CHAPTER I.

When it was first proposed by a few friends of Chauncey Wright to collect into a volume his principal papers, it was intended to add to them, as a part of the same book, a selection from his letters. But afterwards this plan was changed. It seemed best, for the present at least, to respect the privacy of his letters, and to print them only for the reading of his friends.

Accordingly, at the beginning of the year 1877, the volume entitled “Philosophical Discussions” was published, with an Introduction by Professor Norton; while the letters were placed in my hands. The present volume consists in the main of selections from them. But it has been desired that some sketch of Wright’s personal history and characteristics should accompany the letters, and this I have undertaken to give. Professor Norton’s purpose, in his excellent “Biographical Sketch,” was not so much to state with any degree of fulness these personal details, as to indicate Wright’s characteristics as a thinker, and to furnish a key to his philosophical opinions.

My own qualifications for speaking of Chauncey Wright are those of a friend who had been intimate with him from boyhood to the day of his death. We went to the same school

from the time we were twelve years old; we entered college together, and had there a close friendship; and, after leaving college, although our callings were different, and others for most of the time saw more of him than I did, yet I saw much; I was for a time his room-mate; we travelled in company during the summer holidays for several years, and were often together on the most familiar footing. When his death came, although it brought to me the sad reflection that I had been for many years near a wisdom and sweetness which I had but imperfectly appreciated, I yet felt very keenly that it was my oldest and most intimate friend that had gone.

Chauncey Wright was born at Northampton, Massachusetts, on September 20, 1830: he lived there until 1848, when he entered Harvard College. All the rest of his life he passed at Cambridge, and died there on September 12, 1875. He was never married.

From the time he graduated, in 1852, until the year 1870, he was employed in the office of the Nautical Almanac, and in this way supported himself. While thus occupied, he took now and then a private pupil; for a year or two, he taught in the school for young ladies, maintained at Cambridge during some years by Professor Agassiz. In the year 1870, and afterwards, he was for a short time one of the University Lecturers, and again an instructor in the College. During the last fifteen years or so of his life at Cambridge, he was in the habit of writing occasionally for the reviews or newspapers, — principally for the “North American Review” and “The Nation.”

Such is the sum and abstract of his uneventful life. Let me now undertake, in presenting a selection from his letters, to add such details as may serve to explain them, or to illustrate his character.

On his father’s side, Chauncey came of a family which had lived at Northampton ever since the foundation of the town in 1654. Samuel Wright, the first of the line in this country, was also the ancestor of Silas Wright, Governor of New York. He had emigrated from England in 1630, had passed with others from the neighborhood of Boston to the Connecticut River, and after staying for a longer or shorter time at Hartford, Windsor, or Springfield (where he was a deacon), had been one of the little company of thirty-eight who finally went higher up the river and settled at Nonotuck, now Northampton. “Men of enterprise, of good sense, and truly Christian men: they combined industry and prudence, patient labor and economy.” —Rev. Dr. Allen's “Second Century Address delivered at Northampton, Oct. 29, 1854. ¹ One after another succeeded in the family line of the Wrights, living and dying in the town where his fathers had lived and died before him.

Chauncey’s grandfather was a private in the Revolutionary War. His father was Ansel Wright, a substantial, well-known, respected citizen, a deputy-sheriff of the county, and a prosperous dealer in those miscellaneous articles which are known in our country towns as “West India Goods and Groceries.” He was a man of very simple ways, laborious in his business, seeing little of his friends, and not much of his family, but cheerful, kindly, known and liked by everybody in the town. No object was more familiar in the streets of Northampton than the stout, short figure of the deputy-sheriff carelessly seated in his mud-bespattered, open buggy, as he drove with loose-hanging reins his ill-harnessed, ill-groomed, hard-used, but rapid horse. Quiet and kind as the deputy-sheriff was, he was also quick-minded, wise, and shrewd. Many a story is current in Northampton now which illustrates his good-natured wit and a skill that he had in entrapping rogues which must have amused even the victims themselves. He was a man of

irreproachable character, and a constant attendant at the little Unitarian church in Northampton, which he remembered in his will.A friend tells me: “Mr. Wright was always a pleasant man in his family, and very indulgent to his children, giving them more than they asked for, fond of joking with them, and allowing them the largest liberty in that way. George [the oldest son] liked to practise little tricks and catches upon his father, who always took them kindly,—for instance, getting his father to stand in a chair, and telling him that when he should ask him the third time to come down he would certainly come, whether he wanted to or not. Mr. Wright good-naturedly stood in the chair, and George called upon him twice to come down: he didn’t come down, — and he waited in vain for a third call.” ² He died in the year 1872.

The name of Chauncey’s mother was Elizabeth Boleyn, or Bullen; for the name here as well as in England was spelled both ways. With a sister who is still living at Northampton, she came from Enfield, in Connecticut, when they were small children. She died on September 10, 1848, just after Chauncey had entered college; she is remembered as a woman of sober character, good sense, and reserved habits.Of Mrs. Wright, a friend says: “Chauncey’s mother, unlike him, had dark hair and eyes and a dark skin: she was a quiet woman, and, as ---- says, hadn’t a particle of fun in her.” ³

Of Chauncey’s early days, he himself has furnished an amusing account in his “Life,” written in 1858, in the “Class- Book” of his class at Harvard College.

“I was born,” he says, . . . “near the autumnal equinox, just as the sun was about to enter the Balance. To this circumstance and to my equable temperament I ascribe the subsequent monotony of my life. My father Ansel Wright is . . . doubtless himself descended from a series of English Wrights, who in their day and generation were well known to their friends. . . .

“My memory of the earliest events of my life is nearly uniform; but, as years advanced, a few salient events stand as landmarks, with no particular propriety that I can discover,

except perhaps the fact that they happened at moments in my life when I was unusually conscious, and serve to indicate this state of mind. The baby on which I was founded was, I suppose, like other babies, except in respect to its destiny, of which, however, its friends knew nothing at that time. At an early period in its life, its grandmother discovered on its head, which was born without hair, a light down, from which she predicted the present color of my hair.

“This child, though unusually sober and good-natured, was in no way remarkable, except at the time, as being the baby; but this I have observed is ever a source of wonder. I bear at the present moment upon my .forehead the mark of a wound which this child received in its first attempts at walking, and by which among other features I was afterwards distinguished.

“My father was a Democrat and an ardent supporter of Andrew Jackson, then President; and I escaped only by the skin of my teeth (not then grown) from receiving the name of this statesman. Fortunately, the Fates and my mother interfered, and gave to this infant the name I now bear. This name, by which he was so generally and so familiarly called, even by friends who were not intimately acquainted with him, was not a family name: it was selected by his parents because they happened to like it. ⁴

“The first day at the infant school I distinctly remember as one of the saddest in my early life, a day of grief inconsolable. My teacher, or the lady who, I suppose, afterwards became my teacher, endeavored to comfort me by offering me something to drink, — what, I do not distinctly remember. It may have been milk or some sweet beverage. My fainting spirit with all its tender rootlets, ruddy torn from home, could find no sustenance in earthly fluids; and so I came to my letters in tears.

“From the earliest period of my conscious life, I have shrunk

from every thing of a startling or dramatic character. I was indisposed to active exercise, to any kind of excitement or change. I was never remarkable at any kind of sport; never could see the value or significance of any kind of formality. In illustration of this, I remember a circumstance in my earliest school-days. The school-mistress wished to introduce the custom of kneeling at morning prayer. This I obstinately refused to do, or at least obstinately did not do. The penalty for my disobedience was to kneel by the teacher’s side, — a position of dramatic interest by which my spirit was broken.

