Sanborn arrived in Concord at nightfall, on March 24, 1855, the Saturday before the Monday on which his school was scheduled to open. He took a room at Colonel Holbrook's Inn. Though Holbrook was appointed Democratic Customhouse Officer in Boston, he still kept up his Concord tavern. That Saturday night when Sanborn arrived, Mr. And Mrs. Holbrook were awaiting the arrival of their son from California, but he had not come. Because of that, Sanborn noted, the couple seemed to receive Sanborn all the more pleasantly -- because he was their son's age.

The night was cold. His room was without a fire. Sanborn turned in early. In the morning, he read by the fireplace down in Holbrook's parlor. On venturing out, in the afternoon, he saw Mrs. Emerson and joined her in her walk to church, sitting with her in the family pew. After the service, Sanborn walked her home, where Mr. Emerson invited him to join his daughter Ellen, his son Eddy, and himself for a late afternoon walk to Walden Pond, stopping by a little dell in the woods which the Emerson children had dubbed Fairyland.

It was cold and blustery out. Everyone was glad to get back to the Emerson dining room. Sanborn stayed for tea. In the evening he met the famous scholar, Mrs. Sarah Bradford Ripley, a sweet, silverhaired lady living in the famed Old Manse with her three daughters and a small grandson. She'd been there ten years, keeping up her reading in four or five languages. She wished to continue with the Greek authors, and arranged that we would meet together one evening each week to read Herodotus, the Dramatists, Plato, and assorted poets. This would continue through the next ten years, whenever I was at home in Concord. Each spring, Mrs. Ripley put on a banquet for her many minister friends, bringing out Mocha coffee which her father, Captain Gamaliel Bradford, had brought home from his Mediterranean sea voyages in the late eighteenth century.

Leaving Mrs. Ripley's, Sanborn joined Mrs. Emerson in calling on the Hoar family. He met the old gentleman, Judge Rockwood Hoar, and his daughter Elizabeth Hoar, who still wore black for Charles Emerson, who'd died eighteen years before. At forty, she appeared both old and young, Sanborn noted -- both wise and yet girlish. She was one of Emerson's chief friends, and also the poet Channing's. Sanborn regretted having to leave them, but he had to get back to his room before the 10:00 o’clock curfew Mr. Holbrook had imposed

He ran to the inn, but it was too late. The inn was shut tight. Another guest at the inn heard Sanborn’s calls and let him in. Exhausted, he went straight to bed. If I get through this week all right, Sanborn jotted in his notebook in the morning, I’ll consider myself fortunate.

The school was located just across the road from the Thoreau house at Number 5, Sudbury Road. It opened right on schedule, Monday morning, with seventeen pupils. Sanborn later admitted to having been much flustered that first day. He’d figured his having presided over an occasional public meeting was sufficient preparation for presiding over a school, but then he was not so sure. In later years, he liked to remark that he had no idea whatsoever what he’d said or done at his school that first day.

On Wednesday, Sanborn went to Emerson's house for tea. The poet, Ellery Channing, had just returned from a long walk with Emerson, and was now talking with Emerson's daughter Edith. Sanborn noticed her flower-like beauty working on Channing. Having said that, he didn’t report any emotions he might have been feeling himself. After tea, they all went to the Town Hall, where Emerson was going to give a lecture on Beauty. Afterwards, Emerson introduced Sanborn to Thoreau who, at the time, according to Sanborn, didn’t have much to say.

At the end of April, with Frank and Sarah settled in Channing's house along with Channing’s housekeeper Ann Carney, Henry Thoreau called on them. He arrived at eight and stayed until ten. Sanborn said he talked about Latin and Greek and sundry other things. He appears to be imitating Emerson, Sanborn thought to himself. It was annoying to listen to him. But of course he also said many original things.

