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: —