“I was in general a very tractable boy, and never was flogged at school, though I remember some slight corrections. A friend writes from Northampton: “Chauncey first went to school to a Miss Burt, with whom he was a great favorite, — he was such a good, gentle little boy. She used to teach the children to repeat hymns, but could not get Chauncey to learn them, or the alphabet, or any thing out of a book. He would sit still and listen to his mates, and after a time the teacher was surprised to find that he was learning all that she was teaching the others. In this way, he had learned some thirty hymns before he had mastered the alphabet. . . . His aunt tells me that he was the best little boy she ever saw. The only mischief she ever knew him to be guilty of was upsetting a pan of sq.uash prepared for pies: it was on an upper shelf, and he was curious about the contents of the pan, and, in pulling it down to look in, it went all over him from head to foot. He said not a word to any one, but took off his jacket, and hid it away in a loft, cleansed himself and his trowsers as well as he could, and went to his father and asked for a new jacket. His father expressed a mild surprise, but gave him the jacket.” ⁵ I had some little ambitions, such as all boys have, but they were for the most part of a solitary nature. I never aspired to be a leader among boys, and never cared for their quarrels and parties. If I aspired to a place, it was to a solitary place and a peculiar one, not within the general aim of the boys. At one time, however, my ambition took a social turn. While I was still in the district school, I conceived an ardent attachment for one of the school-girls, which I have never mentioned

before this writing to any living soul. I did not even intimate it to the young lady herself, but rather built small castles, or very diminutive houses in the air, wherein I dwelt in fancy with her I fancied, — I will not say adored. Such was the character of all the attachments or fancies I have subsequently had.

“Another social turn of my ambition was at the High School, where I studied hard for one of a series of prizes. I obtained one, not the first of the series, but the first and last in my past life. I carried to this school and retained the character of good boy. I was never flogged; and, on the occasion of receiving the prize I have mentioned, I was publicly praised as the only boy who had received, in that term of the school, no marks for tardiness or bad behavior. This virtue of punctuality I have since lost in college, principally in the Senior year, in which I received two private admonitions for cutting prayers. In this respect, then, the boy was not father to the man; though I think this can be explained, when we consider that I was not tempted like other boys by their sports, and that I was carefully trained to punctuality at home. Tardiness is the natural result of an indolent disposition, and this I have always had. I had in my boyhood a violent temper; but I was not quarrelsome, nor did I ever cultivate pugnacious qualities. My indolence has since completely mastered my temper.

“At the age of ten, I formed a liking for the study of astronomy, and my zeal in this easily overcame all the fondness for those surprises which had previously constituted the great attraction of New-Years’ gifts, and so I asked my father for that puerile book, Burritt’s Geography and Atlas of the Heavens; but I afterwards lost my interest in this study.”

The first letter that Chauncey ever wrote has been preserved. It was written to his grandmother and his aunt, then

in the State of New York, when he was twelve years old. I will give it, omitting only a name, just as the boy wrote it, with all its imperfections on its head. The sending of a letter in those days had not ceased to be a rather important transaction in a pecuniary way. The postage on this letter is marked in red ink on the outside—for it was before the day of postage-stamps— as “18 3/4.”

To his Grandmother and to his Aunt, Mrs. Clarke.

Northampton, April 29, 1843.

Dear Grandmother and Aunt, — As this is the first time I ever wrote a letter you need not expect much, but as I understand writing letters does not consist in telling what I never have done before, but in telling about the family and other things, I will begin by telling you that we are all well. I have had a sore throat two or three days back, but now have nearly got over it. About three or four weeks ago George took our cutting machine up in town and got it sharpened. He had not had it much more than a week afterwards when he cut his first two fingers off in the middle of the nails. He lost one of the ends in the hay and threw the other in the fire. They bled for some time, and after a while he began to faint. Father and mother led him to the bed. Father then went to the door, where he fainted away, and fell full length upon the platform, but we soon brought him too. George’s fingers are now healing very fast. We have had a queer season for spring, but it is more like spring now. We have some snow on the ground but it is now going very rapidly. The school is now out and also the school in South St. When the last begins, Fred is going. Frank has got done working for us. He has moved up in South St. and has set up Soap and Candle business by himself, and has his shop in the old Dye House, between Mr. Davis’es shop and Mr. Kingsley’s house. Fred says

he wants to see Grandma. Asabel has got over his last summers disorder. He can now talk very plain. Aunt Polly’s folks are all well. They have moved in with Sam’l. Jr. Aunt Electa’s foaks are all well. Mr. Rust has bought a monkey for the shop. The day after he bought it George brought it down hear where he bit Ansel on the head. They carryed him to the shop again. There is one girl born in Maple St. Mrs. Dexter Clark is the claimer thereof. Ansel and I are going to lose one of our school-teachers, for Miss Alden is going to get married to Josiah Parsons of this town. Father keeps the black horses a going, and is as much hurried as ever. ---- has been stealing from his Grandmother, and has gone to the state’s prison for one year. Since writing the above, Frank’s babe has died after being sick about five days with the scarlet fever. We have had a higher flood hear than the Jeferson flood, as I suppose you have read in one of our Northampton papers. Our hatchway wall fell in. The water was so high that it ran over our front yard fence. We have had a hard storm and the water is rising very fast, and there is some prospect of an other such a flood. Un. Sam has hired the mine farm. I believe I have wrote all I can think of, and will stop by requesting you to write: We all send our love to you.

Yours, &c.

Chauncey Wright.

In this letter, Chauncey speaks of a great flood. His father’s house stood (and still stands) on Maple Street, near Mill River, and on the southerly side of it, — just at the edge of that great unfenced Northampton meadow which stretches away on both sides of Mill River to the Connecticut, and spreads into the Hadley meadow beyond the larger stream. A mile and a half to the south-east, in full sight, just across the Connecticut, Mount Holyoke rises suddenly out of the plain. This Mill River is the same which became so tragically

famous in the spring of 1874, by a flood which came from the breaking away of a dam. The flood to which Chauncey’s letter refers was of another sort, — such as often comes in the spring, when the Connecticut, swollen by the melting of the snows in the upper country, overspreads the meadows and fills the channel of Mill River with “back water.” Mr. Wright and his neighbors used not seldom to be flooded, and sometimes cut off from all their usual means of communication with the town. Now the waters are shut out by a dike. Chauncey was fond of speculating on the phenomena of these streams; and it is probable that he found in them his earliest provocation to those studies in natural science which always had a special hold on his attention.

In the next letter will be found some amusing illustrations of an early habit which Chauncey had of writing verse. He continued it through his school-days, but then wholly abandoned it. It seemed odd to the rest of us at school — confounding, as we did, the form of poetry with the substance — to find Chauncey writing his compositions in verse, for he exhibited in his dealings little sentiment or emotion: indeed, his habits were rather marked by an unusual amount of that reserve in such matters which passes with boys for good sense. It is not difficult now to see that what attracted Chauncey to this form of writing was the exercise of ingenuity which he found in it. He continued always fond of ingenious modes of expression: the clinching of an argument by a happy phrase always gave him a peculiar pleasure. The reader of his letters, as well as of his graver writings, will notice this not seldom. His wit also may properly enough be mentioned here: many will remember the excellent quality of it. Since I have been preparing this book, I have accidentally, at a public table, overheard a saying of his quoted as Charles Lamb’s, — his description of that bookish creation, a lad. “A lad,” he said, “is a boy with a man’s hand on his head.” Some of his friends will remember that he had a favorite amended reading of certain lines in Shakespeare, after the manner of the commentators. ⁶

It was the same mental characteristic which led him in later life to his experiments in legerdemain, of which Mr. Norton has spoken in his Biographical Sketch.A much-quoted passage in “As You Like It,” he insisted, is manifestly corrupt, and yet needs only an astonishingly simple transposition to bring it right. It should read, — “And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds . . . stones in the running brooks, Sermons in books, and good in every thing.” ⁷ As for his youthful verse, it was, indeed, often “ingenious;” but it neither claimed nor possessed any other merit. One of his schoolmates writes: “I have no recollection of him as a boy except that he astonished us all one Saturday, shortly after entering the High School, by reciting, in the way of declamation, a piece of poetry of his own composition. I remember consoling myself for my measureless inferiority in not being able to write a single line, by thinking that, after all, the verses were not remarkably good.”

