THE REVERENDS HORATIO ALGER R AND R - Kouroo

THE REVERENDS HORATIO ALGER, SR. AND JR.

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

Reverend Horatio Alger, Jr. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/ActiveIndex.pdf


REVEREND HORATIO ALGER, JR. REVEREND HORATIO ALGER, SR.

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At Harvard Divinity School, the following gentlemen commenced their studies:

Stephen Alfred Barnard (A.B. Brown University)Horatio Alger, Sr.David Hatch BarlowStephen A. BarnardWilliam BarryWashington GilbertHersey Bradford GoodwinWillard NewellCazneau PalfreyWilliam S. PrentissGeorge Whitney

(George Washington Hosmer would also go on into this school — but he is not listed as having begun immediately.)

George Washington Hosmer; A.M.; Grad. Div. S. 1830; S.T.D. 1853;Prof. Past. Care, Meadville Theol. S. (Pa.); Prof. Hist. andEthics, Antioch (O.); President, Antioch 1866-1873

In early years of the Divinity School, there were no formal class graduations as students would be in the habit of studying there for varying periods until they obtained an appropriate offer to enter a pulpit.

1826

NEW “HARVARD MEN”

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http://surnamesite.com/harvard/harvard1826.htm

REVEREND HORATIO ALGER, SR. REVEREND HORATIO ALGER, JR.

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January 13, Friday: Horatio Alger, Jr. was born to Olive Augusta Fenno Alger in North Chelsea, Massachusetts (which now is known as Revere), where his father the Reverend Horatio Alger was the Unitarian minister. (Although said town may not have produced its quota of Tattered Toms or Ragged Dicks, it has evidently managed to produce at least one reverend who couldn’t keep his pants buttoned.)

In Providence, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal:

6th day 13 of 1 M / Time passes swiftly & silently away - I feel that it is so & the necessity of a preparation for the end or conclusion of it —

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

1832

RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS








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The Reverend Horatio Alger, Sr. was forced by bankruptcy to resign his position as a Unitarian minister in North Chelsea, Massachusetts and go out on a search for some church that could offer him a more adequate salary.

1844





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The Reverend Horatio Alger, Sr. was accepted as the Unitarian minister of West Church in Marlborough. In Marlborough, Horatio Alger, Jr. would attend Gates Academy until he was fifteen in 1847.

We don’t know the exact year of this, and will be forced to put it here temporarily: Out of sheer mischief, in an attempt to get something interesting going, Horatio Alger, Jr. started a bonfire during an abolitionist rally.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

1845








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Horatio Alger, Jr. matriculated at Harvard College.

1848







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Horatio Alger, Jr. graduated from Harvard College with Phi Beta Kappa honors.

His cousin, the Reverend William Rounseville Alger, who had attended the Harvard Divinity School without first attending Harvard College, belatedly was awarded the degree of AM. His 30-page THE NATURE, GROUNDS, AND USES OF FAITH was printed for the American Unitarian Association in Boston by W. Crosby and H.P. Nichols. His 37-page THE FACTS OF INTEMPERANCE, AND THEIR CLAIMS ON THE PUBLIC ACTION OF THE PEOPLE was printed in Boston by Crosby, Nichols, and Company.

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD?— NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES.

LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

1852










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At the age of 16 Bertie was required to attend Faraday’s Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institute, on Attraction, and produce a report of what he was learning about chemistry. His father Prince Albert would examine these notes and complain of their inadequacy.

A collection of sentimental stories by Horatio Alger, Jr.’s BERTHA’S CHRISTMAS VISION.

The Reverend William Rounseville Alger’s THE POETRY OF THE ORIENT, OR METRICAL SPECIMENS OF THE THOUGHT, SENTIMENT, AND FANCY OF THE EAST, PREFACED BY AN ELABORATE DISSERTATION was published in Boston by the firm of Whittemore, Niles and Hall. (This editions of poems translated from the Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit languages would be republished in an enlarged 2d edition in Boston by the firm of Roberts Brothers in 1865, and in an further enlarged 4th edition in 1874, and in a further enlarged 5th edition in 1883.)

The Reverend’s AMERICAN VOICE ON THE LATE WAR IN THE EAST was published in Boston by the firm of John P. Jewett & Co.

The Reverend’s THE CHARITIES OF BOSTON, OR, TWENTY YEARS AT THE WARREN-STREET CHAPEL: AN ADDRESS / DELIVERED AT THE CHAPEL BY WILLIAM R. ALGER, SUNDAY EVENING, JAN. 27, 1856 was published in Boston by the firm of J. Wilson.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

1856

POETRY OF THE ORIENT







http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/56/1856_PoetryOfOrient.pdf


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Publication of Horatio Alger, Jr.’s long poem, “Nothing to Do, a Tilt at our Best Society.” He entered the Harvard Divinity School to become, like his father and his cousin, a Unitarian reverend.

At the Lowell Institute, the Unitarian Reverend Henry Whitney Bellows delivered a series of lectures on “The Treatment of Social Diseases.” Before the American Dramatic Fund Society at the Academy of Music in New-York, the Reverend Bellows delivered an address on “The Relation of Public Amusements to Public Morality, Especially of the Theatre to the Highest Interests of Humanity.” This would be published by C.S. Francis as THE RELATION OF PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS TO PUBLIC MORALITY, ESPECIALLY OF THE THEATRE TO THE HIGHEST INTERESTS OF HUMANITY: AN ADDRESS, DELIVERED AT THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC, NEW YORK BEFORE “THE AMERICAN DRAMATIC FUND SOCIETY,” FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE FUND.

1857







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The Unitarian Reverend Henry Whitney Bellows’s RESTATEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE IN TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS.

The Reverend Horatio Alger, Sr. was accepted as the minister of the Unitarian church in South Natick, Massachusetts. His son Horatio Alger, Jr. completed Harvard Divinity School and then instead of seeking a church, would travel in Europe for the following ten months.

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

1860








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The Unitarian Reverend Henry Whitney Bellows planned the United States Sanitary Commission, the major source of spiritual and physical aid for wounded Union soldiers during and after the American Civil War. He would become the Commission’s only president.

A new edition of the Reverend William Rounseville Alger’s THE POETRY OF THE ORIENT, OR METRICAL SPECIMENS OF THE THOUGHT, SENTIMENT, AND FANCY OF THE EAST, PREFACED BY AN ELABORATE DISSERTATION (originally published in Boston in 1856). –Also, his A CRITICAL HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE, with a bibliography by Ezra Abbot comprising some 5,000 titles. –Also, his THE GENIUS OF SOLITUDE; OR THE LONELINESS OF HUMAN LIFE.

Since his shortness (he was 5 foot 2) and poor eyesight were keeping him from being accepted into the military, in this year or the following one the Reverend Horatio Alger, Jr. would accept a position as the Unitarian pastor of the 1st Parish Church in Brewster. The ordination sermon would be delivered by the Reverend Edward Everett Hale.

