The scope of the present book prevents more than a glimpse at the
other members of the New England Transcendental group. They are a
very mixed company, noble, whimsical, queer, impossible. "The
good Alcott," wrote Carlyle, "with his long, lean face and
figure, with his gray worn temples and mild radiant eyes; all
bent on saving the world by a return to acorns and the golden
age; he comes before one like a venerable Don Quixote, whom
nobody can laugh at without loving." These words paint a whole
company, as well as a single man. The good Alcott still awaits an
adequate biographer. Connecticut Yankee, peddler in the South,
school-teacher in Boston and elsewhere, he descended upon
Concord, flitted to the queer community of Fruitlands, was
starved back to Concord, inspired and bored the patient Emerson,
talked endlessly, wrote ineffective books, and had at last his
apotheosis in the Concord School of Philosophy, but was chiefly
known for the twenty years before his death in 1888 as the father
of the Louisa Alcott who wrote "Little Women.
Pages:
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170