eagerly all that he could find. He went to school in the Spindle Hill district until he was thirteen years old, and at the age of twelve began to keep a diary, a practice which he has continued the greater part of the time since. Still earlier he had read Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the book of all others which had the greatest influence on his mind. He learned to write by practicing with chalk on his mother's kitchen floor, and became in his boyhood a skillful penman, so that his first essay in teaching was as master of a writingschool. He was mainly self-taught, in the higher studies, although he was for a time a pupil of his uncle, Dr. Bronson, at Cheshire, in 1813, and in 1815 of Rev. John Keys, of Wolcott Hill.

He worked during boyhood on the farm and in the shop with his father and brothers, and was dextrous at mechanical tasks. At the age of fourteen he worked for a while at clock making, in Plymouth, and in the same year went on an excursion into northern Connecticut and western Massachusetts, selling a few articles as he went, to meet the expenses of his journey. At the age of fifteen he was confirmed, along with his father, as a member of the Episcopal church, the ceremony being performed in Waterbury, by Bishop Brownell, after which young Alcott, with his cousin, the late Dr. William A. Alcott,* used to read the church service on Sundays at the school-house in their neighborhood. The two cousins also carried on a correspondence at this time, and founded a small library for their mutual improvement. A few years later they visited Virginia and the Carolinas together, on one of those peddling pilgrimages which makes such a romantic feature of Mr. Alcott's early life. Travels and Peddling Pilgrimages.

Mr. Alcott began his travels early. His first visit to New Haven was in 1813, when he went to a bookstore and sighed for a place in it, for the sake of reading all the books. And he turned his rambles in Virginia and North Carolina to good account in the way of reading; gaining access to the libraries of the great houses as he went along.

The beginning of his rambles was in the autumn and winter of 1818, when the youth was almost nineteen years old. At the age of sixteen he had played the part of a subscription book agent, selling copies of Flavel's 'Keeping the Heart.' His earnings were spent in New Haven for a prayer-book for his mother, another for himself, a dictionary, and a supply of paper for his diaries. These short journeys in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York, had

* Memoir in Barnard's American Journal of Education, Vol. iv. 629–656.

worn off his natural bashfulness somewhat, and had increased his longing to see more of the great world. His father and mother would fain have retained him at home, but he resolved to go to Norfolk in one of the coasting vessels from New Haven, and had a dream that he could easily, in Virginia, find a place as a teacher. Accordingly he sailed from New Haven, October 13th, 1818, in the good sloop 'Three Sisters,' Captain Sperry, skipper, with fifteen other passengers, chiefly peddlers from Connecticut and workmen going in the employ of the Tisdales, Connecticut tinmen, who had a shop at Norfolk. The voyage lasted about a week, and young Alcott landed in Virginia, October 20th. His passage money seems to have been ten dollars. For a few days after arriving at Norfolk be continued to board with Captain Sperry, but soon went to live at Tisdale's, the tinman, and was urged by him to enter his service. At first Mr. Alcott was bent on teaching, but having tried from the 24th of October to the 12th of November, without success, to get a school, and being then somewhat in debt, the youth accepted his offer, and began to peddle for him about the city. This continued until some time in December, but apparently without much pecuniary result, for just before the Christmas holidays we find Mr. Alcott buying a small stock of Virginia almanacs, and selling them to the citizens of Norfolk at a profit of two hundred per cent. Each almanac cost three pence and was sold for nine pence, and the young merchant easily earned a dollar or two a day so long as the holidays lasted. Then it occurred to him to enlarge his stock, and to sell trinkets and silks to the families in the surrounding country. He went, therefore, to a dealer in 'fancy goods,' in Norfolk, and bought goods costing nearly three hundred dollars, which he bestowed in two small tin trunks, to be carried in the hand, as the peddler journeyed on foot from house to house. There were tortoise-shell combs, thimbles, scissors, various articles of ornament for ladies, puzzles and picture-books for children, spectacles, razors, and many other wares for the men, beside needles, buttons, sewingsilk, and much more that was not then a part of a peddler's stock in Eastern Virginia.

The first trip as a peddler of small wares was made in January, 1819, and was a circuit from Norfolk, by way of Hampton, along the James river for awhile, then across the country to Yorktown, and by the York county plantations back to Hampton and Norfolk again. It proved profitable, and both goods and merchant found unexpected favor in the eyes of the Virginians. An American footpeddler, a bashful Yankee, neither impertinent nor stingy, was a

novelty in those regions, and, it soon appeared, an agreeable novelty. He was kindly received at the great houses of the planters, where he generally spent the night, accepting courteously their customary hospitality, though sometimes sleeping in the slave quarters. On Sundays and rainy days, when his trade could not be pursued, this diffident and bookish Autolycus remained in the planters' houses, and had permission to read in their libraries, where he found many books he had never seen or heard of before. In that part of Virginia there lived some of the oldest and best descended families of the Old Dominion, with large and choice libraries, which they allowed the young man from Connecticut to explore for himself. Biography was his favorite reading, then poems and tales, and he had a keen appetite-not so common among lads of nineteen-for metaphysics and books of devotion. Cowper's Life and Letters, Locke's Conduct of the Understanding, and Lavater's Physiognomy were among the books thus read; nor was his favorite, Pilgrim's Progress, forgotten, which he found in fine editions among the Virginians.

SCHOOL KEEPING.

