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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Literary Shrines, by Theodore F. Wolfe
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Literary Shrines
+       The Haunts of Some Famous American Authors
+
+
+Author: Theodore F. Wolfe
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 17, 2012  [eBook #38889]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY SHRINES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+(http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by
+Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 38889-h.htm or 38889-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38889/38889-h/38889-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38889/38889-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/literaryshrinesh00wolfrich
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
+
+      Superscripted characters are indicated with a carat followed
+      by the superscripted character(s) in curly braces.
+
+
+
+
+LITERARY SHRINES
+
+FIFTH EDITION
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+  _BY DR. WOLFE_
+
+  Uniform with this volume
+
+  A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE
+  AMONG THE HAUNTS OF SOME FAMOUS BRITISH AUTHORS
+
+  _Treating descriptively and reminiscently of the homes and resorts of
+  English writers from the time of Chaucer to the present, and of the
+  scenes commemorated in their works_
+
+  262 pages. Illustrated with four photogravures. $1.25
+
+  A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE AND LITERARY SHRINES
+
+  Two volumes in a box, $2.50
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+  [Illustration: THE WAYSIDE, CONCORD]
+
+
+LITERARY SHRINES
+
+The Haunts of Some Famous American Authors
+
+by
+
+THEODORE F. WOLFE
+M.D. PH.D.
+
+Author of A Literary Pilgrimage etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+J. B. Lippincott Company
+Philadelphia. MDCCCXCV
+
+Copyright, 1895,
+By
+Theodore F. Wolfe.
+
+Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+  TO
+
+  MY WIFE,
+
+  MY SYMPATHETIC AND APPRECIATIVE
+  COMPANION IN PILGRIMAGES
+  TO MANY
+
+  LITERARY SHRINES
+
+  IN THE NEW WORLD AND THE OLD,
+  THIS VOLUME
+  IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.
+
+
+
+
+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
+
+    V. THE ORCHARD HOUSE AND ITS NEIGHBORS.
+
+  _Ellery Channing--Margaret Fuller--The Alcotts--Professor
+    Harris--Summer School of Philosophy--Where Little Women was
+    written and Robert Hagburn lived--Where Cyril Norton was slain_   52
+
+    VI. HAWTHORNE'S WAYSIDE HOME.
+
+  _Sometime Abode of Alcott--Hawthorne--Lathrop--Margaret Sidney--
+    Storied Apartments--Hawthorne's Study--His Mount of Vision--Where
+    Septimius Felton and Rose Garfield dwelt_                         58
+
+    VII. THE WALDEN OF THOREAU.
+
+  _A Transcendental Font--Emerson's Garden--Thoreau's
+    Cove--Cairn--Beanfield--Resort of Emerson--Hawthorne--Channing--
+    Hosmer--Alcott, etc._                                             68
+
+    VIII. THE HILL-TOP HEARSED WITH PINES.
+
+  _Last Resting-Place of the Illustrious Concord Company--Their
+    Graves beneath the Piny Boughs_                                   75
+
+
+  IN AND OUT OF LITERARY BOSTON
+
+
+  IN BOSTON
+
+  _A Golden Age of Letters--Literary Associations--Isms--Clubs--Where
+    Hester Prynne and Silas Lapham lived--The Corner Book-store--Home
+    of Fields--Sargent--Hilliard--Aldrich--Deland--Parkman--Holmes--
+    Howells--Moulton--Hale--Howe--Jane Austin, etc._                  83
+
+
+  OUT OF BOSTON
+
+    I. CAMBRIDGE: ELMWOOD: MOUNT AUBURN.
+
+  _Holmes's Church-yard--Bridge--Smithy, Chapel, and River of
+    Longfellow's Verse--Abodes of Lettered Culture--Holmes--
+    Higginson--Agassiz--Norton--Clough--Howells--Fuller--
+    Longfellow--Lowell--Longfellow's City of the Dead and its
+    Precious Graves_                                                 103
+
+    II. BELMONT: THE WAYSIDE INN: HOME OF WHITTIER.
+
+  _Lowell's Beaver Brook--Abode of Trowbridge--Red Horse Tavern--
+    Parsons and the Company of Longfellow's Friends--Birthplace of
+    Whittier--Scenes of his Poems--Dwelling and Grave of the
+    Countess--Powow Hill--Whittier's Amesbury Home--His Church and
+    Tomb_                                                            117
+
+    III. SALEM: WHITTIER'S OAK-KNOLL AND BEYOND.
+
+  _Cemetery of Hawthorne's Ancestors--Birthplace of Hawthorne and his
+    Wife--Where Fame was won--House of the Seven Gables--
+    Custom-House--Where Scarlet Letter was written--Main Street
+    and Witch Hill--Sights from a Steeple--Later Home of Whittier--
+    Norman's Woe--Lucy Larcom--Parton, etc.--Rivermouth--Thaxter_    128
+
+    IV. WEBSTER'S MARSHFIELD: BROOK FARM, ETC.
+
+  _Scenes of the Old Oaken Bucket--Webster's Home and Grave--Where
+    Emerson won his Wife--Home of Miss Peabody--Parkman--Miss
+    Guiney--Aldrich's Ponkapog--Farm of Ripley's Community--Relics
+    and Reminiscences_                                               141
+
+
+  IN BERKSHIRE WITH HAWTHORNE
+
+    I. THE GRAYLOCK AND HOOSAC REGION.
+
+  _North Adams and about--Hawthorne's Acquaintances and Excursions--
+    Actors and Incidents of Ethan Brand--Kiln of Bertram the
+    Lime-Burner--Natural Bridge--Graylock--Thoreau--Hoosac
+    Mountain--Deerfield Arch--Williamstown--Bryant_                  155
+
+    II. LENOX AND MIDDLE BERKSHIRE.
+
+  _Beloved of the Littérateurs--La Maison Rouge--Where The House of
+    the Seven Gables was written--Wonder-Book and Tanglewood Scenes--
+    The Bowl--Beecher's Laurel Lake--Kemble--Bryant's Monument
+    Mountain--Stockbridge--Catherine Sedgwick--Melville's Piazza
+    and Chimney--Holmes--Longfellow--Pittsfield_                     176
+
+
+  A DAY WITH THE GOOD GRAY POET
+
+  _Walk and Talk with Socrates in Camden--The Bard's Appearance and
+    Surroundings--Recollections of his Life and Work--Hospital
+    Service--Praise for his Critics--His Literary Habit, Purpose,
+    Equipment, and Style--His Religious Bent--Readings_              201
+
+
+
+
+  ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+  The Wayside, Concord                                   _Frontispiece._
+
+  The Thoreau-Alcott House,--Present Appearance                       21
+
+  The Grave of Emerson                                                78
+
+  Where Longfellow lived                                             108
+
+
+
+
+THE CONCORD PILGRIMAGE
+
+
+  I. A Village of Literary Shrines
+  II. The Old Manse
+  III. Storied River and Battle-field
+  IV. The Home of Emerson
+  V. Alcott's Orchard House, etc.
+  VI. Hawthorne's Wayside Home
+  VII. The Walden of Thoreau
+  VIII. The Hill-top Hearsed with Pines
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+A VILLAGE OF LITERARY SHRINES
+
+_Abodes of Thoreau--The Alcotts--Channing--Sanborn--Hudson--Hoar--
+  Wheildon--Bartlett--The Historic Common--Cemetery--Church._
+
+
+If to trace the footsteps of genius and to linger and muse in the
+sometime haunts of the authors we read and love, serve to bring us
+nearer their personality, to place us _en rapport_ with their
+aspirations, and thus to incite our own spiritual development and
+broaden and exalt our moral nature, then the Concord pilgrimage should
+be one of the most fruitful and beneficent of human experiences.
+Familiarity with the physical stand-point of our authors, with the
+scenes amid which they lived and wrote, and with the objects which
+suggested the imagery of their poems, the settings of their tales, and
+which gave tone and color to their work, will not only bring us into
+closer sympathy with the writers, but will help us to a better
+understanding of the writings.
+
+A plain, straggling village, set in a low country amid a landscape
+devoid of any striking beauty or grandeur, Concord yet attracts more
+pilgrims than any other place of equal size upon the continent, not
+because it holds an historic battle-field, but because it has been the
+dwelling-place of some of the brightest and best in American letters,
+who have here written their books and warred against creeds, forms, and
+intellectual servitude. It is another Stratford, another Mecca, to which
+come reverent pilgrims from the Old World and the New to worship at its
+shrines and to wander through the scenes hallowed by the memories of its
+illustrious _littérateurs_, seers, and evangels. To the literary prowler
+it is all sacred ground,--its streets, its environing hills, forests,
+lakes, and streams have alike been blessed by the loving presence of
+genius, have alike been the theatres and the inspirations of noble
+literary achievement.
+
+Our way lies by historic Lexington, and thence, through a pleasant
+country and by the road so fateful to the British soldiery, we approach
+Concord. It is a placid, almost somnolent village of villas, abounding
+with delightful lawns and gardens, with great elms shading its
+old-fashioned thoroughfares and drooping their pliant boughs above its
+comfortable homes.
+
+Elizabeth Hoar has said, "Concord is Thoreau's monument, adorned with
+inscriptions by his hand;" of the circle of brilliant souls who have
+given the town its world-wide fame, he alone was native here; he has
+left his imprint upon the place, and we meet some reminder of him at
+every turn. By the historic village Common is the quondam home of his
+grandfather, where his father was reared, and where the "New England
+Essene" himself lived some time with the unmarried aunt who made the
+ample homespun suit he wore at Walden. The house of his maternal
+grandmother, where Henry David Thoreau was born, stood a little way out
+on a by-road to Lexington, and a daughter of this home--Thoreau's
+winsome aunt Louisa Dunbar--was ineffectually wooed by the famous Daniel
+Webster. At the age of eight months the infant Thoreau was removed to
+the village, in which nearly the whole of his life was passed. Believing
+that Concord, with its sylvan environment, was a microcosm "by the study
+of which the whole world could be comprehended," this wildest of
+civilized men seldom strayed beyond its familiar precincts. Alcott
+declared that Thoreau thought he dwelt in the centre of the universe,
+and seriously contemplated annexing the rest of the planet to Concord.
+
+On the south side of the elm-shaded Main street of the village we find a
+pleasant and comfortable, old-fashioned wooden dwelling,--the home
+which, in his later years, the philosopher, poet, and mystic shared with
+his mother and sisters. About it are great trees which Thoreau planted;
+a stairway and some of the partition walls of the house are said to have
+been erected by him. In the second story of an extension at the back of
+the main edifice, some of the family worked at their father's trade of
+pencil-making. In the large room at the right of the entrance, afterward
+the sitting-room of the Alcotts, some of Thoreau's later writing was
+done, and here, one May morning of 1862, he breathed out a life all too
+brief and doubtless abbreviated by the storms and drenchings endured in
+his pantheistic pursuits. In this house Thoreau's "spiritual brother,"
+John Brown of Osawatomie, was a welcome guest, and more than one
+wretched fugitive from slavery found shelter and protection. From
+his village home Thoreau made, with the poet Ellery Channing, the
+journey described in his "Yankee in Canada," and several shorter
+"Excursions,"--shared with Edward Hoar, Channing, and others,--which he
+has detailed in the delightful manner which gives him a distinct
+position in American literature.
+
+  [Illustration: THE THOREAU-ALCOTT HOUSE]
+
+After the removal of Sophia, the last of Thoreau's family, his friend
+Frank B. Sanborn occupied the Thoreau house for some years, and then
+it became the home of the Alcott family. Here Mrs. Alcott, the "Marmee"
+of "Little Women," died; here Bronson Alcott was stricken with the fatal
+paralysis; here commenced the malady which contributed to the death of
+his illustrious daughter Louisa; here lived "Meg," the mother of the
+"Little Men" and widow of "John Brooke" of the Alcott books; and here
+now lives her son, while his brother, "Demi-John," dwells just around
+the corner in the next street. In the room at the left of the hall,
+fitted up for her study and workshop, Louisa Alcott wrote some of the
+tales which the world will not forget. An added apartment at the right
+of the sitting-room was long the sick-room of the Orphic philosopher and
+the scene of Louisa's tender care. Here the writer saw them both for the
+last time: Alcott helpless upon his couch, his bright intelligence
+dulled by a veil of darkness; the daughter at his bedside, sedulous of
+his comfort, devoted, hopeful, helpful to the end. A cherished memento
+of that interview is a photograph of the Thoreau-Alcott mansion, made by
+one of the "Little Men," and presented to the writer, with her latest
+book, by "Jo" herself. The front fence has since been removed, and the
+illustration shows the present view.
+
+In Thoreau's time, a modest dwelling, with a low roof sloping to the
+rear,--now removed to the other side of the street,--stood directly
+opposite his home, and was for some time the abode of his friend and
+earliest biographer, the sweet poet William Ellery Channing. Thoreau
+thought Channing one of the few who understood "the art of taking
+walks," and the two were almost constant companions in saunterings
+through the countryside, or in idyllic excursions upon the river in the
+boat which Thoreau kept moored to a riverside willow at the foot of
+Channing's garden. The beneficent influence of their comradeship is
+apparent in the work of both these recluse writers, and many of the most
+charming of Channing's stanzas are either inspired by or are poetic
+portrayals of the scenes he saw with Thoreau,--the "Rudolpho" and the
+"Idolon" of his verse. Thoreau's last earthly "Excursion" was with this
+friend to Monadnoc, where they encamped some days in 1860. To this home
+of Channing came, in 1855, Sanborn, who was welcomed to Concord by all
+the literary galaxy, and quickly became a familiar associate of each
+particular star. To go swimming together seems to have been, among these
+earnest and exalted thinkers, the highest evidence of mutual esteem, and
+so favored was Sanborn that he is able to record, "I have swum with
+Alcott in Thoreau's Cove, with Thoreau in the Assabet, with Channing in
+every water of Concord."
+
+In this home Sanborn entertained John Brown on the eve of his Virginia
+venture; here escaping slaves found refuge; here fugitives from the
+Harper's Ferry fight were concealed; here Sanborn was arrested for
+supposed complicity in Brown's abortive schemes, and was forcibly
+rescued by his indignant neighbors. This modest dwelling gave place to
+the later residence of Frederic Hudson, the historian of journalism, who
+here produced many of his contributions to literature. Professor Folsom,
+of "Translations of the Four Gospels," and the popular authoress Mrs.
+Austin have also lived in this neighborhood.
+
+For some years Sanborn had a famous select school on a street back of
+Thoreau's house, not far from the recent hermit-home of his friend
+Channing, at whose request Hawthorne sent some of his children to this
+school, in which Emerson's daughter--the present Mrs. Forbes--was a
+beloved pupil, and where, also, the daughters of John Brown were for
+some time placed.
+
+A few rods westward from his former dwelling we find Sanborn in a
+tasteful modern villa,--spending life's early autumn among his books.
+He abounds with memories of his friends of the by-gone time, and his
+reminiscences and biographies of some of them have largely employed his
+pen in his pleasant study here.
+
+Some time ago the sweet singer Channing suffered in his hermitage a
+severe illness, which prompted his appreciative friend Sanborn to take
+him into his own home; so we find two surviving witnesses or
+participants in the moral, intellectual, and political renaissance
+dwelling under the same roof. In the kindly atmosphere of this home, the
+shy poet--who in his age is more recluse than ever, and scarce known to
+his neighbors--so far regained physical vigor that he has resumed his
+frequent visits to the Boston library, long time a favorite haunt of
+his. The world refused to listen to this exquisite singer, and now "his
+songs have ceased." He has been celebrated by Emerson in the "Dial," by
+Thoreau in his "Week," by Hawthorne in "Mosses" and "Note-Books," by the
+generous and sympathetic Sanborn in many ways and places; but even such
+poems as "Earth-Spirit," "Poet's Hope," and "Reverence" found few
+readers,--the dainty little volumes fewer purchasers.
+
+Below the Thoreau-Alcott house on the village street was a prior home of
+Thoreau, from which he made, with his brother, the voyage described in
+his "Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers," and from which, in superb
+disdain of "civilization" and social conventionalities, he went to the
+two years' hermitage of "Walden."
+
+Nearly opposite the earlier residence of the stoic is the home of the
+Hoars, where lived Thoreau's comrade Edward Hoar, and Edward's
+sister,--styled "Elizabeth the Wise" by Emerson, of whom she was the
+especial friend and favorite, having been the _fiancée_ of his brother
+Charles, who died in early manhood. The adjacent spacious mansion was
+long the home of Wheildon, the historian, essayist, and pamphleteer.
+Nearer the village Common lived John A. Stone, dramatist of "The Ancient
+Briton" and of the "Metamora" in which Forrest won his first fame. In
+this part of the village the eminent correspondent "Warrington," author
+of "Manual of Parliamentary Law," was born and reared; and in Lowell
+Street, not far away, lives the gifted George B. Bartlett, of the
+"Carnival of Authors,"--poet, scenic artist, and local historian.
+
+In the public library we find copies of the printed works of the many
+Concord authors, and portraits or busts of most of the writers. Among
+the treasures of the institution are priceless manuscripts of Curtis,
+Motley, Lowell, Holmes, Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and others.
+
+Among the thickly-strewn graves on the hill-side above the Common repose
+the ashes of Emerson's ancestors; about them lie the fore-fathers of the
+settlement,--some of them asleep here for two centuries, reckless alike
+of the resistance to British oppression and of the later struggle for
+freedom of thought which their townsmen have waged. A tree on the Common
+is pointed out as that beneath which Emerson made an address at the
+dedication of the soldiers' monument, and Bartlett records the tradition
+that the grandfather of the Concord sage stood on the same spot a
+hundred years before to harangue the "embattled farmers" on the morning
+of the Concord fight.
+
+Near by is the ancient church where Emerson's ancestors preached, and
+within whose framework the Provincial Congress met. Of the religious
+services here Emerson was always a supporter, often an attendant; here
+he sometimes preached in early manhood; here his children were
+christened by the elder Channing,--"the first minister he had known who
+was as good as they;" here Emerson's daughter is a devout worshipper.
+
+The comparatively few of the transcendental company who prayed within a
+pew came to this temple, but here all were brought at last for funeral
+rites: here lay Thoreau among his thronging townsmen while Emerson and
+Bronson Alcott made their touching eulogies and Ellery Channing read a
+dirge in a voice almost hushed with emotion; here James Freeman Clarke,
+who had married Hawthorne twenty-two years before, preached his funeral
+sermon above the lifeless body which bore upon its breast the unfinished
+"Dolliver Romance;" before the pulpit here lay the coffined
+Emerson,--"his eyes forever closed, his voice forever still,"--while a
+vast concourse looked upon him for the last time, and his neighbor Judge
+Hoar pronounced one of the most impressive panegyrics that ever fell
+from human lips, and the devoted Alcott read a sonnet.
+
+
+
+
+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._
+
+
+Northward from the village Common, a delightful stroll along a shaded
+highway, less secluded now than when Hawthorne "daily trudged" upon it
+to the post-office or trundled the carriage of "baby Una," brings us to
+the famous "Old Manse" about which he culled his "Mosses."
+
+This antique mansion was first tenanted by Ralph Waldo Emerson's
+grandsire, and next by Dr. Ezra Ripley, who married the previous
+occupant's widow and became guardian of her children,--born under its
+roof,--of whom Emerson's father was one. When his father died Emerson
+found a secondary home here with Dr. Ripley. The Manse was again the
+abode of Emerson and his mother in 1834-35, when he here wrote his first
+volume. In 1842, the year following the demise of the good Dr. Ripley,
+the Manse was profaned by its first lay occupant, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+He brought here his bride, lovely Sophia Peabody (who, with the gifted
+Elizabeth and Mrs. Horace Mann, formed a famous triune sisterhood), and
+for four years lived here the ideal life of which his "Note-Books" and
+"Mosses" give us such delicious glimpses. Hawthorne's landlord, Samuel
+Ripley, was related to the George Ripley with whom Hawthorne had
+recently been associated at Brook Farm. He was uncle of Emerson, and
+preached his ordination sermon; was himself reared in the old Manse, and
+succeeded Hawthorne as resident there. His widow, born Sarah Bradford,
+and celebrated as "the most learned woman ever seen in New England," the
+close friend of Emerson and of the brilliant Concord company, survived
+here until 1876. She made a valuable collection of lichens, and
+sometimes trained young men for Harvard University. Conway records that
+a _savant_ called here one day and found her hearing at once the lesson
+of one student in Sophocles and that of another in Differential
+Calculus, while rocking her grandchild's cradle with one foot and
+shelling peas for dinner. The place is now owned by her daughters, who
+reside in Cambridge, and is rented in summer.
+
+It is little changed since the time Emerson's ancestor hurried thence to
+the gathering of his parishioners by his church-door before the Concord
+battle,--still less changed since the halcyon days when the great wizard
+of romance dwelt--the "most unknown of authors"--within its shades. It
+is still the unpretentious Eden, "the El Dorado for dreamers," which so
+completely won the heart of the sensitive Hawthorne.
+
+The picturesque old mansion stands amid greensward and foliage, its
+ample grounds divided from the highway by a low wall. The gate-way is
+flanked by tall posts of rough-hewn stone, whence a grass-grown avenue,
+bordered by a colonnade of overarching trees, leads to the house. Within
+the scattered sunshine and shade of the avenue, a row of stone slabs
+sunken in the turf like gravestones paves the path paced by Ripley,
+Emerson, and Hawthorne as they pondered and planned their compositions.
