In October, Edith Emerson married Will Forbes.

It was a gorgeous, happy wedding, Ellen wrote. The whole world seemed to have arrived all at once. Just before three o'clock, when people began leaving, I was upstairs with the undressing bride. Her Aunt Lizzy and Mrs. Sanborn helped her, telling her how wondrous beautiful her wedding was.

Miss Edith is married, Bronson Alcott noted simply. Emerson lecturing in orthodox Amherst. Louisa in Vevey, Switzerland. In November Sanborn again goes inspecting.

Through the summer, the fervent inspector of charities had fought off his preoccupation with Edith by writing and sending out, on behalf of the Massachusetts Board of Charities, scores upon scores of invitations to governors, commissioners, and other dignitaries across the nation and around the world. He called on them to be present in the fall, on October 4, 1865, at the State House in Boston, for the first, organizational meeting of the new American Social Science Association.

Our attention, wrote the distracted Sanborn, is called to the importance of forming an organization, both local and national, for the discussion of questions relating to the Relief, Employment, and Education of the Poor, the Prevention of Crime, the Amelioration of Criminal Law, the Discipline of Prisons, the Remedial Treatment of the Insane, and those numerous other matters of statistical and philanthropic interest which are included under the general head of Social Science.

Though the charter meeting was sponsored by the Massachusetts Board of Charities, and presided over by Governor Andrew, the meeting was in fact formally convened by a group of Bostonians aligned with the Bristish NAPSS, the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science. The Governor called on the new Secretary of the ASSA, Sanborn, to read the new organization’s constitution, which gave the Association's central reason for being: to understand society and to improve it.

Its objects are, Sanborn declaimed, to aid in the development of social Science, and to guide the public mind, obtaining by discussion the real elements of Truth; by which doubts are removed, conflicting opinions harmonized, and a common ground afforded for treating wisely the great social problems of the day.

Governor Andrew then invited formal debate. Joining in were local dignitaries Wendell Phillips and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. The draft constitution had provided for a five dollar annual fee, and fifty dollars for a lifetime membership. Higginson proposed the annual fee be just three dollars, with lifetime membership to be just thirty dollars. His motion was amended to read: annual fee, one dollar. After extensive further argument from Phillips, the motion for a three dollar annual fee was renewed, and was approved.

Sanborn's chief role for both the Board of State Charities and the American Social Science Association was to travel about the state and country, familiarizing himself with all the many charitable institutions and their forms of operation, systematizing the gathering and reporting of information about them. In his first report to the Board of State Charities, Sanborn claimed to have traveled more than 7,000 miles, having visited more than 165 Massachusetts institutions, and some 20 or more out-of-state.

The results of imprisonment were very unsatisfactory, Sanborn summed up years afterwards. The people took but little interest in the subject. The Civil War engrossed all thought, and while crime had diminished in the face of the greater crime of war, crime among women had much increased. My reports, and the activity of new prison reforms, especially in New York, now drew attention to the subject. When I reported there was no suitable, separate prison for women, legislation soon followed. A women's prison was built at Sherborn, near South Framingham, and a board of women commissioners of prisons took charge of it, and soon made it a model for other such prisons.

The second meeting of the American Social Science Association was held at the Lowell Institute, Boston, on December 27th, and 28th. In the course of the second day's assorted lectures, Sanborn delivered his "Prison Discipline in Europe and America." Before the Association adjourned the proceedings, it was moved and adopted that honorary membership in the ASSA be bestowed on the reknowned educator Bronson Alcott. Sanborn was tickled to receive a January letter addressed to one Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Esquire, Resident Secretary of The American Social Science Association: Dear Sir, Your letter informing me of my being made an honorary member of your Association is before me. I esteem it an honor, indeed, and a privilege, to be associated with so many friends of man and students of whatsoever shall promote his welfare. Allow me to assure the Association of the pleasure it will afford me to partake in its labors, and to express my hope that the compliment it has conferred, may prove something more than an empty name. Respectfully, A. Bronson Alcott. P.S. Your own dear Sanborns here, and Channing, are well.

