Chapter FOURTEEN: Lexington and Concord (2)

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."

And now as of yore

"In the parlor, full in view,
His coat-of-arms, well framed and glazed,
Upon the wall in colors blazed."

The small window-panes which the poet describes as bearing

"The jovial rhymes, that still remain,
Writ near a century ago,
By the great Major Molineaux,
Whom Hawthorne has immortal made,"

are preserved in frames near the mantel in the parlor, one deeply scratched by diamond ring with name of Major Molineaux and the date, "June 24th, 1774," the other bears this inscription,--

"What do you think?
Here is good drink,
Perhaps you may not know it;
If not in haste, Do stop and taste,
You merry folk will show it."

A worthy, though not so gifted, successor of the jolly major rendered the following "true accomp.," which, yellow and faded, hangs on the bar-room wall:

"Thursday, August 7, 1777"
L s. d.
Super & Loging . . . . . . . 0 1 4
8th. Brakfast, Dinar and 0 1 9
Super and half mug of tody 0 2 6
9th. Lodging, one glass rum half 0 2 6
& Dinar, one mes oats 0 1 4
Super half mug flyp 0 3 0
10th Brakf.--one dram 0 1 8
Dinner, Lodging, horse-keeping 0 2 0
one mug flyp, horse bating 0 3 0
11th. horse keeping 1
13th. glass rum & Diner 1 8
14th. Horse bating 0 0 6
Horse Jorney 28 miles 0 5 10

A true accomp.--total 1 14 6
William Bradford,
Dilivered to Capt. Crosby 2 2 6

Alas! the major's inscription and the foregoing "accomp." are hollow mockeries to the thirsty traveller, for there is neither rum nor "flyp" to be had; the bar is dry as an old cork; the door of the cupboard into which the jovial Howes were wont to stick the awl with which they opened bottles still hangs, worn completely through by the countless jabs, a melancholy reminder of the convivial hours of other days. The restrictions of more abstemious times have relegated the ancient bar to dust, the idle awl to slow-consuming rust.

It is amazing how thirsty one gets in the presence of musty associations of a convivial character. The ghost of a spree is a most alluring fellow; it is the dust on the bottle that flavors the wine; a musty bin is the soul's delight; we drink the vintage and not the wine.

Drinking is a lost art, eating a forgotten ceremony. The pendulum has swung from Trimalchio back to Trimalchio. Quality is lost in quantity. The tables groan, the cooks groan, the guests groan,-- feasting is a nightmare.

Wine is a subject, not a beverage; it is discussed, not drunk; it is sipped, tasted, and swallowed reluctantly; it lingers on the palate in fragrant and delicious memory; it comes a bouquet and departs an aroma; it is the fruition of years, the distillation of ages; a liquid jewel, it reflects the subtle colors of the rainbow, running the gamut from a dull red glow to the violet rays that border the invisible.

But, alas! the appreciation of wine is lost. Everybody serves wine, no one understands it; everybody drinks it, no one loves it. From a fragrant essence wine has become a coarse reality,--a convention. Chablis with the oysters, sherry with the soup, sauterne with the fish, claret with the roast, Burgundy with the game,--champagne somewhere, anywhere, everywhere; port, grand, old ruddy port--that has disappeared; no one understands it and no one knows when to serve it; while Madeira, that bloom of the vinous century plant, that rare exotic which ripens with passing generations, is all too subtle for our untutored discrimination.

And if, perchance, a good wine, like a strange guest, finds its way to the table, we are at loss how to receive it, how to address it, how to entertain it. We offend it in the decanting and distress it in the serving. We buy our wines in the morning and serve them in the evening to drink the sediment which the more fastidious wine during long years has been slowly rejecting; we mix the bright transparent liquid with its dregs and our rough palates detect no difference. But the lover of wine, the more he has the less he drinks, until, in the refinement and exaltation of his taste, it is sufficient to look upon the dust-mantled bottle and recall the delicious aroma and flavor, the recollection of which is far too precious to risk by trying anew; he knows that if a bottle be so much as turned in its couch it must sleep again for years before it is really fit to drink; he knows how difficult it is to get the wine out of the bottle clear as ruby or yellow diamond; he knows that if so much as a speck of sediment gets into the decanter, to precisely the extent of the speck is the wine injured.

