THE REVEREND HORATIO WOOD

REVEREND HORATIO WOOD HORATIO WOOD

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December 1, Tuesday: Horatio Wood was born, son of John Wood and Elizabeth Smith Wood, in Newburyport, Massachusetts (the father was for half a century a prominent merchant of Newbury port, and for several years president of its Mechanics Bank).

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal:

3rd day 1st of 12th M 1807 / Again much engaged, & nothing material to insert The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak

ESSENCE IS BLUR. SPECIFICITY, THE OPPOSITE OF ESSENCE,

IS OF THE NATURE OF TRUTH.

1807

RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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On a trip through Charleston, South Carolina, the Reverend Joseph Tuckerman, a distant relative of Abba Alcott, watched as a carpenter was sold for $490.00, then a “very likely boy, about 12 or 13” for $400.00, then a seamstress for $375.00 — and this gave him the willies.1 But he sort of accepted it, at the time, as the way the world worked. In fact, in the next year, when he went off to the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, he assumed that free black citizens would not be eligible for state office, just as he assumed that white women would likewise be ineligible. It wasn’t that he was a wicked or uncaring person, it was just that this was the normative framework which he had never thought to challenge. Tuckerman would later (1826) found the Unitarian Ministry at Large in service to the poor.

ESSENCES ARE FUZZY, GENERIC, CONCEPTUAL;ARISTOTLE WAS RIGHT WHEN HE INSISTED THAT ALL TRUTH IS

SPECIFIC AND PARTICULAR (AND WRONG WHEN HE CHARACTERIZED TRUTH AS A GENERALIZATION).

1819

1. By the way, this is not what Friend Maria Mitchell would be talking about, when she would opinion famously that “The needle is the chain of woman, and has fettered her more than the laws of the country.”

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Spring: Horatio Wood was being fitted for Harvard College by Caleb Cushing, who was then entering upon the practice of law while tutoring on the side, after completing the course at the Newburyport Academy. Mr. Cushing took his scholars for an expedition of a day or two, to experience the beginning of what afterward would become the industrial city of Lowell, Massachusetts.

“HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE” BEING A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN TIME (JUST AS THE PERSPECTIVE IN A PAINTING IS A VIEW

FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN SPACE), TO “LOOK AT THE COURSE OF HISTORY MORE GENERALLY” WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE PERSPECTIVE ALTOGETHER. THIS IS FANTASY-LAND, YOU’RE FOOLING YOURSELF. THERE CANNOT BE ANY SUCH THINGIE, AS SUCH A PERSPECTIVE.

Fall: Horatio Wood matriculated at Harvard College.

Looking for a good location in which to set up their winter camp, fur trappers Jedediah Smith and Thomas Fitzpatrick led their crew south from the Yellowstone River to the Sweetwater River (they were guessing that this eastward-flowing river would in the following spring convey them to the Missouri River).

A pair of slave-catchers attired in Kentucky’s characteristic green leggings arrived in Lockport, New York. At that time Darius Comstock, a Quaker, was employing a large crew of Irish laborers to dig a section of the Erie Canal he had under contract, and they were making their way slowly though a local rocky ridge. Friend Darius and his brother Joseph were known to be sympathizers with the fugitive slave. Under a warrant issued by Hiram Gardner, Justice of the Peace, the Kentuckians seized Joseph Pickard, a local black barber. Friend Darius rushed to the office of the Justice, which was on the 2d floor of a wooden building near Brown’s hat store and was entered by a flight of stairs on the outside. A large crowd of his canal workmen packed the street in front of the office. With the examination in progress, the barber sprang though an open window and landed in the street below, but the slave-catchers rushed down the stairs with drawn pistols and again collared him. G.W. Rogers and others surrounded the Kentuckians, defying them to shoot, and an agreement was reached to take the barber back upstairs to allow Justice of the Peace Gardner to hear the case. When the Justice discharged Pickard for want of proof that he was the property of the persons claiming him, this pair of Kentuckian slave-catchers departed the area.

1823

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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William Davis Ticknor left his home on a farm just outside Lebanon, New Hampshire at the age of 17, to work in the brokerage house of his uncle Benjamin Ticknor in Boston.

Professor Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert was made a professor at the University of München. In this post, attempting to produce a religiously grounded interpretation of the cosmos, he would arouse the antagonism of Lorenz Oken.

