be a dentist in Boston, but who at the time was walking to Concord for classes with another Bedford boy, B.W. Lee, who would later relocate to Newport, Vermont. Thomas Hosmer wrote Dr. Emerson to relate of Thoreau that:

I have seen children catch him by the hand, as he was going home from school, to walk with him and hear more.

One of the outings the class had this spring was a walk to Fairhaven Hill, where they did a survey of the hill and the adjacent shoreline of the river. A student’s comment on this field-work with surveying instruments was that of the brothers, Henry was the more active during the surveying. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Summer: Samuel Bemis made a series of 21 unremarkable exposures in the vicinity of his Crawford Notch Inn. These photographs are among the first landscape daguerreotypes made in the USA.

After having attended Elijah Wood’s infant school, at ten years of age, Horace Rice Hosmer went off to the Concord Academy of the Thoreau brothers, to become their youngest and smallest boy. As part of the deal he would get his meals at the Thoreau boardinghouse. Although he did not interact with Henry Thoreau, later on he would warn us not to make too much of this: “Do not misunderstand my saying that Henry did not speak to me. There was no reason he should, simply a fact, and so on to other things.” “As a teacher Henry was “merciless” i.e. the thing to be done must be done correctly. He was rigidly exacting—a faithful teacher to the parent whose child he had & to the child. He never mixed with the schoolboys; he was hated. The bell tolled instead of rang, when he taught alone during John’s illness. Did not answer the boys[’] questions by the River. “He had no enemies.” He did not have the “love-idea” in him: i.e. he did not appear to feel the sex- attraction.”

Bear in mind that it was not at all unusual during this period for people to rely upon boardinghouses. Indeed, per T.C. Grattan’s CIVILIZED AMERICA, a large proportion of the American urban population of this century resided at boardinghouses or at boarding hotels: When we penetrate a little deeper into the domestic arrangements of the natives, we find that the most prominent feature of their private lives is its publicity. The vast majority of the town inhabitants of the United States live in boarding houses or hotels; and it would be difficult indeed to calculate the small proportion of those who live alone.

Several more advertisements appeared this year for the Concord Academy under Preceptor John Thoreau, Jr., until the academy closed its doors.

July 29, Wednesday: Preceptor John Thoreau, Jr. wrote out a receipt which happens still to exist. It records Moses Maynard’s payment of $4.00 for his child being instructed for one term at the Concord Academy. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September: Henry Thoreau surveyed for a proposed new street near the Railroad Depot. Length 30" x Width 21". In 1844 when the railroad had been opened in Concord, he had been asked to suggest the route of a new street from the corner of Main and Sudbury Road to the Depot, and in fact he had drawn up several alternatives. The one chosen is the present Middle Street and required the moving of the Concord Academy Building from the spot where Academy Lane and Middle Street meet. This proposal is the present Middle Street from Academy Lane to Thoreau Lane. The old Concord Academy stood on the spot so it had to be moved to the south side of the new street. (The Academy building in which the Thoreau brothers had taught was made over into a double house for Ellery Channing. The Concord Free Public Library has several preserved sketches for this area. One shows the land of Wetherbee on Belknap Street which became the property on which the old Davis Store from Main Street came to rest, and was occupied by William Barrett from 1859 to 1898.)

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/24b.htm

Channing wrote in a letter complaining about Waldo Emerson: “a terrible man to deal with — one has to be armed at all points. He threshes you out very soon; is admirably skillful, able to go anywhere and do anything. Those nearest to him feel him hard and cold; no one knows even what he is doing or studying.... Nobody knows what his real philosophy is; his books do not tell it. I have known him for years intimately and have not found it out. Women do not like him: he cannot establish a personal relation with anyone, yet he can get on agreeably with everyone.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At some point during the month Thoreau made an entry in his journal that he was later to copy into his early lecture “WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT” as:22

[Paragraph 52] A commerce that whitens every sea in quest of nuts and raisins, and makes slaves of its sailors for this purpose! I saw, the other day, a vessel which had been wrecked, and many lives lost, and her cargo of rags, juniper-berries, and bitter almonds were strewn along the shore. It seemed hardly worth the while to tempt the dangers of the sea between Leghorn and New York for the sake of a cargo of juniper-berries and bitter almonds. America sending to the Old World for her bitters! Is not the sea-brine, is not shipwreck, bitter enough to make the cup of life go down here? Yet such, to a great extent, is our boasted commerce; and there are those who style themselves statesmen and philosophers who are so blind as to think that progress and civilization depend on precisely this kind of interchange and activity,—the activity of flies about a molasses-hogshead. Very well, observes one, if men were oysters. And very well, answer I, if men were mosquitoes.

