Personal and Family Papers of Frederick Llewellyn Hovey Willis, Unitarian minister, Medical Doctor, Author and Lecturer, resident for many years in the home of the Alcotts, and model for the character “Laurie” in Little Women, friend of Louisa May Alcott and the Transcendentalists – Amos Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, et al, and his wife Love Whitcomb Willis, materials dated 1806-1959 by Willis, Frederick Llewellyn Hovey (1830-1914)

"Laurie's" Papers. Large archive, housed in six cartons, pertaining to Frederick L. H. Willis, his wife and family, including an extensive collection of Correspondence (256 letters, 889 pp); with 16 Diaries, Journals, and Notebooks, (over 1200 pp); including an 1854-1855 Journal recording a trip from Boston to Brazil, with a stop in Virginia, in which Willis records his impressions of Slavery and interactions with African American slaves; plus over 5,000 manuscript pages of lectures, sermons, and other writings; and over 300 Photographs (mostly in albums); manuscript and typescript accounts of Willis' life with the Alcotts, and recollections of Louisa and Bronson Alcott, also included are 4 Scrapbooks; 30 Books and Pamphlets; plus other manuscript and printed Ephemera, all of which pertains to either Dr. Frederick Lewellyn Hovey Willis, his wife author Love Marie Whitcomb Willis, their daughter author and poet Edith L. Willis Linn, his in-laws Henry Whitcomb and Love Foster Whitcomb, other family and friends; including associates such as Harrison Gray Otis Blake and Theophilus Brown, both friends, correspondents, and promoters of Henry David Thoreau; as well as relatives and friends of Louisa May Alcott: Alcott's nephew and adopted son John Sewell Pratt Alcott, and her girlhood friend and early biographer Clara Gowing; plus Clara Endicott Sears purchaser and preservationist of "Fruitlands" the Alcott's failed Utopian community; and others, all dated from 1806 to 1959, with the bulk dating from the 1840s to the 1910s.

The archive comprises the surviving papers of Frederick Llewellyn Hovey Willis, Unitarian minister, medical doctor, lecturer and writer, who as a young man boarded and lived with the Alcott family, from 1844-1854, and who, according to none other than Bronson Alcott1, Louisa's father, was the model for the character "Laurie" in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. Willis was an orphan, and as he later discovered, was also a distant cousin of the Alcott's. Willis wrote, in his posthumously published Alcott Memoirs, 1915, describing a tragic loss for American literary history: "From my matriculative year at Harvard, until shortly before my marriage, I maintained a correspondence with Louisa. It is a matter of deep regret to me that, together with many papers of value, her letters, which were among my most valued treasures were stolen…" Willis played an important role in Louisa May Alcott's literary development, he was the one who secured publication for Alcott's first poem, by privately submitting the manuscript of "Sunlight" written under the pseudonym Flora Fairfield, to Peterson's Magazine. The magazine paid Louisa $ 5 and published the poem in September 1851. It was the first money Louisa May Alcott earned as a writer. The character Laurie in Little Women fills a similar role. The Alcotts likewise were an important influence upon Willis' life as well.

Frederick Llewellyn Hovey Willis (1830-1914)

Frederick Llewellyn Hovey Willis was born on 29 January 1830, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Throughout his life he appears not to have used the name Frederick, preferring Llewellyn. Llewellyn was the only child of prosperous Massachusetts merchant Lorenzo Dow Willis (1805-?) and his wife Eleanor Hovey (1807-1830). Lorenzo was the cousin of Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806-1867), an American author, poet and editor who worked with several notable American writers including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Nathaniel became the highest-paid magazine writer of his day.

Llewellyn's parents married on 11 June 1829, at Cambridge. Since Mrs. Willis had her first baby in January 1830, it's likely she may have already been pregnant when she married Lorenzo. While Lorenzo was a successful merchant, but his business partner was unscrupulous and absconded with the funds of their enterprise, leaving Lorenzo to be thrown into debtor's prison. While Lorenzo's wife Eleanor had several wealthy brothers, who could have easily helped her husband to get out of debtor's prison, they refused. The Hovey family were not supportive of Lorenzo's marriage to Eleanor, as Lorenzo was rather liberal in his religion and the Hovey's were strict Baptists. However, even without the Hovey family help, Lorenzo was able to get out of prison in time to see the birth of his son Llewellyn.

Llewellyn's mother Eleanor Hovey was born in 1807 in Cambridge and died on 2 February 1830, several days after giving birth to him. She was the daughter of Ebenezer Hovey (1769-1831) of Lunenburg, Massachusetts and his wife Sarah Greenwood (1771- ), of Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was one of at least twelve children born to her parents.

After the death of his mother, Llewellyn was brought up by his grandmother, Sarah Greenwood Hovey, originally of Salem, Massachusetts, but then living in Cambridge. Her father was Colonel Darby of Salem, a famous trader in his day. The Hovey household was said to be one of extreme bigotry. Sarah's husband Ebenezer was one of the founders of the Baptist Church of Cambridge. At an early point Llewellyn was given to a mother of twins by his grandparents, who acted as a wet nurse when he was an infant. When he was old enough to be weaned, he lived with his maternal grandparents, as his father Lorenzo had also died, leaving Llewellyn an orphan. The grandparents sent him to an old woman in the country, where Llewellyn first became aware of his love of nature.

At a young age Llewellyn was brought back to Cambridge to live with his maternal grandparents, where he was to be prepared for school in a very strict religious household. Boxes of his father's books were stowed in the attic of the home and Llewellyn would sneak away to read, as works of literature and politics were forbidden in the house.

Llewellyn began his education in the public schools of Cambridge and was later apprenticed to an apothecary. When he was seven years old, he "got religion" in the old-fashioned sense. He tried his best to be a devout Baptist and please his grandparents but was not successful. At the age of twelve, because of his disbelief in foreordination, he was expelled from church as a heretic. His grandfather, being a founder of the church, felt compelled to expel Llewellyn from their home, however they did help him to seek lodging elsewhere.

Two years later, in 1844, a chance meeting with Mrs. Abigail "Abba" Alcott (1800-1877), changed Llewellyn's life; Abba was the mother of American writer Louisa Alcott (1832-1888), and the wife of Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), an American teacher, writer, philosopher, and reformer. As an educator, he pioneered new ways of interacting with young students, focusing on a conversational style, and avoided traditional punishment. He hoped to perfect the human spirit and, to that end, advocated a vegan diet before the term was coined. He was also an abolitionist and an advocate for women's rights.

