languages to private classes, also Latin and French in my school.”[1]
Her connection with Mr. Alcott’s school, like the school itself, was destined to be short-lived. Mr. Alcott’s characteristic methods of dealing with children through minute questioning, joined with some peculiar theories as to punishment, called out an amount of indignation which, at this distance of time, appears almost incredible. The little volume called “Record of a School,” followed by the two volumes called “Conversations on the Gospels,” roused this wrath to the highest point. The books and the school were bitterly denounced by the “Daily Advertiser” and “Courier,” the latter seriously urging that Mr. Alcott should be prosecuted for blasphemy, as Abner Kneeland had lately been. To this Mr. R. W. Emerson wrote an indignant reply, asserting that Mr. Alcott’s only offense lay in his efforts to “make children think,” and that his experiment was one in which all the friends of education were interested. The editor of the “Courier,” Mr. J. T. Buckingham, rejoined by quoting the opinion of a Harvard professsor that “one third of Mr. Alcott’s book was absurd, one third was blasphemous, and one third was obscene.”[2]
Such was the hornet’s nest into which Margaret Fuller had unwarily plunged herself by following the very mildest-mannered saint who ever tried