1861





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Table of Altitudes

Yoda 2 ' 0 ''

Lavinia Warren 2 ' 8 ''

Tom Thumb, Jr. 3 ' 4 ''

Lucy (Australopithecus Afarensis) 3 ' 8 ''

Hervé Villechaize (“Fantasy Island”) 3 ' 11''

Charles Proteus Steinmetz 4 ' 0 ''

Mary Moody Emerson per FBS (1) 4 ' 3 ''

Alexander Pope 4 ' 6 ''

Benjamin Lay 4 ' 7 ''

Gary Coleman (“Arnold Jackson”) 4 ' 8 ''

Queen Victoria with osteoporosis 4 ' 8 ''

Queen Victoria as adult 4 ' 10 ''

Margaret Mitchell 4 ' 10 ''

length of newer military musket 4 ' 10''

Charlotte Brontë 4 ' 10-11''

Harriet Beecher Stowe 4 ' 11''

Laura Ingalls Wilder 4 ' 11''

a rather tall adult Pygmy male 4 ' 11''

John Keats 5 ' 0 ''

Clara Barton 5 ' 0 ''

Isambard Kingdom Brunel 5 ' 0 ''

Andrew Carnegie 5 ' 0 ''

Thomas de Quincey 5 ' 0 ''

Stephen A. Douglas 5 ' 0 ''

Danny DeVito 5 ' 0 ''

Immanuel Kant 5 ' 0 ''

William Wilberforce 5 ' 0 ''

Mae West 5 ' 0 ''

Mother Teresa 5 ' 0 ''

Deng Xiaoping 5 ' 0 ''

Dred Scott 5 ' 0 '' (±)

Captain William Bligh of HMS Bounty 5 ' 0 '' (±)

Harriet Tubman 5 ' 0 '' (±)

Mary Moody Emerson per FBS (2) 5 ' 0 '' (±)

John Brown of Providence, Rhode Island 5 ' 0 '' (+)




Yoda, of Lucas’s "Star Wars" movies.

"The Jacksons" TV sitcom: Gary Coleman played Arnold Jackson on the TV sitcom "The Jacksons." He grew his last inch at age 26. He ran for governor of California against another Arnold, last name "Schwarzeneger."

Most male Pygmy adults and virtually all female Pygmy adults would be considerably shorter than this.


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Bette Midler 5 ' 1 ''

Jemmy Button 5 ' 2 ''

Margaret Mead 5 ' 2 ''

R. Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller 5 ' 2 ''

Yuri Gagarin the astronaut 5 ' 2 ''

William Walker 5 ' 2 ''

Horatio Alger, Jr. 5 ' 2 ''

length of older military musket 5 ' 2 ''

the artist formerly known as Prince 5 ' 21/2''

typical female of Thoreau's period 5 ' 21/2''

Francis of Assisi 5 ' 3 ''

Voltaire 5 ' 3 ''

Mohandas Gandhi 5 ' 3 ''

Sammy Davis, Jr. 5 ' 3 ''

Kahlil Gibran 5 ' 3 ''

Friend Daniel Ricketson 5 ' 3 ''

The Reverend Gilbert White 5 ' 3 ''

Nikita Khrushchev 5 ' 3 ''

Sammy Davis, Jr. 5 ' 3 ''

Truman Capote 5 ' 3 ''

Kim Jong Il (North Korea) 5 ' 3 ''

Stephen A. “Little Giant” Douglas 5 ' 4 ''

Francisco Franco 5 ' 4 ''

President James Madison 5 ' 4 ''

Iosef Vissarionovich Dzugashvili “Stalin” 5 ' 4 ''

Alan Ladd 5 ' 4 ''

Pablo Picasso 5 ' 4 ''

Truman Capote 5 ' 4 ''

Queen Elizabeth 5 ' 4 ''

Ludwig van Beethoven 5 ' 4 ''

Typical Homo Erectus 5 ' 4 ''

typical Neanderthal adult male 5 ' 41/2''

Alan Ladd 5 ' 41/2''

comte de Buffon 5 ' 5 '' (-)

Captain Nathaniel Gordon 5 ' 5 ''

Charles Manson 5 ' 5 ''

Audie Murphy 5 ' 5 ''

Harry Houdini 5 ' 5 ''




The average American female of 1710 was five foot two, and the average American female of 1921 was five foot three. Our average altitude now is of course about five four and a half and should reach five seven by the year 2050.

His platform soles were 12 centimeters high. "Mr. Get Used To It" is dead now -- but not before the inimitable Rick Perry, while running for President, referred to him as "Kim Jong the Second."

The average American female of 1710 was five foot two, and the average American female of 1921 was five foot three. Our average altitude now is of course about five four and a half and should reach five seven by the year 2050.

He wasn’t just short, he was ugly too.


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Hung Hsiu-ch'üan 5 ' 5 ''

Marilyn Monroe 5 ' 51/2''

T.E. Lawrence “of Arabia” 5 ' 51/2''

average runaway male American slave 5 ' 5-6 ''

Charles Dickens 5 ' 6? ''

President Benjamin Harrison 5 ' 6 ''

President Martin Van Buren 5 ' 6 ''

James Smithson 5 ' 6 ''

Louisa May Alcott 5 ' 6 ''

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 5 ' 61/2''

Napoleon Bonaparte 5 ' 61/2''

Emily Brontë 5 ' 6-7 ''

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 5 ' ? ''

average height, seaman of 1812 5 ' 6.85 ''

Oliver Reed Smoot, Jr. 5 ' 7 ''

minimum height, British soldier 5 ' 7 ''

President John Adams 5 ' 7 ''

President John Quincy Adams 5 ' 7 ''

President William McKinley 5 ' 7 ''

“Charley” Parkhurst (a female) 5 ' 7 ''

Ulysses S. Grant 5 ' 7 ''

Henry Thoreau 5 ' 7 ''

the average male of Thoreau's period 5 ' 71/2 ''

Edgar Allan Poe 5 ' 8 ''

President Ulysses S. Grant 5 ' 8 ''

President William H. Harrison 5 ' 8 ''

President James Polk 5 ' 8 ''

President Zachary Taylor 5 ' 8 ''

average height, soldier of 1812 5 ' 8.35 ''

President Rutherford B. Hayes 5 ' 81/2''

President Millard Fillmore 5 ' 9 ''

President Harry S Truman 5 ' 9 ''

President Jimmy Carter 5 ' 91/2''

Herman Melville 5 ' 93/4''

Calvin Coolidge 5 ' 10''

Andrew Johnson 5 ' 10''

Theodore Roosevelt 5 ' 10''

Thomas Paine 5 ' 10''




Oliver R. Smoot was utilized, while a student at MIT in 1958, as the unit of measure for the Harvard Bridge. He later became Chair, American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and President, International Organization for Standardization (ISO) <http://www.sizes.com/units/smoot.htm>

The average American male of 1710 was five foot seven, and the average American male of 1921 was five foot eight. Our average altitude now is of course about five ten and we expect that Mr. Average will be a six-footer by the year 2050.

A Mystery: Does anyone know exactly how long a fellow Longfellow was?


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Franklin Pierce 5 ' 10''

Abby May Alcott 5 ' 10''

Reverend Henry C. Wright 5 ' 10''

Nathaniel Hawthorne 5 ' 101/2''

Louis “Deerfoot” Bennett 5 ' 101/2''

Friend John Greenleaf Whittier 5 ' 101/2''

President Dwight D. Eisenhower 5 ' 101/2''

Sojourner Truth 5 ' 11''

President Grover Cleveland 5 ' 11''

President Herbert Hoover 5 ' 11''

President Woodrow Wilson 5 ' 11''

President Jefferson Davis 5 ' 11''

President Richard M. Nixon 5 ' 111/2''

Robert Voorhis the hermit of Rhode Island < 6 '

Frederick Douglass 6 ' (-)

Anthony Burns 6 ' 0 ''

Waldo Emerson 6 ' 0 ''

Joseph Smith, Jr. 6 ' 0 ''

David Walker 6 ' 0 ''

Sarah F. Wakefield 6 ' 0 ''

Thomas Wentworth Higginson 6 ' 0 ''

President James Buchanan 6 ' 0 ''

President Gerald R. Ford 6 ' 0 ''

President James Garfield 6 ' 0 ''

President Warren Harding 6 ' 0 ''

President John F. Kennedy 6 ' 0 ''

President James Monroe 6 ' 0 ''

President William H. Taft 6 ' 0 ''

President John Tyler 6 ' 0 ''

John Brown 6 ' 0 (+)''

President Andrew Jackson 6 ' 1''

Alfred Russel Wallace 6 ' 1''

President Ronald Reagan 6 ' 1''

Venture Smith 6 ' 11/2''

John Camel Heenan 6 ' 2 ''

Crispus Attucks 6 ' 2 ''

President Chester A. Arthur 6 ' 2 ''

President George Bush, Senior 6 ' 2 ''




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Heenan


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President Franklin D. Roosevelt 6 ' 2 ''

President George Washington 6 ' 2 ''

Gabriel Prosser 6 ' 2 ''

Dangerfield Newby 6 ' 2 ''

Charles Augustus Lindbergh 6 ' 2 ''

President Bill Clinton 6 ' 21/2''

President Thomas Jefferson 6 ' 21/2''

President Lyndon B. Johnson 6 ' 3 ''

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. 6 ' 3 ''

Richard “King Dick” Seaver 6 ' 31/4''

President Abraham Lincoln 6 ' 4 ''

Marion Morrison (AKA John Wayne) 6 ' 4 ''

Elisha Reynolds Potter, Senior 6 ' 4 ''

Thomas Cholmondeley 6 ' 4 '' (?)

