Sanborn’s son Tom left his Concord home that fall to begin his studies at Harvard with the class of '86. He boarded at Hollis Hall, taking his meals in Memorial Hall. One of the earliest friendship he made was with a fellow freshman, Ernest Thayer. Within the first month of their entering Harvard, the two were elected to serve on the Board of the Harvard Lampoon, as was also the most exotic and intriguing of their classmates, an 18 year-old Spaniard with a dark and enigmatic face, one George Santayana. It was plain from early on that this Santayana was extraordinarily talented. Almost effortlessly, always jubilantly, he filled ream after ream of paper with his drawings, limericks, and verse. It wasn't long before the Lampoon had signed him on as a staff writer, satirist, and cartoonist.

Santayana, Thayer, and Sanborn were soon close cronies, intimates in a larger circle of friends that prided themselves on being either in The Harvard Lampoon or The Hasty Pudding, or both (as had been Tom’s father before him). They took their daily meals together at Memorial Hall, discoursing as they ate, meanwhile sketching cartoons and lines of poems, making fresh starts from day to day on projected future masterpieces, and scheming schemes for some fun and high jinx, both in and beyond the solemn, hallowed walls of Harvard. Such new and refreshing views of the world as Oscar Wilde offered, what with his eloquent denunciations of American puritanism, were thrilling to them. They resolved they'd be anything but what the old world had held, Puritans, prigs, and preachers. Their commitment would be to beauty. They would hold what was splendid in reverence, mocking prurience, rejecting every ancient, outworn social convention. Years later, Santayana would write gratefully of his good fortune in having found himself in such a creative and delightful circle of lively wits.

Tom Sanborn and I kept up our close comradeship at table for four years, Santayana later remembered. We became close personal friends, on intellectual grounds. In those days Harvard freshmen sat together in their classrooms in alphabetical order, to be marked present or absent. Sanborn and I were as likely as not to be sitting next to each other. I also remember sitting next to Sanborn in our Natural History class, where Professor Shaler set forth, as he said, All the geology necessary to a gentleman. Tom and I had separate chairs, but there was a common running desk in front of us, so that we could easily look over on one another's notebooks. We amused ourselves comparing triolets in verse, meanwhile oblivious to Professor Shaler's Concatenation of Phenomena, and so on, which he tried so hard, in vain, to impress upon us.

Though I attended Harvard through the generosity of a sponsor, Caroline Sturgis, still I had only a dollar a day for spending, Santayana would write. With only that, complemented by the further generosity of my friends, I managed to dress decently, to belong to minor societies like The Hasty Pudding and The Lampoon, to buy books, and to visit the homes of Mrs. Sturgis' rich friends, or the homes of my classmate's, for example Tom Sanborn's, in Concord.

On October 24th, 1882, Bronson Alcott suffered a stroke. On getting word of it via telegram, Louisa, then living in Boston in a room at the Bellevue Hotel, rushed to Concord. Her bedridden father gave no sign of recognition, his mind clouded, and his entire right side paralyzed.

Dr. Wesselhoeft came up yesterday and said it was only a question of time, Louisa wrote in November. He has weeks perhaps, the doctor said, or only days. So we make ready, and enjoy each hour in spite of the sad eclipse that already seems to part us in a measure. Sanborn saw him in a bright moment, and so gives, I fear, a too favorable account of Father's condition. He saw him but twice, and the last time he only excited him a good deal, reading and talking of things I think are best avoided in his present feeble state of mind and body. Father talks now, but brokenly, and seems to have difficulty in expressing even the disconnected thoughts that come and go in his bewildered yet active brain. He suffers no pain, can make his wants known, eats spoon food easily, and sleeps more quietly than before. But he is very wandering in mind, and feeble in body. We do not hope to see him ever his old self, nor to keep him long. It is not to be desired, and I shall gladly see the end before life is a burden, or he recalls too clearly the affliction that has befallen him. He would suffer in the knowledge of his weakness and the probable fate in store for him, so I do not ask many days or weeks of this pathetic fumbling after the lost intelligence and vigor. A quick and quiet passage from this darkness to the light he loved and lived is far better.

