To Professor Lesley.

Cambridge, March 25, 1856.

Mary Walker Mary Walker was an escaped fugitive slave, who had been aided by Mrs. Lesley in her flight. She lived with Mrs. Lyman, in Cambridge; and after Mrs. Lyman left Cambridge, in 1861, Chauncey lodged at Mary Walker’s house. After her death, he continued until his own death at the house of her daughter. Mary Walker’s “instructions” have to do with those secret agencies of communication between the slaves and the North, which used to be known as the “underground railroad.” ³¹ has for a few days past been sick with a rheumatic cold, but is now much better. She will write to Mrs. Lesley very soon. Meantime, she gives me the box enclosed with this letter, and sends the following instructions: —

“Uncle Zack belongs to the Presbyterian minister Mr. Lā′ā [I spell it by the pronouncing dictionary], and is the sexton of the Baptist church.

“Willis Haywood, waiter at the largest hotel in the place, will direct to him; or any other waiter at any other hotel will direct to Mr. L.’s.

“If Aunt Lucy should be dead, inquire for Glasgow, one of the colored deacons of the Baptist church, who belongs to Mr. Saunders. Either he or Uncle Zack may be trusted.”

I feel how little worth there is in a general acquaintance with any subject, when I consider how totally unfitted I am to undertake such a work as you so generously proposed to me. Why, I never used my senses for any thing finer than simple drawing and eating a fish dinner. And as to astronomical observation, I should as soon think of officiating at a sacrament as of offering my poor, untrained senses to such a service. I am very much obliged to you, however, and should like, if I can get an opportunity, to attend the survey as a student. Professor Lesley is unable to recall the proposition to which reference is here made. ³²

Of late, I have been writing an essay, which I call the “Philosophy of Mother Goose,” — very dry and dull. It is about infantile and juvenile education. I may hereafter expand it into a review of juvenile Sunday-school books.

I suspect that I had Mamy in my mind some of the time, though no one, I am sure, would suppose it in' the reading.

My love to Mamy and Mrs. Lesley, — to Mamy first, because of her seniority, for she belongs to older time than the rest of us.

The essay of which Chauncey speaks in the last letter was read before his club on the evening of March 26. It was heard with a great deal of interest, and has always been remembered for its shrewd and characteristic wisdom. I find it preserved just as he wrote it, — a rough draft in lead-pencil, in the half-filled sheets of a college blank book. He had been drawn to the observation of children, as he intimates, by seeing often the little daughter of Mrs. Lesley at Mrs. Lyman’s. The reader will probably be interested in seeing one or two passages of it: — “If the venerable mother of nurses,” he says, “had, in addition to her motherly tenderness and sympathetic appreciation of the juvenile mind, been endowed with dialectic powers, she might, in her protest against these abusive tamperings with her classic songs, have reasoned thus: ‘ I do not aim to make a man of a child, for that is the work of Providence, but do I not know what a child is, and what are its wants, better than you, O most audacious Mrs. Science, and do I not believe in spite of your theories that the satisfaction of its natural wants is the best way to further the work of nature? . . . What is good taste to a child, — nay, what is the difference between the sensible and absurd, —before the discriminating powers are excited? Are not contrasts the means by which discrimination is provoked? Is not the pleasing most distinctly realized in the ugly, the true in the false, and the sensible in the absurd? I venture timidly into your own province, when I assert that the imitative dispositions of children, the perpetual make-believe and play of their tender years, and their ability to discriminate at the first dawn of intelligence the serious from the comic, are the means by which their common sense is nourished and the abstraction of meanings effected. Banish not then the grotesque, but set it off with the beautiful, that by the contrast the beauty of the beautiful may be realized. Tell them impossible stories, that the limits of the possible may be known. Talk nonsense and baby-talk, that good sense and correct language may be acquired. But in all this do not dissimulate: guard with religious care that first discrimination of intelligence, the earnest from the make-believe.’”—“It is wise,” he says, later on, “instead of directing the tasks of children and neglecting their sports, to direct the sports, and let the tasks take care of themselves.” — I wish it were practicable to quote the whole paper. ³³

Before the same club, Chauncey read other papers in the course of the next year or two. On May 21, he read upon the “Real Difference between the Philosophy of Ancient and of Modern Times;” on November 19, upon the “Rest of Plants on November 27, 1857, upon “Winds and Storms and on October 13, 1858, upon “The Stereoscope,” — an article in the form of a dialogue.