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn 6 ' 5 ''

Peter the Great of Russia 6 ' 7 ''

Giovanni Battista Belzoni 6 ' 7 ''

Thomas Jefferson (the statue) 7 ' 6''

Jefferson Davis (the statue) 7 ' 7''

Martin Van Buren Bates 7 ' 111/2''

M. Bihin, a Belgian exhibited in Boston in 1840 8 '

Anna Haining Swan 8 ' 1''




This is an educated guess.

How’s the weather up there?


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April 8, Saturday: There was fighting at Appomattox Station.

The New York legislature passed the Willard Law, named for psychiatrist Sylvester D. Willard, providing a mental health facility for the care of the “chronic pauper insane.” When this facility would open on October 13, 1869 on Seneca Lake, the Willard Asylum for the Insane would be the 1st US institution for chronically ill patients, reflecting more sophisticated diagnosis and treatment methods. This is now the Willard Psychiatric Center.1

The Reverend Horatio Alger, Jr.’s story “Aunt Jane’s Ear Trumpet” appeared in Gleason’s Literary Companion:

The noise of wheels was heard in the street. It was the stagecoach with its load of passengers just returned from the railwaystation. It paused before the gate of rather a pretentious housein the main street of the village.Mrs. Graves looked out of the window and an expression of dismaycrept over her face.“I declare,” she exclaimed. “if it isn’t Aunt Jane Breed cometo make us a visitation.”“O dear,” chimed in Arabella, a young lady of eighteen, “what apity! Just as we are going to have a party too. Couldn’t we tellher it is inconvenient for us to have her, and send her to UncleMerriam’s?”“No, Arabella, that would never do. You must consider that yourAunt Jane has twenty thousand dollars which she can dispose ofas she pleases.”She had no time to say more for the bell rang.Mrs. Graves went to the door herself. By the time she had openedit her face was composed into an expression of joy.“Why Aunt Jane, how do you do? What a pleasant surprise! Arabellaand I were speaking of you only this morning.”“Wait a minute, Eleanor,” said the old lady, fumbling in herpocket.She produced an ear trumpet which she adjusted to her ear.“There,” said she “now we can talk”

1865

1. Street, W.R. A CHRONOLOGY OF NOTEWORTHY EVENTS IN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY. Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 1994

PSYCHOLOGY





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“There,” said she, “now we can talk.”

“I had no idea you were deaf,” said Mrs. Graves through thetrumpet.“Age has its infirmities,” said Aunt Jane.“How is Arabella.”“Very well, thank you. Here she is to speak for herself.”Mrs. Graves turned towards her daughter, and spoke in hernatural voice.“Aunt Jane’s as deaf as an adder,” she remarked. “You see shehas to use an ear trumpet.”“I’m glad of it,” said Arabella. “Now we can say what we pleasewithout her hearing us. Is she going to stay a long time?”“I don’t know. I’ll ask her”“Aunt Jane,” said she with her mouth to the ear trumpet “I hopeyou are going to favor us with a long visit ““I can’t spare you but a month,” said Aunt Jane, “that is, ifit is entirely convenient for you to have me with you so long.”“We shall be delighted.” said Mrs. Graves, finishing thesentence for her daughter’s benefit, “to have you go. That’s thetruth, isn’t it Arabella?”“How shall we ever live through the month?” said Arabelladismally without however venturing to express this feeling onher countenance.A peculiar expression flitted over the old lady’s face, but thiswas observed neither by Mrs. Graves nor her daughter.Three days passed. The old lady had become domesticated at thehouse of her niece.It so happened that Arabella had a beau —a young man of verymuch the same calibre as herself— who was employed as a clerk





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in one of the village stores. He called one evening when AuntJane had indulged herself to sitting up a little longer thanusual.“I suppose I must introduce you to my aunt,” said Arabella. “Shewon’t be in our way, for she is as deaf as a post. Aunt Jane,”she said through the ear-trumpet, “this is Mr. Storrs.”“I am glad to see him,” said Aunt Jane extending her hand.“There we needn’t say anything more to her,” said Arabellacarelessly. “I believe you never saw her before.”“No,” said the young man.“Ain’t she a beauty? laughed Arabella.“Are you not afraid she will hear?”O no, she is entirely dependent on her trumpet. That’s lucky forus. If she could hear, she might not always be gratified by whatshe heard.”“Ha, ha!” laughed Storrs.“It’s a great trial to us to have her here, but you know whenone has a rich aunt, she can’t very well be put off.”“So your aunt is rich,” said the young clerk with increasedinterest.“Yes, she’s worth twenty thousand dollars.”“That’s a large sum,” said Storrs thinking how large a portionof this sum would be likely to fall to Arabella whom he alreadylooked upon as his own.“Yes, its worth some sacrifice. So we tolerate the old lady inspite of her frumpy dress and odd ways.”“I was just going to observe,” said Storrs banteringly, what astrong resemblance there is between you and your aunt.”“Take that for your impertinence sir,” said the young lady,playfully tapping him with her fan. “I must be a charmingcreature if that were the case”Now aunt Jane was in reality a very good looking old lady, thoughof course not as good looking as when she was young.So the conversation ran on, entirely regardless of Aunt Jane,who sat placidly in a rocking-chair at the window knitting astocking. She appeared to take little notice of the youngcouple, but occasionally an amused look just flitted over herface. Probably she was thinking of something.Aunt Jane had been a fortnight at the house of Mrs. Graves whenone morning she said at the breakfast table “I should like togo over to Merriam’s to spend the day.”“Very well,” said Arabella with alacrity, “we can carry you downthere immediately after breakfast.”“What a relief it will be” said she turning to her mother, “tobe rid of her a single day.”“Yes,” said Mrs. Graves, who being older, was a little moreprudent, “but you must consider that your uncle is as nearlyrelated as I am, and we must not let her stay there too long.”“Yes, I suppose so,” said Arabella with a sigh.“You had better tell her that you hope she wont stay longer thanone day.”“Well,” said Arabella, “if I must I suppose I must.”