Cornelius Conway Felton, who had been at least in part working his way through his education by teaching in Concord and in Boston, and at the Round Hill School in Northampton, at this point graduated from Harvard College. Horatio Wood graduated (his copious and carefully written notes on French and Spanish literature per the lectures of Professor George Ticknor, fresh from the German universities, would be preserved, and under the influence of Dr. Karl Follen, Horatio would persist in being a strenuous runner until the 7th decade of his life).

At the Divinity School, the following gentlemen commenced their studies:

• Julian Abbot• Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch (A.B. Col. [Columbia College?])• Francis Cunningham• Joseph Hawley Dorr (A.B. Bowdoin College)• George Washington Hosmer• Josiah Moore• John Owen (A.B. Bowdoin College)• Ephraim Peabody (A.B. Brown University)• Allen Putnam• George Putnam• John Turner Sargent• David Southard• Oliver Stearns

(In these early years of the divinity school there were no formal class graduations, as students would be in the habit of remaining until they wrangled the offer of an appropriate pulpit.)

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

1827

NEW “HARVARD MEN”

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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Winter: Concord’s school committee consisted of the Reverend Ezra Ripley, Dr. Abiel Heywood, Esq., Deacon John White, Dr. Joseph Hunt (perhaps a son of the Joseph Hunt who had died in 1812?), and Deacon George Minott. Horatio Wood was from September 27th to August 28th the teacher of the grammar-school in the town center (among his pupils was William Stevens Robinson, and, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn would allege, John Thoreau, Jr.; in the following year he would teach instead at Newburyport) and was Edward Jarvis’s principal companion out of school and study hours, walking together on many mornings. Henry Swasey McKean had charge of the #3 “out-school” in Concord, that is, the one-room wooden school located in the Nine-acre Corner district (this was during the winter of his senior year at Harvard College).

However, the Thoreau brothers 13-year-old John Thoreau, Jr. and 9-year-old David Henry Thoreau were neither with schoolmaster McKean nor with schoolmaster Wood — they were instead being schooled at the Town School in the center district under schoolmaster Edward Jarvis to prepare them for their transfer to the Concord Academy under preceptor Phineas Allen.

YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT EITHER THE REALITY OF TIME OVER THAT OF CHANGE, OR CHANGE OVER TIME — IT’S PARMENIDES, OR

HERACLITUS. I HAVE GONE WITH HERACLITUS.

REVEREND HORATIO WOOD

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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Benjamin Peirce and William Henry Channing graduated from Harvard College.

Oliver Wendell Holmes graduated from Harvard as Class Poet, and went into the study of medicine — for many years afterward he would congratulate each graduating class by means of a poem.

Dr. Charles Follen became, in addition to the Professor of German Language and Literature, an instructor of ethics and history at the Divinity School.

Horatio Wood entered Divinity School. Among his classmates would be his lifelong friend the Reverend Andrew Preston Peabody, the Reverend Charles Babbidge of Pepperell, and the Reverend Henry Adolphus Miles. The Reverend Wood would afterward write of this period as follows:

My mind was taken by the first movements of Rev. Dr. Tuckermanamong the poorest, the most friendless, the most neglected,the most exposed to sin and ruin of our fellow-men. It struckme like the dawning of a new day for the Unitarian Church if itwould be not only doctrinally, but practically, truly Christian.Rev. F.T. Gray, Rev. C.F. Barnard, Rev. J.T. Sargent,Rev. R.C. Waterston, I saw step forward, one after another, andput their hands zealously and vigorously to the plough of Christin the new field, and my heart went with them. On a Saturdayof my last collegiate year, in 1827, I went alone and spent a dayin visiting the crowded rooms, cellars and attics of BroadStreet [in Boston], where there was a stifled mass ofdegradation and woe. I let nothing escape my eyes, heard all

1829

NEW “HARVARD MEN”

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tales, sat down and talked familiarly with many till theyunburdened themselves and turned themselves inside out, lettingme know all that was in their hearts. I carried away knowledgeand lessons which were never to leave me....

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.

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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The Reverend Andrew Bigelow’s “Christian Liberty,” a sermon delivered at Derry, New Hampshire, was published. His Unitarian First Congregational Church of Medford, Massachusetts erected, for $3,805, a parsonage, and built a new meetinghouse on the site of the previous one.

Horatio Wood completed his education at the Harvard Divinity School and took the common round of a beginner in the ministry, preaching when invited at Portsmouth, Boston, Providence, New Bedford, etc. He would become a missionary for two years to Fryeburg in Maine, and its neighboring towns of Franklin and Salisbury, New Hampshire.

