We get a few brief glimpses of Emerson during the years following his
graduation. He writes in 1823 to a classmate who had gone from Harvard
to Andover:--

"I am delighted to hear there is such a profound studying of German
and Hebrew, Parkhurst and Jahn, and such other names as the memory
aches to think of, on foot at Andover. Meantime, Unitarianism will
not hide her honors; as many hard names are taken, and as much
theological mischief is planned, at Cambridge as at Andover. By the
time this generation gets upon the stage, if the controversy will
not have ceased, it will run such a tide that we shall hardly
he able to speak to one another, and there will be a Guelf and
Ghibelline quarrel, which cannot tell where the differences lie."

"You can form no conception how much one grovelling in the city
needs the excitement and impulse of literary example. The sight of
broad vellum-bound quartos, the very mention of Greek and German
names, the glimpse of a dusty, tugging scholar, will wake you up to
emulation for a month."

After leaving College, and while studying Divinity, Emerson employed a
part of his time in giving instruction in several places successively.

Emerson's older brother William was teaching in Boston, and Ralph Waldo,
after graduating, joined him in that occupation. In the year 1825 or
1826, he taught school also in Chelmsford, a town of Middlesex County,
Massachusetts, a part of which helped to constitute the city of Lowell.
One of his pupils in that school, the Honorable Josiah Gardiner Abbott,