In early June of 1844, at the age of fourteen, Llewellyn was on a stagecoach ride from Boston to Still River Village in the town of Harvard. During the trip one of his fingers got caught in the door as it was closing causing such intense pain that he passed out. When he awoke, Mrs. Abba Alcott, was attending to him. A friendship was struck up and she took him to her home and introduced him to her four young daughters, Anna, Louisa, Lizzie and May (later immortalized as Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy in Louisa Alcott's "Little Women.").

The very next day Llewellyn visited the Alcott family again, and within a week he convinced his grandmother to allow him to change his boarding to the Alcott home, where from the age of fourteen until he was twenty-four years old, he became an intimate member of the Alcott family, as a friend, boarder and guest in their home. It is said that he was loved as a son by Amos Bronson Alcott and his wife, and was for a number of years the only boy playmate of Louisa Alcott and her sisters, with the single exception of William, son of Charles Lane (1800–1870), an English-American transcendentalist, abolitionist, and early voluntarist, who along with Amos Bronson Alcott, was one of the main founders of Fruitlands and, like Alcott, a vegan. Through the Alcotts Willis met Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Hawthorne, Lydia Maria Child, all of the principal Abolitionists, Phillips, Pillsbury, Parker, Grimke, Weld, Horace Mann, Abbie Kelley Foster, Lucretia Mott and Lucy Stone, he also met Thomas Starr King, whom he served as an amanuensis for a time. Willis fell under the influence of Bronson Alcott's philosophy and became a disciple, and which later found expression in his sermons.

Willis lived in the Alcott home at Still River Village in the latter half of 1844, and was with them again when they moved to "Hillside" at Concord from 1845 to 1848 (called "Wayside" by Nathaniel Hawthorne), and still later when they moved to Boston in 1848 into the 1850s when they lived at the Pinckney and High Street houses. He continued to live with them as he prepared for Harvard College. It was during his time of preparation that Willis acted as amanuensis for Thomas Starr King (1824-1864), an American Universalist and Unitarian minister, influential in California politics during the American Civil War. King spoke zealously in favor of the Union and was credited by Abraham Lincoln with preventing California from becoming a separate republic.

Willis' description of the Alcott home in his own book, Alcott Memoirs, mirrors the way Louisa immersed her character Laurie into the life of the March family in Little Women. Laurie, the March family's neighbor, it will be remembered, had also lost his mother.

Amos Bronson Alcott was at this time (March 1853) invited to teach a group of fifteen students at Harvard's Divinity School in an extracurricular, non-credit course. Willis may have attended or audited the course. Llewellyn also appears to have begun his studies at Harvard Divinity School at about this time. Willis undertook a sea voyage from Boston to Brazil from September 1854 to April 1855, so the chronology of his entrance to Harvard is unclear. However, Willis was later suspended from Harvard in 1857 for mediumistic activities (conducting seances). The case of his suspension is narrated by Emma Hardinge Britten in her book "Modern American Spiritualism: A Twenty Years' Record of the Communion between Earth and the World of Spirits" (New York: 1870). Prof. Eustis, an openly avowed sceptic of Spiritualism, sat in on one of the seances of Willis and afterwards accused Willis of "deception and imposture". Harvard wanted Willis to resign from his studies until the matter was investigated further, and a decision was considered that would not have an official record of the incident. However, Willis objected, demanding to be allowed to continue his studies, which led to Harvard suspending him.

Soon after his suspension from Harvard, Willis was invited to Coldwater, Michigan, by Henry C. Gilbert who had recently established a Spiritualist church in Coldwater, and personally invited Willis to be the new minister. Willis, in his Alcott Memoirs, described himself as a "settled clergyman for a period of six years in Coldwater, Michigan," and his daughter described her father as a Universalist minister. However, it appears that Willis had continued practicing Spiritualism.

Willis married Love Maria Whitcomb on 8 October 1858. The couple were married at Hancock, New Hampshire, by the Rev. Asahel Bigelow. At the time of his marriage Willis was living in Coldwater, Michigan and was listed as a preacher.

Love Maria Whitcomb was born 9 June 1824, in Hancock, New Hampshire. When she married in 1858, she was living at home in Hancock and was six years older than her husband. She was the daughter of Henry Whitcomb (1787-1831) and Love Foster (1789-1873) his wife, both originally from Littleton, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. Willis' wife Love was an early member of "Sorosis" (est. March 1868 at New York City), the first professional women's club in the United States, being a member of the club by at least the year 1872, when she is found listed in the 4th Anniversary Program of the organization.

At some point after his marriage in the early 1860s, Willis appears to have stopped being a preacher, and to have attended medical school in New York City at the New York Homeopathic Medical College. At an event advertised in the Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, NY) on 22 May 1912, it stated Willis was a member of the Alumni Association of the school. A memoir of the Alcott family written by Willis states he started medical school in New York City at the outbreak of the Civil War (1861). An advertisement (New York Daily Herald) of 12 March 1864, shows that Willis spoke at the Clinton Hall, Astor Place in New York City, every Sunday morning and evening. That week's subject was "What and Where is God?" and "The Significance of Life." The meetings were free to all, thus while attending medical school, he was still giving lectures, or preaching.

For five years Willis was a Professor of Materia-Medica at the New York Homoeopathic Medical College for Women. He later practiced medicine in New York, Boston, and at his summer home in Glenora, New York, on Seneca Lake. The Willis family is found on the 1875 NY State Census and the 1880 Federal Census, Llewellyn is listed as a physician in Starkey, Yates County, New York and enumerated with his wife Love, and daughter Edith. The 1900 Federal Census shows that Willis and his wife were still living in Starkey, Yates County, New York; and that his daughter Edith, now married had moved out. Willis at 70 years of age, was listed without an occupation, although he was said to have practiced medicine until he was eighty-three years old. The Buffalo Times (Buffalo, NY) advertised on 16 January 1900, that "Dr. Frederick L.H. Willis of Rochester, formerly of Boston, has arranged to give a course of parlor lectures on 'Metaphysics or the Science of the Human Soul.' When the 1905 New York State Census was taken the couple was still in Starkey and Willis was listed as a physician.

Frederick's wife, Love Willis, died 26 November 1908, in Elmira, Chemung County, New York and was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester, New York.