+Of the trees aligned upon either side, some, gray-lichened and broken,
+are survivors of Hawthorne's time; others are set to replace fallen
+patriarchs and keep the stately lines complete. At the right of the
+broad _allée_ and extending away to the battle-ground is the field,
+waving now with lush grass, where Hawthorne and Thoreau found the flint
+arrow-heads and other relics of an aboriginal village. Upon the space
+which skirts the other side of the avenue, Hawthorne had the garden
+which engaged so much of his time and thought, and where he produced
+for us abundant crops of something better than his vegetables. Here his
+Brook-Farm experience was useful. Passing neighbors would often see the
+darkly-clad figure of the recluse hoeing in this "patch," or, as often,
+standing motionless, gazing upon the ground so fixedly and so
+long--sometimes for hours together--that they thought him daft. Of the
+delights of summer mornings spent here with his peas, potatoes, and
+squashes, he gives us many glimpses in his record of that happy time;
+but the "Note-Books" show us, alas! that this simple pleasure was not
+without alloy, for, although his "garden flourished like Eden," there
+are hints of "weeds," next "more weeds," then a "ferocious banditti of
+weeds" with which "the other Adam" could never have contended. But a
+greater woe came with the foes who menaced his artistic squashes,--"the
+unconscionable squash-bugs," "those infernal squash-bugs," against which
+he must "carry on continual war." For the moments that we contemplate
+the scene of his entomic warfare, the greater battle-field, a few rods
+away, seems hardly more impressive. Few of the trees which in
+Hawthorne's time stood nearest the house remain; the producers of the
+peaches and "thumping pears" have gone the way of all trees. So has Dr.
+Ripley's famous willow--celebrated in Emerson's and Channing's exquisite
+verse and in Hawthorne's matchless prose--which veiled the western face
+of the mansion and through which Hawthorne's study-windows peeped out
+upon orchard, river, and mead. In the orchard that has borne such
+luscious fruit of fancy, some of the contorted and moss-grown trees,
+whose branches--"like withered hands and arms"--hold out the sweet
+blossoms on this June day, are the same that Hawthorne pictures among
+his "Mosses," and beneath which he lay in summer reverie. Few vines now
+clamber upon the house-walls, lilacs still grow beneath the old
+study-window, and a tall mass of their foliage screens a corner of the
+venerable edifice, which time has toned into perfect harmony with its
+picturesque environment. It is a great, square, wooden structure of two
+stories, with added attic rooms beneath an overwhelming gambrel roof,
+which is the conspicuous feature of the edifice and contributes to its
+antique form. The heavy roof settles down close upon the small,
+multipaned windows. From above the door little convex glasses, like a
+row of eyes, look out upon the visitor as he applies for admission.
+
+A spacious central hall, rich in antique panelling and sombre with grave
+tints, extends through the house. From its dusk and coolness we look out
+upon the bright summer day through its open doors; through one we see
+the "hill of the Emersons" beyond the highway, the other frames a
+pleasing picture of orchard and sward with glimpses of the river shining
+through its bordering shrubbery. The quaint apartments are darkly
+wainscoted and low-ceiled, with massive beams crossing overhead. Some of
+these rooms Hawthorne has shown us. The one at the left, which the
+novelist believed to have been the sleeping-room of Dr. Ripley, was the
+parlor of the Hawthornes, and--decked with a gladsome carpet, pictures,
+and flowers daily gathered from the river-bank--Hawthorne averred it was
+"one of the prettiest and pleasantest rooms in the whole world." To this
+room then came the sage Emerson "with a sunbeam in his face;" the
+"cast-iron man" Thoreau, "long-nosed, queer-mouthed, ugly as sin," but
+with whom to talk "is like hearing the wind among the boughs of a forest
+tree;" Ellery Channing, with his wife and her illustrious sister,
+Margaret Fuller; the gifted George William Curtis, then tilling a farm
+not far from the Manse, long before he lounged in an "Easy Chair;"
+genial Bradford, relative of Ripley, and associate and firm friend of
+Hawthorne; Horatio Bridge, of the "African Cruiser" and of the recent
+Hawthorne "Recollections;" the critic George Hillard, at whose house
+Hawthorne was married; "Prince" Lowell, the large-hearted; Franklin
+Pierce, Hawthorne's life-long friend. Concerning the discussion of
+things physical and metaphysical, to which these old walls then
+listened, the host gives us little hint. Sometimes the guests were
+"feasted on nectar and ambrosia" by the new Adam and Eve; sometimes they
+"listened to the music of the spheres which, for private convenience, is
+packed into a music-box,"--left here by Thoreau when he went to teach in
+the family of Emerson's brother; once here before this wide fireplace
+they sat late and told ghost stories,--doubtless suggested by the
+clerical phantom whose sighs they used to hear in yonder dusky corner,
+and whose rustling gown sometimes almost touched the company as he moved
+about among them. In this room Dr. Ripley penned, besides his "History
+of the Concord Fight" and "Treatise on Education," three thousand of his
+protracted homilies,--a fact upon which Hawthorne found it "awful to
+reflect,"--and here in our day the gifted George B. Bartlett wrote some
+part of his Concord sketches, etc. Here, too, and in the larger room
+opposite, the erudite and versatile Mrs. Samuel Ripley held her social
+court and received the exalted Concord conclave, with other earnest
+leaders of thought.
+
+In the front chamber at the right Hawthorne's first child, the hapless
+Una,--named from Spenser's "Faerie Queene,"--was born. Behind this is
+the "ten-foot-square" apartment which was Hawthorne's study and
+workshop. Two windows of small, prismatic-hued panes look into the
+orchard, and upon one of these Hawthorne has inscribed,--
+
+    "Nath^{l}. Hawthorne.
+  This is his study, 1843."
+
+Below this another hand has graven,--
+
+    "Inscribed by my husband at
+      Sunset Apr 3^{d} 1843
+    In the gold light S. A. H.
+
+  Man's accidents are God's purposes.
+                      SOPHIA A. HAWTHORNE 1843."
+
+From its north window, said to have been cracked by the explosions of
+musketry in the conflict, we see the battle-field and a reach of the
+placid river. This room had been the study of Emerson's grandfather;
+from its window his wife watched the fight between his undrilled
+parishioners and the British veterans. His daughter Mary--aunt of our
+American Plato and herself a gifted writer--used to boast "she was in
+arms at the battle," having been held up at this window to see the
+soldiery in the highway. Years later Emerson himself came into
+possession of this room, and here wrote his "Nature," antagonizing many
+of the orthodox tenets. Perhaps it was well for the moral serenity of
+his ancestor--to whom the transcendental movement would have seemed
+arrant March-madness--that he could not foresee the composition of such
+a volume here within the sanctity of his old study. The book was
+published anonymously, and Sanborn says that when inquiry was made, "Who
+is the author of 'Nature?'" a Concord wit replied, "God and Waldo
+Emerson."
+
+Next, the dreamy Hawthorne succeeded to the little study, and here, with
+the sunlight glimmering through the willow boughs, he worked in solitude
+upon his charming productions for three or four hours of each day. Here,
+besides the copious entries in his journals, he prepared most of the
+papers of his "Mosses," wrote many articles for the "Democratic Review"
+and other magazines, edited "Old Dartmoor Prisoner" and Horatio Bridge's
+"African Cruiser." It is note-worthy that the "Celestial Railroad," in
+which Hawthorne records his condemnation of the spiritual renaissance by
+substituting the "terrible giant Transcendentalist" (who feeds upon
+pilgrims bound for the Celestial City) in place of the Pope and Pagan of
+Bunyan's allegory, was written in the same room with Emerson's volume,
+which inaugurated the great transcendental movement in the Western
+World.
+
+Among the recesses of the great attic of the Manse we may still see the
+"Saints' Chamber," with its fireplace and single window; but it is
+tenanted by sprouting clergymen no longer. The atmosphere of theological
+twilight and mustiness--acquired from generations of clerical
+inhabitants--which pervaded the place in Hawthorne's time has been
+dissipated by the larger and happier home-life of Mrs. Samuel Ripley and
+the blithe and brilliant company that gathered about her here. Dismayed
+by these beneficent influences, the ghosts have indignantly deserted the
+mansion: even the persistive clerical, who sighed in Hawthorne's parlor
+and noisily turned his sermon-leaves in the upper hall, has not
+disturbed the later occupants of the Manse.
+
+One might muse and linger long about the old place which, as his
+"Mosses" and journals show, Hawthorne made a part of his very life. Its
+air of antiquity, its traditional associations, its seclusion, and all
+its peaceful environment were pleasing to the shy and susceptible nature
+of the subtle romancer, and accorded well with his introspective habit.
+Besides, it was "the first home he ever had," and it was shared with his
+"new Eve." No wonder is it that he could here declare, "I had rather be
+on earth than in the seventh heaven, just now."
+
+It is saddening to remember that, from this paradise, poverty drove him
+forth.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+A STORIED RIVER AND BATTLE-FIELD
+
+_Where Zenobia Drowned--Where Embattled Farmers Fought--Thoreau's
+  Hemlocks--Haunts of Hawthorne--Channing--Thoreau--Emerson, etc._
+
+
+Behind Hawthorne's "Old Manse"--its course so tortuous that Thoreau
+suggested for Concord's escutcheon "a field verdant with the river
+circling nine times round," so noiseless that he likened it to the
+"moccasined tread" of an Indian, so sluggish that Hawthorne had dwelt
+some weeks beside it before he determined which way its current
+lies--flows the Concord, "river of peace." This placid stream is the
+aboriginal "Musketaquid" of Emerson's poem,--sung of Thoreau, Channing,
+and many another bard, beloved of Hawthorne and pictured in rapturous
+phrase in his "Note-Books" and "Mosses from an Old Manse." It was the
+delightful haunt of Hawthorne's leisure, the scene of the occurrence
+which inspired the most thrilling and high-wrought chapter of his
+romance.
+
+A grassy path, shaded by orchard trees, leads from the west door of the
+Manse to the river's margin at the place where Hawthorne kept his boat
+under the willows. The boat had before been the property of Thoreau,
+built by his hands and used by him on the famous voyage described in his
+"Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers." Hawthorne named the craft
+"Pond-Lily," because it brought so many cargoes of that beautiful flower
+to decorate his home. In it, alone or accompanied by Thoreau or Ellery
+Channing, he made the many delightful excursions he has described.
+Embarking on the slumberous stream, we follow the course of Hawthorne's
+boat to many a scene made familiar by that dreamful romancer and by the
+poets and philosophers of Concord. First to the place, below the bridge
+of the battle, where one dark night Hawthorne and Channing assisted in
+recovering from the water the ghastly body of the girl-suicide, an
+incident which made a profoundly horrible impression upon the sensitive
+novelist, and which he employed as the thrilling termination of the tale
+of Zenobia in "The Blithedale Romance,"--portraying it with a tragic
+power which has never been surpassed. Thence we paddle up the placid
+stream, as it slumbers along its winding course between the meadows,
+kisses the tangled grasses and wild flowers that fringe its margins,
+bathes the roots and boughs of the elders and dwarf willows which
+overhang its surface as if to gaze upon the reflections of their own
+loveliness mirrored there. The reach of river--"from Nashawtuc to the
+Cliff"--above the confluence of the two branches was most beloved and
+frequented of Thoreau; here he sometimes brought Emerson, as on that
+summer evening when the sage's diary records, "the river-god took the
+form of my valiant Henry Thoreau and introduced me to the riches of his
+shadowy, starlit, moonlit stream," etc.
+
+The deeper portion of the river near the Manse was Hawthorne's habitual
+resort for bathing and fishing, but his longer solitary voyages and his
+"wild, free days" with Ellery Channing were upon the beautiful and
+sheltered North Branch,--the Assabeth of the "Mosses,"--which flows into
+the Concord a half-mile above the Manse. Into this branch we turn our
+boat, and through sunshine and shade we follow the winsome course of the
+lingering stream, finding new and delightful seclusion at every turn. A
+railway now lies along one lofty bank, but its unsightliness is
+concealed by long lines of willows planted by the loving hands of poet
+and artist,--Bartlett and French,--and the infrequent trains little
+disturb the seclusion of the place. Giant trees, standing with "their
+feet fixed in the flood," bend their bright foliage above the
+softly-flowing stream and fleck its surface with shadows; pond-lilies
+are still up-borne by its dreaming waters, and cardinal flowers bedeck
+its banks; its barer reaches are ribbons of reflected sky. The spot on
+the margin locally known as "The Hemlocks," and noted by Hawthorne as
+being only less sacred in his memory than the household hearth, remains
+itself undisturbed. Here a clump of great evergreens projects from the
+base of the lofty bank above and across the stream, and forms on the
+shore a shaded bower, carpeted by the brown needles which have fallen
+through many a year. This was a favorite haunt of Hawthorne and Channing
+in blissful days; here they prepared their sylvan noontide feasts; here
+they lounged and dreamed; here their "talk gushed up like the babble of
+a fountain." As we recline in their accustomed resting-place beside the
+sighing stream, and look up at the azure heaven through the boughs where
+erstwhile often curled the smoke of their fire, we vainly try to imagine
+something of what would be the converse, merry or profound, of such
+starry spirits amid such an inspiring scene, and we more than ever
+regret that neither the gentle poet nor the subtle romancer has chosen
+to share that converse with his readers.
+
+Long and lovingly we loiter in this consecrated spot, and then slowly
+float back to Hawthorne's landing-place by his orchard wall.
+
+A few rods distant, at the corner of his field, is the site of the "rude
+bridge that arched the flood," and the first battle-ground of the
+American Revolution. On the farther side a colossal minute-man in
+bronze, modelled by the Concord sculptor French, surmounts a granite
+pedestal inscribed with Emerson's immortal epic, and marks the spot
+where stood the irregular array of the "embattled farmers" when they
+here "fired the shot heard round the world." The statue replaces a bush
+which sprang from the soil fertilized by the blood of Davis, and which
+Emerson imaged as the "burning bush where God spake for his people."
+
+The position of the British regulars on the hither shore is indicated by
+the "votive stone" of Emerson's poem,--a slender obelisk of
+granite,--and near it, close under the wall of the Manse enclosure, is
+the rude memorial that marks the grave of the British soldiers who were
+slain on this spot. The current tradition that a lad who, after the
+battle, came, axe in hand, from the Manse wood-pile, found one of the
+soldiers yet alive and dispatched him with the axe, was first related to
+Hawthorne by James Russell Lowell, as they stood together above this
+grave. The effect of this story upon the feelings of the susceptible
+Hawthorne is told on a page of "The Old Manse," and--a score of years
+later and in different shape--is related in the romance of "Septimius
+Felton."
+
+
+
+
+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._
+
+
+Following the direction of the British retreat from the historic Common,
+we come, beyond the village, to the modest mansion which was for half a
+century the abode of the princely man who was not only "the Sage of
+Concord," but, in the esteem of some contemporaries, "was Concord
+itself."
+
+Emerson declares, "great men never live in a crowd,"--"a scholar must
+embrace solitude as a bride, must have his glees and glooms alone." Of
+himself he says, "I am a poet and must therefore live in the country; a
+sunset, a forest, a river view are more to me than many friends, and
+must divide my day with my books;" and this was the consideration which
+finally determined his withdrawal from the storm and fret of the city to
+his chosen home here by Walden woods and among the scenes of his
+childhood. It was his retirement to this semi-seclusion which called
+forth his much-quoted poem, "Good-by, proud world! I'm going home." To
+him here came the afflatus he had before lacked, here his faculties
+were inspirited, and here his literary productiveness commenced.
+
+Behind a row of dense-leaved horse-chestnuts ranged along the highway,
+the quondam home of Emerson nestles among clustering evergreens which
+were planted by Bronson Alcott and Henry D. Thoreau for their friend. A
+copse of pines sighs in the summer wind close by; an orchard planted and
+pruned by Emerson's hands, and a garden tended by Thoreau, extend from
+the house to a brook flowing through the grounds and later joining the
+Concord by the famous old Manse; beyond the brook lies the way to
+Walden. At the left of the house is a narrow open reach of greensward on
+the farther verge of which erst stood the unique rustic bower--with a
+wind-harp of untrimmed branches above it--which was fashioned by the
+loving hands of Alcott. The mansion is a substantial, square,
+clapboarded structure of two stories, with hip-roofs; a square window
+projects at one side; a wing is joined at the back; covered porches
+protect the entrances; light paint covers the plain walls which gleam
+through the bowering foliage, and the whole aspect of the place is
+delightfully attractive and home-like. Its pleasant and unpretentious
+apartments more than realize the comfortable suggestion of the
+exterior. Adjoining the hall on the right is the plain, rectangular room
+which was the philosopher's library and workshop. The cheerful fireplace
+and the simple furnishings of the room are little changed since he here
+laid down his pen for the last time; the heavy table held his
+manuscript, his books are ranged upon the shelves, the busts and
+portraits he cherished adorn the walls, his accustomed chair is upon the
+spot where he sat to write.
+
+Emerson's afternoons were usually spent abroad, but his mornings were
+habitually passed among his books in this small corner-room--"the study
+under the pines"--recording, in "a pellucid style which his genius made
+classic," the truths which had come to him as he mused by shadowy lake
+or songful stream, in deep wood glade or wayside path. Most of all his
+pen produced, of divinest poetry, of gravest philosophy, of grandest
+thought, was minted into words and inscribed in this simple apartment.
+
+The adjoining parlor--a spacious, pleasant, home-like room, furnished
+forth with many mementos of illustrious friends and guests--is scarcely
+less interesting than the library. This house was the intellectual
+capitol of the village; to it freely came the Concord circle of shining
+ones,--Thoreau, Channing, Sanborn, the Alcotts, the Hoars,--less
+frequently, Hawthorne. For a long time Mrs. Samuel Ripley habitually
+passed her Sabbath evenings here. The Delphic Margaret Fuller, who was
+as truly the "blood of transcendentalism" as Emerson "was its brain,"
+was here for months an honored guest. For long periods Thoreau, whose
+fame owes much to Emerson's generosity, was here an inmate and intimate.
+In Emerson's parlor were held the more formal _séances_ of the Concord
+galaxy; here met the short-lived "Monday Evening Club," which George
+William Curtis whimsically describes as a "congress of oracles," who ate
+russet-apples and discoursed celestially while Hawthorne looked on from
+his corner,--"a statue of night and silence;" here were held many of
+Bronson Alcott's famous "conversations," as well as those of that
+disciple of Platonism, Dr. Jones.
+
+Emerson belonged not to Concord only, but to the whole world,--"his
+thought was the thought of Christendom." To these plain rooms as to an
+intellectual court came, from his own and other lands, hundreds famed in
+art, literature, and politics. Here came Curtis and Bartol to sit at the
+feet of the sage; Charles Sumner and Moncure Conway to bear hence--as
+one of them has said--"memories like those Bunyan's pilgrim must have
+cherished of the Interpreter." Here "came Theodore Parker from the fight
+for free thought," and Wendell Phillips and John Brown from the conflict
+for free men; here came Howells, bearing the line from Hawthorne, "I
+find this young man worthy;" here came Whittier, Agassiz, Hedge,
+Longfellow, Bradford, Lowell, Colonel Higginson, Elizabeth Peabody,
+Julia Ward Howe, as to a fount of wisdom and purity. In this
+unpretentious parlor have gathered such guests as Stanley, Walt Whitman,
+Bret Harte, Henry James, Louis Kossuth, Arthur Clough, Lord Amberley,
+Jones Very, Fredrika Bremer, Harriet Martineau, and many others who,
+like these, would have felt repaid for their journey over leagues of
+land and sea by a hand-clasp and an hour's communion with the intellect
+that has been the beacon of thousands in mental darkness and storm. With
+these came another class of pilgrims, the great army of impracticables,
+"men with long hair, long beards, long collars,--many with long ears,
+each in full chase after the millennium," and each intent upon securing
+the endorsement of Emerson for his own pet scheme. The wonder is that
+the little library saw any work accomplished, so many came to it and
+claimed the time of the master; for to every one--scholar, tradesman,
+and "crank"--were accorded his never-failing courtesy and kindly
+interest. Any one might be the bearer of a divine message, so he
+listened to all,--the most uncouth and _outré_ visitant might be the
+coming man for whom his faith waited, therefore all were admitted.
+
+Here all were "assayed, not analyzed." Emerson's habitual quest for only
+the divinest traits and his quickened perception of the best in men
+enabled him to recognize excellencies which were yet unseen by others.
+While Hawthorne, the shy hermit at the Manse, was unheeded by the world
+and thought crazed by his neighbors, Emerson knew and proclaimed his
+transcendent genius. He first recognized the inspiration of Ellery
+Channing, and made for his exquisite verse exalted claims which have
+been fully justified, and which the world may yet allow. While to others
+Henry Thoreau was yet only an eccentric egotist, Emerson knew him as a
+poet and philosopher, and made him the "forest seer, the heart of all
+the scene," in his lyrical masterpiece "Wood-Notes." He promptly hailed
+Walt Whitman as a true poet while many of us were yet wondering if it
+were not charitable to think him insane.