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“Aunt Jane, you must be sure and not stay longer than a day ortwo,” said the young lady through the ear trumpet.You are very kind,” said the old lady, “I didn’t know but I wasgetting troublesome.”“O no, we are delighted to have you here,” said Mrs. Graves. “Wehope you will stay a long time.”“How could you say that, mother?” protested Arabella.“Because, my dear, your aunt is too old to last very long, andwe ought to feel willing to submit to some inconveniences forthe sake of being remembered in her will. If we work our cardsright she may leave us the whole. That would be worth having.Twenty thousand dollars don’t grow on every bush.”“As likely as not she’ll live to be a hundred,” mutteredArabella.After breakfast Aunt Jane was carried to the house of her nephew,Mr. James Merriam, the only son of her sister.Mr. Merriam was a poor man. He had met with reverses, and nowlived in a much less expensive way than his cousin. Mrs. Graves,who despite the relationship looked upon Mr. Merriam as hersocial inferior. He was a very worthy man however, and far frombeing as worldly as Mrs. Graves. He had three children, all athome. His wife was an excellent housekeeper, and far moreamiable than Mrs. Graves though her pretensions were much less.“I am glad to see you, Aunt Jane,” said Mr. Merriam hospitably,as he came out to help her from the carriage. “We have beenhoping to see you ever since we heard of your arrival in town.Clara will be delighted to welcome you.”The old lady drew out her trumpet. Mr. Merriam looked concerned.“I am sorry that you have lost your hearing,” be said.“Old people can’t expect to hear as well as young folks,” saidAunt Jane.“You must make us a good long visit,” said Mrs. Merriam who nowappeared.“I will see,” said Aunt Jane.“I always liked Aunt Jane,” said Mrs. Merriam to her husband.She is always so gentle and kind. It seems very pleasant to haveher in the house.”“So it does. The only thing I think of is that we have a smallhouse, and can’t make her as comfortable as at your cousins.”“Well we will make up in the warmth of our welcome.”Aunt Jane seemed unusually happy that day. As night approachedshe seemed thoughtful, and finally consented to stay longer.“I must write a letter to my niece to explain it,” she said.An hour after the following note was placed in the hands of Mrs.Graves.

Niece Eleanor: I have concluded to stay where I amduring the remainder of my visit. As you remarked toArabella when I came that you should be delighted tohave me go, this information will doubtless be pleasingto you. As for Arabella she will be easily consoled forthe departure of her “frumpy old aunt” who must haveannoyed her with her “odd ways.”





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Aunt Jane.P. S. My hearing has been wonderfully restored so thatI can now dispense with my ear-trumpet.

This letter filled Mrs. Graves and Arabella with dismay. Theyhad sinned so deeply against the old lady that they felt thatno apologies would be adequate. To add to Arabella’smisfortunes, when the young clerk learned that there was anestrangement between her and her rich aunt he unceremoniouslydeserted her for another young lady.Aunt Jane bequeathed the bulk of her possession to her nephew.Her will contained the following provision.

Item. I bequeathe to my niece Eleanor my ear trumpetwhich I found on one occasion of excellent service

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT








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The Reverend Horatio Alger, Jr. came to be suspected of being engaged in “questionable relations” with a choirboy or two and was ousted from the Unitarian church of Brewster on Cape Cod, at which he had been the pastor. He agreed never again to accept a position as a minister, and returned to the home of his father and mother. He then relocated to the New-York metropolis, where, over the following three decades, he would “adopt,” live with, and nurture a series of teen-age boys.

His cousin, the Reverend William Rounseville Alger, who on August 1, 1854 had been the first to purchase a copy of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS –hot off the press eight days before its official publication date– during this year prepared a treatise THE SOLITUDES OF NATURE AND OF MAN; OR, THE LONELINESS OF HUMAN LIFE which immediately went through a number of printings, a treatise in which in no uncertain terms he denounced Henry Thoreau.

On page vii of the Introduction we learn that the objective of this treatise is to learn “how at the same time to win the benefits and shun the evils of being alone.” ... “The subject –the conditions and influences of solitude in its various forms– is so largely concerned with disturbed feelings that it is difficult, in treating it, to keep free from everything unhealthy, excessive, or eccentric.” On page viii we learn that: “The warm effusion of Christianity is better adapted to human nature than the dry chill of Stoicism.”

It was obviously a very low blow, hitting below the belt, to describe Thoreau as he did (see below), in terms that suggested that this author had been not only a solitary but also had been “feeling himself,” had been “fondling himself,” which is to suggest, going one better on the previously published derogations of James Russell Lowell, that Henry had been a masturbator. Nowadays, however, it requires some special explanation of the context for us to grasp just what an utterly low blow it was, because nowadays we have a more accurate theory, an infection theory, of the origins of the tuberculosis from which Thoreau died. This was, however, the period before, during which the contagious nature of the ailment was not yet generally understood. One of the pervasive theories of “phthisis” of that era was that it was a debility brought about through excessive and unrestrained masturbation. The reverend was therefore in effect suggesting to his appreciative audience that the Concord author had, through his lack of self-restraint as persistently exhibited in the text of his manual for life, been responsible for his own early death!

The second half of the volume bears this title page:

SKETCHES OF LONELY CHARACTERS:or,

PERSONAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE GOOD AND EVIL OF SOLITUDE.

1866

TIMELINE OF WALDEN




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/WALDEN/WALDEN.html


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In this second half the reverend author deals serially, in sub-chapters, with Gautama Buddha, Confucius, Demosthenes, Tacitus, Lucretius, Cicero, Boethius, Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, Bruno, Vico, Descartes, Hobbes, Leibnitz, Milton, Pascal, Rousseau, Zimmermann, Beethoven, Shelley, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Blanco White, Leopardi, Foster, Channing, Robertson, Chopin, Thoreau (pages 329-338), Maurice de Guérin, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Eugenie de Guérin, Comte, and then with Jesus.

Pages 329-338: If any American deserves to stand as arepresentative of the experience of reclusiveness, Thoreau isthe man. His fellow-feelings and alliances with men were few andfeeble; his disgusts and aversions many, as well as stronglypronounced. All his life he was distinguished for his aloofness,austere self-communion, long and lonely walks. He was separatedfrom ordinary persons in grain and habits, by the poeticsincerity of his passion for natural objects and phenomena. Asa student and lover of the material world he is a genuine apostleof solitude, despite the taints of affectation, inconsistency,and morbidity which his writings betray. At twenty-eight, on theshore of a lonely pond, he built a hut in which he lived entirelyby himself for over two years. And, after he returned to hisfather’s house in the village, he was for the chief part of thetime nearly as much alone as he had been in his hermitage byWalden water. The closeness of his cleaving to the landscapecannot be questioned: “I dream of looking abroad, summer andwinter, with free gaze, from some mountain side, nature lookinginto nature, with such easy sympathy as the blue-eyed grass inthe meadow looks in the face of the sky.” When he describesnatural scenes, his heart lends a sweet charm to the pages hepens: “Paddling up the river to Fair-Haven Pond, as the sun wentdown, I saw a solitary boatman disporting on the smooth lake.The falling dews seemed to strain and purify the air, and I wassoothed with an infinite stillness. I got the world, as it were,by the name of the neck, and held it under, in the tide of itsown events, till it was drowned; and then I let it go down streamlike a dead dog. Vast, hollow chambers of silence stretched awayon every side; and my being expanded in proportion, and filledthem.”In his little forest-house, Thoreau had three chairs, “one forsolitude, two for friendship, three for society.” “My nearestneighbor is a mile distant. It is as solitary where I live ason the prairies. It is as much Asia or Africa as New England. Ihave, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars; and a littleworld all to myself.” “At night, there was never a travelerpassed my door, more than if I were the first or last man.” “Weare wont to imagine rare and delectable places in some remoteand more celestial corner of the system, — behind theconstellation of Cassiopea’s Chair, far from noise anddisturbance. I discovered that my house actually had its sitein such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of theuniverse.” “I love to be alone. I never found the companion thatwas so compatible as solitude.” In this last sentence we catcha tone from the diseased or disproportioned side of the writer.





