ture on American literature, from which I carried away for future use
a delightful story about an excellent Boston merchant who, being asked
at a Goethe birthday dinner to make a few remarks, said that he "guessed
that Go-ethe was the N. P. Willis of Germany."

Colonel Higginson's lecture was to me a green oasis in the arid desert
of metaphysics, but it was regarded by earnest truth-seekers in the
class as quite irrelevant to the purposes of the course. The lecturer
himself confided to me at the close of the session a suspicion that his
audience cared more for philosophy than for literature. Once or twice
Mr. Emerson visited the School, taking no part in its proceedings, but
sitting patiently through the hour, and wearing what a newspaper
reporter described as his "wise smile." After the lecture for the
session was ended, the subject was thrown open to discussion and there
was an opportunity to ask questions. Most of us were shy to speak out in
that presence, feeling ourselves in a state of pupilage. Usually there
would be a silence of several minutes, as at a Quaker meeting waiting
for the spirit to move; and then Mr. Alcott would announce in his
solemn, musical tones "I have a thought"; and after a weighty pause,
proceed to some Orphic utterance. Alcott, indeed, was what might be
called the leader on the floor; and he was ably seconded by Miss
Elizabeth Peabody, the sister of Nathaniel Hawthorne's wife. Miss
Peabody was well known as the introducer of the German kindergarten, and
for her life-long zeal in behalf of all kinds of philanthropies and
reforms. Henry James was accused of having caricatured her in his novel
"The Bostonians," in the figure of the dear, visionary, vaguely
benevolent old lady who is perpetually engaged in promoting "causes,"
attending conventions, carrying on correspondence, forming committees,
drawing up resolutions, and the like; and who has so many "causes" on
hand at once that she gets them all mixed up and cannot remember which
of her friends are spiritualists and which of them are concerned in
woman's rights movements, temperance agitations, and universal peace
associations. Mr. James denied that he meant Miss Peabody, whom he had
never met or known. If so, he certainly divined the type. In her later
years, Miss Peabody was nicknamed "the grandmother of Boston."

I have to acknowledge, to my shame, that I was often a truant to the
discussions of the School, which met three hours in the mo