The gasoline for sale at country stores _Two Thousand Miles on an Automobile Being a Desultory Narrative of a Trip Through New England, New York, Canada, and the West, By "Chauffeur"

it is handled in all sorts of receptacles; the only safe way is to

ask for a bright and new dipper and let the store-keeper guess at

the measure.

At Westfield the spark began to give trouble; the machine was very

slow in starting, as if the batteries were weak; but that could

not be, for one set was fresh and the other by no means exhausted.

A careful examination of every connection failed to disclose any

breaks in the circuit, and yet the spark was of intermittent

strength,--now good, now weak.

When there is anything wrong with an automobile, there is but one

thing to do, and that is find the source of the trouble and remedy

it. The temptation is to go on if the machine starts up

unexpectedly. We yielded to the temptation, and went on as soon as

the motor started; the day was so fine and we were so anxious to

get to Worcester that we started with the motor,--knowing all the

time that whatever made the motor slow to start would, in all

likelihood, bring us to a stand-still before very long; the evil

moment, possibly the evil hour, may be postponed, but seldom the

evil day.

At two o'clock we passed through Springfield, stopping only a

moment at the hotel to inquire for mail. Leaving Springfield we

followed the main road towards Worcester, some fifty miles away.

The road is winding and over a rolling country, but for the most

part very good. The grades are not steep, there are some sandy

spots, but none so soft as to materially interfere with good

speed. There are many stretches of good gravel, and here and there

a piece--a sample--of State road, perfectly laid macadam, with

signs all along requesting persons not to drive in the centre of

the highway,--this is to save the road from the hollows and ruts

that horses and narrow-tired wagons invariably make, and in which

the water stands, ultimately wearing the macadam through. We could

not see that the slightest attention was paid to the notices.

Everybody kept the middle of the road, such is the improvidence of

men; the country people grumble at the great expense of good

roads, and then take the surest way to ruin them.

While it is true that the people in the first instance grumble at

the prospective cost of these well-made State roads, no sooner are

they laid than their very great value is appreciated, and good

roads sentiment becomes rampant. The farmer who has worn out

horses, harness, wagons, and temper in getting light loads to

market over heavy roads is quick to appreciate the very material

advantage and economy of having highways over which one horse can

pull as much as two under the old sandy, rough, and muddy

conditions.

A good road may be the making of a town, and it increases the

value of all abutting property. Already the question is commonly

asked when a farm is offered for sale or rent, "Is it on a State

road?" Lots will not sell in cities unless all improvements are

in; soon farmers will not be able to sell unless the highways are

improved.

One good thing about the automobile, it does not cut up the

surface of a macadam or gravel road as do steel tires and

horseshoes.

At the outskirts of the little village of West Brookfield we came

to a stand-still; the spark disappeared,--or rather from a large,

round, fat spark it dropped to an insignificant little blue

sparklet that would not explode a squib.

The way the spark acted with either or both batteries on indicated

pretty strongly that the trouble was in the coil; but it is so

seldom a coil goes wrong that everything was looked over, but no

spark of any size was to be had, therefore there was nothing to do

but cast about for a place to spend the night, for it was then

dark.

As good luck would have it, we were almost in front of a large,

comfortable, old-fashioned house where they took summer boarders;

as the season was drawing to a close, there was plenty of room and

they were glad to take us in. The machine was pushed into a shed,

everybody assisting with the readiness ever characteristic of

sympathetic on-lookers.

The big, clean, white rooms were most inviting; the homely New

England supper of cold meats and hot rolls seemed under the

circumstances a feast for a king, and as we sat in front of the

house in the evening, and looked across the highway to a little

lake just beyond and heard the croaking of the frogs, the chirping

of crickets, and the many indistinguishable sounds of night, we

were not sorry the machine had played us false exactly when and

where it did.

The automobile plays into the hands of Morpheus, the drowsy god

follows in its wake, sure of his victims. No sleep is dreamless.

It is pretty difficult to exhaust the three billions of cells of

the central nervous system so that all require rest, but ten hours

on an automobile in the open air, speeding along like the wind

most of the time, will come nearer putting all those cells to

sleep than any exercise heretofore discovered. The fatigue is

normal, pervasive, and persuasive, and it is pretty hard to recall

any dream on waking.

It was Sunday morning, September 1, and raining, a soft, drizzly

downpour, that had evidently begun early in the night and kept up

--or rather down--steadily. It was a good morning to remain

indoors and read; but there was that tantalizing machine challenging

combat; then, too, Worcester was but eighteen or twenty miles

away, and at Worcester we expected to find letters and telegrams.

A young and clever electrician across the way came over, bringing

an electric bell, with which we tested the dry cells, finding them

in good condition. We then examined the connections and ran the

trouble back to the coil. There was plenty of current and plenty

of voltage, but only a little blue spark, which could be obtained

equally well with the coil in or out of the circuit, and yet the

coil did not show a short circuit, but before we finished our

tests the spark suddenly appeared.

Again, it would have been better to remain and find the trouble;

but as there was no extra coil to be had in the village, it seemed

fairly prudent to start on and get as far as possible. Possibly

the coil would hold out to Worcester; anyway, the road is a series

of villages, some larger than Brookfield, and a coil might be

found at one of them.

When within two miles of Spencer the spark gave out again; this

time no amount of coaxing would bring it back, so there was

nothing to do but appeal to a farmer for a pair of horses to pull

the machine into his yard. The assistance was most kindly given,

though the day was Sunday, and for him, his men and his animals,

emphatically a day of rest.

Only twice on the entire trip were horses attached to the machine;

but a sparking coil is absolutely essential, and when one gives

out it is pretty hard to make repairs on the road. In case of

necessity a coil may be unwound, the trouble discovered and

remedied, but that is a tedious process. It was much easier to

leave the machine for the night, run into Worcester on the trolley

which passed along the same road, and bring out a new coil in the

morning.

Monday happened to be Labor Day, and it was only after much

trouble that a place was found open where electrical supplies

could be purchased. In addition to a coil, the electrician took

out some thoroughly insulated double cable wire; the wiring of the

machine had been so carelessly done and with such light, cheap

wire that it seemed a good opportunity to rewire throughout.

The electrician--a very competent and quick workman he proved to

be--was so sure the trouble could not be in the coil that he did

not wish to carry out a new one.

When ready to start, we found the trolley line blocked by a Labor

Day parade that was just beginning to move. The procession was

unusually long on account of striking trades unionists, who turned

out in force. As each section of strikers passed, the electrician

explained the cause of their strike, the number of men out, and

the length of time they had been out.

It seemed too bad that big, brawny, intelligent men could find no

better way of adjusting differences with employers than by

striking.

A strike is an expensive luxury. Three parties are losers,--the

community in general by being deprived for the time being of

productive forces; the employers by loss on capital invested; the

employees by loss of wages. The loss to the community, while very

real, is little felt. Employers, as a rule, are prepared to stand

their losses with equanimity; in fact, when trade is dull, or when

an employer desires to make changes in his business, a strike is

no inconvenience at all; but the men are the real losers, and

especially those with families and with small homes unpaid for; no

one can measure their losses, for it may mean the savings of a

lifetime. It frequently does mean a change in character from an

industrious, frugal, contented workman with everything to live

for, to a shiftless and discontented man with nothing to live for

but agitation and strife.

It is easy to acquire the strike habit, and impossible to throw it

off. A first strike is more dangerous than a first drink; it makes

a profound and ineradicable impression. To quit work for the first

time at the command of some central organization is an experience

so novel that no man can do it without being affected; he will

never again be the same steady and indefatigable workman; the

spirit of unrest creeps in, the spirit of discontent closely

follows; his life is changed; though he never goes through another

strike, he can never forget his first.

In the long run it does not matter much which side wins, the

effect is very much the same,--strikes are bound to follow

strikes. Warfare is so natural to men that it is difficult to

declare a lasting peace. But some day the men themselves will see

that strikes are far more disastrous to them than to any other

class, and they will devise other ways and means; they will use

the strength of their organizations to better advantage; above

all, they will relegate to impotency the professional organizers

and agitators who retain their positions by fomenting strife.

It is singular that workmen do not take a lesson from their

shrewder employers, who, if they have organizations of their own,

never confer upon any officer or committee of idlers the power to

control the trade. An organization of employers is always

controlled by those most actively engaged in the business, and not

by coteries of paid idlers; no central committee of men, with

nothing to do but make trouble, can involve a whole trade in

costly controversies. The strength of the employer lies in the

fact that each man consults first his own interest, and if the

action of the body bids fair to injure his individual interests he

not only protests, but threatens to withdraw; the employer cannot

be cowed by any association of which he is a member; but the

employee is cowed by his union,--that is the essential difference

between the two. An association of employers is a union of

independent and aggressive units, and the action of the

association must meet the approval of each of these units or

disruption will follow. Workingmen do not seem to appreciate the

value of the unit; they are attracted by masses. They seem to

think strength lies only in members; but that is the keynote of

militantism, the death-knell of individualism. The real, the only

strength of a union lies in the silent, unconsulted units; now and

then they rise up and act and the union accomplishes something;

for the most part they do not act, but are blindly led, and the

union accomplishes nothing.

It was interesting to hear the comments of the intelligent young

mechanic as the different trades passed by.

"Those fellows are out on a sympathetic strike; no grievance at

all, plenty of work and good wages, but just out because they are

told to come out; big fools, I say, to be pulled about by the

nose.

"There are the plumbers; their union makes more trouble than any

other in the building trades; they are always looking for trouble,

and manage to find it when no one else can.

"Unions are all right for bachelors who can afford to loaf, but

they are pretty hard on the married man with a family.

"What's gained in a strike is lost in the fight.

"What's the use of staying out three months to get a ten per cent.

raise for nine? It doesn't pay.

"Wages have been going up for two hundred years. I can't see that

the strike has advanced the rate of increase any.

"These fellows have tried to monopolize Labor Day; they don't want

any non-union man in the parade; the people will not stand for

that very long; labor is labor whether union or non-union, and the

great majority of workingmen in this country are not members of

any union."

The parade, like all things good, came to an end, and we took the

trolley for the place where the automobile had been left.

On arriving we took out the dry cells, tested each one, and then

rewired the carriage complete and in a manner to defy rain, sand,

and oil. The difficulty, however, was in the coil. Apparently the

motion of the vehicle had worn the insulation through at some

point inside. The new coil, a common twelve-inch coil, worked

well, giving a good, hot spark.

The farmer who had so kindly pulled the machine in the day before

would accept nothing for his trouble, and was, as most farmers

are, exceedingly kind. It is embarrassing to call upon strangers

for assistance which means work and inconvenience for them, and

then have them positively decline all compensation.

The ride into Worcester was a fast one over good gravel and

macadam.

Immediately after luncheon we started for Boston. Every foot of

the road in from Worcester is good hard gravel and the ride is

most delightful. As it was a holiday and the highway was

comparatively free of traffic, we travelled along faster than

usual.

It was our intention to follow the main road through Shrewsbury,

Southborough, Framingham, and Wellesley, but though man proposes,

in the suburbs of Boston Providence disposes. About Southborough

we lost our road, and were soon angling to the northeast through

the Sudburys. So far as the road itself was concerned the change

was for the better, for, while there would be stretches which were

not gravelled, the country was more interesting than along the

main highway.

The old "Worcester Turnpike" is Boyleston Street in Boston and

through Brookline to the Newtons, where it becomes plain Worcester

Street and bears that name westward through Wellesley and Natick.

The trolley line out of Worcester is through Shrewsbury and

Northborough to Marlborough, then a turn almost due south to

Southborough, then east to Framingham, southeast to South

Framingham, east through Natick to Wellesley, northeast through

Wellesley Hills to Newton, then direct through Brookline into

Boston.

