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Jamaica Plain (Massachusetts, United States) (search for this): chapter 5
he way in which these were undertaken; as when the recognized leader of a certain class of the Harvard Law School abandoned, from conscientious scruples, the career of a practicing lawyer, and spent his life as a conveyancer. What turned me away from the study of the law was not this moral scruple, but what was doubtless an innate preference, strengthened by the influence of one man and one or two books. After leaving college I taught for six months as usher in the boarding-school at Jamaica Plain, kept by Mr. Stephen Minot Weld; and then, greatly to my satisfaction, became private tutor to the three young sons of my cousin, Stephen Higginson Perkins, a Boston merchant, residing in a pretty cottage which he had designed for himself in Brookline. In him I encountered the most attractive man I had yet met and the one who was most to influence me. He was indeed a person of unique qualities and great gifts; he was in the prime of life, handsome and refined, a widower, whose modest h
Ballston (New York, United States) (search for this): chapter 5
t Nahant during the summer, for the professed reason that the barberry blossoms in the Brookline lanes made her sneeze. The summer life around Boston was then an affair so unlike anything now to be found in the vicinity as to seem like something observed in another country or period. Socially speaking, it more resembled the plantation life of the South or the ranch life of the West. Many of the prosperous people lived in Boston all summer, with occasional trips to Nahant or Saratoga or Ballston, or for the more adventurous a journey by stage among the White Mountains, encountering rough roads and still rougher taverns. But there existed all around Boston, and especially in Roxbury, Brookline, and Milton, a series of large estates with ample houses, all occupied by people connected in blood or intimacy, who drove about and exchanged calls in summer afternoons. Equipages were simple; people usually drove themselves; there were no liveries, but the hospitality was profuse. My uncl
New England (United States) (search for this): chapter 5
ers who were ignorant of much that I knew, yet could do so much that I could not. Under these combined motives I find that I carefully made out, at one time, a project of going into the cultivation of peaches, an industry then prevalent in New England, but now practically abandoned,--thus securing freedom from study and thought by moderate labor of the hands. This was in 1843, two years before Thoreau tried a similar project with beans at Walden Pond; and also before the time when George avisitors as he played in the water. Wal, neaow, said one of the youths, be them kind oa critters common up this way, do ye suppose? Be they-or be they? Wal, responded the other, dunno's they be, and dunno ez they be. This perfect flower of New England speech, twin blossoms on one stem, delighted Lowell hugely; and it was so unexampled in my own experience that it always inspired in me a slight distrust, as being too good to be true. Perhaps it created a little envy, as was the case with A
Nahant (Massachusetts, United States) (search for this): chapter 5
near Boston, the then famous Boston nectarine being a fruit of his introducing. His wife, Barbara Higginson, my aunt, had been a belle in her youth, but had ripened into an oddity, and lived in Boston during the winter and in a tiny cottage at Nahant during the summer, for the professed reason that the barberry blossoms in the Brookline lanes made her sneeze. The summer life around Boston was then an affair so unlike anything now to be found in the vicinity as to seem like something observed in another country or period. Socially speaking, it more resembled the plantation life of the South or the ranch life of the West. Many of the prosperous people lived in Boston all summer, with occasional trips to Nahant or Saratoga or Ballston, or for the more adventurous a journey by stage among the White Mountains, encountering rough roads and still rougher taverns. But there existed all around Boston, and especially in Roxbury, Brookline, and Milton, a series of large estates with ampl
Walden Pond (Massachusetts, United States) (search for this): chapter 5
e equal terms with that vast army of hand-workers who were ignorant of much that I knew, yet could do so much that I could not. Under these combined motives I find that I carefully made out, at one time, a project of going into the cultivation of peaches, an industry then prevalent in New England, but now practically abandoned,--thus securing freedom from study and thought by moderate labor of the hands. This was in 1843, two years before Thoreau tried a similar project with beans at Walden Pond; and also before the time when George and Burrill Curtis undertook to be farmers at Concord. A like course was actually adopted and successfully pursued through life by another Harvard man a few years older than myself, the late Marston Watson, of Plymouth, Massachusetts. Such things were in the air, and even those who were not swerved by the Newness from their intended pursuits were often greatly modified as to the way in which these were undertaken; as when the recognized leader of a
