DR. WALTER CHANNING - Kouroo Contexture · sturgis channing. “narrative history” amounts to fabulation, the real stuff being mere chronology ... barbara perkins channing died

DR. WALTER CHANNING

DOCTOR WALTER CHANNING, BROTHER OF THE REVEREND

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING, BROTHER OF FELLOW HARVARD PROFESSOR

(OF RHETORIC), EDWARD TYRRELL CHANNING, COUSIN OF THE REVEREND WILLIAM

HENRY CHANNING, FATHER OF ELLERY CHANNING,

FATHER-IN-LAW OF ELLEN FULLER CHANNING (ESTRANGED WIFE OF HIS SON),

GRANDFATHER OF MARGARET FULLER CHANNING AND CAROLINE

STURGIS CHANNING.

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Dr. Walter Channing

mailto:[email protected]?subject=Contribution to Kouroo Contexture

mailto:[email protected] subject=Contribution to Kouroo Contexture

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/ActiveIndex.pdf

DR. WALTER CHANNING DR. WALTER CHANNING

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April 15, Saturday: In Newport, Rhode Island, Walter Channing was born to William Channing and Lucy Ellery Channing. His father, a Princetonian, was a federal district attorney. His maternal grandfather William Ellery, a Harvard man, had signed our Declaration of Independence. His older brother, the Reverend William Ellery Channing, would be the minister of the Federal Street Church in Boston from 1803 to 1842. His younger brother, Edward Tyrell Channing, would become the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard College, succeeding John Quincy Adams as that young man left academia for his career in diplomacy and politics. In 1804 Walter Channing would enter Harvard College and among his classmates would be a 1st cousin, Richard Henry Dana, who after a hiatus for a few years before the mast, would also be at Harvard at the same time as Henry David Thoreau. In 1807 students at the College would go on a rampage, and in 1808 Walter’s bachelor’s degree would be withheld as punishment (he would receive the degree — but not until 1867). In 1809 Walter would obtain the M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, and after that he would study for three years in Europe to return to Boston in 1812 to take up a practice in obstetrics. Even without the bachelor’s diploma, Doctor Walter Channing would become professor of Obstetrics and Medical Jurisprudence at Harvard Medical School.

Friend Elias Hicks surveyed the land laid out to Richard Willits east of highway leading from Jericho, New York to the plains.

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

1786

Dr. Walter Channing “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/thumbnails/T/HDT.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/explanation.pdf





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The Channing family of Newport, Rhode Island relocated to Boston.

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD?— NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES.

LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

1803








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Richard Henry Dana, Sr. and Walter Channing were expelled from Harvard College for participating in the Rotten Cabbage Rebellion, a student revolt triggered by a maggoty lunch. Also, Dana’s mother died during this year. Channing would, under the tutelage of Dr. James Jackson, continue the study of medicine.

Harvard tutor John Farrar was appointed as the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. He would begin to maintain weather records in Cambridge, seeking to understand the mathematical complexities of this bulk atmospheric natural process.

At the age of 18, William Elliott graduated from Beaufort College in South Carolina and matriculated at Harvard.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

1807

NEW “HARVARD MEN”







http://surnamesite.com/harvard/harvard1807.htm


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Walter Channing was studying medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

During this year and the following one, Dr. Benjamin Say of Philadelphia would represent Pennsylvania’s 1st District in the US House of Representatives.

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

1808








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Walter Channing was awarded the MD degree by the University of Pennsylvania.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

1809








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Professor Dugald Stewart’s PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS. Dr. Thomas Brown was appointed as a colleague of this professor the University of Edinburgh — a position which he would hold for life.

Walter Channing was studying medicine in Edinburgh and London, and would obtain a second medical diploma, from the University of Edinburgh.

1810





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Doctor Walter Channing began to practice medicine in Boston. Throughout his years in this city, a Unitarian, he would regularly attend the Federal Street Church.

Massachusetts General Hospital was designed by Charles Bulfinch and constructed by convict labor. Around it would cluster the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, the Boston Lying-In Hospital of Doctor Channing, the Perkins Institute for the Blind, the Boston Dispensary, and the Harvard School of Medicine. There were gratuitous fears “among the crude and popular” that the charitable aspect of the hospital masked an agenda to entice poor people

within its walls that they might be made the subjects ofexperiments in surgical processes or in the trial of drugs,chemicals, and medicines; so that this gratuitous practice mightfit new young doctors and surgeons for safer and well-remunerated professional work for the rich in their luxuriouschambers.

