The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1895-02-07
EMERSON'S YOUTH.
He Served as a Waiter and Tutor During
His College Course.

nc SerVeu as waiter and q Tutor During
His College Course.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born Nav
%, 1S03 in Boston, not far from the
birth place of Franklin. His father
was a clergyman, who had recently
founded what is now .he library of
the Boston Athenauni. Books rather
than the ordinary boyish sports were
the delight of the son. He rarely
played, and never owned sled. In
the austere New England life of the
time there was little leisure for mere
amusement.
Emerson's father died before the boy
was eight years old, and thereafter the
enid had to help his mother, who took
boarders and tried hard to give her sons
an education sucn as their fathers.
Emerson entered the Latin school II
1913, and one day the next year, when
there was rumor that the British
were going to send fleet to Boston
harbor, he went with the rest of the
boys to help build earthworks on one
of the Islands, About this time, also,
he began to rhyme, celebrating in
juvenile verse the victories of the
young American navy.
In August, 1877, Emerson entered
Harvard college, receiving help from
the various funds intended to aid poor
students, and obtaining the appoint
ment of Presidents Freshman" a
student who received his lodgings free
in return for carrying official messages.
lie served also as waiter at the college
commons, and so saved three-fourths
the cost of his board. Later in his col
lege course. he acted as tutor to
younger pupils. He seems to have i'm
pressed his instructors as a youth of
remarkable ability; but he was not a
diligent student In those days Har-
ward was not university; it was not
even college; it was little more than
high school where boys recited their
lessons. Emerson was only eighteen
when he was graduated, feeling that
the regular course of studies had done
little for him, and having therefore
strayed out of the beaten path to
browse for himself among the books i'll
the library He was popular with the
best of his classmates, and at gradua-
ton he was class poet.
Whatever the value of a college edu-
cation in those days, Emerson was the
earliest of the little group of the foun-
ers of American literature to GO through
college. Franklin, having to work for
his living from early boyhood, had no
time; Irving, after preparing for Co.
lumbia, threw his chance away; while
Cooper was expelled from Yale, and
Bryant was so dissatisfied with Will
liams that he left it after single year
But the authors who came after Emer-
son made sure of the best education
that this country could afford them
Hawthorne and Longfellow were grad
uated from Bowdoin, while from Emer-
sons college, Harvard, were to come
Holmes, Thoreau and Lowell.
When he graduated, Emerson's am
bition was to be a professor of rhetoric;
but such position was never offered
to him. He taught school for while
in Boston, earning money to pay his
debts and to help his mother. Then
ne entered the Divinity school at Har-
ward, and, in October, 1926, he was
appreciated to preach" delivering his
first sermon few days later For the
sake of his health he spent that winter
in Florida, at st. Augustine. On his
return he lived in Cambridge chiefly,
preaching here and there, and in the
spring of 1929 he became the minister
Of the old North church in Boston.
Being thus established, in September
he married Miss Ellen Tucker, but he
lost his wife soon after the marriage.
Moreover, Emerson was not satisfied
to remain in the ministry, and in 1882
he resigned his charge. Prof. Brandel
Matthews, in st. Nicholas.