To Mrs. Clarke.

Northampton, April 18th, 1844.

Dear Aunt, — My last letter was clouded by the mournful event of Asahel’s death, but those gloomy clouds have broke away and the sun now shines with resplendent glory. We are obliged to acknowledge that he who taketh also giveth, yea, and twofold also. On the morn of Wednesday, April 3rd to the great delight of all we were presented with a sister, and at eve with a brother.

We now look forward to the future
And humbly wish them future bliss,
And may they live to age mature,
They will if heaven will grant our wish.

The boy weighs six and the girl five pounds. They now enjoy good health. I shall not go very far into detail,

but simply say that the girl resembles Fred, and the boy Asahel.

Mother is comfortable and the rest of our family are all very well. Father requests me to tell you that he has seen Mr. Searl since I wrote before, and Searl said that he thought that he could pay one hundred dollars on that note, about the first of June next.

Yours affectionately,
Chauncey Wright.

THE TWINS.

United by one strict relation
They do unbroken keep,
A concord suited to their station,

Togeather eat and sleep.
And may they grow and prosper well And soon their use display,
Keeping one harmonious spell,

Togeather work and play.
And may they, when in old age prime Look back upon the past,
Repenting all the misspent time,
Togeather die at last.

Chauncey Wright.

Chauncey was the second son and the third child, in a family of nine. Two of the children were girls: both of these, and three of the boys, died young. Neither of the twins, whose birth came on with such “resplendent glory,” lived to see the old age which the poet invoked for them. There remained four sons. George, the oldest child, — four years older than Chauncey, — grew up to share his father’s business as a grocer, became, like him, a deputy-sheriff, and died in November, 1865. He was an upright man, and widely beloved. His wife and several children survived him, and now live at

Northampton. Next younger than Chauncey was Ansel, who also succeeded to both branches of his father’s business, and who lives now at Northampton, the last survivor of the household. Frederick, a younger brother, born in 1839, entered the army as a private in the Tenth Massachusetts Regiment at the beginning of the war of the Rebellion, was made successively second and first lieutenant of the Twenty-seventh Massachusetts Regiment, and was mortally wounded at Cold Harbor while acting as adjutant of his regiment. He died at a hospital in Washington, on June 27, 1864.

My acquaintance with Chauncey began when we were about twelve years old, he being my senior by a few months only. My father had moved to Northampton in 1841, and then lived for a little time quite near Mr. Wright’s house. I do not recall Chauncey distinctly at this time, but remember well his brother George, who was the hero of all the small boys of the neighborhood, — a great swimmer, a wonder, in our eyes, of physical strength, and as kind as he was strong. I must have met Chauncey often in the train that followed our leader; but our eyes and thoughts were all fixed on him, and not on each other. We were together also at the High School, and, a little later, at what was called the Select High School, where twenty or thirty of the more advanced scholars, both boys and girls, were for a few years brought together by themselves. This experiment at co-education was soon given up; but we upon whom it was tried were most fortunate, for it brought us under the care of an admirable teacher, Mr. David S. Sheldon, now a professor in Griswold College, at Davenport, in Iowa. The development of Chauncey’s mind owed much to the kindly influence and the wise and original methods of instruction of this thoughtful, refined, devout, and excellent man. One of his pupils, in a published notice of Chauncey’s death, writes: “Mr. Sheldon led his pupils out into the fields and woods, and taught them to observe the facts of nature, — the

life of plants; the life and habits of birds, animals, and insects; the movements of the heavenly bodies; the phenomena of the clouds, — and very soon it happened that one and another were absorbed in some special study of nature. The boy Chauncey took to watching the stars by night and investigating the phenomena of natural philosophy by day. He made himself a rude measurer of the distances of the stars; and the neighboring boys at times gathered about him to watch with openmouthed wonder his simple experiments with the humble apparatus of his own contriving.” Chauncey always remembered Mr. Sheldon with grateful appreciation.In his Class-Book “Life,” he says, in a passage which immediately follows that I have already quoted: “In the higher English and Classical branches of the Northampton High School, I came under the care of a most kind and zealous teacher, Mr. David S. Sheldon, now a Professor in Iowa College. I was inspired by him with a zeal for natural history, which I have also since lost. I tramped in his company and under his guidance through most of the wilds of Northampton, collecting, preparing, and naming specimens of plants, bugs, birds, and reptiles. We drew into our pursuits nearly the whole school, and founded a museum of natural history, which, I think, is still in existence. My private collection of plants was partly destroyed by fire a few years before I went to college, but not till my whole interest had perished, never to rise from its ashes.” ⁸ Nothing could have been more consonant with his own nature than the gentle and sympathetic methods of his teacher: very novel they were to us in our experiences at the public schools.

A friendDr. Thomas Gilfillan, of Northampton. ⁹ who knew Chauncey at school, but hardly met him again until the last year of his life, writes: “Chauncey was a peculiar boy, somewhat reserved, and still not reserved in the sense of bashfulness, so common in boys of that age. He was very quiet, and much given to what is called ‘ brown study.’ I think his most noticeable peculiarity was his abstractedness, amounting to absent-mindedness, especially

in the school-room. Often have I seen him sit through a whole school session with a sheet of paper before him, and with pencil, ruler, and compasses, fill the sheet with curves and circles, squares and triangles, and all manner of figures, overlapping and underlying each other in apparent mathematical chaos, — whether of any significance to himself no one knew, certainly of no significance to any one else. Some looked upon this as evidence of something wrong, — a screw loose somewhere. When the class in Latin, Greek, or what not, was called, Chauncey sometimes failed to hear; and one would be sent to rouse him from his brown study, only to find that he had entirely forgotten to look at the lesson. On this account, he was not an apt scholar, except in mathematics, in which he always excelled, and with which he was always delighted. Out of doors, he was a quiet boy, seldom joining in the boisterous school-boy games, preferring to wander away by himself and within himself, yet always companionable and pleasant, ready to chat with any one who would chat with him, and always well liked by all his mates. He was very observing of every thing about him, making quaint remarks, and philosophizing upon it. To any one who sympathized with him in his study, or rather observation, of nature, he was a rare companion. It was my good fortune to be intimate with him in those earlier days; and pleasantly did we spend many happy hours together roaming about, — nutting, swimming, playing; sometimes talking, sometimes silent, but always with pleasant enjoyment.”

It was, perhaps, in some of those “brown studies” at Mr. Sheldon’s school, to which Dr. Gilfillan refers, that Chauncey, then fourteen years old, arrived at the “theories” which are so oddly sprung upon his brother George in the following letter. I am careful to reproduce the misspelling and the want of punctuation that set off so quaintly the conceits of the wise little head.

To his Brother George.

Northampton, Mass., July, 1845.

Dear Brother, — This Sunday morning it is so hot that I have to take my seat in the jail shed At this time, for a single year, the deputy-sheriff was keeper of the county jail, and lived in the jailer’s house, then at the lower end of Pleasant Street. ¹⁰ to keep cool while I write to tell you what ways the wheel of fortune has turned since last Sunday. You need not expect that it has made many revolutions any way for it is as lazy as any of us this hot weather

We are all as well as the weather except baby who is a little down. He fell down the cellar stares the other day. Father hurt his foot the other day

We have had no prisoneres here who are going to Springfield or have gone since we wrote last

We have had no new prisoneres since father wrote except ---- committed for debt.

