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.”