Likewise completing his education at the Divinity School, Christopher Pearse Cranch became a Unitarian minister (he would give this up as of 1842). He would go to Ohio as a missionary where he would become a

close friend of James Freeman Clarke, editor of the Western Messenger, and review some of Waldo Emerson’s controversial addresses.

NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE

1832

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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April 3, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson left Rome for Firenzi (Florence).

Pro-democracy students attacked the main police station in Frankfurt-am-Main in an attempt to free political prisoners and begin a general republican uprising. Failing to attract public support, the uprising collapsed.

At the request of Charles Babbage, a pair of arbitrators, Messrs. Field and Donkin, had visited the contractor for the Calculational Engine project. They found the main point at issue to be who it was who was responsible to the contractor for the project, whether it be the Parliament or Babbage himself.

In Salisbury, New Hampshire, the Reverend Horatio Wood delivered an address on temperance (this would be printed as an 18-page tract in Concord, New Hampshire by the firm of Hill and Barton). It is to be noted, in this address, that the “temperance” being urged was not abstinence from ethanol products, but instead consisted in two things, a total abstinence from distilled spirits such as rum, whiskey, vodka, brandy, etc. and in sale of such distilled spirits to others, coupled with sufficient moderation in the consumption of wine, beer, and cider, that public or private drunkenness is never the result.

Every friend of temperance should show himself. Let him take adecided stand. We want no half way men. I will tell you what Ithink a decided stand is, the only stand, from which one canconsistently and properly lift up his voice with effect, andprove himself a friend of temperance. This stand is totalabstinence from the use of ardent spirits. ... It is enjoinedin holy writ, that no man put a stumbling block, or an occasionto fall in his brothers way. Let those who drink temperatelyabstain altogether, is it to be doubted that they would checkthe tendency of many to ruin, and stop others in the first stepsof a dangerous habit? ... Let me ask to, how it happens, thatardent spirit is needed in so many cases as alleged, when it iswell known, that ardent spirit had its invention within threehundred years, and has been in common use in New-England lessthan one hundred. ... Break away from a slavish regard to selfalone, and let the generous spirit breathed through these wordsof the holy page possess you, “Let no man seek his own but everyman another’s good.” ... Those who drink temperately and who arehere, I would respectfully ask, whether it would not be reallysafer for them not to drink ardent spirit at all, and whetherduty to others does not prompt them to a generous declarationof entire disuse for the future. ... You ought also, I conceive,not to drink to excess of other things which do not come underthe denomination of the forbidden article; for thereby you doyourself injury and discredit, injure the cause, and are keepingup the appetite which sometimes may find its old channel ofgratification.

YOUR GARDEN-VARIETY ACADEMIC HISTORIAN INVITES YOU TO CLIMB ABOARD A HOVERING TIME MACHINE TO SKIM IN METATIME BACK

1833

REVEREND HORATIO WOOD

REVEREND HORATIO WOOD HORATIO WOOD

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REVEREND HORATIO WOOD HORATIO WOOD

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ACROSS THE GEOLOGY OF OUR PAST TIMESLICES, WHILE OFFERING UP A GARDEN VARIETY OF COGENT ASSESSMENTS OF OUR PROGRESSION. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP! YOU SHOULD REFUSE THIS HELICOPTERISH

OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORICAL PAST, FOR IN THE REAL WORLD THINGS HAPPEN ONLY AS THEY HAPPEN. WHAT THIS SORT WRITES AMOUNTS,

LIKE MERE “SCIENCE FICTION,” MERELY TO “HISTORY FICTION”: IT’S NOT WORTH YOUR ATTENTION.

October 24, Thursday: Horatio Wood was ordained as an evangelist at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Alexandros Nikolaou Mavrokordatos replaced Spyridon Ioannou Trikoupis as President of the Ministerial Council of Greece.

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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September 24, Wednesday: The Reverend Horatio Wood received and accepted a call to minister in Walpole, New Hampshire.

Dom Pedro, leader of the Portuguese liberal cause, died of consumption at the age of 36. He had defeated his absolutist brother Dom Miguel four months earlier. Pedro de Sousa Holstein, marques e conde de Palmela would replace him as prime minister.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal:

4th day 24th of 9th M / Our friend Thos Arnott from Indiana Yearly Meeting attended our Moy [Monthly] Meeting today - which was a season of favour to us all, he was large in testimony & well adapted to States & conditions present —

THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN

SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD.

