Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Margaret Fuller Ossoli

[142] is no knowing what I should wish to write upon next January.

Ms.

Every knot of bright young thinkers is easily tempted to plan a periodical which shall reflect the thoughts of the coterie; and it seemed for some years as if this particular enterprise would go no farther. The Rev. F. H. Hedge, who had urged it most definitely, removed to Bangor, Maine, in 1835, and the project languished. But it so happened that there was held in the autumn of 1836 the bicentennial celebration of Harvard College, and it turned out an important circumstance for this special movement. Four young Unitarian clergymen — Emerson, Hedge, Ripley, and Putnam — meeting after the exercises, got into some conversation about the narrow tendencies of thought in the churches. They adjourned to a room at Willard's Hotel-then a place of some resort in Cambridge, now converted into a horse-railroad office — and talked the matter over at length. It ended in a small meeting for consultation at Rev. George Ripley's in Boston, on September 19, 1836, at which were present Ripley, Emerson, Hedge, Alcott, Clarke, and Francis, and one or two divinity students. This led to a much larger meeting at Mr. Emerson's in Concord, at which were present, besides the above, O. A. Brownson, T. Parker, C. A. Bartol, C. Stetson, and various other men; with Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth P. Peabody. This was the inauguration of a club,