TABLETS

by

A. BRONSON ALCOTT

"For curious method expect none, essays for the most part not being placed as at a feast, but placing themselves as at an ordinary." _Thomas Fuller._

Boston Roberts Brothers 1868.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by A. Bronson Alcott, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

Electrotyped and Printed by Alfred Mudge & Son, No. 34 School St., Boston.

CONTENTS.

BOOK I.--PRACTICAL.

I. THE GARDEN. PAGE.

1 Antiquity 5

2 Ornaments 11

3 Pleasures 14

4 Orchard 20

5 Sweet Herbs 25

6 Table Plants 28

7 Rations 36

8 Economies 41

9 Rural Culture 48

II. RECREATION.

1 The Fountains 59

2 The Cheap Physician 65

III. FELLOWSHIP.

1 Hospitality 69

2 Conversation 75

IV. FRIENDSHIP.

1 Persons 81

2 Woman 88

3 Family 92

4 Children 95

V. CULTURE.

1 Modern Teaching 103

2 Socratic Dialectic 108

3 Pythagorean Discipline 113

4 Mother Tongue 118

VI. BOOKS. 127

VII. COUNSELS.

1 Religious 139

2 Personal 145

3 Political 148

4 Soul's Errand 151

Table of contents (by pages)

• 1: Tablets by Amos Bronson Alcott
• 2: The nearest neighbor or next in kindred to philosophy
• 3: The citizen hopes to become a countryman
• 4: Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps
• 5: Arbors are especially ornamental
• 6: Shedding lustre on all he takes in hand
• 7: Earth all is mine and mine the sheaves
• 8: Or of pimpled coat The russet
• 9: So are flowers and herbs to women
• 10: As Marvell the melon for Old England
• 11: And gleaning damsels kerchief all they list
• 12: And owes most to culture in its ancient varieties of quince
• 13: By abstinence from animal food
• 14: Bathes in floods of sweet ethers
• 15: Especially if it stand in an orchard
• 16: Do we not build ourselves into its foundations
• 17: The arts of handicraft and husbandry coming by mother wit
• 18: Since its roots are fast planted therein
• 19: They could touch the lute and virginal
• 20: And charity was as warm as the kitchen
• 21: Sleep took the sleep out of us
• 22: Wouldst see a man that can Live to be old
• 23: Let him entertain the dispositions
• 24: If intercourse have not this wholesome effect
• 25: Leaves the discourse incomplete
• 26: Temperament telling against temperament
• 27: That fairest word in the human vocabulary
• 28: Who had he not her blest creation seen
• 29: If thou dost anything confer that's sweet
• 30: To be decaying and losing flavor
• 31: And the thoughts of each harmless hour
• 32: Will you spoil my paradise too
• 33: Piety and genius are parents of piety and genius
• 34: Say the Alcibiades of the earlier Dialogues
• 35: If therefore the eye would see itself
• 36: As Socrates did to the accomplished Alcibiades
• 37: And when the person struck the lyre
• 38: Whose well known proficiency in Latin
• 39: That I would reject the grammars altogether
• 40: Truth the flowing essence of things
• 41: Begin at the last paragraph and read backward as well
• 42: Greater than to all foreign literatures besides
• 43: Sweep secretly the breadth and depths of Christendom
• 44: The liberal mind is of no sect
• 45: Still striving till striving is having
• 46: Both conformity and nonconformity are alike impracticable
• 47: Tell Potentates they live Acting
• 48: Although to give the lie Deserves no less than stabbing
• 49: Knowledge everywhere diffused is accessible to all
• 50: Sconce mounting sconce aspiringly as it rises
• 51: Because they are merely hypothetical
• 52: Is the visionary mistaking images for ideas
• 53: Marshals in trope and tone The ideal band
• 54: Instinct is the fountain of Personal power
• 55: Is it surprising that this spiritual theism
• 56: With savage rites and sacrifice abhorred
• 57: The subtilest thinker on Genesis since Moses
• 58: The serpent symbolized divine wisdom
• 59: This statue like tissue of filaments
• 60: The choleric is of the fiery temper
• 61: Content thyself with the small barren praise
• 62: All drink of oblivion some more
• 63: Remaining unshaken to the last
• 64: With an Introduction by Epes Sargent