In a newspaper story published in the Boston Globe of 16 November 1912, Willis wrote a letter to the Buffalo Express, claiming to have documentary evidence in the form of letters written by Louisa Alcott to him to prove his claim that he was the model for Laurie, the character in "Little Women." The same article goes on to state that Willis took the first manuscript of Alcott's to get published; it was titled "The Prince and the Fairy." He took it to the Boston Olive Branch, a publication of a Methodist denomination, and was paid $5.00. However, other accounts state that the first manuscript published was Alcott's poem "Sunlight". At some point between 1912 and the publication of Willis' Alcott Memoirs in 1915, Willis' "correspondence and other important papers" were stolen. These papers have not surfaced since that time. From The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott we learn that Louisa May Alcott began corresponding with Willis as early as 1845 (see p. 3). This fact offers a hint at the extent of the correspondence, as well as the loss. It is possible that the publication of this story may have led to the theft of the Alcott-Willis correspondence.

Dr. Willis died at his home in Rochester on 12 April 1914. His obituary states that through his relationship with the Alcott family, he became intimate friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Charles A. Dana, George William Curtis, Frank B. Sandborn, and other literary lights of New England. Willis' memoirs of the Alcotts et al, were published after his death by his daughter Edith as "Alcott Memoirs: Posthumously Compiled from Papers Journals and Memoranda of the Late Dr. Frederick L. H. Willis," by E.W.L. & H.B. The book was published by Richard G. Badger of Boston in 1915.

Willis and his wife Love had a daughter named Edith L. Willis. Edith was born about 1865, in New York; and died 1 October 1945, in Starkey, Yates County, New York. She was supposedly cremated, the location of ashes unknown, possibly at Mt. Hope Cemetery, Rochester, New York with her first husband, or in Riverside Cemetery, Rochester, where her second husband is apparently buried. She was a prolific authoress; poet; artist; and musician, co-edited her father's memoirs of his acquaintance with the family of Bronson Alcott his daughter Louisa May, authoress of "Little Women".

Edith was married twice; her first marriage was to Samuel H. Linn. He was born on 26 September 1843, at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and died 26 February 1916, at Rochester, New York. He was buried at Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester. He was the son of Hugh William Linn (1818-1900) and his wife Mary Chadwick (1818-1907). Samuel served in the Civil War and was one of the squads acting as guards of honor for President Lincoln's funeral. Linn enrolled in dentistry school after the war and after a few years transferred practice to Europe, along with younger brother Benjamin, where he eventually settled in Leningrad, Russia, where after successfully performing a chin lift on a member of the Imperial family, he was asked by Tsar Alexander III to serve as personal dentist of the Romanoffs. After eight years of service he went to study medicine in Vienna; London; Paris; and the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his degree. Returning to Russia, he spent another eight years as court physician. He returned to the United States around 1886, married Edith Willis and settled in Rochester, but remained close to the Russian royal family, (Grand Duke Alexis was a close friend), which gave him numerous gifts: including a Russian carriage and driver which he kept in Rochester.

Edith and Samuel Linn had a son by the name of Benjamin F. Linn. He was born 29 April 1889 and died 1923. He was buried with this father at Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester.

As her second husband, Edith Willis married George Mathes Forbes.

High Lights from the Collection:

The Willis collection includes manuscript drafts for chapters of his Alcott Memoirs, (Alcott as Abolitionist, Fruitlands, Alcott the Philosopher, etc.) as well as manuscript reminiscences on Bronson Alcott and the Alcott family, including the Alcott sisters. Willis also wrote favorably in support of Women's Rights and Women's Suffrage, there are also manuscript accounts of notable people he met through the Alcotts. The collection includes a manuscript entitled "Mr. Alcott as a Prophet", which was not included in his Alcott Memoirs. This manuscript was likely intended as a chapter in his book but was not used. The work contains further recollections of Bronson Alcott and of his lasting influence upon Willis.

The sections that we quote from are either not in his published work or contains text that differs from the posthumously published work, edited by his daughter.

The following manuscript, entitled: "The Four Little Women, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, offers a reminiscent account by Willis of the Alcott sisters, and differs substantially from the chapter Louisa and Her Sisters, in his Alcott Memoirs. In the account he uses the names of the sisters that Louisa gave them in her book:

"Anna Bronson – Meg – was the eldest of the four. She had the clear, beautiful complexion of her father – pink and white as an infant's, with large, lovely blue eyes and golden brown hair. I sued to call her our "ox eyed Juno". She had a charming smile that revealed teeth like pearls of the orient. She possessed a quiet, even temperament and a remarkably amiable disposition, with a keen sense of humor, and a quiet enjoyment of fun and frolic.

Both of the older sisters had a good degree of dramatic talent. Meg would have made a fine tragic actress, and Jo an equally fine comedienne. They were never happier than when getting up private theatricals.

While yet quite young, Meg manifested a great deal of her father's quiet dignity of manner, blended with much of her mother's vivacity, practicality, and hopefulness of spirit. Mr. Alcott was stately and dignified in his bearing, and manners and in all his movements. I cannot remember ever seeing him make a quick or hasty movement. This was so apparent in him – so very marked, that it attracted the attention of a young Englishman, who bore the euphonious name of Cholmondeley. He was the descendant of an aristocratic old family – the nephew of a lord. He became so interested in Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau, whose fame had reached England, that he visited this country, especially to make a study of their characters.

While engaged in this interesting pursuit, he boarded in Concord for some time with Thoreau's mother, and became greatly attached to Thoreau, and greatly interested in Alcott. He had learned of his humble parentage, that he was the son of a plain Connecticut farmer, that he was not liberally educated, and that he began public life as a travelling pedlar.

These facts he could not reconcile with the marked dignity, repose and even elegance of manner, and bearing of this gentle philosopher he exclaimed: "How is it possible! He has the manner and bearing of a grand peer!" This was the highest compliment that a scion of the British nobility could pay to a plain American citizen.

As regards temperament, no contrast could be greater than that which existed between Meg and Jo. Meg was serene, self-poised equable. Jo was impulsive, impetuous, subject to moods. In almost every respect she was just the opposite of Meg. And yet the affection that existed between the two sisters was never ruffled even by Jo's most irritable moods. It was truly the harmony of opposites, and was beautiful to behold.

