The flowering of New England, 1815-1865 by Brooks Van Wyck 1886-1963

Author:Brooks, Van Wyck, 1886-1963
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: American literature, American literature, Authors, American
Publisher: Boston, Mass. : Houghton Mifflin
Published: 1981-03-28T16:00:00+00:00

CONCORD: 1840-1844

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could count on their rice and turnips, they cut their meals down to two a day to provide for the neighbour with the drunken husband. There were those who laughed at Alcott. They said that his intemperate love of water made his mind hazy and cloudy. If he had eaten a little meat or fish, it might have had more marrow and sul> stance. But Emerson, who knew his foibles well, loved him for his copious peacefulness and for the mountain landscape of his mind, with its darting lights and shadows.

He was preordained for the philosophic life, a life which, hospitably taken, was a very simple affair. What did he ask for his wealth and estate? A fireside and a spring, a stream to stir one’s blood in the morning, the “frequent cold water” of Agathias, a web of cloth, friends and books, a chosen task, health and peace of mind. For thought, the study; for metaphors, a walk; hills for ideas; for force, a glimpse of the ocean, and over and through all the changing seasons, surcharging mind and body, rendering them primitive and elemental. Fields, streams, groves and country houses, rustic recreations, farmers to talk withal, whose wits were level with the world they worked in. Woodlots, the pleasing homestead, forest paths to foster meditation, alleys and graceful gates opening into a wood. Trees of ancient standing, vines like firm friends and royal neighbours. Orchards of Academe, suggesting the ripest learning of accomplished Greece. A garden, first of all.

Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps,

Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvests reaps.

An occupation friendly to every virtue, the freest from covetousness and debasing cares. For the rest, a solar diet. Let the groundlings laugh as they might, they had not heard the word of the Samian sage, “A cheerful and a good heart will have a care for his meat and drink;”

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