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Heavy as this affliction was, it brought none of the paralysis of grief caused by Sammy's death: rather, as after the passing of the Chevalier, she was urged by the thought of her dead child to more and higher efforts.
In the quiet of Oak Glen she wrote this summer a careful study of Dante and Beatrice, for the Concord School of Philosophy.1 July 20 found her at Concord, where she and Julia had been wont to go together.
She says, “I cannot think of the sittings of the School without a vision of the rapt expression of her face as she sat and listened to the various speakers.”
2
Spite of her grief in missing this sweet companionship she found the sessions of the School deeply interesting.
She was “much more nervous than usual” about her lecture; which “really sounded a good deal better than it had looked to me. It was wonderfully well received.”
We are told by the last living representative of the School of Philosophy, Mr. F. B. Sanborn, that she was the most attractive, and sometimes the most profound, of its lecturers; “had the largest audiences, and gave the most pleasure; especially when she joined delicate personal criticism or epigrammatic wit with high philosophy.”
The meetings of the School were always a delight to her; the papers written for it were among her most valuable essays; indeed, we may look upon them as
1 This was a summer school of ten years (1879-88) in which Emerson, Alcott, and W. T. Harris took part.
2 Reminiscences, p. 440.
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 1916.
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