Poor father, dumb and helpless! Louisa Alcott wrote in her journal later that month. Feeble mind slowly coming back. He knows us, but lies asleep most of the time. Get a nurse and wait to see if he will rally. It is sad to see the change one moment made, turning the hale handsome old man into this pathetic wreck. The forty sonnets last winter and the fifty lectures at the school last summer were too much for a man of eighty-three. He was warned by Dr Wesselhoeft, but no, Mr. Franlin Benjamin Sanborn thought it folly to stop, and now poor father pays the penalty of breaking the laws of health. I have done the same, may I be spared this end!

Bronson Alcott's health would deteriorate not over days, but through five more long years. He would occasionally find the strength to attend lectures at the Concord School of Philosophy, but would never again to participate actively. Louisa fumed, at the close of the year, when Professorr Harris came calling, with Sanborn. They came only for a few moments. As he says his brain works and tires him, I had insisted they avoid saying anything that would excite him, even pleasurably. But they got on with their little jokes about the Dean and Faculty of the School of Philosophy, anyway. The poor Dean sat up among his pillows and laughed, and tried to talk, but his speech is more indistinct than formerly, and very hard to understand.

In January, 1883, Ellen Emerson wrote her sister Edith of her taking tea at Mrs. Reynolds' house for the first time: The hungarian Unitarian delegate to our Saratoga Conference was there. Of all the easy social strangers, none could be desired more lively than he. I shivered a little in my skin, as I remembered experiences with people who couldn't talk English, before I went. But he could! I shouldn't dread having him on my hands a whole day. The next day he came and stayed an hour here and I really was sorry to have him go.

Ellen wrote of hastening to Alice Wheildon's one snowy winter evening for a meeting of the Frolic Club: -- It was very exciting to see people bearing down on the gateway from behind us, from across the street, from downtown, yes, even sleighs arriving. Lizzie Bartlett sat on the arm of the sofa sparkling with malice, Louisa Alcott occupied the other arm. Between them sat the deaf. Sister after sister shone upon the sight, and many a sister's mother.

Father is as serene and patient as a philosopher should be, Louisa Alcott wrote of her father in mid-February. He seems to find sweetness and sunshine even in this new experience of pain. He talks still of rounding out his hundred years, and plans work for twenty years to come. Sanborn and Harris call often, the two talking enough between them for any three people, father's own speech being too imperfect to make conversation easy for him. He likes to read and play checkers, looks out at the wintry world with tranquil pleasure, and enjoys the pranks of his little grandchild, who is headnurse and takes care of her Dranpa with pretty, maternal tenderness. It seems to be a beautiful and happy ending to a wise and blameless life, very lovely to watch and very helpful to us who look after the ascending saint to catch a glimpse of Heaven as he enters in.

On February 24, 1883, Ellen Emerson wrote to her sister of the happiness she felt at having all Edith's seven children joining her for tea: Ralph, Don, Cameron, Violet, Edward, Waldo, and baby Alexander. They were nectar and ambrosia. Mrs. Sanborn was here too, making life additionally delightful.

In April, Ellen reported her being visited by Mrs. Sanborn's sister,

Miss Leavitt, who had come for dinner: I feasted her on photgraphs. You would have enjoyed her scream when Alexander's came in sight.

In May Ellen shared her photo album with Nina Lowell: Here she was, and oh what a good time I had with her! She delighted in Alexander's big amused photograph, seemed to drink health from it. She visited little Florence and Edward read her some of Father's poetry. At 11:00 I took home my four dear friends, Mrs. Sanborn, Miss Leavitt, Anna McClure, and Mrs. Emery.

