Ife and fortunes were his, or those of the Alcott family. She had no
individual
existence. Two years after the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Alcott,
Louisa, their second daughter was born in Germantown, Pa., where Mr.
Alcott was
in charge of a school belonging to the Society of Friends, or Quakers.
The date was November 29, 1832, also Mr. Alcott's birthday, always
observed as a double festival in the family. In 1834,
Mr. Alcott opened his celebrated school in Masonic Temple in
Boston, Mass., under the auspices of Dr. Channing and with the assured
patronage of some of the most cultivated and influential families in
the city. As assistants in this school, he had first Miss Sophia
Peabody afterward Mrs. Hawthorne, her sister
Miss Elizabeth Peabody, and finally Margaret Fuller. The school opened
prosperously and achieved remarkable success until,
in 1837, the publication of Mr. Alcott's
"Conversations on the Gospels" shocked the piety of Boston newspapers,
whose persistent and virulent attacks frightened the public and caused
the withdrawal of two-thirds of the pupils.
Mr. Emerson came to Mr. Alcott's defence, saying: "He is making an
experiment in which all the friends of education are interested," and
asking, "whether it be wise or just to add to the anxieties of this
enterprise
a public clamor against some detached sentences of a book which, on
the whole, is pervaded by
