Ralph Waldo Emerson on Boston

“The sea returning day by day Restores the world-wide mart. So let each dweller on the Bay Fold Boston in his heart Till these echoes be choked with snows Or over the town blue ocean flows.”

“Our people are timid, desponding, recreant whimperers. If they fail in their first enterprises they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at the Cambridge Divinity College, and is not ordained within a year afterwards in Boston, or New York, it seems to his friend and himself that he is justified in being disheartened and in complaining for the rest of his life. A sturdy New Hampshire man or Vermonter who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these Boston dolls. My brave Henry here who is content to live now, and feels no shame in not studying any profession, for he does not postpone his life but lives already—pours contempt on these crybabies of routine and Boston. He has not one chance but a hundred chances.”