Meg was all that Louisa represents her to have been in "Little Women", ever pursuing the even tenor of her way with all the regularity of the pendulum of a clock, ever most unselfishly devoting herself to the efforts for the comfort and happiness of those around her, and doing it all in so quiet and unostentatious a manner one would hardly suspect she was making any effort at all in that direction. The chief charm of it all was its spontaneity.

She had a keen sense of the proprieties of life – the conventionalities. Jo did not care a snap of her fingers for them. She had as sovereign a contempt for them as had Thoreau. (Willis then gives a lengthy quote from Little Women, Vol. 1 page 9, illustrating his point, that he expresses in another section that "Louisa always lamented that she was not a boy…") …

As Jo and I sympathized most heartily in this direction, we became excellently good comrades, and were constantly daring each other with stunts that were decidedly "boyish" in their characteristics, such as climbing the tallest trees, running foot races and hoop races, climbing fences, jumping, leaping, etc. Jo entered into these bouts with a zeal, and a vim that was truly inspiring and which put me to my trumps most decidedly. As a rule, the honors were pretty equally divided. I can recall but one feat in which I decidedly had the advantage for a time, and that was in leaping a fence or a horizontal bar, in which she was sadly hampered by her skirts, but she soon triumphed over that obstacle by improvising a pre-historical Bloomer costume. These exploits often called forth a little lecture from the dignified Meg. – "preachments", Louisa called them, but they were delivered in such a quaint, sweet, motherly sort of a way it was rather a pleasure, than otherwise to be rebuked by her.

Meg married John Pratt, who was the son of Minot Pratt, who was one of the most esteemed members of the famous Brook Farm Phalanx, one of the earliest pioneers of the communist movement in this country. By profession he was a printer, and for several years held a position as foreman in the office of the Christian Register in Boston. Early in the forties he and his wife became deeply interested in the communistic ideas of Fourier and Robert Owen. …" (Willis then relates the involvement of the Pratts with Brook Farm and the Communistic movement, labor reforms, etc).

Willis provides another recollection of Louisa:

"Louisa always lamented that she was not a boy, and she endeavored to be one to the utmost extent that the physiological laws of being would admit. She dearly loved boy's games. She could leap a fence and climb a tree as well as I could, and we found our way into the topmost branches of the tall trees at Hillside. She was the most beautiful girl runner I ever saw. We were fond of contests in rope skipping to see which could hold out the longest in that vigorous exercise. We had many races, too, with our hoops, which we especially enjoyed.

In the berry season, our expeditions to the berry pasture were about twice a week and a great source of delight. In those days the commercial spirit had not attained the tremendous grip which it holds today on all branches of industry, and the meadows and pastures, with their rich fruitage of huckleberries, blue berries and black berries, were free to all for the picking, no toll ever being demanded by the owners of the ground.

We took special pains to take along pails and baskets as nearly equal in their holdings as possible, for we had most exciting contests as to which could fill the pail quicker.

I remember one day we were close by Louisa. We had been pressing each other very closely in the contest as to which pail would be filled first, when my foot stumbled over some impediment and I measured my length upon the ground in such a manner that my clothing was richly ornamented with berry stains. Louisa, who always saw the ludicrous side of everything, said, "You look like a huckleberry rollypolly."

I remember as I went down, in my despair over my defeat in getting ahead of Louisa, I allowed a vulgar word to escape my lips. From my earliest recollection of myself I had never before permitted such a misdemeanor. Any approach toward vulgarity or profanity repelled me at once, and I had no future use for the boys who did use it. As the word escaped my lips, I looked into Louisa's face and saw thereon an expression I have never forgotten. She said nothing, but there was a lesson in that look which lasted me for a long time.

The entire party generously joined in filling my pail, and despite my mishap, we wended our way home, a merry, joyful party, soon to revel in dear "Marmee's" delicious berry pies, puddings and cakes."

The following manuscript by Willis recollects one of Bronson Alcott's Sunday 'Table Talks', which had a lasting influence on Willis and which contains a distillation of Alcott's philosophy and Transcendentalism:

"One of the earliest of Mr. Alcotts Table Talks made so profound an impression upon my mind that I have retained a vivid memory of it ever since. It was strikingly unlike anything to which I had ever listened. It began thus: -

Nothing can be more self-evident than the fact that we who dwell upon this planet Earth are dependent upon its laws for our existence.

The plant that grows in our garden is not more dependent upon the soil than are we upon our union with matter. The physical requirements that ally us to humanity making us at one with all mankind are the necessities of our earthly origin. Could we imagine a being not dependent on food or air for existence we could not recognize him as kindred with ourselves.

Many of us sigh for an Elixir of Life that we may feel no more the pressure of toil and anxiety that precedes harvest and vintage; but the burden is upon us all. Cruel and irksome as the chain may seem at times that binds our necessities to matter, yet it holds us all and compels our servitude. The fact that we are mortal is a lesson that is daily repeated to our consciousness. If we choose to forget it in our exalted moods Nature forces our conclusions and compels us to remember that in one department of our being we are but dust.

We find however, that the plants that grow in our garden are allied to something besides the soil. From whence come the wondrous colors that reflect the golden glory of the morning, or the exquisite tints of the sunset hour? The light through its electric and magnetic power feeds the tissues with its combined essences, and they vibrate in unison with the vibrations of light and there is bloom and beauty, as well as form and substance.

The rose attracts by its own individual life, just such sustenance as shall develop its own individual beauty; it will have no other. It presents to us its Auroral blush because it retains in its cup all the other rays giving forth the red-tinted ones only. Tell me why one rose is red, another close by it is white, still another pink or by what power each give forth from its delicate petals its own individual rays, and you can go far toward telling me what God is.

We can not fail to see that even our garden is full of individual life. Everything in it – even the minutest weed – has its own individual life. By no possible effort can we make a maple tree grow from the seed of an elm, and thus we find that life is something more than more than matter, and even its most insignificant form can reveal to us divine order, grace and beauty.

And yet, although the material realm of Nature, holds each one of us in bondage to her inexorable laws, something whispers to our consciousness that we are outside of it all, that there is something within us that is above mere matter. We are conscious of desires, of longings and cravings that are beyond our appetites. Even in the commonest acts of life we know that we are seeking something besides that which is purely sensuous. Closely as the chain of our earthly necessities holds us and compels our servitude, yet we feel a higher power claiming also its service.