Theories

In the begining God existed a mind like us who are made in his image or as we shall be in the future life and the qualities which characterise us and are finite in limit characterised him and were infinite in limit he created the earth ages before man with all the heavenly bodies now in existance except may be a few Here the philosopher had his doubts. After saying “except a few,” he inserted “may be” with a caret. ¹¹

During this period it was void like the comics This spelling preserves the local boyish pronunciation of comets. ¹² at present and afterwards when it was fully formed the great changes were wrought in the space of six days. It was clothed with verdure, and was set performing its foremost and eternal work, of nourishing living beings of giving enjoyment to millions upon million times millions of minds. The present world is

divided into three parts Animals Vegitables &Minerals the latter being but the raw materials the others transformations of minerals into that which is capable of containing and giving enjoyment to living minds Animals and Vegitables are destinguished from each other by performing the same office in different ways the former directly and the latter indirectly by giving nourishment to the animal. Minerals comprise all solids and fluids except those comprised by the other two and are of infinite duration vital perishes and needs renewal this nature produces. It is known that a graft from and old tree in a new one dies of old age before the other parts the potatoe being but the root dies in the course of time and new is raised from the seed. Nature efects this in the animal by the sexes. In the vegitable by the same thing in a different form. In the vegitable the sexes are unite in one plant with some exceptions the office of the female is to give the seed form of the male to give it youthfullness otherwise it would die of old age as soon as the female.

Thus much of theory. Please give your opinion.

Love from all to you and your’s

Your’s affectionately

Chauncey Wright.

Mr. Norton has remarked of Chauncey that “no strong personal influence seems to have affected the development of his intelligence.” This was peculiarly true of his boyhood. There was little about him to attract the attention of persons outside of his family, and his life at home was unusually withdrawn from the agitations of society. But, even if circumstances had been different, it would have taken much to make any strong impression upon his invincible quietness. To say of him that he was mentally sluggish at this time would probably give a wrong impression of one who in some directions was gentle, sensitive, and easily moved, and whose

mind, throughout his life, was always in its own way exercising itself upon some problem or other. But he certainly developed slowly, “Bashfulness and apathy,” says Mr. Emerson, “are a tough husk, in which a delicate organization is protected from premature ripening.” ¹³ and in boyhood one of his main characteristics was a placid, cool mind, which it was impossible to ruffle. Northampton at that time was very much under the influence of the Orthodox churches; and in the spring of 1846 there came a “revival” which swept in most of the scholars of our school, — for even so early was it thought well to agitate violently the religious sensibilities. Chauncey, however, was not to be moved, but kept throughout an attitude of amused observation, — a state of mind which had in it not merely the distrust or indifference of a Unitarian, but the cool curiosity of a philosopher.

In 1847, Mr. Wright’s house was burned down. It was now found expedient that Chauncey should take some part in his father’s business; and so he used, before going to school in the morning, to drive his father’s ice-cart about town, and deliver ice. In March, 1848, he finally left the school, and was for some time employed in his father’s shop. But it was soon determined that such a position was not the best one for this thoughtful boy. There was at that time an admirable woman in Northampton, who was a strong power in the community, who took, indeed, — within the little limits of the town, — all human affairs for her province, and who, in casting her eyes over the town, had observed Chauncey, and marked the ungenial region where his lot was just now cast. This was Mrs. Lyman, the wife, and about that time the widow, of the Hon. Joseph Lyman, who had been in former years the Judge of Probate, and later the high-sheriff, of the county. In the privately printed Memoir of Mrs. Lyman, written by her daughter Mrs. Lesley, of Philadelphia, the writer says: —

“Scarcely ever did Chauncey’s father, the deputy-sheriff, drive past her door, that she did not hail him, to impress on his mind, with all the earnestness and pathos of her nature, that Chauncey must have a collegiate education; and I think, if he did not want her to be a thorn in his side until this dear wish of her heart was accomplished, he must have made a circuit to avoid her. But he was a kind-hearted man, and valued her sympathy and interest; and she never forgot the day when he came to tell her that Chauncey should go to Harvard, nor the sweet smile of the shy youth, who timidly thanked her for using her influence in his behalf. That day made a high festival for her, and, to use her own expressive phrase, ‘ was worth a guinea a minute to her. ’”

In May, 1848, Chauncey was sent over to the Williston Seminary, at Easthampton, four miles away, to fit for college. The time was short — only three or four months — before the examination, and, in some particulars, the candidate was very backward. He found the preparation a tedious business; he had no friends at Easthampton, and he hated, the study of the classics, to which he had now to bend. In August, he and I went to Cambridge together to be examined. Our friend, Mrs. Lyman, was already there, and had done what she could to prepare the way. “I have seen the President,” Edward Everett. ¹⁴ she wrote early in August, “and said all I could for Chauncey, and I have no doubt he will get in.” He did get in, but not without conditions. In the Class-Book, Chauncey gives a brief account of the end of his school-days and the beginning of his college life, which is, I believe, inaccurate as to some of the dates. ¹⁵

The minister of the Unitarian parish in Northampton at this time was the Rev. Rufus Ellis, now of the First Church, in Boston. Dr. Ellis has kindly sent me his recollections of Chaunceya portion of his letter I reserve for a later page.

“As you know,” he says, “my knowledge of our friend goes back to pleasant Northampton days, and to his boyhood. My two most vivid pictures of the youth present him first in his father’s shop, and again as he stood before me translating from some Latin text-book and from Felton’s Greek Reader. The days in the store were an intercalation, and I must have had a dim sense of this; for I recall my thought about him as out of place behind the counter, and not a person to buy groceries of. He stands before me, in the picture that comes up before me now,—with his light hair and pale face,—as one who was not there to stay, — a kind of visitor and temporary person in the shop. His garments, I distinctly remember, were not like those of the rest, and would have answered well enough for an Easthampton student or even a Harvard Freshman of the period. It could not have be.en long after this time, when he came to me with his school-books, to see how much he could recall of his High-School Latin and Greek, and whether it would suffice to tide him over the examinations for admission to Cambridge.

“And I have him before me again in the little room which opened out of the Doctor’s office, where I was then accustomed to hear the recitations of two pupils who were preparing for college. He had forgotten a part of the little which he had learned, and made poor work of it. Would it be worth while for him to try? I must confess that I said no. I could not see how with such a meagre outfit there could be any thing but a disappointment. But he was like the boy who, when asked if he could read Greek, said in reply that he did not know, for he never had read Greek, but would try. He made the attempt; and thanks, it may be, to something which he could do, or to the discerning spirit of one and another examiner, he was admitted.” '

Before passing on to Chauncey’s college days, let me find a place here for a note relating mainly to the period of his

school-life, written by a lady Mrs. Josiah P. Quincy, of Quincy. ¹⁶ who was his schoolmate. “My school-girl reminiscences,” she writes, “have not sufficient clearness of outline to be of value; for the powers of his mind, which afterwards were developed in the direction of mathematics and philosophy, made no adequate impression upon a fellow-student in Latin and the common English branches of the Northampton town school. I recall, however, the manliness of his character, which was all the more striking from the modesty and reserve with which it was associated. I believe the first party he attended was given at our house. In the winter vacations, he returned to the work of helping his father, and was accustomed to drive his cart about the town, in fulfilment of orders that were left at the store. He came into our kitchen during the morning of the party to distribute groceries, and showed the instincts and dignity of a gentleman to no less advantage than in the evening, when he mingled with the guests, and took his part in games and dances that were quite new to him. This may seem a small matter, and yet it showed a frank self-respect, a certain breadth and strength of bearing which are seldom to be found in one so sincerely modest as our friend. Another remembrance of Chauncey was at one of the pleasant conversation parties of Mrs. Charles Lowell. At Cambridge, about ten years later. ¹⁷ There he carried off the honors of the evening, with the same quiet self-possession with which he discharged the humblest offices connected with his father’s business.”