After an afternoon adrift on the Assabet River in Thoreau's boat (dubbed "Musketaquid") one splendid, sunny day in May, Sanborn felt entirely pleased with himself, idly reflecting on his great good luck, almost too wonderful to fathom. Who could have guessed that he, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, would become not only a schoolmaster, but a schoolmaster in Concord, Massachusetts? Who could have imagined he'd be taking rooms in Ellery Channing's home, Henry Thoreau making evening calls? Who could have known he'd be teaching the children of the Concord sage himself, Ralph Waldo Emerson, with whom he often took tea, exchanging confidences, the two of them rambling over hill and dale together?

Sanborn went back in to Cambridge on May 12th, early in the morning, to retrieve his oak writing desk -- to put it on a train. This did not go well. Though a carriage brought the desk easily enough to the Cambridge train station, a baggage cart there was uncooperative. Only after a short, humiliating struggle did Sanborn, with the coachman's help, get the desk aboard the train to Concord.

Sanborn liked to tell the story of how he was was sitting at his hard won desk reading Demosthenes one evening in May when Thoreau walked in and the two fell to talking about Greek, Latin, Milton Wordsworth, Emerson, and Ellery Channing.

Channing reunited with his wife and family that summer. As winter came on, Ellen Channing's face grew serene, stoical, and haggard. She wasn’t sure which would come first: her husband’s wounding her, or deserting her. With the spring came a renewed feeling of love or, at least melancholy tenderness. By summer, she was back in Dorchester.

Ellery Channing went on an excursion with his friend Thoreau. The two thirty-eight year olds went off to explore Cape Cod. On returning, he wrote to his wife to say he felt sure they could live together in happiness as man and wife. She wrote back to him, but he didn’t get her letter. In mid-July one of Channing's letters made its way to Dorchester. Ellen readied herself for a reunion. Her brother Richard, a lawyer, drew up a legal document that would protect her in their again living together, as well as in the case of another separation. A formal agreement was made between Channing and a trustee who acted on behalf of Channing's wife. It assured to her their children, all their household goods, and half her husband's income. The paper was signed by both parties. Ellery and Ellen were again man and wife and, more, what with their brood of children, a family. To Channing's chagrin, the agreement formally stipulated the family would live not in Concord, but in Dorchester.

Frank and Sarah Sanborn now had the Channing house, housekeeper and all, for themselves. It was at that door that an official from Harvard knocked, early in July, to request that he, Sanborn, do his Alma Mater the favor of being present at the forthcoming Commencement, to deliver an oration. Sanborn immediately went to work on a draft, which he read aloud to Emerson, who praised some parts of it, censuring others. Emerson promised to be in Cambridge to hear Sanborn deliver it and, though he arrived late, he was there.

No one who has of late watched the course of things can have failed to notice the increasing importance of the secular teacher, Sanborn orated. It is a work not to be undertaken by the frivolous, nor carried on without prayer and struggle. Young men who are seeking a path in life, young women, I entreat you to come forward, in humility, yet in hope, to the serious, blessed labors of education.

Late that summer, in August 1855, Emerson introduced Sanborn to Walt Whitman's book, Leaves of Grass. The first review of the book, declaring the poet a genius -- albeit an odd genius -- had appeared in the New York Tribune on July 23rd, perhaps the same day as Whitman had received from Emerson a salutation, greeting him at the beginning of a great career. Though the book drew hardly any further notice from the press, in Concord Emerson couldn't praise the book enough, seeing in Whitman not only a disciple, but his ideal American man, an unbridled Emersonian, unloosed upon the world.

One afternoon that autumn as Sanborn was lying in the yard reading, Ellery Channing suddenly appeared, wanting Sanborn to join him in going boating. They went in to the village to a house where a small boat and some oars were, and then went with these to Walden pond. Throughout, Channing talked of Henry James, Sr. and Swedenbourg, advising Sanborn to read them and forget Leaves of Grass.