The food we eat today becomes our power of thought tomorrow, and we feel the compulsion of a sphere that closely touches our sensuous sphere of thought and feeling.

Science, of late years, has been performing many most beautiful and most interesting experiments, has elaborated many poetic theories showing how thought rises out of matter, how brain-force is evolved from crude, coarse material. How the food we eat becomes blood and muscle, and electric nerve-force and magnetic life culminating in thought.

How few of us realise the grandeur of the simple, common place act of eating. How few sit down to a meal as if it were a solemn sacrament through which we are daily enacting within ourselves the beautiful miracle of Divine Humanity. Our spiritual life is continually being drawn out of – evolved from – the material life by the one law of motion, which is attraction. Our forces are being continually used to outwork the divine.

The simple process of thought is the god-like power in man. Hence is it not immensely important that we should select our food from a higher stand-point than that of mere gratification of the palate?

Let no one think that that the above is a verbatim report of this talk of Mr. Alcotts it is an embodiment in my own language of some of its cardinal points that made a profound impression upon my young mind because of their utter dissimilarity to anything I had ever before heard. I had never dreamed that one of the most commonplace events of our daily life – the eating of three meals a day – had any relevancy whatever to high spiritual truths or any other object than satisfying the demands of hunger.

So late as 1894 I was delivering a course of parlor lectures in St. Louis, Mo. On the Relation of Spiritual Laws to Every Day Life. In the midst of one of my lectures there came floating into my mind several of the points made by Mr. Alcott in the above talk, and I made use of them crediting them to him. This brought out the – to me – very interesting fact that in my audience were several persons who listened to Mr. Alcott's talks on his first experimental trip to the West more than half a century before. When they learned that I had been so intimately associated with the family in my youth, they insisted upon my giving them an evening especially devoted to recollections of them, and some of their distinguished Concord friends."

The manuscript "Mr. Alcott as a Prophet" contains recollections of the Alcott's not included in Willis' published memoir. Willis also relates the extent to which his association with Bronson Alcott influenced the course of his own thought and later life.

"The germ of the gift of prophecy lies in every human soul. It is one of those spiritual gifts that the great Apostle of Christianity commanded his disciples, and followers to covet earnestly…

Spirituality, Patriotism, Liberty can make no high revelations of themselves to a selfish soul. It is only when a man realizes that divine sense of the destiny of the world that comes from a profound conviction that it is God's world, and feels the unselfish love of his soul going out to all mankind, that he can be called in the highest sense a Reformer, a Patriot, or a true lover of Liberty. Soul-liberty means freedom from the slavery of selfishness, of personal aggrandizement, and of wrong in all its forms, and such a man pre-eminently was Amos Bronson Alcott. …

As children we had many proofs of Mr. Alcott's possession of the gifts of seership that filled us with wonder, and surprise. I remember on one occasion I went up to Concord to pass Christmas with them. It was a bitter cold season and they were rather short of wood – had barely enough to carry them over Sunday. I think this was on Friday. A bitter cold storm was raging. There came a rap at the door, and an opening it, there stood a poor child illy clad to beg a little wood, for the baby was sick, and the father was on a drunken spree. I will give the story in Louisa's words written to a mutual friend "My mother hesitated at first as we also had a baby. Very cold weather was upon us, and a Sunday to be gotten through before more wood could be had. My father said, "Give half our stock, and trust in Providence; the weather will moderate, or wood will come". Mother laughed, and answered in her cheery way, "Well, their need is greater than ours, and if our half gives out we can go to bed and tell stories". So a generous half went to the poor neighbor, and a little later while the storm still raged and we were about to cover our fire to keep it, a knock came, and a farmer who usually supplied us with wood appeared, saying anxiously, "I started for Boston with a load of wood, but it drifts so I want to go home. Wouldn't you like to have me drop the wood here? It would accommodate me, and you needn't hurry about paying for it." "Yes." Said Father, and as the man went off, he turned to Mother with a look that much impressed us children with his gifts as a seer, "Didn't I tell you wood would come if the weather did not moderate?"

After the tragical termination of the Anthony Burns affair he wrote in his journal the following prophecy. "In the evening I read the New York 'Tribune'. Alas for poor Hungary! But the Demon has sway some quarter century longer, - then to lay himself fairly, and give Liberty full scope and prevailing." This was in 1849, and within ten years commenced a series of events that startled the world and widely extended the sphere of liberty.

Let us briefly review some of the events that so strikingly fulfilled this prophetic declaration of Mr. Alcott's … Before the close of the first decade of Mr. Alcott's prescient quarter of a century had passed, John Brown had rendered valiant service in helping to free Kansas from the grasp of the slave oligarchy, and had struck the blow in Virginia that sent consternation into the heart of the South, and hastened the coming of that terrible baptism of fire and of blood that led to the issuance of Lincoln's Emancipation proclamation. Nearly all of these wonderful events to which we so briefly referred occurred within the interim of time between 1849 – the date of the prophecy – and 1874. …Mr. Alcott believed that the world of spirit and the world of matter are simultaneously progressing toward a higher condition of divine harmony, and steadily, through this concerted action, are bringing nearer the day when justice and righteousness shall rule triumphantly in church and state, and the nations of the earth shall dwell together as one great Brotherhood in the bonds of Peace and Love. …"

The manuscript continues with an examination of Alcott's philosophy follows in form and substance the published version of the chapter 'Alcott the Philosopher' in Willis' memoir, with the exception of an extensive section describing Alcott's Sunday "Table Talks" and explanations given by Alcott himself to Willis on various aspects of his philosophy:

"… But I got at the heart of Mr. Alcott's philosophy far more fully from his pure, beautiful life than from anything that ever issued from his pen, for he lived his philosophy, and also from the little talks he gave us children from time to time – mostly on Sunday afternoons. On such occasions he laid aside his grandiloquent diction, and in plain, but elegant English, he discoursed in such a manner that we older children had no difficulty whatever in comprehending him. I recall the general tenor, and much of the phraseology of some of these delightful talks. On one occasion he made this assertion: "There are no limitations to ideas, but there are certain axiomatic principles from which must spring all true ideas, and on the basis of which all principles rest. A departure from these is an emergence at once into difficulties and doubts; into uncertainties and mischances that leave the soul no rest or security".