Ellen Emerson's winter letters told of many walks with Mrs. Sanborn who, with little Tommy, was a frequent guest in the Emerson home. Many a snowy morning the two would sit together by a fire, taking turns reading aloud.

In that winter came the publication of Walt Whitman's book of patriotic poems, Drum Taps, written in the years prior to, and just after, his dismissal from his government job at the Office of Indian Affairs. Generally ignored or panned by critics, it did receive one highly favorable review, in the February 24, 1866 issue of the Boston Commonwealth. In his editorial, Sanborn drew attention to Whitman's Civil War service, and his stoical calm and resolve in the face of humiliation and rebuke.

The previous fall Sophia Hawthorne had begun culling, from her deceased husband's notebooks, passages worthy of being compiled into articles for his publisher, James T. Fields. He had bought a dozen for The Atlantic Monthly, paying one hundred dollars a piece. Now, in 1866, the articles began to appear, drawing harsh criticism.

Hawthorne's notebook, Sanborn wrote in a Christian Register review, does little justice to the genius of the writer. Again it is opened for people to gape at, to wonder how such a man could write so many commonplace things. Still more, how can such a man's friends wish to see themselves thus paraded before the world? Hawthorne's delicate nature would have shrunk from such an enterprise.

Sanborn's words hit Sophia like ice, like daggers. Her having balked at doing what Fields had requested in the first place now seemed entirely justified. Fields had further intended to collect the articles into a book, but just the prospect of doing so, after what Sanborn had written, sent Sophia reeling. It was not until Sanborn assured her himself that he meant her no harm, that Fields could proceed with the project.

When Hawthorne's American Notebooks were years afterwards published by Houghton Mifflin, successors to Ticknor & Fields, an introductory note apologized for the remarks of a writer who'd stated the notebooks read like a series of rather dull letters: Whatever degree of acumen this remark may indicate in the maker, the disclaimer admitted, it shows clearly that the critic has left out of account (if he took pains to examine it at all) the manner in which the notes came into existence and the circumstances of their publication.

Sanborn is to take tea with us this evening, Bronson Alcott wrote his daughter Louisa, who that spring had departed France to go see London. I shall ask him to write at once to his friend Moncure Conway, in London, about your coming. Through him, we trust, every facility will be opened to you.

Festal chariot! Ellen Emerson exclaimed, describing a wild autumn ride in a hay-wagon. We set out, Edith and I, Rose and Una Hawthorne, Anna Bartlett, and Mrs. Sanborn. It was the most perfect day possible. The jolting, though frequent, was delightful. Mrs Sanborn informed me she was personally somewhat averse to such a shaking, but for all that she enjoyed the children's ecstacy.

Concord seems generally possessed, a lighthearted Ellen Emerson observed in the spring, with a most restless spirit of innovation. Every day I feel a stronger impulse to take leave and go to the Moon!

Mrs. Sanborn's baby was born yesterday at eleven o'clock, Ellen reported on April 25, 1867. What a joyful surprise to his three aunts, who arrived in the twelve o'clock train to see the baby, Victor Channing Sanborn. He is large, and has long black hair, and plenty of it.

Ellery Channing beamed, if only half an hour, upon learning Sanborn's new son's name. Another name under consideration had been Victor Luther, in honor of another of Sanborn's many mentors, George Luther Stearns, who died in New York City of pneumonia that same spring.

After the death of John Brown, Stearns had joined Higginson and Sanborn from year to year in traveling to North Elba by Lake Placid in the Adirondack Mountains, visiting the martyr's grave in the ghost town that had been Timbucto. Sanborn now bid Higginson, upon the death of Stearns, to join him in continuing to make the pilgrimage in coming years. They would try to interest James Redpath, but the man who had written the first biography of Brown would tell them he had his hands full, both with his work as the Director of the Boston Lyceum Bureau and with his writing, with Jefferson Davis himself, A Short History of the Confederate States.

Visiting Brown's grave, Sanborn and Higginson would clear away leaves, pausing to honor his memory, contemplating for themselves whether John Brown's work, and theirs, would be praised, or damned, by coming generations.