+
+Emerson's cordiality won for him the honor which prophets rarely enjoy
+in their own country; the objects and places once associated with him
+here are still esteemed sacred by his old neighbors. We find among them
+at this day many who can know nothing of his books, but who, for memory
+of his simple kindness, go far from their furrow or swath to show us
+spots he loved and frequented in woodland or meadow, on swelling
+hill-side or by winding river.
+
+To his home here Emerson brought his bride sixty years ago; here he
+lived his fruitful life and accomplished his work; here he rose to the
+zenith of poesy and prophecy; to him here came the "great and grave
+transition which may not king or priest or conqueror spare;" from here
+his wife, lingering behind him in the eternal march, went a year or two
+ago to rejoin him on the piny hill-top; and here his unmarried
+daughter--of "saint-like face and nun-like garb"--inhabits his home and
+cherishes its treasures.
+
+Emerson's son and biographer some time ago relinquished his medical
+practice in Concord, and has since devoted himself to art. He has a
+residence a mile or so out of the village, but spends much of his time
+abroad. Last year he lectured in London upon the lives and writings of
+some of the Concord authors.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE ORCHARD HOUSE AND ITS NEIGHBORS
+
+_Ellery Channing--Margaret Fuller--The Alcotts--Professor Harris--Summer
+  School of Philosophy--Where Little Women was written and Robert
+  Hagburn lived--Where Cyril Norton was slain._
+
+
+A plain little cottage by the road, not far from Emerson's home, was for
+some time the abode of the companion of many of his rambles through the
+countryside,--the poet Ellery Channing. It was to this simple dwelling,
+as the author of "Little Women" once told the writer, that Channing
+brought his young wife--sister of Margaret Fuller--before the Alcotts
+had come to live in their hill-side home under the wooded ridge, and it
+was here he commenced the sequestered life so suited to his nature and
+tastes.
+
+Some of his descriptive poems of Concord landscapes were written in this
+little cottage. The scenes of one of his earlier winters in the
+neighborhood--when he chopped wood in a rude clearing--are portrayed in
+the exquisite lines of his "Woodman." In those days he thought his poems
+"too sacred to be sold for money," and they were kept for his circle of
+friends. Of the poet's modest home Miss Fuller--that "dazzling woman
+with the flame in her heart"--was a frequent inmate; it was from Concord
+that she went to live in the family of Horace Greeley in New York. At
+the time of her visits at Channing's cottage Thoreau was sojourning with
+Emerson, and we may be sure that the quartette of starry souls, thus
+_juxtaposé_, held much soulful and edifying converse. But those of us
+who deplore our lack of the supreme transcendental spirit which we
+ascribe to the Concord circle may find consolation in reflecting that
+some of this gifted company had also earthly tastes, and found even
+discourse concerning the "over-soul" sometimes tiresome. The "strained
+pitch of intellectual intensity" was, upon occasion, gladly relaxed;
+thus we discover the exalted Channing sometime profanely inviting
+Hawthorne--"the gentlest man that kindly Nature ever drew"--to visit him
+in Concord, alluring the novelist with prospects of strong-waters, pipes
+and tobacco without end, and urging, as the utmost inducement, "Emerson
+is gone and there is nobody here to bore you."
+
+
+A few furlongs farther eastward, under the high-soaring elms of the
+Lexington road, we come to the "Orchard House" of Bronson Alcott, "the
+grandfather of the 'Little Women.'" The tasteful dwelling stands several
+rods back from the street, nestling cosily at the foot of a pine-crowned
+slope, and having a wide, sunny outlook in front. Embowered in orchards
+and vines, and shaded by the overreaching arms of giant elms, it seems a
+most delightful home for culture and contemplative study. The cottage
+itself is a low, wide, gabled, picturesquely irregular edifice, which
+our Pythagorean mystic evolved from a forlorn, box-like farm-house which
+he found here when he purchased the place. The rustic fence he set along
+the highway is replaced by an ambitious modern structure. On this
+hill-side Alcott, the "most transcendent of the transcendentalists,"
+lived for nearly thirty years,--but not all of that time in this
+house,--coming here first after the failure of his "Fruitlands"
+community in 1845, and finally twelve years later. Prior to this he had
+been assisted by Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Peabody in his renowned
+Boston Temple School, which was a failure in a financial sense only,
+since it furnished a theme for Miss Peabody's "Record of a School," and
+Louisa Alcott's girlish recollections of it provided her a model for the
+delightful "Plumfield" of her books.
+
+Alcott's treatise on "Early Education," his "Gospels" and "Orphic
+Sayings," had been published, and his "very best contribution to
+literature"--his daughter Louisa--was also extant before he came to this
+home, but it was here that his maturer works and most of his charming
+essays and "Conversations" were produced.
+
+In this house were held the early sessions of the Summer School of
+Philosophy, of which Alcott was the leading spirit; here his daughter,
+the "Beth" of "Jo's" books, died. The interior of the "Orchard House" is
+roomy and quaint and abounds in surprising nooks and cosy recesses. In
+the corner-room Louisa wrote "Little Women" and other delicious books;
+in the room behind it, May, "our Madonna,"--who died Madame
+Nieriker,--had her studio and practised the art which made her famous
+before her untimely end. In the great attic under the sloping roof the
+"Little Women" acted the "comic tragedies" written by "Jo" and "Meg"
+(some of them now published in a volume with a "Foreword" by "Meg")
+until the increasing audiences of Concord children caused the removal of
+the mimic stage to the big barn on the hill-side.
+
+Hawthorne makes this house the abode of Robert Hagburn in "Septimius
+Felton." Along the brow of the tree-clad ridge which overlooks the
+place, and to which Bronson Alcott resorted for the morning and evening
+view, the patriots hastened to intercept the retreat of the British
+troops, "blackened and bloody." In the depression of the ridge just back
+of the house we find the spot where "Septimius Felton" shot the young
+officer, Cyril Norton, and buried him under the trees. On the grave here
+"Septimius" sat with Rose Garfield and the half-crazed Sibyl Dacy; here
+grew the crimson flower which he distilled in his "elixir of
+immortality," and here Sibyl came to die after her draught of the
+compound.
+
+After the removal of the Alcotts to the Thoreau house in the village,
+"Apple Slump"--as Louisa sometimes called this orchard home--became the
+property and residence of that disciple of Hegel, Professor
+Harris,--once principal of the Summer School of Philosophy, and now the
+head of the National Bureau of Education at Washington,--who sometimes
+comes here in summer.
+
+The "Hillside Chapel," erected by Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, of New York,
+for the sessions of the Summer Philosophers, is placed among the trees
+of the orchard adjoining Alcott's old home. It is a plain little
+structure of wood, tasteful in design, with pointed gables and
+vine-draped porch and windows. Its embowered walls, unpainted and
+unplastered, seem "scarcely large enough to contain the wisdom of the
+world," but they have held assemblages of such lights as Emerson,
+Alcott, Sanborn, Bartol, McCosh, Holland, Porter, Lathrop, Stedman,
+Wilder, Hedge, Dr. Jones, Elizabeth Peabody, Ward Howe, Ednah Cheney,
+and other like seekers and promoters of fundamental truth.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+HAWTHORNE'S WAYSIDE HOME.
+
+_Sometime Abode of Alcott--Hawthorne--Lathrop--Margaret Sidney--Storied
+  Apartments--Hawthorne's Study--His Mount of Vision--Where Septimius
+  Felton and Rose Garfield dwelt._
+
+
+On the Lexington road, a little way beyond the Orchard House, is the
+once Wayside home of Hawthorne, the dwelling in which, at a tender age,
+Louisa M. Alcott made her first literary essay. It is a curious, wide,
+straggling, and irregular structure, of varying ages, heights, and
+styles. The central gambrel-roofed portion was the original house of
+four rooms, described as the residence of "Septimius Felton;" other
+rooms have been added at different periods and to serve the need of
+successive occupants, until an architecturally incongruous and
+altogether delightful mansion has been produced. To the ugly little
+square house which Alcott found here in 1845 and christened "Hillside"
+he added a low wing at each side, the central gable in the front of the
+old roof, and wide rustic piazzas across the front of the wings. No
+additions were made during Hawthorne's first residence here, nor during
+the occupancy of Mrs. Hawthorne's brother, while the novelist was
+abroad; but when Hawthorne returned to it in 1860, with "most of his
+family twice as big as when they left," he enlarged one wing by adding
+the barn to it, heightened the other side-wing, erected two spacious
+apartments at the back, and crowned the edifice with a square
+third-story study, which, with its great chimney and many gables,
+overtops the rambling roofs like an observatory, and may have been
+suggested by the tower of the Villa Montauto, where he wrote "The Marble
+Faun." No important changes have been made by the subsequent owners of
+the place.
+
+Hawthorne's widow left the Wayside in 1868. It was afterward occupied by
+a school for young ladies; then by Hawthorne's daughter Rose--herself a
+charming writer--with her husband, the gifted and versatile George
+Parsons Lathrop; later it was purchased by the Boston publisher Daniel
+Lothrop, and has since been the summer home of his widow, who is widely
+known as "Margaret Sidney," the creator of "Five Little Peppers," and
+writer of many delightful books. Hawthorne said, anent his visit to
+Abbotsford, "A house is forever ruined as a home by having been the
+abode of a great man,"--a truth well attested by the present amiable
+mistress of his own Wayside, whose experience with a legion of
+unaccredited, intrusive, and often insolent persons who come at all
+hours of the day, and sometimes in the night, demanding to be shown over
+the place, would be more ludicrous were it less provoking.
+
+Some details of the interior have been beautified by the æsthetic taste
+of Mrs. Lothrop, but an appreciative reverence for Hawthorne leads her
+to preserve his home and its belongings essentially unchanged. At the
+right of the entrance is an antique reception-room, which was
+Hawthorne's study during his first residence here, as it had long before
+been the study of "Septimius Felton" in the tale. It is a low-studded
+apartment with floor of oaken planks, heavy beams strutting from its
+ceiling, a generous fireplace against a side wall, and with two windows
+looking out upon the near highway. In this room Hawthorne wrote
+"Tanglewood Tales" and "Life of Franklin Pierce;" and here that creature
+of his imagination, "Septimius," brooded over his doubts and questions.
+Through yonder windows "Septimius" saw the British soldiery pass and
+repass; above this oaken mantel--now artistically fitted and embellished
+with rare pottery--he hung the sword of the officer he had slain; before
+this fireplace he pored over the mysterious manuscript his dying victim
+had given him; on this hearth he distilled the mystic potion, and here
+poor Sibyl quaffed it. The spacious room at the left, across the hall,
+was at first Hawthorne's parlor; but after he enlarged the dwelling this
+became the library, where he read aloud to the assembled family on
+winter evenings, and where his widow afterward transcribed his
+"Note-Books" for publication. The sunny room above this was the chamber
+of the unfortunate Una; Hawthorne's own sleeping apartment, on the
+second floor, is entered from the hall through the narrowest of
+door-ways. In the upper hall a little wall-closet was the repository of
+Hawthorne's manuscripts, and here, to the surprise of all, an entire
+unpublished romance was found after his death. From this hall a narrow
+stairway, so steep that one need cling to the iron rail at the side in
+order to scale it, ascends to Hawthorne's study in the tower, a lofty
+room with vaulted ceiling. On one side wall is the Gothic enclosure of
+the stairs, against which once stood his plain oaken writing-desk; upon
+it the bronze inkstand he brought from Italy, where it held the ink for
+"The Marble Faun." In this inkstand, he declared, lurked "the little
+imp" which sometimes controlled his pen. Attached to a side of the
+staircase was the high desk or shelf upon which he often wrote
+standing. Book-closets filled the corners at the back, and a little
+fireplace with a plain mantel was placed between two of the windows.
+Loving hands have neatly decorated the ceiling, and painted upon the
+walls mottoes commemorative of the master who wrought here. The views he
+beheld through the windows of this sanctum when he lifted his eyes from
+his book or manuscript are tranquil and soothing: across his roofs in
+one direction he looked upon the sunny grasslands of the valley; in
+another he saw placid slopes of darkly-wooded hills and a reach of the
+elm-bordered road; in a third direction, smiling fields and the
+vineyards where the famous Concord grape first grew met his vision; and
+through his north windows appeared the thick woods that crowned his own
+hill-top,--so near that he "could see the nodding wild flowers" among
+the trees and breathe the woodland odors.
+
+Local tradition declares that, to prevent intrusion into this den,
+Hawthorne habitually sat upon a trap-door in the floor, which was the
+only entrance. Without this precaution he found in this eyrie the
+seclusion he coveted, and here, among the birds and the tree-tops,
+remote from the tumult of life and above ordinary distracting
+influences, he could linger undisturbed in that border-land between
+shadow and substance which was his delight, could evoke and fix upon his
+pages the weird creatures of his fancy. Several hours of each day he
+passed here alone in musing or composition, and here, besides some
+papers for the "Atlantic," he wrote "Our Old Home," "Grimshaw's Secret,"
+"Septimius Felton," and the "Dolliver Romance" fragment. Years before,
+Thoreau told him, the Wayside had once been inhabited by a man who
+believed he would never die. The thus suggested idea, of a deathless man
+associated with this house, seems to have clung to Hawthorne in his last
+years, and was embodied in both his later works,--the scene of
+"Septimius Felton" being laid here at the Wayside. No one knew aught of
+its composition, and the author, rereading the tale in the solitude of
+this study and finding it in some way lacking the perfection of his
+ideal, laid it away in his closet, and, in weariness and failing health,
+commenced and vainly tried to finish the "Dolliver Romance" from the
+same materials.
+
+The house is separated from the highway by a narrow strip of sward, out
+of which grow elms planted by Bronson Alcott and clustering evergreens
+rooted by Hawthorne himself. The greater part of his domain lies along
+the dark slope and the wooded summit of the ridge which rises close
+behind the house. At the extremity of the grounds nearest the Orchard
+House, a depression in the turf marks the site of the little house where
+dwelt the Rose Garfield of "Septimius." Hawthorne planted sunflowers in
+this hollow, and Julian, his son, remembers seeing the novelist stand
+here and contemplate their wide disks above the old cellar.
+
+On the steep hill-side remain the rough terraces Alcott fashioned when
+he occupied the place, and many of the flowering locusts and fruit-trees
+he and Thoreau planted. Here, too, are the sombre spruces and firs which
+Hawthorne sent from "Our Old Home" or planted after his return, and all
+are grown until they overshadow the whole place and fairly embower the
+house with their branches. Along the hill-side are the famous "Acacia
+path" of Mrs. Hawthorne and other walks planned by the novelist, some of
+them having been opened by him in the last summer of his life. By one
+path, once familiar to his feet, we find our way up the steep ascent
+among the locusts to the "Mount of Vision,"--as Mrs. Hawthorne named the
+ridge to which the novelist daily resorted for study and meditation.
+
+The hill-top is clothed with a tangled growth of trees which hides it
+from the lower world and renders it a fitting trysting-place for the
+wizard romancer and the mystic figures which abound in his tales. Along
+the brow we trace, among the ferns, vestiges of the pathway worn by his
+feet. In the safe seclusion of this spot he spent delectable hours,
+lying under the trees "with a book in his hands and an unwritten book in
+his thoughts," while the pines murmured to him of the mystery and shadow
+he loved. More often he sat on a rustic seat between yonder pair of
+giant trees, or paced his foot-path hour after hour, as he pondered his
+plots and worked out the mystic details of many romances, some of them
+never to be written. Walking here with Fields he unfolded his design of
+the "Dolliver" tale, which he left half told. Here he composed the weird
+story of "Septimius Felton," while trudging on the very path he
+describes as having been worn by his hero,--Hawthorne himself habitually
+walking, with hands clasped behind him and with eyes bent on the ground,
+in the very attitude he ascribes to "Septimius" as Rose saw him
+"treading, treading, treading, many a year," on this foot-path by the
+grave of the officer he had slain. In this refuge Hawthorne remained a
+whole day alone with his grief, when tidings came to him of the loss of
+his sister in the burning of the "Henry Clay." Here he sat with Howells
+one memorable afternoon. In the last years his wife was often with him
+here, sometimes walking, but more frequently sitting, with him,--as did
+Rose with "Septimius,"--and looking out, through an opening in the
+foliage near the western end of his path, upon the restful landscape,
+not less charming to-day than when his eyes lovingly lingered upon it.
+We see the same broad, sun-kissed meadows awave with lush grass and
+flecked with fleeting cloud-shadows, and beyond, the dark forests of
+Thoreau's Walden and the gentle outlines of low-lying hills which shut
+in the valley like a human life.
+
+For some months after the election to the Presidency of his friend
+Franklin Pierce, the Wayside was frequented by office-seekers; but
+ordinarily Hawthorne had few visitors besides his Concord friends.
+Fields, Holmes, Hilliard, Whipple, Longfellow, Howells, Horatio Bridge,
+the poet Stoddard, Henry Bright, came to him here. The visits of "Gail
+Hamilton" (Miss Abigail Dodge), mentioned by Hawthorne as "a sensible,
+healthy-minded woman," were especially enjoyed by him. His own visits
+were very infrequent; "Orphic" Alcott said that in the several years he
+lived next door Hawthorne came but twice into his house: the first time
+he quickly excused himself "because the stove was too hot," next time
+"because the clock ticked too loud."
+
+The Wayside was the only home Hawthorne ever owned. To it he came soon
+after his removal from the "little red house" in Berkshire, and to it he
+returned from his sojourn abroad; here, with failing health and
+desponding spirits, he lived in the gloomy war-days,--writing in his
+study or, with steps more and more uncertain, pacing his hill-top; from
+here he set out with his life-long friend Pierce on the last sad journey
+which ended so quickly and quietly.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE WALDEN OF THOREAU
+
+_A Transcendental Font--Emerson's Garden--Thoreau's Cove--Cairn--
+  Beanfield--Resort of Emerson--Hawthorne--Channing--Hosmer--Alcott,
+  etc._
+
+
+One long-to-be-remembered day we follow the shady foot-paths, once
+familiar to the sublimated Concord company, through their favorite
+forest retreats to "the blue-eyed Walden,"--sung by many a bard, beloved
+by transcendental saint and seer. After a delightful stroll of a mile or
+more, we emerge from the wood and see the lovely lakelet "smiling upon
+its neighbor pines." We find it a half-mile in diameter, with bold and
+picturesquely irregular margins indented with deep bays and mostly
+wooded to the pebbles at the water's edge. From this setting of emerald
+foliage it scintillates like a gem: its wavelets lave a narrow pebbly
+shore within which a bottom of pure white sand gleams upward through the
+most transparent water ever seen. At one point where the railway skirts
+the margin, the woods are disfigured with pavilions and tables for
+summer pleasure-seekers, and a farther wooded slope has recently been
+ravaged by fire; but most of the shore has escaped both profanation and
+devastation, so that the literary pilgrim will find the shrines he seeks
+little disturbed since the Concord luminaries here had their haunt.
+
+From the summit of the forest ledge which rises from the southern shore,
+the lakelet seems a foliage-framed patch of the firmament. This
+rocky eminence affords a wide and enchanting prospect, and was the
+terminus and object of many excursions of Emerson and the other
+"Walden-Pond-Walkers," as the transcendentalists were styled by their
+more prosy and orthodox neighbors. It was upon this elevation in the
+midst of a portion of his estate which he celebrates in his poetry as
+"My Garden"--whose "banks slope down to the blue lake-edge"--that
+Emerson proposed to erect a lodge or retreat for retirement and thought.
+A mossy path, once trodden almost daily by the philosopher and his
+friends, brings us to the beautiful and secluded cove where Emerson and
+Thoreau kept a boat, and where the shining ones often came to bathe in
+this limpid water. Ablution here seems to have been a sort of
+transcendent baptism, and many a visitor, eminent in art, thought, or
+letters, has boasted that he walked and talked with Emerson in Walden
+woods and bathed with him in Walden water. In this romantic nook
+Thoreau spent much time during his hermitage, sitting in reverie on its
+banks or afloat on its glassy surface, fishing or playing his flute to
+the charmed perch. On the shore of this cove he procured the stones for
+the foundations and the sand for the plastering of his cabin. From the
+water's edge an obscure path, bordered by the wild flowers he loved,
+winds among the murmuring pines up to the site of Thoreau's retreat, on
+a gentle hill-side which falls away to the shore a few rods distant. A
+cairn of small stones, placed by reverent pilgrims, stands upon or near
+the spot where he erected his dwelling at an outlay of twenty-eight
+dollars and lived upon an income of one dollar per month.
+
+The hermit would hardly know the place now; his young pines are grown
+into giants that allow but glimpses of the shimmering lake; even the
+"potato hole" he dug under his cabin, whence the squirrels chirped at
+him from beneath the floor as he sat to write, and where he kept his
+winter store,--the "beans with the weevil in them" and the "potatoes
+with every third one nibbled by chipmunks,"--is obliterated and
+overgrown with the glabrous sumach. His near-by field, where he learned
+to "know beans" and gathered relics of a previous and aboriginal race of
+bean-hoers, is covered by a growth of pines and dwarf oaks, in places
+so dense as to be almost impassable.