The road, it will be noted, is far from straight, and it is at the

numerous forks and turns one is apt to go astray unless constant

inquiries are made.

At Marlborough we kept on to the east towards Waltham instead of

turning to the south for Southborough. It is but a few miles out

of the way from Marlborough to Concord and into Boston by way of

Lexington; or, if the road through Wellesley and Newton is

followed, it is worth while to turn from Wellesley Hills to

Norembega Park for the sake of stopping a few moments on the spot

where Norembega Tower confidently proclaims the discovery of

America and the founding of a fortified place by the Norsemen

nearly five hundred years before Columbus sailed out of the harbor

of Palos.

Having wandered from the old turnpike, we thought we would go by

Concord and Lexington, but did not. The truth is the automobile is

altogether too fast a conveyance for the suburbs of Boston, which

were laid out by cows for the use of pedestrians. There are an

infinite number of forks, angles, and turnings, and by a native on

foot short cuts can be made to any objective point, but the

automobile passes a byway before it is seen. Directions are given

but not followed, because turns and obscure cross-roads are passed

at high speed and unobserved.

Every one is most obliging in giving directions, but the

directions run about like this:

"To Concord?--yes,--let me see;--do you know the Old Sudbury

road?--No!--strangers?--ah! that's too bad, for if you don't know

the roads it will be hard telling you--but let me see;--if you

follow this road about a mile, you will come to a brick store and

a watering trough,--take the turn to the left there;--I think that

is the best road, or you can take a turn this side, but if I were

you I would take the road at the watering trough;--from there it

is about eight miles, and I think you make three turns,--but you

better inquire, for if you don't know the roads it is pretty hard

to direct you."

"We follow this road straight ahead to the brick store and trough,

that's easy."

"Well, the road is not exactly straight, but if you bear to the

right, then take the second left hand fork, you'll be all right."

All of which things we most faithfully performed, and yet we got

no nearer that day than "about eight miles farther to Concord."

In circling about we came quite unexpectedly upon the old "Red

Horse" tavern, now the "Wayside Inn." We brought the machine to a

stop and gazed long and lovingly at the ancient hostelry which had

given shelter to famous men for nearly two hundred years, and

where congenial spirits gathered in Longfellow's days and the

imaginary "Tales of a Wayside Inn" were exchanged.

The mellow light of the setting sun warmed the time-worn structure

with a friendly glow. The sign of the red horse rampant creaked

mournfully as it swung slowly to and fro in the gentle breeze;

with palsied arms and in cracked tones the old inn seemed to bid

us stay and rest beneath its sheltering eaves. Washington and

Hamilton and Lafayette, Emerson and Hawthorne and Longfellow had

entered that door, eaten and drunk within those humble walls,--the

great in war, statecraft, and literature had been its guests; like

an old man it lives with its memories, recalls the associations of

its youth and prime, but slumbers oblivious to the present.

The old inn was so fascinating that we determined to come back in

a few days and spend at least a night beneath its roof. The

shadows were so rapidly lengthening that we had to hurry on.

Crossing the Charles River near Auburndale a sight of such

bewitching beauty met our astonished gaze that we stopped to make

inquiries. Above and below the bridge the river was covered with

gayly decorated canoes which were being paddled about by laughing

and singing young people. The brilliant colors of the decorations,

the pretty costumes, the background of dark water, the shores

lined with people and equipages, the bridge so crowded we could

hardly get through, made a never-to-be-forgotten picture. It was

just a holiday canoe-meet, and hundreds of the small, frail craft

were darting about upon the surface of the water like so many

pretty dragon-flies. The automobile seemed such an intrusion, a

drone of prose in a burst of poetry, the discord of machinery in a

sylvan symphony.

We stopped a few moments at Lasell Seminary in Auburndale, where

old associations were revived by my Companion over a cup of tea. A

girl's school is a mysterious place; there is an atmosphere of

suppressed mischief, of things threatened but never quite

committed, of latent possibilities, and still more latent

impossibilities. In a boy's school mischief is evident and

rampant; desks, benches, and walls are whittled and defaced with

all the wanton destructiveness of youth; buildings and fences show

marks of contact with budding manhood; but boys are so openly and

notoriously mischievous that no apprehension is felt, for the

worst is ever realized; but those in command of a school of demure

and saintly girls must feel like men handling dynamite, uncertain

what will happen next; the stolen pie, the hidden sweets, the

furtive note are indications of the infinite subtlety of the

female mind.

From Auburndale the boulevard leads into Commonwealth Avenue and

the run is fine.

It was about seven o'clock when we reached the Hotel Touraine, and

a little later when the machine was safely housed in an automobile

station,--a part of an old railway depot.

A few days in Boston and on the North Shore afforded a welcome

change.

Through Beverly and Manchester the signs "Automobiles not allowed"

at private roadways are numerous; they are the rule rather than

the exception. One young man had a machine up there, but found

himself so ostracized he shipped it away. No machines are allowed

on the grounds of the Essex Country Club.

No man with the slightest consideration for the comfort and

pleasure of others would care to keep and use a machine in places

where so many women and children are riding and driving. The charm

of the North Shore and the Berkshires lies largely in the

opportunities afforded for children to be out with their ponies,

girls with their carts, and women with horses too spirited to

stand unusual sights and sounds. One automobile may terrorize the

entire little community; in fact, one machine will spread terror

where many would not.

It is quite difficult enough to drive a machine carefully through

such resorts, without driving about day after day to the

discomfort of every resident.

In a year or two all will be changed; the people owning summer

homes will themselves own and use automobiles; the horses will see

so many that little notice will be taken, but the pioneers of the

sport will have an unenviable time.

A good half-day's work was required on the machine before starting

again.

The tire that had been plugged with rubber bands weeks before in

Indiana was now leaking, the air creeping through the fabric and

oozing out at several places. The leak was not bad, just about

enough to require pumping every day.

The extra tire that had been following along was taken out of the

express office and put on. It was a tire that had been punctured

and repaired at the factory. It looked all right, but as it turned

out the repair was poorly made, and it would have been better to

leave on the old tire, inflating it each day.

A small needle-valve was worn so that it leaked; that was

replaced. A stiffer spring was inserted in the intake-valve so it

would not open quite so easily. A number of minor things were

done, and every nut and bolt tried and tightened.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN LEXINGTON AND CONCORD

"THE WAYSIDE INN"

Saturday morning, September 7, at eleven o'clock, we left the

Touraine for Auburndale, where we lunched, then to Waltham, and

from there due north by what is known as Waltham Street to

Lexington, striking Massachusetts Avenue just opposite the town

hall.

Along this historic highway rode Paul Revere; at his heels

followed the regulars of King George. Tablets, stones, and

monuments mark every known point of interest from East Lexington

to Concord.

In Boston, at the head of Hull Street, Christ Church, the oldest

church in the city, still stands, and bears a tablet claiming for

its steeple the credit of the signals for Paul Revere; but the Old

North Church in North Square, near which Revere lived and where he

attended service, and from the belfry of which the lanterns were

really hung, disappeared in the conflict it initiated. In the

winter of the siege of Boston the old meeting-house was pulled

down by the British soldiers and used for firewood. Fit ending of

the ancient edifice which had stood for almost exactly one hundred

years, and in which the three Mathers, Increase, Cotton, and

Samuel,--father, son, and grandson,--had preached the unctuous

doctrine of hell-fire and damnation; teaching so incendiary was

bound sooner or later to consume its own habitation.

Revere was not the only messenger of warning. For days the

patriots had been anxious concerning the stores of arms and

ammunition at Concord, and three days before the night of the 18th

Revere himself had warned Hancock and Adams at the Clarke home in

Lexington that plans were on foot in the enemies' camp to destroy

the stores, whereupon a portion was removed to Sudbury and Groton.

Before Revere started on his ride, other messengers had been

despatched to alarm the country, but at ten o'clock on the

memorable night of the 18th he was sent for and bidden to get

ready. He got his riding-boots and surtout from his house in North

Square, was ferried across the river, landing on the Charlestown

side about eleven o'clock, where he was told the signal-lights had

already been displayed in the belfry. The moon was rising as he

put spurs to his horse and started for Lexington.

The troops were ahead of him by an hour.

He rode up what is now Main Street as far as the "Neck," then took

the old Cambridge road for Somerville.

To escape two British officers who barred his way, he dashed

across lots to the main road again and took what is now Broadway.

On he went over the hill to Medford, where he aroused the Medford

minute-men. Then through West Medford and over the Mystic Bridge

to Menotomy,--now Arlington,--where he struck the highway,--now

Massachusetts Avenue,--to Lexington. Galloping up to the old

Clarke house where Hancock and Adams were sleeping, the patriot on

guard cautioned him not to make so much noise.

"Noise! you'll have enough of it here before long. The Regulars

are coming."

Awakened by the voice, Hancock put his head out of the window and

said,--

"Come in, Revere; we're not afraid of you."

Soon the old house was alight. Revere entered the "living room" by

the side door and delivered his message to the startled occupants.

Soon they were joined by Dawes, another messenger by another road.

After refreshing themselves, Revere and Dawes set off for Concord.

On the road Samuel Prescott joined them. When about half-way, four

British officers, mounted and fully armed, stopped them. Prescott

jumped over the low stone wall, made his escape and alarmed

Concord. Dawes was chased by two of the officers until, with rare

shrewdness, he dashed up in front of a deserted farm-house and

shouted, "Hello, boys! I've got two of them," frightening off his

pursuers.

Revere was captured. Without fear or humiliation he told his name

and his mission. Frightened by the sound of firing at Lexington,

the officers released their prisoner, and he made his way back to

Hancock and Adams and accompanied them to what is now the town of

Burlington. Hastening back to Lexington for a trunk containing

valuable papers, he was present at the battle,--the fulfillment of

his warning, the red afterglow of the lights from the belfry of

Old North Church.

He lived for forty-odd years to tell the story of his midnight

ride, and now he sleeps with Hancock and Adams, the parents of

Franklin, Peter Faneuil, and a host of worthy men in the

"Granary."

The good people of Massachusetts have done what they could to

commemorate the events and obliterate the localities of those

great days; they have erected monuments and put up tablets in

great numbers; but while marking the spots where events occurred,

they have changed the old names of roads and places until

contemporary accounts require a glossary for interpretation.

Who would recognize classic Menotomy in the tinsel ring of

Arlington? The good old Indian name, the very speaking of which is

a pleasure, has given place to the first-class apartments,

--steam-heated, electric-lights, hot and cold water, all improvements

--in appellations of Arlington and Arlington Heights. A tablet marks

the spot where on April 19 "the old men of Menotomy" captured a

convoy of British soldiers. Poor old men, once the boast and glory

of the place that knew you; but now the passing traveller

curiously reads the inscription and wonders "Why were they called

the old men 'of Menotomy'?" for there is now no such place.

Massachusetts Avenue--Massachusetts Avenue! there's a name, a

great, big, luscious name, a name that savors of brown stone

fronts and plush rockers: a name which goes well with the

commercial prosperity of Boston. Massachusetts Avenue extends from

Dorchester in Boston to Lexington Green; it has absorbed the old

Cambridge and the old Lexington roads; the old Long Bridge lives

in history, but, rechristened Brighton Bridge, the reader fails to

identify it.

Concord remains and Lexington remains, simply because no real

estate boom has yet reached them but Bunker Hill, there is a

feeling that apartments would rent better if the musty

associations of the spot were obliterated by some such name as

"Buckingham Heights," or "Commonwealth Crest;" "The Acropolis" has

been prayerfully considered by the freemen of the modern Athens;--

whatever the decision may be, certain it is the name Bunker Hill

is a heavy load for choice corners in the vicinity.