1834

RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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March 11, Wednesday: The Reverend Horatio Wood got married with Abby Abbot, daughter of the Reverend Jacob Abbot and Catharine Thayer Abbot. The ceremony was performed by his friend the Reverend Andrew Preston Peabody, then of Portsmouth.

NEVER READ AHEAD! TO APPRECIATE MARCH 11TH, 1835 AT ALL ONE MUST APPRECIATE IT AS A TODAY (THE FOLLOWING DAY, TOMORROW, IS BUT A PORTION OF THE UNREALIZED FUTURE AND IFFY AT BEST).

1835

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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June 22, Friday: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas for an 8th day.

The Reverend Horatio Wood was called from Walpole, New Hampshire to take charge of a society in Tyngsborough, new Lowell, Massachusetts, which was in a state of transformation from Calvinism to Liberalism.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

1838

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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October: The Reverend Horatio Wood began his ministry in Lowell, Massachusetts (the reverend used to be a teacher in Concord — did Henry Thoreau remember him?).

The rivalry between the Concord Light Infantry company and the Concord Artillery company culminated in their hiring of two competing bands from Boston. As the two groups paraded, each attempted to crowd out their enemy’s marching formation and tangle their enemy’s feet by the beat from a different drummer (this happened on Concord common — did Henry witness this?).

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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May: Several members of the Unitarian Society formed what they termed the Unitarian Missionary Society.

In the previous month and this one, two articles on Buddhist thought by Professor Eugène Burnouf had been appearing in La Revue Indépendante, a prominent French journal which may have been available to Thoreau at the New York Society Library. The previous month’s article had been entitled Fragments des Prédications de Buddha and this month’s article was entitled Considérations sur l’Origine du Bouddhisme. Professor Burnouf was the 1st to translate the LOTUS SUTRA from Sanskrit into a European language and eventually Henry Thoreau would possess a personal copy of the 1852 edition of his LE LOTUS DE LA BONNE LOI, TRADUIT DU SANSCRIT, ACCOMPAGNÉ D’UN COMMENTAIRE ET DE VINGT ET UN MÉMOIRES RELATIFS AU BUDDHISME, PAR M. E. BURNOUF (Paris: Imprimerie nationale). An English translation of this French translation of Chapter V of the Sanskrit of THE LOTUS SUTRA would appear in THE DIAL for January 1844, and presumably either Thoreau or Miss Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, busy as beavers, prepared that translation — which would amount to the very 1st presentation of any part of this essential Buddhist scripture in the English language!

1843

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NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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June: The Unitarian Missionary Society, impelled, probably, by the increase in poverty from immigration, resolved to drop the word “Unitarian” from its title and to establish an unsectarian ministry-at-large. The Lowell Missionary Society appointed the Reverend Crawford Nightingale as the initial minister of the new institution, but he held the position for only one month before resigning because he considered himself unequal to the responsibility. It was then that the society invited the Reverend Horatio Wood to assume that responsibility.

Early in the month, preparing for the grand opening ceremonies of the 17th, there were several trial runs over the new railroad track from Concord to Charlestown. In this year trains were reaching the speed of 30 miles per hour between stations. Here is a drawing of a locomotive manufactured in 1844 by Ross Winans:

“[The railroad will] only encourage the common peopleto move about needlessly.”

— Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Artist of the Beautiful” was published. The Hawthornes dismissed their maid and sought a replacement. Mrs. Sophia Peabody Hawthorne of course could do no housework due to her delicate temperament and her tremendous headaches, so for the time being Nathaniel, working on “Rappacini’s Daughter,” would also have to do the cooking and wash the dishes rather than be served. The family would be unsuccessful in obtaining a new servant until Mary Pray would come along, after Thanksgiving.

THE FALLACY OF MOMENTISM: THIS STARRY UNIVERSE DOES NOT

1844

REVEREND HORATIO WOOD HORATIO WOOD

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CONSIST OF A SEQUENCE OF MOMENTS. THAT IS A FIGMENT, ONE WE HAVE RECOURSE TO IN ORDER TO PRIVILEGE TIME OVER CHANGE,

A PRIVILEGING THAT MAKES CHANGE SEEM UNREAL, DERIVATIVE, A MERE APPEARANCE. IN FACT IT IS CHANGE AND ONLY CHANGE WHICH

WE EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, TIME BEING BY WAY OF RADICAL CONTRAST UNEXPERIENCED — A MERE INTELLECTUAL CONSTRUCT. THERE EXISTS NO SUCH THING AS A MOMENT. NO “INSTANT” HAS

EVER FOR AN INSTANT EXISTED.

