I
THE ALCOTT BOY
ONCE upon a time in the little town of Wolcott, Connecticut, was born a
boy destined to offer to the world new and beautiful thoughts. He was
laughed at and misunderstood; but the thoughts were truth, and they have
lived, although the boy grew weary and old and passed on.
The boy was Amos Bronson Alcott. He was a country lad, used from infancy
to the rugged life of the farm, with its self-denial and makeshifts. The
seeming disadvantage, however, proved quite the opposite. His close
communion with Nature brought him nearer to the truths of life. For him
God ceased to be a mythical object to be studied and read about on
Sunday; but, as he roamed the fields and climbed the hills, the lad
found Him in the rocks and the woodlands, and in the sparkling streams.
He became a reality. The boy and God were friends.
Of schooling he had little. When work at the farm permitted, he attended
the country school near his father's house. "Our copies," he told his
little daughters, "were set by the schoolmaster in books made of a few
sheets of foolscap, stitched together and ruled with a leather plummet.
We used ink made of maple and oak bark, which we manufactured ourselves.
With this I began keeping a diary of my doings."
This was when the boy was twelve. His hours at school were few, but as
he went about his daily tasks on the farm, his thoughts grew and grew
until his mental stature far exceeded his physical. He read as he guided
the plow along the furrow, sometimes unmindful of his work until a
sudden punch from a neglected handle, as the plow struck a stone, would
bring him back to earth with a thump. He sowed seeds in the moist, sweet
earth, but his face was turned to the skies, and he knew the clouds and
the stars. When he gathered firewood, his eyes were keen for the soft,
dainty mosses, the clinging lichens. As he picked berries for the home
table, he never missed the whirr of a bird wing or passed unnoticed the
modest flowers half hidden in the soil. Nature was his library, and she
spread out her choicest treasures to this growing boy.
A love for all of God's creations characterized him. He was fond, not
only of the growing things in the wood, but of all life. His love for
animals amounted almost to a passion, one reason for his being a strict
vegetarian and insisting upon bringing up his little family on a
vegetable diet. But in boyhood it was not always clear whether humanity
or the craving for knowledge made him so considerate of the plodding
team in the field. Never was team more carefully tended. Many were its
hours of grazing, when the noonday sun rode high in the heavens, and the
Alcott boy, book in hand, curled up under the shade of a gigantic elm
and read until the shadows began to lengthen. But these lapses were only
occasional, for the lad was faithful to his tasks, except when he
yielded to the lure of the printed page.
When scarcely more than a child he began to keep a record of his books
and his reading, showing the first traces of the reflective,
introspective quality of mind which later led him to set down in letters
and unpublished manuscripts his inmost thoughts. He cultivated the same
habits of thought in his children, one reason, doubtless, for Louisa's
accurate and realistic descriptions of the lives of the four Little
Women of the Alcott family.
His favorite books in boyhood, and, for that matter, in manhood, were
the Bible and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," which he read and reread
and commented upon. Years later he mentions in his journal that he made
it a practice to read "Pilgrim's Progress" every year, which is a
remarkable record to the modern boy and girl who find it difficult to
struggle through that wonderful allegory even once.
Bronson Alcott took his chance and made a stepping-stone of every
difficulty. Each obstacle he encountered in getting an education created
in him an even stronger determination to gain one. The modern boy has
the world of books opened wide to him through the library and the free
school. The treasures of art are spread out before him in the museums.
He is surrounded by helps. The boy of to-day is studied as an entity.
The boy of the last century could tell quite a different story.
So the Alcott boy, passing long hours in the woods, reading, thinking,
getting close to Nature and to God, walked as one apart, seeing the
invisible. While still a boy, he began casting off the garment of a
conventional creed and to think for himself of God, the creation, of
life, unconsciously putting from him the trammeling, cumbersome
conventions with which man has often hidden truth.
Out of this the man Alcott emerged--a great soul.
II
THE ALCOTT MAN
With Bronson Alcott the craving for knowledge was scarcely stronger than
the craving for adventure, so it is not surprising that in the first
flush of young manhood he did not settle down to life on the farm. He
longed for the great world lying beyond the hills and valleys of
peaceful New England. He wanted experience, and experience he had.
He went South, hoping to teach school, as he had original ideas on the
training of children. Unsuccessful in this, he decided to be a peddler,
naively remarking that "honesty of purpose could dignify any
profession."
