Page:The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924).pdf/22

6 of sincere piety, and a generosity that was his financial ruin. In a letter from his sister, Emily's Aunt Lucretia, to his son Edward at Yale, the following passage occurs. It is dated 1821:

Father left in the yellow gig for the Bay Road this morning. He has gone to Boston by coach to see about getting a charter for something they propose to call Amherst College. He looked so fine in his white beaver and new great coat.

Until this ardent enthusiast, almost bigot, lost all the money he had not previously given away in his fanaticism for education and religion, the family throve and were favorably known for this world's prosperity as well as in matters of piety and attainment.

His oldest son Edward, who was the father of Emily, was brought up strictly and with a regard for the needs of the missionaries first. He was sent to Yale College, driven there, too, in the family chaise upon at least one trip mentioned in the family correspondence. The family letters during that period are happily at hand and throw a profound and touching atmosphere about these earlier days of education, when it was a sacred boon possible to the few through fierce sacrifice, often, on the part of those who gave it, and not to be entered into with less than a consecrated spirit of trust for those to whom it was to be returned, transformed into a wisdom that was to help save the world.

In one letter from Samuel, who was a deacon for forty years in the First Church and whose zeal was sleepless, to Edward, his son, this passage strikes its own contrast to modern fathers and sons.

December 17, 1819, he writes:

It is good news to hear of your good health and conduct. I