There are a few old names still left in Massachusetts,--

Jingleberry Hill and Chillyshally** Brook sound as if they once

meant something; Spot Pond, named by Governor Winthrop, has not

lost its birthright; Powder-Horn Hill records its purchase from

the Indians for a hornful of powder--probably damp; Drinkwater

River is a good name,--Strong Water Brook by many is considered

better. It is well to record these names before they are effaced

by the commercialism rampant in the suburbs of Boston.

At the Town Hall in Lexington we turned to the right for East

Lexington, and made straight for Follen Church, and the home of

Dr. Follen close by, where Emerson preached in 1836 and 1837.

The church was not built until 1839. In January, 1840, the

congregation had assembled in their new edifice for the dedication

services. They waited for their pastor, who was expected home from

a visit to New York, but the Long Island Sound steamer--Lexington,

by strange coincidence it was called--had burned and Dr. Follen

was among the lost. His home is now the East Lexington Branch of

the Public Library.

We climbed the stairs that led to the small upper room where

Emerson filled his last regular charge. Small as was the room, it

probably more than sufficed for the few people who were

sufficiently advanced for his notions of a preacher's mission. He

did not believe in the rites the church clung to as indispensable;

he did not believe in the use of bread and wine in the Lord's

Supper; he did not believe in prayers from the pulpit unless the

preacher felt impelled to pray; he did not believe in ritualism or

formalism of any kind,--in short, he did not believe in a church,

for a church, however broad and liberal, is, after all, an

institution, and no one man, however great, can support an

institution. A very great soul--and Emerson was a great soul--may

carry a following through life and long after death, but that

following is not a church, not an institution, not a living

organized body, until forms, conventions, and traditions make it

so; its vitalizing element may be the soul of its founder, but the

framework of the structure, the skeleton, is made up of the more

or less rigid conventions which are the results of natural and

logical selection.

The ritual of Rome, the service of England, the dry formalism of

Calvinism, the slender structure of Unitarianism were all equally

repugnant to Emerson; he could not stretch himself in their

fetters; he was not at ease in any priestly garment. Born a

prophet, he could not become a priest. By nature a teacher and

preacher, he never could submit to those restrictions which go so

far to make preaching effective. He taught the lesson of the ages,

but he mistook it for his own. He belonged to humanity, but he

detached himself. He was a leader, but would acknowledge no

discipline. Men cried out to him, but he wandered apart. He was an

intellectual anarchist of rare and lovely type; few sweeter souls

ever lived, but he defied order.

Not that Emerson would have been any better if he had submitted to

the discipline of some church; he did what he felt impelled to do,

and left the world a precious legacy of ideas, of brilliant,

beautiful thoughts; but thoughts which are brilliant and beautiful

as the stars are, scattered jewels against the background of night

with no visible connection. Is it not possible that the gracious

discipline of an environment more conventional might have reduced

these thoughts to some sort of order, brought the stars into

constellations, and left suggestions for the ordering of life that

would be of greater force and more permanent value?

His wife relates that one day he was reading an old sermon in the

little room in the Follen mansion, when he stopped, and said,

"The passage which I have just read I do not believe, but it was

wrongly placed."

The circumstance illustrates the openness and frankness of his

mind, but it is also a commentary on the want of system in his

intellectual processes. His habit through life was to jot down

thoughts as they came to him; he kept note-books and journals all

his life; he dreamed in the pine woods by day and walked beneath

the stars by night; he sat by the still waters and wandered in the

green fields; and the dreams and the visions and the fancies of

the moment he faithfully recorded. These disjointed musings and

disconnected thoughts formed the raw material of all he ever said

and wrote. From the accumulated stores of years he would draw

whatever was necessary to meet the needs of the hour; and it did

not matter to him if thought did not dovetail into thought with

all the precision of good intellectual carpentry. His edifices

were filled with chinks and unfinished apartments.

He saw things in a big way, but did not always see them as through

crystal, clearly; nor did he always take his staff in hand and

courageously go about to see all sides of things. He never thought

to a finish. His philosophy never acquired form and substance. His

thoughts are not linked in chain, but are just so many precious

pearls lightly strung on a silken thread.

In 1852 he wrote in his journal, "I waked last night and bemoaned

myself because I had not thrown myself into this deplorable

question of slavery, which seems to want nothing so much as a few

assured voices. But then in hours of sanity I recover myself, and

say, 'God must govern his own world, and knows his way out of this

pit without my desertion of my post, which has none to guard it

but me. I have quite other slaves to free than those negroes, to

wit, imprisoned spirits, imprisoned thoughts, far back in the

brain of man, far retired in the heaven of invention, and which,

important to the republic of man, have no watchman or lover or

defender but me,'" thereby naively leaving to God the lesser task.

But he wrongs himself in his own journal, for he did bestir

himself and he did speak, and he did not leave the black men to

God while he looked after the white; he helped God all he could in

his own peculiar, irresolute way. At the same time no passage from

the journals throws more light on the pure soul of the great

dreamer. He was opposed to slavery and he felt for the negroes,

but their physical degradation did not appeal to him so much as

the intellectual degradation of those about him. To him it was a

loftier mission to release the minds of men than free their

bodies. With the naive and at the same time superb egoism which is

characteristic of great souls, he consoles himself with the

thought that God can probably take care of the slavery question

without troubling him; he will stick to his post and look after

more important matters.

What a treat it must have been to those assembled in the Follen

house to hear week after week the very noblest considerations and

suggestions concerning life poured forth in tones so musical, so

penetrating, that to-day they ring in the ears of those who had

the great good fortune to hear. There was probably very little

said about death. Emerson never pretended to a vision beyond the

grave. In his essay on "Immortality" he says, "Sixty years ago,

the books read, the services and prayers heard, the habits of

thought of religious persons, were all directed on death. All were

under the shadow of Calvinism and of the Roman Catholic purgatory,

and death was dreadful. The emphasis of all the good books given

to young people was on death. We were all taught that we were born

to die; and over that, all the terrors that theology could gather

from savage nations were added to increase the gloom, A great

change has occurred. Death is seen as a natural event, and is met

with firmness. A wise man in our time caused to be written on his

tomb, 'Think on Living.' That inscription describes a progress in

opinion. Cease from this antedating of your experience. Sufficient

to to-day are the duties of to-day. Don't waste life in doubts and

fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that

the right performance of the hour's duties will be the best

preparation for the hours or ages that follow it."

Such was the burden of Emerson's message: make the very best of

life; let not the present be palsied by fears for the future. A

healthy, sane message, a loud clear voice in the wilderness of

doubt and fears, the very loudest and clearest voice in matters

spiritual and intellectual which America has yet produced.

It was during the days of his service in East Lexington that he

went to Providence to deliver a course of lectures; while there he

was invited to conduct the services in the Second (Unitarian)

Church. The pastor afterwards said, "He selected from Greenwood's

collection hymns of a purely meditative character, without any

distinctively Christian expression. For the Scripture lesson he

read a fine passage from Ecclesiasticus**, from which he also took

his text. The sermon was precisely like one of his lectures in

style; the prayers, or what took their place, were wholly without

supplication, confession, or praise, but only sweet meditations on

nature, beauty, order, goodness, love. After returning home I

found Emerson with his head bowed on his hands, which were resting

on his knees. He looked up to me and said, 'Now, tell me honestly,

plainly, just what you think of that service.' I replied that

before he was half through I had made up my mind that it was the

last time he should have that pulpit. 'You are right,' he

rejoined, 'and I thank you. On my part, before I was half through,

I felt out of place. The doubt is solved.'"

He dwelt with time and eternity on a footing of familiar equality.

He did not shrink or cringe. His prayers were sweet meditations

and his sermon a lecture. He was the apostle of beauty, goodness,

and truth.

Lexington Road from East Lexington to the Centre is a succession

of historic spots marked by stones and tablets.

The old home of Harrington, the last survivor of the battle of

Lexington, still stands close to the roadside, shaded by a row of

fine big trees. Harrington died in 1854 at the great age of

ninety-eight; he was a fifer-boy in Captain Parker's company. In

the early morning on the day of the fight his mother rapped on his

bedroom door, calling, "Jonathan, Jonathan, get up; the British

are coming, and something must be done." He got up and did his

part with the others. Men still living recall the old man; they

heard the story of that memorable day from the lips of one who

participated therein.

At the corner of Maple Street there is an elm planted in 1740.

On a little knoll at the left is the Monroe Tavern. The square,

two-storied frame structure which remains is the older portion of

the inn as it was in those days. It was the head-quarters of Lord

Percy; and it is said that an inoffensive old man who served the

soldiers with liquor in the small bar-room was killed when he

tried to get away by a rear door. When the soldiers left they

sacked the house, piled up the furniture and set fire to it.

Washington dined in the dining-room in the second story, November

5, 1789. The house was built in 1695, and is still owned by a

direct descendant of the first William Monroe.

Not far from the tavern and on the same side of the street is a

house where a wounded soldier was cared for by a Mrs. Sanderson,

who lived to be one hundred and four years old.

Near the intersection of Woburn Street is a crude stone cannon

which marks the place where Lord Percy planted a field pine

pointing in the direction of the Green to check the advancing

patriots and cover the retreat of the Regulars.

On the triangular "Common," in the very heart of the village, a

flat-faced boulder marks the line where the minute-men under

Captain Parker were formed to receive the Regulars. "Stand your

ground; don't fire unless fired upon; but if they mean to have a

war, let it begin here" was Parker's command to his men and it was

there the war did begin. The small band of patriots were not yet

in line when the red-coats appeared at the east end of the

meeting-house, coming on the double-quick. Riding ahead, a British

officer called out, "Disperse, you rebels! Villains, disperse!"

but the little band of rebels stood their ground until a fatal

volley killed eight and wounded ten. Only two of the British were

wounded.

The victors remained in possession of the Green, fired a volley,

and gave three loud cheers to celebrate a victory that in the end

was to cost King George his fairest colonies.

The soldiers' monument that stands on the Green was erected in

1799. In 1835, in the presence of Daniel Webster, Joseph Story,

Josiah Quincy, and a vast audience, Edward Everett delivered an

oration, and the bodies of those who fell in the battle were

removed from the old cemetery to a vault in the rear of the shaft,

where they now rest. The weather-beaten stone is over-grown with a

protecting mantle of ivy, which threatens to drop like a veil over

the long inscription. Here, for more than a century, the village

has received distinguished visitors,--Lafayette in 1824, Kossuth

in 1851, and famous men of later days.

The Buckman Tavern, where the patriots assembled, built in 1690,

still stands with its marks of bullets and flood of old

associations.

These ancient hostelries--Monroe's, Buckman's, Wright's in

Concord, and the Wayside Inn--are by no means the least

interesting features of this historic section. An old tavern is as

pathetic as an old hat: it is redolent of former owners and

guests, each room reeks with confused personalities, every latch

is electric from many hands, every wall echoes a thousand voices;

at dusk of day the clink of glasses and the resounding toast may

still be heard in the deserted banquet-hall; at night a ghostly

light illumines the vacant ballroom, and the rustle of silks and

satins, the sound of merry laughter, and the faint far-off strains

of music fall upon the ear.

We did not visit the Clarke house where Paul Revere roused Adams

and Hancock; we saw it from the road. Originally, and until 1896,

the house stood on the opposite side of the street; the owner was

about to demolish it to subdivide the land, when the Historical

Society intervened and purchased it.

Neither did we enter the old burying-ground on Elm Street. The

automobile is no respecter of persons or places; it pants with

impatience if brought to a stand for so much as a moment before a

house or monument of interest, and somehow the throbbing, puffing,

impatient machine gets the upper hand of those who are supposed to

control it; we are hastened onward in spite of our better

inclinations.

The trolley line from Lexington to Concord is by way of Bedford,

but the direct road over the hill is the one the British followed.