During his Freshman and Sophomore years, Chauncey roomed in the third story of “Massachusetts,” at the southwest corner, No. 25. This was not a Freshman room, and he had obtained it by buying out a Senior. My brother was a Junior, and we roomed for a year directly across the entry from Chauncey. During this year, we saw each other constantly;

indeed, Chauncey passed the greater part of every day in our room. He seldom had a book in his hands, for neither at this time nor ever was he addicted to books, or much devoted to the regular studies of the college. When a recitation was immediately impending, he grew busy and sometimes agitated; but, for the most part, he was content to sit about and talk if anybody was ready to talk, or keep silent if others were busy. He had never much to say, but was always comfortable and a source of comfort to others, even in silence. It grew more and more surprising to us to see how little he read and how much he knew. His coming was always welcome: it was like the coming of a familiar member of one’s family, — nay, rather like that of some pet animal; it seemed the effect of mere gregarious instinct. He had generally, as I mentioned, little or nothing to say; he appeared to be thinking of nothing: certainly, he was not preoccupied by any thing that called for solitude or silence. He was always sympathetic, ready to listen, ready to talk, ' ready for an impulse in any direction. He was oddly impersonal. and his presence was as natural, as welcome, as little marked as the sunlight or the air. When strangers came near, he was very shy and silent, but among his intimates as playful as a child. Upon his singularly amiable and compliant disposition, some of us used occasionally to play, — to invite him, for instance, to take a pail and go down two flights of stairs to the college pump for our water. This experiment upon his good-nature was often tried; and I doubt if he ever held out in refusing. Sometimes, indeed, he gently resented the outrage, but he would soon yield to our clamorous reproaches, with a sweetness to which not even the young ruffians who abused him were quite insensible.

During a part of the Sophomore year, Chauncey shared his room with Mr. C. C. Langdell, then a member of the class just ahead of us, and now the Dane Professor in the Law

School, — during so much of the year as Mr. Langdell remained in college; for, having entered as a Sophomore, he left early in his own Junior year. They had met as strangers in the course of some negotiations about the room, and Mr. Langdell remained in college too short a time to form any intimate relations with a room-mate of a lower class; but he still recalls the ease with which Chauncey dealt with certain difficult matters in the Junior course in astronomy and physics which had puzzled him, although he was the best scholar in his class. He remembers also the trouble that Chauncey had in getting up his Latin and Greek. I was in the same division with Chauncey, and was often a witness to the poor results of his labors in these departments. There was indeed something comic in Chauncey’s helplessness and distress at a Latin, and especially a Greek, recitation. Small had been the work of preparation, and even disproportionately small was the harvest. He could neither translate nor pronounce respectably. But in mathematics he was easily master, and so in the physical sciences; while in moral and intellectual philosophy he was always good, and grew to be excellent. His themes and forensics also were good, and sometimes of unusual merit.

Chauncey never aimed to take high rank in college, but his standing was respectable; He was at his graduation the twenty-seventh scholar in a class of eighty-eight. ¹⁸ and under the rules of that day, which gave a part at Commencement to the first half of the class, his name appeared on the Commencement Programme for an essay on “Ancient Geometry.” “At the close of our course” he says in the Class-Book, “the world was deprived of the results of my learning, as embodied in my Commencement part, by an accident, which for a time disabled me as to my power of walking. When I recovered, I limped from Holworthy to the Nautical Office; and I have remained in its employments to the present time (July 24, 1858).” ¹⁹

When Chauncey came to college, he knew nobody except

four of his Northampton schoolmates who were there. For a good while he was hardly known at all out of this circle, but during the last two years he grew rapidly in the acquaintance and good opinion of his classmates. He was a member of the Rumford Society, the Natural History Society, and several others. He was not a member of the Institute of 1770. Of the Hasty Pudding Club, he became an honorary member after he graduated. In distributing the class honors, Chauncey was awarded the jack-knife. This dubious testimonial used to be given to “the homeliest man” in the class. I doubt if it was ever honestly awarded. Sometimes it was made the vehicle of ill-will, and sometimes of good-natured banter to a favorite; and the sum of money voted for it varied accordingly. In a later class, they disliked a man, and voted him the knife, with fifty cents to pay for it: in our class, they liked him, and voted him twenty-five dollars for it, — an amount which, as I well remember (for I helped in the search), Chauncey found it impossible to expend upon any single knife to be found in Boston. He took the vote of the class as it was meant, and was good-naturedly proud of the handsome gift.

But certainly Chauncey was not the homeliest man in the class, and nobody thought him so. He was not, indeed, handsome: he had thin, rather long, and very straight red hair, somewhat light blue eyes, and a complexion which grew painfully red with any unusual exposure to wind or sun. His head was large and well formed; but his features at that time had little about them that was marked, and his expression then was often dull and inanimate. He was rather large in person, and about five feet ten inches in height. Although not precisely awkward, he was without grace, and slow and heavy in his movements. He had also at this time little knowledge, care, or taste in dress. No popularity could come from his mere appearance and manner. Although there was nothing whatever in him that could offend one, yet there was, as I have

said before, little to attract a person who did not know him. Those, however, who did know him, found often a sweetness and composure in his face, — a steady thoughtfulness in the look and a light of quick intelligence in the eyes which held them fast. He was one whose face for a long time grew handsomer and nobler as he grew older, and those who saw him in his later years are aware how thoughtful, how expressive, and how fine a presence he had.

I can best complete the picture of Chauncey as he appeared to his classmates by quoting from the letters which some of them have sent me.

One with whom he was very intimate, who had been for a little while a schoolmate at Northampton, and was at one time his chum in college, George H. Fisher, now a member of the bar in Brooklyn, N. Y. ²⁰ writes: —

“He was so retiring and so little self-asserting that it was long before he was found out. We used to think he was irregular in his way of studying. But the fact is he was always studying, without going through the usual forms and appearances of it. The commonest occasions and incidents always set him thinking and philosophizing.

“Although we were chums during the Senior year [at Holworthy 15], I did not see much more of him than other classmates, on account of a way he had of living wherever he happened to be. This disposition was more easy of gratification, because he was always so warmly welcomed wherever he came. The idea of ever seeing too much of Chauncey Wright never entered the head of anybody. If his host was occupied for the moment, Chauncey had a way of sitting quietly, musing, or reading what happened to be handy, always carrying away something from it. He never seemed tired or sleepy, except in the mornings about prayer time, — rarely rousing till the last bell.

“Of course, it was well understood by the time we graduated

that he had remarkable talents. When we left college, there was no one more respected or better liked. He was, I believe, literally without any unfriendly antagonisms of the slightest kind. His gentleness, good-humor, kindliness, selfforgetfulness, were as universally recognized as his thinking power.”

From the letter-of another classmate, John T. Perry, now editor of the “Cincinnati Gazette.” ²¹ I take the following extracts: —

“I first knew him well on taking a room (Mass. 26) opposite his. This was at the beginning of the Sophomore year. ²² I was fond of metaphysics; and Chauncey and I used to have long discussions. . . . His originality was shown by his frequent solution of some deep problem. His discoveries were not always very important; but they were worked out in his own mind, and were seldom helped by reading. I rarely knew of his reading a novel. One queer exception occurs to me. On a Saturday evening, in the winter of our Senior year, he came to my room with a paper-covered novel, — Pierce Egan’s ‘ Quentyn Matsys,’ a fearfully sensational romance, based on the life of the famous blacksmith and artist of Antwerp. It was written in the most gorgeous and melodramatic style. Chauncey seemed to have got the idea that he had something very fine, and so we sat down to read the book to each other. He began; then I took up the book. The alternation, I think, was kept up for some time; but, finally, as I was reading in the small hours, I found that he had fallen fast asleep. I finished the story for myself, and then woke him up. I believe this was the only partnership in the study of romance that we ever engaged in. . . . There is no member of our class of whom I have pleasanter recollections.”