Father cannot drink wine, Louisa Alcott wrote Mary Stearns at the end of May. It heats his head. But the bay rum you sent is his comfort and delight!

On June 4th, Ellen Emerson wrote Edith of her walking and talking in their mother's garden: It was in full glory of tulips. Mother has had a show this year, far surpassing anything heretofore. The Narcissus were just appearing, perhaps six in bloom. Lilies of the Valley had one or two bells open. At last we all came back merrily to my room and eagerly returned to listen to Mrs. Emery, who did not advance even three pages before her horse came for her. We all howled with dismay. She invited us to come next Wednesday and spend the day with her. Miss Leavitt, and Anna and I walked out onto the hills while Mrs. Sanborn took a nap. This ended the festivity. We spent the day at Mrs. Emery's on Wednesday. Mother and I reached her house at about twelve and found Mrs. Sanborn already there. After the reading, Mrs. Sanborn, Anna, Miss Leavitt, and I went out to walk while Mrs. Emery lay down to rest. Miss Leavitt couldn't come back to tea, but Mother and the rest of us did. There was a lively little skirmish on the Golden Rule between Mrs. Sanborn and all the gentlemen at tea-time. Right after tea Mr. McClure and I went out to the sing. Mother stayed and read Louisa Alcott's Transcendental Wild Oats in the evening, but wasn't even half finished with it by the time I got back home.

Last night Miss Leavitt invited us and dear Mrs. Emery and Anna to tea, Ellen wrote her sister on June 13th. I was tired when I went but as we came into the parlour after tea I wondered where the fatigue had gone to. After tea Mother, though recalcitrant, was induced to lie down in Miss Leavitt's room, and returned rested to the evening's discourse. We stayed very late -- till 9:30, and then walked home through moonlight too beautiful to imagine, more than my capacities could take in.

Yesterday was a delightful day, Ellen wrote on July 12th. I had asked Sarah Richardson to come and spend it with me. Messrs. and Mrs. Bulkeley were invited to dine, and Mother had summoned the Emerys to her Transcendental Wild Oats reading in the evening. We had a very cheerful time. They stayed till nearly four. Then something was said of our Aeolian harp, and I got it out. 'Twas windy enough for it, and it sang like an angel. After tea Mother remembered the book, Silver Pitchers, had been left at Miss Leavitt's. Sarah and I took the wagon post-haste, and rode up to get it. We found the Leavitt's porch packed with company. It looked most festive and inviting. They brought out the book, and we drove home fast. Then began one of the most joyous evenings imaginable, sharing the Aeolian harp among much loved friends.

Oh happiness of hearing William James! Ellen wrote her brother Edward on July 20th. Mr. Sanborn has sent you, Mother, and me season tickets to the School. William James read the first evening. I told Mr Sanborn to send him to us, but Mr Sanborn didn't see him. William came up with wife and sister-in-law, expecting to take tea somewhere. In vain. He found himself, as he thought, obliged to repair to the School of Philosophy without time to come to us for comfort. So fasting he lectured, then walked to the train and reached home having had no food for ten hours! Naturally he didn't lecture at his best, but it was a pleasure to see and hear him. I asked him to stay here. He refused, but promised to come next Thursday and spend the night. I found psychology was no more one of my themes than Hegel, so doubted whether I would go next time, but Thursday noon dear Mr. Blake made a beautiful call on me, every moment interesting and delightful, and told me to go to the second lecture. At night William came to tea, and we did have such a good time! Hereditary friendships are a blessed thing!

On July 28th Ellen wrote her sister of William James' visit and of his having agreed to bring his entourage to stay longer at the Emerson's when he next came to Concord to lecture. Now the occasion had arrived: I meant to make this a great gala and to have tea on the Pond if it was pleasant. The Emerys and Sanborns could not come, but the others I invited could. No sooner was the lecture over than Mrs. James told me they must whisk right home at half past noon. Dismay! They came with us to have a drink of water, but we went to the wagon and then set out to show them the Minuteman statue. We had a happy ride, and just as we reached the train, we remembered endless numbers of things to say to each other. William had read the letters from his Father which I had lent him, and asked to keep the one about his brother Wilky's wound. Then they departed.