It is nine miles by Bedford and the Old Bedford Road, and but six

miles direct.

A short distance out of Lexington a tablet marks an old well; the

inscription reads, "At this well, April 19, 1775, James Hayward,

of Acton, met a British soldier, who, raising his gun, said, 'You

are a dead man.' 'And so are you,' replied Hayward. Both fired.

The soldier was instantly killed and Hayward mortally wounded."

Grim meeting of two thirsty souls; they sought water and found

blood; they wooed life and won death. War is epitomized in the

exclamations, "You are a dead man," "And so are you." Further

debate would end the strife; the one query, "Why?" would bring

each musket to a rest. Poor unknown Britisher, exiled from home,

what did he know about the merits of the controversy? What did he

care? It was his business to shoot, and be shot. He fulfilled most

completely in the same moment the double mission of the soldier,

to kill and be killed. Those who do the fighting never do know

very much about what they are fighting for,--if they did, most of

them would not fight at all. In these days of common schools and

newspapers it becomes ever more and more difficult to recruit

armies with men who neither know nor think; the common soldier is

beginning to have opinions; by and by he will not fight unless

convinced he is right,--then there will be fewer wars.

Over the road we were following the British marched in order and

retreated in disorder. The undisciplined minute-men were not very

good at standing up in an open square and awaiting the onslaught

of a company of regulars,--it takes regulars to meet regulars out

in the open; but behind trees and fences, from breast-works and

scattered points of advantage, each minute-man was a whole army in

himself, and the regulars had a hard time of it on their retreat,

--the trees and stones which a few hours before had been just trees

and stones, became miniature fortresses.

The old vineyard, where in 1855 Ephraim Bull produced the now well

known Concord grape by using the native wild grape in a cross with

a cultivated variety, is at the outskirts of Concord.

A little farther on is "The Wayside," so named by Hawthorne, who

purchased the place from Alcott in 1852, lived there until his

appointment as Consul at Liverpool in 1853, and again on his

return from England in 1860, until he died in 1864. But "The

Wayside" was not Hawthorne's first Concord home. He came there

with his bride in 1842 and lived four years in the Old Manse.

There has never been written but one adequate description of this

venerable dwelling, and that by Hawthorne himself in "Mosses from

an Old Manse." To most readers the description seems part and

parcel of the fanciful tales that follow; no more real than the

"House of the Seven Gables." We of the outside world who know our

Concord only by hearsay cannot realize that "The Wayside" and the

"Old Manse" and "Sleepy Hollow" are verities,--verities which the

plodding language of prose tails to compass, unless the pen is

wielded by a master hand.

Cut in a window-pane of one of the rooms were left these

inscriptions: "Nat'l Hawthorne. This is his study, 1843."

"Inscribed by my husband at sunset, April 3d, 1843, in the gold

light, S. A. H. Man's accidents are God's purposes. Sophia A.

Hawthorne, 1843."

Dear, devoted bride, after more than fifty years your bright,

loving letters have come to light, and through your clear vision

we catch unobstructed glimpses of men and things of those days.

After years of devotion to your husband and his memory it was your

lot to die and be buried in a foreign land, while he lies lonely

in "Sleepy Hollow."

When the honeymoon was still a silver crescent in the sky she

wrote a friend, "I hoped I should see you again before I came home

to our paradise. I intended to give you a concise history of my

elysian life. Soon after we returned my dear lord began to write

in earnest, and then commenced my leisure, because, till we meet

at dinner, I do not see him. We were interrupted by no one, except

a short call now and then from Elizabeth Hoar, who can hardly be

called an earthly inhabitant; and Mr. Emerson, whose face pictured

the promised land (which we were then enjoying), and intruded no

more than a sunset or a rich warble from a bird.

"One evening, two days after our arrival at the Old Manse, George

Hilliard and Henry Cleveland appeared for fifteen minutes on their

way to Niagara Falls, and were thrown into raptures by the

embowering flowers and the dear old house they adorned, and the

pictures of Holy Mothers mild on the walls, and Mr. Hawthorne's

study, and the noble avenue. We forgive them for their appearance

here, because they were gone as soon as they had come, and we felt

very hospitable. We wandered down to our sweet, sleepy river, and

it was so silent all around us and so solitary, that we seemed the

only persons living. We sat beneath our stately trees, and felt as

if we were the rightful inheritors of the old abbey, which had

descended to us from a long line. The tree-tops waved a majestic

welcome, and rustled their thousand leaves like brooks over our

heads. But the bloom and fragrance of nature had become secondary

to us, though we were lovers of it. In my husband's face and eyes

I saw a fairer world, of which the other was a faint copy."

Nearly two weeks later she continues in the same letter, "Sweet,

dear Mary, nearly a fortnight has passed since I wrote the above.

I really believe I will finish my letter to-day, though I do not

promise. That magician upstairs is very potent! In the afternoon

and evening I sit in the study with him. It is the pleasantest

niche in our temple. We watch the sun, together, descending in

purple and gold, in every variety of magnificence, over the river.

Lately, we go on the river, which is now frozen; my lord to skate,

and I to run and slide, during the dolphin death of day. I

consider my husband a rare sight, gliding over the icy stream.

For, wrapped in his cloak, he looks very graceful; impetuously

darting from me in long, sweeping curves, and returning again--

again to shoot away. Our meadow at the bottom of the orchard is

like a small frozen sea now; and that is the present scene of our

heroic games. Sometimes, in the splendor of the dying light, we

seem sporting upon transparent gold, so prismatic becomes the ice;

and the snow takes opaline hues from the gems that float above as

clouds. It is eminently the hour to see objects, just after the

sun has disappeared. Oh, such oxygen as we inhale! After other

skaters appear,--young men and boys,--who principally interest me

as foils to my husband, who, in the presence of nature, loses all

shyness and moves regally like a king. One afternoon Mr. Emerson

and Mr. Thoreau went with him down the river. Henry Thoreau is an

experienced skater, and was figuring dithyrambic dances and

Bacchic leaps on the ice,--very remarkable, but very ugly

methought. Next him followed Mr. Hawthorne, who, wrapped in his

cloak, moved like a self-impelled Greek statue, stately and grave.

Mr. Emerson closed the line, evidently too weary to hold himself

erect, pitching headforemost, half lying on the air. He came in to

rest himself, and said to me that Hawthorne was a tiger, a bear, a

lion,--in short, a satyr, and there was no tiring him out; and he

might be the death of a man like himself. And then, turning upon

me that kindling smile for which he is so memorable, he added,

'Mr. Hawthorne is such an Ajax, who can cope with him!'"

Of all the pages, ay, of all the books, that have been printed

concerning Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau, there is not one which

more vividly and accurately set the men before us and describe

their essential characteristics than the casual lines of this old

letter:--Thoreau, the devotee of nature, "figuring dithyrambic

dances and Bacchic leaps on the ice," joyous in the presence of

his god; the mystic Hawthorne, wrapped in his sombre cloak, "moved

like a self-impelled Greek statue, stately and grave,"--with magic

force these words throw upon the screen of the imagination the

figure of the creator of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale;

while Emerson is drawn with the inspiration of a poet, "evidently

too weary to hold himself erect, pitching headforemost, half lying

on the air;" "half lying on the air,"--the phrase rings in the

ear, lingers in the memory, attaches itself to Emerson, and fits

like a garment of soft and yielding texture.

The letter concludes as follows: "After the first snow-storm,

before it was so deep, we walked in the woods, very beautiful in

winter, and found slides in Sleepy Hollow, where we became

children, and enjoyed ourselves as of old,--only more, a great

deal. Sometimes it is before breakfast that Mr. Hawthorne goes to

skate upon the meadow. Yesterday, before he went out, he said it

was very cloudy and gloomy, and he thought it would storm. In half

an hour, oh, wonder! what a scene! Instead of a black sky, the

rising sun, not yet above the hill, had changed the firmament into

a vast rose! On every side, east, west, north, and south, every

point blushed roses. I ran to the study and the meadow sea also

was a rose, the reflection of that above. And there was my

husband, careering about, glorified by the light. Such is

Paradise.

"In the evening we are gathered together beneath our luminous star

in the study, for we have a large hanging astral lamp, which

beautifully illumines the room, with its walls of pale yellow

paper, its Holy Mother over the fireplace, and pleasant books, and

its pretty bronze vase on one of the secretaries, filled with

ferns. Except once, Mr. Emerson, no one hunts us out in the

evening. Then Mr. Hawthorne reads to me. At present we can only

get along with the old English writers, and we find that they are

the hive from which all modern honey is stolen. They are thick-set

with thought, instead of one thought serving for a whole book.

Shakespeare is pre-eminent; Spencer is music. We dare to dislike

Milton when he goes to heaven. We do not recognize God in his

picture of Him. There is something so penetrating and clear in Mr.

Hawthorne's intellect, that now I am acquainted with it, merely

thinking of him as I read winnows the chaff from the wheat at

once. And when he reads to me, it is the acutest criticism. Such a

voice, too,--such sweet thunder! Whatever is not worth much shows

sadly, coming through such a medium, fit only for noblest ideas.

From reading his books you can have some idea of what it is to

dwell with Mr. Hawthorne. But only a shadow of him is found in his

books. The half is not told there."

Just a letter, the outpouring of a loving young heart, written

with no thought of print and strange eye, slumbering for more than

fifty years to come to light at last;--just one of many, all of

them well worth reading.

The three great men of Concord were happy in their wives. Mrs.

Hawthorne and Mrs. Alcott were not only great wives and mothers,

but they could express their prayers, meditations, fancies, and

emotions in clear and exquisite English.

It was after the prosperous days of the Liverpool Consulate that

Hawthorne returned to Concord to spend the remainder of his all

too short life.

He made many changes in "The Wayside" and surrounding grounds. He

enlarged the house and added the striking but quite unpicturesque

tower which rises from the centre of the main part; here he had

his study and point of observation; he could see the unwelcome

visitor while yet a far way off, or contemplate the lazy travel of

a summer's day.

Just beyond is "Orchard House," into which the Alcotts moved in

October, 1858.

A philosopher may not be a good neighbor, and Alcott lived just a

little too near Hawthorne. "It was never so well understood at

'The Wayside' that its owner had retiring habits as when Alcott

was reported to be approaching along Larch Path, which stretched

in feathery bowers between our house and his. Yet I was not aware

that the seer failed at any hour to gain admittance,--one cause,

perhaps, of the awe in which his visits were held. I remember that

my observation was attracted to him curiously from the fact that

my mother's eyes changed to a darker gray at his advents, as they

did only when she was silently sacrificing herself. I clearly

understood that Mr. Alcott was admirable, but he sometimes brought

manuscript poetry with him, the dear child of his own Muse. There

was one particularly long poem which he had read aloud to my

mother and father; a seemingly harmless thing, from which they

never recovered."

The appreciation the great men of Concord had of one another is

interesting to the outside world. Great souls are seldom

congenial,--popular impression to the contrary notwithstanding.

Minds of a feather flock together; but minds of gold are apt to

remain apart, each sufficient unto itself. It is in sports,

pastimes, business, politics, that men congregate with facility;

in literary and intellectual pursuits the leaders are

anti-pathetic in proportion to their true greatness. Now and then

two, and more rarely three, are united by bonds of quick

understanding and sympathy, but men of profound convictions attract

followers and repel companions.

Emerson's was the most catholic spirit; he understood his

neighbors better than they understood one another; his vision was

very clear. For a man who mingled so little with the world, who

spent so much of his life in contemplation--in communing with his

inner self--Emerson was very sane indeed; his idiosyncrasies did

not prevent his judging men and things quite correctly.