Professor Cary, of the Theological School at Meadville, — another classmate, who grew intimate with him in the west entry of Massachusetts, — writes as follows: —

“If I should describe my impressions of him by the use of negative epithets, I might seem to imply that positive qualities were wanting; and yet what I feel cannot be better expressed than by saying that he was not inordinately ambitious, not self-seeking, not envious, not suspicious, not critical of others’ faults, not resentful of injuries, not one against whose rough corners his friends were constantly jostling. . . . His maturity bore fruit of which his earlier youth hardly gave promise. I always, even in college, looked upon him as a philosopher, yet more as a practical than a speculative one; and so was somewhat taken by surprise when I found how high a rank he was gaining as an original thinker in the line of the most abstruse discussions of the times. Even within the past few days, I have been made to feel how inadequate had been my previous estimate of his powers, by reading in the London ‘Academy’ of the 24th ult. [Feb. 24, 1877] the unhesitating affirmation that he was ‘ one of the finest philosophical minds which America or any country has produced.’

“His practical philosophy seemed equal to any emergency; and no strange or unexpected circumstances ever excited him to any more vehement expressions than the utterance of his sole exclamatory oath, ‘ By Zeus! ’ uttered with a tone of unmingled surprise.”

Dr. Cheever, Chauncey’s chum in the Junior year at Mass. 28. ²³ now the Professor of Clinical Surgery in Harvard College, writes: —

“Chauncey Wright, Cary, Chase, and myself were very intimate in college. Wright roomed in Massachusetts two years, and I did three years. He was one of the most charming and genial of companions, and of wonderful conversational powers: this was. mostly in the form of philosophical or speculative soliloquy. Many nights we spent listening to him until one or two in the morning. We planned to start him by irritative or skeptical remarks; and he would run like a good clock.

He was, in talk, like what we read of Coleridge, De Quincey, or Hamilton. He was shy as a hermit crab; and the entrance of one not in the set would send him to his hole for the rest of the evening.”

Another view of Chauncey may be had through the eyes of the second scholar in the class: Addison Brown, now a lawyer in the city of New York. Brown entered Sophomore, coming to Cambridge from Amherst College. ²⁴ —

“My acquaintance with Chauncey in college was comparatively little. Not being in the same half of the class, The classes then recited in two divisions made alphabetically. ²⁵ I saw him only at the elective recitations in mathematics, The electives then began with the Junior year. ²⁶ which he took to the end of the course. I remember my first visit to his room, where I found him boxing with F. H. All the paraphernalia of the pugilist seemed prominent, with, I think, the antlers of a deer, and some other objects of natural history, hung about his room. My impression remained a long time that the college studies were of wholly secondary importance in that quarter. In the mathematical elective hour, he would occasionally exhibit an original method of arriving at the same result with Professor Peirce; and there he grew greatly in my horizon. . . . Whatever he said or did, it seemed but the surface only of a great deep beyond. It was the sense of reserved power in him which gave one the idea of greatness. His gentleness and sweetness of nature seem to me almost unexampled. I never saw even a ruffle in the great sea of his placidity and goodness.”

Chauncey, while in college, was not fond of letter-writing: it was with him a painful and elaborate exercise. I know of only a few letters written at this period, and these are of slight importance.

In November, 1850, he writes to his friend Fisher: “It will doubtless be a source of great satisfaction to you to hear of

the success of the Union meeting of yesterday [at Faneuil Hall, in Boston], which I had the pleasure to attend. Dr. Warren presided; and speeches were made by B. R. Curtis, Hallet, Choate, et ceteri, and demonstrations of enthusiasm by the audience, among whom your humble servant, sitting behind the great American Eagle, gave sundry manifestations of delight by beating the floor with the end of a broken umbrella. . . . Ten of our class are going to teach, and fifteen of the Seniors.” This refers to a custom, now long discontinued. While there was a six weeks winter vacation, ending about the first of March, it was the habit of the college authorities to give leave of absence to such students as needed it, from Thanksgiving (the last Thursday of November) for the rest of the winter term. By this means, many students were able to command a solid three months for teaching in the country district schools. ²⁷

In the winter vacation of the Junior year (January 20, 1851), he wrote from Northampton to me: “In my excursions about town to see the improvements, I notice a large church standing close beside the boys’ school-house. Situated at that time in the low land behind the “Old Church.” ²⁸ . . . Cigars have lost their flavor, and smoked in solitude increase my melancholy. Yet, as I have said on a former occasion, I mean to accustom myself to a solitary nook in this desert country, neither courting the favors nor tempting the frowns of Fortune; and then, if I am not content, I will say with the poet, —

‘ It is not grief that bids me moan:
It is that I am all alone.’

To-morrow I shall commence the Homer, This probably refers to a college “condition.” ²⁹ and shall probably make it the spice of my life for the rest of the vacation; for I don’t intend to hurry myself.”

Doubtless, Chauncey did miss the society of his only classmate at Northampton; for during the vacations, while in

college, and for several years afterwards, we were constantly together. We walked to Mount Holyoke, and traversed the meadows in all directions; we explored the paper-mill, and cotton factories, and all the machine-shops we could find. We sat under the trees, and read and talked, and had many a long discussion. Chauncey would come up to my father’s house, and sit all day and late into the evening; sometimes he went home twice a day for his meals, and sometimes he did not; but it was the regular programme that we were together every day and all day, in the same simple, affectionate, matter-of-course way that had gone on in the Freshman year. At this time, Emerson was a very favorite author with him; and, although his own habit of mind grew to be very different from that of Mr. Emerson, he never lost a cordial appreciation of the utterances which had stirred his early enthusiasm. As I have said, he read few books; but he had, in succession, certain favorite authors. The first in order was Emerson: he was a constant resource in the vacation-readings at Northampton. Then, soon after leaving college, he took eagerly to Bacon; and there was a time when his friends heard little from him that was not flavored by the wisdom of the “Novum Organum.” At about the same time, and for a good while, he was a careful student and an ardent admirer of Hamilton. To him succeeded Mill. And then came Darwin and the literature to which the “Origin of Species” gave rise. Darwin was a thinker who fairly drew from him an unbounded homage; and this lasted till his death; I never heard him speak of any one with such ardor of praise. During his last days, he had returned again to Bacon, and was reading Plato with deep satisfaction. But, as to all his later likings, a sufficient guide is found in his correspondence, in Professor Gurney’s letter, which I print on a later page, and in the articles which Mr. Norton has preserved in the “Philosophical Discussions.”

When he graduated in the summer of 1852, Chauncey

became immediately, during the vacation, a computer in the Nautical Almanac office, then lately established at Cambridge. The salary, although small, was enough for his outlay; and being increased from time to time, as he was promoted or as his duties changed, it continued through nearly the whole of his life to be his principal means of support. He added a little to his income by teaching; and, in the latest years of his life, he taught or lectured for a short time in the College. From these sources, or from the writing of an occasional scientific article in the “New York Evening Post,” or from his other articles in the “Nation” and the “North American Review,” came all his pecuniary income until the death of his father in 1872. This brought him a small amount of money; but he never was able to be very free in his expenditures, and at the time of his death he left but little property.

The work at the almanac office was very easy to him, and was of a kind which did not bind him to any particular hours. He invented new ways of computing, which shortened his labor; and I have heard him say that he could do his year’s work in two months of steady application. But the duties were solitary, and grew to be very tedious. So long, however, as friends were thick about him, so long even as he could find some one with whom to pass his abundant leisure and share his teeming speculations, he was very happy; nay, if he could do no better, that affectionate and simple nature was happy enough if even any busy and preoccupied friend could be found, and he might sit with him, and smoke and think and ruminate in silence.