While Sanborn and Higginson were away on their pilgrimmage, Mrs. Sanborn received guests: This last Monday, Ellen Emerson wrote Edith on June 4th, I went with Mrs. Stearns to visit Mrs. Sanborn, who seemed happy to receive us.

In August, the Sanborns again joined the Alcott sisters at Clarke's Island, boating and croqueting, participating in the evening dramatics, the colorful and theatrical Alcotts joining Sanborn in pacing and declaiming, flairfully orating, all to the delight of everyone present. We went over to the Island, Sanborn wrote, where were the Alcotts, Mrs. Austen, Fanny Lombard, and other ladies. Imagine! All in a houseful.

Back in Concord, fresh from his most recent campaigns with Samuel Gridley Howe, helping to establish the Clarke School for the Deaf and the Massachusetts Infant Asylum, the distinguished editor of The Journal of Social Science set to work on a fresh new pile of editorial assignments.

On September 11th, in New York, Herman Melville broke open the bedroom door of his son Malcolm, seventeen, to discover the boy, after a mysterious night in which the teen had stayed out till three in the morning, was dead from a self-inflicted wound, a pistol shot to the right temple of his head. It was reported by most papers as a suicide, but one, The New York Post, reported it as an accident, claiming the teen was known for his boyish whim of keeping a gun under his pillow and that restless sleep had caused the gun to go off.

All may go well for many a year, Melville would later write in a poem about soldiers and war and death by explosives, The Apparition: But who can think, without a fear, of horrors that happen so.

In mid-November, Bronson Alcott wrote to Christopher Walton in London, I have lately had the pleasure of reading a copy of your Cyclopedia of Pure Christian Theology and Theosophic Science, Alcott wrote. Some of the freest minds about Boston have lately formed a free Religious Club which meets monthly for discussing the deepest questions in Religious Philosophy. Mr. Emerson, Dr. Hedge, Mesrs. Wasson and Weiss are all members of The Club. Mr. Emerson is my townsman, and a near neighbor.

My dear Papa, Ellen Emerson wrote her father on December 6th. On Monday morning we went to see Mrs. Sanborn, then came home before departing for Boston. I visited poor Mr. Fields, everybody's friend. He behaved beautifully, Mr. Ticknor gave us duplicate tickets for ones we had lost, and we went on to the Temple to see Mr. Dickens. So exhilerating to laugh with fifteen hundred people! We were afterwards joined at home by Mr. Lyman, Mr. Alcott, and Mr. Sanborn.

Louisa May Alcott, upon returning from her European tour in May, moved back to Concord, beginning work on her book, Little Women, even as Sanborn was preparing to depart. On the strength of his successful From Boston and Occasional Letters columns in the Springfield Republican, the paper’s owner, Sam Bowles, invited Sanborn to be a resident editor. Sanborn resigned his post as Secretary of the State Board of Charities and moved with his family to Springfield to begin his stint, though Louisa and the children would spend much time back in Concord and environs, staying often with the assorted Leavitts in and around Woburn or Concord, and other area family and friends.

Dear Friend, Bronson Alcott wrote to Sanborn in Springfield in July. The Republican derives new interest now, from your connection with it. I was disappointed in missing you at your leaving Concord. 'Tis not to the credit of our town, that with all its virtues and allurements it suffered the citizen to leave it, who, more than any, did most for its social improvement while residing with us. I hope to continue in intimacy with you by frequent correspondence. Are you not coming this way during the summer? Remember me to Mrs Sanborn and Tommy.

Your letter came to hand the morning after Mr. Harris left Concord for St. Louis, Alcott wrote Sanborn in August. He passed Sunday here, saw Emerson, and went to Boston on Monday. All who saw Harris seem favorably impressed by his attainments. We are all very well. Anna and her boys are here for the summer. Louisa is now at Gloucester, May is at Mount Desert Island with a Boston party. Channing makes his Sunday visits, but hides his wanderings willfully, though he did own parenthetically to having seen you somewhere lately. Louisa's book, Little Women, is printed, and is to be published sometime in October. Kind regards to Mrs. Sanborn and the children.