Such assertions, however, have been challenged, and the disinterested dedication of these doctors to the health of the poor has been insisted upon. these assertions did reflect, however, a “strong prejudice of the deserving poor” against taking advantage of the free services offered, a prejudicial suspicion of exploitation which would persist and persist.

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MINDYOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

1811








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Doctor Walter Channing became editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery.

1812





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Doctor Walter Channing became a Fellow of the Massachusetts Medical Society.

1814





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Doctor Walter Channing became a Lecturer in Midwifery at the Harvard Medical College. He got married with Barbara Higginson Perkins.

1815





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Doctor Walter Channing became the initial Professor of Obstetrics and Medical Jurisprudence at Harvard College.

Professor John Farrar published for the use of his pupils an English version of Professor Sylvestre François Lacroix’s ÉLÉMENS D’ALGÈBRE, titled ELEMENTS OF ALGEBRA. He would follow this with selections from Legendre, Blot, Bezant, and others. Harvard, the US military academy, and other institutions of higher education would at once adopt these works as textbooks.

1818





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November 29, Sunday: William Ellery Channing 2d was born.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal:

1st day 29th of 11th M / Our meetings were both silent, the morning was to me a season of but little satisfaction, the Afternoon was more solid & a season of some favor. —

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS








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Doctor Walter Channing was made the Dean of Medical Faculty at Harvard College.

Doctor John White Webster went into medical practice in Boston with a Doctor Gorham.

1819





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Doctor Walter Channing became an Assistant Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital.

1821





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Barbara Perkins Channing died.

1822





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Marshall Tufts entered Harvard College in the year of the Great Rebellion.1 One of the things he would do while in college was file a petition that he be excused from wearing the prescribed clothing for a student, a petition which was denied. Another such application filed by him would meet with the fate of being “indefinitely postponed.” At one point during his higher education he would be admonished for using disrespectful language to a college officer. Upon completion of his higher education, he, like Henry Thoreau later, would disdain to pay (in his case, $2.50) for a meaningless supplementary A.M. sheepskin.

According to the historian Robert Elton Berry, the Great Rebellion at Harvard, after which 43 members of a graduating class of 70 would find themselves expelled, was merely an out-of-hand effort by the senior class to drive an unpopular classmate away from school.

Thomas Dorr of Rhode Island was attending during this student revolt but took no part and thus would be one of the very few in the class of 1823 actually to receive a diploma — an assignment which he prepared on April 29th, “Calculation and Projection of a Lunar Eclipse of 1825” (21 ½ x 29 ½ inches), is still on file there: <http://oasis.harvard.edu:10080/oasis/deliver/~hua17004>. (Doctor Walter Channing would not, for instance, be handed his bachelor’s diploma until 1867.) Dorr would return to his home town of Providence to became an attorney and a member of the Legislature –then an agitator for public reform –then a “governor” –then a revolutionary with a cannon –then a “traitor” –then a life convict at hard labor –finally a person on “early retirement.” (It’s quite a different life trajectory than usual: the dude who didn’t act up at all while a callow college youth but then grew up to make a great stir!)

The sloop Harvard was being used to bring firewood for the college from Maine. Nathaniel Bowditch would calculate that after the Great Rebellion of 1823 and the consequent expulsion of 43 of 70 of the graduating class, and loss of economy of scale, this practice was actually rather than saving the college money, costing the college some $4,400 per year.

1823

1. Refer to Samuel Eliot Morison’s “The Great Rebellion in Harvard College, and the Resignation of President Kirkland” in Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts XXVII (1929):54-112.Professor Morison was the last Harvard historian to ride a horse to work. He taught the young Harvard men while attired in riding breeches. He refused to teach the Radcliffe girls because girls are so frivolous. He believed so passionately that the writing of history was an art that, when interrupted at his desk by the barking of a dog, he shot the dog. After WWII he taught while attired in an Admiral’s uniform.




Although this is probably him, we aren’t absolutely certain.


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Doctor Walter Channing became the editor of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.

1828





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Doctor Walter Channing became the treasurer of the Massachusetts Medical Society.