In September, Moncure Conway came to Concord as Emerson's guest. The host introduced him eagerly to Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Back in Boston the following day, Conway went to Fowler & Wells' book shop to purchase his own copy, prior to boarding a steamer bound for New York. Aboard the boat, he devoured the book. Disembarking, he vowed he'd find the poet at once. Conway found him living fearfully far out of Brooklyn, as he wrote to Emerson. Whitman’s mother directed him to Rome's Printing Office, where Whitman, in a blue-striped shirt, sat on a chair without a back, revising proof. It being the only chair, Conway reported, he offered it to me, and sat down on a corner of the printer's desk. Conway told Whitman all about how it was Emerson who’d steered him in Whitman’s direction, and the rest. Whitman wanted to know all about Emerson. He especially wanted to know what Emerson thought of Whitman’s book. Conway said Emerson liked Whitman’s frankness. The people of Concord, however, by and large, could not stand to read his book in mixed company. On hearing this, Whitman laughed out loud.

Whitman accompanied Conway on the ferry ride back to Manhattan, greeting everyone heartily along the way, especially laborers. His beard and hair are greyer than is usual with a man of thirty-six, Conway reported. He says of himself that he is personally dear to thousands of laboring New Yorkers, who love him but cannot make head or tail of his book.

Later that year, Emerson met Whitman in New York, dining with him at the Astor House. Instead of drinking out of a glass, Whitman requested a tin cup. After the meal, Whitman took Emerson to an engine-house, where he showed the Transcendental sage the opportunities firemen enjoyed for sitting and reading and for chatting with one another.

Thoreau did not initially sing his praises for Whitman’s book. He’d found the poems coarse. He much prefered the intricate and airy poems of his friend, Ellery Channing. When in the fall Thoreau introduced his New Bedford friend Daniel Ricketson to Channing, Ricketson found him to be the perfect man with whom to smoke a pipe and, as Ricketson said, with whom to feelosophize.

It was always easy to forget that Channing was a married man. Channing often forgot the fact himself. He and his wife both claimed they wanted the marriage to work. Ellen was glad the young Concord schoolmaster Sanborn and his sister had moved into the Concord house. Her whole heart was given to making her poet husband happy in their Dorchester home. Ellen's actual health, however, was on the decline. Beyond realizing she was pregnant, she also recognized her deep-seated cough wasn't going away.

Ellen didn’t join her husband Ellery in attending, at the end of September, the dedication of Concord’s Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Earlier in the year, the Hollow and the adjoining land had been claimed for a graveyard, then surveyed and divided into lots for the purpose. At the dedication, Channing read a poem, Emerson made an address, and an ode written by Sanborn expressly for the occasion was sung.

In October, Sanborn again heard from Thomas Cholmondeley, who was in training, drilling and making ready for war. Before heading for the Black Sea, however, he’d somehow gathered, with much care and cost, a box of books relating to India and Egypt, such as he fancied Thoreau might like, and he was now sending them on to Boston. The books arrived in Concord at the end of November. When they arrived, Thoreau put the books in cases he made himself out of driftwood he’d brought home from his voyages along the Musketaquid, Sanborn noted, thus giving that Oriental wisdom an Occidental shrine.

As for wars, there was one brewing in Americas’s own back yard -- in Kansas. In December, 1855, a Kansas Free Stater was killed in a boundary dispute near the Free State town of Lawrence, which had been named after Amos A. Lawrence, the founder of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society. Fearing retaliation from the Free Staters, the Proslavery sheriff bid the Governor call a thousand men to arms, even as a thousand Border Ruffians were gathering along the Wakarusa River, four miles from Lawrence, calling their newly organized army, and at first quite loosely organized army, The Kansas Volunteers. The Captain of the 5th Regiment of the First Brigade of the Kansas Volunteers was a man named John Brown. Captain Brown proclaimed his squad ready to fight, if there was to be a fight. John Brown Jr. said his one hundred man company of Pottawatomie Riflemen likewise was ready.

In the end, no blood was spilled in this, the Wakarusa War. The Governor was told by Free Staters he'd simply misunderstood the dispute over the boundary. The governor disbanded the troops. A treaty was signed with the Free Staters. Plundering and pillaging the Territory in departing, Border Ruffians promised they'd be back to burn down Lawrence on another day.