+
+Some one has said, "Thoreau experienced Nature as other men experience
+religion." Certainly the life at Walden, which he depicted in one of the
+most fascinating of books, was in all its details--whether he was
+ecstatically hoeing beans in his field or dreaming on his door-step,
+floating on the lake or rambling in forest and field--that of an ascetic
+and devout worshipper of Nature in all her moods. Thoreau "built himself
+in Walden woods a den" in 1845,--after his return from tutoring in the
+family of Emerson's brother at Staten Island; here he wrote most of
+"Walden" and the "Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers," and much
+more that has been posthumously published; from here he went to jail for
+refusing to pay a tax on his poll, from here he made the excursion
+described in "The Maine Woods."
+
+He finally removed from Walden in the autumn of 1847, to reside in the
+house of Emerson during that sage's absence in Europe. An old neighbor
+of Thoreau's, who had often watched his "stumpy" figure as he hoed the
+beans, and had even once or twice assisted him in that celestial
+agriculture, tells us that Thoreau's hut was removed by a gardener to
+the middle of the bean-field and there occupied for some years. Later
+it was purchased by a farmer, who set it upon wheels and conveyed it to
+his farm some miles distant, where it has decayed and gone to pieces.
+
+In Concord it is not difficult to identify the personages associated
+with Thoreau's life at Walden Pond and referred to in his book. The
+"landlord and waterlord" of the domain, on which Thoreau was "a
+squatter," was Waldo Emerson; the owner of the axe which the hermit
+borrowed to hew the frame of his hut was Bronson Alcott; the "honorable
+raisers" of the structure were Emerson, Curtis the Nile "Howadji,"
+Alcott, Hosmer, and others; the lady who made the sketch of the
+hermitage which appears on the title-page of "Walden" was the author's
+sister Sophia. Of the hermit's visitors here, "the one who came
+oftenest" was Emerson; "the one who came farthest" was also the poet
+whom the hermit "took to board for a fortnight," Ellery Channing; the
+"long-headed farmer," who had "donned a frock instead of a professor's
+gown," was Thoreau's neighbor and life-long friend Edmund Hosmer, who is
+celebrated in the poetry of Emerson and Channing; the "last of the
+philosophers," the "Great Looker--great Expecter," who "first peddled
+wares and then his own brains," was Bronson Alcott, who spent long
+evenings here in converse with the hermit, or in listening to chapters
+from his manuscript. Here came Hawthorne to talk with his "cast-iron
+man" about trees and arrow-heads; here came George Hilliard and James T.
+Fields, and others,--sometimes so many that the hut would scarce contain
+them; the only complaint heard from Thoreau anent the narrowness of his
+quarters being that there was not room for the words to ricochet between
+him and his guests. Here, too, came humbler visitors, hunted slaves, who
+were never denied the shelter of the hermitage nor the sympathy and aid
+of the hermit.
+
+Another generation of visitors comes now to this spot,--pilgrims from
+far, like ourselves, to the shrine of a "stoic greater than Zeno or
+Xenophanes,"--a man whose "breath and core was conscience." We linger
+till the twilight, for the genius of this shrine seems very near us as
+we muse in the place where he dwelt incarnate alone with Nature, and
+there is for us a hint of his healthful spirit in the odor of his pines
+and of the wild flowers beside his path,--a vague whisper of his
+earnest, honest thought in the murmur of the clustering boughs and in
+the lapping of the wavelets upon the mimic strand.
+
+We bring from the shore a stone--the whitest we can find--for his cairn,
+and place with it a bright leaf, like those his callers in other days
+left for visiting cards upon his door-step, and then, through the
+wondrous half-lights of the summer evening, we walk silently away.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE HILL-TOP HEARSED WITH PINES
+
+_Last Resting-Place of the Illustrious Concord Company--Their Graves
+  beneath the Piny Boughs._
+
+
+During Hawthorne's habitation of the "Old Manse" and his first residence
+at the Wayside, his favorite walk was to the "Sleepy Hollow," a
+beautifully diversified precinct of hill and vale which lies a little
+way eastward from the village. His habitual resting-place here was a
+pine-shaded hill-top where he often met Emerson, Thoreau, Bronson
+Alcott, Elizabeth Hoar, Mrs. Ripley, or Margaret Fuller,--for all that
+sublimated company loved and frequented this spot. More often Hawthorne
+lounged and mused or chatted here alone with his lovely wife. Their
+letters and journals of this period make frequent mention of the walks
+to this place and of "our castle,"--a fanciful structure which, in their
+happy converse here under the pines, they planned to erect for their
+habitation on this hill-top. In their pleasant conceit, the terraced
+path which skirts the verge of the hollow and thence ascends the ridge
+was the grand "chariot-road" to their castle. This park has become a
+cemetery,--at its dedication Emerson made an oration and Frank B.
+Sanborn read a beautiful ode,--and on their beloved hill-top nearly all
+the transcendent company whom Hawthorne used to meet there, save
+Margaret Fuller who rests beneath the sea, lie at last in "the dreamless
+sleep that lulls the dead."
+
+First came Thoreau, to lie among his kindred under the wild flowers and
+the fallen needles of his dear pines, in a grave marked now by a simple
+stone graven with his name and age. Next came Hawthorne: with his
+"half-told tale" and a wreath of apple-blossoms from the "Old Manse"
+resting on his coffin, and with Emerson, Longfellow, Fields, Ellery
+Channing, Agassiz, Hoar, Lowell, Whipple, Alcott, Holmes, and George
+Hilliard walking mournfully by his side, he was borne, through the
+flowering orchards and up the hill-side path,--which was to have been
+his "chariot-road,"--to a grave on the site of the "castle" of his
+fancy; where his dearest friend Franklin Pierce covered him with flowers
+and James Freeman Clarke committed his mortal part to the lap of earth.
+Alas, that the beloved cohabitant of his dream-castle must lie in death
+a thousand leagues away! in no dream of his would such a separation from
+her have seemed possible. She tried to mark his tomb by a leafy
+monument of hawthorn shrubbery, but the rigorous climate prevented; now
+a low marble, inscribed with the one word "Hawthorne," stands at either
+extremity of his grave, and a glossy growth of periwinkle covers the
+spot where sleeps the great master of American romance. Some smaller
+graves are beside his: in one lies a child of Julian Hawthorne; in
+another, Rose--the daughter of Hawthorne's age--laid the son which her
+husband, Parsons Lathrop, commemorates in the lines of "The Flown Soul."
+Next Mrs. Ripley and Elizabeth Hoar were borne to this "God's acre," and
+then Emerson--followed by a vast concourse and mourned by all the
+world--was brought to "give his body back to earth again," in this loved
+retreat, near Hawthorne and his own "forest-seer" Thoreau. A gigantic
+pine towers above him here, and a massive triangular boulder of untooled
+pink quartz--already marred by the vandalism of relic-seekers--is placed
+to mark the grave of the great "King of Thought." It bore no inscription
+or device of any sort until a few months ago, when a bronze plate
+inscribed with his name and years and the lines--
+
+  "The passive master lent his hand
+  To the vast soul that o'er him planned"--
+
+was set in the rough surface of the stone. By Emerson lie his wife, his
+mother, two children of his son and biographer Dr. Emerson, and his own
+little child,--the "wondrous, deep-eyed boy" whom Emerson mourned in his
+matchless "Threnody."
+
+  "O child of paradise,
+  Boy who made dear his father's home,
+  In whose deep eyes
+  Men read the welfare of the times to come,--
+  I am too much bereft."
+
+Six years after Emerson, Bronson Alcott and his illustrious daughter
+Louisa were laid here, within a few yards of Hawthorne and the rest, on
+a spot selected by the "Beth" of the Alcott books who was herself the
+first to be interred in it. Now all the "Little Women" repose here with
+their parents and good "John Brooke,"--"Jo" being so placed as to
+suggest to her biographer that she is still to take care of parents and
+sisters "as she had done all her life."
+
+  [Illustration: THE GRAVE OF EMERSON]
+
+No other spot of earth holds dust more precious than does this "hill-top
+hearsed with pines." We are pleased to find the native beauty of the
+place little disturbed,--the trees, the indigenous grasses, ferns, and
+flowers remaining for the most part as they were known and loved by
+those who sleep beneath them. The contour of the ground and the foliage
+which clusters upon the slopes measurably shut out the view of other
+portions of the enclosure from this secluded hill-top, and, as we sit by
+the graves under the moaning pines, we seem to be alone with these _our_
+dead. Through the boughs we have glimpses of the motionless deeps of a
+summer sky; the patches of sunshine which illumine the graves about us
+are broken by foliate shadows sometimes as still as if painted upon the
+turf. No discordant sound from the haunts of men disturbs our
+meditations; the silence is unbroken save by the frequent sighs of the
+mourning pines.
+
+As we linger, the pervading quiet becomes something more than mere
+silence, it acquires the air and sense of reserve: the impression is
+borne into our thought that these asleep here, who once freely gave us
+their richest and best, are withholding something from us now,--some
+newly-learned wisdom, some higher thought. Does "an awful spell bind
+them to silence," or are they vainly repeating to us in the tender
+monotone of the pines a message we cannot hear or cannot bear? Or have
+they ceased from all ken or care for earthly things? Do they no longer
+love this once beloved spot? Do they not rejoice in the beauty of this
+summer day and the sunshine that falls upon their windowless palace?
+Are they conscious of our reverent tread on the turf above them, of our
+low words of remembrance and affection? Do they care that we have come
+from far to bend over them here?
+
+"For knowledge of all these things, we must"--as the greatest of this
+transcendent circle once said--"wait for to-morrow morning."
+
+
+
+
+IN AND OUT OF LITERARY BOSTON
+
+
+IN BOSTON
+
+OUT OF BOSTON
+
+  I. Cambridge; Elmwood, etc.
+  II. Belmont; Wayside Inn; Homes of Whittier
+  III. The Salem of Hawthorne; Whittier's Oak Knoll
+  IV. Webster's Marsh-field; Brook Farm and other Shrines
+
+
+
+
+IN BOSTON
+
+_A Golden Age of Letters--Literary Associations--Isms--Clubs--Where
+  Hester Prynne and Silas Lapham lived--The Corner Book-store--Home of
+  Fields--Sargent--Hilliard--Aldrich--Deland--Parkman--Holmes--Howells--
+  Moulton--Hale--Howe--Jane Austin, etc._
+
+
+Of the cisatlantic cities our "modern Athens" is, to the literary
+pilgrim, the most interesting; for, whatever may be the claims of other
+cities to the present literary primacy, all must concede that Boston was
+long the intellectual capital of the continent and its centre of
+literary culture and achievement. If the pilgrim have attained to middle
+life and be loyal to the literary idols of his youth, his regard for the
+Boston of to-day must be largely reminiscential of a past that is
+rapidly becoming historic; for, of the constellation of brilliant
+authors and thinkers who first gained for the place its pre-eminence in
+letters, few or none remain alive. The requirements of labor and trade
+are transforming the old streets; the sedate and comfortable dwellings,
+once the abodes or the resorts of the _littérateurs_, are giving place
+to palatial shops or great factories; the neighborhood where Bancroft,
+Choate, Winthrop, Webster, and Edward Everett dwelt within a few rods
+of each other was long ago surrendered to merchandise and mammon; yet
+for us the busy scenes are haunted by memories and peopled by presences
+which the spirit of trade is powerless to exorcise.
+
+To tread the streets which have daily echoed the foot-falls of the
+illustrious company who created here a golden age of learning and
+culture were alone a pleasure, but the city holds many closer and more
+personal mementos of her dead prophets, as well as the homes of a
+present generation who worthily strive to sustain her place and
+prestige.
+
+Interwoven with the older Boston are literary associations hardly less
+memorable and enduring than its history: in the belfry of its historic
+holy of holies--Old South Church--was the study of the historian Dr.
+Belknap, and the dove that nested beneath the church-bell is preserved
+in the poetry of N. P. Willis; King's Chapel, the sanctuary where the
+beloved Dr. Holmes worshipped for so many years, and whence he was not
+long ago sadly borne to his burial, figures in the fiction of Fenimore
+Cooper; historic Copp's Hill is also a scene in a tale of the same
+novelist; the court-house occupies the site of the "beetle-browed"
+prison of Hester Prynne of "The Scarlet Letter;" the storied old
+State-house marked the place of her pillory; the theatre of the Boston
+Massacre is the scene of the thrilling episode of Hawthorne's "Gray
+Champion;" his "Legends of Province House" commemorate the ancient
+structure which stood nearly opposite the Old South Church; the Tremont
+House, where the "Jacobins' Club" used to assemble with Ripley,
+Channing, Theodore Parker, Bronson Alcott, Peabody, and the extreme
+reformers, was the resort of Hawthorne's "Miles Coverdale," as it was of
+the novelist himself, and on the street here he saw "ragamuffin Moodie"
+of "The Blithedale Romance." On the site of Bowdoin School, Charles
+Sumner was born; at one hundred and twenty Hancock Street he lived and
+composed the early orations which made his fame; at number one Exeter
+Place, Theodore Parker, the Vulcan of the New England pulpit, forged his
+bolts and wrote the "Discourses of Religion;" in Essex Street lived and
+wrote Wendell Phillips, at thirty-seven Common Street he died; at
+thirty-one Hollis Street the gifted Harriet Martineau was the guest of
+Francis Jackson; at the corner of Congress and Water Streets Lloyd
+Garrison wrote and published "The Liberator." In this older city,
+antedating the luxury of the Back Bay district of the new Boston, Mather
+wrote the "Magnalia," Paine sang his songs, Allston composed his
+tales, Buckminster wrote his homilies, Bowditch translated La Place's
+"_Mécanique céleste_." Here Emerson, Motley, Parkman, and Poe were born;
+here Bancroft lived, Combe wrote, Spurzheim died. Here Maffit, Channing,
+and Pierpont preached; Agassiz, Phillips, and Lyell lectured; Alcott,
+Elizabeth Peabody, and Fuller taught. Here Sargent wrote "Dealings with
+the Dead," Sprague his "Curiosity," Prescott his "Ferdinand and
+Isabella;" here Margaret Fuller held the "Conversations" which attracted
+and impressed the leading spirits of the time, and Bronson Alcott
+favored elect circles with his Orphic and oracular utterances; here
+lived Melvill, pictured in Holmes's "Last Leaf;" here Emerson preached
+Unitarianism "until he had carried it to the jumping-off-place," as one
+of his quondam parishioners avers, and here commenced his career as
+philosopher and lecturer. Here, besides those above mentioned, Dwight,
+Brisbane, Quincy, Ripley, Graham, Thompson, Hovey, Loring, Miller, Mrs.
+Folsom, and others of similar ability or zeal, discoursed and wrote in
+advocacy of the various reforms and "isms" in vogue half a century or
+more ago.
+
+It has been said that, according to the local creed, whoso is born in
+Boston needs not to be born again, but some decades ago a literary
+prowler, like ourselves, discovered that "nobody is born in Boston," the
+people who have made its fame in letters and art being usually allured
+to it from other places. This is true in less degree of the present age,
+since Hale, Robert Grant, Ballou,--of "The Pearl of India,"--Bates,
+Guiney, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and others are "to the manor born;"
+but, if Boston has few birthplaces, she cherishes the homes and haunts
+of two generations of adult intellectual giants.
+
+Prominent among the literary landmarks is the "Corner Book-store"--once
+the shop of the father of Dr. Clarke--at School and Washington Streets,
+which, like Murray's in London, has long been the rendezvous of the
+_littérateurs_. Here appeared the first American edition of "The Opium
+Eater" and of Tennyson's poems. Here was the early home of the
+"Atlantic," then edited by James T. Fields, who was the literary partner
+of the firm and the presiding genius of the old store. This lover of
+letters and sympathetic friend of literary men--always kind of heart and
+generous of hand--drew to him here the foremost of that galaxy who first
+achieved for America a place in the world of letters. To this literary
+Rialto, as familiar loungers, came in that golden age George Hilliard,
+Emerson, Ticknor, Saxe, Whipple, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Lowell, Agassiz,
+the "Autocrat," and the rest, to loiter among and discuss the new books,
+or, more often, to chat with their friend Fields at his desk, in the
+nook behind the green baize curtain. The store is altered some since
+Fields left it; the curtained back-corner, which was the domain of the
+Celtic urchin "Michael Angelo" and the trysting spot of the literary
+fraternity, has given place to shelves of shining books. The side
+entrance--used mostly by the authors because it brought them more
+directly to Fields's desk and den--is replaced by a window which looks
+out upon the spot where, as we remember with a thrill, Fields last shook
+Hawthorne's hand and stood looking after him as--faltering with
+weakness--he walked up this side street with Pierce to start upon the
+journey from which he never returned.
+
+Literary tourists come to the store as to a shrine: thus in later years
+Matthew Arnold, Cable, Edmund Gosse, Professor Drummond, Dr. Doyle, and
+others like them, have visited the old corner. Nor is it deserted by the
+authors of the day; Holmes was often here up to the time of his death,
+and the visitor may still see, turning the glossy pages, some who are
+writers as well as readers of books: Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Scudder,
+Alger, Robert Grant,--whose "Reflections" and "Opinions" have been so
+widely read,--Miss Winthrop, Miss Jewett, Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton,
+and Mrs. Coffin are among those who still come to the familiar place.
+Near by, in Washington Street, Hawthorne's first romance, "Fanshawe,"
+was published in 1828. From Fields's famous store the transition to the
+staid old mansion which was long his home, and in which his widow still
+lives, is easy and natural. We find it pleasantly placed below the
+western slope of Beacon Hill, overlooking an enchanting prospect of blue
+waters and sunset skies. It is one of those dignified, substantial, and
+altogether comfortable dwellings--with spacious rooms, wide halls, easy
+stairways, and generous fireplaces--which we inherit from a previous
+generation. Here Fields, hardly less famed as an author than as the
+friend of authors, and his gifted wife--who is still a charming
+writer--created in their beautiful home an atmosphere which attracted to
+it the best and highest of their kind, and made it what it has been for
+more than forty years, a centre and ganglion of literary life and
+interest. The old-fashioned rooms are aglow with most precious memories
+and teem with artistic and literary treasures, many of them being
+_souvenirs_ of the illustrious authors whom the Fields have numbered
+among their friends and guests. The letters of Dickens, Hawthorne,
+Emerson, and others reveal the quality of the hospitality of this house
+and show how it was prized by its recipients. For years this was the
+Boston home of Hawthorne; to it came Emerson, Longfellow, and Whittier
+almost as freely as to their own abodes; here Holmes, Lowell, Charles
+Sumner, Greene, Bayard Taylor, Joseph Jefferson, were frequent guests;
+and here we see a quaintly furnished bedchamber which has at various
+times been occupied by Dickens, Trollope, Arthur Clough, Thackeray,
+Charles Kingsley, Matthew Arnold, Charlotte Cushman, and others of equal
+fame. Of the delights of familiar intercourse with the starry spirits
+who frequented this house, of their brilliant discussions of men and
+books, their scintillations of wit, their sage and sober words of
+wisdom, Mrs. Annie Fields affords but tantalizing hints in her
+reminiscences and the glimpses she occasionally allows us of her
+husband's diary and letters. Fields's library on the second
+floor--described as "My Friend's Library"--is a most alluring apartment,
+where we see, besides the "Shelf of Old Books" of which Mrs. Fields
+gives such a sympathetic account, other shelves containing numerous
+curious and uniquely precious volumes,--among them the few hundreds of
+worn and much annotated books which constituted the library of Leigh
+Hunt. In this room Emerson, while awaiting breakfast, wrote one of his
+poems, to which the hostess gave title.
+
+In later years a younger generation of writers came to this mansion:
+Celia Thaxter was a frequent guest; the princess-like Sarah Orne Jewett,
+beloved by Whittier as a daughter, has made it her Boston home; Aldrich
+comes to see the widow of his friend; Miss Preston, Mrs. Ward, and other
+luminous spirits may be met among the company who assemble in these
+memory-haunted rooms. For several years Holmes lived in the same street,
+within a few doors of Fields's house.
+
+At number fifty-four in quaint Pinckney Street, around the corner from
+Mrs. Fields's and near the former residence of Aldrich, we find the
+house in which the brilliant George Hilliard lived and died, scarcely
+changed since the time James Freeman Clarke here married Hawthorne to
+the lovely Sophia Peabody.
+
+Upon the opposite side, at number eleven, dwells Mrs. E. P. Whipple,
+widow of the eminent author and critic,--herself a lady of refined
+critical tastes,--who keeps unchanged the home in which her husband
+died. In his lifetime a select circle of friends usually assembled here
+on Sunday evenings,--a circle in which Fields, Bronson Alcott, Lowell,
+Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, Sumner, Clarke, Dr. Bartol, Ole Bull,
+Lucretia Hale, Edwin Booth, and others of similar eminence in letters or
+art were included. Just around the corner, in Louisburg Square, Bronson
+Alcott died in the house of his daughter Mrs. Pratt,--the "Meg" of
+Louisa Alcott's books.