I write to acknowledge receipt of The Semi Weekly Republican, Alcott wrote Sanborn in September. It has been arriving regularly. Your Correspondent, with his kindly notices and allusions concerning Old Concord, seems somehow familiar to me. I have not yet had the happiness to greet Mrs Sanborn and the children in their visits here. Mr. Channing continues his Sunday visits. Louisa and May are still with us. I am in doubt about going West. There is talk of a Room for Sunday meetings in Boston. And I have almost concluded to venture a course of Evening Conversations there.

Louisa and May have taken rooms in Boston, Alcott informed Sanborn in December. Mrs. Alcott has come to pass the winter here at Maplewood with Anna. We have closed our house in Concord for the time, and I am to be back and forth meanwhile, making Maplewood headquarters. My tour West is deferred till after the Conversations. I am about beginning a course of six at the Ladies' Club Room. The subjects are to be advertised in tomorrow's papers. I shall be most happy to see yourself and Mrs Sanborn honoring me by attendance.

The Sanborns were in Concord over the holidays, and made their rounds, visiting the Concord Leavitts, the Alcotts, and the Emersons.

I was glad to see you, Alcott wrote Sanborn in the new year, in places where your face was formerly a bright part of the social scene.

In May, Louisa shot off a letter to Sanborn, The Editor of The Semi Weekly Republican, as she said, from One of the Dullest Little Towns in Massachusetts. The letter was meant both to tickle Sanborn -- and to rile him.

The Latest News From Concord (Nurse Periwinkle Frees Her Mind): As it has become the fashion to make a yearly report of the condition of Concord and its inhabitants, and as no gossip concerning this immortal town seems to be considered too trivial for the public ear, we feel it our duty to add to said yearly report lately published, the last rumor afloat. It is said that a new hotel is about to be established, called The Sphinx's Head, where pilgrims to this modern Mecca can be entertained in the most hospitable and appropriate style. Walden water, wild apples by the bushel, orphic acorns by the peck will be furnished at philosophic prices. Samples of Autumn Tints, Mosses from the Manse, Rhodora, and herbs from the Garden, will be supplied gratis.

-- Sanborn was here last Sunday, Alcott wrote in July to his friend Harris in St. Louis. Louisa is now in Riviere du Loup, Canada, where she has been for the last month. Her Little Women has been a great success, having reached its 20,000 copies. She has another book to appear next month.

Louisa returned from Canada to Concord at the end of July, 1869 and soon was on her way north again, in mid-August, to Mount Desert Island in Maine.

Should she return in season, Alcott wrote, and be inclined to accompany me, we may attend the National Woman Suffrage Convention at Newport.

After abolitionism, the women's rights movement had been the most controversial of the many antebellum reform campaigns. Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, and Samuel Gridley Howe all supported the suffragists. Susan Brownwell Anthony, ardent abolitionist and woman-suffrage advocate, agitated relentlessly to gain the vote for women. She had declared she would ignore any law that might hinder her from helping a slave, and would likewise ignore any law that might hinder her from protecting an enslaved woman. Anthony was the prime organizer of the National Woman Suffrage Association, created that year.

You invite my views on the subject of your proposed American Woman's Suffrage Association, Alcott wrote in August to Julia Ward Howe in Rhode Island. I am accustomed to defer to woman the questions that are properly hers. But I will venture say that women ought to be admitted to full citizenship, via these measures: The Convention, The Lecture, The Press, and The Conversation, especially the last named, as being the simplest, the most natural, and in keeping with this humane reform. I trust your American Suffrage Association will be organized on the broadest principles, and set its machinery in motion forthwith.

Louisa and I think some of taking a journey to my home town, Wolcott, Connecticut, Alcott wrote from Concord to Sanborn in Springfield. If we do, we will perhaps take in Springfield on our route. Whether Louisa will agree, I fear to inquire now, deferring to inquire till we get near Springfield. Louisa's mood is imperative in the matter and cannot be foreseen. Wolcott she has not seen since she was a child, and goes to picture the background of her new story. The Little Women have multiplied themselves surprisingly. Her publishers now count 23,000 of them. Come spend another night with us when you and yours are next in Boston. Kind regards to Mrs Sanborn and the childen.

