It was not uncommon to see farmers, bearing names highly respected in the town, lying drunk by the roadside on a summer afternoon, or staggering along the streets.

I do not believe there is a small boy's stomach in this generation that can hold a tenth part of what used to go into mine, not only on Thanksgiving day, but on the days before and after.

I do not know what the Jewish festival or the old Roman banquets might have been, but they could not have equalled a New England Thanksgiving week in a house in the country.

The horrible and nasty castor oil, ipecac and calomel, and the salts and senna, sulphur and molasses taken three mornings in succession and then missed three mornings, were worse than any sickness.

We had none of the sweet patent medicines that the children now cry for, and none of the smooth capsules or the pleasant comfits that turn medicine into confectionery nowadays.

I account it one of the chief blessings of my life that my boyhood was spent in the pure, noble and simple society of the people of Concord.

Lowell said that these three names shine among all others in American literature as the three blazing stars in the belt of Orion shine in the sky.

Indeed, I think he would have said that the town had more influence upon him than he had upon it.

When he died, every schoolboy thought he had lost a friend.

It may be a fond exaggeration, but I think he was the most brilliant intellect ever born in Massachusetts.

A beautiful, high-souled, pure, exquisitely delicate nature in a slight but finely wrought mortal frame, he was for me the very ideal of an embodied celestial intelligence.

I felt as many have felt after being with his brother, Ralph Waldo, that I had entertained an angel visitant.

The fawn of Marvell's imagination survives in my memory as the fitting image to recall this beautiful youth; a soul glowing like the rose of morning with enthusiasm, a character white as the lilies in its purity.

I think the impression he made upon all who knew him was that of a classical scholar and a perfect gentleman.

Yesterday afternoon we attended his funeral, and that is the end on this side Heaven, of his extraordinary promise, the union of such shining gifts,--grace and genius, and sense and virtue.

I deferred to him on so many questions and trusted him more than myself, that I feel as if I had lost the best part of myself.

I mourn for the Commonwealth, which has lost before it yet had learned his name the promise of his eloquence and rare public gifts.

I never shall hear such speaking as his, for his memory was a garden of immortal flowers, and all his reading came up to him as he talked, to clear, elevate and decorate the subject of his present thought.

It seems no longer worth living in, if whatever delights us in it departs.

But at the time of the hubbub against me in Boston, Charles Emerson stood alone of a large company in defence of free thought and speech, and declared that he had rather see Boston in ashes than that I or anybody should be debarred in any…

He had formed in his own mind a standard of education far beyond that which can be completed, even by the most faithful application, within the ordinary rounds of school and college--an education in which every man must be mainly his own…

He openly professed what he believed, and he acted up to his professions.

He not only held conscience the guide of his life, but he took care to school and discipline that conscience so that its dictates should always conform to truth, to duty, to the laws of God.

But he knew birds and beasts as one boy knows another--all their delightful little habits and fashions.

He has fallen at the very gate of an honorable and eminent career, and a thousand hopes are buried in his grave.