"But," I said "how can one know these axiomatic principles?" He replied, - "They are the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. They appeal to every consciousness. It is not because men mistake them that they build upon them errors of philosophy or religion, but because they seek to warp or bend these truths so simple that none need mistake them, to suit conditions that do not accord with them. That is, they endeavor to take these foundation stones out of the Temple of Truth and fit them into a structure of their own."

"I will give you two or three axiomatic principles that will be sufficient for your guidance through life, but will be of no avail to you unless you strive to exemplify them in your lives – to make them basic principles on which to build your character …"

Upon these principles so generally admitted by the religious world, Mr. Alcott claimed had been raised innumerable false structures, and innumerable false theological conceptions; among them – Total Depravity, an Endless Hell of Physical Torture. Immediate Sanctification making it possible for a soul steeped in crime to go, even from a scaffold, directly into the supernal joys of the highest heaven, and all those so-called schemes- as he designated them – for making the future seem an unnatural condition, a dead thing far removed from the living present.

As he talked of that transcendent spiritual nature within the human body called the soul, his language became wonderfully eloquent, and his face grew radiant. He defined it as a spiritual entity that lives on after the body is dead in higher spheres, subject to the same laws of moral, social and intellectual being that governed it before the chemical process of dissolution that we call death, had released it from the mortal body.

"Beautiful glimpses have been given to the world of the power of this immortal entity in man when it attains ascendancy over the lower departments of his being, and becomes fully exemplified in his life. Heroes and saints have testified of its beauty but a soul grand enough to exemplify it fully – where has it been found? …

Mr. Alcott manifested ever a tender regard a loving admiration that amounted almost to worship towards Jesus. I asked him one day if he thought Jesus held any vital relation to the living present. I can recall but little of his reply, but the note of it was that he believed that he held just as real and just as vital a relationship to humanity to day as he did the day he died a martyr to his principles. He said that unfaltering faith in the eternity of the spirit of man, with the eternity of the spirit of man, with all its attributes, all its faculties and powers, compelled him to believe in the inter-penetration of the two spheres of being – the spiritual and the natural – and through the great law of sympathy it was possible for us to come under the special individual influence and guidance of Jesus himself.

This was to me an intensely interesting conversation. But he startled me by declaring that any heroic soul may assert what Jesus asserted of himself – that he is Lord and Creator of the world; because every hero-soul is inspired with the fact that all life, and all thought are resident in the infinite because found within himself who is a part of the infinite. Truly may a man say, "I am the cause and producer of all things," for you can place no man outside of infinity. …"

The collection contains a manuscript draft of chapter on Fruitlands, Bronson Alcott's failed Utopian experiment, from Willis' memoir. The manuscript draft is lengthier than the published version and includes an account of Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane's visit to Brook Farm, not published in Alcott Memoirs:

"About this time Alcott and Lane made a trip to Boston, partly on business, but I think mainly to visit the Brook Farm Community at West Roxbury. Mr. Lane by no means took the same view of it that many of its most distinguished members did. His criticisms upon it are quite caustic. He said: - "We went out one evening to Roxbury where we found eighty or ninety persons playing away their youth and daytime in a miserable, joyous, frivolous manner. There are not above four or five who could be selected as really and truly progressive beings. Most of the adults are there to pass a good time, the children are taught languages, etc. The animals occupy a prominent position, there being no less than sixteen cows besides four oxen, a herd of swine a horse or two, etc. The milk is sold in Boston, and they buy butter to the extent of five hundred dollars a year. We had a pleasant summer evening conversation with many of them, but it is only in a few individuals that anything deeper than ordinary is found. The Northampton community is one of industry; the one at Hopedale aims at practical theology; this of Roxbury is one of taste; yet it is the best which exists here and perhaps we shall have to say it is the best which can exist." … Just after their trip to Brook Farm Alcott and Lane went to New York and in connection with the visit we have the following delicious bit of gossip taken from a letter by Mrs. Lydia Maria Child. "A day or two after Theodore Parker left Alcott and Lane called to see me. I asked what brings you to New York? 'I don't know' said Mr. Alcott, 'it seems a miracle that we are here'. Mr. Child and John Hopper went to hear a discussion between them, and W. H. Channing. I asked Mr. Child what they talked about. 'Lane divided man into three states – the disconscious, the conscious and the unconscious. The disconscious is the state of a pig; the conscious the baptism by water; and the unconscious is the baptism by fire. I laughed, and said, "Well, how did the whole discussion affect your mind? 'Well after I heard them talk a few minutes, I'll be cursed if I knew I had any mind at all'…

Distressed by the burden that pressed so heavily upon his devoted wife in having to prepare three meals a day for sixteen hungry mouths, besides all the other household duties, Mr. Alcott took upon himself the office of bread-maker. The bread was made of a mixture of barley and graham-meal, and to make it pleasant to the eye , if not to the palate, he fashioned the loaves into the shape of animals and divers other forms as his fancy dictated. In baking nothing kept its shape, and they came out of the oven totally unlike anything ever seen before in the heavens above or the earth beneath. I suggested that this must have been pure transcendental bread, for certainly it was something "outside the range of the human intellect or human experience", which I believe is one of the dictionary definitions of that term. I asked my friend how the bread tasted. He laughingly replied, "Your question baffles my descriptive powers."

The collection includes numerous manuscript notes and drafts on the Alcott's evidently gathered by Willis for inclusion in his book, some of which are of considerable interest.

"The Pathetic Family was the title Louisa first thought of giving to the history of the family she was contemplating writing. She afterwards changed it to Little Women."

"The story of the Tramp has been widely circulated and I think denied but I [was] in Concord at the time of its occurrence and I introduce it here as it is so strikingly illustrative of Mr. Alcott's child like simplicity of character his benevolent impulses and his trusting faith in human nature.

One day when the family were all out save Mr. Alcott a typical tramp called at the door and rehearsing a pitiful story of a sick wife and several starving children asked Mr. Alcott to give him a dollar to purchase food and medicine with.

Mr. Alcott replied that he hadn't a dollar in his possession but he had a gold piece and he gave the man his gold piece. I am not sure as to its denomination but I think it was a ten dollar piece.

The next day his gold piece came back to him. I think through the mail.

Evidently the Tramp in thinking the matter over was so impressed by the manner of the donor that his conscience smote him and he returned the gift so ignominiously obtained.