In Godey’s Lady’s Book, Henry T. Tuckerman characterized Alexander von Humboldt as “the Napoleon of science.” This title, although apparently innocuous, would soon be combined with our iniquitous lust for the conquest of nature, so that Humboldt would soon be being worshipped, and eventually would find himself condemned, as something he had simply not been: an exploiter. Professor Laura Dassow Walls points out that during Humboldt’s old age while “his voice was aging and distant,” his legacy would be seized upon by positivists such as Louis Agassiz even though he “could and did protest with every means at this disposal.” His name became synonymous with empire and with the exploitation of nature, while native American

22. Thoreau was referring to his experience at Fire Island in late July 1850. The American bark Elizabeth, with Margaret Fuller Ossoli, her husband, and their son aboard, had sailed from Italy on May 17, 1850, bound for New-York, but wrecked on the coast of Fire Island on July 19th. Thoreau was dispatched to the scene of the wreck to recover the bodies of the Ossolis and their belongings, and when he arrived he found the beach strewn with the unsalvageable portion of the cargo—heaps of rags, juniper- berries, and bitter almonds (see Kenneth Walter Cameron, “Thoreau’s Notes on the Shipwreck at Fire Island,” Emerson Society Quarterly 52 [3d Quarter 1968]: 97-99; and Paula Blanchard, MARGARET FULLER: FROM TRANSCENDENTALISM TO REVOLUTION [NY: Delacorte Press, 1978], pages 329-37). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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populations were being removed and ecological communities disrupted in the name of our Manifest Destiny. How ironic it is today that current approaches to science, which stress the role our own knowledge plays as part of the world we seek to understand, have lost sight of Humboldt’s work. Today, Humboldtian concepts like plant communities, isotherms, and magnetic storms are routine, the “ecology of ideas” is an exciting new concept — and Alexander von Humboldt’s once-glorious name has long since b id d i t th di ft l f th f t t ( 107) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1841

In Concord, the family of Horace Rice Hosmer was in debt some $60.00 and was unable to return him to the Concord Academy. He languished and “kept my soul and body together with Bunyans Pilgrim’s Progress.... Blessed be Bunyan and his book.”

John Stacy became postmaster at Concord, Massachusetts (until 1845).

According to Dr. Edward Jarvis’s TRADITIONS AND REMINISCENCES OF CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS 1779- 1878, page 143: Concord has her representatives in most of the states of the union. When I was in New Orleans in 1841, there were seven Concord men there. Five were settled and doing business there. Two were officers of Merchant ships there on business. I was a visitor to two of my brothers [Stephen (1806-1855) and Nathan (1808-1851), who was blown up in a boating accident] in the wholesale drug trade. I have met our Concord emigrants in New York, Baltimore, Washington, Louisville, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Rutland, Burlington, and manifold other places.

April 1, Thursday: Due to the continued weakness of John Thoreau, Jr., on this day the Thoreau brothers closed their school –the Concord Academy they had begun in mid-June of 1838– before it had completed its 3d year.

Henry David Thoreau copied into his literary notebook, evidently out of a 6-volume set of THE WORKS OF BEN JONSON that was in Emerson’s library, a poem in which the sun is characterized as the “day-star.”

Even at this early period, I would submit, Thoreau was preparing to confront the cultural politicians who have their reasons for needing to characterize the star Sol as unique in its power and majesty. (This bears upon HDT WHAT? INDEX

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material which he reworked for his WALDEN manuscript, as of Draft F.)

WALDEN: I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this; PEOPLE OF but such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time WALDEN can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

“JOHN” (BULL) “JONATHAN”

April 1. ON THE SUN COMING OUT IN THE AFTERNOON

Methinks all things have travelled since you shined, But only Time, and clouds, Time’s team, have moved; Again foul weather shall not change my mind, But in the shade I will believe what in the sun I loved.