+
+On Beacon Hill, in the next--Mount Vernon--street, we find near the "hub
+of the Hub" a tall, deep-roomed dwelling, surmounted by an observatory
+which commands a charming view of the city and its environs, and this is
+the elegant city home of the poet, novelist, and prince of
+conversationalists, Thomas Bailey Aldrich. His library, full of
+treasures, is on a lower floor, but the study in which he pens his
+delightful compositions is high above the distractions of the world. As
+one sees the author of "Marjorie Daw" and the recent "Unguarded Gates"
+among his books, there is no hint of his sixty years in his fresh, ruddy
+face, with its carefully waxed moustache, nor in his sprightly speech
+and manner.
+
+In the same street, the spacious mansion of ex-Governor Claflin was long
+a resort of a wise, earnest, and dazzling company of sublimated
+intellects. This house was in later years the usual haven of Whittier,
+the gentle Quaker bard, during his visits to Boston; and here, protected
+by the hostess from the eager kindness of his numerous friends, he spent
+many restful days when rest was most needed.
+
+Near by, on the same hill-side, the talented authoress of "John Ward,
+Preacher" inhabits a many-windowed home of sober brick. Within, we find
+everywhere evidences of the fastidious personality of Mrs. Margaret
+Deland. In her parlors are dainty articles of furniture and bric-à-brac,
+wide fireplaces, deep windows full of flowers, many pictures, many more
+books. In her study and work-room, her desk stands near another
+fireplace, about it are still more flowers, pictures and books galore;
+here, not long ago, that tragedy of selfishness--"Philip and His
+Wife"--was written.
+
+At the sumptuous home of the Sargents in the adjoining street have been
+held some of the _séances_ of the noted Radical Club, in which, as Mrs.
+Moulton says, "somebody read a paper and everybody else pulled it to
+pieces." At these sessions such spirits as Emerson, Bronson Alcott,
+Holmes, Edward Everett Hale, Carl Schurz, the genial Colonel Higginson,
+the serene James Freeman Clarke, the mystic Dr. Bartol,--who still lives
+in retirement in his old home,--and other representatives of advanced
+thought have discussed the ethics of life as well as of letters.
+
+A plain brick house of three stories in the same quiet street was the
+abode of Francis Parkman's sister, where, after the death of his wife,
+the historian spent his winters, his study here being a simple front
+room on the upper floor, with open fireplace and book-lined walls.
+
+In Park Street, above the Common, the ample mansion of George
+Ticknor--the chronicler of "Spanish Literature" and the autocrat of
+literary taste--was during many years a haunt of the best of Boston
+culture. We find its stately walls still standing, but the interior has
+been surrendered to the Philistines.
+
+On Beacon Street, but a door or two removed from the birthplace of
+Wendell Phillips, in a house whose number the poet-lover said he
+"remembered by thinking of the Thirty-Nine Articles," Longfellow won
+Miss Appleton to be his wife. Just across the Common, in Carver Street,
+Hawthorne's son was born.
+
+At many of the homes here mentioned were held the assemblages of the
+Ladies' Social Club. Among its readers were Agassiz, Emerson, Greene,
+Whipple, Clarke, and E. E. Hale. It was ironically styled the "Brain
+Club," and died after many years because, according to one ex-member,
+"the newer members brought into it too much Supper and Stomach and no
+Brain at all." A successor has been the Round Table Club, with Colonel
+Higginson for first president,--its meetings for essays and discussions
+being held in the homes of its literary or artistic members.
+
+Boston's Belgravia occupies a district which has been reclaimed from the
+waters of the "Back Bay" of the Charles River,--on whose shore Hawthorne
+placed the shunned and isolated thatched cottage of Hester Prynne in
+"The Scarlet Letter," and the windows of many of Boston's Four Hundred
+overlook the same delightful vista of water, hills, and western skies
+which to the sad eyes of Hester and little Pearl were a daily vision. On
+the water side of Beacon Street, within this select region, is the
+four-floored, picturesque mansion of brick--its front embellished with a
+growth of ivy which clusters about the bay-windows--where not long ago
+we found the gentle and genial Holmes sitting among his books, serene in
+the golden sunset of life, happy in the love of friends and in the
+benedictions of the thousands his work has uplifted and beatified. The
+mansion is redolent of literary associations, and throughout its
+apartments were tastefully disposed articles of virtu, curios, and
+mementos--literary, artistic, or historic--of affection and regard from
+Holmes's many friends at home and abroad. His study was a large room at
+the back of the house, occupying the entire width of the second floor.
+Its broad window commands a sweep of the Charles, with its tides and its
+many craft, beyond which the poet could see, as he said, Cambridge where
+he was born, Harvard where he was educated, and Mount Auburn where he
+expected to lie in his last sleep. We last saw the "Autocrat" in his
+easy-chair, among the treasures of this apartment, with a portrait of
+his ancestress "Dorothy Q" looking down at him from a side wall. His
+hair was silvered and his kindly face had lost its smoothness,--for he
+was eighty-five "years young," as he would say,--but his faculties were
+keen and alert, and, in benign age, his greeting was no less cordial and
+his outlook upon men and affairs was no less cheery and optimistic than
+in the flush and vigor of early manhood. In this luxurious study were
+written several of his twenty-five volumes,--"Over the Teacups" being
+the most popular of those produced here,--and we found him still
+devoting some hours of each day to light literary tasks, oftenest
+dictating materials for his memoirs, which are yet to be published.
+
+Above the study, and overlooking the river on which he used to row and
+the farther green hills, is the chamber immortalized in "My Aviary;" and
+here, as he sat in his favorite chair, surrounded by his family, death
+came to him, and his spirit peacefully passed into the eternal silence.
+Then the "Last Leaf" had fallen, to be mourned by all the world.
+
+A door or two from Holmes sometime dwelt the versatile novelist, poet,
+playwright, and "Altrurian Traveller." A popular print of "Howells in
+his Library" is an interior of his Beacon Street house; the view of the
+glassy river-basin, with the roofs and spires of Cambridge rising from
+banks and bowers of foliage beyond,--which he pictures from the new
+house of "Silas Lapham" on this street,--is the one Howells daily beheld
+from his study window here. His latest Boston home was in the same
+district on the superb Commonwealth Avenue, near the statue of Garrison,
+and here, in a sumptuous, six-storied, bow-fronted mansion, he wrote
+"The Shadow of a Dream" and other widely read books.
+
+A modest, old-fashioned house on Beacon Street has long been the home of
+the poet and starry genius Julia Ward Howe, writer of the "Battle-Hymn
+of the Republic." Other members of her singularly gifted family have
+sojourned here, and the "home of the Howes" has been frequented by men
+and women eminent for culture and thought and for achievement in
+literature or art.
+
+In the adjacent Marlborough Street recently died the polished author and
+orator Robert C. Winthrop, and here, too, was the home of Dr. Ellis, the
+friend of Lowell's father.
+
+Farther away in this newer Boston of luxury and culture is the charming
+and hospitable home of the poet, essayist, novelist, and critic Mrs.
+Louise Chandler Moulton, whose American admirers complain that in late
+years she remains too much in London. When at home, she inhabits a
+delightful dwelling which, from entrance to attic, teems with pictures,
+rare books, curios, and other _souvenirs_ of her many friends in many
+lands. In her library, where much of "Garden of Dreams," "Swallow
+Flights," and other books was written, and where more of all "the work
+nearest her heart" was accomplished, are preserved many autograph copies
+of books by recent writers--several of them dedicated to Mrs.
+Moulton--and a priceless collection of letters from illustrious literary
+workers. In her drawing-rooms one may meet many of the famed authors of
+the day,--Higginson, Wendell, Horsford, Bynner, Nora Perry of the
+charming books for girls, Miss Conway, Miss Louise Imogen Guiney, Mrs.
+Howe, Arlo Bates, Adams, the jocosely serious Robert Grant, and others
+of Boston's newer lights of literature.
+
+If we "drive on down Washington Street" with "Silas Lapham," we shall
+find in Chester Square the "Nankeen Square" where he dwelt in his less
+ambitious days, and the pretty oval green with the sturdy trees which
+the worthy colonel saw grow from saplings.
+
+In a pleasant dwelling on the contiguous street lives and works the
+bright and busy Lucretia P. Hale, sister of the author-divine. She was
+the favorite scholar of Miss Elizabeth Peabody; and she has, through her
+writings and her classes, acquired an influence and discipleship little
+smaller than that which Margaret Fuller once possessed.
+
+Farther south, in the Roxbury district, we seek the abode of the famed
+author of "The Man without a Country." Sauntering along the shady and
+delectable Highland Street, we interrogate a uniformed guardian of the
+law, who heartily rejoins, "Dr. Hale's is a temple on the right a block
+further on: and if any man's fit to live in a temple, it's him." As we
+walk the "block further on" we think that, however defective his
+grammar, the policeman's estimate of Hale is beyond criticism and agrees
+with that of the thousands of readers and friends of the indefatigable
+author, lecturer, preacher, editor, reformer, and promoter of all good.
+We find the house--very like a Greek temple--standing back from the
+street in the midst of an ample lawn, shaded by noble trees and decked
+with a wealth of shrubbery and bloom. The mansion is a large square
+edifice, with great dormer-windows in its roofs, surmounted by a cupola,
+and having in front a lofty portico upheld by heavy Ionic pillars,
+between which interlacing woodbine forms a leafy screen. Within is a
+wide hall, and opening out of it are generously proportioned rooms, some
+of them lined from floor to ceiling with thousands of books. The study
+is a commodious room, with a "pamphlet-annex" adjoining it on the garden
+side, and is crammed with book-shelves and drawers, while piles of
+books, magazines, portfolios, manuscripts, and memoranda are disposed on
+cases, tables, and stands about the apartment. Everything is obviously
+arranged for convenient and ready use, and well it may be so, for this
+is the work-room and "thinking-shop" of the hardest-working literary man
+in America. The books which made his first fame were written before he
+came to this house; of all the works produced in this study, the
+numerous poems, romances, histories, essays, editorials, reviews,
+discussions, translations,--to say nothing of the many hundreds of
+well-considered and carefully written sermons,--we may not here mention
+even the names, for no writer since Voltaire is more fruitful of
+finished and masterly work. It is notable that Hale regards "In His
+Name" as his best work from a literary point of view; of his other
+productions, he thinks some of the poems of the latest collection, "For
+Fifty Years," as good as anything,--"always excepting his sermons."
+Among the abundant treasures of his study, Hale has a most interesting
+and valuable collection of autograph letters, of which he is justly
+proud. His father was Nathan Hale of the Boston "Advertiser," his mother
+was sister to Edward Everett and herself an author and translator, his
+wife is niece to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, his son Robert has already
+acquired a reputation in the domain of letters. The doctor himself has
+been a writer from childhood, his earliest contributions being to his
+father's paper. His illustrious sister declares that in their nursery
+days she and her brother used to take their meals with the "Advertiser"
+pinned under their chins,--a practice to which their literary precocity
+has been attributed. We find Hale at the age of seventy-three blithe and
+hopeful, working as much and manifestly accomplishing more than ever
+before.
+
+A little farther out on the same street is the dwelling where William
+Lloyd Garrison spent his last years, and in this neighborhood lived Mrs.
+Blake, poet of "Verses Along the Way." Here also are the early home of
+Miss Guiney and the school to which she was first sent,--or rather
+"carried neck and heels," because she refused to walk. Close by we find
+the pleasant home in which Jane G. Austin wrote some of her famed
+colonial tales and where she died not many months ago; and in the same
+delightful suburb, a half-mile beyond Hale's house, is the retreat where
+the beloved author of "Little Women" breathed out her too brief life.
+
+
+
+
+OUT OF BOSTON
+
+I
+
+CAMBRIDGE: ELMWOOD: MOUNT AUBURN
+
+_Holmes's Church-yard--Bridge, Smithy, Chapel, and River of Longfellow's
+  Verse--Abodes of Lettered Culture--Holmes--Higginson--Agassiz--
+  Norton--Clough--Howells--Fuller--Longfellow--Lowell--Longfellow's City
+  of the Dead and its Precious Graves._
+
+
+Crossing the Charles by "The Bridge" of Longfellow's popular poem, a
+stroll along elm-shaded streets brings us to the ancient Common of
+Cambridge and a vicinage which has much besides its historic traditions
+to allure the literary pilgrim. For centuries the site of a celebrated
+college and a conspicuous centre of learning, it has long been the
+abiding-place of representatives of the best and foremost in American
+culture and mental achievement.
+
+Close by the Common, and opposite the remains of the elm beneath which
+Washington assumed the command of the patriot army, stood the old
+gambrel-roofed house in which that "gentlest of autocrats," Holmes, was
+born and reared, and upon whose door-post was first displayed his
+"shingle," on which he whimsically proposed to inscribe "The Smallest
+Fevers Thankfully Received;" across the college grounds is the home-like
+edifice where lived the erudite Professor Felton, loved by Dickens and
+oft mentioned in his letters; not far away, at the corner of Broadway,
+was the home of Agassiz, since occupied by his son; and a few rods
+eastward is the picturesque residence of the witty and profound Colonel
+Higginson,--poet, essayist, novelist, and reformer. In the adjacent
+Kirkland Street dwelt the delightful Dr. Estes Howe, brother-in-law to
+Lowell, with whom the poet sometime lived and whom he celebrated as "the
+Doctor" in the "Fable for Critics." Dr. C. C. Abbott formerly lived in
+this neighborhood, and the collections on which his best-known books are
+founded are preserved in the near-by Peabody Museum, beyond which we
+find the tasteful abode of Professor Charles Eliot Norton, the friend
+and literary executor of Lowell. Near the Common, too, dwelt for a year
+or so that rare poet Arthur Clough, author of "The Bothie" and "Qua
+Cursum Ventus;" and the sweet singer Charlotte Fiske Bates--the intimate
+friend of Longfellow--had her habitation in the same neighborhood.
+Opposite the southern end of the Common is the ancient village cemetery
+celebrated in the poetry of Holmes and Longfellow; a little way
+westward, Howells lived in a delightful rose-embowered cottage and
+pleasantly pictured many features of the old town in the "Charlesbridge"
+of his "Suburban Sketches." Two or three furlongs distant, within the
+grounds of the Botanic Garden, long lived the American Linnæus,
+Professor Asa Gray.
+
+Of all the Cambridge thoroughfares, the shady and venerable Brattle
+Street, which curves westward from the University Press, is most
+interesting and attractive. Near the Press building stands the historic
+Brattle House,--its beautiful stairway and other antique features
+preserved by the Social Club, to whom the property now belongs,--where
+Margaret Fuller, the priestess and queen of modern Transcendentalism,
+passed much of her youth and young womanhood, and where her sister, wife
+to the poet Ellery Channing, was reared. Margaret, who is said to have
+stood for the Theodora of Beaconsfield's "Lothair," first saw the light
+in a modest little dwelling in Main Street nearer the Boston bridge, and
+here attended school with Holmes and Richard Henry Dana; but it was in
+this Brattle House that her marvellous, and in some respects unique,
+intellectual career commenced. Here she acquired the moral and mental
+equipment which fitted her for leadership in the most vital epoch of
+American culture and thought, and here she attracted and attached all
+the wisest and noblest spirits within her range. To her here came
+Theodore Parker, the older Channing, Harriet Martineau, James Freeman
+Clarke,--the earnest, brilliant, and thoughtful of all ages and
+conditions. One noble soul who knew her here speaks of her friendship as
+a "gift of the gods," and some eminent in thought and achievement
+testify that they have ever striven toward standards set up for them by
+her in that early period of her residence here.
+
+Close by Miss Fuller's home, "under a spreading chestnut-tree" at the
+intersection of Story Street, stood the smithy of Pratt, who was
+immortalized by Longfellow as "The Village Blacksmith." To the poet,
+passing daily on the way between his home and the college, the "mighty
+man" at his anvil in the shaded smithy was long a familiar vision. The
+tree--a horse-chestnut--has been removed, the shop has given place to a
+modern dwelling, and years ago the worthy smith rejoined his wife,
+"singing in Paradise."
+
+A few steps westward from the site of the smithy is the "Chapel of St.
+John" of another sweet poem of Longfellow; and just beyond this we
+find, bowered by lilacs and environed by acres of shade and sward, the
+colonial Cragie House, once the sojourn of Washington, but holding for
+us more precious associations, since Sparks, Worcester, and Everett have
+lived within its time-honored walls, and our popular poet of grace and
+sentiment for near half a century here had his home, and from here
+passed into the unknown. The picturesque mansion wears the aspect of an
+old acquaintance, and the interior, with its princely proportioned
+rooms, spacious fireplaces, wide halls, curious carvings and tiles, has
+much that Longfellow has shared with his readers. On the entrance door
+is the ponderous knocker; a landing of the broad stairway holds "The Old
+Clock on the Stairs;" the right of the hall is the study, with its
+priceless mementos of the tender and sympathetic bard who wrought here
+the most and best of his life-work, from early manhood onward into the
+mellow twilight of sweet and benign age. Here is his chair, vacated by
+him but a few days before he died; his desk; his inkstand which had been
+Coleridge's; his pen with its "link from the chain of Bonnivard;" the
+antique pitcher of his "Drinking Song;" the fireplace of "The Wind over
+the Chimney;" the arm-chair carved from the "spreading chestnut-tree"
+of the smithy, which was presented to him by the village children and
+celebrated in his poem "From my Arm-Chair." About us here are his
+cherished books, his pictures, his manuscripts, all his precious
+belongings, and from his window we see, beyond the Longfellow Memorial
+Park, the river so often sung in his verse, "stealing onward, like the
+stream of life." In this room Washington held his war councils. Of the
+many intellectual _séances_ its walls have witnessed we contemplate with
+greatest pleasure the Wednesday evening meetings of the "Dante Club,"
+when Lowell, Howells, Fields, Norton, Greene, and other friends and
+scholars sat here with Longfellow to revise the new translation of
+Dante.
+
+The book-lined apartment over the study--once the bedchamber of
+Washington and later of Talleyrand--was occupied by Longfellow when he
+first lived as a lodger in the old house. It was here he heard
+"Footsteps of Angels" and "Voices of the Night," and saw by the fitful
+firelight the "Being Beauteous" at his side; here he wrote "Hyperion"
+and the earlier poems which made him known and loved in every clime.
+Later this room became the nursery of his children, and some of the
+grotesque tiles which adorn its chimney are mentioned in his poem
+"To a Child:"
+
+  "The lady with the gay macaw,
+  The dancing-girl, the grave bashaw.
+      The Chinese mandarin."
+
+  [Illustration: WHERE LONGFELLOW LIVED]
+
+Along the western façade of the mansion stretches a wide veranda, where
+the poet was wont to take his daily exercise when "the goddess
+Neuralgia" or "the two Ws" (Work and Weather) prevented his walking
+abroad. In this stately old house his children were born and reared,
+here his wife met her tragic death, and here his daughter--the "grave
+Alice" of "The Children's Hour"--abides and preserves its precious
+relics, while "laughing Allegra" (Anna) and "Edith with golden
+hair"--now Mrs. Dana and Mrs. Thorp--have dwellings within the grounds
+of their childhood home, and their brother Ernst owns a modern cottage a
+few rods westward on the same street.
+
+In Sparks Street, just out of Brattle, dwelt the author Robert
+Carter,--familiarly, "The Don,"--sometime secretary to Prescott and long
+the especial friend of Lowell, with whom he was associated in the
+editorship of the short-lived "Pioneer." Carter's home here was the
+rendezvous of a circle of choice spirits, where one might often meet
+"Prince" Lowell,--as his friends delighted to call him,--Bartlett of
+"Familiar Quotations," and that "songless poet" John Holmes, brother of
+the "American Montaigne."
+
+A short walk under the arching elms of Brattle Street brings us to
+Elmwood, the life-long home of Lowell. The house, erected by the last
+British lieutenant-governor of the province, is a plain, square
+structure of wood, three stories in height, and is surrounded by a park
+of simple and natural beauty, whose abundant growth of trees gives to
+some portions of the grounds the sombreness and apparent seclusion of a
+forest. A gigantic hedge of trees encloses the place like a leafy wall,
+excluding the vision of the world and harboring thousands of birds who
+tenant its shades. Some of the aquatic fowl of the vicinage are referred
+to in Longfellow's "Herons of Elmwood." In the old mansion, long the
+home of Elbridge Gerry, Lowell was born and grew to manhood, and to it
+he brought the bride of his youth, the lovely Maria White, herself the
+writer of some exquisite poems; here, a few years later, she died in the
+same night that a child was born to Longfellow, whose poem "The Two
+Angels" commemorates both events. Here, too, Lowell lost his children
+one by one until a daughter, the present Mrs. Burnett,--now owner and
+occupant of Elmwood,--alone remained. During the poet's stay abroad, his
+house was tenanted by Mrs. Ole Bull and by Lowell's brother-bard Bailey
+Aldrich, who in this sweet retirement wrought some of his delicious
+work. To the beloved trees and birds of his old home Lowell returned
+from his embassage, and here, with his daughter, he passed his last
+years among his books and a chosen circle of friends. Here, where he
+wished to die, he died, and here his daughter preserves his former home
+and its contents unchanged since he was borne hence to his burial. Until
+the death of his father, Lowell's study was an upper front room at the
+left of the entrance. It is a plain, low-studded corner apartment, which
+the poet called "his garret," and where he slept as a boy. Its windows
+now look only into the neighboring trees, but when autumn has shorn the
+boughs of their foliage the front window commands a wide level of the
+sluggish Charles and its bordering lowlands, while the side window
+overlooks the beautiful slopes of Mount Auburn, where Lowell now lies
+with his poet-wife and the children who went before. His study windows
+suggested the title of his most interesting volume of prose essays. In
+this upper chamber he wrote his "Conversations on the Poets" and the
+early poems which made his fame,--"Irene," "Prometheus," "Rhoecus,"
+"Sir Launfal,"--which was composed in five days,--and the first series
+of that collection of grotesque drolleries, "The Biglow Papers." Here
+also he prepared his editorial contributions to the "Atlantic." His
+later study was on the lower floor, at the left of the ample hall which
+traverses the centre of the house. It is a prim and delightful
+old-fashioned apartment, with low walls, a wide and cheerful fireplace,
+and pleasant windows which look out among the trees and lilacs upon a
+long reach of lawn. In this room the poet's best-loved books, copiously
+annotated by his hand, remain upon his shelves; here we see his table,
+his accustomed chair, the desk upon which he wrote the "Commemoration
+Ode," "Under the Willows," and many famous poems, besides the volumes of
+prose essays. In this study he sometimes gathered his classes in Dante,
+and to him here came his friends familiarly and informally,--for
+"receptions" were rare at Elmwood: most often came "The Don," "The
+Doctor," Norton, Owen, Bartlett, Felton, Stillman,--less frequently
+Godkin, Fields, Holmes, Child, Motley, Edmund Quincy, and the historian
+Parkman.