The incident made a strong impression upon my mind because I had so frequently heard Mr. Alcott affirm that there was no human being however low and vile that had not within him a latent spark of divinity that was surely destined sooner or later to burst into a redemptive flame …"

Willis corresponded late in his life with Clara Gowing, one of Louisa May Alcott's Concord schoolmates and friends. Gowing published her own memoir of the Alcotts entitled: "The Alcotts as I knew them". The collection contains retained typescript copies of his letters to her, in one of which he reminisces with her on their time amongst the Alcott's and the character "Laurie" and Willis' claims as its inspiration:

"Dec. 9, 1913

Dear Miss Gowing,

… Indeed I do remember you though I had to think back for a few minutes, for I had forgotten your name; but it came to me so vividly after a little that I recalled even your looks… I remember those scenes of our childhood very clearly. On memory's tablet they are indelibly recorded. The article you saw in the paper was written without my knowledge or consent and contains many misstatements. I could never have consented to the appearance of so sensational an article about myself. It was written by a young newspaper reporter here with whom I have had but a slight acquaintance. I was drawn to him by sympathy because he is in wretched health and limited financial resources. Just before the drama of Little Women came here the last time he saw his opportunity to make money out of the theatre co. that was to produce the play and without consulting me at all wrote that article. My surprise and vexation when I saw it was very great. My first impulse was to write to the paper that published it an indignant protest; but I was too ill to bear the excitement of the thing, and then too I reflected that it might be the means of the poor fellows losing his position so I have silently ignored it. I had talked with him about the Alcotts and my book, that was all.

Yes, I am the Lewellyn Hovey who was in close relations of intimacy with the Alcotts for ten or twelve years, first in Still River Village, Harvard, then in Concord and later in Boston. I was the only boy that was in the family during all those years with the single exception of Billy Lane, the son of the Englishman who furnished the money for that disastrous experiment at Fruitlands. He was in Concord on a visit to the children one summer that I was there but only for ten days or a fortnight. I was a participant in nearly all the scenes that are described in the book up to the time of Lizzie's death. I went to Europe about that time and that broke up my close relations with family. The first summer that I met them, I gave the name of Hovey. This was my mother's maiden name. She died in giving me birth. I was her first child and my father died before I was two years old. I was brought up by my grandmother Hovey and as a child I was fond of calling my self by her name rather than by my fathers, but I was christened Willis, and of course as I grew older I had to take my legal name. But soon after I first knew them I told them that my last name was Willis and that I belonged to an old Boston family by that name, and it was found that the rich banker of Boston, whose father married Mrs. Alcott's sister was of the same family and that I was really a distant relative, and the girls who were always ready to celebrate everything made a celebration of this and we had a lot of fun over it.

Now as to my being Laurie as I told you further back I never claimed to be because I knew that Louisa had indignantly denied it and claimed that it was a Polish boy she met in New York or abroad. I know of two other parties that she wrote to and told them they were Laurie. Neither of them did she ever see until long after all the real events narrated in Little Women had transpired. A few years ago there appeared in the Ladies Home Journal a lengthy article sent them by a man out west who claimed that he was the Laurie of the book, and in support of his claim he published several facsimiles of letters she had written him addressing him as Laurie and telling him he was the Laurie. They were evidently facsimiles of her writing which was peculiar and marked by a striking individuality of its own.

When I heard of the death of Louisa and her father I was confined to my bed crippled by a very severe accident I met with. As I read the sad tidings in my evening paper I thought to myself that from my recollections of the family I might write a very interesting paper to be given in public the proceeds of which would enable me to do more for worthy charities than my own resources admitted of my doing. On my bed I wrote a lecture that I have delivered before thousands of people. It was always been most enthusiastically received. I consecrated it to the above purpose and have faithfully kept to it, often paying my own incidental expenses in getting from place to place, and thus I have been instrumental in putting a great deal of money into the treasury of the Lord. … Two distinguished educators here urged me to have it published as a text book for schools, saying there was a dearth of books giving such vital descriptions of distinguished individuals and such indisputable proofs of close personal relationship with them. I have been urged on all sides to write a book giving my reminiscences of distinguished people I have known. It seems to have been in my destiny ever since I was ten years old to have come into close personal relationship with distinguished people both at home and abroad. I decided after this lecture that I would do so and I went right to work on it taking my Alcott paper as the nucleus of it, and extending that to take in many of their noted friends whose acquaintance I made through them, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and others. I had gotten it about half laid out when the infirmities of my 84 years began to press so heavily upon me. I was compelled to give up my work and I have not been able to resume it since. It is about half done and I much fear I shall not live to complete it for I am losing ground steadily.

And now I have bit of surprise for you. The newspaper article to which you referred met the eye of John Pratt Alcott in Boston. He immediately wrote me a very brief but curt letter demanding that I send him the proofs that I was the Laurie of the book. I wrote him simply that I had never made any such claim; that I had been exploited by a sensational newspaper reporter. Then I told him that I had written a paper that I had delivered before many people and that these people had insisted upon it that I was Laurie and that I had replied that Louisa denied it. Then I told him of my close intimacy with the family and gave him many incidents he had never known of. Last Saturday morning to my astonishment who should walk in upon me but John Pratt Alcott. My letter so interested him that he came on to see me. I had a three hours talk with him in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. I read him extracts from my paper in which he was intensely interested. He apologized for writing me so curt a letter, said he had been greatly annoyed by claimants, especially by the one who wrote the Philadelphia article. He proposed to collaborate with me in my books should I get well enough to resume work upon it, by supplying extracts from his grandfather's journal. He even went so far when he bade me goodbye as to say "I am inclined to think I have found the real Laurie".

I alone understand the secret of Louisa's strange versatility regarding Laurie.

And now I want to ask you if you took part in the Tableauxs that we got up the first summer I was with them in Concord, or was that before your intimacy with the girls began? I also want to know if you were present at the play the night the cot bed that formed the dress circle of the audience collapsed and the tower fell.