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He was unhealthy and unjust in all his thoughts on society;underrating the value, overrating the dangers, of intercoursewith men. But his thoughts on retirement, the still study andlove of nature, though frequently exaggerated, are uniformlysound. He has a most catholic toleration, a wholesome andtriumphant enjoyment, of every natural object, from star toskunk-cabbage. He says, with tonic eloquence, “Nothing canrightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness: whileI enjoy the friendship of the seasons, I trust that nothing canmake life a burden to me.” But the moment he turns to contemplatehis fellow-men, all his geniality leaves him, — he growsbigoted, contemptuous, almost inhuman: “The names of men are ofcourse as cheap and meaningless as Bose and Tray, the names ofdogs. I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me,but still see men in herds.” The cynicism and the sophistry areequal. His scorn constantly exhales: “The Irishman erects hissty, and gets drunk, and jabbers more and more under my eaves;and I am responsible for all that filth and folly. I find itvery unprofitable to have much to do with men. Emerson says thathis life is so unprofitable and shabby for the most part, thathe is driven to all sorts of resources, and, among the rest, tomen. I have seen more men than usual, lately; and, well as I wasacquainted with one, I am surprised to find what vulgar fellowsthey are. They do a little business each day, to pay their board;then they congregate in sitting-rooms, and feebly fabulate andpaddle in the social slush; and, when I think they havesufficiently relaxed, and am prepared to see them steal away totheir shrines, they go unashamed to their beds, and take on anew layer of sloth.” Once in a while he gives a saner voice outof a fonder mood: “It is not that we love to be alone, but thatwe love to soar, the company grows thinner and thinner, tillthere is none at all.” But the conceited and misanthropic fitquickly comes back: “Would I not rather be a cedar post, whichlasts twenty-five years, than the farmer that set it; or he thatpreaches to that farmer?” “The whole enterprise of this nationis totally devoid of interest to me. There is nothing in it whichone should lay down his life for, — nor even his gloves. Whataims more lofty have they than the prairie-dogs?”This poisonous sleet of scorn, blowing manward, is partly anexaggerated rhetoric; partly, the revenge he takes on men fornot being what he wants them to be; partly, an expression of hisunappreciated soul reacting in defensive contempt, to keep himfrom sinking below his own estimation of his deserts. It iscurious to note the contradictions his inner uneasiness begets.Now he says, “In what concerns you much, do not think you havecompanions; know that you are alone in the world.” Then he writesto one of his correspondents, “I wish I could have the benefitof your criticism; it would be a rare help to me.” The followingsentence has a cheerful surface, but a sad bottom: “I have latelygot back to that glorious society, called solitude, where wemeet our friends continually, and can imagine the outside worldalso to be peopled.” At one moment, he says, “I have never felt





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lonesome, or the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, butonce; and then I was conscious of a slight insanity in my mood.”At another moment he says, “Ah! what foreign countries thereare, stretching away on every side from every human being withwhom you have no sympathy! Their humanity affects one as simplymonstrous. When I sit in the parlors and kitchens of some withwhom my business brings me — I was going to say — in contact, Ifeel a sort of awe, and am as forlorn as if I were cast away ona desolate shore. I think of Riley’s narrative, and hissufferings.” That his alienation from society was more bitterthan sweet, less the result of constitutional superiority thanof dissatisfied experience, is significantly indicated, when wefind him saying, at twenty-five, “I seem to have dodged all mydays with one or two persons, and lived upon expectation”; atthirty-five, “I thank you again and again for attending to me”;and at forty-five, “I was particularly gratified when one of myfriends said, ‘I wish you would write another book, — write itfor me.’ He is actually more familiar with what I have writtenthan I am myself.”The truth is, his self-estimate and ambition were inordinate;his willingness to pay the price of their outward gratification,a negative quantity. Their exorbitant demands absorbed him; buthe had not those powerful charms and signs which would draw fromothers a correspondent valuation of him and attention to him.Accordingly, he shut his real self in a cell of secrecy, andretreated from men whose discordant returns repelled, to naturalobjects whose accordant repose seemed acceptingly to confirm andreturn, the required estimate imposed on them. The key of hislife is the fact that it was devoted to the art of an interioraggrandizement of himself. The three chief tricks in this artare, first, a direct self-enhancement, by a boundless pamperingof egotism; secondly, an indirect self-enhancement, by ascornful deprecation of others; thirdly, an imaginativemagnifying of every trifle related to self, by associating withit a colossal idea of the self. It is difficult to open manypages in the written record of Thoreau without being confrontedwith examples of these three tricks. He is constantly, with allhis boastful stoicism, feeling himself, reflecting himself,fondling himself, reverberating himself, exalting himself,incapable of escaping or forgetting himself. He is nevercontented with things until they are wound through, and made toecho himself; and this is the very mark of spiritualdisturbance. “When I detect,” he says, “a beauty in any of therecesses of nature, I am reminded, by the serene and retiredspirit in which it requires to be contemplated, of theinexpressible privacy of a life.” In the holiest and silentestnook his fancy conjures the spectre of himself, and an ideal dinfrom society for contrast. He says of his own pursuits, “Theunchallenged bravery which these studies imply is far moreimpressive than the trumpeted valor of the warrior.” When hesees a mountain he sings: —

Wachuset, who, like me,





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Standest alone without society,Upholding heaven, holding down earth, —Thy pastime from thy birth, —Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other,May I approve myself thy worthy brother!

This self-exaggeration peers out even through the disguise ofhumor and of satire: “I am not afraid of praise, for I havepractised it on myself. The stars and I belong to a mutual-admiration society.” “I do not propose to write an ode todejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning,standing on his roost.” “The mass of men lead lives of quietdesperation.” But he, — he is victorious, sufficing, royal. Atall events he will be unlike other people. “I am a mere arenafor thoughts and feelings, a slight film, or dash of vapor, sofaint an entity, and make so slight an impression, that nobodycan find the traces of me.” “I am something to him that made me,undoubtedly, but not much to any other that he has made.” “Manyare concerned to know who built the monuments of the East andWest. For my part, I should like to know who, in those days, didnot build them, — who were above such trifling.” “For my part,I could easily do without the post-office. I am sure that I neverread any memorable news in a newspaper.” This refrain ofopposition between the general thoughts and feelings of mankindand his own, recurs until it becomes comical, and we look forit. He refused invitations to dine out, saying, “They make theirpride in making their dinner cost much; I make my pride in makingmy dinner cost little.” One is irresistibly reminded of Plato’sretort, when Diogenes said, “See how I tread on the pride ofPlato.” — “Yes, with greater pride.”But he more than asserts his difference; he explicitly proclaimshis superiority: “Sometimes when I compare myself with othermen, it seems as if I were more favored by the gods than they.”“When I realize the greatness of the part I am unconsciouslyacting, it seems as if there were none in history to match it.”Speaking of the scarlet oaks, he adds with Italics, “These aremy china-asters, my late garden-flowers; it costs me nothing fora gardener.” The unlikeness of genius to mediocrity is a fact,but not a fact of that relative momentousness entitling it tomonopolize attention. He makes a great ado about his absorbingoccupation; his sacred engagements with himself; his consequentinability to do anything for others, or to meet those who wishedto see him. In the light of this obtrusive trait the egotisticcharacter of many passages like the following become emphatic:“Only think, for a moment, of a man about his affairs! How weshould respect him! How glorious he would appear! A man abouthis business would be the cynosure of all eyes.” He evidentlyhad the jaundice of desiring men to think as well of him as hethought of himself; and, when they would not, he ran into thewoods. But he could not escape thus, since he carried them stillin his mind.His quotations are not often beautiful or valuable, but appearto be made as bids for curiosity or admiration, or to produce





