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 pa.s.sage 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 partic.i.p.ated 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 a.s.sembled, built in 1690, still stands with its marks of bullets and flood of old a.s.sociations.
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 gla.s.ses 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 Hanc.o.c.k; 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 compa.s.s, 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 G.o.d"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 un.o.bstructed 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 h.o.a.r, 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sed 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 princ.i.p.ally 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. Th.o.r.eau went with him down the river. Henry Th.o.r.eau 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 Th.o.r.eau, 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:--Th.o.r.eau, the devotee of nature, "figuring dithyrambic dances and Bacchic leaps on the ice," joyous in the presence of his G.o.d; 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 G.o.d 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 n.o.blest 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 ma.n.u.script 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 Seash.o.r.e" 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."