Chapter I: Preface

For some years it has been the delightful privilege of the writer of the present volume to ramble and sojourn in the scenes amid which his best-beloved authors erst lived and wrote. He has made repeated pilgrimages to most of the shrines herein described, and has been, at one time or another, favored by intercourse and correspondence with many of the authors adverted to or with their surviving friends and neighbors. In the ensuing pages he has endeavored to portray these shrines in pen-pictures which, it is hoped, may be interesting to those who are unable to visit them and helpful and companionable for those who can and will. If certain prominent American authors receive little more than mention in these pages, it is mainly because so few objects and places associated with their lives and writings can now be indisputably identified: in some instances the writer has expended more time upon fruitless quests for shrines which proved to be non-existent or of doubtful genuineness than upon others which are themes for the chapters of this booklet.

T. F. W.

CONTENTS

THE CONCORD PILGRIMAGE
PAGE
I. A VILLAGE OF LITERARY SHRINES.

_Abodes of Thoreau--The Alcotts--Channing--Sanborn--Hudson--Hoar--
Wheildon--Bartlett--The Historic Common--Cemetery--Church_ 17

II. THE OLD MANSE.

_Abode of Dr. Ripley--The Emersons--Hawthorne--Learned Mrs.
Ripley--Its Famed Study and Apartments--Grounds--Guests--Ghosts--
A Transcendental Social Court_ 28

III. A STORIED RIVER AND BATTLE-FIELD.

_Where Zenobia Drowned--Where Embattled Farmers Fought--Thoreau's
Hemlocks--Haunts of Hawthorne--Channing--Thoreau--Emerson, etc._ 39

IV. THE HOME OF EMERSON.

_An Intellectual Capitol and Pharos--Its Grounds, Library, and
Literary Workshop--Famous Rooms and Visitants--Relics and
Reminiscences of the Concord Sage_ 45