We closed our house on Tuesday last, Alcott wrote Sanborn from Maplewood. We are here for the winter with Anna. Louisa and May have taken rooms at No. 43 Pinckney Street, where they propose to pass the winter. Louisa is far from well, but hopes by abstinence from the hard work of the last years, to recover strength and spirits to resume her pen. May has been busily engaged on her Book of 'Concord Sketches,' which are to be published by Fields and Osgood.

I have concluded to leave here on Friday of next week, Alcott wrote Sanborn in mid-November. If I knew you would be at home, I might pass Friday night in Springfield. My wish is to reach Cleveland by the 24th for the Woman's Suffrage Convention. I shall like to attend the Convention and learn its temper and tendencies. You speak of leaving Springfield for the Convention on the 20th. If you should, we might go on together, at least a part of the way.

Sanborn, in the meantime, kept a promise made other friends, to help organize the Prison Conference of Cincinnati, assiting also in the formation, beyond the Prison Conference, of the National Prison Association.

Alcott went out on another Western Tour, and wrote Sanborn in the spring, This opens the way for future opportunities. The Western people have sharp appetites and bite eagerly instead of nibbling at the fruit you offer them. I came home in better health and hope than when I left last November.

Louisa and May left for New York this morning, Alcott wrote on April 1st, to take the Steamer for Brest, which sails romorrow. Louisa's new book, The Old-Fashioned Girl, is to be published tomorrow. 12,000 copies have been sold in advance, and 4,000 more are printing. I was at Concord one day this week, and found Emerson busy with his University lectures. He is to give eighteen in all, three a week.

My daughters are enjoying themselves travelling abroad, Alcott wrote at the end of April. They are on their way to Switzerland, and Italy. Louisa is regaining health and spirits and May is adding sketches to her Portfolio. Sanborn is at his pen again, gossiping about us all.

When Charles Dickens died on June 9, 1870, Sanborn announced in his June 15th column that Louisa May Alcott was Dickens' sincerest mourner. Early in July Louisa received a copy of Sanborn's notice from her publisher, Thomas Niles.

There goes the gossipy old Republican again, Louisa wrote from Vevey, Switzerland. Now they tell the world about my grief for Dickens (I don't care a pin) and all my plans and ails and all. I suppose either Ellery Channing or Bun wrote it. I should like to knock their heads off for meddling with what don't concern them, the old tattle tails! Another notice said I wrote diaries at 6, plays at 10, went out to service at 13, and was governess and dragged a baby round the Common. I recognize Pa's nice derangement of dates here, and fancy it was written by some of his admirers. I suppose I ought to like it, but I dont.

On July 20, 1870, the six-year old son of Alcott's friend William T. Harris, in St. Louis, had died. The Harris' had earlier lost an infant daughter. Alcott wrote, on the 29th, offering his condolences: The newspaper containing the obituary of your little boy, Ethan, came to me yesterday evening. I had been expecting to hear from you for some weeks, and began to fear that you were ill yourself, broken down by your school Superintending labors. I was about to write you when the news of your bereavement came. A bright-eyed boy, I remember he was.

Should you think of leaving St Louis to come purchase a home in these parts, Alcott invited Harris, please fix your residence here in Concord. There are several places, Hawthorne's for instance, on sale at reasonable prices. But whether you leave St. Louis or not, come and see me. My wife, myself and housekeeper are sole occupants for the summer. The girls are now in Switzerland.

My prospects are fair as to my Western tour, Alcott wrote his daughters in Europe that fall. I go advertised and arrangements have been made for me in the cities and towns from Syracuse to Dubuque and St Louis and I may get as far as San Francisco. Saturday, I go to Western Massachuestts, to Florence, to speak. I shall very likely see Sanborn. I am in much better plight than I have been for many years. My hearing is much improved, and I carry more weight of flesh, if not of thought, to my work. We rejoice in the accounts you write of your improved health and spirits. I pray these may continue as you journey from place to place. If Napoleon is dethroned, the war will be likely to come to a speedy end, and you can winter in Italy.