1829





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George Barrell Emerson helped to organize a Boston Society of Natural History on the basis of what remained of the Linnaean Society, which had flourished from 1813 to 1823. He would be a very active member, holding several offices, curating one of the collections, and regularly attending meetings. Initially its function would be to offer a series of lectures on natural history to the general public in the hall of the Boston Athenaeum (which at that time was being housed in a mansion donated by James Perkins on Pearl Street). Doctor Walter Channing would be among those who would join the new society.

Six men interested in natural history established the BostonSociety of Natural History, an organization through which theycould pursue their common scientific interests. Devoted tocollecting and studying natural history specimens, the societydisplayed its collections in numerous temporary facilities until1864, when it opened the New England Museum of Natural Historyat the corner of Berkeley and Boyleston Streets in Boston’s BackBay. That Museum is now known world-wide as the Museum ofScience. The Museum has remained on the cutting edge of scienceeducation by developing innovative and interactive exhibits andprograms that both entertain and educate. Two of the Museum’smore recent additions, the Hall Wing housing the Roger L.Nichols Gallery for temporary exhibits, and the Mugar OmniTheater, exemplify the Museum of Science’s commitment to makingscience fun and accessible to all. The Mugar Omni Theater,opened in 1987, utilizes state-of-the-art film technology toproject larger-than-life images onto a five-story high, domedscreen, creating a “you are there” experience for viewers. Morethan 1.6 million people visit the Museum and its more than 600interactive exhibits each year.

1830





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Doctor Walter Channing remarried, with Eliza Wainwright.

1831





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Ellery Channing’s father, Doctor Walter Channing, founded the Boston Lying-In Hospital for childbirth.

1832





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Doctor Walter Channing had the honor of delivering the annual address to the Massachusetts Medical Society.

1833





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Eliza Wainwright Channing died. Doctor Walter Channing’s THOUGHTS ON THE ORIGIN, NATURE, PRINCIPLES AND PROSPECTS OF THE TEMPERANCE REFORM.

1834





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Doctor Walter Channing had the honor of delivering the annual address to the Boston Society of Natural History. He was made the secretary of the Massachusetts Temperance Society.

At the age of 17 Ellery Channing published his adolescent poetry in the Boston Mercantile Journal under the pen name “Hal Menge” — poems of the “my mother died / Before I clasped her” sort, necessarily pseudonymous, “sublimo-slipshod” nevertheless poems,2 19 of them in a single year — and we all wish to have such relations with the mercantile press.

1835

2. This term “sublimo-slipshod” is Thoreau’s. Compare Thomas Carlyle’s “cabalistico-sartorial.”





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Doctor Walter Channing had the honor of delivering the annual address to the Massachusetts Temperance Society. His LECTURE ON THE MORAL USES OF THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY.

1836





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Doctor Walter Channing received an appointment as physician at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Edward Everett Hale and William Francis Channing graduated from Harvard College. Channing would go on to study medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (although his practice as a physician would never extend beyond the administration of quack applications of electricity to the heads and feet of sufferers).

After leaving Harvard, Ellery Channing had spent almost five years living in the home of his father Dr. Walter Channing, withdrawing books from the Boston Athenæum and presumably educating himself in this manner — but otherwise not doing much of anything. In this year he determined that he was going to make something of himself, as a farmer on the frontier! (Meanwhile, in this year, Abraham Lincoln was beginning to travel through nine counties in central and eastern Illinois, as a lawyer on the 8th Judicial Circuit.)

1839

NEW “HARVARD MEN”




http://surnamesite.com/harvard/harvard1839.htm


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Doctor Walter Channing’s NOTES ON ANAEMIA.

1842





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Doctor Walter Channing’s AN ADDRESS ON THE PREVENTION OF PAUPERISM.

Poverty tells its whole story. It has no concealments. Theundisguised spirit speaks through rags, simply and audibly....What then are the causes of that condition which you haveassociated to prevent?

1843





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Doctor Walter Channing’s A PLEA FOR PURE WATER. His THOUGHTS ON PEACE AND WAR: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE AMERICAN PEACE SOCIETY.

1844





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Doctor Walter Channing’s MY OWN TIMES, OR ‘TIS FIFTY YEARS SINCE’ and his OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION, AND OF ITS PREPARATION.

1845





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At the Boston Lying-In Hospital, Ellery Channing’s father, Doctor Walter Channing, began to experiment with the use of sulfurous ether as an anesthetic in obstetrics.