In reading a work on agriculture, I skip the author’s moral reflections, and the words “Providence” and “He” scattered along the page, to come at the profitable level of what he has to say. There is no science in men’s religion; it does not teach me so much as the report of the committee on swine. My author shows he has dealt in corn and turnips and can worship God with the hoe and spade, but spare me his morality. EMMONS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1842

John Goldsbury’s A SEQUEL TO THE COMMON SCHOOL GRAMMAR; CONTAINING, IN ADDITION TO OTHER MATERIALS AND ILLUSTRATIONS, NOTES AND CRITICAL REMARKS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE; AND EXPLAINING SOME OF ITS MOST DIFFICULT IDIOMATIC PHRASES. DESIGNED FOR THE USE OF THE FIRST CLASS IN COMMON SCHOOLS. BY JOHN GOLDSBURY, A.M., TEACHER OF THE HIGH SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. (Boston: James Munroe and Company; New York: Collins, Brother & Co.; Philadelphia: Thomas, Cowperthwait & Co.; Baltimore: Cushing & Brothers). Since a copy of this book would be discovered in the personal library of Henry Thoreau, may we be allowed to speculate that it may have been something that had been on pre-order for use as a text at the Concord Academy — before that school had needed to be closed in 1841 due to the tuberculosis of John Thoreau, Jr.? GOLDSBURY’S GRAMMAR

I know, it’s speculative. –But, can anyone come up with some other possible explanation for how a schoolbook on grammar with a publication date of 1842 happens to turn up on a shelf in Thoreau’s attic room in Concord? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1848

The definitive final edition of KNICKERBOCKER’S HISTORY OF NEW YORK by “Diedrich Knickerbocker” (Washington Irving) was published by G.P. Putnam.

READ THE FULL TEXT

A revised edition of Irving’s THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW was published, which included the rendering of Ichabod Crane the ill-fated schoolmaster, by the illustrator Felix Octavius Carr Darley, which would HDT WHAT? INDEX

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become the definitive illustration:

Would Henry Thoreau, or his former pupils, have taken this illustration as a humorous rendition of himself, in his instar as schoolmaster at the Concord Academy? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1851

November 10, Monday: Henry Thoreau made a journal entry he was later to copy into his early lecture “WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT” as:

[Paragraph 63] In our science and philosophy even there is no true and absolute account of things—but a petty reference to classes of men and their affairs—often falsely to christianity. At every bush that trips or pricks us—as BRAD DEAN’S the problem whether the stars are inhabited or not—we turn and tear one COMMENTARY another like fret-ful wild-cats; as if telescopes and microscopes were the tools of a party. Why must we daub the heavens as well as the earth? It was an unfortunate discovery surely that Dr. Kane was a Mason,1 and that Sir John Franklin was another.2 But it was a more cruel suggestion that possibly that was the reason why the former went in search of the latter.

1. Bradley P. Dean has emended the manuscript copy-text from “mason.” 2. Dr. Elisha Kent Kane was the US Navy medical officer who became famous in the early 1850s by leading an expedition to the Arctic in search of Sir John Franklin, the British explorer who was believed to be lost there but who actually had died there in 1847. Kane joined the Order of the Masons just before his expedition set out from New-York on May 31, 1851 (see George W. Corner, DOCTOR KANE OF THE ARCTIC SEAS [Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1972], page 129).

ASTRONOMY FREEMASONRY PARANOIA More than a decade after teaching the boy Cyrus Warren in the Concord Academy, Henry Thoreau encountered him as a grown man walking along the sidewalk.