Louisa reported she’d walked from Vevey to the Prison of Chillon, 12 miles, and was quite refreshed by the jaunt.

I start next Wednesday for the West, Alcott wrote Harris at the end of October. I propose reaching St. Louis about the first of December, when you will have returned from your New England journey. I regret I am not to be here to make sure of your meeting the persons you should see. But Emerson will introduce you. At the last meeting of the Radical Club, the Committee of Invitation moved to have you come read a paper. I hope you will. The theme is left to you. I am confident you will edify and inspire the company.

I purpose being at Detroit about the 20th of November, Alcott wrote to Harris early that month. Emerson is expected about the same time to lecture, and to give a parlor reading or two. He lectures also at Buffalo and Toledo. I hope you will not miss him. Your July number of the Speculative is very attractive reading. It was favorably reviewed by Wasson in the Commonwealth, and by Sanborn in The Republican.

Your parcel of Republicans came today, Alcott wrote Sanborn. I write hastily now to ask you to forward the next to me at Dubuque Iowa, where I expect to be on Dec 12th. I am to have a course of Conversations there. I'll be returning to Buffalo, pausing for Conversations at several towns along the route.

News of John Pratt's decease reached me last Wednesday, Alcott noted. Mrs. Alcott will remain with Anna till spring. Louisa and May were in Florence on October 30th, about to leave for Rome. They write in the best of spirits.

I am pleased to learn you will visit us this month, Alcott wrote to Harris on the fourth of July, 1871. Come directly to my house and give us all the time you can spare.

Alcott visited Gerrit Smith on July 16th. I joined him in attending a Sunday services in his Church, he wrote. Very gratifying.

At the time, Sanborn wrote, I was giving much thought to how the true story of Brown's Virginia plans should best be preserved. I consulted often with my friend Morton who, after recovering from a long illness, had begun the practice of law in Boston. Gerritt Smith's claim, that he had no connection with Brown's scheme, was contrary to the actual facts. In 1871, Morton and I agreed that I should write for the Atlantic Monthly an anonymous article, stating the general facts as we both knew them. This was done. It led to a painful correspondence between the Smiths and myself.

That fall Sanborn was also busy editing a blank-verse pastoral poem written by Ellery Channing, The Wanderer: a Colloquial Poem, a project financed by Emerson. The final work had Sanborn's fingerprints all over it, as well as Emerson's.

In The Springfield Republican of a week or two back, Bronson Alcott wrote a friend in mid-October, you will see a notice of Ellery Channing's new Pastoral, entitled The Wanderer, which is to appear this month, published by Osgood & Company. There are to be 200 copies.

Channing's book did relatively well, considering the low expectation that was generally held out for it. The small first edition was nearly sold out within one month of its publication, according to Sanborn. But Channing, who in the past had showed no particular in or concerns about changes to his manuscripts, now was miffed. That nincompoop F.B.S., he would write. Born and bred a shoemaker.

The two chief disasters of the early 1870s were the great Chicago fire of 1871 and the equally terrible fire that swept Boston in 1872. The few unsold copies of Channing's book, along with untold thousands of other books, would be destroyed in the Boston conflagration.

Mary Mann came to the defense of the Roberts Brothers, who planned to publish a new edition of Elizabeth Peabody's Record of a School, the account of Bronson Alcott's Temple School, originally published in 1835. The reprint was to be called, A Record of Mr. Alcott's School, in order to capitalize on the name, and success, of Louisa May Alcott, and the fictional Plumfield School, created for her book, Little Men. The Alcotts held up publication till Elizabeth Peabody finished making certain additions. But then she suddenly departed for England on a trip that would last from September 1871 until May 1872. Her work on the book's preface, in which she intended to promote the ideas of the German educator Friedrich Froebel, and not Bronson Alcott's, was delayed. Likewise, her plans for a detailed appendix, never completed, contributed to the further delay of publication. The book, which finally would appear in 1874, carried a preface not by Elizabeth Peabody, but one written by Louisa May Alcott.

