He says: "And what if Trade sow cities Like shells along the shore, And thatch with towns the prairie broad, Along Thought's causing stream, "We can ill spare the commanding social benefits of cities; they must be used, yet cautiously and haughtily, and will yield their best values to him who best can do without them." "Keep the town for occasions; but the habits should be formed to retirement." "Cities give us collision. 'Tis said London and New York take the nonsense out of a man." Boston town as Emerson knew it in his childhood was in its happy youth, when Nature still lay all about it; and was like a family association, where every man knew his neighbor, and there was a common bond of good-fellowship among all. The Common was still the training-ground and cow-pasture, and the boy's little feet roamed freely over it, with no caution to "keep off the grass." Yet it was already a place consecrated by historic memories. The British had built fortifications upon it during the war; and when the Constitution was adopted a procession had carried an old long-boat, named the "Old Confederacy," to the Common, and there burned it amid the shouts of the rejoicing people. The Common was endeared to every one as the theatre of his sports and exercises in youth, or of the quiet walks for thought and contemplation or the sweet converse of lovers, in later years. Emerson's childhood in Boston was during a period of commercial activity and pecuniary prosperity, when the career was open to talent, and every boy might look forward to success and fame in life. Yet economy was necessary in the household of the widowed mother; and thus the true-hearted boy learned the lessons of conscientious frugality for the sake of noble good, which are so conspicuous in his thought. But these were blended with a generous wisdom, which counselled to spend for one's genius, but not for show in the eyes of others. His chapter on "Wealth" is full of the wisdom of the saint and the practical sagacity of Poor Richard: "As long as your genius buys, the investment is safe, though you spend like a monarch." 66 'Spend for your expense, and retrench the expense which is not yours." "But vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health, and peace, and is still nothing at last, a long way leading nowhere." "A good pride is, as I reckon it, worth from five hundred to fifteen hundred a year." Very early he found the help of the city in getting the novel he craved from the circulating library; but when his aunt reproached him for spending six cents on such a luxury while his mother's needs were so constant, he left the story unfinished, and did not take out the second volume. The wise mother did not keep her boy tied to her apron-strings, but at eight years old sent him to the grammar school, that his life might be rooted in the common ground with his fellow-citizens. This grammar school was probably one whose course of instruction was laid down in 1784 by a committee of which Samuel Adams was a member. Dilworth's spelling-book, containing a brief treatise on English grammar, was the only text-book required. Arithmetic included vulgar and decimal fractions; while the Bible and Psalter were the only reading-books. We do not know how much this programme had been extended in 1811. In 1814 he became a Latin School boy. The Latin School is a peculiarly "Boston institution," and was founded in the very earliest period of her history. Boston has always believed in beginning to grow at the top; and long before she had primary schools for her children she had her college and Latin School, to keep learning alive and furnish leaders in the great warfare against the enemy of souls. The aristocracy that founded the Latin School is not that of selfishness and greed," the best for me, and the worst for the rest of the world," but it holds the doctrine of noblesse oblige, and teaches that the highest service must have the fullest preparation. The poorest boy may share its privileges; but he is expected to pay for them by superior work done in - the course of his life, - not by sinking into the readiest means for gaining wealth or ignoble ease. The honorable names among our Latin School boys have justified this claim. If Emerson often read the book of genius by stealth, instead of conning the stupid lessons of routine, he still accomplished the work of preparation for college; and he got from his public-school training the best results of an acquaintance with the future men of his age and country. These early companionships, like family ties, have a special value in binding us to acquaintance with those unlike us in tastes and habits, whom we might not seek from choice. They save us from living in a petty world of our own choosing, as well as from the dreary experience of the aristocratic lady who said that "the longer she lived the more she realized how little there is outside of one's own circle." Emerson's high courtesy could always meet all on equal terms, and the poorest of servants or the highest of nobles alike felt of kin to him when he gave them the benediction of the morning. The commercial prosperity which existed during his childhood was followed by the hated embargo and the war with England, which had such a disastrous influence on the business of Boston, changing it from a purely commercial to a manufacturing town. During the war the British cruisers could be daily seen in the harbor, and volunteer companies were engaged in defending commerce and in building forts. Politics furnished the theme of all intellectual conversation, and Emerson must have found his young mind broadened and enriched by the exciting discussions of the time. The master of the school once invited his boys to spend the next day in helping to throw up defences against the enemy at Noddle's Island, now East Boston. Party spirit raged fiercely throughout the nation, and especially in Boston. The French Revolution had aroused the greatest activity of thought on political and social questions, and the party divisions of that day did not represent a mere scramble for office, but the opposite sides of the most important problems of social and political economy. While the Democrats held those generous views which captivate the young mind, on the other side was an array of personal character and historic reputation which could not but command the respect of a modest and reverent nature; so that, as Emerson afterwards said, "One party had the best ideas and the other the best men." An orphan boy, much under the influence of wise and sweet women, Emerson was not bound to follow a father's party in politics, and may early have learned the great lesson of unpartisan patriotism which he so fully carried out. As a young man of eighteen or nineteen he may have heard the animated discussions in regard to the adoption of the city charter, and may have remembered Josiah Quincy's eloquent eulogiums on the town meetings when he wrote afterwards to Carlyle, |