Fanny Appleton Longfellow was the 1st to experiment with use of this anesthetic to cope with the pain of childbirth.

Her experimental baby would live only a year. Presumably this wasn’t due to the dangerous experimental childbirth technique which it had initially needed to survive, but also — one cannot help but note that today no-one would any longer consider the administration of ether to help mothers cope with the pain of childbirth just as no-one would any longer consider the administration of thalidomide to help mothers cope with the trauma of pregnancy.

1847

I feel proud to be the pioneer to less suffering forpoor weak womankind.





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Doctor Walter Channing’s TREATISE ON ETHERIZATION IN CHILD-BIRTH, ILLUSTRATED BY 581 CASES.

1848





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April 13, Friday: Ellen Fuller Channing gave birth to Walter Channing in their home on Main Street opposite the Thoreaus. They were living on an income of about $400.00 a year, most of it from proud grandpa Dr. Walter Channing — yet wages for domestics were so reasonable that they were able to utilize an Irish woman, Margaret.

1849





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Dr. Walter Channing’s NEW AND OLD.

Since a copy of this would be discovered in Henry Thoreau’s personal library, and since it is difficult to imagine Henry himself ever investing hard-earned coin in such a piece of drek, we need to suppose that this volume likely had been presented to him by the author’s son, the “Concord PO8” William Ellery Channing 2d. As an example indicating why I am terming this volume drek, I have included below one poem from the volume selected entirely at random. (I would challenge you to produce from the volume an effort less unworthy than this one — they all have the imprint of the same cookie-cutter. The reason why the son in Concord would prove himself to be such a lousy poet is that “the chip doesn’t fall far from the stump.”)

To Jenny Lind.I never saw thee, never heard thee speak,As I have not the best of earlier days;Nor may I till the latest morning break,If it be mine to meet its dawning rays.

Yet still I know thee, as I do the best,Whose holy step has sanctified the earth :Thank Heaven, by thee and them the world is blest,And joy and love through both have daily birth.

Thy power is all thy own, — the wealth of heart ;Thy own creation, boundless as its source:Thou owest little to the rule of art,Thy music native as the birds’ discourse.

Diffusive is thy gift, thy soul’s own birth;It reaches me through unknown thousands blest;’Tis music circling wide the listening earth,Wooing the broken heart to happy rest.

1851

NEW AND OLD




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/51/1851_WalterChanning.pdf


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I listen to these voices of the soul,The echoed melodies from thee which sprung;I think to others thou wouldst give the whole,As nature freely gives, — thy wealth of song.

I reverence those who in thy wondrous voiceHave found for worship and for love a theme;With such with cheerful heart I here rejoice,And join with them in honor of thy name.

And yet doth come another strain to me,Which from thyself in living measure springs :It is thy soul’s and life’s deep harmony,Which o’er thy word its mighty magic flings.

How reverend and how holy human art,When sanctified by that which is of heaven,Of the divine which dwells within the heart !The product sure of inspiration given.

Here art thou from thy home, how far away!Yet not forgetting it, and loving mine ;As if it were a common debt to pay, —Two distant nations in one blessing join.

’Twas fabled, in the reverend days of old,That music could the stones to measure move:A nobler story by our history’s told,Now music moves whole continents to love.

The thought has come from thy blest mission here,If men would of their all a part forego,Like thee with loving heart dry up the tear,What large deduction then from human woe !

I love to linger with the thoughts which riseOut of thy grateful visit to our home ;I bid thee welcome to its varied skies,And blessing ask on all thy years to come.





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Doctor Walter Channing went to Europe.

April 6, Tuesday: When Henry Thoreau appeared to lecture as scheduled at Cochituate Hall in downtown Boston, a heavy snow was falling. He had come from the Boston Society of Natural History where he had checked out John Evelyn’s SYLVA, OR A DISCOURSE OF FOREST-TREES, AND THE PROPAGATION OF TIMBER.... TO WHICH IS ANNEXED POMONA.... ALSO KALENDARIUM HORTENSE....

(see the following screen)

This lecture date had been set up by the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

Due to the snowstorm only 5 or 6 persons showed up, among whom was Doctor Walter Channing, the father of Ellery Channing of Concord. Bronson Alcott got the meeting moved to the Mechanics Apprentices Library next door, in hopes that some of the young men reading there could be persuaded to join the audience, but these young men proved to be hard to interest in a lecture on “Reality.”