During all the early part of his post-graduate life at Cambridge, there was a good number of his friends at the professional schools; some became connected with the College, like Gurney and Chase. He formed also new friendships with others who became from time to time attached to the College. In later years, that acute and learned lawyer, the late Nicholas

St. John Green (afterwards a Professor in the Boston Law School), whom he had first known as a student at Northampton, and whose permanent home was in Cambridge, came gradually to be intimate with Chauncey.

The following letter to his friend Fisher was written within a year after they had left college: —

To George H. Fisher.

Cambridge, May 8, 1853.

If you were ever so culpably negligent as I have been, you can conceive the difficulty of beginning this letter. If it were not for adding to other difficulties an inconvenience of posture, I should write this letter on my knees.

Proverbs have condemned procrastination (and critics have condemned proverbs), and so I will only tarry a moment to remark what a fearful object a long-neglected duty gets to be.

Perhaps in your own experience you may have noticed what a magnitude a little duty will assume, after we have left it far back in the distance, and turn to look at it through the mists of a guilty conscience.

Thus this letter has haunted with its fearful front (which now lies nearly finished before me) those leisure hours devoted to laziness and smoking.

The warm weather has begun to remind me forcibly of those lazy but palmy days of last year when . . . Holworthy was the scene of Eden from which too much knowledge forced us to part.

Last year I have seen very little of the so-called real life of the world, for I have hardly got out into the world yet, and as I am now disposed I never shall; for though there is a weary feeling in hours of leisure, and a longing for something more active and inspiriting than my pursuits, still the satisfactions of a man of active business only compensate in my opinion for the jostlings and the conflicts of his life.

Upon reconsidering the above sentence, I can’t see how it can be interpreted into a joke; and I must therefore inform you by way of explanation that I am not sentimental, but have written the aforegoing for want of aught else to say. ... I haven’t written much news, not knowing what is news to you; not knowing what you know, I can’t tell what to tell you. If you wish to be enlightened, you must show your darkness.

On December 4, 1853, he writes to Fisher, correcting the statement of a friend that he had a salary of $1,500 at the Nautical Almanac office and a good chance of being appointed to a tutorship in college. “Discount a third,” he says, “from the one, and a half from the other, and you have a fair view of the worldly advantages of your old chum. . . . Come to Cambridge, where many of our class still congregate. ... In the Law School there is a vigor of thought and a stimulus to study which can’t be found anywhere else.”

At the beginning of the fall of 1854, after a short absence, I returned to Cambridge for seven years, and, entering the Law School, took lodgings with Chauncey. We were now chums for a year or more. There is little in this period that I can recall as worthy of special mention. Although I was very busy in my own occupations, I saw much of Chauncey and thoroughly enjoyed our arrangement. We read together on Sundays; and in our walks about the country, according to an old habit, we examined machinery, gas-works, factories, the glass-works at East Cambridge, and the like. After a while, the need of economy and the kindness of a friend drew me to other quarters; and in a few years Chauncey went to lodge — where he continued for a good many years — in Little’s Block, at the corner of Main Street and Dunster. His classmate Gurney, then a tutor in the College, had been living in this building since the beginning of 1857, and remained there until the fall of 1863. During the whole of this period,

Chauncey had the advantage of constant intercourse with Gurney, — an opportunity which was of great benefit to him, and which he improved to the utmost, making great and almost unending draughts upon the hospitality of his friend by day and far into the night. Nor was Chauncey the only habitual visitor there. The evening light in the second-story, front-corner room on Dunster Street was now, for a number of years, the beacon to summon in as bright and goodly a company of young men as Cambridge could then supply.

During most of this time, up to 1861, Chauncey boarded with Mrs. Lyman, our old and most kind friend from Northampton, who had come to Cambridge in 1853. Here, in the summers that followed, Chauncey had the pleasure, more often than before, of meeting Mrs. Lesley and her husband Professor Lesley, of Philadelphia, with their two little girls, to whom Chauncey was devoted. Before this, the Lesleys had been his friends; but a more intimate acquaintance began now, which gladdened Chauncey’s days to the end.

Mrs. Lesley has given me some account of her acquaintance with Chauncey, from which I take a few passages: —

“I first saw Chauncey a good deal in 1853, the summer before Mary’s birth. I think he had then very few friends in Cambridge, and that he used to like to come and see my mother and me. It was a rare pleasure to listen to his conversation, at that time less assured than it afterwards became in tone, but full of a delicate tendency to speculation, always given with a modest hesitancy peculiar to his nature, and full of reverence and deference for the feelings of others. I left Cambridge the first of October.

“I think it was a very short time after I left Cambridge that he went to board with my mother. I spent the summers with my mother from that year until she went to the Asylum, in 1861; and I can hardly give you an idea how

difficult those summers would have been to get through, but for his constant and considerate kindness. I was always in ill-health in those days, scarcely hoping to get the better of tendencies which all expected would shorten my life. But I recall with unspeakable gratitude how, in every way, he tried to make things easy to me. I cannot recollect his ever alluding in any way to my being an invalid; but there never was any thing more evident than that it was in his mind, and that he was resolved to help me through the weary days. He brought books and read aloud; he took the children off for hours, if he saw I wanted rest; and when my poor mother was overcome with restlessness, he either diverted her, or took me to some place where I should not mind it. . . . Of personal talk, I never had much with him, even in those days of closer intimacy than came afterwards; and sometimes I have regretted a little that I had not come nearer to his personal history, as it might have given me some advantages of friendship in aiding him in his later years. But at that time any approach to personal subjects, which he never invited, would have seemed indelicate and unworthy of that fine character. As I now look back, I can think of no one who seemed to me more distinguished for disinterestedness, singleness of mind, and purity of heart, and who, in little things as in great, more habitually considered other people. He stood to me then as a noble type of the Christian gentleman.

“You know all about his love for little Mary, and his deep interest in her education. He used to tell me that he always had her in mind when he wrote about education. I told him one day that I thought all the old-fashioned talk and stories about impulse and principle were very harmful; that children and grown people, too, ought to be taught that principles were not good for much until they became impulses; then they would do their work and unconsciously. He seemed greatly

delighted at this very simple remark, and said, ‘ Well, we will have Mary brought up that way.’

“I felt that his life at my mother’s was very hard for him in some ways, and it made me anxious. When she went to the Asylum, in 1861, I wrote him that the one thought that it would sign a release for him reconciled me to her going more than any thing else. Since then, how much we had to mourn, not dreamed of then.”

In another letter, Mrs. Lesley writes: “I think very few persons can do entire justice to his sympathy and consideration for others. I can never recall without emotion a time when I had to go back from Cambridge to Philadelphia alone, — with Meggie, a baby in arms, — and so weak that I dreaded the journey, though I never said so to a living soul. At the last moment appeared Chauncey, saying decisively, but very quietly, that he was going with me. I shall never forget my sense of relief, as he took Meggie on one arm and my bags on the other, and assumed the entire care of us all. He scarcely spoke to me on the journey, because he divined I could not talk; but I think I never felt a kindness so deeply. And I found afterwards, by mere accident, that he had written or telegraphed to Mr. Lesley at different points of our route, my husband being then out surveying in Western Pennsylvania. When I think of his phlegmatic temperament, which always disinclined him to exertion, and his occupations at that time in the Nautical Almanac office, this incident rises before my memory with great force. It has often made me feel what he might have been in domestic life, and what that would have been to him.”

The first letter to Mrs. Lesley which has come to my hands was written while we were rooming together: —

To Mrs. J. P. Lesley.

Cambridge, Nov. 16, 1854.