Father seems brighter in mind, though in body he remains helpless, Louisa Alcott wrote that fall. He reads a little, and understands us better, and seems to enjoy his little comforts.

The following summer, in June 1884, Louisa sold the Alcott family Orchard House to the man to her father's fond Western Friend, Professor Harris.

With the urgency of a man vowing to do the work of ten dead or dying mentors, Sanborn was then often absent from Concord, traveling throughout the northeast and elsewhere, ever advocating for social reform. That year he journeyed eagerly to upper New York State, to Elmira, to investigate dramatic progressive developments taking place at the reformatory there.

The eminent reformer Theodore Dwight, as a leading member of the Prison Association of New York, had been instrumental in securing legislative support for the Elmira Reformatory, incorporated in 1869 and opened in 1877 under the superintendency of the former Superintendent of The Detroit House of Refuge, Zebulon R. Brockway, respected nationwide as the foremost authority on reformatory techniques in dealing with older delinquents and first-time offenders.

In 1884, Brockway introduced at Elmira what would become a popular course, Morality, complemented by what he called An experiment in a more intensive use of literature for reformative effect. In other words, here was a Reformatory course in English Literature. The curriculum included, beyond European poetry and drama, the study of Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Dean Howells, and Thomas Hughes. -- Literature was studied over and over, F. Thornton Macauley wrote in his Secretary of Schools report in the Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the New York State Reformatory at Elmira, for the Year Ending September 30, 1885. -- Minds heretofore innocent of culture became saturated with the drinkable gold of the classics.

Much impressed with Brockway's work, but dismayed by the Reformatory librarian's rejection of a popular but controverial novel, Sanborn wrote to Brockway, so soon as he got back to his writing desk: I have read Huckleberry Finn, and I do not see any reason why it should not go into your Practical Morality class. When, in July, 1886 Mark Twain would be invited to participate in a lecture series at the Reformatory in Elmira, he would accept, spicing his rousing, much applauded lecture with the most colorful episodes from his cautionary tale of the infamously unreformed Huckleberry Finn.

Beyond finding Brockway's undertaking, and accomplishment, to be splendid and impressive, Sanborn was just pleased with the man, Brockway. Here was a practical reformer with extraordinary devotion, uncanny ability, and simple gumption. Here was a bold and powerful idealist, a rascal, a gentleman. He found in Brockway a friend, good company in which he felt again God's true work on earth was being done.

Sanborn took the New York State Reformatory for his model when he came to aid in the establishment of the Massachusetts Reformatory for Men. Our Concord State prison, Sanborn wrote, which was built in 1873-74 to take the place of the old stone castle at Prison Point in Charlestown, was turned into a reformatory prison in 1885, and was managed under the Elmira System.

In 1884 the reknowned educator Andrew Dickson White, President of Cornell University, set out in earnest finally to hire at Cornell a professor in the still emerging, not yet formalized discipline of social science. White, lately elected president of the American Historical Society, a group newly splintered off from the American Social Science Association, whose meetings White attended and enjoyed, was determined to have the man on whom he’d already fixed his sights come to Cornell to lecture. As far as he could see, it was just a matter of somehow getting the Secretary of the ASSA, Frank Sanborn, away from Concord to do it.

Sanborn knew White as one of the great teachers of history in the country. At the University of Michigan in 1857, Professor White had implemented lectures in lieu of recitations, leading his students out beyond their regular texts to outside readings and original sources. White already had strong ideas about what America's universities could and should be, years prior to Ezra Cornell's choosing him to preside over Cornell. At the truly great university, White wrote, there would be instruction in Moral Philosophy, History, Political Economy. Students would learn ways and means of utilizing these practically, unwarped by any then accustomed, entrenched abuses in Politics and Religion. White's plans for the new school at Ithaca had included, from the outset, the creation of a department of History, Jurisprudence, and Political and Social Science.