October 28, Monday: The Reverend Horatio Wood left his church in Tyngsborough, Massachusetts to become a Minister-at-Large in nearby Lowell, just started.2 Many if not most of the people flocking to the new mills would be immigrant Irish escaping the potato blight, a large proportion of them unable to read or write (population in 1830, 6,474; in 1840, 20,796; in 1850, 33,383). During the 24 years of his administration he would be offering evening schooling at the Free Chapel on Middlesex Street, teaching some 12,000 pupils by his own count, and during that time he would be absent but one single evening — to attend the funeral of his mother. In order to obtain students from the largely Irish Catholic labor force, it would be necessary for the Reverend to pledge that he would never offer any religious instruction.

The initial issue of Theodore Foster’s and Guy Beckley’s Signal of Liberty, published by the Michigan Anti-Slavery Society of Ann Arbor.

BETWEEN ANY TWO MOMENTS ARE AN INFINITE NUMBER OF MOMENTS, AND BETWEEN THESE OTHER MOMENTS LIKEWISE AN INFINITE NUMBER, THERE BEING NO ATOMIC MOMENT JUST AS THERE IS NO ATOMIC POINT ALONG A LINE. MOMENTS ARE THEREFORE FIGMENTS. THE PRESENT MOMENT IS A MOMENT AND AS SUCH IS A FIGMENT, A FLIGHT OF THE IMAGINATION TO WHICH NOTHING REAL CORRESPONDS. SINCE PAST MOMENTS HAVE PASSED OUT OF EXISTENCE AND FUTURE MOMENTS HAVE YET TO ARRIVE, WE NOTE THAT THE PRESENT MOMENT IS ALL

THAT EVER EXISTS — AND YET THE PRESENT MOMENT BEING A MOMENT IS A FIGMENT TO WHICH NOTHING IN REALITY CORRESPONDS.

2. Between 1844 and 1852, inclusive, 12 ministries-at-large would be organized in New England; 3 In Boston making 5 in that city, and 9 in other cities (in 1850 the Reverend Wood would sponsor an “Association of Ministers-at-Large in New England”).

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

LOWELL, MIDDLESEX

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June: When the Five Cent Savings Bank began operations, the Reverend Horatio Wood, whose father had been president of the Mechanics Bank of Newbury port, was chosen as its president. He would fill that function until resigning in January 1885 in consequence of physical disability.

FIGURING OUT WHAT AMOUNTS TO A “HISTORICAL CONTEXT” IS WHAT THE CRAFT OF HISTORICIZING AMOUNTS TO, AND THIS NECESSITATES

DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN THE SET OF EVENTS THAT MUST HAVE TAKEN PLACE BEFORE EVENT E COULD BECOME POSSIBLE, AND MOST

CAREFULLY DISTINGUISHING THEM FROM ANOTHER SET OF EVENTS THAT COULD NOT POSSIBLY OCCUR UNTIL SUBSEQUENT TO EVENT E.

1854

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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December 31, Thursday: James David Forbes died at Clifton.

Because of rulings by the Board of Directors, the Reverend Horatio Wood felt he had no alternative but to submit his resignation as Minister-at-Large in Lowell, Massachusetts (he would not find it a simple matter, during his 60s, to obtain other employment).

When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and American painter George Healy visited Franz Liszt at the monastery of Santa Francesca Romana, he showed them around and then played for them, on a grand piano that had been sent to him by Frank Chickering of Boston.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

1868

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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In about this year the Reverend Horatio Wood became interested in the People’s Club of Lowell, Massachusetts, a facility that had been founded in 1872 by Colonel James Francis and Mr. Samuel Cabot, Jr. to afford a place of innocent resort for those young persons who spent their evenings in walking the streets. He would be responsible for the lecturers, for the periodicals for the reading-room, for the books of the library, and for raising revenues necessary to keep the club afloat.

As people sorted themselves out, there would come to be separate facilities for the young men and for the young women.

