Bronson Alcott at Alcott House, England, and Fruitlands, New England (1842-1844) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908. Excerpt: ... savings to the poor family. Now the saving must be made for themselves. Mr. Alcott said he could not live with debt burdening them in this way; that they must live simpler still. He started up and said he would go into the woods and chop for his neighbors, and in that way get his fuel. He has since entered upon this work. They said they should give up milk. I persuaded them against this, on account of the baby. Mr. A. thought it would not hurt any of them. THE ENGLISH MYSTICS At this time Anna, afterwards Mrs. Pratt, was ten, Louisa nine, and Beth seven. A year later, three English persons were added to the family, --Charles Lane, then forty-two years old, his son William, ten or twelve, and Henry Gardiner Wright, twenty-eight, --all in the autumn of 1842. How and why were they there, and who were they? To answer this question we must go back a few years, and introduce the name of Pestalozzi, the Swiss reformer of education, and his English coadjutor, James Pierrepont Greaves. Of the latter, a considerable biography is to be found in the Dial, written by Emerson, from material furnished by Alcott in 1842. Briefly, he was an Englishman, born in 1777, who at the age of forty went to reside in Switzerland with Pestalozzi, for four years, and there adopted, a few years before young Alcott did, the chief ideas of Pestalozzi, as to the training of children. Returning to England in 1825, he gradually formed a circle of mystics and reformers, in London and its vicinity, who were like himself, interested in the early instruction and training of children. Hearing from Harriet Martineau, upon her return from America in 1837, of Mr. Alcott's Temple School at Boston, and thinking more favorably of it than Miss Martineau did, Mr. Greaves opened a correspondence with the ...