The next stage in his career was school keeping, an occupation begun in 1823, that he pursued for more than fifteen years. His first school was in a district of Bristol, the adjoining town, and only three miles from Spindle Hill. Here he taught for three months, his wages being $10 a month besides board, and was so good a teacher as to make the school committee desirous to engage him again. He did indeed teach school in Bristol the next winter (1824–5), but not in the same district, and for a part of the year he gave writing lessons at Wolcott. In the spring and summer of 1825, he resided in Cheshire with his uncle, Dr. Bronson, who then edited the Churchman's Magazine, for which Mr. Alcott procured subscribers, and copied his uncle's manuscript for the printer. While residing with Dr. Bronson this season, he read Butler's Analogy, Reid and Stewart's Metaphysics, Watts's Logic, Vattel's Law of Nations, and Dwight's Theology; his readings being to some extent directed by his uncle, with whom he continued to live after beginning to teach school in Cheshire, in November, 1825. This school occupied Mr. Alcott from that time until June, 1827, nearly two years, when he closed it and returned to Wolcott. He wrote a brief account of it and his method,* which was published in Mr. William Russell's American Journal of Education,' in January, 1828, and attracted

* This account was republished by Dr. Caldwell, President of the University of North Carolina, in a Series of Essays devoted to Popular Education-about 1832.

much notice. It was in Cheshire, in fact, that Mr. Alcott began to develop his peculiar system of instruction, which afterward received. so much praise and blame in Boston. He continued this system in. a similar school in Bristol in the winter of 1827-8, and then removed to Boston to take charge of an infant school in Salem street, in June, 1828. In the following April he opened a private school near St. Paul's church on Tremont street, in which he remained until November 5, 1830, when he gave it up to open a school in Germantown, near Philadelphia, where with his associate, Mr. William Russell, he remained a little more than two years. On the 22d of April, 1833, he opened a school in Philadelphia, which continued until July, 1834, soon after which, September 22, 1834, Mr. Alcott returned to Boston and there began his famous Temple school, concerning which so much has been written and published. This was nearly eleven years after his first winter's school keeping in Bristol. Mr. Alcott had now reached the 35th year of his life, and the fifth of his married life.

Previous to 1827, the district schools of Connecticut, and of all New England, were at a low degree of discipline, instruction, and comfort, and in all these matters Mr. Alcott set the example of improvement. He first gave his pupils single desks, now so common, instead of the long benches and double or three-seated desks, still in use in some sections. He gave his youthful pupils slates and pencils, and blackboards. He established a school library, and taught them to enjoy the benefits of careful reading; he broke away from the old rule of severe and indiscriminate punishments, and substituted therefor appeals to the affections and the moral sentiment of children, so that he was able almost wholly to dispense with corporeal punishment. He introduced, also, light gymnastic exercises, evening amusements at the school-room, the keeping of diaries by young children, and, in general, an affectionate and reverent mode of drawing out the child's mind toward knowledge, rather than the pouring in of instruction by mechanical or compulsory processes. Familiar as this natural method of teaching has since become, it was an innovation five and forty years ago,-as much so as Pestalozzi's method had been in Europe when he began the instruction of poor children in Switzerland a hundred years ago. Rev. Samuel May, in 1827, then pastor of a church in Brooklyn, Conn., informed by letter from Dr. W. A. Alcott of his cousin's labors in Cheshire, wrote direct for a detailed statement of his principles and method of training children. In due time came to me a full account of the school of Cheshire, which revealed such a depth

of insight into the nature of man, such a true sympathy with children, such profound appreciation of the work of education, and was, withal, so philosophically arranged and exquisitely written, that I at once felt assured the man must be a genius, and that I must know him more intimately. So I wrote, inviting him urgently to visit He came and passed a week with me before the end of the I have never, but in one instance, been so immediately taken possession of by any man I have ever met in life. He seemed to me like a born sage and saint.

me.

summer.

The most devoted of Pestalozzi's personal friends and followers in England, Mr. James Pierrpont Greaves, who first learned of Mr. Alcott's experiments in education from Miss Harriet Martineau, after her return from America in 1837, afterward, to a school near London, gave the name of Alcott House.'

In his educational, at least his formal school work, Mr. Alcott was in advance of his age, and his ideas in education, now almost universally received, were slow in making their way among the plain and practical people of New England. Like Pestalozzi, he was continually at a disadvantage in dealing with affairs, and he was not so fortunate as to find a coadjutor in his schools who could supply the practical ability to match and complete his own idealism. Hence the brief period of his success in each place where he taught, and his frequent removals from town to town, and city to city. Every where he impressed the best men and women with the depth and worth of his character, the fervor of his philanthropy, the delicacy and penetration of his genius, and they spoke of him as Mr. May did, in the passage quoted above. They sought his fellowship, aided his plans, rejoiced in his successes, and knew how to pardon his failures. During the period from 1826 to 1836, he made the acquaintance and enjoyed the friendship of some of the most eminent persons in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania; among them Drs. Gallaudet and Henry Barnard, of Hartford; Dr. Channing and Mr. Garrison, of Boston; Mr. R. W. Emerson, of Concord; Messrs. Matthew Carey, Roberts Vaux, and Dr. Furness, of Philadelphia; and many of the most esteemed Boston families, the Mays, Phillipses, Savages, Shaws, Quincys, etc. Among the eminent women who took an interest in his school may be named, (besides Miss Martineau), Miss Margaret Fuller, Miss Elizabeth Peabody, her sister, the late Mrs. Hawthorne, Miss Elizabeth Hoar, and others. Both Miss Fuller and Miss Peabody were assistant teachers in the Temple school at Boston, and Miss Peabody compiled the accounts of it, which were published under the