Hawthorne and Emerson saw comparatively little of each other;

these two great souls respected the independence of each other too

much to intrude. "Mr. Hawthorne once broke through his hermit

usage, and honored Miss Ellen Emerson, the friend of his daughter

Una, with a formal call on a Sunday evening. It was the only time,

I think, that he ever came to the house except when persuaded to

come in for a few moments on the rare occasions when he walked

with my father. On this occasion he did not ask for either Mr. or

Mrs. Emerson, but announced that his call was upon Miss Ellen.

Unfortunately, she had gone to bed, but he remained for a time

talking with my sister Edith and me, the school-mates of his

children. To cover his shyness he took up a stereoscope on the

centre-table and began to look at the pictures. After looking at

them for a time he asked where those views were taken. We told him

they were pictures of the Concord Court and Town Houses, the

Common and the Mill-dam; on hearing which he expressed some

surprise and interest, but evidently was as unfamiliar with the

centre of the village where he had lived for years as a deer or a

wood-thrush would be. He walked through it often on his way to the

cars, but was too shy or too rapt to know what was there."

Emerson liked Hawthorne better than his books,--the latter were

too weird, uncanny, and inconclusive. In 1838 he noted in his

journal, "Elizabeth Peabody brought me yesterday Hawthorne's

'Footprints on the Seashore' to read. I complained there was no

inside to it. Alcott and he together would make a man."

Later, when Hawthorne came to live in Concord, Emerson did his

best to get better acquainted; but it was of little use; they had

too little in common. Both men were great walkers, and yet they

seldom walked together. They went to Harvard to see the Shakers,

and Emerson recorded it as a "satisfactory tramp; we had good talk

on the way."

After Hawthorne's death, Emerson made the following entry in his

journal: "I thought him a greater man than any of his works

betray; there was still a great deal of work in him, and he might

one day show a purer power. It would have been a happiness,

doubtless, to both of us, to come into habits of unreserved

intercourse. It was easy to talk with him; there were no barriers;

only he said so little that I talked too much, and stopped only

because, as he gave no indication, I feared to exceed. He showed

no egotism or self-assertion; rather a humility, and at one time a

fear that he had written himself out. I do not think any of his

books worthy his genius. I admired the man, who was simple,

amiable, truth-loving, and frank in conversation, but I never read

his books with pleasure; they are too young."

Emerson was greedy for ideas, and the pure, limpid literature of

Hawthorne did not satisfy him.

Hawthorne's estimate of Emerson was far more just and penetrating;

he described him very correctly as "a great original thinker"

whose "mind acted upon other minds of a certain constitution with

wonderful magnetism, and drew many men upon long pilgrimages to

speak with him face to face. Young visionaries--to whom just so

much of insight had been imparted as to make life all a labyrinth

around them--came to seek the clew that should guide them out of

their self-involved bewilderment. Gray-headed theorists--whose

systems, at first air, had finally imprisoned them in an iron

framework--travelled painfully to his door, not to ask

deliverance, but to invite the free spirit into their own

thraldom. People that had lighted on a new thought, or a thought

that they fancied new, came to Emerson, as the finder of a

glittering gem hastens to a lapidary to ascertain its quality and

value. Uncertain, troubled, earnest wanderers through the midnight

of the moral world beheld his intellectual face as a beacon

burning on a hill-top, and, climbing the difficult ascent, looked

forth into the surrounding obscurity more hopefully than hitherto.

For myself, there had been epochs in my life when I, too, might

have asked of this prophet the master word that should solve me

the riddle of the universe, but, now, being happy, I feel as if

there were no question to be put, and therefore admired Emerson as

a poet of deep and austere beauty, but sought nothing from him as

a philosopher. It was good nevertheless to meet him in the

wood-paths, or sometimes in our avenue, with that pure, intellectual

gleam diffused about his presence like the garment of a shining

one; and he, so quiet, so simple, so without pretension,

encountering each man alive as if expecting to receive more than

he could impart."

It was fortunate for Hawthorne, doubly fortunate for us who read

him, that he could withstand the influence of Emerson, and go on

writing in his own way; his dreams and fancies were undisturbed by

the clear vision which sought so earnestly to distract him from

his realm of the imagination.

On first impressions Emerson rated Alcott very high. "He has more

of the godlike than any man I have ever seen, and his presence

rebukes, and threatens, and raises. He is a teacher." "Yesterday

Alcott left us after a three days' visit. The most extraordinary

man, and the highest genius of his time." This was in 1835. Seven

years later Emerson records this impression. "He looks at

everything in larger angles than any other, and, by good right,

should be the greatest man. But here comes in another trait; it is

found, though his angles are of so generous contents, the lines do

not meet; the apex is not quite defined. We must allow for the

refraction of the lens, but it is the best instrument I have ever

met with."

Alcott visited Concord first in October, 1835, and found that he

and Emerson had many things in common, but he entered in his

diary, "Mr. Emerson's fine literary taste is sometimes in the way

of a clear and hearty acceptance of the spiritual." Again, he

naively congratulates himself that he has found a man who could

appreciate his theories. "Emerson sees me, knows me, and, more

than all others, helps me,--not by noisy praise, not by low

appeals to interest and passion, but by turning the eye of others

to my stand in reason and the nature of things. Only men of like

vision can apprehend and counsel each other."

With the exception of Hawthorne, there was among the men of

Concord a tendency to over-estimate one another. For the most

part, they took themselves and each other very seriously; even

Emerson's subtle sense of humor did not save him from yielding to

this tendency, which is illustrated in the following page from

Hawthorne's journal:

"About nine o'clock (Sunday) Hilliard and I set out on a walk to

Walden Pond, calling by the way at Mr. Emerson's to obtain his

guidance or directions. He, from a scruple of his eternal

conscience, detained us until after the people had got into

church, and then he accompanied us in his own illustrious person.

We turned aside a little from our way to visit Mr. Hosmer, a

yeoman, of whose homely and self-acquired wisdom Mr. Emerson has a

very high opinion." "He had a fine flow of talk, and not much

diffidence about his own opinions. I was not impressed with any

remarkable originality in his views, but they were sensible and

characteristic. Methought, however, the good yeoman was not quite

so natural as he may have been at an earlier period. The

simplicity of his character has probably suffered by his detecting

the impression he makes on those around him. There is a circle, I

suppose, who look up to him as an oracle, and so he inevitably

assumes the oracular manner, and speaks as if truth and wisdom

were attiring themselves by his voice. Mr. Emerson has risked the

doing him much mischief by putting him in print,--a trial few

persons can sustain without losing their unconsciousness. But,

after all, a man gifted with thought and expression, whatever his

rank in life and his mode of uttering himself, whether by pen or

tongue, cannot be expected to go through the world without finding

himself out; and, as all such discoveries are partial and

imperfect, they do more harm than good to the character. Mr.

Hosmer is more natural than ninety-nine men out of a hundred, and

is certainly a man of intellectual and moral substance. It would

be amusing to draw a parallel between him and his admirer,--Mr.

Emerson, the mystic, stretching his hand out of cloudland in vain

search for something real; and the man of sturdy sense, all whose

ideas seem to be dug out of his mind, hard and substantial, as he

digs his potatoes, carrots, beets, and turnips out of the earth.

Mr. Emerson is a great searcher for facts, but they seem to melt

away and become unsubstantial in his grasp."

They took that extraordinary creature, Margaret Fuller, seriously,

and they took a vast deal of poor poetry seriously. Because a few

could write, nearly every one in the village seemed to think he or

she could write, and write they did to the extent of a small

library most religiously shelved and worshipped in its own

compartment in the town library.

Genius is egotism; the superb confidence of these men, each in the

sanctity of his own mission, in the plenitude of his own powers,

in the inspiration of his own message, made them what they were.

The last word was Alcott's because he outlived them all, and his

last word was that, great as were those who had taken their

departure, the greatest of them all had fallen just short of

appreciating him, the survivor. A man penetrates every one's

disguise but his own; we deceive no one but ourselves. The insane

are often singularly quick to penetrate the delusions of others;

the man who calls himself George Washington ridicules the claim of

another that he is Julius Caesar.

Between Hawthorne and Thoreau there was little in common. In 1860,

the latter speaks of meeting Hawthorne shortly after his return

from Europe, and says, "He is as simple and childlike as ever."

Of Thoreau, Mrs. Hawthorne wrote in a letter, "This evening Mr.

Thoreau is going to lecture, and will stay with us. His lecture

before was so enchanting; such a revelation of nature in all its

exquisite details of wood-thrushes, squirrels, sunshine, mists and

shadows, fresh vernal odors, pine-tree ocean melodies, that my ear

rang with music, and I seemed to have been wandering through copse

and dingle! Mr. Thoreau has risen above all his arrogance of

manner, and is as gentle, simple, ruddy, and meek as all geniuses

should be; and now his great blue eyes fairly outshine and put

into shade a nose which I thought must make him uncomely forever."

In his own journal Hawthorne said, "Mr. Thoreau dined with us. He

is a singular character,--a young man with much of wild, original

nature still remaining in him; and so far as he is sophisticated,

it is in a way and method of his own. He is as ugly as sin,

long-nosed, queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and somewhat rustic,

though courteous, manners, corresponding very well with such an

exterior. But his ugliness is of an honest and agreeable fashion,

and becomes him much better than beauty."

Alcott helped build the hut at Walden, and he and Emerson spent

many an evening there in conversation that must have delighted the

gods--in so far as they understood it.

Of Alcott and their winter evenings, Thoreau has said, "One of the

last of the philosophers. Connecticut gave him to the world,--he

peddled first his wares, afterwards, as he declares, his brains;

these he peddles still, prompting God and disgracing man, bearing

for fruit his brain only, like the nut in the kernel. His words

and attitude always suppose a better state of things than other

men are acquainted with, and he will be the last man to be

disappointed as the ages revolve. A true friend of man, almost

the only friend of human progress. He is perhaps the sanest man

and has the fewest crotchets of any I chance to know,--the same

yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. Ah, such discourse as we had,

hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I have spoken of,--we

three; it expanded and racked my little home;"--to say nothing of

the universe, which doubtless felt the strain.

Referring to the same evening, Alcott said,--probably after a

chastening discussion,--"If I were to proffer my earnest prayer to

the gods for the greatest of all human privileges, it should be

for the gift of a severely candid friend. Intercourse of this kind

I have found possible with my friends Emerson and Thoreau; and the

evenings passed in their society during these winter months have

realized my conception of what friendship, when great and genuine,

owes to and takes from its objects."

Nearly twenty years after Thoreau's death, Alcott, while walking

towards the close of day, said, "I always think of Thoreau when I

look at a sunset."

Emerson was fourteen years older than Thoreau, but between the two

men there existed through life profound sympathy and affection.

Emerson watched him develop as a young man, and delivered the

address at his funeral; for two years they lived in the same

house, and concerning him Emerson wrote in 1863, a year after his

death, "In reading Henry Thoreau's journal, I am very sensible of

the vigor of his constitution. That oaken strength which I noted

whenever he walked or worked, or surveyed wood-lots, the same

unhesitating hand with which a field laborer accosts a piece of

work which I should shun as a waste of strength, Henry shows in

his literary task. He has muscle, and ventures in and performs

feats which I am forced to decline. In reading him I find the same

thoughts, the same spirit that is in me, but he takes a step

beyond and illustrates by excellent images that which I should

have conveyed in a sleepy generalization. 'Tis as if I went into a

gymnasium and saw youths leap and climb and swing with a force

unapproachable, tho these feats are only continuations of my

initial grapplings and jumps." One is reminded of Mrs. Hawthorne's

vivid characterization of the two men as she saw them on the ice

of the Musketaquid twenty years before.