White knew Sanborn as one of the leading figures of social reform in the Northeast, having hobnobbed with him often at at Saratoga, New York, at the annual gatherings of the American Social Science Association. Through twenty years, Sanborn had made himself no stranger in New York: I had become intimately familiar with the charitable and correctional establishments there, Sanborn wrote. I was well acquainted with the State Board of Charities, the head of the reformatory at Elmira, the various heads of the insane asylums, and with the head of the Idiot's School at Syracuse. I had ready access, without delay or parade, to all the establishments of the Empire State.

For years White had tempted Sanborn, asking him to come and give a course that would be neither Ethics nor Economics, nor what is broadly termed Sociology, but practical lectures on the treatment of public dependents.

My own experience in the New York State Legislature, White wrote, and in the public affairs of the State generally, had shown me how poorly equipped for public duties the graduates of our colleges generally were. Hence arose my conviction that one of our first duties at Cornell should be to give some knowledge which would fit our graduates who were likely to enter public life, to consider the principles and practice involved in the founding and maintaining of the institutions dealing with Pauperism, Insanity, Inebriety, and Crime, in their various stages.

The 1885 agreement secured Sanborn's not only giving lectures, but his also chaperoning field trips to area prisons, reformatories, asylums, and poorhouses.Classes were to hear me and be examined in writing, Sanborn wrote. Such numbers as chose to go with me to the poorhouses, should have their travelling expenses, and mine, paid by the University. The plan was perhaps my suggestion, but it was heartily accepted and acted upon by White.

The course was popular, drawing on the average forty students each semester through the three years Sanborn taught at Cornell. No other professor could offer a course approaching anything so fabulous or strange as taking trips into the howling labyrinths of prisons and asylums for the insane.

In some of these visits, of which we made six or seven in a year, my visiting class numbered sixty or seventy -- being most numerous at the Elmira Reformatory, where Mr. Brockway was then at the height of his success in the practical organization of a great prison university, which did graduate reformed convicts, and restored them as self-supporting citizens to the community whose criminal laws they had broken. Mr. Brockway himself explained to my students how he managed his students, then numbering something like a thousand, and what was the result of the Indeterminate Sentence, then a new measure, hardly tried elswhere in America, though long practiced with good effect in Ireland under the Crofton System.

Sanborn's students visited the Tomkins County jail, the County Poorhouse, Willard's Asylum, the Auburn Asylum for Insane Criminals, the Auburn State Prison, the New York State Asylum for Idiots at Syracuse, the Monroe County Insane Asylum at Rochester, the Western House of Refuge at Rochester, and the Elmira State Reformatory.

Student were required to make notes, and to compare and contrast the institutions and their management. Students agreed from semester to semester that Zebulon Brockway was an exemplary social scientist and reformer, and the Elmira Reformatory was the best managed of the institutions they toured, consistently agreeing likewise that the Tomkins County Poorhouse was the most dismally run.

Though he apparently enjoyed giving the course, and was evidently well received and enjoyed by students, still he felt a powerful natural allergic reaction to the academic, pedantic, institutional setting. he was amused to hear his students greeting or calling after him, Professor Sanborn! To him, professors were ridiculously plagued with scholarly pretense and with what he called their Effusive Omniscience.

Looking back in 1890 on his three years at Cornell, 1885 -1888, Sanborn scorned what the academic study, social science, was tending toward, insisting, To discover and amend what is wrong in the habitual life of men is what social science applies itself to most usefully; not to the promulgating broad theories or insisting on ambitious panaceas for every human ill. Better to consider the ailment and apply the remedy patiently and repeatedly, as a mother heals the hurts of her children.