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some other sharp effect; as they are almost invariably strange,bizarre, or absurd: culled from obscure corners, Damodara,Iamblichus, the Vishnu Purana, or some such out-of-the-waysource. He seems to take oddity for originality, extravagantsingularity for depth and force. His pages are profuselypeppered with pungent paradoxes and exaggerations, — a strainingfor sensation, not in keeping with his pretence of sufficingrepose and greatness: “Why should I feel lonely? is not ourplanet in the Milky Way?” “All that men have said or are, is avery faint rumor; and it is not worth their while to rememberor refer to that.” He exemplifies, to an extent trulyastonishing, the great vice of the spiritual hermit; thebelittling, because he dislikes them, of things ordinarilyconsidered important; and the aggrandizing, because he likesthem, of things usually regarded as insignificant. Hiseccentricities are uncorrected by collision with theeccentricities of others, and his petted idiosyncrasies spurnat the average standards of sanity and usage. Grandeur,dissociated from him, dwindles into pettiness; pettiness, linkedwith his immense ego, dilates into grandeur. In his conceitedseparation he mistakes a crochet for a consecration. If a wormcrosses his path, and he stops to watch its crawl, it is greaterthan an interview with the Duke of Wellington.It is the wise observation of Lavater, that whoever makes toomuch or to little of himself has a false measure for everything.Few persons have cherished a more preposterous idea of self thanThoreau, or been more persistently ridden by the enormity. Thisfalse standard of valuation vitiates every moral measurement hemakes. He describes a battle of red and black ants before hiswood-pile at Walden, as if it were more important than Marathonor Gettysburg. His faculties were vast, and his timeinexpressibly precious: this struggle of the pismires occupiedhis faculties and time; therefore this struggle of the pismiresmust be an inexpressibly great matter. A trifle, plus his ego,was immense; an immensity, minus his ego, was a trifle. Is it ahaughty conceit or a noble loftiness that makes him say, “Whenyou knock at the Celestial City, ask to see God, — none of theservants”? He says, “Mine is a sugar to sweeten sugar with: ifyou will listen to me, I will sweeten your whole life.” Again,“I would put forth sublime thoughts daily, as the plant putsforth leaves.” And yet again, “I shall be a benefactor if Iconquer some realms from the night, — if I add to the domainsof poetry.” After such manifestos, we expect much. We do notfind so much as we naturally expect.He was rather an independent and obstinate thinker than apowerful or rich one. His works, taken in their whole range,instead of being fertile in ideas, are marked by speculativesterility. “He was one of those men,” a friendly but honestcritic says, “who, from conceit or disappointment, inflict uponthemselves a seclusion which reduces them at last, afternibbling everything within reach of their tether, to simplerumination and incessant returns of the same cud to the tongue.”





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This unsympathetic temper is betrayed in a multitude of suchsentences as this: “O ye that would have the cocoanut wrong sideoutwards! when next I weep I will let you know.” Thoreau is notthe true type of a great man, a genuine master of life, becausehe does not reflect greatness and joy over men and life, butupholds his idea of his own greatness and mastership by makingthe characters and lives of others mean and little. Those who,like Wordsworth and Channing, reverse this process, are the truemasters and models. A feeling of superiority to others, withlove and honor for them, is the ground of complacency and acondition of chronic happiness. A feeling of superiority toothers, with alienation from them and hate for them, is the surecondition of perturbations and unhappiness.Many a humble and loving author who has nestled amongst hisfellow-men and not boasted, has contributed far more to braceand enrich the characters and sweeten the lives of his readersthan the ill-balanced and unsatisfied hermit of Concord, partcynic, part stoic, who strove to compensate himself with natureand solitude for what he could not wring from men and society.The extravagant estimate he put on solitude may serve as acorrective of the extravagant estimate put on society by ourhives of citizens. His monstrous preference of savagedom tocivilization may usefully influence us to appreciate naturalunsophisticatedness more highly, and conventionality morelowly. As a teacher, this is nearly the extent of his narrowmission. Lowell [James Russell Lowell], in a careful article,written after reading all the published works of Thoreau, saysof him: “He seems to us to have been a man with so high a conceitof himself, that he accepted without questioning, and insistedon our accepting, his defects and weaknesses of character, asvirtues and powers peculiar to himself. Was he indolent, — hefinds none of the activities which attract or employ the restof mankind worthy of him. Was he wanting in the qualities thatmake success, — it is success that is contemptible, and nothimself that lacks persistency and purpose. Was he poor, — moneywas an unmixed evil. Did his life seem a selfish one, — hecondemns doing good, as one of the weakest of superstitions.”In relation to the intellectual and moral influence of solitude,the example of Thoreau, with all the alleviating wisdom,courage, and tenderness confessedly in it, is chiefly valuableas an illustration of the evils of a want of sympathy with thecommunity. Yet there is often a deep justice, a grandly tonicbreath of self-reliance, in his exhortations. How sound andadmirable the following passage: “If you seek the warmth ofaffection from a similar motive to that from which cats and dogsand slothful persons hug the fire, because your temperature islow through sloth, you are on the downward road. Better the coldaffection of the sun, reflected from fields of ice and snow, orhis warmth in some still wintry dell. Warm your body by healthfulexercise, not by cowering over a stove. Warm your spirit byperforming independently noble deeds, not by ignobly seeking thesympathy of your fellows who are no better than yourself.”





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Though convinced of the justice of this sketch, the writer feelsrebuked, as if it were not kind enough, when he remembers thepleasure he has had in many of the pages of Thoreau, and theaffecting scene of his funeral on that beautiful summer day inthe dreamy town of Concord. There was uncommon love in him, butit felt itself repulsed, and too proud to beg or moan, it puton stoicism and wore it until the mask became the face. Hisopinionative stiffness and contempt were his hurt self-respectprotecting itself against the conventionalities and scorns ofthose who despised what he revered and revered what he despised.His interior life, with the relations of thoughts and things,was intensely tender and true, however sorely ajar he may havebeen with persons and with the ideas of persons. If he was sour,it was on a store of sweetness; if sad, on a fund of gladness.While we walked in procession up to the church, though the belltolled the forty-four years he had numbered, we could not deemthat he was dead whose ideas and sentiments were so vivid in oursouls. As the fading image of pathetic clay lay before us, strewnwith wild flowers and forest sprigs, thoughts of its formeroccupant seemed blent with all the local landscapes. We stillrecall with emotion the tributary words so fitly spoken byfriendly and illustrious lips. The hands of friends reverentlylowered the body of the lonely poet into the bosom of the earth,on the pleasant hillside of his native village, whose prospectswill long wait to unfurl themselves to another observer socompetent to discriminate their features and so attuned to theirmoods. And now that it is too late for any further boon amidsthis darling haunts below,

There will yet his mother yieldA pillow in her greenest field,Nor the June flowers scorn to coverThe clay of their departed lover.

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MINDYOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF








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RAGGED DICK; OR, STREET LIFE IN NEW YORK WITH THE BOOT-BLACKS by Horatio Alger, Jr.

1867





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The Reverend William Rounseville Alger became the pastor of the Reverend Theodore Parker’s “fraternity” (congregation) worshiping in the Boston Music Hall. His MAN FROM THE MEDICAL POINT OF VIEW, and his THE ABUSES AND USES OF CHURCH-GOING: A DISCOURSE SPOKEN AT THE FIRST SERVICE OF THE MUSIC-HALL SOCIETY IN BOSTON, OCT. 18, 1868, were published in Boston.

His disgraced cousin Horatio Alger, Jr. offered his photograph as a bonus to subscribers to Student and Schoolmate:

Horatio Alger, Jr. began basically to write the same formula story 130 times. He would be putting out what would amount to RAGGED DICK; OR, STREET LIFE IN NEW YORK WITH THE BOOT-BLACKS, using 130 different hero names and 130 different titles. This was a story America needed to believe because it was so far in every particular from the truth. Even today it would seem we have a need to believe in this story, still as false as ever it was.

1868





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The Reverend William Rounseville Alger relocated his operation from Boston to New-York. He put out an enlarged 4th edition of his THE POETRY OF THE ORIENT, OR METRICAL SPECIMENS OF THE THOUGHT, SENTIMENT, AND FANCY OF THE EAST, PREFACED BY AN ELABORATE DISSERTATION.