In our reverence for a place where a great man for a time has had

his home, we must not forget that, while death may mark a given

spot, life is quite another matter. A man may be born or may die

in a country, a city, a village, a house, a room, or,--narrower

still,--a bed; for birth and death are physical events, but life

is something quite different. Birth is the welding of the soul to

a given body; death is the dissolution of that connection; life is

the relation of the imprisoned soul to its environment, and the

content of that environment depends largely upon the individual;

it may be as narrow as the village in which he lives, or it may

stretch beyond the uttermost stars. A man may live on a farm, or

he may visit the cities of the earth,--it does not matter much;

his life is the sum total of his experiences, his sympathies, his

loves, of his hopes and ambitions, his dreams and aspirations, his

beliefs and convictions.

To live is to love, and to think, and to dream, and to believe,

and to act as one loves and thinks and dreams and believes, that

is life; and, therefore, no man's life is bounded by physical

confines, no man lives in this place or that, in this house or

that; but every man lives in the world he has conquered for

himself, and no one knows the limits of the domains of another.

The farmer's boy who sows the seed and watches the tender blades

part with volcanic force the surface of the earth, making it to

heave and tremble, who sees the buds and flowers of the spring

ripen into the fruit and foliage of autumn, who follows with

sympathetic vision all the mysterious processes of nature, lives a

broader and nobler life than the merchant who sees naught beyond

the four walls of his counting-room, or the traveller whose

superficial eye marks only the strange and the curious.

In the eyes of those about them Hawthorne "lived" a scant mile

from Emerson; in reality they did not live in the same spheres;

the boundaries of their worlds did not overlap, but, like two

far-separate stars, each felt the distant attraction and admired the

glow of the other, and that was all. The real worlds of Thoreau and

Alcott and Emerson did at times so far overlap that they trod on

common ground, but these periods were so brief and the spaces in

common so small that soon they wandered apart, each circling by

himself in an orbit of his own.

Words at best are poor instruments of thought; the more we use

them the more ambiguous do they become; no man knows exactly what

another means from what he says; every word is qualified by its

context, but the context of every word is eternity. How long shall

we listen to find out what a speaker meant by his opening

sentence?--an hour, a day, a week, a month?--these periods are all

too short, for with every added thought the meaning of the first

is changed for him as well as for us.

"Life" in common speech may mean either mere organic existence or

a metaphysical assumption; we speak of the life of a tree, and the

life of a man, and the life of a soul, of the life mortal and the

life immortal. Who can tell what we have in mind when we talk of

life? No one, for we cannot tell ourselves. We speak of life one

moment with a certain matter in mind, possibly the state of our

garden; in the infinitesimal fraction of a second additional cells

of our brain come into activity, additional areas are excited, and

our ideas scale the walls of the garden and scatter over the face

of the earth. If we attempt to explain, the very process implies

the generation of new ideas and the modification of old, so that

long before the explanation of what we meant by the use of a given

word is finished, the meaning has undergone a change, and we

perceive that what we thought we meant by no means included all

that lurked in the mind.

In every-day speech we are obliged to distinguish by elaborate

circumlocution between a man's place of residence and that larger

and truer life,--his sphere of sympathies. Emerson lived in

Concord, Carlyle in Chelsea; to the casual reader these phrases

convey the impression that the life of Emerson was in some way

identified with and bounded by Concord; that the life of Carlyle

was in some way identified with and bounded by Chelsea; that in

some subtle manner the census of those two small communities

affected the philosophy of the two men; whereas we know that for a

long time the worlds in which they really did move and have their

being so far overlapped that they were near neighbors in thought,

much nearer than they would have been if they had "lived" in the

same village and met daily on the same streets.

The directory gives a man's abode, but tells us nothing,

absolutely nothing, about his life; the number of his house does

not indicate where he lives. It is possible to live in London, in

Paris, in Rome without ever having visited any one of those

places; in truth, millions of people really live in Rome in a

truer sense than many who have their abodes there; of the

inhabitants of Paris comparatively few really live there,

comparatively few have any knowledge of the city, its history, its

traditions, its charms, its treasures, but outside Paris there are

thousands of men and women who spend many hours and days and weeks

of their time in reading, learning, and thinking about Paris and

all it contains,--in very truth living there.

Many a worthy preacher lives so exclusively in Jerusalem that he

knows not his own country, and his usefulness is impaired; many an

artist lives so exclusively in Paris that his work suffers; many

an architect lives so long among the buildings of other days that

he can do nothing of his own. In fact, most men who are devoted to

intellectual, literary, and artistic pursuits live anywhere and

everywhere except at home.

The one great merit of Walt Whitman is that he lived in America

and in the nineteenth century; he did not live in the past; he did

not live in Europe; he lived in the present and in the world about

him, his home was America, his era was his own.

If we have no national literature, it is because those who write

spend the better part of their lives abroad; they may not leave

their own firesides, but all their sympathies are elsewhere, all

their inspiration is drawn from other lands and other times.

We have very little art, very little architecture, very little

music of our own for the same reasons. We have any number of

painters, sculptors, composers, but few of them live at home;

their sympathies are elsewhere; they seem to have little or

nothing in common with their surroundings. Now and then a clear,

fresh voice is heard from out of the woods and fields, or over the

city's din, speaking with the convincing eloquence of immediate

knowledge and first-hand observation; but there are so few of

these voices that they do not amount to a chorus, and a national

literature means a chorus.

All this will gradually change until some day the preacher will

return from Jerusalem, the painter from Paris, the poet from

England, the architect from Rome, and the overwhelming problems

presented by the unparalleled development and opportunities of

America will absorb their attention to the exclusion of all else.

The danger of travel, the danger of learning, the danger of

reading, of profound research and extensive observation, lies in

the fact that some age, city, or country, some man or coterie of

men, may gain too firm a hold, may so absorb the attention and

restrict the imagination that the sense of proportion is lost. It

requires a level head to withstand the allurements of the past,

the fascination of the foreign. Nothing disturbed Shakespeare's

equanimity. Neither Stratford nor London bounded his life. On the

wings of his imagination he visited the known earth and penetrated

beyond the blue skies, he made the universe his home; and yet he

was essentially and to the last an Englishman.

When we stopped before "Orchard House" it was desolate and

forsaken, and the entrance to the "Hillside Chapel," where the

"Concord School of Philosophy and Literature" had its home for

nine years, was boarded up.

Parts of the house had been built more than a century and a half

when Mrs. Alcott bought it in 1857. In her journal for July, 1858,

the author of "Little Women" records, "Went into the new house and

began to settle. Father is happy; mother glad to be at rest; Anna

is in bliss with her gentle John; and May busy over her pictures.

I have plans simmering, but must sweep and dust and wash my

dishpans a while longer till I see my way."

Meanwhile the little women paper and decorate the walls, May in

her enthusiasm filling panels and every vacant place with birds

and flowers and mottoes in old English.

"August. Much company to see the new house. All seem to be glad

that the wandering family is anchored at last. We won't move again

for twenty years" (prophetic soul to name the period so exactly)

"if I can help it. The old people need an abiding place, and now

that death and love have taken two of us away, I can, I hope, soon

manage to take care of the remaining four."

It is one of the ironies of fate that the fame of Bronson Alcott

should hang upon that of his gifted daughter. It was not until she

made her great success with "Little Women" in 1868 that the

outside world began to take a vivid interest in the father. From

that time his lectures and conversations began to pay; he was

seized anew with the desire to publish, and from 1868 until the

beginning of his illness in 1882 he printed or reprinted nearly

his entire works,--some eight or ten volumes; it is no

disparagement to the kindly old philosopher that his books were

bought mainly on the success of his daughter's.

The Summer School of Philosophy was the last ambitious attempt of

a spirit that had been struggling for half a century to teach

mankind.

The small chapel of plain, unpainted boards, nestling among the

trees on the hillside, has not been opened since 1888. It stands a

pathetic memento to a vision. Twenty years ago the "school" was an

overshadowing reality,--to-day it is a memory, a minor incident in

the progress of thought, a passing phase in intellectual

development. Many eminent men lectured there, and the scope of the

work is by no means indicated by the humble building which

remains; but, while strong in conversation and in the expression

of his own views, Alcott was not cut out for a leader. All reports

indicate that he had a wonderful facility in the off-hand

expression of abstruse thought, but he had no faculty whatsoever

for so ordering and systematizing his thoughts as to furnish

explosive material for belligerent followers; the intellectual

ammunition he put up was not in the convenient form of cartridges,

nor even in kegs or barrels, but just poured out on the ground,

where it disintegrated before it could be used.

Leaning on the gate that bright, warm, summer afternoon, it was

not difficult to picture the venerable, white-haired philosopher

seated by the doorstep arguing eloquently with some congenial

visitor, or chatting with his daughter. One could almost see a

small throng of serious men and women wending their way up the

still plainly marked path to the chapel, and catch the measured

tones of the lecturer as he expounded theories too recondite for

this practical age and generation.

Philosophy is the sarcophagus of truth; and most systems of

philosophy are like the pyramids,--impressive piles of useless

intellectual masonry, erected at prodigious cost of time and labor

to secrete from mankind the truth.

A little farther on we came to the fork in the road where Lincoln

Street branches off to the southeast. Emerson's house fronts on

Lincoln and is a few rods from the intersection with Lexington

Street. Here Emerson lived from 1835 until his death in 1882.

It is singular the fascination exercised by localities and things

identified with great men. It is not enough to simply see, but in

so far as possible we wish to place ourselves in their places, to

walk where they walked, sit where they sat, sleep where they

slept, to merge our petty and obscure individualities for the time

being in theirs, to lose our insignificant selves in the

atmosphere they created and left behind. Is it possible that

subtile** distillations of personality penetrate and saturate

inanimate things, so that aromas imperceptible to the sense are

given off for ages and affect all who come in receptive mood

within their influence? It is quite likely that what we feel when

we stand within the shadow of a great soul is all subjective, that

our emotions are but the workings of our imaginations stirred by

suggestive surroundings; but who knows, who knows?

When this house was nearly destroyed by fire in July, 1872,

friends persuaded Emerson to go abroad with his daughter, and

while they were away, the house was completely restored.

His son describes his return: "When the train reached Concord, the

bells were rung and a great company of his neighbors and friends

accompanied him, under a triumphal arch, to his restored house. He

was greatly moved, but with characteristic modesty insisted that

this was a welcome to his daughter, and could not be meant for

him. Although he had felt quite unable to make any speech, yet,

seeing his friendly townspeople, old and young, in groups watching

him enter his own door once more, he turned suddenly back and

going to the gate said, 'My friends! I know this is not a tribute

to an old man and his daughter returned to their home, but to the

common blood of us all--one family--in Concord.'"

The exposure incidental to the fire seriously undermined Emerson's

already failing health; shortly after he wrote a friend in

Philadelphia, "It is too ridiculous that a fire should make an old

scholar sick; but the exposures of that morning and the

necessities of the following days which kept me a large part of

the time in the blaze of the sun have in every way demoralized me

for the present,--incapable of any sane or just action. These

signal proofs of my debility an decay ought to persuade you at

your first northern excursion to come and reanimate and renew the

failing powers of your still affectionate old friend."

The story of his last days is told by his son, who was also his

physician:

"His last few years were quiet and happy. Nature gently drew the

veil over his eyes; he went to his study and tried to work,

accomplished less and less, but did not notice it. However, he

made out to look over and index most of his journals. He enjoyed

reading, but found so much difficulty in conversation in

associating the right word with his idea, that he avoided going

into company, and on that account gradually ceased to attend the

meetings of the Social Circle. As his critical sense became

dulled, his standard of intellectual performance was less

exacting, and this was most fortunate, for he gladly went to any

public occasion where he could hear, and nothing would be expected

of him. He attended the Lyceum and all occasions of speaking or

reading in the Town Hall with unfailing pleasure.