During the three years Sanborn lectured in Social Science at Cornell, he was always itching to pack his bags and go home. One fine day in his first year among the distinguished Cornell faculty, he suddenly up and cancelled classes for a week, giving no explanation, saying simply he was needed in Concord.

After Sanborn left Cornell he set to work, formulating a comprehensive model curriculum organized around the American Social Science Association's five main educational categories: Education, Health, Jurisprudence, Social Economy, and Finance. He then spearheaded the ASSA initiative to inundate colleges and universities all across the country with its version of what the study of social science should be. Seeking to determine the status of social science instruction in the nation's universities, the Association conducted a survey, calling on the heads of the varied institutions to say whether or not the main concerns and challenges of the ASSA were or were not being addressed.

Sanborn had, in the meantime, brought out a new biography of John Brown, at which he'd been at work on for over twenty-five years, seeking out and gathering together every scrap of new information he could lay his hands on. In 1885 Roberts Brothers had published The Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of Kansas, and Martyr of Virginia.

When I wrote my first biography of John Brown for the History of his native Connecticut township, Torrington, in 1878, I supposed Brown had not been present at the Pottawatomie executions, Sanborn wrote in later years, I relied on the statements of Redpath in his biography, and on the words of Brown's brother, having never asked Brown himself about the exact truth in the matter. Late in 1879 one of Brown's company, James Townsley, charged Brown with having fired one of the fatal shots that night. This was not true, but in the main I found Townsly truthful. I sought an interview with Owen Brown, who was also present at the deed, and obtained from him the precise account which I published in my second Life of Brown, in 1885.

When in mid-July, 1882, Sanborn had heard from John and Mary Brown's daughter Sarah, inquiring whether he and some of his Eastern friends had indeedd gotten up a trust fund for the Brown family, Sanborn had informed her. He, Emerson, Higginson, John Greenleaf Whittier, and others had set up just such a fund. Now, in 1885, he made certain that only Mary Brown would be its beneficiary, receiving in her last years all income from the interest of the fund. When Mary brown died, Sanborn sent $150 to her daughter Sarah, for payment of all expenses incurred during her final illness. After Mary Brown's death, over a thousand dollars remained at the disposal of the Brown family, three-fourths of which was invested into real estate. The rest was put into a standard bank account, to be used at will by any of Brown's children. Sarah used wisely what money came to her from the fund, while her brothers, Salmon and Jason Brown, dispersed their share to the four winds.

If ever a biographer faced scrutiny, Sanborn did, that year, and for years afterwards. It was said Sanborn had to be read with caution: he'd corrected Brown's punctuation, and spelling, and grammar, and had committed other gaucheries, short of actually putting his own words into Brown's mouth, all without informing the reader.

The story of John Brown will mean little to those who do not believe that God governs the world, and that He makes His will known in advance to certain chosen men and women who perform it, consciously or unconsciously, Sanborn divined. He let his readers know, right from the beginning, that his views on Brown's words and deeds were going to be tipped in Brown's favor. Of such prophetic, heaven-appointed men, Sanborn wrote, John Brown was the most conspicuous in our time.

When, in 1885, a controversy arose over Mark Twain's book, Huckleberry Finn, with the trustees of the Concord Free Public Library voting against including it among the books on their shelves, Sanborn came to its defense, writing in the April 27th issue of The Springfield Daily Republican: I cannot subscribe to the extreme censure passed upon this volume, which is no coarser than Mark Twain's books usually are, while it has a vein of deep morality beneath its exterior of falsehood and vice that will redeem it in the eyes of mature persons. It is not adapted to Sunday-school libraries, and should perhaps be left unread by growing boys. But the mature in mind may read it without distinction of age or sex, and without material harm.

By 1885, Sanborn had been, for more years now than anyone could remember, the official State Inspector for the Massachusetts Board of Charities which, for one thing, monitored the state's reform schools for juvenile delinquents. Whatever Franklin B. Sanborn had to say about Huckleberry Finn was not going to be taken lightly.