It was about the year 1856 that he was first drawn a little into general society, by means of those “Conversations” at Mrs. Charles Lowell’s, on Quincy Street, to which Mrs. Quincy has referred in the letter already quoted. He was also a member of a Shakespeare Club which used to meet at Mrs. Lowell’s house. Not only Chauncey, but many another young person in Cambridge, during those years, had reason to remember

with gratitude the wise and kindly interest which this admirable woman showed in gathering them about her. It was to her that the poet, her husband's brother, addressed this beautiful sonnet: — “Through suffering and sorrow thou hast passed, To show us what a woman true may be: They have not taken sympathy from thee, Nor made thee any other than thou wast; Save as some tree, which, in a sudden blast, Sheddeth those blossoms that are weakly grown, Upon the air, but keepeth every one Whose strength gives warrant of good fruit at last: So thou hast shed some blooms of gayety, But never one of steadfast cheerfulness; Nor hath thy knowledge of adversity Robbed thee of any faith in happiness, But rather cleared thine inner eyes to see How many simple ways there are to bless.” ³⁴ At the “Conversations,” Mrs. Quincy has truly indicated Chauncey’s position: it was found that he excelled us all; the others often saw themselves become little else than willing listeners at the keen and eager discussions that went on between Mrs. Lowell and him.

In 1857, Chauncey entertained the idea of going to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, and went so far as to allow his name to be mentioned as a candidate for a professorship there. At about this time, also, he was asked to go as professor to a Western college. But neither of these plans came to any thing.

In October, 1858, Mr. J. D. Runkle, Chauncey’s friend and associate in the work of the Nautical Almanac, began the publication of the “Mathematical Monthly,” a periodical which ran through three volumes, ending in September, 1861. Chauncey made several contributions to the first two volumes of this journal, as follows: Vol. I. p. 21 (October, 1858), “The Prismoidal Formula;” ib. p. 53 (November, 1858), “Extension

of the Prismoidal Formula;” ib. p. 244 (April, 1859), “The most Thorough Uniform Distribution of Points about an Axis;” Vol. II. p. 198 (March, 1860), “Properties of Curvature in the Ellipse and Hyperbola;” ib. p. 304 (June, 1860), “The Economy and Symmetry of the Honey-Bees’ Cells.”

On January 25, 1860, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Of this learned body, he was the Recording Secretary from May 26, 1863, to May 24, 1870. And he contributed to its publications the following two papers: viz., on May 8, 1860, one “On the Architecture of Bees,” — “Proceedings of the American Academy,” Vol. IV. p. 432; and on October 10, 1871, another on the “Uses and Origin of the Arrangement of Leaves in Plants,” This paper is printed also in the “Philosophical Discussions,” p. 296. In the “American Naturalist” for June, 1876, Vol. X. p. 326, a short paper was printed, at the instance of Professor Goodale of Harvard College, entitled “A Popular Explanation (for those who understand Botany) of the Mathematical Nature of Phyllotaxis. By the late Chauncey Wright.” To this article the following note is appended: “This article was prepared by Mr. Wright several years ago, at Professor Gray’s suggestion. In its manuscript form, it has been found of much interest and value to the botanical students in Harvard College. It is here reprinted, without change, from Mr. Wright’s notes.” The substance of the paper before the Academy, as I am informed by Professor Goodale, was incorporated in the English translation of Sach’s “Lehrbuch der Botanik.” ³⁵ — “Memoirs of the Academy,” New Series, Vol. IX. p. 379.