(This was a mistake. Thoreau should not have indicated the by-tradition-wise King Solomon of Judaea, for Evelyn had been referring in SYLVA, OR A DISCOURSE OF FOREST-TREES, to this by-tradition-wise originator of Athenian democracy.)

1852

JOHN EVELYN’S SYLVA

PEOPLE OFWALDEN

WALDEN: According to Evelyn, “the wise Solomon prescribedordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Roman praetorshave decided how often you may go into your neighbor’s land togather the acorns which fall on it without trespass, and whatshare belongs to that neighbor.”

JOHN EVELYN

SOLON OF ATHENS




http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20778/20778-h/20778-h.htm

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/WALDEN/PeopleOfWALDEN.pdf


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PEOPLE OFWALDEN

WALDEN: Though I gave them no manure, and did not hoe them allonce, I hoed them unusually well as far as I went, and was paidfor it in the end, “there being in truth,” as Evelyn says, “nocompost or lætation whatsoever comparable to this continualmotion, repastination, and turning of the mould with the spade.”“The earth,” he adds elsewhere, “especially if fresh, has acertain magnetism in it, by which it attracts the salt, power, orvirtue (call it either) which gives it life, and is the logic ofall the labor and stir we keep about it, to sustain us; alldungings and other sordid temperings being but the vicarssuccedaneous to this improvement.” Moreover, this being one ofthose “worn-out and exhausted lay fields which enjoy theirsabbath,” had perchance, as Sir Kenelm Digby thinks likely,attracted “vital spirits” from the air. I harvested twelvebushels of beans.

SIR KENELM DIGBY

JOHN EVELYN

TIMELINE OF WALDEN




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/WALDEN/PeopleOfWALDEN.pdf


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One of my most amusing impressions of Thoreau relates to a timewhen, in the Quixotism of youthful admiration, I had persuadedhim to give a lecture in Boston, at my risk. He wrote (April 3,1852) in a tone of timidity which may surprise those who did notknow him, “I certainly do not feel prepared to offer myself asa lecturer to the Boston public, and hardly know whether moreto dread a small audience or a large one. Nevertheless I willrepress this squeamishness, and propose no alteration in yourarrangements.” The scene of the lecture was to be a small hallin a court, now vanished, opening from Tremont street, oppositeKing’s Chapel, the hall itself being leased by an associationof young mechanics, who had a reading-room opening out of it.The appointed day ushered in a furious snow-storm before whichthe janitor of the building retreated in despair, leaving thecourt almost blockaded. When Thoreau and I ploughed through, wefound a few young mechanics reading newspapers; and when theappointed hour came, there were assembled only Mr. Alcott, Dr.Walter Channing and at most three or four ticket-holders. No onewished to postpone the affair and Mr. Alcott suggested that thething to be done was to adjourn to the reading-room, where, hedoubted not, the young men would be grateful for the new gospeloffered; for which he himself undertook to prepare their minds.I can see him now, going from one to another, or collecting themin little groups and expounding to them, with his lofty Socraticmien, the privileges they were to share. “This is his life; thisis his book; he is to print it presently; I think we shall allbe glad, shall we not, either to read his book or to hear it?”Some laid down their newspapers, more retained them; the lectureproved to be one of the most introspective chapters from“Walden.” A few went to sleep, the rest rustled their papers;and the most vivid impression which I retain from the wholeenterprise is the profound gratitude I felt to one auditor(Doctor Walter Channing), who forced upon me a five-dollar billtowards the expenses of the disastrous entertainment.3

April 6, Tuesday: Last night a snow storm & this morning we find the ground covered again 6 or8 inches deep–& drifted pretty badly beside. The conductor in the cars which have been detained more than anhour–says it is a dry snow up country– Here it is very damp.

PHILIP CAFARO ON VIRTUE IN WALDEN4

PAGE 47: [I]n the chapter “The Bean-Field,” Thoreau quotesseventeenth-century horticulturist John Evelyn’s assertion that“the earth ... especially if fresh, has a certain magnetism init, by which it attracts the salt, power, or virtue (call iteither) which gives it life, and is the logic of all the laborand stir we keep about it, to sustain us.” Clearly a field cannotact morally! For Evelyn, as for Thoreau, “virtue” implies power:that force through which a field or a man may flourish and bringforth the proper fruits. Thoreau quotes a similar archaic use

3. The Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s “Glimpses of Authors” (Brains I, December 1, 1891, page 105)




Whenever and wherever you see this little pencil icon in the pages of this Kouroo Contexture, it is marking an extract from the journal of Henry David Thoreau. OK?