Horatio Alger, Sr., the minister father of William’s cousin Horatio Alger, Jr., retired from his Unitarian ministry in South Natick, Massachusetts.

1874

POETRY OF THE ORIENT




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/56/1856_PoetryOfOrient.pdf


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The Reverend William Rounseville Alger’s, and his cousin Horatio Alger, Jr.’s, LIFE OF EDWIN FORREST, THE AMERICAN TRAGEDIAN, WITH A CRITICAL HISTORY OF THE DRAMATIC ART was published in 2 volumes in Philadelphia by the firm of J.B. Lippincott & Company.

Cousin Horatio had done most of the research and writing in regard to the career of Forrest, while Cousin William had supplied the materials dealing in general with the history of the American theater.

I don’t know the year in which this happened, and am therefore inserting the material quite randomly: at some point Horatio Alger, Jr. discussed his sexual preferences with the psychologist William James.

1877

LIFE OF EDWIN FORREST




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/70S/77/1877_EdwinForrest.pdf


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The Reverend William Rounseville Alger moved from Chicago to Portland. He would not remain there, but would return to Boston. His THE SCHOOL OF LIFE would be published in this year in Boston. His A SYMBOLIC HISTORY OF THE CROSS OF CHRIST also would be published in this year.

Horatio Alger, Sr., the minister father of his cousin Horatio Alger, Jr., died in Natick, Massachusetts.

1881

HISTORY OF THE CROSS




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/58/1858_AlgersCROSS.pdf


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During his years in this enormous impersonal metropolis, Horatio Alger, Jr. had been “adopting,” living with, and nurturing a series of vulnerable teen-age boys. This had been good for him and it had also been good for them to have a protector, or so one may suppose. At this point, due to illness, he needed to return to Natick, Massachusetts to finish out his life in the home of a sister — he wasn’t going to be able to help the defenseless teen-age boys of New-York any more, they were on their own.

1896





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July 18, Tuesday: Micronesia was placed under the domain of German New Guinea.

Le Matin announced that Major Esterhazy had admitted having written the original letter in the Dreyfus case — his defense would be that he had done so under the orders of a superior officer.

Horatio Alger, Jr., whose lads always had enough pluck to succeed, died of heart disease in Natick, Massachusetts. His funeral would be at the church at which his father had been the reverend, his papers would largely be destroyed by his family at his own request, and his tombstone would be caused to read as follows:

HERE LIES THE BODY OF HORATIO ALGER, JR. WELL, WHAT OF IT?

1899





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The books of Horatio Alger, Jr. were banned from the Worcester Public Library.

1907





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Nathaniel West’s A COOL MILLION parodied the novels of Horatio Alger, Jr.

1934





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Summer: Gary Scharnhorst’s article “Biographical Blindspots: The Case of the Cousins Alger” appeared in Biography 6/2.

1983

WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER

HORATIO ALGER, JR.





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January 1, Thursday: Daniel Akst’s article “Buyer’s Remorse,” suggesting of Henry Thoreau and Horatio Alger, Jr. that they were probably a couple of homosexuals, appeared in The Wilson Quarterly (Akst is a novelist and essayist living in New York’s Hudson Valley):

There are two things at which Americans have always excelled:One is generating almost unimaginable material wealth, and theother is feeling bad about it. If guilt and materialism are twosides of a single very American coin, it’s a coin that hasachieved new currency in recent years, as hand-wringing andMcMansions vie for our souls like the angels and devils who perchon the shoulders of cartoon characters, urging them to be goodor bad.When Princeton University researchers asked working Americansabout these matters a decade ago, 89 percent of those surveyedagreed that “our society is much too materialistic,” and 74-percent said that materialism is a serious social problem. Sincethen, a good deal has been written about materialism, andmagazines such as Real Simple (filled with advertising) havesprung up to combat it. But few of us would argue that we’vebecome any less consumed with consuming; the latest magazinesensation, after all, is Lucky, which dispenses with all theeditorial folderol and devotes itself entirely to offeringreaders things they can buy.The real question is, Why should we worry? Why be of two mindsabout what we buy and how well we live? Most of us have earnedwhat we possess; we’re not members of some hereditary landedgentry. Our material success isn’t to blame for anyone else’spoverty — and, on the contrary, might even ameliorate it (evenThird World sweatshops have this effect, much as we might lamentthem).So how come we’re so sheepish about possessions? Why do we needa class of professional worrywarts –AKA the intelligentsia– towarn us, from the stern pulpits of Cambridge, Berkeley, andother bastions of higher education (and even higher real estateprices) about the perils of consumerism run amok?There are good reasons, to be sure. If we saved more, we couldprobably achieve faster economic growth. If we taxed ourselvesmore, we might reduce income inequality. If we consumed less,our restraint might help the environment (although theenvironment mostly has grown cleaner as spending has increased).Then, too, there’s a personal price to be paid for affluence:Because we’re so busy pursuing our individual fortunes, weendure a dizzying rate of change and weakened community andfamily ties.There is merit in all these arguments, but while I know lots ofpeople who are ambivalent about their own consumerism, hardlyany seem to worry that their getting and spending is underminingthe economy or pulling people off family farms. No, the real

2004





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reason for our unease about possessions is that many of us, justlike the makers of Hebrew National franks, still seem to answerto a higher power. We may not articulate it, but what really hasus worried is how we think God wants us to behave. And on thatscore, materialism was making people nervous long before therewas an America. In the BIBLE, the love of money is said to be theroot of all evil, and the rich man has as much of a shot atheaven as a camel has of passing through the eye of a needle.On the other band, biblical characters who enjoy God’s blessingshave an awful lot of livestock, and other neat stuff as well.Though Job loses everything while God is testing him, he getsit all back when he passes the test. Perhaps even God is of twominds about materialism.Here on earth, however, traditional authorities have alwaysinsisted that materialism is a challenge not just to the socialorder but to the perfection of God’s world. James B. Twitchell,a student of advertising and a cheerful iconoclast onmaterialism, has observed that sumptuary laws were once enforcedby ecclesiastical courts “because luxury was defined as livingabove one’s station, a form of insubordination against theconcept of copia — the idea that God’s world is already full andcomplete.”America represents the antithesis of that idea. Many of theearliest European settlers were motivated by religion, yet bytheir efforts they transformed the new land –God’s country?–into a nation of insubordinates, determined not so much to liveabove their station as to refuse to acknowledge they even hadone. Surely this is the place Joseph Schumpeter had in mind whenhe wrote of “creative destruction.”America was soon enough a nation where money could buy socialstatus, and American financial institutions pioneered suchweapons of mass consumption as the credit card. Today, no othernation produces material wealth on quite the scale we do — andcitizens of few other affluent countries are allowed to keep asmuch of their earnings. In America, I daresay, individuals havedirect control of more spending per capita than in just aboutany other nation. If affluence is a sign of grace, is it anywonder that Americans are more religious than most other modernpeoples?Twitchell is right in observing that the roots of ourambivalence about materialism are essentially religious innature. They can be traced all the way back to Yahweh’sinjunction against graven images, which might distract us fromGod or suggest by their insignificant dimensions some limits tohis grandeur. Over the centuries the holiest among us, at leastputatively, have been those who shunned material possessions andkept their eyes on some higher prize. From that elevatedperspective, material goods, which are essentially transient,seem emblems of human vanity and gaudy memento mori. Unless youhappen to be a pharaoh, you can’t take it with you; there’s amuch better chance that your kids will have to get rid of it ata garage sale.





