enth out of a total of fifty-nine (Myerson 332). More important than any specific academic achievements was his informal education, both intellectual and emotional, that would occupy him throughout the rest of his life. Emerson graduated from Harvard College in 1821. After running a school for young women, he returned to Harvard to study divinity and was licensed to preach the next year (Perkins 124). He preached from various pulpits before being ordained pastor of the prestigious second Unitarian church in Boston (Myerson 332). While serving as a preacher in Boston, he fell in love with Ellen Tucker. Although nervous about Ellen's ill health, Emerson became engaged to her a year later and they were married in the fall of 1829 (Merriam 298). Their early happiness was only brief. Ellen became seriously ill after six months of marriage and died early in 1831. The emotional strain on Emerson was great and long-lasting, so much that a year after her death, he reopened Ellen's coffin in attempt to deal with his grief. Because of Ellen's death, Emerson underwent a religious and personal crisis(Ralph Waldo Emerson). He had been a Unitarian minister for three years at the Old North Church in Boston, but he had resigned because in his view the observance of the Lord's Supper could not be justified in the Unitarian church. In October 1833, Emers
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