amily. Poverty there was,
but also much happiness in the old parsonage, whose dooryard of trees
and shrubs, joined on to the neighboring gardens, made a pleasant
outlook into the world. When school work was over, and household duty
disposed of, very often the brothers would retire to their own room
and there find their own peculiar joy in reading tales of Plutarch,
reciting poetry, and declaiming some favorite piece, for solitude was
loved by all, and the great authors of the world were well studied by
these boys, whose bedchamber was so cold that Plato or Cicero could
only be indulged in when the reader was wrapped so closely in his
cloak that Emerson afterward remarked, the smell of woollen was
forever afterward associated with the Greek classics. Ralph attended
the Latin Grammar School, and had private lessons besides in
writing, which he seems to have acquired with difficulty, one of his
school-fellows telling long afterward how his tongue moved up and down
as the pen laboriously traversed the page, and how on one occasion he
even played truant to avoid the dreaded task, for which misdemeanor
he was promptly punished by a diet of bread and water. It was at this
period that he wrote verses on the War of 1812, and began an epic poem
which one of his school friends illustrated. Such skill did he attain
in verse-making that his efforts were delivered on exhibition days,
being rendered with such impressiveness by the young author that his
mates considered nothing could be finer.

From the Latin school Emerson passed to Harvard in his fifteenth year,
entering as "President's Freshman," a post which brought with it a
certain annual sum and a remission of fees in exchange for various
duties, such as summoning unruly students to the president, announcing
the orders of the faculty, and serving as waiter at commons.

At college Emerson was noted as a student more familiar with general
literature than with the college text-books, and he was an ardent
member of a little book club which met to read and discuss current
literature, the book or magazine under discussion being generally
bought by the member who had the most pocket-money at the time. But
in spite of a dislike for routine study, Emerson was graduated with
considerable honor, and almost immediately afterward set about the
business of school-teaching.

But Emerson was not able to take kindly to teaching, and in his
twenty-first year began preparations to enter the min