My memory came back so distinctly that I
could recite long poems after a single reading, and no member of the
class passed a more brilliant examination at the end of the term than
I; and, at the end of the second term, I could recite the whole of
Legendre's geometry, plane and spherical, from beginning to end
without a question, and the class examination was recorded as the most
remarkable which the academy had witnessed for many years. I have
never been able to conceive an explanation of this curious phenomenon,
which I record only as of possible interest to some one interested in
psychology."
A. Bronson Alcott[43] was the son of a Connecticut farmer. He began a
diary at twelve; aspired vainly to enter Yale, and after much
restlessness at the age of nineteen left home with two trunks for
Virginia to peddle on foot, hoping to teach school. Here he had a
varying and often very hard experience for years.
Hornes Bushnell's[44] parents represented the Episcopal and liberal
Congregational Church. His early life was spent on a farm and in
attending a country academy. He became profoundly interested in
religion in the early teens and developed extreme interest in nature.
At seventeen, while tending a carding machine, he wrote a paper on
Calvinism.
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