Dec. 11. I have had to have three sittings at tis letter with long rests between, it tires me to write. I shall hope to hear from you again. If you were present at those first tableauxs please give me your recollections of them. There were twelve groups and I can only recall six of them. I want to make an article about them. We got them up entirely ourselves and they were given before an audience composing the elite of Concord. I wish I could see your book. I presume it is out of print. If so I wish you would send e your copy by mail. I will take the best of care of it and return it paying the postage both ways. I never heard of it nor of the one by Miss Moses. I am sending you in this two pictures of myself. See if you can find in the photograph taken recently at 84 any traces of the boy of 14 …"

"Dec. 23, 1913

Dear Miss Gowing,

It was lovely in you to send me your two books as a gift. … You must have wondered at my delay in acknowledging them until this late day. They found me quite prostrated. That Saturday with John Alcott was too much for me. I was deeply moved by it emotionally and since my last severe illness I have to avoid anything that appeals strongly to my emotional nature. The fact that I was so unexpectedly brought face to face with a living bona fide member of that dear family whom I have held so long in my heart of hearts was in itself quite exciting … I enjoyed "The Alcotts as I knew them" very much. It refreshed my memories of many incidents related and revived others…"

"Dear Miss Gowing,

… Your letter recalled the funny incident of Louisa's delay in greeting me that time, and her rushing in in her impetuous way and prostrating herself in Oriental fashion. It was a shock to hear that you were almost as old in years as I am, for strange to say I had not once thought of the long lapse of years since those early days in connection with you, and had only thought of you as the girl you were at that early period. I am getting better they all tell me but it seems dreadfully slow. "Little Women" is running in Boston to good houses I see by the Boston paper. There are four companies out giving the play and John Alcott must have a gold mine in it…"

The collection includes several letters to Willis written by John Sewell Pratt Alcott, Louisa May Alcott's nephew and adopted son. These were written 1913-1914, and they reference their meeting which Willis related to Miss Gowing in the correspondence quoted above, as well as a proposed jointly authored book on Willis' life with the Alcotts and his friendship with Louisa. The book never advanced belonged to the planning stages due to Willis' illness and subsequent death.

"Brookline, November 30, 1913

My Dear Mr. Willis,

Allow me to thank you for your letter which reached me safely and which I shall prize most highly. I assure you it was a great treat to hear from one who was such a friend of the family in the old days and I am very anxious to meet and have a good talk with you, and would therefore ask if it would be agreeable to have me call upon you on next Saturday December the sixth, I find that I can probably get away on Friday and reach Rochester Saturday morning, this would give us a chance for a long talk about old times and I could return on the night train on Saturday… it is so seldom that I have an opportunity to meet an old friend of the family who knew them when Mother and Aunt Louisa were girls that I feel I [must] meet you and know you better.

Your letter was a great relief to me also for we have had a few very unpleasant experiences with men who have really claimed to be the original of Laurie and your letter disclaiming all thought of such an idea was so different that I almost feel that you are more entitled to that privilege than the others. … John Alcott"

[Feb. 3, 1914]

"My Dear Doctor Willis,

I hope you will pardon my delay in answering your very kind letter but I have been terribly busy since my return and have had hardly a minute to myself, I certainly meant to have written before this to thank you for the most interesting and beautiful day I have spent in many years. I can assure you it was a great pleasure a d an honor to know you and meet one who knew my Mother and Aunt so well, so many years ago.

I am afraid that we cannot use material taken bodily from the little book as that will probably be published by itself, we can however use some of the extracts from diaries and there is I think plenty of Alcott material to select from and as soon as we get over the Christmas rush and the excitement of the opening of the Little Women Play in Boston I will set to work getting material together and shall try to run on to Rochester sometime in January for another treat of a day with you.

I am sending you under separate cover a little calendar in memory of our beautiful day together, and hope you will enjoy it. … John Alcott"

[Dec. 23, 1914]

"My Dear Dr. Willis,

… 'Little Women' has been and gone and while the Play received beautiful notices from all the papers and everyone who saw it was very enthusiastic over it, still the engagement here was a disappointment, the matinees were very successful but the evening performances were not very well attended, and instead of staying for the full seven weeks as originally planned the engagement was cut to five. I had hope and rather expected that when the company came to Boston, Miss Alcott's home, that the Play would have a long run to crowded houses, but I am afraid that Boston people are not as loyal to her memory as the people of most any other city in the Country…

I have had no time to start gathering material for our book, as yet but shall hope to talk it all over with you when we meet again. … John Alcott"

The collection also has manuscripts by Willis on the subject of Women's Rights and the Suffrage cause. These include retained copies of letters to newspaper editors and lengthier manuscripts on the "Woman Question", and recollections of women he met through his association with the Alcotts, including Lucy Stone, Margaret Fuller. Willis had been a lifelong proponent of Women's Rights, including the right to equal suffrage. These views were shared by his friends the Alcotts.

Willis took a sea voyage from Boston to Brazil in 1854-1855 and recorded the trip in a manuscript journal. His destination was Rio Grande, in Brazil's southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul. Willis' journal contains an excellent account of travel to Richmond, Virginia and on the James River, visiting plantations and towns, while on the southbound voyage. Willis records his impressions of enslaved African Americans he encountered and his interactions with them.

Willis entitles his journal as follows: "The Journal of A Voyage in the Barque May Queen Capt. Edward M. King Esq. From Boston to Rio Grande South America via Richmond, Virginia. 1854. Kept by Frederic L. Willis, for the benefit of his friend Frank G. Russell & by his particular request." Willis' journal is written dos-a-dos fashion, the voyage south in front, and when the volume is flipped over the return voyage can be read.

Willis departed from Boston aboard the May Queen on Monday September 11, 1854.

"… was accompanied down by several friends. Mrs Dr Adams and daughter – Mr. & Mrs. Mann and children, C.D. Bradlee & Frank G. Russell. We had a fine ride but all too short. Managed to keep up a stout heart till it came time to say "good bye" when my fortitude gave way … After all had gone a feeling of desolation came over me… 5 p.m. Capt K came aboard sunshine beams from every feature of his round jolly face. Mates wife & child left in the boat wh brought the Capt down. The mate is said to be as savage as a meat axe. He certainly is a loving husband & tender father… After tea walked the deck with Capt K for two hours in social converse. … Turned out at 2 in the morning to see the harbor & shipping by moonlight a most romantically beautiful scene. The city over wh rested a solemn stillness, the church spires pointing like white fingers upward to the great one who created all this loveliness… so much for my first day & night on ship board."

Willis describes the events of shipboard life as he struggles to adapt to life on the sea, complete with the usual descriptions of sea sickness and monotony endured by the novice sea traveler.

Friday 15th … we were fast approaching Cape Henry … the Capt seemed anxious for a pilot