Emerson reading to Edith and Ellen

Emerson reading to Edith and Ellen

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“He liked to read and recite to us poems or prose passages a little above our heads, and on Sunday mornings often brought into the dining-room something rather old for us, and read aloud from Southey’s Chronicle of the Cid, or Froissart’s Chronicles, or Burke’s speeches, or amusing passages from Sydney Smith or Charles Lamb or Lowell. One rainy Sunday when we could not go to walk we got permission from our mother to play Battledore and Shuttlecock for a little while, but no sooner did the sound of the shuttlecock on the parchment bathead ring through the house than we heard the study door open and our father’s stride in the entry. He came in and said: ‘That sound was never heard in New England before on Sunday and must not be in my house. Put them away.’ ”—Edward Waldo Emerson, Emerson in Concord.

All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library

Amelia Forbes Emerson

Concord Free Public Library

Undated