CHAPTER II.

1823-1828.  AET. 20-25.

Extract from a Letter to a Classmate.—­School-Teaching.—­Study of Divinity.—­“Approbated” to Preach.—­Visit to the South.—­Preaching in Various Places.

We get a few brief glimpses of Emerson during the years following his graduation.  He writes in 1823 to a classmate who had gone from Harvard to Andover:—­

“I am delighted to hear there is such a profound studying of German and Hebrew, Parkhurst and Jahn, and such other names as the memory aches to think of, on foot at Andover.  Meantime, Unitarianism will not hide her honors; as many hard names are taken, and as much theological mischief is planned, at Cambridge as at Andover.  By the time this generation gets upon the stage, if the controversy will not have ceased, it will run such a tide that we shall hardly he able to speak to one another, and there will be a Guelf and Ghibelline quarrel, which cannot tell where the differences lie.”

“You can form no conception how much one grovelling in the city needs the excitement and impulse of literary example.  The sight of broad vellum-bound quartos, the very mention of Greek and German names, the glimpse of a dusty, tugging scholar, will wake you up to emulation for a month.”

After leaving College, and while studying Divinity, Emerson employed a part of his time in giving instruction in several places successively.

Emerson’s older brother William was teaching in Boston, and Ralph Waldo, after graduating, joined him in that occupation.  In the year 1825 or 1826, he taught school also in Chelmsford, a town of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, a part of which helped to constitute the city of Lowell.  One of his pupils in that school, the Honorable Josiah Gardiner Abbott, has favored me with the following account of his recollections:—­

The school of which Mr. Emerson had the charge was an old-fashioned country “Academy.”  Mr. Emerson was probably studying for the ministry while teaching there.  Judge Abbott remembers the impression he made on the boys.  He was very grave, quiet, and very impressive in his appearance.  There was something engaging, almost fascinating, about him; he was never harsh or severe, always perfectly self-controlled, never punished except with words, but exercised complete command over the boys.  His old pupil recalls the stately, measured way in which, for some offence the little boy had committed, he turned on him, saying only these two words:  “Oh, sad!” That was enough, for he had the faculty of making the boys love him.  One of his modes of instruction was to give the boys a piece of reading to carry home with them,—­from some book like Plutarch’s Lives,—­and the next day to examine them and find out how much they retained from their reading.  Judge Abbott remembers a peculiar look in his eyes, as if he saw something beyond what seemed to be in the field of vision.  The whole impression left on this pupil’s mind was such as no other teacher had ever produced upon him.