In serving wines, we of the Western world may learn something from the tea ceremonies of the Japanese,--ceremonies so elaborate that to our impatient notions they are infinitely tedious, and yet they get from the tea all the exquisite delight it contains, and at the same time invest its serving with a halo of form, tradition, and association. Surely, if wine is to be taken at all, it is as precious as a cup of tea; and if taken ceremoniously, it will be taken moderately.

What is the use of serving good wine? No one recognizes it, appreciates it, or cares for it. It is served by the butler and removed by the footman without introduction, greeting, or comment. The Hon. Sam Jones, from Podunk, is announced in stentorian tones as he makes his advent, but the gem of the dinner, the treat of the evening, the flower of the feast, an Haut Brion of '75, or an Yquem of '64, or a Johannisberger of '61, comes in like a tramp without a word. Possibly some one of the guests, whose palate has not been blunted by coarse living or seared by strong drink, may feel that he is drinking something out of the ordinary, and he may linger over his glass, loath to sip the last drop; but all the others gulp their wine, or leave it--with the indifference of ignorance.

Good wine is loquacious; it is a great traveller and smacks of many lands; it is a bon vivant and has dined with the select of the earth; it recalls a thousand anecdotes; it reeks with reminiscences; it harbors a kiss and reflects a glance, but it is a silent companion to those who know it not, and it is quarrelsome with those who abuse it.

It seemed a pity that somewhere about the inn, deep in some long disused cellar, there were not a few--just a few--bottles of old wine, a half-dozen port of 1815, one or two squat bottles of Madeira brought over by men who knew Washington, an Yquem of '48, a Margaux of '58, a Johannisberger Cabinet--not forgetting the "Auslese"--of '61, with a few bottles of Romani Conti and Clos de Vougeot of '69 or '70,--not to exceed two or three dozen all told; not a plebeian among them, each the chosen of its race, and all so well understood that the very serving would carry one back to colonial days, when to offer a guest a glass of Madeira was a subtle tribute to his capacity and appreciation.

It is a far cry from an imaginary banquet with Lucullus to the New England Saturday night supper of pork and beans which was spread before us that evening. The dish is a survival of the rigid Puritanism which was the affliction and at the same time the making of New England; it is a fast, an aggravated fast, a scourge to indulgence, a reproach to gluttony; it comes Saturday night, and is followed Sunday morning by the dry, spongy, antiseptic, absorbent fish-ball as a castigation of nature and as a preparation for the austere observance of the Sabbath; it is the harsh, but no doubt deserved, punishment of the stomach for its worldliness during the week; inured to suffering, the native accepts the dose as a matter of course; to the stranger it seems unduly severe. To be sent to bed supperless is one of the terrors of childhood; to be sent to bed on pork and beans with the certainty of fishballs in the morning is a refinement of torture that could have been devised only by Puritan ingenuity.

At the very crisis of the trouble in China, when the whole world was anxiously awaiting news from Pekin, the papers said that Boston was perturbed by the reported discovery in Africa of a new and edible bean.

To New England the bean is an obsession; it is rapidly becoming a superstition. To the stranger it is an infliction; but, bad as the bean is to the uninitiated, it is a luscious morsel compared with the flavorless cod-fish ball which lodges in the throat and stays there--a second Adam's apple--for lack of something to wash it down.

If pork and beans is the device of the Puritans, the cod-fish ball is the invention of the devil. It is as if Satan looked on enviously while his foes prepared their powder of beans, and then, retiring to his bottomless pit, went them one better by casting his ball of cod-fish.

"But from the parlor of the inn
A pleasant murmur smote the ear,
Like water rushing through a weir;
Oft interrupted by the din
Of laughter and of loud applause

"The firelight, shedding over all
The splendor of its ruddy glow,
Filled the whole parlor large and low."