November 10, Monday, 1851: … In relation to politics–to society–aye to the whole out-ward world I am tempted to ask–Why do they lay such stress on a particular experience which you have had?– That after 25 years you should meet Cyrus Warren again on the sidewalk! Haven’t I budged an inch then?– 23 This daily routine should go on then like those–it must be conceded–vital functions of digestion–circulation of the blood &c which in health we know nothing about. A wise man is as unconscious of the movements in the body politic as he is of digestion & the circulation of the blood in the natural body. …

I will include here a list of those who attended this Concord Academy. I do not know why the name of Cyrus Warren is absent from the list:

Martha Adams

Mary Ball

Elizabeth W. Barrett

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Hannah Reed Batcheller Grafton

Sarah Stone Batcheller Grafton

Mary Bowers Chelmsford

Helen Bowers Boston

Caroline Brooks

Sarah Brown

Sarah Davis Clarke Brookline

Susan Colburn Clairborn, Alabama

Nancy Conant Littleton

Eliza A. Cutler Lexington

Abby Hubbard Davis

Agusta Davis

Mary Davis

Cynthia F. Dennis

Martha Field Lincoln

Lucy Fiske Lincoln

Elizabeth Gates Ashby

Elizabeth Hoar

Sarah S. Hoar

23. Henry Thoreau was later to copy this into his early lecture “WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT” as:

[Paragraph 61] In relation to politics, to what is called society—aye, often to the whole outward world, I am often tempted to ask—why such stress is laid on a particular experience which you have had?—that after twenty-five years BRAD DEAN’S you should meet Hobbins—registrar of deeds, again on the side-walk?1 COMMENTARY Haven’t I budged an inch then?

1. There were no County Registrars of Deeds by the name of Hobbins in Massachusetts from 1823 to 1862.

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Ann P. Hosmer

Helen M. Hosmer

Rebecca P. Hubbard

Susan H. Hubbard

Lucy M. Mann

Lucy Miles

Harriet N. Pratt

Martha Prescott

Amelia M. Prichard

Elizabeth H. Prichard

Frances J. Prichard

Lucia M. Rice

Sarah E. Shattuck

Sarah Dodge Sitwell Boston

Maria Smith Lincoln

Eliza B. Stacy

Mary Stow

Jane Tarbell Lincoln

Sophia Thoreau

Mary Wetherby Acton

Louisa J. Whiting

Ann M. Whiting

Eliza Woodward

Susan H. Wyman

William Baker

Jonathan F. Barrett

Gorham Bartlett

Edwin Bent HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Alber W. Bridge

George M. Brooks

John Brown

Leonard Brown

Elbridge Clark

Asabel Dakin

Hiram Dennis

Josiah G. Davis

William Derby

Isaac Fiske

Deming J. Hastings

George Heywood

Stephen Hidden

Ebenezer R. Hoar

Edward S. Hoar

George F. Hoar

Samuel Hoar

James Hosmer

Silas T. Jewell

B.F. Johnson

John S. Keyes

Rufus B. Lawrence Groton

George Loring

Elbridge Marshal Littleton

John Maynard

Richmond Nichles Carlisle

S.S. Niles

Nathaniel Parker HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Owen Peabody

Samuel Pierce

Charles Prescott

Moses Prichard

William Prichard

Agustus Robbins Harvard

Henry Shattuck

William Shepherd

John D. Sherman Lincoln

Francis Smith Lincoln

Edward Stearns Lincoln

Daniel Stedman Boston

Nathan Brooks Stow

William Thayer

Isaac Thayer

John Thoreau

Henry Thoreau

William Tuttle Littleton

Agustus Tuttle

Henry Vose Boston

Amiel Whipple

William Whiting

James Barrett Wood HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Town Meeting of Concord adopted regulations relative to the use and care of the new Town House:

August 30, Saturday morning: In the morning John White Webster was hanged in public at #5 Leverett Street on Leverett Square in Boston for the murder of George Parkman. It took about four minutes. In deference to the social standing of the culprit, there had not been a prior public announcement of the date or the place of the execution. The Reverend George Putnam, D.D. immediately departed for Cambridge to inform the family. That evening a lady and her two children visiting from New-York would come to the family home in Cambridge in the hope that she would be able to see the corpse of the murderer, but fortunately these ghoulish tourists would be intercepted by the maid and the widow and the daughters did not come to know of it. To fool the crowds which were assembling, and in addition to prevent the body from being exhumed, it would be interred in secret that night at the lowbrow cemetery on Copp’s Hill — rather than in the expected venue at toney Mount Auburn Cemetery.24 24. Due to this unpleasantness, Harvard College has created a special endowment for the relief of desperate professors. The widow Harriet Frederica Hickling Webster, who would only live for a few additional years, would take the four daughters back to the Azores. There, one of the four, Sarah Hickling Webster, would marry Samuel Wyllys Dabney (1826-1893), who would from 1872 to 1892 be the US consul to the Azores. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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On this day Henry Thoreau was also concerned with cemeteries, for at the request of John Shepard Keyes, he was surveying two sides of the Concord West Burying Ground by running the lines of the old Hurd place, the so-called Block House now on Lowell Road, and the line of the river bank further east on Main Street.25 The purpose of this activity, probably, was to determine where to position the iron fence from the old courthouse around the burial ground. According to the Town Report, Thoreau received $1.00 for this on March 1, 1851.

View Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/Thoreau_surveys.htm

Aug 31st Tall Ambrosia Among the signs of Autumn I perceive The Roman Wormwood (called by learned men Ambrosia elatior, food for gods,– For to impartial science the humblest weed Is as immortal as the proudest flower–) Sprinkles its yellow dust over my shoes As I cross the now neglected garden We trample under foot the food of Gods & spill their nectar in each drop of dew– My honest shoes thus powdered country-fide Fast friends that never stray far from my coach Bearing many a mile the marks of their adventure At the post-house disgrace the Gallic gloss Of those well dressed ones who no morning dew Nor Roman wormwood ever have been through Who never walk but are transported rather For what old crime of theirs I do not gather The grey blueberry bushes venerable as oaks why is not their fruit poisonous? Bilberry called Vaccinium corymbosum some say amoenum & or Blue Bilberry & Vaccinium disomorphum MX–Black Bilberry. Its fruit hangs on into September but loses its wild & sprightly taste.

’Tis very fit the ambrosia of the gods Should be a weed on earth. their nectar The morning dew with which we wet our shoes For the gods are simple folks and we should pine upon their humble fare The purple flowers of the humble Trichostema mingled with the worm wood. smelling like it And the spring-scented–dandelion scented primrose Yellow primrose The swamp pink Azalea viscosa–its now withered pistils standing out. The odoriferous sassafras with its delicate green stem its three-lobed leaf–tempting the traveller to bruise it it sheds so rare a perfume on him equal to all the spices of the east. Then its rare tasting root bark–like nothing else which I used to dig– The first navigators freighted their ships with it and deemed it worth its weight in gold. The alder-leaved Clethra (Clethra alnifolia sweet smelling queen of the swamp–its long white racemes. We are most apt to remember & cherish the flowers which appear earliest in the spring– I look with equal affection on those which are the latest to bloom in the fall The choke Berry Pyrus arbutifolia 25. We can gather that it was sometime prior to this date, that this former Concord Academy classmate had become an selectman of Concord. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The beautiful white waxen berries of the cornel–either cornus alba or Paniculata white berried or Panicled– beautiful both when full of fruit & when its cymes are naked delicate red cymes or stems of berries. spreading its little fairy fingers to the skies its little palms. Fairy palms they might be called. One of the Viburnums Lentago–or pyrifolium or–Nudum–with its poisonous looking fruit in cymes first– greenish white then red then purple or all at once. The imp eyed red velvety looking berry of the swamps The spotted Polygonum Polygonum Persicaria seen in low lands amid the potatoes now wild Princes feather? Slight flower that does not forget to grace the Autumn The Late Whortleberry (Dangle-berry) that ripens now that other huckleberries and blueberries are shrivelled and spoiling HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1857

April 24, Friday: In India, the British colonel in charge of the 3d Light Cavalry ordered his riflemen to use the Enfield cartridge which they suspected had been greased with a mixture of cow fat and pig fat. When 85 of the Hindu and Moslem riflemen refused, they were convicted of disobedience to a lawful order, to serve at hard labor.

In the early morning, before daybreak, Henry Thoreau sailed down the Concord River to Ball’s Hill. Then he surveyed, for his Concord Academy classmate John Shepard Keyes, a pasture belonging to Dennis. At some point during the day he walked with Ellery Channing.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Concord Academy HDT WHAT? INDEX

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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 2015. 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: August 14, 2015 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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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

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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.