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Ultimately, our love-hate relationship with materialismreflects the tension between our age-old concern with theafterlife and our inevitable desire for pleasure and comfort inthis one. The Puritans wrestled this contradiction withcharacteristic intelligence and verve, but our guilt aboutmaterialism is probably their legacy. They understood that therewas nothing inherently evil in financial success, and muchpotential good, given how the money might be used.The same work ethic, Protestant or otherwise, powers the economytoday. Americans take less time off than Europeans, forinstance, and there is no tradition here of the idle rich. Butthe Puritans also believed that poverty made it easier to getclose to God. Worldly goods “are veils set betwixt God and us,”wrote the English Puritan Thomas Watson, who added: “How readyis [man] to terminate his happiness in externals.” Leland Ryken,a biblical scholar and professor of English at Wheaton Collegewho has written extensively about Christian attitudes towardwork and leisure, shrewdly observes that the Puritans regardedmoney as a social good rather than a mere private possession:“The Puritan outlook stemmed from a firm belief that people arestewards of what God has entrusted to them. Money is ultimatelyGod’s, not ours. In the words of the influential Puritan book AGODLY FORM OF HOUSEHOLD GOVERNMENT, money is ‘that which God hath lentthee.’”So who are you to go buying a Jaguar with that bonus check? Asif to dramatize Puritan ambivalence about wealth, New Englandlater produced a pair of influential nonconformists, HoratioAlger, Jr. (1832-99) and Henry Thoreau (1817-62), whose workembodies sharply contrasting visions of material wealth; forbetter or worse, we’ve learned from both of them. Alger’s manynovels and stories offered an ethical template for upwardmobility, even as they gave him a sanitized outlet for hisdangerous fantasies about young boys. Thoreau, meanwhile, cameto personify the strong disdain for materialism –what might becalled the sexual plumage of capitalism– that would later beexpressed by commentators such as Thorstein Veblen and JulietSchor.Alger and Thoreau had much in common. Both were fromMassachusetts, went to Harvard, and lived, in various ways, asoutsiders. Their lives overlapped for 30 years. Both struggledat times financially, and both apparently were homosexual. Thepopular image of Thoreau is of the lone eccentric contemplatingnature at Walden Pond. In fact, he spent only two years and twomonths there, and while he always preferred to be thinking andwriting, he spent much of his life improving his father’s pencilbusiness, surveying land, and otherwise earning money.Of course, Thoreau scorned business as anything more than ameans to an end. His literary output, mostly ignored in hislifetime, won a wide audience over the years, in part, perhaps,because of the triumph of the materialism he so reviled.Thoreau’s instinctive disdain for moneymaking, his naturalasceticism and implicit environmentalism, his embrace of civil





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disobedience, and his opposition to slavery all fit him well forthe role of patron saint of American intellectuals. Alger’swork, by contrast, is read by hardly anyone these days, and hislife was not as saintly as Thoreau’s. When accusations of“unnatural” acts with teenage boys –acts he did not deny– forcedhim from his pulpit in Brewster, the erstwhile Unitarianminister decamped for New York City, where he became aprofessional writer. It was in venal New York that he made hisname with the kind of stories we associate with him to this day:tales of unschooled but goodhearted lads whose spunk, industry,and yes, good looks, win them material success, with the helpof a little luck and their older male mentors.Alger’s hackneyed parables are tales of the American dream,itself an accumulation of hopes that has always had a stronglymaterialistic component. The books themselves are now ignored,but their central fable has become part of our heritage. “Algeris to America,” wrote the novelist Nathanael West, “what Homerwas to the Greeks.”If Thoreau won the lofty battle of ideology, Alger won the waron the ground. This tension is most clearly visible among our“opinion leaders,” who identify far more easily with Thoreauthan with, say, Ragged Dick. One reason may be that few writersand scholars seem to have Alger stories of their own. I rarelymeet journalists or academies from poor or even working-classfamilies, and even the movie business, built by hardscrabbleimmigrants from icy Eastern Europe, is run today by the childrenof Southern California sunshine and prosperity.Hollywood aside, journalists, academics, and intellectuals havealready self-selected for anti-materialist bias by choosing apath away from money, which may account for why they’re so downon consumerism (unless it involves Volvo station wagons). Inthis they’re true to their ecclesiastical origins; monasteries,after all, were once havens of learning, and intellectuals oftenoperated in a churchly context. Worse yet, some intellectuals,abetted by tenure and textbook sales, are doing very wellindeed, and they in turn can feel guilty about all thoseitinerant teaching fellows and underpaid junior faculty whoselives suggest a comment by Robert Musil in his novel THE MANWITHOUT QUALITIES: “In every profession that is followed not forthe sake of money but for love,” wrote Musil, “there comes amoment when the advancing years seem to be leading into thevoid.”There are no such feelings in the self-made man (or woman). Oncea staple of American life and literature, the self-made man isnow a somewhat discredited figure. Like the Puritans, knowingmoderns doubt that anyone really can be self-made (except maybeimmigrants), though they’re certainly not willing to assign toGod the credit for success. Besides, more of us now are borncomfortable, even if we work as hard as if we weren’t, and thischange may account for the persistence of minimalism as a styleof home decor among the fashionable. The perversely Veblenesquecostliness of minimalist design –all that glossy concrete, and





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no cheap clamshell moldings to slap over the ragged seams wherethe doorways casually meet the drywall– attests to its asceticsnob appeal. So does the general democratization of materialism.Once everybody has possessions, fashion can fulfill its role,which is to reinforce the primacy of wealth and give those inthe know a way of distinguishing themselves, only by shunningpossessions altogether. “Materialism,” in this context, refersto somebody else’s wanting what you already have.When my teenage nephew, in school, read Leo Tolstòy’s “How MuchLand Does a Man Need?” –a parable about greed whose grim answeris: six feet for a burial plot– nobody told the students thatTolstòy himself owned a 4,000-acre estate (inherited, ofcourse).We have plenty of such well-heeled hypocrites closer to home.John Lennon, for example, who lugubriously sang “imagine nopossessions,” made a bundle with the Beatles and lived at theDakota, an unusually prestigious and expensive apartmentbuilding even by New York City standards. And before moving intoa $1.7 million house in New York’s northern suburbs, HillaryRodham Clinton told the World Economic Forum in Davos thatwithout a strong civil society, we risk succumbing to unbridledmaterialism. “We are creating a consumer-driven culture thatpromotes values and ethics that undermine both capitalism anddemocracy,” she warned. But Mrs. Clinton soon suspended herconcerns about capitalism and democracy to accept acontroversial avalanche of costly china and other furnishingsfor the new house.Heck, Thoreau could never have spent all that time at Walden ifhis friend Ralph Waldo Emerson hadn’t bought the land. It’sfitting that getting and spending –by somebody– gave us our mostfamous anti-materialist work of literature. Getting and spendingby everyone else continues to make the intellectual lifepossible, which is why universities are named for the likes ofCarnegie, Rockefeller, Stanford, and Duke.Every church has a collection plate, after all, even if thepriests like to bite the hands that feed them.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY








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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Pleasecontact the project at <[email protected]>.

Prepared: April 15, 2014

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST




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Well, tomorrow is such and such a date and so it began on that date in like 8000BC? Why 8000BC, because it was the beginning of the current interglacial -- or what?

Bearing in mind that this is America, "where everything belongs," the primary intent of such a notice is to prevent some person or corporate entity from misappropriating the materials and sequestering them as property for censorship or for profit.


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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested thatwe pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of theshoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What thesechronological lists are: they are research reports compiled byARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term theKouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such arequest for information we merely push a button.





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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obviousdeficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored inthe contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then weneed to punch that button again and recompile the chronology —but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary“writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of thisoriginating contexture improve, and as the programming improves,and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whateverhas been needed in the creation of this facility, the entireoperation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminishedneed to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expectto achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring roboticresearch librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place requests with <[email protected]>. Arrgh.




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Documents

THE REVERENDS HORATIO ALGER R AND R - Kouroo