Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays

[78] 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 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