Through his acquaintance with Thurlow Weed
he came to know Mr. Greeley and through Mr. Greeley was introduced to
Dr. Ripley and the Transcendentalists, gaining, by the way, broader
views and a wider range of ideas than those which had prevailed in
Beaver Street for two hundred years. Such, I take it was the sequence of
events, not as noted by a little boy but as partly imagined and partly
reasoned out at a later time. Partly imagined, too, is the presumption
that my father was attracted by the philosophic ideals presented by his
Boston friends. A tired business man might well be impressed by the
Transcendental teaching that our civilization has gone wrong in forcing
all human energy into the one pursuit, that of getting riches. They held
that while hard work rarely harms any one, the monotonous grind in the
money making mills results in arrested development. Work as hard as you
please, spend all the energy, all the talent, all the skill you have but
not in seeking wealth. That is not worth while, and it prevents the
doing of what is worth while.
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