Roxbury, Mass. (Massachusetts, United States) (search for this): chapter 5
ow to be found in the vicinity as to seem like something observed in another country or period. Socially speaking, it more resembled the plantation life of the South or the ranch life of the West. Many of the prosperous people lived in Boston all summer, with occasional trips to Nahant or Saratoga or Ballston, or for the more adventurous a journey by stage among the White Mountains, encountering rough roads and still rougher taverns. But there existed all around Boston, and especially in Roxbury, Brookline, and Milton, a series of large estates with ample houses, all occupied by people connected in blood or intimacy, who drove about and exchanged calls in summer afternoons. Equipages were simple; people usually drove themselves; there were no liveries, but the hospitality was profuse. My uncle Perkins was a poor man compared with his rich brother; there was a theory that his beautiful pears and nectarines were to be a source of profit, but I fear that the balance-sheet, if perch
Hammond's Pond (Massachusetts, United States) (search for this): chapter 5
r. This I do not believe; and he was probably not the highest authority; yet his remark and Judge Foster's always helped me to justify to myself that early choice. With all this social and intellectual occupation, much of my Brookline life was lonely and meditative; my German romances made me a dreamer, and I spent much time in the woods, nominally botanizing but in reality trying to adjust myself, being still only nineteen or twenty, to the problems of life. One favorite place was Hammond's Pond, then celebrated among botanists as the only locality for the beautiful Andromeda polifolia, so named by Linnaeus because, like the fabled Andromeda, it dwelt in wild regions only. The pond was, and I believe still is, surrounded by deep woods and overhung by a hill covered with moss-grown fragments of rock, among which the pink Cypripedium or lady's slipper used to grow profusely. The Andromeda was on the other side of the lake, and some one had left a leaky boat there, which I used t
Russian River (Alaska, United States) (search for this): chapter 5
But as these chapters are to be mainly autobiographic, it is well to state with just what outfit I left college in 1841. I had a rather shallow reading knowledge of six languages, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, and Greek, and had been brought in contact with some of the best books in each of these tongues. I may here add that I picked up at a later period German, Portuguese, and Hebrew, with a little Swedish; and that I hope to live long enough to learn at least the alphabet in Russian. Then I had acquired enough of the higher mathematics to have a pupil or two in that branch; something of the forms of logic and of Locke's philosophy with the criticisms of the French eclectics upon it; a smattering of history and political economy; some crude acquaintance with field natural history; some practice in writing and debating; a passion for poetry and imaginative literature; a voracious desire for all knowledge and all action; and an amount of self-confidence which has now, a
Watertown (Massachusetts, United States) (search for this): chapter 5
thed, who were known among the members as their King and Queen. They called themselves The brothers and sisters, being mainly made up in that way: the Whites of Watertown and their cousins the Thaxters; the Storys from Cambridge; the Hales and the Tuckermans from Boston; the Kings from Salem, and others. They had an immense and h intermarriage; they read the same books, and had perpetual gatherings and picnics, their main headquarters being the large colonial house of the White family in Watertown. My own point of contact with them was remote, but real; my mother had removed, when her family lessened, to a smaller house built by my elder brother, and belolied. The river itself was different; there were far more vessels, and I have myself been hailed on the bridge and offered money to pilot a coasting schooner to Watertown. Seals also came above the wharves and gave Lowell the material for one of his best stories, but one which he never, I think, quite ventured to print. He saw t
Newport (Rhode Island, United States) (search for this): chapter 5
ommon up this way, do ye suppose? Be they-or be they? Wal, responded the other, dunno's they be, and dunno ez they be. This perfect flower of New England speech, twin blossoms on one stem, delighted Lowell hugely; and it was so unexampled in my own experience that it always inspired in me a slight distrust, as being too good to be true. Perhaps it created a little envy, as was the case with Albert Dicey, when he and James Bryce first visited America, and I met them at a dinner party in Newport. Dicey came in, rubbing his hands, and saying with eagerness, Bryce is very happy; at the Ocean House he has just heard a man say European twice! Another and yet more tonic influence, though Lowell was already an ardent Abolitionist, came from the presence of reformatory agitation in the world outside. There were always public meetings in Boston to be attended; there were social reform gatherings where I heard the robust Orestes Brownson and my eloquent cousin William Henry Channing; t
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