The Life of Joseph Hodges Choate As Gathered Chiefly from His Letters

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: JOSEPH HODGES CHOATE CHAPTER I IN SALEM AND AT HARVARD A LETTER FROM SALEM CAMBRIDGE AND HARVARD?SPARKS AND EVERETT?ANTISLAVERY DAYS?GEORGE THOMPSON, ABOLITIONIST ?THE FLOW OF THE UNDERGRADUATE SOUL?INSPECTING THE NEW WEST Following the record made by Mr. Choate himself of his ancestry and childhood in...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: JOSEPH HODGES CHOATE CHAPTER I IN SALEM AND AT HARVARD A LETTER FROM SALEM CAMBRIDGE AND HARVARD?SPARKS AND EVERETT?ANTISLAVERY DAYS?GEORGE THOMPSON, ABOLITIONIST ?THE FLOW OF THE UNDERGRADUATE SOUL?INSPECTING THE NEW WEST Following the record made by Mr. Choate himself of his ancestry and childhood in Salem, his college years and start in his profession, there now proceeds the story derived from his early letters of a clever and cheerful young man, well born, dutiful and diligent, of excellent habits and admirable talents, and of what he sought in this world and what he found. It will be remembered that the world he was born into was by no means the one to which we are now trying to adjust ourselves. His course was run in the world that was and is no more. It started at a notable time, covered a remarkable historical period, and reached to within plain sight of the end of the cycle it belonged to. The story of his career is the story of a man who was fond of that world and of many people in it, enjoyed it, laughed at it, helped it on its way, and took his toll of it as he went along. Some of the letters reach back into the peiiod which he has himself incompletely treated. My dear Sisters, he writes in June, 1848, having then reached the maturity of sixteen years, though not much acquaintedwith the art of letter-writing, I venture to do my best, as mother is too busy. As you might suppose, we are all very lonely without you; to sit down at the table with four only instead of our usual good, round number, is for us 'bad enough.' Already he is a writer who can arrange his words in a good order. He proceeds to the extent of two large pages and a half, as follows: George dined in Boston on Wednesday, said they were all well there, saw Martha, and her lit...