+
+While the older trees of the place were planted by Gerry, the pines and
+clustering lilacs were rooted by Lowell or his father. All who remember
+the poet's passionate love for this home will rejoice in the assurance
+that the old mansion, with its precious associations and mementos, and
+the acres immediately adjoining it, will not be in any way disturbed
+during the life of his daughter and her children. At most, the memorial
+park which has been planned by the literary people of Boston and
+Cambridge will include only that portion of the grounds which belonged
+to the poet's brothers and sisters.
+
+A narrow street separates the hedges of Elmwood from the peaceful shades
+of Mount Auburn,--the "City of the Dead" of Longfellow's sonnet. Lowell
+thought this the most delightful spot on earth. The late Francis Parkman
+told the writer that Lowell, in his youth, had confided to him that he
+habitually went into the cemetery at midnight and sat upon a tombstone,
+hoping to find there the poetic afflatus. He confessed he had not
+succeeded, and was warned by his friend that the custom would bring him
+more rheumatism than inspiration. Dr. Ellis testified that at this
+period his friend Dr. Lowell often expressed to him his anxiety "lest
+his son James would amount to nothing, because he had taken to writing
+poetry."
+
+In the sanctuary of Mount Auburn we find many of the names mentioned in
+these chapters,--names written on the scroll of fame, blazoned on
+title-pages, borne in the hearts of thousands of readers in all
+lands,--now, alas! inscribed above their graves. From the eminence of
+Mount Auburn, we look upon Longfellow's river "stealing with silent
+pace" around the sacred enclosure; the verdant meads along the stream;
+the distant cities, erst the abodes of those who sleep about us
+here,--for whom life's fever is ended and life's work done. Near this
+summit, Charlotte Cushman rests at the base of a tall obelisk, her
+favorite myrtle growing dense and dark above her. By the elevated Ridge
+Path, on a site long ago selected by him, Longfellow lies in a grave
+decked with profuse flowers and marked by a monument of brown stone. On
+Fountain Avenue we find a beautiful spot, shaded by two giant trees,
+which was a beloved resort of Lowell, and where he now lies among his
+kindred, his sepulchre marked by a simple slab of slate: "Good-night,
+sweet Prince!" Not far away is the beautiful Jackson plot, where not
+long ago the beloved Holmes was tenderly laid in the same grave with his
+wife beneath a burden of flowers. Some of the blossoms we lately saw
+upon this grave were newly placed by the creator of "Micah Clarke" and
+"Sherlock Holmes," Dr. Conan Doyle. By a great oak near the main avenue
+is the sarcophagus of Sumner, and one shady slope bears the memorial of
+Margaret Fuller and her husband,--buried beneath the sea on the coast of
+Fire Island. Near by we find the grave of "Fanny Fern,"--wife of Parton
+and sister of N. P. Willis,--with its white cross adorned with
+exquisitely carved ferns; the pillar of granite and marble which
+designates the resting-place of Everett; the granite boulder--its
+unchiselled surface overgrown with the lichens he loved--which covers
+the ashes of Agassiz; the simple sarcophagus of Rufus Choate; the
+cenotaph of Kirkland; the tomb of Spurzheim; and on the lovely slopes
+about us, under the dreaming trees, amid myriad witcheries of bough and
+bloom, are the enduring memorials of affection beneath which repose the
+mortal parts of Sargent, Quincy, Story, Parker, Worcester, Greene,
+Bigelow, William Ellery Channing, Edwin Booth, Phillips Brooks, and many
+like them whom the world will not soon forget.
+
+In this sweet summer day, their place of rest is so quiet and
+beautiful,--with the birds singing here their lowest and tenderest
+songs, the soft winds breathing a lullaby in the leafy boughs, the air
+full of a grateful peace and calm, the trees spreading their great
+branches in perpetual benediction above the turf-grown graves,--it seems
+that here, if anywhere, the restless wayfarer might learn to love
+restful death.
+
+
+
+
+OUT OF BOSTON
+
+II
+
+BELMONT: THE WAYSIDE INN: HOME OF WHITTIER
+
+_Lowell's Beaver Brook--Abode of Trowbridge--Red Horse Tavern--Parsons
+  and the Company of Longfellow's Friends--Birthplace of Whittier--
+  Scenes of his Poems--Dwelling and Grave of the Countess--Powow Hill--
+  Whittier's Amesbury Home--His Church and Tomb._
+
+
+A few miles westward from the classic shades of Cambridge we found,
+perched upon a breezy height of Belmont, a picturesque, red-roofed
+villa, for some years the summer home of our "Altrurian Traveller." From
+its verandas he overlooked a slumberous plain, diversified with meads,
+fields, country-seats, and heavy-tinted copses, and bordered by a circle
+of verdant hills; while on the eastern horizon rises the distant city,
+crowned by the resplendent dome of the capitol. In his dainty white
+study here, with its gladsome fireplace and curious carvings and
+mottoes, Howells wrote--besides other good things--his "Lady of the
+Aroostook," in which some claim to have discerned an answer to Henry
+James's "Daisy Miller."
+
+In this neighborhood is the valley of "Beaver Brook," a favorite haunt
+of Lowell, to which he brought the English poet Arthur Clough. The old
+mill is removed, but we find the water-fall and the other romantic
+features little changed since the poet depicted the ideal beauties of
+this dale, in what has been adjudged one of the most artistic poems of
+modern times.
+
+In a charming retreat among the hills of Arlington, scarce a mile away
+from Howells's sometime Belmont home, dwells and writes that genial and
+gifted poet and novelist, John T. Trowbridge, whose books--notably his
+war-time tales--have found readers round the world.
+
+[Sidenote: Longfellow's Wayside Inn]
+
+Westward again from Belmont, a prolonged drive through a delightful
+country brings us to "Sudbury town" and the former hostelry of 'Squire
+Howe,--the "Wayside Inn" of Longfellow's "Tales." Our companion and
+guide is one who well knew the old house and its neighborhood in the
+halcyon days when Professor Treadwell, Parsons,--the poet of the "Bust
+of Dante,"--and the quiet coterie of Longfellow's friends came, summer
+after summer, to find rest and seclusion under its ample roof and
+sheltering trees, among the hills of this remote region. The environment
+of fragrant meadow and smiling field, of deep wood glade and
+forest-clad height, is indeed alluring. About the ancient inn remain
+some of the giant elms and the "oak-trees, broad and high," shading it
+now as in the day when the "Tales" immortalized it with the "Tabard" of
+Chaucer; while through the near meadow circles the "well-remembered
+brook" of the poet's verse, in which his friends saw the inverted
+landscape and their own faces "looking up at them from below."
+
+The house is a great, old-fashioned, bare and weather-worn edifice of
+wood,--"somewhat fallen to decay."--standing close upon the highway. Its
+two stories of spacious rooms are supplemented by smaller chambers in a
+vast attic; two or three chimneys, "huge and tiled and tall," rise
+through its gambrel roofs among the bowering foliage; a wing abuts upon
+one side and imparts a pleasing irregularity to the otherwise plain
+parallelogram. The wide, low-studded rooms are lighted by windows of
+many small panes. Among the apartments we find the one once occupied by
+Major Molineaux, "whom Hawthorne hath immortal made," and that of Dr.
+Parsons, the laureate of this place, who has celebrated it in the
+stanzas of "Old House at Sudbury" and other poems. But it is the old
+inn parlor which most interests the literary visitor,--a great, low,
+square apartment, with oaken floors, ponderous beams overhead, and a
+broad hearth, where in the olden time blazed a log fire whose ruddy glow
+filled the room and shone out through the windows. It is this room which
+Longfellow peoples with his friends, who sat about the old fireplace and
+told his "Tales of a Wayside Inn." The "rapt musician" whose
+transfiguring portraiture we have in the Prelude is Ole Bull; the
+student "of old books and days" is Henry Wales; the young Sicilian, "in
+sight of Etna born and bred," is Luigi Monti, who dined every Sunday
+with Longfellow; the "Spanish Jew from Alicant" is Edrelei, a Boston
+Oriental dealer; the "Theologian from the school of Cambridge on the
+Charles" is Professor Daniel Treadwell; the Poet is T. W. Parsons, the
+Dantean student and translator of "Divina Commedia;" the Landlord is
+'Squire Lyman Howe, the portly bachelor who then kept this "Red Horse
+Tavern," as it was called. Most of this goodly circle have been here in
+the flesh, and our companion has seen them in this old room, as well as
+Longfellow himself, who came here years afterward, when the Landlord was
+dead and the poet's company had left the old inn forever. In this room
+we see the corner where stood the ancient spinet, the spot on the wall
+where hung the highly colored coat of arms of Howe and the sword of his
+knightly grandfather near Queen Mary's pictured face, the places on the
+prismatic-hued windows where the names of Molineaux, Treadwell, etc.,
+had been inscribed by hands that now are dust.
+
+Descendants of the woman who died of the "Shoc o' Num Palsy" are said to
+live in the neighborhood, as well as some other odd characters who are
+embalmed in Parsons's humorous verse. But the ancient edifice is no
+longer an inn; the Red Horse on the swinging sign-board years ago ceased
+to invite the weary wayfarer to rest and cakes and ale; the
+memory-haunted chambers, where starry spirits met and tarried in the
+golden past, were later inhabited by laborers, who displayed the rooms
+for a fee and plied the pilgrim with lies anent the former famed
+occupants. The storied structure has recently passed to the possession
+of appreciative owners,--Hon. Herbert Howe being one of them,--who have
+made the repairs needful for its preservation and have placed it in the
+charge of a proper custodian.
+
+A longer way out of Boston, in another direction, our guest is among the
+haunts of the beloved Quaker bard. On the bank of the Merrimac--his
+own "lowland river"--and among darkly wooded hills of hackmatack and
+pine, we find the humble farm-house, guarded by giant sentinel poplars,
+where eighty-eight years agone Whittier came into the world.
+
+[Sidenote: Scenes of Whittier's Poems]
+
+Among the plain and bare apartments, with their low ceilings, antique
+cross-beams, and multipaned windows, we see the lowly chamber of his
+birth; the simple study where his literary work was begun; the great
+kitchen, with its brick oven and its heavy crane in the wide fireplace,
+where he laid the famous winter's evening scene in "Snow-Bound,"
+peopling the plain "old rude-furnished room" with the persons he here
+best knew and loved. We see the dwelling little changed since the time
+when Whittier dwelt--a dark-haired lad--under its roof; it is now
+carefully preserved, and through the old rooms are disposed articles of
+furniture from his Amesbury cottage, which are objects of interest to
+many visitors.
+
+All about the place are spots of tender identification of poet and poem:
+here are the brook and the garden wall of his "Barefoot Boy;" the scene
+of his "Telling the Bees;" the spring and meadow of "Maud Muller;" not
+far away, with the sumachs and blackberries clustering about it still,
+is the site of the rude academy of his "School Days;" and beyond the low
+hill the grasses grow upon the grave of the dear, brown-eyed girl who
+"hated to go above him." We may still loiter beneath the overarching
+sycamores planted by poor Tallant,--"pioneer of Erin's outcasts,"--where
+young Whittier pondered the story of "Floyd Ireson with the hard heart."
+
+Delightful rambles through the country-side bring us to many scenes
+familiar to the tender poet and by him made familiar to all the world.
+Thus we come to the "stranded village" of Aunt Mose,--"the muttering
+witch-wife of the gossip's tale,"--where Whittier found the materials
+out of which he wrought the touching poem "The Countess," and where we
+see the poor low rooms in which pretty, blue-eyed Mary Ingalls was born
+and lived a too brief life of love, and her sepulchre--now reclaimed
+from a tangle of brake and brier--in the lonely old burial-ground that
+"slopes against the west." Her grave is in the row nearest the dusty
+highway, and is marked by a mossy slab of slate, which is now protected
+from the avidity of relic-gatherers by a net-work of iron, bearing the
+inscription, "The Grave of the Countess."
+
+Thus, too, we come to the ruined foundation of the cottage of "Mabel
+Martin, the Witch's Daughter," and look thence upon other haunts of the
+beloved bard, as well as upon his river "glassing the heavens" and the
+wave-like swells of foliage-clad hills which are "The Laurels" of his
+verse. In West Newbury, the town of his "Northman's Written Rock," we
+find the comfortable "Maplewood" homestead where lived and lately died
+the supposed sweetheart of the poet's early manhood.
+
+[Sidenote: Whittier's Amesbury Cottage]
+
+Whittier's beloved Amesbury, the "home of his heart," is larger and
+busier than he knew it, but, as we dally on its dusty avenues, we find
+them aglow with living memories of the sweet singer. In Friend Street
+stands--still occupied by Whittier's former friends--the plain little
+frame house which was so long his home. A bay window has been placed
+above the porch, but the place is otherwise little changed since he left
+it; the same noble elms shade the front, the fruit-trees he planted and
+pruned and beneath which the saddened throng sat at his funeral are in
+the garden; here too are the grape-vines which were the especial objects
+of his loving care,--one of them grown from a rootlet sent to him in a
+letter by Charles Sumner.
+
+Within, we see the famous "garden room," which was his sanctum and
+workshop, and where this gentle man of peace waged valiant warfare with
+his pen for the rights of man. In this room, with its sunny outlook
+among his vines and pear-trees, he kept his chosen books, his treasured
+souvenirs; and here he welcomed his friends,--Longfellow, Fields,
+Sumner, Lowell, Colonel Higginson, Bayard Taylor, Mrs. Thaxter, Mrs.
+Phelps-Ward, Alice Cary, Lucy Larcom, Sarah Orne Jewett, and many
+another illustrious child of genius.
+
+A quaint Franklin fireplace stood by one side wall,--usually surmounted
+in summer by a bouquet; in the nook between this and the sash-door was
+placed an old-fashioned writing-desk, and here he wrote many of the
+poems which brought him world-wide fame and voiced the convictions and
+the conscience of half the nation. Here are still preserved some of his
+cherished books. Above the study was Whittier's bedchamber, near the
+rooms of his mother, his "youngest and dearest" sister, and the "dear
+aunt" (Mercy) of "Snow-Bound," who came with him to this home and shared
+it until their deaths. After the others were gone, the brother and
+sister long dwelt here alone, later a niece was for some years his
+house-keeper, and at her marriage the poet gave up most of the house to
+some old friends, who kept his study and chamber in constant readiness
+for his return upon the prolonged sojourns which were continued until
+his last year of life,--this being always his best-loved home.
+
+Near by are the "painted shingly town-house" of his verse, where during
+many years he failed not to meet with his neighbors to deposit "the
+freeman's vote for Freedom," and the little, wooden Friends'
+meeting-house, where he loved to sit in silent introspection among the
+people of his faith. The trees which now shade its plain old walls with
+abundant foliage were long ago planted by his hands. The "Powow Hill" of
+his "Preacher" and "The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall" rises steeply near
+his home, and was a favorite resort, to which he often came, alone or
+with his guests. One who has often stood with Whittier there pilots us
+to his accustomed place on the lofty rounded summit, whence we overlook
+the village, the long reach of the "sea-seeking" river, and the
+entrancing scene pictured by the poet in the beautiful lines of
+"Miriam."
+
+[Sidenote: Whittier's Tomb]
+
+From these precious haunts our pilgrim shoon trace the revered bard to
+the peaceful precincts of the God's-acre--just without the town--where,
+in a sequestered spot beneath a dark cedar which sobs and soughs in the
+summer wind, his mortal part is forever laid, with his beloved sister
+and kindred, within
+
+                "the low green tent
+  Whose curtain never outward swings."
+
+
+
+
+OUT OF BOSTON
+
+III
+
+SALEM: WHITTIER'S OAK-KNOLL AND BEYOND
+
+_Cemetery of Hawthorne's Ancestors--Birthplace of Hawthorne and his
+  Wife--Where Fame was won--House of the Seven Gables--Custom-House--
+  Where Scarlet Letter was written--Main Street and Witch Hill--Sights
+  from a Steeple--Later Home of Whittier--Norman's Woe--Lucy Larcom--
+  Parton, etc.--Rivermouth--Thaxter._
+
+
+[Sidenote: Hawthorne's Salem]
+
+A half-hour's jaunt by train brings us to the shaded streets of quaint
+old Salem and the scenes of Hawthorne's early life, work, and triumph.
+Here we find on Charter Street, in the old cemetery of "Dr. Grimshaw's
+Secret" and "Dolliver Romance," the sunken and turf-grown graves of
+Hawthorne's mariner ancestors, some of whom sailed forth on the ocean of
+eternity nearly two centuries ago. Among the curiously carved
+gravestones of slate we see that of John Hathorn, the "witch-judge" of
+Hawthorne's "Note-Books." Close at hand repose the ancestors of the
+novelist's wife, and the Doctor Swinnerton who preceded "Dolliver" and
+who was called to consider the cause of Colonel Pyncheon's death in the
+opening chapter of "The House of the Seven Gables."
+
+The sombre house which encroaches upon a corner of the cemetery
+enclosure--with the green billows surging about it so closely that its
+side windows are within our reach from the gravestones--was the home of
+the Peabodys, whence Hawthorne wooed the amiable Sophia, and where, in
+his tales, he domiciled Grandsir "Dolliver" and also "Doctor Grimshaw"
+with Ned and Elsie. We found it a rather depressing, hip-roofed,
+low-studded, and irregular edifice of wood, standing close upon the
+street, and obviously degenerated a little from the degree of
+respectability--"not sinking below the boundary of the genteel"--which
+the romancer ascribed to it. The little porch or hood protects the front
+entrance, and the back door communicates with the cemetery,--a
+circumstance which recalls the novelist's fancy that the dead might get
+out of their graves at night and steal into this house to warm
+themselves at the convenient fireside.
+
+Not many rods distant, in Union Street, stands the little house where
+Captain Hathorn left his family when he went away to sea, and where the
+novelist was born. The street is small, shabby, shadeless,
+dispiriting,--its inhabitants not select. The house--builded by
+Hawthorne's grandfather and lately numbered twenty-seven--stands close
+to the sidewalk, upon which its door-stone encroaches, leaving no space
+for flower or vine; the garden where Hawthorne "rolled on a grass-plot
+under an apple-tree and picked abundant currants" is despoiled of turf
+and tree, and the wooden house walls rise bare and bleak. It is a plain,
+uninviting, eight-roomed structure, with a lower addition at the back,
+and with a square central chimney-stack rising like a tower above the
+gambrel roof. The rooms are low and contracted, with quaint corner
+fireplaces and curiously designed closets, and with protuberant beams
+crossing the ceilings. From the entrance between the front rooms a
+narrow winding stair leads to an upper landing, at the left of which we
+find the little, low-ceiled chamber where, ninety years ago, America's
+greatest romancer first saw the light. It is one of the most cheerless
+of rooms, with rude fireplace of bricks, a mantel of painted planks, and
+two small windows which look into the verdureless yard. In a modest
+brick house upon the opposite side of the street, and but a few rods
+distant from the birthplace of her future husband, Hawthorne's wife was
+born five years subsequent to his nativity.
+
+[Sidenote: The Manning House]
+
+Abutting upon the back yard of Hawthorne's birthplace is the old Manning
+homestead of his maternal ancestors, the home of his own youth and
+middle age and the theatre of his struggles and triumph. It is known as
+number twelve Herbert Street, and is a tall, unsightly, erratic fabric
+of wood, with nothing pleasing or gracious in its aspect or environment.