"He read a lecture before his townpeople** each winter as late as

1880, but needed to have one of his family near by to help him out

with a word and assist in keeping the place in his manuscript. In

these last years he liked to go to church. The instinct had always

been there, but he had felt that he could use his time to better

purpose."

"In April, 1882, a raw and backward spring, he caught cold, and

increased it by walking out in the rain and, through

forgetfulness, omitting to put on his over-coat. He had a hoarse

cold for a few days, and on the morning of April 19 I found him a

little feverish, so went to see him next day. He was asleep on his

study sofa, and when he awoke he proved to be more feverish and a

little bewildered, with unusual difficulty in finding the right

word. He was entirely comfortable and enjoyed talking, and, as he

liked to have me read to him, I read Paul Revere's Ride, finding

that he could only follow simple narrative. He expressed great

pleasure, was delighted that the story was part of Concord's

story, but was sure he had never heard it before, and could hardly

be made to understand who Longfellow was, though he had attended

his funeral only the week before."

It was at Longfellow's funeral that Emerson got up from his chair,

went to the side of the coffin and gazed long and earnestly upon

the familiar face of the dead poet; twice he did this, then said

to a friend near him, "That gentleman was a sweet, beautiful soul,

but I have entirely forgotten his name."

Continuing the narrative, the son says: "Though dulled to other

impressions, to one he was fresh as long as he could understand

anything, and while even the familiar objects of his study began

to look strange, he smiled and pointed to Carlyle's head and said,

'That is my man, my good man!' I mention this because it has been

said that this friendship cooled, and that my father had for long

years neglected to write to his early friend. He was loyal while

life lasted, but had been unable to write a letter for years

before he died. Their friendship did not need letters.

"The next day pneumonia developed itself in a portion of one lung

and he seemed much sicker; evidently believed he was to die, and

with difficulty made out to give a word or two of instructions to

his children. He did not know how to be sick, and desired to be

dressed and sit up in his study, and as we had found that any

attempt to regulate his actions lately was very annoying to him,

and he could not be made to understand the reasons for our doing

so in his condition, I determined that it would not be worth while

to trouble and restrain him as it would a younger person who had

more to live for. He had lived free; his life was essentially

spent, and in what must almost surely be his last illness we would

not embitter the occasion by any restraint that was not absolutely

unavoidable.

"He suffered very little, took his nourishment well, but had great

annoyance from his inability to find the words which he wished

for. He knew his friends and family, but thought he was in a

strange house. He sat up in a chair by the fire much of the time,

and only on the last day stayed entirely in bed.

"During the sickness he always showed pleasure when his wife sat

by his side, and on one of the last days he managed to express, in

spite of his difficulty with words, how long and happy they had

lived together. The sight of his grandchildren always brought the

brightest smile to his face. On the last day he saw several of his

friends and took leave of them.

"Only at the last came pain, and this was at once relieved by

ether, and in the quiet sleep this produced he gradually faded

away in the evening of Thursday, April 27, 1882.

"Thirty-five years earlier he wrote one morning in his journal: 'I

said, when I awoke, after some more sleepings and wakings I shall

lie on this mattress sick; then dead; and through my gay entry

they will carry these bones. Where shall I be then? I lifted my

head and beheld the spotless orange light of the morning streaming

up from the dark hills into the wide universe.'"

After a few more sleepings and a few more wakings we shall all lie

dead, every living soul on this broad earth,--all who, at this

mathematical point in time called the present, breathe the breath

of life will pass away; but even now the new generation is

springing into life; within the next hour five thousand bodies

will be born into the world to perpetuate mankind; the whole lives

by the constant renewal of its parts; but the individual, what

becomes of the individual?

The five thousand bodies that are born within the hour take the

place of the something less than five thousand bodies that die

within the hour; the succession is preserved; the life of the

aggregate is assured; but the individual, what becomes of the

individual? Is he immortal, and if immortal whence came he and

whither does he go? if immortal, whence come these new souls which

are being delivered on the face of the globe at the rate of nearly

a hundred a minute? Are they from other worlds, exiled for a time

to this, or are they souls revisiting their former habitation?

Hardly the latter, for more are coming than going.

One midsummer night, while leaning over the rail of an ocean

steamer and watching the white foam thrown up by the prow, the

expanse of dark, heaving water, the vast dome of sky studded with

the brilliant jewels of space, an old man stopped by my side and

we talked of the grandeur of nature and the mysteries of life and

death, and he said, "My wife and I once had three boys, whom we

loved better than life; one by one they were taken from us,--they

all died, and my wife and I were left alone in the world; but

after a time a boy was born to us and we gave him the name of the

oldest who died, and then another came and we gave him the name of

my second boy, and then a third was born and we gave him the name

of our youngest;--and so in some mysterious way our three boys

have come back to us; we feel that they went away for a little

while and returned. I have sometimes looked in their eyes and

asked them if anything they saw or heard seemed familiar, whether

there was any faint fleeting memories of other days; they say

'no;' but I am sure that their souls are the souls of the boys we

lost."

And why not? Is it not more than likely that there is but one soul

which dwells in all things animate and inanimate, or rather, are

not all things animate and inanimate but manifestations of the one

soul, so that the death of an individual is, after all, but the

suppression of a particular manifestation and in no sense a

release of a separate soul; so that the birth of a child is but a

new manifestation in physical form of the one soul, and in no

sense the apparition of an additional soul? It is difficult to

think otherwise. The birth and death of souls are inconceivable;

the immortality of a vast and varying number of individual souls

is equally inconceivable. Immortality implies unity, not number.

The mind can grasp the possibility of one soul, the manifestation

of which is the universe and all it contains.

The hypothesis of individual souls first confined in and then

released from individual bodies to preserve their individuality

for all time is inconceivable, since it assumes--to coin a word--

an intersoulular space, which must necessarily be filled with a

medium that is either material or spiritual in its character; if

material, then we have the inconceivable condition of spiritual

entities surrounded by a material medium; if the intersoulular

space be occupied by a spiritual medium, then we have simply souls

surrounded by soul,--or, in the final analysis, one soul, of which

the so-called individual souls are but so many manifestations.

To the assumption of an all-pervading ether which is the physical

basis of the universe, may we not add the suprasumption** of an

all-pervading soul which is the spiritual basis of not only the

ether but of life itself? The seeming duality of mind and matter,

of the soul and body, must terminate somewhere, must merge in

identity. Whether that identity be the Creator of theology or the

soul of speculation does not much matter, since the final result

is the same, namely, the immortality of that suprasumption, the

soul.

But the individual, what becomes of the individual in this

assumption of an all-pervading, immortal soul, of which all things

animate and inanimate are but so many activities?

The body, which for a time being is a part of the local

manifestation of the pervading soul, dies and is resolved into its

constituent elements; it is inconceivable that those elements

should ever gather themselves together again and appear in

visible, tangible form. No one could possibly desire they ever

should; those who die maimed, or from sickness and disease, or in

the decrepitude and senility of age, could not possibly wish that

their disordered bodies should appear again; nor could any person

name the exact period of his life when he was so satisfied with

his physical condition that he would choose to have his body as it

then was. No; the body, like the trunk of a fallen tree, decays

and disappears; like ripe fruit, it drops to the earth and

enriches the soil, but nevermore resumes its form and semblance.

The pervading soul, of which the body was but the physical

manifestation, remains; it does not return to heaven or any

hypothetical point in either space or speculation. The dissolution

of the body is but the dissolution of a particular manifestation

of the all-pervading soul, and the immortality of the so-called

individual soul is but the persistence of that, so to speak, local

disturbance in the one soul after the body has disappeared. It is

quite conceivable, or rather the reverse is inconceivable, that

the activity of the pervading soul, which manifests itself for a

time in the body, persists indefinitely after the physical

manifestation has ceased; that, with the cessation of the physical

manifestation, the particular activity which we recognize here as

an individuality will so persist that hereafter we may recognize

it as a spiritual personality. In other words, assuming the

existence of a soul of which the universe and all it contains are

but so many manifestations, it is dimly conceivable that with the

cessation, or rather the transformation, of any particular

manifestation, the effects may so persist as to be forever known

and recognizable,--not by parts of the one soul, which has no

parts, but by the soul itself.

Therefore all things are immortal. Nothing is so lost to the

infinite soul as to be wholly and totally obliterated. The

withering of a flower is as much the act of the all-pervading soul

as the death of a child; but the life and death of a human being

involve activities of the soul so incomparably greater than the

blossoming of a plant, that the immortality of the one, while not

differing in kind, may be infinitely more important in degree. The

manifestation of the soul in the life of the humming-bird is

slight in comparison with the manifestation in the life of a man,

and the traces which persist forever in the case of the former are

probably insignificant compared with the traces which persist in

the case of the latter; but traces must persist, else there is no

immortality of the individual; at the same time there is not the

slightest reason for urging that, whereas traces of the soul's

activity in the form of man will persist, traces of the soul's

activity in lower forms of life and in things inanimate will not

persist. There is no reason why, when the physical barriers which

exist between us and the soul that is within and without us are

destroyed, we should not desire to know forever all that the

universe contains. Why should not the sun and the moon and the

stars be immortal,--as immortal in their way as we in ours, both

immortal in the one all-pervading soul?

"The philosophy of six thousand years has not searched the

chambers and the magazine of the soul. In its experiments there

has always remained, in the last analysis, a residuum it could not

solve," said Emerson in the lecture he called "Over-Soul."

What a pity to use the phrase "Over-Soul," which removes the soul

even farther aloof than it is in popular conception, or which

fosters the belief of an inner and outer, or an inferior and a

superior soul; whereas Emerson meant, as the context shows, the

all-pervading soul.

But, then, who knows what any one else thinks or means? At the

most we only know what others say, what words they use, but in

what sense they use them and the content of thought back of them

we do not know. So far as the problems of life go we are all

groping in the dark, and words are like fireflies leading us

hither and thither with glimpses of light only to go out, leaving

us in darkness and despair.

It is the sounding phrase that catches the ear. "For fools admire

and like all things the more which they perceive to be concealed

under involved language, and determine things to be true which can

prettily tickle the ears and are varnished over with finely

sounding phrase," says Lucretius. We imagine we understand when we

do not; we do not really, truly, and wholly understand Emerson or

any other man; we do not understand ourselves.

We speak of the conceivable and of the inconceivable as if the

words had any clear and tangible meaning in our minds; whereas

they have not; at the best they are of but relative value. What is

conceivable to one man is inconceivable to another; what is beyond

the perception of one generation is matter of fact to the next.

The conceivable is and ever must be bounded by the inconceivable;

the domain of the former is finite, that of the latter is

infinite. It matters not how far we press our speculations, how

extravagant our hypotheses, how distant our vision, we reach at

length the confines of our thought and admit the inconceivable.

The inconceivable is a postulate as essential to reason as is the

conceivable. That the inconceivable exists is as certain as the

existence of the conceivable; it is in a sense more certain, since

we constantly find ourselves in error in our conclusions

concerning the existence of the things we know, while we can never

be in error concerning the existence of things we can never know,

being sure that beyond the confines of the finite there must

necessarily be the infinite.

We may indulge in assumptions concerning the infinite based upon

our knowledge of the finite, or, rather, based upon the inflexible

laws of our mental processes. We may say that there must be one

all-pervading soul, not because we can form any conception

whatsoever of the true nature of such a soul, but because the

alternative hypothesis of many individual souls is utterly

obnoxious to our reason.

To those who urge that it is idle to reason about what we cannot

conceive, it is sufficient answer to say that man cannot help it.