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of “virtue” by Cato the Elder.Virtue is thus essentially active for Thoreau; as he had writtenearlier, “even virtue is no longer such if it be stagnant.” Inthe modern view, the virtues are valuable largely because theylimit our self-assertion and keep us from doing what we shouldnot do. The modest person will not brag about his achievements,the honest person will not lie for personal advantage, the justperson will not take more than her fair share. The ancient viewinstead stresses that actively cultivating the virtues is keyto our self-development and happiness. They allow us to do whatwe should do and become better people. Thoreau echoes this life-affirming view when he writes: “The constant inquiry whichNature puts is Are your virtuous? Then you can behold me. Beauty— fragrance — music — sweetness — & joy of all kinds are for thevirtuous.”Thoreau, like the ancients, links his notion of virtue topersonal flourishing. In WALDEN, he tries to show how the virtuesof simplicity, integrity, and resolutions serve to focus andclarify our lives; how generosity and sympathy may improve ourrelations with our neighbors; how curiosity, imagination, andreverence help us appreciate the world around us. Theseconnections between virtue and flourishing serve to specifygenuine virtues and spell out their proper development and use.

4. Philip Cafaro. THOREAU’S LIVING ETHICS: WALDEN AND THE PURSUIT OF VIRTUE. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2004





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Doctor Walter Channing resigned from the Harvard College medical faculty.

1854





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Doctor Walter Channing’s THE LAW OF COMPENSATIONS.

1855





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Doctor Walter Channing was made the president of the Suffolk District Medical Society. His A PHYSICIAN’S VACATION; OR, A SUMMER IN EUROPE.

September 21, Friday: Ellery Channing came to his father Doctor Walter Channing’s home in Boston from New Bedford, Massachusetts to visit his ailing estranged wife Ellen Fuller Channing. His sister Barbara Channing observed that he was “prepared,” or preparing himself, for Ellen’s eventual inevitable death.5

Friend Daniel Ricketson to his journal, in Concord:

September 22, Saturday: Henry Thoreau wrote to Benjamin B. Wiley in Providence, Rhode Island:

Concord Sep 22d ’56 Dear SirI would advi[s]e notto take a revolver or other weapon of defen[c]e. It will affect the in- nocence of your enterprise. If you chance to meet with a wolf or a dangerous snake, you will be luckier than I have been, or expect to be. When

1856

5. For some six months, which in Ellery’s inconstant universe would be like six light years, this father had been able to hold a steady newspaper job paying a respectable income of $500 per year, and had been actively engaged in a process of reestablishing a relationship with his children.

Poor sleep at hotel. Thoreau called at 8. Walked withhim to Walden Pond and saw the location of the Shantywhere he lived alone some two years, bathed and visitedthe cliff and several other hills to obtain views ofthe pond and surrounding country, which is verypicturesque, and the Concord River constantly seen inits meandering course through the neighboring fields,&c. Dined with Thoreau at his father’s house; afterdinner went on the river with Thoreau and Channing;called at an old farmhouse and saw a Mr. Hosmer, afriend of my companions; visited old battleground; sawthe old mansion where Hawthorne formerly lived. Tooktea with R.W. Emerson, in whose family Thoreau is quiteat home, having been an inmate there. Suffered fromembarrassment or rather a sense of incongruity in mybeing at Emerson’s. I spent the night with Channing,who kindly made a good bed for me, the one at the hotelbeing so poor.

EDMUND HOSMER

WALDO EMERSON




DANIEL RICKETSON AND HIS FRIENDS. LETTERS POEMS SKETCHES ETC. EDITED BY HIS DAUGHER AND SON ANNA AND WALTON RICKETSON WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1902.