+The ugly and commonplace character of his surroundings here during half
+his life must have been peculiarly depressing to such a sensitive
+temperament as Hawthorne's, and doubtless accounts for his mental
+habits. That he had no joyous memories of this old house his letters and
+journals abundantly show. Its interior arrangement has been somewhat
+changed to accommodate the several families of laborers who have since
+inhabited it, and one front room seems to have been used as a shop; but
+it is not difficult to identify the haunted chamber which was
+Hawthorne's bed-room and study. This little, dark, dreary apartment
+under the eaves, with its multipaned window looking down into the room
+where he was born, is to us one of the most interesting of all the
+Hawthorne shrines. Here the magician kept his solitary vigil during the
+long period of his literary probation, shunning his family, declining
+all human sympathy and fellowship, for some time going abroad only
+after nightfall; here he studied, pondered, wrote, revised, destroyed,
+day after day as the slow months went by; and here, after ten years of
+working and waiting for the world to know him, he triumphantly recorded,
+"In this dismal chamber FAME was won." Here he wrote "Twice-Told Tales"
+and many others, which were published in various periodicals, and here,
+after his residence at the old Manse,--for it was to this Manning house
+that he "always came back, like the bad halfpenny," as he said,--he
+completed the "Mosses." This old dwelling is one of the several which
+have been fixed upon as being the original "House of the Seven Gables,"
+despite the novelist's averment that the Pyncheon mansion was "of
+materials long in use for constructing castles in the air." The pilgrim
+in Salem will be persistently assured that a house which stands near the
+shore by the foot of Turner Street, and is known as number thirty-four,
+was the model of Hawthorne's structure. It is an antique edifice of some
+architectural pretensions, displays five fine gables, and has spacious
+wainscoted and frescoed apartments, with quaint mantels and other
+evidences of colonial stateliness. It was an object familiar to the
+novelist from his boyhood,--he had often visited it while it was the
+home of pretty "Susie" Ingersol,--and it may have suggested the style of
+architecture he employed for the visionary mansion of the tale. The
+names Maule and Pyncheon, employed in the story, were those of old
+residents of Salem.
+
+[Sidenote: Hawthorne's Custom-House]
+
+But a few rods from Herbert Street is the Custom-House where Hawthorne
+did irksome duty as "Locofoco Surveyor," its exterior being--except for
+the addition of a cupola--essentially unchanged since his description
+was written, and its interior being even more somnolent than of yore.
+The wide and worn granite steps still lead up to the entrance portico;
+above it hovers the same enormous specimen of the American eagle, and a
+recent reburnishing has rendered even more evident the truculent
+attitude of that "unhappy fowl." The entry-way where the venerable
+officials of Hawthorne's time sat at the receipt of customs has been
+renovated, the antique chairs in which they used to drowse, "tilted back
+against the wall," have given place to others of more modern and elegant
+fashion, and the patriarchal dozers themselves--lying now in the
+profounder slumber of death--are replaced by younger and sprightlier
+successors, who wear their dignities and pocket their emoluments. At the
+left we find the room, "fifteen feet square and of lofty height," which
+was Hawthorne's office during the period of his surveyorship: it is no
+longer "cobwebbed and dingy," but is tastefully refitted and
+refurnished, and the once sanded floor, which the romancer "paced from
+corner to corner" like a caged lion, is now neatly carpeted. The
+"exceedingly decrepit and infirm" chairs, and the three-legged stool on
+which he lounged with his elbow on the old pine desk, have been retired,
+and the desk itself is now tenderly cherished among the treasures of the
+Essex Institute, on Essex Street, a few blocks distant, where the
+custodian proudly shows us the name of Hawthorne graven within the lid,
+in some idle moment, by the thumb-nail of the novelist. Some yellow
+documents bearing his official stamp and signature are preserved at the
+Custom-House, and the courteous official who now occupies Hawthorne's
+room displays to us here a rough stencil plate marked "Salem N Hawthorne
+Surr 1847," by means of which knowledge of Hawthorne's existence was
+blazoned abroad "on pepper-bags, cigar-boxes, and bales of dutiable
+merchandise," instead of on title-pages. The arched window, by which
+stood his desk, commands a view upon which his vision often rested, and
+which seems to us decidedly more pleasing and attractive than he has
+led us to expect. The picturesque old wharf in the foreground, the
+white-sailed shipping, and a shimmering expanse of water extending to
+the farther bold headlands of the coast form, we think, a pleasant
+picture for the lounger here.
+
+The apartment opposite to Hawthorne's was, in his day, occupied by the
+brave warrior General James Miller, who is graphically described as the
+"old Collector" in the introduction to "Scarlet Letter;" the room
+directly above it--which is the private office of the present chief
+executive, the genial Collector Waters--a portrait of the hero of
+Lundy's Lane now looks down from the wall upon the visitor; but no
+picture of Hawthorne is to be found in the edifice.
+
+An ample room at the right of the hall on the second floor, now
+handsomely fitted and furnished, was in Hawthorne's time open and
+unfinished, its bare beams festooned with cobwebs and its floor lumbered
+with barrels and bundles of musty official documents; and it was here
+that he discovered, among the accumulated rubbish of the past, the
+"scarlet, gold-embroidered letter," and the manuscript of Surveyor
+Prue,--Hawthorne's ancient predecessor in office,--which recorded the
+"doings and sufferings" of Hester Prynne.
+
+A short walk from the Custom-House brings us to the spot where, with
+"public notices posted upon its front and an iron goblet chained to its
+waist," stood that "eloquent monologist," the town-pump of Hawthorne's
+famous "Rill." Already its locality, at the corner of Essex and
+Washington Streets, is pointed out with pride as being among the sites
+memorable in the town's history, and thus the playful prophecy with
+which Hawthorne terminates the sketch of his official life is more than
+fulfilled.
+
+The spacious and well-preserved old frame house at number fourteen Mall
+Street--a neighborhood superior to that of his former residences--was
+Hawthorne's abode for three or four years. It was here that he, on the
+day of his official death, announced to his wife, "Well, Sophie, my head
+is off, so I must write a book;" and here, in the ensuing six months,
+disturbed and distressed by illness of his family, by the death of his
+mother, and by financial needs, he wrote our most famous romance, "The
+Scarlet Letter." A bare little room in the front of the third story was
+his study here, and while he wrote in solitude his wife worked in a
+sitting-room just beneath, decorating lamp-shades whose sale helped to
+sustain the household.
+
+[Sidenote: Salem--Witch Hill]
+
+As we saunter along the "Main Street" of Hawthorne's sketch and the
+other shady avenues he knew so well, the curious old town, which in his
+discontent he called tame and unattractive, seems to our eyes
+picturesque and beautiful, with its wide elm-bordered streets, its
+grassy waysides, its many gardens and square, embowered dwellings, not
+greatly changed since he knew them. If we follow "the long and lazy
+street" to the Witch Hill, which the novelist describes in "Alice
+Doane's Appeal," we may behold from that unhappy spot, where men and
+women suffered death for imagined misdoing, the whole of Hawthorne's
+Salem, with the environment he pictures in "Sights from a Steeple." We
+see the house-roofs of the town--half hidden by clustering
+foliage--extending now from the slopes of the fateful hill to the
+glinting waters of the harbor; the farther expanse of field and meadow,
+dotted with white villages and scored with shadowy water-ways; the
+craggy coast, with the Atlantic thundering endlessly against its
+headlands. Yonder is the steeple of Hawthorne's vision, beyond is the
+scene of the exquisite "Footprints in the Sand," and across the blue of
+the rippling sea we behold the place of the fierce fight in which the
+gallant Lawrence lost at once his ship and his life.
+
+Not far from Salem is Oak-Knoll, where the white-souled Whittier,
+"wearing his silver crown," passed "life's late afternoon" with his
+devoted relatives. It is a delightful, sheltered old country-seat, with
+wide lawns, and scores of broad acres wooded with noble trees, beneath
+which the poet loved to stroll or sit, soothed and inspirited by the
+gracious and generous beauty of the scene about him.
+
+One spot in the glimmering shade of an overarching oak is shown as his
+favorite resort. Close by the house is a circular, green-walled garden,
+where, in summer mornings, he delighted to work with rake and hoe among
+the flowers. The mansion is a dreamful, old-fashioned edifice, with wide
+and lofty piazzas, whose roofs are upheld by massive columns; and, with
+its grand setting of trees, it presents a pleasing picture. Whittier's
+study--a pleasant, cheerful room, with a delightful outlook and sunny
+exposure, a friendly-looking fireplace, and a glass door opening upon
+the veranda--was especially erected for him in a corner of the house,
+and here his later poems were penned. A bright and ample chamber above
+the parlor was his sleeping-apartment.
+
+[Sidenote: Whittier--Longfellow, etc.]
+
+The sweet poetess Miss Preston and the sprightly and versatile "Gail
+Hamilton" dwelt in the neighborhood and came often to this room to talk
+with the "transplanted prophet of Amesbury." Lucy Larcom and that
+"Sappho of the isles," Celia Thaxter, came less frequently. The place is
+still occupied by the relatives Whittier loved, who have preserved
+essentially unchanged the scenes he here inhabited.
+
+A little farther up the rock-bound coast are the scene of Lucy Larcom's
+touching poem "Hannah's at the Window Binding Shoes;" the hearth-stone
+where Longfellow saw his "Fire of Drift-Wood;" and the bleak sea-side
+home of "Floyd Ireson" of Whittier's verse. Beyond these lie the
+sometime summer homes of the poet Dana, Harriet Prescott Spofford,
+Fields, and Whipple, with that Mecca of the tourist, the savage reef of
+Norman's Woe,--celebrated in Longfellow's pathetic poem as the scene of
+"The Wreck of the Hesperus,"--not far away; while across the harbor a
+summer resort of the gifted Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward stands--an "Old
+Maid's Paradise" no longer--among the rocks of the shore.
+
+By the mouth of Whittier's "lowland river" we find the birthplace of
+Lloyd Garrison, the ancestral abode of the Longfellows, the tomb of
+Whitefield beneath the spot where he preached, the once sojourn of
+Talleyrand. Here, too, still inhabited by his family, we find the large,
+three-storied corner house in which Parton spent his last twenty years
+of busy life, and the low book-lined attic study where, in his cherished
+easy-chair with his manuscript resting upon a lap-board, he did much of
+his valuable work.
+
+Still farther northward, we come to the ancient town of Aldrich's "Bad
+Boy"-hood,--immortalized as the "Rivermouth" of his prose,--the place of
+Longfellow's "Lady Wentworth," the home of Hawthorne's Sir William
+Pepperell; and to the picturesque island realm of that "Princess of
+Thule," Celia Thaxter, and her gifted poet-brother Laighton;--but these
+shrines are worthy of a separate pilgrimage.
+
+
+
+
+OUT OF BOSTON
+
+IV
+
+WEBSTER'S MARSHFIELD: BROOK FARM, ETC
+
+_Scenes of the Old Oaken Bucket--Webster's Home and Grave--Where Emerson
+  won his Wife--Home of Miss Peabody--Parkman--Miss Guiney--Aldrich's
+  Ponkapog--Farm of Ripley's Community--Relics and Reminiscences._
+
+
+One day's excursion out of Boston is southward through the birthplace
+and ancestral home of the brilliant essayist Quincy to the boyhood
+haunts of Woodworth and the scenes which inspired his sweetest lyric. In
+Scituate, by the village of Greenbush, we find the well of the "Old
+Oaken Bucket" remaining at the site of the dwelling where the poet was
+born and reared. Most of the "loved scenes" of his childhood--the
+wide-spreading pond, the venerable orchard, the flower-decked meadow,
+the "deep-tangled wildwood"--may still be seen, little changed since he
+knew them; but the rock of the cataract has been removed and the cascade
+itself somewhat altered by the widening of the highway; the "cot of his
+father" has given place to a modern farm-house; and the "moss-covered
+bucket that hung in the well" has been supplanted by a convenient but
+unpoetical pump.
+
+[Sidenote: Webster's Home and Grave]
+
+A few miles beyond this romantic spot we come to the Marshfield home of
+Daniel Webster, set in the midst of a pleasant rural region, not far
+from the ancient abode of Governor Winslow of the Plymouth colony. On
+the site of Webster's farm-house of thirty rooms--destroyed by fire some
+years ago--his son's widow erected a pretty and tasteful modern cottage,
+in which she preserved many relics of the illustrious statesman and
+orator, which had been rescued from the flames. Some of the relics were
+afterward removed to Boston, and, the family becoming extinct with the
+death of Mrs. Fletcher Webster, the place found an appreciatory
+proprietor in Mr. Walton Hall, a Boston business-man who was reared in
+this neighborhood, where Webster's was "a name to conjure by."
+
+The objects connected with the memory of the statesman have been as far
+as possible preserved, and we find the cottage partially furnished with
+his former belongings. Here we see his writing-table, covered with
+ink-stained green baize; his phenomenally large arm-chair with seat of
+leather; the andirons from his study fireplace; the heavy cane he used
+in his walks about the farm; portraits of the great _genius loci_--one
+of them representing him in his coarse farm attire--and of members of
+his family; a fine cabinet of beetles and butterflies presented to him
+by the Emperor of Brazil; and a number of paintings, articles of
+furniture, and bric-à-brac which had once been Webster's.
+
+Near the house stand the great memorial elms, each planted by Webster's
+hand at the death of one of his children. His favorite tree, beneath
+which his coffined figure lay at his funeral, was injured by the fire
+and has since been removed. Behind the house is a pretty lakelet, on
+whose surface--by his desire--lights were kept burning at night during
+his last illness, so that he might see them from his bed in the Pink
+Room where he died.
+
+His study window looked out through a colonnade of trees upon the
+hill-side cemetery--a furlong distant--where he now sleeps in a spot he
+loved and chose for his sepulchre. His tomb, on the brow of the hill, is
+marked by a huge mound of earth crowned by a ponderous marble slab. The
+memorial stones about it were erected by him to commemorate his family,
+already sleeping in the vault here before he came to lie among
+them:--all save one, and that one died at Bull Run.
+
+Not far away lie Governor Winslow and the Peregrine White who was born
+on the Mayflower. From among the neglected graves we look abroad upon
+the acres Webster tilled, the creeks he fished, the meadows he hunted,
+the haunts of his leisure during many years: on the one hand, we see a
+stretch of verdant pastures and lowly hills dotted by white cottages and
+bounded by distant forests; on the other hand, across the wave-like
+dunes and glistening sands we see a silver rim flecked with white
+sails,--the ocean, whose low-sounding monotone, eternally responding to
+some whisper of the infinite, mayhap lulls the dreamless sleepers
+beneath our feet.
+
+Southward again, we come to historic old Plymouth, with its many Puritan
+shrines and associations, which did not prevent its becoming a
+shire-town of Transcendentalism. Here we see the house (framed in
+England, and erected here upside down) where Emerson, the fountain-head
+of that great "wave of spirituality," wooed and won Miss Jackson to be
+his wife; and not far away the lovely spot where, among his gardens,
+groves, and orchards, Marston Watson had his "Hillside" home,--to which
+resorted Emerson, Theodore Parker, Peabody, Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott,
+and which the latter celebrated in a sonnet. Here, too, we find the
+church where Kendall preached, and the farm of Morton, the earliest
+historian of the Western world.
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Peabody]
+
+In the Boston suburb of Jamaica Plain we find, near the station, the
+modest apartments where Miss Elizabeth Peabody--the "Saint Elizabeth" of
+her friends--passed her later years, and where, not many months ago, she
+died, having survived nearly all her associates in the earlier struggle
+for the enlargement of the bounds of spiritual freedom. She had been the
+intimate friend of Emerson, Channing, Theodore Parker, and the rest; and
+of the wider spirituality which they proclaimed she was esteemed a
+prophetess. Most of her literary work was done before she came to this
+home; and the latest literary effort of her life, her autobiography
+(which was undertaken here in age and weariness), was frustrated by her
+increasing infirmities.
+
+[Sidenote: Parkman]
+
+In the same delightful suburb was the ideally beautiful home of the
+historian Francis Parkman. His wide and tasteful dwelling surmounted an
+elevation overlooking a pretty lakelet, and was environed by ample
+grounds filled with choicest shrubbery and flowers, where there were
+roods of the roses and lilies he loved and studied. In this place he
+lived thirty-four years, and, although practically blind and rarely free
+from torturing pain, he here produced many volumes and accomplished the
+work which places him among the foremost historians of the age. In this
+home he died a year or so ago: his grounds having been taken for a
+public park, it is now proposed to erect here a bronze memorial of the
+great historian amid the floral beauty he created and cherished.
+
+In the remoter region of Canton, Thomas Bailey Aldrich has a sometime
+summer home, erected among enchanting landscapes, where he has pondered
+and written much of his dainty prose and daintier poesy. The curious
+name of this rural retreat is preserved in the title of his entertaining
+volume of travel-sketches, "From Ponkapog to Pesth." The tree near his
+door was the home of the pair of birds he described in the delightful
+sketch "Our New Neighbors at Ponkapog."
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Guiney]
+
+A morning's drive westward through the shade and sheen of a delectable
+urban district conveys us to the village of Auburndale, where we find
+the tasteful cottage home of Louise Imogen Guiney, with its French
+roofs, wide windows, square tower, and embosoming foliage. Here, if we
+come properly accredited, we may (or might before she became the
+village postmistress) see the gifted poetess of "White Sail" and
+"Roadside Harp" and essayist of "English Gallery" and "Prose Idyls"--a
+_petite_ and attractive young lady--at her desk, surrounded by her
+treasures of books and bric-à-brac and with the portraits of many
+friends looking down upon her from the walls of the square upper room
+where she writes. She has little to say concerning her own
+work,--fascinating as it is to her,--but discourses pleasantly on many
+topics and narrates _con amore_ the history of the precious tomes and
+the literary relics she has gathered here, and describes the traits and
+lineage of her beloved canine pets, who have been execrated by some of
+her neighbors.
+
+[Sidenote: Brook Farm]
+
+Nearer Jamaica Plain is the quiet corner of West Roxbury, where the
+exalted community of Brook Farmers attempted to realize in external and
+material fashion their high ideals and to inaugurate the precursor of an
+Arcadian era. In this season, "the sweet o' the year," we find the farm
+a delightful spot, fully warranting Hawthorne's eulogium in "Blithedale
+Romance." The songful stream which gives the place its name is margined
+by verdant and sun-kissed meads which slope away to the circling
+Charles; on either side, fields and picturesque pastures--broken here
+and there by rocky ledges and copse-covered knolls--swell upward to
+feathery acclivities of pine and oak, with rugged escarpments of rock.
+From the elevation about the farm-house we overlook most of the domain
+of these social reformers,--the many acres of woodlands, the orchards
+and fields where Ripley, George William Curtis, Hawthorne, Dwight,
+Bedford, Pratt, Dana, and other transcendental enthusiasts held
+sublimated discourse while they performed the coarsest farm drudgery,
+applied uncelestial fertilizers, "belabored rugged furrows," or delved
+for the infinite in a peat-bog. Curtis has said "there never were such
+witty potato-patches, such sparkling corn-fields; the weeds were
+scratched out of the ground to the music of Tennyson and Browning." The
+farm-house stands above the highway, and is shaded by giant trees
+planted by Ripley and his associates. It is a commodious, antiquated
+structure of weather-worn wood, two stories in height, with a vast attic
+beneath the sloping roofs and an extension which has been recently
+enlarged. The original edifice is a ponderous fabric of almost square
+form, with an entrance in the middle of the front, massive chimneys at
+either end, and contains four spacious lower rooms, besides an outer
+scullery. Here we see the sitting-room of the reformers, where at first
+Channing sometimes preached and the now "Nestor of American journalism"
+sang bass in the choir; their refectory, where Dana served as
+head-waiter; and their brick-paved kitchen, where the erudite Mrs.
+Ripley and the soulful Margaret Fuller sometimes helped to prepare the
+bran bread and baked beans for the exalted brotherhood. Adjoining is the
+old "wash-room," where some who have since become famous in literature
+or politics pounded the soiled linen in a hogshead with a heavy wooden
+pestle; and just without is the turf-carpeted yard where the dignified
+and handsome Hawthorne, the brilliant Charles A. Dana (who certainly was
+the most popular member of the community), and the genial Curtis were
+sometimes seen hanging the moist garments upon the lines, a truly
+edifying spectacle for gods and men. It was from Curtis's pockets that
+the clothes-pins sometimes dropped during the evening dances. Some of
+the trees yet to be seen near the house were rooted from the nursery
+established here by Dana.
+
+This old house was the original "Hive" of the community, who added the
+extensive wing at the back, but increasing numbers soon forced a
+portion of the company to swarm, and other dormitories were erected.
+Of these we find vestiges of the "Eyrie"--which was also used as a
+school-house--upon a commanding ledge at a little distance from the
+house, and nearer the grove where the rural festivals of the association
+were held. Of the "Nest," the little house where Miss Ripley lived, the
+"Cottage," where Margaret Fuller lodged during her sojourns at the farm,
+the large barn, where social _séances_ were held while the starry
+company prepared vegetables for the market, and the other steading
+erected by the community, only the cellars and broken foundations
+remain. In the wood at some distance from the house is the "Eliot's
+Pulpit" of Coverdale's narrative, a mass of rock crowning a knoll and
+having a great fissure through its core; in the forest beyond we may
+find "Coverdale's Walk," and the "Hermitage" where he heard by accident
+the colloquy of Westervelt and Zenobia.
+
+After the day of Ripley's brilliant colony the broad acres of Brook Farm
+were tilled by the town poor, and--"to what base uses!"--the pretty
+cottage of Margaret Fuller became a loathsome small-pox pest-house; the
+rooms of the "Hive," after six years of familiarity with ideal refiners
+and reformers, became the abode of paupers, and at this day are aswarm
+with an odorous multitude of German orphans, wards of a Lutheran
+society that now owns the place.