We take great pleasure in accepting your kind invitation to spend Thanksgiving with you. ... I shall see, I imagine, little Mary walking very briskly, and rapidly coming to that period when, first becoming conscious of herself, she will see the fresh and bright forms of those intuitions (afterwards by experience turned into common sense) which will make her the little oracle we used to talk about. James and I have nearly finished the “Jesus and his Biographers” of Mr. Furness, and are very much impressed by it. The great doctrine of the book, however, is, it seems to me, a great step in philosophy; and it is because most men have too narrow notions of what is meant by “in the course of nature,” and too vague notions of the Christian miracles themselves, that they do not think more like Mr. Furness. Many events that are so emphatically in the course of nature that they are enumerated in books of science, are events that have never happened more than two or three times, — events brought about by costly and careful experiments (as in the laboratory), and yet are regarded as more truly facts of nature than those of the ordinary course of events.

But this sounds more like an essay than a letter, and I hope you will excuse me for resorting to my old hobbies to fill a letter, for I am entirely out of the letter way of thinking.

In August, 1855, he writes pleasantly to his classmate Darwin Ware, Ware was an intimate friend, from whose recollections of Chauncey I shall repeatedly quote. They were room-mates at Cambridge in 1856, and were companions in several summer journeys. ³⁰ in reference to a plan for going to Northampton, whither I had preceded them on foot: —

“I should have answered your note immediately, if I had

not been on the point of an expedition afoot, for the day, to Chelsea Beach, where I dipped and toasted myself to my heart’s content. By Saturday, I shall be ready for another turn, so as to be sufficiently colored for my journey to Northampton.

“I found by my yesterday’s experience that twenty miles per day, at least for the first day, is best enjoyed as a background to present ease; and as for the second day, — this being my second day, I am competent to judge that twenty miles on the second day isn't enjoyed at all.”

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.

To Mrs. Lesley.

Cambridge, Feb. 12, 1860.

About Thanksgiving time, I entered upon new duties, — the teaching of Natural Philosophy in Prof. Agassiz’s School; and, as this school has no winter vacation but the Christmas days, you see how I have hampered myself.

... I have received from Mr. Lesley his pamphlet on the gradations of words. I have looked over it, but not yet attentively enough. The idea of it is a very attractive one, and closely resembles the argument in that new book on “The Origin of Species,” — Darwin’s, — which I have just finished reading, and to which I have become a convert, so far as I can judge in the matter.

Agassiz comes out against its conclusions, of course, since they are directly opposed to his favorite doctrines on the subject; and, if true, they render his essay on Classification a useless and mistaken speculation. I believe that this development theory is a true account of nature, and no more atheistical than that approved theory of creation, which covers ignorance with a word pretending knowledge and feigning reverence. To admit a miracle when one isn’t necessary seems to be one of those works of supererogation which have survived the Protestant Reformation, and to count like the penances of old for merit in the humble philosopher. To admit twenty or more (the more, the better), as some geologists do, is quite enough to make them pious and safe. I would go even farther, and admit an infinite number of miracles, constituting continuous creation and the order of nature.

My friend Darwin Ware, in answering a request for some account of Chauncey, as he saw him in repeated summer vacations at the period which we have now reached, says: This extract from Mr. Ware’s letter is preceded by a little sketch of the vacation journeys to which he refers. “In 1857,” he says, “you and Chauncey and I were a fortnight together among the Franconia Mountains of New, Hampshire, and again in the following year. Those days in retrospect are bright with sunshine. You will remember how we passed them, — taking long walks, climbing the mountains, following up the courses of mountain streams, and bathing in the icy waters of secluded rocky basins fed by waterfalls, and sometimes, in the afternoon, strolling into the woods, or in some quiet nook, in the shade of trees, reading aloud in turn the one poet, Shakespeare, we had brought with us. “In 1860, we spent with Chauncey a vacation at Mount Desert. The little steamer that now carries so many to Bar Harbor then had only three or four passengers besides ourselves, and stopped only at Southwest Harbor. We had learned the secret, however, before we started, that not at South-west Harbor, but at Bar Harbor, was the place for the true worshipper ; and so, on landing from the boat, we took a wagon, and were conveyed directly there. At Roberts’s, — then the only house that received strangers, — we stayed a week or ten days, furnished with the most meagre accommodations, and a fare of little besides fish, berries. and milk. I remember no other permanent visitors then at this place. Some of the time we were on the water, but more we spent in climbing the mountainous island, and exploring the grand sea-coast. “In the following year, Chauncey, Gurney, and I passed a vacation together in excursions on foot among the Berkshire Hills. Chauncey and I walked from Pittsfield to Stockbridge, where Gurney joined us. About Lenox, Stockbridge, and thence to Bash Bish Falls, we had many a pleasant jaunt.” ³⁶—

“Chauncey was always ready for a long walk or a hard climb when it was proposed to him, although by nature disinclined to bodily exertion. The companionship on these excursions was the main thing he cared for; and his will offered little resistance in determining a day’s plan of recreation. His sweetness of temper, the wide range of his sympathies and knowledge, and the incessant activity of mind shown in his conversation, made him a charming comrade. The highest regions of thought, in its search after truth, were the most habitual to him; but he could incline to mirth and gayety, and joined in quiet sports with genuine relish. A strong, companionable sense of humor in him was more open to its impressions than active in producing them. The pervasive heartiness of his laugh was contagious, — its tone deep and mellow, and in strong contrast with his ordinary voice, which was on a high key, and almost feminine in refinement. When he was happy in his social intercourse, his face, which was very sensitive to the play of feeling, fairly beamed with genial pleasure. His large

stature, rather heavily moulded, was graced with the manner of the gentlest and most amiable of men. Such personal characteristics helped to inspire the sense of perfect fellowship which friends felt in his company.

“In these vacations, Chauncey talked most about what he was then most thinking; and I never knew the time when he was not pondering some deep learning in Science or Philosophy. This was the mode of his extraordinary intellectual growth. In the apparent absence of the means of nutrition, it was like the growth of a tree within which powerful processes are continually going on, by which, from the proper germ, is reared a giant oak. A few authentic books gave him the history of science and philosophy. The key of all the sciences, mathematics, he held with an easy grasp. Through meditation, he wrought out deductions that were knowledge, and framed those intelligent questions that are half the answers of truth. Comparatively little observation and research enabled him to make those answers whole. The naturalist has been able, from a single fossil scale, to describe the structure of the fish from which it came. In the same way, from the fragmentary segment of a system or a theory, Chauncey seemed able to reconstruct the full orb of thought. Such methods would not been been attended with large results, without the wonderful power he had of long-continued, concentrated attention, and of steadily holding in his imagination the realities upon which his thought was fixed.

“And yet, as a companion, he was not abstracted or self-absorbed. His highest thinking was never permitted to separate him from his friend. He made his meditations part of the common stock of the social partnership. With undivided interest and sympathy, he entertained another’s thought, and returned it with generous increase. In a mind so trained by great studies, and purified by the love of truth, there was no place for prejudice or intolerance: there was only entire impartiality and kind appreciation.

“The direction of Chauncey’s studies in 1857-58, and again in 1860-61, as I remember, well represented the twofold discipline of his powers, which enabled him afterwards to compose the two essays on subjects so diverse as ‘ A Physical Theory of the Universe ’ and the ‘ Evolution of Self-consciousness,’ published in his ‘ Philosophical Discussions.’ At the earlier period, I recall his comments on the successive theories in geology; the nebular hypothesis; the undulatory theory of light; his explanation of the formation of mountains and their disintegration; and of other science familiar to one who knew

‘ What land and sea, discoursing, say
In the sidereal years.’

At the later period, the experience philosophy, the utilitarian theory of morals, natural selection, and kindred doctrines, were the most frequent serious topics of Chauncey’s conversation. For a good while after our visit at Mount Desert, they passed, with us, under the humorous name of ‘The Mount Desert Philosophy.’

“These vacation rambles, under summer skies, through the most beautiful and impressive scenery of New England, I shall always cherish among the tenderest and most delightful of memories.”