Another glimpse of him is that given us by Mr. Ireland from the "Boyhood
Memories" of Rufus Dawes. His old schoolmate speaks of him as "a
spiritual-looking boy in blue nankeen, who seems to be about ten years
old,--whose image more than any other is still deeply stamped upon my
mind, as I then saw him and loved him, I knew not why, and thought him
so angelic and remarkable." That "blue nankeen" sounds strangely, it may
be, to the readers of this later generation, but in the first quarter
of the century blue and yellow or buff-colored cotton from China were a
common summer clothing of children. The places where the factories and
streets of the cities of Lowell and Lawrence were to rise were then open
fields and farms. My recollection is that we did not think very highly
of ourselves when we were in blue nankeen,--a dull-colored fabric, too
nearly of the complexion of the slates on which we did our ciphering.

Emerson was not particularly distinguished in College. Having a near
connection in the same class as he, and being, as a Cambridge boy,
generally familiar with the names of the more noted young men in College
from the year when George Bancroft, Caleb Cushing, and Francis William
Winthrop graduated until after I myself left College, I might have
expected to hear something of a young man who afterwards became one of
the great writers of his time. I do not recollect hearing of him except
as keeping school for a short time in Cambridge, before he settled as a
minister. His classmate, Mr. Josiah Quincy, writes thus of his college
days:--

"Two only of my classmates can be fairly said to have got into
history, although one of them, Charles W. Upham [the connection of
mine referred to above] has written history very acceptably. Ralph
Waldo Emerson and Robert W. Barnwell, for widely different reasons,