The scientist and the materialist in the ardent pursuit of

knowledge soon experience the necessity of indulging in

assumptions concerning force and matter, the hypothetical ether

and molecules, atoms and vortices, which are as purely

metaphysical as any assumptions concerning the soul. The

distinction between the realist and the idealist is a matter of

temperament. All that separated Huxley from Gladstone was a word;

each argued from the unknowable, but disputed over the name and

attributes of the inconceivable. Huxley said he did not know,

which was equivalent to the dogmatic assertion that he did;

Gladstone said he did know, which was a confession of ignorance

denser than that of agnosticism.

Those men who try not to think or reason concerning the infinite

simply imprison themselves within the four walls of the cell they

construct. It is better to think and be wrong than not to think at

all. Any assumption is better than no assumption, any belief

better than none.

Hypotheses enlarge the boundaries of knowledge. With assumptions

the intellectual prospector stakes out the infinite. In life we

may not verify our premises, but death is the proof of all things.

We stopped at Wright's tavern, where patriots used to meet before

the days of the revolution, and where Major Pitcairn is said--

wrongfully in all probability--to have made his boast on the

morning of the 19th, as he stirred his toddy, that they would stir

the rebels' blood before night.

One realizes that "there is but one Concord" as the carriages of

pilgrims are counted in the Square, and the swarm of young guides,

with pamphlets and maps, importune the chance visitor.

We chose the most persistent little urchin, not that we could not

find our way about so small a village, but because he wanted to

ride, and it is always interesting to draw out a child; his story

of the town and its famous places was, of course, the one he had

learned from the others, but his comments were his own, and the

incongruity of going over the sacred ground in an automobile had

its effect.

It was a short run down Monument Street to the turn just beyond

the "Old Manse." Here the British turned to cross the North Bridge

on their way to Colonel Barrett's house, where the ammunition was

stored. Just across the narrow bridge the "embattled farmers stood

and fired the shot heard round the world." A monument marks the

spot where the British received the fire of the farmers, and a

stone at the side recites "Graves of two British soldiers,"--

unknown wanderers from home they surrendered their lives in a

quarrel, the merits of which they did not know. "Soon was their

warfare ended; a weary night march from Boston, a rattling volley

of musketry across the river, and then these many years of rest.

In the long procession of slain invaders who passed into eternity

from the battle-field of the revolution, these two nameless

soldiers led the way." While standing by the grave, Hawthorne was

told a story, a tradition of how a youth, hurrying to the

battle-field axe in hand, came upon these two soldiers, one not yet

dead raised himself up painfully on his hands and knees, and how the

youth on the impulse of the moment cleft the wounded man's head with

the axe. The tradition is probably false, but it made its impression

on Hawthorne, who continues, "I could wish that the grave might be

opened; for I would fain know whether either of the skeleton

soldiers has the mark of an axe in his skull. The story comes home

to me like truth. Oftentimes, as an intellectual and moral exercise,

I have sought to follow that poor youth through his subsequent

career and observe how his soul was tortured by the blood-stain,

contracted as it had been before the long custom of war had robbed

human life of its sanctity, and while it still seemed murderous to

slay a brother man. This one circumstance has borne more fruit for

me than all that history tells us of the fight."

There are souls so callous that the taking of a human life is no

more than the killing of a beast; there are souls so sensitive

that they will not kill a living thing. The man who can relate

without regret so profound it is close akin to remorse the killing

of another--no matter what the provocation, no matter what the

circumstances--is next kin to the common hangman.

From the windows of the "Old Manse," the Rev. William Emerson,

grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson, looked out upon the battle,

and he would have taken part in the fight had not his neighbors

held him back; as it was, he sacrificed his life the following

year in attempting to join the army at Ticonderoga, contracting a

fever which proved fatal.

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery lies on Bedford Street not far from the

Town Hall. We followed the winding road to the hill where

Hawthorne, Thoreau, the Alcotts, and Emerson lie buried within a

half-dozen paces of one another.

Thoreau came first in May, 1862. Emerson delivered the funeral

address. Mrs. Hawthorne writes in her diary, "Mr. Thoreau died

this morning. The funeral services were in the church. Mr. Emerson

spoke. Mr. Alcott read from Mr. Thoreau's writings. The body was

in the vestibule covered with wild flowers. We went to the grave."

Hawthorne came next, just two years later. "On the 24th of May,

1864 we carried Hawthorne through the blossoming orchards of

Concord," says James T. Fields, "and laid him down under a group

of pines, on a hillside, overlooking historic fields. All the way

from the village church to the grave the birds kept up a perpetual

melody. The sun shone brightly, and the air was sweet and

pleasant, as if death had never entered the world. Longfellow and

Emerson, Channing and Hoar, Agassiz and Lowell, Greene and

Whipple, Alcott and Clarke, Holmes and Hillard, and other friends

whom he loved, walked slowly by his side that beautiful spring

morning. The companion of his youth and his manhood, for whom he

would willingly, at any time, have given up his own life, Franklin

Pierce, was there among the rest, and scattered flowers into the

grave. The unfinished 'Romance,' which had cost him so much

anxiety, the last literary work on which he had ever been engaged,

was laid in his coffin."

Eighteen years later, on April 30, 1882, Emerson was laid at rest

a little beyond Hawthorne and Thoreau in a spot chosen by himself.

A special train came from Boston, but many could not get inside

the church. The town was draped; "even the homes of the very poor

bore outward marks of grief." At the house, Dr. Furness, of

Philadelphia, conducted the services. "The body lay in the front

northeast room, in which were gathered the family and close

friends." The only flowers were lilies of the valley, roses, and

arbutus.

At the church, Judge Hoar, standing by the coffin, spoke briefly;

Dr. Furness read selections from the Scriptures; James Freeman

Clarke delivered the funeral address, and Alcott read a sonnet.

"Over an hour was occupied by the passing files of neighbors,

friends, and visitors looking for the last time upon the face of

the dead poet. The body was robed completely in white, and the

face bore a natural and peaceful expression. From the church the

procession took its way to the cemetery. The grave was made

beneath a tall pine-tree upon the hill-top of Sleepy Hollow, where

lie the bodies of his friends Thoreau and Hawthorne, the upturned

sod being concealed by strewings of pine boughs. A border of

hemlock spray surrounded the grave and completely lined its sides.

The services were very brief, and the casket was soon lowered to

its final resting-place. The grandchildren passed the open grave

and threw flowers into it."

In her "Journal," Louisa Alcott wrote, "Thursday, 27th. Mr.

Emerson died at nine P.M. suddenly. Our best and greatest American

gone. The nearest and dearest friend father ever had, and the man

who has helped me most by his life, his books, his society. I can

never tell all he has been to me,--from the time I sang Mignon's

song under his window (a little girl) and wrote letters _… la_

Bettine to him, my Goethe, at fifteen, up through my hard years,

when his essays on Self-Reliance, Character, Compensation, Love,

and Friendship helped me to understand myself and life, and God

and Nature. Illustrious and beloved friend, good-by!

"Sunday, 30th.--Emerson's funeral. I made a yellow lyre of

jonquils for the church, and helped trim it up. Private service at

the house, and a great crowd at the church. Father read his

sonnet, and Judge Hoar and others spoke. Now he lies in Sleepy

Hollow among his brothers under the pines he loved."

On March 4, 1888, Bronson Alcott died, and two days later Louisa

Alcott followed her father. They lie near together on the ridge a

little beyond Hawthorne. Initials only mark the graves of her

sisters, but it has been found necessary to place a small stone

bearing the name "Louisa" on the grave of the author of "Little

Women." She had made every arrangement for her death, and by her

own wish her funeral was in her father's rooms in Boston, and

attended by only a few of her family and nearest friends.

"They read her exquisite poem to her mother, her father's noble

tribute to her, and spoke of the earnestness and truth of her

life. She was remembered as she would have wished to be. Her body

was carried to Concord and placed in the beautiful cemetery of

Sleepy Hollow, where her dearest ones were already laid to rest.

'Her boys' went beside her as 'a guard of honor,' and stood around

as she was placed across the feet of father, mother, and sister,

that she might 'take care of them as she had done all her life.'"

Louisa Alcott's last written words were the acknowledgment of the

receipt of a flower. "It stands beside me on Marmee's (her mother)

work-table, and reminds me tenderly of her favorite flowers; and

among those used at her funeral was a spray of this, which lasted

for two weeks afterwards, opening bud by bud in the glass on her

table, where lay the dear old 'Jos. May' hymn-book, and her diary

with the pen shut in as she left it when she last wrote there,

three days before the end, 'The twilight is closing about me, and

I am going to rest in the arms of my children.' So, you see, I

love the delicate flower and enjoy it very much."

Reverently, with bowed heads, we stood on that pine-covered ridge

which contained the mortal remains of so many who are great and

illustrious in the annals of American literature. A scant patch of

earth hides their dust, but their fancies, their imaginings, their

philosophy spanned human conduct, emotions, beliefs, and

aspirations from the cradle to the grave.

The warm September day was drawing to a close; the red sun was

sinking towards the west; the hilltop was aflame with a golden

glow from the slanting rays of the declining sun. Slowly we wended

our way through the shadowy hollow below; looking back, the mound

seemed crowned with glory.

Leaving Concord by Main Street we passed some famous homes, among

them Thoreau's earlier home, where he made lead-pencils with the

deftness which characterized all his handiwork; turning to the

left on Thoreau Street we crossed the tracks and took the Sudbury

road through all the Sudburys,--four in number; the roads were

good and the country all the more interesting because not yet

invaded by the penetrating trolley. It would be sacrilegious for

electric cars to go whizzing by the ancient tombs and monuments

that fringe the road down through Sudbury; the automobile felt out

of place and instinctively slowed down to stately and measured

pace.

In all truth, one should walk, not ride, through this beautiful

country, where every highway has its historic associations, every

burying-ground its honored dead, every hamlet its weather-beaten

monument. But if one is to ride, the automobile--incongruous as it

may seem--has this advantage,--it will stand indefinitely

anywhere; it may be left by the roadside for hours; no one can

start it; hardly any person would maliciously harm it, providing

it is far enough to one side so as not to frighten passing horses;

excursions on foot may be made to any place of interest, then,

when the day draws to a close, a half-hour suffices to reach the

chosen resting-place.

It was getting dark as we passed beneath the stately trees

bordering the old post-road which leads to the door of the

"Wayside Inn."

Here the stages from Boston to Worcester used to stop for dinner.

Here Washington, Lafayette, Burgoyne, and other great men of

Revolutionary days had been entertained, for along this highway

the troops marched and countermarched. The old inn is rich in

historic associations.

The road which leads to the very door of the inn is the old

post-road; the finely macadamized State road which passes a little

farther away is of recent dedication, and is located so as to

leave the ancient hostelry a little retired from ordinary travel.

A weather-beaten sign with a red horse rampant swings at one

corner of the main building.

"Half effaced by rain and shine,

The Red Horse prances on the sign."

For nearly two hundred years, from 1683 to 1860, the inn was owned

and kept by one family, the Howes, and was called by many "Howe's

Tavern," by others "The Red Horse Inn."

Since the publication of Longfellow's "Tales of a Wayside Inn,"

the place has been known by no other name than the one it now

bears.

"As ancient is this hostelry

As any in the land may be,

Built in the old Colonial day,

When men lived in a grander way,

With ampler hospitality;

A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall,

Now somewhat fallen to decay,

With weather-stains upon the wall,

And stairways worn, and crazy doors,

And creaking and uneven floors,

And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall."

A portrait of Lyman Howe, the last landlord of the family, hangs

in the little bar-room,

"A man of ancient pedigree,

A Justice of the Peace was he,

Known in all Sudbury as 'The Squire.'

Proud was he of his name and race,

Of old Sir William and Sir Hugh."

Two Thousand Miles on an Automobile Being a Desultory Narrative of a Trip Through New England, New York, Canada, and the West, By "Chauffeur" · 第 7 / 10 题

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