I'm in the middle of my lighting the furnace, Bronson Alcott wrote the Sanborns, who were then, a week before Christmas, 1871, very much enjoying their two small sons, with a third child on the way. Now that we are rejoicing in its genial warmth, we wonder how we endured previous winters without it. It is a real luxury. I am tempted to forego my Western tour altogether. Six copies of Channing's Wanderer came from Osgood & Company. I have sent one to Sophia Thoreau. Channing appears to be encouraged by his late recognition, though he says he has not published any verses to speak of lately. Emerson has not spoken of his Poem since it was published. He called last evening to tell me of his Western tour, and was sorry to hear of the suspension of the Record of a School by Miss Peabody's whimsies. Louisa is fixed in pleasant quarters in Boston.

Emerson returned late Wednesday evening, Alcott wrote to Sanborn on January 19, 1872. He was just in time to hear James T. Fields lecture. He gave a fine lay sermon on Cheerfulness, and was well received. Whatever Fields is not, certainly he is a good fellow and should recite his piece throughout New England. I passed the evening afterwards at Emerson's house, where Fields and his wife Annie also spent the night.

Come up and spend a night with us, Alcott offerered the Sanborns soon after the birth of their third son, Francis Bachiler Sanborn, on February 5, 1872. Come whenever it is convenient to you. We shall all delight to entertain you. Anna and her boys are passing these days at Pratt Farms, and we have a spare room or two for guests. It is always a privilege to entertain the good under one's roof!

In July, Ellen Emerson wrote of a beautiful summer day when she and Mrs. Sanborn, with her new baby and her two boys Tommy and Victor, went round to see to it that the world was notified of a Teachers' Meeting that night. A thunderstorm came up in the evening, Ellen remembered. It thundered, lightened and darkened furiously, rained one minute, and then cleared up.

Early one morning at the end of that strange, stormy July, Ralph Waldo Emerson was awakened by the sound of crackling in his garret. He sprang from his bed, ran out of the house in his nightclothes, into the rain, and shouted for help.

Who would believe it? Ellen wrote the next day. I was in Beverly, visiting the Higginsons. The paper was held before my eyes and I was told that something had happened at our house, but that Father and Mother were safe. I tried to read, but only very slowly took it in. It was so surprising! It was neither pain nor fright I felt, but it took my breath away. Half an hour after, when I walked out to say goodbye, I found my knees were shaky. When I was coming home in the cars all alone, I saw very clearly that this might be a stroke to Father or Mother, or both, and that they would never get over it.

Neighbors rushed to the scene to help. The Emersons were led to John Keyes' house, where he got them into dry clothes, and served them breakfast.

The most wonderful thing of all, Ellen wrote, was Ephraim Bull on the roof, managing the hose. You would think it hard enough for a man with two arms. And Mr. Staples! Oh Mr. Staples, Mr Staples! He is a good man! He was working and watching the fire, saying Put the hose here, and Don't break anything! Louisa Alcott and May attended to letters and manuscripts. There were any quantity of them lying around in the rain, and they collected them.

The sides of the house were all intact, but the roof and upper structure were destroyed. Assorted pieces of furniture and other material goods saved from the fire were housed in homes and barns throughout the town.

The Emersons spent that night at the Old Manse. Since Sarah Bradford Ripley's death, just after the conclusion of the war, the sole occupant of the house had been her daughter, Elizabeth, who now welcomed the Emersons there. A room in the courthouse was also cleared for him, for his use as a temporary study. There, in the courthouse room, Emerson set into into accounting for and arranging his salvaged books and papers. All our things smelled of the fire, Ellen wrote. That smell, that had hitherto seemed to me the abomination of desolation, became sweet and dear to me. A letter from Mr. and Mrs. Forbes at Naushon contained a check for five hundred dollars, for me to buy new clothes. Caroline Tappan offered Father five thousand to rebuild the house. Judge Hoar told him to draw freely on his account at the Concord Bank. A few days later, Father received a check for five thousand dollars, from some of Father's intimate friends. He looked at the check and exclaimed, Good Heavens! He was astonished at the sum. Poor man, today he has to speak at a Japanese dinner. They wouldn't let him off.

