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.