BUT HISTORY’S NOT MADE OF WOULD. WHEN SOMEONE REVEALS AS ABOVE, FOR INSTANCE, THAT THERE WOULD COME TO BE SEPARATE FACILITIES FOR THE YOUNG MEN AND FOR THE YOUNG WOMEN, S/HE

DISCLOSES THAT WHAT IS BEING CRAFTED IS NOT REALITY BUT PREDESTINARIANISM. AS OF 1874 SUCH A SEPARATION WAS NOT PART OF REALITY. THE RULE OF REALITY IS THAT THE FUTURE HASN’T EVER

HAPPENED, YET.

1874

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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A photograph was taken of the Reverend Horatio Wood.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

1882

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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Spring: The Reverend Horatio Wood suffered a stroke with paralysis that impaired somewhat his power of motion, and, to a greater degree, his ability to speak.

ONE COULD BE ELSEWHERE, AS ELSEWHERE DOES EXIST. ONE CANNOT BE ELSEWHEN SINCE ELSEWHEN DOES NOT.

(TO THE WILLING MANY THINGS CAN BE EXPLAINED,THAT FOR THE UNWILLING WILL REMAIN FOREVER MYSTERIOUS.)

1884

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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January: In consequence of physical disability after his stroke, the Reverend Horatio Wood was obliged to resign from the presidency of the Five Cent Savings Bank.

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND

YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

1885

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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May 12, Tuesday: Horatio Wood died.

Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky visited Niagara Falls (he visited both the US and Canadian sides, and in addition made the tour under the falls; let’s hope it was loud enough for him).

Captain Edmond Verney, Conservative member of the House of Commons for North Bucks who had been conspicuous in the ongoing purity crusade of the National Vigilance Association, had pled guilty in London to “conspiring to procure for corrupt and immoral purposes a girl of nineteen.” On this day Tory leader W.H. Smith performed the “disagreeable duty” of expelling him from that august body. While there was no discussion of the “painful details” attendant on this married man’s private conduct, there was not a single dissenting vote.3

CONTINGENCYALTHOUGH VERY MANY OUTCOMES ARE OVERDETERMINED, WE TRUST

THAT SOMETIMES WE ACTUALLY MAKE REAL CHOICES.

June 29, Monday: After the death of Horatio Wood, the School Committee of Lowell, Massachusetts passed unanimously a series of resolutions recognizing him as the founder of evening schools in Lowell, and expressing their appreciation of “the philanthropic spirit that inspired him and his faithful band of assistant teachers to freely give their services” in instructing the illiterate of the city.

The foundation of the National Forest Service, as The Forest Reserve Act of 1891 authorized withdrawing land from the public domain as “forest reserves” to be managed by the Department of the Interior.

In London, the vigilance committee in Whitechapel received yet another “Jack the Ripper” letter. Jack was announcing that he was about to perform another operation but that if citizens attempted to track him we would knife them to the heart — because it was the police’s duty, not citizens, to catch him. He added that he has been nearly caught twice and would never be taken alive.

August 4, Tuesday: Horatio Wood read, before the Old Residents’ Historical Association of Lowell, Massachusetts, a brief account of the life of his father the Reverend Horatio Wood, which would be printed by The Morning Mail Corporation of Lowell along with a likeness of the Reverend copied by the Heliotype Printing Company of Boston from a photograph taken in 1882.

In Louisiana some people of mingled white, native American, and black descent objected to being termed “Redbones” (“Redbone” is a type of coon hound) and a gun battle ensued on a tram of the Lock, Moore, &c Co. and McDonald, resulting in multiple fatalities.

1891

3. This former MP would be spending a year in prison. A procuress named Madame Rouillier had lured a series of young women from a London registry for governesses to clandestine meetings with him in Paris. Nellie Blaskett from Belgravia had been his undoing, after her prospective employer “Mr. Wilson” took her to the Eiffel Tower holding her by “her pretty little hand.”

REVEREND HORATIO WOOD

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Franklin Benjamin Sanborn’s MRS. HORATIO WOOD, OF LOWELL.

IT IS NO COINCIDENCE THAT IT IS MORTALS WHO CONSUME OUR HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS, FOR WHAT WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO DO IS EVADE THE RESTRICTIONS OF THE HUMAN LIFESPAN. (IMMORTALS,

WITH NOTHING TO LIVE FOR, TAKE NO HEED OF OUR STORIES.)

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 2016. 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 <Kouroo@kouroo.info>.

Prepared: April 16, 2016

1907

Horatio Wood “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

“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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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.

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obviousdeficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in

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the 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 <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. Arrgh.