Emerson caught a cold the morning of the fire, which got worse before it got better, leaving Emerson feverish and bedridden. It was not long before people began to realize that an even worse toll had been taken on the sagacious, aging philosopher. The shock of the fire was more than a stunning blow to him. He would never be the same again.

The general contributory fund swelled. Friends and neighbors insisted the Emersons should travel abroad. In their absence, their townspeople assured them, the house would be rebuilt.

Sanborn, who for four years had been away, his wife and children living sometimes in Springfield and sometimes in the homes of their Concord friends or their relatives, the Leavitt's, returned to Concord. With the birth of their third son, Francis, Louisa bid her husband settle, build a house, make a home for them.

Sanborn remained in the employ of the Springfield Republican, doing free-lance work, keeping up his regular column, and recommending and editing Boston and Concord area contributors, but he left Springfield forever. He knew Louisa was right, the time was right, and the opportunities were right, including the availability of the Thoreau house for renting, left vacant by the departing Sophia Thoreau upon the death of her mother. Now, he felt, if now he did not get back to Concord, then Concord would be lost to him as his home. And if Frank Sanborn knew anything, he told himself, he knew Concord to be his home.

My book Concord Days is printed, Bronson Alcott announced to William T. Harris early in September. It is to be published the day after tomorrow. I was in Boston yesterday and learned that orders had been forwarded to the publishers for more than half of the edition of one thousand copies. George Ripley has given it a notice in the Tribune which, I doubt not, you have seen.

Sanborn has come back to Concord, Alcott continued, probably to reside permanently. I do not despair of your making our little town your home sometime, too. A new spirit is awakening here, making Concord a literary and philosophical center for the future, as well as for the present. So you see I am still not less a dreamer than of yore.

Louisa leaves us today for her winter quarters in Boston, Alcott wrote to Mary Adams, in Dubuque, on October 4th. Anna and her boys will spend the winter here. Having a warm furnace in the cellar, Mrs. Alcott finds the house comfortable. Mr. Emerson is now at the Manse. Mr. Channing makes his weekly calls and is very agreeable, for the most part. Mr. Sanborn is in pursuit of a house.

So soon as Sanborn had got back to Concord, he’d begun again in earnest to put the record straight regarding John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry: who knew what, and how much did they know, and and when did they know it?

Before all the witnesses are dead, Sanborn wrote to Gerrit Smith in October, would it not be wise to put upon record the authentic facts, in time to have any errors in the statement pointed out and corrected?

When the Harper's Ferry affair occured I was sick, and my brain somewhat diseased, Smith responded. Your bare proposition to write of this matter makes me sleepless. It makes me fear a recurrence of my insanity. If you could defer your contemplated work until after my death (not long hence, as I am approaching seventy-six), you would lay me under great obligations to your kindness.

Smith's wife Ann made additional notes: My dear Mr. Sanborn, everything concerning dear John Brown is, in Mr. Smith's mind, so closely linked with his insanity, that the bare reading of your esteemed letter brought that painful passage of his life back again most vividly, causing a rush of blood to his head, and an almost sleepless night. I greatly fear the effect on him of any further written history of John Brown. Let me ask you, if you should write it, to please use Mr. Smith's bame as little as possible. Give my love to Mrs. Sanborn. We would be very happy, at any time, to receive a visit from you both.

From Dubuque, Iowa, Alcott wrote his friend Harris in mid-November, The Boston fire, so calamitous to many, has left us, Louisa and myself, I believe, unharmed. Her new book, Shawl-Straps, is published today.

Louisa wrote her father in December, How kind they are to you out West. You now carry a cane, a very pretty detail for an old gentleman still quite festive in his 73rd year. Don't get small pox at St Louis. Shawl Straps goes well, and good notices appear. Bun likes it, so I can die content.