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I went to the White Mts I carried a gun to kill game with, but wisely left it at the Concord N.H. As for a knapsack, I should say wear something water-tight & com- fortable, with two or three pockets to keep things separate. Wear old shoes; carry no thin clothes. Do not forget needle and thread and pins, a compass, and the best pocket map of the [county] obtainable.Yrs in hasteHenry D. Thoreau

{written perpendicular to text at bottom of page:Postmark: CONCORDSEP22MASS.Address: B. B. Wiley EsqProvidenceR.I.}





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Friend Daniel Ricketson, who was often afflicted with headaches which seemed to focus upon his left eye, the one that had been injured, to his journal, while staying in Ellery Channing’s bachelor home in Concord:

That late evening, unbeknownst to Friend Daniel, in the home of her father-in-law Doctor Walter Channing on Bowdoin Street in Boston and under his care, his host’s estranged wife Ellen Fuller Channing was dying of complications from her last pregnancy and childbirth. Dr. Channing and his daughter Barbara Channing (Ellery’s sister) were at the bedside:

Barbara commented that everyone had “thought she might live till Jany [January] and I hoped still more.”

Sept. 22. A rainy day. Tried some pennyroyal tea, but found it too medicinal for my taste. Yet I collectthese herbs, biding the time when their use shall be discovered.

September 25, Thursday: With the funeral of Ellen Fuller Channing due for noon, estranged husband and father Ellery Channing sneaked into the Channing home in Boston early in the morning, entering through the basement. His sister Barbara Channing took him up into to her room, and he remained in that room with his children through the day.

He was calm — I never expected to get thro’ the getting Ellerydown from my room thro’ the crowd, & yet it all happened easily.There were a great many here — & beautiful services fr[om]J[ames] F[reeman] C[larke] & Mr Bulfinch — Father, E[llery], the

Rose with headache, breakfast with Channing who livesalone, having separated from his wife and children forwhat reason I do not know, but he appears to me to bea kind and quiet man with extreme eccentricity. Thoreaucame in, we spent the forenoon in conversation; amongother matters Channing suggested the plan of anindependent periodical, &c. Left at 1 P.M. and arrivedat Tarkiln Hill about 7 P.M. The visit, exceptexcessive fatigue and headache, was very pleasant andwill be long remembered by me. My respect for Thoreauwas much increased, he is not only a man of greatnatural powers, but of extreme acquirements and verymuch of a gentleman.

She has seemed more feeble each day, and to-day had twofaint turns wh[ich] alarmed me — but after tea revivedand spoke quite brightly and said she w[ou]ld sit uptill 10 — Then I helped her to bed, and she sat downon the edge, and began to struggle terribly for breath— I call’d father and we held her and gave her brandyand applied hot water to her chest but soon she sunkand died very gently at the last.




DANIEL RICKETSON AND HIS FRIENDS. LETTERS POEMS SKETCHES ETC. EDITED BY HIS DAUGHER AND SON ANNA AND WALTON RICKETSON WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1902.


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children, & I rode out in the first carriage — The day glorious— among the trees — & Ellen was surrounded with lovely flowersa wreath & others.





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Doctor Walter Channing was made the initial president of the Obstetrical Society of Boston.

1861





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Doctor Walter Channing retired from Boston to Dorchester, Massachusetts.

1866





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July 20, Thursday: Walter Channing died in Brookline, Massachusetts.

The schooner Mohawk capsized in a sudden wind off Staten Island and William T. Garner, the Vice-Commodore of the New York Yacht Club and the owner of the People’s Line, drowned along with his wife and two guests.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

1876








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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Pleasecontact the project at <[email protected]>.

Prepared: June 14, 2014

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST


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Well, tomorrow is such and such a date and so it began on that date in like 8000BC? Why 8000BC, because it was the beginning of the current interglacial -- or what?



Bearing in mind that this is America, "where everything belongs," the primary intent of such a notice is to prevent some person or corporate entity from misappropriating the materials and sequestering them as property for censorship or for profit.


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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested thatwe pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of theshoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What thesechronological lists are: they are research reports compiled byARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term theKouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such arequest for information we merely push a button.





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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obviousdeficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored inthe contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then weneed to punch that button again and recompile the chronology —but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary“writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of thisoriginating contexture improve, and as the programming improves,and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whateverhas been needed in the creation of this facility, the entireoperation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminishedneed to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expectto achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring roboticresearch librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place requests with <[email protected]>. Arrgh.




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Documents

DR. WALTER CHANNING - Kouroo Contexture · sturgis channing. “narrative history” amounts to fabulation, the real stuff being mere chronology ... barbara perkins channing died