Think of the courage of this boy, for he was scarcely more than a boy, a
philosopher at heart, living in a world of dreams and books, his
ambitions all for intellectual rather than material achievement,
tramping the southern countryside, undauntedly peddling buttons,
elastic, pins and needles, and supplying all the small wants of the
country housewife! Often he encountered rebuffs, sometimes he had a
hearty welcome, for the visit of the country peddler was eagerly awaited
by the children. At times, when night came and he was far from the
shelter of an inn, he had to beg a lodging from some planter. On one
such occasion, as he entered the grounds, he saw a huge sign, "Beware
the dog." A shout from the house also warned him, and he saw dashing
toward him a savage-looking dog, powerful enough to have torn to pieces
the slender young peddler-student. But his love for animals triumphed.
Alcott stretched out his hand. The huge creature stopped short; then,
recognizing a friend and a fearless one, he bounded on, tail wagging,
barking joyously, snuggling his nose into the young man's palm, which he
licked as he escorted his new-found friend to the house. Animals always
recognized in Alcott an understanding comrade.
From most of these trips Alcott brought back money to add to the scanty
funds at home, but on one memorable occasion the love of finery proved
stronger than the necessity for saving, and he returned to the farm
penniless, but dressed in the latest fashion, having used his savings
for a wardrobe that was the wonder of the countryside. That one debauch
of clothes satisfied him for life; after that his tastes were markedly
simple. With him the "dandy period" was short-lived indeed. That he
repented bitterly of this one excess of folly is shown in his journals,
where he sets down minutely what to him was a mistake that amounted
almost to a sin. As a rule, he was singularly free from folly. His
thoughts were too high, his ideals too lofty, for him to be long
concerned with trifles such as clothes, and the next expenditure
mentioned in his journal is for the "Vicar of Wakefield" and Johnson's
"Rasselas." Ever impractical, one likes him the better for the little
human moment when the vanities of the world overcame him.
At last he secured a school, and then began the realization of his
ideals regarding the teaching of children. His methods were original and
highly successful, especially with the very young. He established a
mental kindergarten, and the fame of his teaching spread abroad. Through
his work as a teacher he achieved his greatest happiness, for it led to
his meeting with the woman who was destined to become his wife.
As the result of correspondence between himself and Mr. May of
Brooklyn, Connecticut, whose attention had been attracted to the work
of the young teacher, Alcott, then twenty-eight years old, drove from
the Wolcott home to Brooklyn, where he met Abigail May of Boston, who
was visiting her brother. With both it was love at first sight, a love
that grew into a perfect spiritual union.
It seemed almost providential that Bronson Alcott should have come into
Abigail May's life at just this time, when her heart had been touched by
its first great sorrow--the loss of her mother. Hitherto she had been a
light-hearted girl, fond of dancing and of the material side of life.
The young philosopher, with his dreams and his ideals, brought a new
interest into her now lonely life, and all that was spiritual in her
nature responded as he freely discussed his plans and ambitions with
her. In her he found both sympathy and understanding.
A year of letter-writing, a frank and honest exchange of thought,
brought out the harmony of their natures and developed in both a sense
of oneness, laying a firm foundation for the comradeship which was not
broken through all the years, even when the wife and mother passed into
the Great Beyond.
The Alcott-May courtship was ideal. Retaining the heaven that lay about
him in his infancy, keeping his close companionship with God and God's
great laboratory, Nature, Bronson Alcott demanded something more than
mere physical attraction in choosing his wife. A certain quaint
circumspection characterized their love-making. Abigail May once wrote:
"Mr. Alcott's views on education were very attractive, and I was charmed
by his modesty," and long after their engagement she spoke of her lover
as "her friend." He was, and so he continued to be in the highest sense
of the word.
So satisfying were those friendship-courtship days, that apparently both
were loath to end them, for another twelvemonth passed before the
announcement of their betrothal, and it was nearly three years from the
date of their first meeting before their marriage in King's Chapel,
Boston, where the brother who had been the means of bringing them
together performed the ceremony.
As their marriage day approached, there was little festivity and none of
the rush that usually precedes a modern wedding. Everything was simple,
quiet, and sure.
This is Bronson Alcott's letter, asking a friend to act as best man at
his wedding.
Dear Sir:
Permit me to ask the favor of your calling at Col. May's at 4
o'clock precisely on Sunday afternoon next, to accompany me and
my friend Miss May to King's Chapel.
With esteem,
A. B. Alcott
Thursday, May 20,
112 Franklin St. 1830.
So began the Alcott pilgrimage, their fortune consisting of love and
faith and brains. In these they were rich indeed, and thus closed
another chapter in the life of the gentle philosopher, of whom Ralph
Waldo Emerson once said: "Our Alcott has only just missed being a
seraph."