After graduating from Harvard, Emerson taught in the Boston school for girls kept by his brother William in their mother's home. He felt himself ill suited to the work and did not enjoy it, but he continued because he needed to contribute toward the education of his younger brothers, Edward and Charles. In 1823, William left to study theology at Göttingen, leaving Waldo (the name that he had decided in college that he preferred) to keep school alone. Shortly before his twenty-first birthday, Emerson decided that he would devote himself to the ministry. His decision was not an unexamined one. He had already expressed doubts about formal religion and his personal fitness to preach it. Nevertheless, he entered the Harvard Divinity School in 1825. Almost immediately, poor health interrupted his studies and, along with the need to continue teaching in order to earn money, prevented him from taking a degree. In 1826, however, he was approbated to preach, and delivered his first sermon in Waltham.
Having decided against a career in the ministry, William Emerson had returned from Göttingen in 1825. In 1826, William and Edward (who, beset by health problems, had in 1825 also gone to Europe) began to study law — William as an apprentice in a New York law office, Edward in Daniel Webster's Boston office. Waldo's health again declined. Showing symptoms of tuberculosis, he traveled south in 1826, to Charleston, South Carolina, and St. Augustine, Florida, to regain his health. He worked on sermons and developed a friendship with Achille Murat, a nephew of Napoleon and an atheist. His health improved, he returned to Boston in 1827 and served as a supply preacher to parishes in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
In 1827, while in Concord, New Hampshire, Emerson fell in love with Ellen Louisa Tucker, daughter of the late Beza Tucker, a successful Boston merchant. Ellen, considered beautiful, was an intelligent, confident girl, a writer of poetry, and the love of Emerson's life. She, like Emerson, was also tubercular. In March of 1829, Emerson became pastor of the Unitarian Second Church of Boston. He had been asked to serve as the colleague of the ailing Reverend Henry Ware, whom he soon succeeded. Emerson was generally well-liked by his congregation, which appreciated the weekly sermons that he delivered with directness and simplicity. The necessity of producing sermons on a regular schedule fostered discipline in writing, and the delivery of these sermons honed Emerson's skills in public speaking. But preaching also forced Emerson uncomfortably to consider how much church doctrine he truly accepted. At the same time, he became aware that he possessed a certain emotional aloofness that made it difficult for him to deal with some of the personal interactions required of a pastor. Nevertheless, at this point his prospects for a long career in the ministry were promising. In September of 1829, when Ellen's precarious health seemed stable, the two were married.