+
+While the pilgrim may find but few traces of the physical labors of the
+choice spirits who once inhabited this spot, the beneficent results of
+the mental and moral work here accomplished--especially among the
+young--are manifest and ineffaceable. These infertile fields yielded but
+scant returns for the manual toil of the optimistic philosophers, but
+their earnest strivings toward social and mental emancipation have borne
+abundant fruit.
+
+
+
+
+IN BERKSHIRE WITH HAWTHORNE
+
+  I. The Graylock and Hoosac Region
+  II. Lenox and Middle Berkshire
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE GRAYLOCK AND HOOSAC REGION
+
+_North Adams and about--Hawthorne's Acquaintances and Excursions--Actors
+  and Incidents of Ethan Brand--Kiln of Bertram the Lime-Burner--Natural
+  Bridge--Graylock--Thoreau--Hoosac Mountain--Deerfield Arch--
+  Williamstown--Bryant._
+
+
+The Hawthorne pilgrimage has drawn us to many shrines: the sunny scenes
+of "The Marble Faun," the peaceful landscapes of "Our Old Home," the now
+busy city of "The Scarlet Letter," the elm-shaded Salem of "Dr.
+Grimshaw" and "The House of the Seven Gables," the Manse of the
+"Mosses," the Wayside of "Septimius Felton" and "The Dolliver
+Romance,"--these and many another resort of the subtile romancer, in the
+Old World and the New, have held our lingering feet.
+
+Amid the splendors of a New England September we follow him into the
+"headlong Berkshire" of "Ethan Brand" and "Tanglewood Tales."
+
+Hawthorne was more than most writers influenced by environment; the
+situations and circumstances under which his work was produced often
+determined its tone and color, while the persons, localities, and
+occurrences observed by his alert senses in the real world about him
+were skilfully wrought into his romance. His residence in Berkshire
+affected not only the books written there, but some subsequently
+produced, and the scenery of this loveliest corner of New England
+supplied the setting for many of his tales. Some of the best passages of
+his "American Note-Books" are records of his observations in this
+region,--sundry scenes, characters, and incidents being afterward
+literally transcribed therefrom into his fiction,--while a few of his
+shorter stories seem to have been suggested by legends once current in
+Berkshire. It passes, therefore, that for us the greatest charm of this
+realm of delights is that all its beauties--the grandeur of its
+mountains, the enchantment of its valleys, the glamour of its autumn
+woods, the sheen of its lakelets, the sapphire of its skies--serve to
+bring us into closer sympathy with Hawthorne, to whom these beauties
+were once a familiar vision.
+
+He first came to Berkshire in the summer of 1838. For thirteen years he
+had bravely "waited for the world to know" him. His "Twice-Told Tales"
+had brought him little fame or money, but they had procured him the
+friendship of the Peabodys, and it would appear that he and the lovely
+Sophia already loved each other. In a letter to her sister Elizabeth,
+written early in the summer, Sophia says, "Hawthorne came one morning
+for a take-leave call, looking radiant. He said he was not going to tell
+any one, not even his mother, where he should be for the next months; he
+thought he should change his name, so that if he died no one would be
+able to find his gravestone. We asked him to keep a journal while he was
+gone. He at first said he would not write anything, but finally
+concluded it would suit very well for hints for future stories." It was
+from his journal of these months of mysterious retirement that, forty
+years later, the gentle Sophia--then his widow--transcribed those pages
+of the "Note-Books" which contain the account of his sojourn in upper
+Berkshire and of his observations and meditations there. How far the
+journal furnished "hints for future stories" the literary world well
+knows.
+
+A few days after this "take-leave call" we find Hawthorne at Pittsfield,
+where his Berkshire saunterings (and ours) fitly began. We follow him
+northward along a curving valley hemmed by mountains that slope upward
+to the azure; on the right rise the rugged Hoosacs in
+
+  "Wave-like walls that block the sky
+  With tints of gold and mists of blue;"
+
+on the left loom the darkly-wooded domes of the Taconics above the
+bright upland pastures, while before us grand old "Graylock" uprears his
+head "shaggy with primeval forest,"--his gigantic shape forming the
+culmination of the superb landscape. Hawthorne's superlative pleasure of
+beholding this grandeur and beauty from the driver's seat of a stage and
+being regaled at the same time by the converse of the driver is
+denied to us, but we enjoy quite as much as did Hawthorne the
+little "love-pats" and passages of a newly-wedded pair of our
+fellow-passengers. The stage has disappeared, the driver and the
+high-stepping steeds which served him "in wheel and in whoa" have given
+place to the engineer and the locomotive; the changes of the
+half-century since Hawthorne journeyed here have well-nigh overturned
+the world; only the eternal beauty of these hills and the bewraying
+demeanor of the newly-married remain evermore unchanged.
+
+[Sidenote: Hawthorne at North Adams]
+
+[Sidenote: Characters of his Fiction]
+
+At North Adams, which the magician, "liking indifferent well, made his
+head-quarters," we have lodgings near the place of his on the Main
+Street and in the domicile of one who, as a lad of fourteen years, had
+known Hawthorne during his stay here. Apparently he did not attempt to
+carry out his plan of concealing his identity; he certainly was known to
+some of the villagers as the author of "Twice-Told Tales," and a
+descendant of one of Hawthorne's "seven doctors of the place" recalls
+his delight on being told that the "Whig Tavern boarder" was the creator
+of "The Gentle Boy;" and he remembers his subsequent and consequent
+worshipful espionage of the wonderful being. To this espionage we are
+indebted for some edifying details of Hawthorne's sojourn in upper
+Berkshire. The world has known few handsomer men than Hawthorne was at
+this period of his life,--he had been styled Oberon at college,--and our
+informant recollects him as "the most brilliantly handsome person he
+ever beheld," tall, dark, with an expressive mobile face and a lustrous
+eye which held something "indescribably more than keenness" in its quick
+glances. (Charles Reade said Hawthorne's eye was "like a violet with a
+soul in it.") As remembered here, his expression was often abstracted,
+sometimes despondent. He would sit for hours at a time on the broad
+porch of the old "North Adams House," or in a corner of the bar-room,
+silently smoking and apparently oblivious to his surroundings, yet, as
+we know, vigilant to note the oddities of character and opinion he
+encountered. It is certain that he did not drink immoderately at this
+time. There were a few persons--_not_ the model men of the community--to
+whom he occasionally unbent and whom he admitted to a sort of
+comradeship, which, as his diary shows, often became confessionary upon
+their part. With these he held prolonged converse upon the tavern
+porch,--his part in the conversations being mainly suggestions
+calculated to elicit the whimsical conceits or experiences of his
+companions,--sitting the while in the posture of the venerable
+custom-house officials, described in the sketch introductory to the
+"Scarlet Letter," with "chair tipped on its hind legs" and his feet
+elevated against a pillar of the porch. Among those remembered to have
+been thus favored was Captain C----, called Captain Gavett in the
+"Note-Books," who dispensed metaphysics and maple sugar from the tavern
+steps, and a jolly blacksmith named Wetherel, described by Hawthorne as
+"big in the paunch and enormous in the rear," who came regularly to the
+bar for his stimulant. Another was the "lath-like, round-backed,
+rough-bearded, thin-visaged" stage-driver, Platt, whom Hawthorne honors
+as "a friend of mine" in the diary, and whose acquaintance he made
+during the ride from Pittsfield. In later years Platt's pride in having
+known Hawthorne eclipsed even his sense of distinction in being "the
+first and only man to drive an ox-team to the top of Graylock, sir." He
+had once been employed to haul the materials for an observatory up that
+mountain's steep inclines. Of the other "hangers-on" who were wont to
+infest the bar-room and porch fifty years ago and whom Hawthorne depicts
+in his journal and his fiction, few of the present generation of
+loungers in the place have ever heard. Orrin ----, the sportive widower
+whose peccadilloes are hinted at in the "Note-Books," is remembered by
+older residents of the town, and the "fellow who refused to pay six
+dollars for the coffin in which his wife was buried" may still be named
+as the personification of meanness. The maimed and dissolute Daniel
+Haines--nicknamed "Black Hawk"--was then a familiar figure in the
+village streets, and his unique history and appearance could not escape
+the notice of the great romancer nor be soon forgotten by the
+towns-people. As Hawthorne says, "he had slid down by degrees from law
+to the soap-vat." Once a reputable lawyer, his bibulous habits and an
+accident--his hand being "torn away by the devilish grip of a
+steam-engine"--had so reduced him that at the time Hawthorne saw him he
+maintained himself by boiling soap and practising phrenology. It is
+remembered that he used to "feel of bumps" for the price of a drink, and
+that, Hawthorne's head being submitted to his manipulation, he gravely
+assured the tavern company, "This man was created to shine as a bank
+president," and then privately advised the landlord to "make that chap
+pay in advance for his board." A resident tells us that this dirty and
+often drunken Haines used to make biweekly visits to his father's house,
+with a cart drawn by disreputable-looking dogs, to receive fat in
+exchange for soap. The novelist touches this odd character many times in
+his journal, and utilizes it in the romance of "Ethan Brand," where it
+is the "Lawyer Giles, the elderly ragamuffin," who, with the rest of the
+lazy regiment from the village tavern, came in response to the summons
+of the "boy Joe" to see poor Brand returned from his long search after
+the Unpardonable Sin. This "boy Joe," son of "Bertram the lime-burner,"
+was also a bar-room character, noted here by Hawthorne, but obviously
+for a different use than that made of him in "Ethan Brand,"--a reference
+to him in the "Note-Books" being supplemented by this memorandum: "take
+this boy as the germ of a tavern-haunter, a country _roué_, to spend a
+wild and brutal youth, ten years of his prime in prison and his old age
+in the poor-house." This sketch may have been written in the spirit of
+prophecy, so exactly has the life of one bar-room boy coincided with
+Hawthorne's outline; the career of another lad whom he here saw and
+possibly had in mind was happier.
+
+[Sidenote: Characters and Scenes]
+
+A modern hotel has replaced the "Whig Tavern" of Hawthorne's time, and a
+new set of _habitués_ now frequent its bar-room; another generation of
+fat men has succeeded the individuals whose breadth of back was a marvel
+to the novelist, and in the increased population of the place the "many
+obese" would no longer provoke comment. The lapsing decades have
+expanded the pretty and busy factory-village he found into a prettier
+and busier factory-city without materially changing its prevailing air.
+The vigorous young city has not wholly out-grown the "hollow vale"
+walled in by towering mountains; the aspect of its grand environment is
+therefore essentially unaltered, and it chances that there is scarcely a
+spot, in or about the town, which received the notice of Hawthorne which
+may not still be identified. It is our crowning pleasure in the
+resplendent autumn days to follow his thoughtful step and dreamy vision
+through town and country-side to the spots he frequented and described,
+thus sharing, in a way, his companionship and beholding through his eyes
+the beauties which he has depicted of mountain and vale, forest and
+stream. On the summit of a hill in the village cemetery, where white
+gravestones gleam amid the evergreens, the grave of a child at whose
+burial Hawthorne assisted is pointed out by one who was present with
+him. The well-known author-divine Washington Gladden, sometime preached
+in a near-by church. The ever-varying phases of the heights which look
+down upon the town--the wondrous play of light and shade upon the great
+sweeps of foliage which clothe the mountain-sides, the shadows chasing
+each other along the slopes and changing from side to side as the day
+declines, until the vale lies in twilight while the near summits are
+gilded with sunset gold, the exquisite cloud-effects as the fleecy
+masses drift above the ridges or cling to the higher peaks--were a
+never-failing source of pleasure to Hawthorne, as they are to the
+loiterer of this day. Every shifting of the point of view as we stroll
+in the town reveals a new aspect of its mountain ramparts and arouses
+fresh delight. Hawthorne thought the village itself most beautiful when
+clouds deeply shaded the mountains while sunshine flooded the valley
+and, by contrast, made streets and houses a bright, rich gold.
+
+[Sidenote: Hawthorne's Rambles]
+
+The investing mountains give to the place the "snug and insular" air
+which Hawthorne observed; from many points it seems completely severed
+from the rest of the world. On some dark days sombre banks of cloud
+settle along the ridges and apparently so strengthen and heighten the
+beleaguering walls that we recall Hawthorne's fancy that egress is
+impossible save by "climbing above the clouds." However, the railways
+tunnel the base of one mountain and curve around the flanks of others,
+while
+
+  "Old roads winding, as old roads will,"
+
+find easy grades about and over the ramparts, so that the bustling
+"Tunnel-city" is by no means isolated from the outside world.
+
+The rambles among and beyond these investing mountains, by which
+Hawthorne made himself and "Eustace Bright" of "Wonder-Book" and
+"Tanglewood Tales" familiar with "rough, rugged, broken, headlong"
+Berkshire, were usually solitary. The before-mentioned admirer of the
+"Gentle Boy" sometimes offered to guide the novelist to places of
+interest in the vicinage, but he usually preferred to be alone with
+nature and his own reveries. Once when the lad proposed to pilot him to
+the peak of Graylock, Hawthorne replied he "did not care to soar so
+high; the Bellows-Pipe was sightly enough for him." He visited the
+latter point many times; it is a long walk from the village, and once he
+returned so late that the hotel was closed for the night and our lad
+pommelled the door for him until the landlord descended, in wrath and
+confidentially scant attire, to admit the novelist.
+
+[Sidenote: Ethan Brand]
+
+One starless night we were guided to the kiln of "Bertram the
+lime-burner" which Hawthorne visited with Mr. Leach,--one of several
+kilns high up on the steep slope without the town, where the marble of
+the mountain is converted into snow-white lime. The graphic imagery of
+the tale may all be realized here upon the spot where it is laid. Amid
+the darkness, the iron door which encloses the glowing limestone
+apparently opens into the mountain-side, and seems a veritable entrance
+to the infernal regions whose lurid flames escape by every crevice. The
+dark and silent figure, revealed to us by the weird light, sitting and
+musing before the kiln, is surely "Ethan Brand" on his solitary vigil,
+intent on perilous thoughts as he looks into the flame, or mutely
+listening to the fiend he has evoked from the fire to tell him of the
+Unpardonable Sin; or it is the same Brand returned to the foot of
+Graylock after eighteen years of weary searching abroad, to find the Sin
+in his own heart and to burn that heart into snowy whiteness and purity
+in the kiln he had watched so long. As we ponder the scene we would
+scarce be surprised to witness the approach of the village rabble led by
+Joe, the old Jew exhibiting his "peep-show" at the foot of the kiln, and
+the self-pursuing cur violently chasing his own shortened tail, or to
+hear the demoniac laughter of Brand which scattered the terror-stricken
+rabble in the surrounding darkness. Certain it is that, thirteen years
+before he wrote the tale, Hawthorne saw here, at a kiln on the foot-hill
+of Graylock, his "Bertram," and heard the legend of a demented creature
+who threw himself into the midst of the circle of fire. The name "Ethan
+Brand" was that of an old resident of Hawthorne's Salem.
+
+[Sidenote: Graylock]
+
+The summit of Graylock, whose rugged beauty has been sung by Holmes,
+Thoreau, Bryant, and Fanny Kemble, had for Hawthorne a sort of
+fascination. From the streets of the village, from all the ways by which
+he sauntered through the country-side, his eyes were continually
+turning to that lofty height, observant of its ever-changing aspects.
+His diary of the time abounds with records of its phases, presented in
+varying conditions of cloud and sunshine and from different places of
+prospect, and of the fanciful impressions suggested to his subtile
+thought by each fresh and unfamiliar appearance. A walk repeatedly
+enjoyed by him is along a primitive road on the mountain-side to the
+southern end of The Notch,--"where it slopes upward to the
+skies,"--whence he could see most of the enchanting valley of
+Berkshire--with its lakes, embowered villages, and billowy expanses of
+upland and mead--extending between mountain-borders to the great Dome
+which looms across it sixty miles away. In the distance he could see the
+crags of Bryant's Monument Mountain--the "headless sphinx" of his own
+"Wonder-Book"--rising above the gleaming lake whose margin was to be his
+later home.
+
+Our route to the peak of Graylock is that taken by Hawthorne and Thoreau
+through the savage cleft of The Notch. We follow up a dashing
+mountain-stream past a charming cascade beneath darkening hemlocks, then
+along a rough road by the houses whose inhabitants Hawthorne thought
+"ought to be temperance people" from the quality of the water they gave
+him to drink. In the remoter parts of the glen a stranger-pedestrian is
+still a wonder, and will be regarded as curiously as was the romancer.
+From the extremity of The Notch, Graylock rises steeply, his sides
+clothed with forests, through which we climb to the summit and our
+reward. From the site of Thoreau's bivouac, where Fanny Kemble once
+declaimed Romeo and Juliet to a picnic party, we behold a scene of
+unrivalled vastness and beauty,--on every side peak soaring beyond peak
+until the shadowy outlines blend with the distant sky. The view ranges
+from Grand Monadnock and the misty Adirondacks to the Catskills, the
+Dome of Mount Washington, and the far-away hills of Connecticut, while
+at our feet smiles the bright valley, as beautiful as that in which
+Rasselas dwelt.
+
+[Sidenote: Natural Bridge]
+
+A mile from the town we find one of the most picturesque spectacles in
+New England, the Natural Bridge, to which Hawthorne came again and again
+during his sojourn in this region. Amid a grove of pines apparently
+rooted in the solid rock, a tributary of the Hoosac has, during
+measureless eons of time, worn in the white marble a chasm sixty feet
+deep and fifteen feet wide, spanned at one point by a beautifully arched
+mass which forms a bridge high above the stream which frets along the
+rock-strewn floor of the canyon. Within the ravine the brook falls in a
+rainbow-crowned cascade, and below this is a placid pool with margins of
+polished marble, where Hawthorne once meditated a bath, but, alarmed by
+the approach of visitors, he hastily resumed his habiliments, "not
+caring to be to them the most curious part of the spectacle."
+
+From the deep bed of the brook the gazer looks heavenward between lofty
+walls of crystalline whiteness which seem to converge as they rise,
+whose surmounting crags jutting from the verge are crowned by sombre
+evergreens which overhang the chasm and almost shut out the sky. As we
+traverse the gorge whose wildness so impressed Hawthorne and listen to
+the re-echoing roar of the now diminished stream, we are reminded of his
+conceit that the scene is "like a heart that has been rent asunder by a
+torrent of passion which has raged and left ineffaceable traces, though
+now there is but a rill of feeling at the bottom."
+
+Our way back to the town is along a riotous stream which took strong
+hold upon the liking of the novelist, by which he often walked and in
+whose cool depths he bathed. His brief descriptions of its secluded and
+turbulent course, through resounding hollows, amid dark woods, under
+pine-crowned cliffs,--"talking to itself of its own wild fantasies in
+the voice of solitude and the wilderness,"--although written at the time
+but for his own perusal, are among the gems of the language. Farther
+down, the boisterous stream is now subdued and harnessed by man and made
+to turn wheels of factories; its limpid waters are discolored by
+dye-stuffs; its beauty is lost with its freedom; it becomes useful
+and--ugly.
+
+[Sidenote: Incidents and Characters of Tales]
+
+One day our excursion is into the romantic valley of the Deerfield by
+the old stage-road over the Hoosac range, the route which Hawthorne took
+with his friends Birch and Leach. The many turns by which the road
+accomplishes the ascent afford constantly varying vistas of the valley
+out of which we rise, and progressively widening prospects of the
+forest-clad mountains beyond. At the summit we are in the centre of the
+magnificent panorama of mountains--glowing now with autumnal crimson and
+gold--which extorted from Henry Clay the declaration that he had "never
+beheld anything so beautiful."
+
+On the bare and wind-swept plain which lies along the summit are a few
+farm-dwellings. Among these at the time of Hawthorne's visit--before
+the great tunnel had pierced the mountain and superseded the
+stage-route--was a homely wayside inn, afterward a farm-house, at whose
+bar passengers were wont to "wet their whistles." It may be assumed that
+the romancer and his companions failed not to conform to this
+time-honored custom, for it was in that rude bar-room--since a
+farm-kitchen--that Hawthorne met the itinerant Jew with a diorama of
+execrable scratchings which he carried upon his back and exhibited as
+"specimens of the fine arts;" in that room also the novelist witnessed
+the whimsical performance of the usually sensible and sedate old dog,
+who periodically broke out in an infuriated pursuit of his own tail, "as
+if one half of his body were at deadly enmity with the other." These
+incidents were carefully noted at the time for possible future use, and
+in such choice diction that when, many years afterward, he wove them
+into the fabric of a tale of "The Snow Image" volume, he transcribed
+them from his diary to his manuscript essentially unchanged. This
+instance illustrates the method of this consummate literary artist and
+his alertness to perceive and utilize the details of real life. His
+journals abundantly show that he was by no means the aphelxian dreamer
+he has been adjudged.
+
+[Sidenote: Deerfield Arch]
+
+As we descend into the deep valley we find a wild gulf where a brooklet
+from the top of Hoosac falls a hundred feet into a rock-bordered pool,
+whence it hastens to lose itself in the river; and a mile or two farther
+along the Deerfield we come to the Natural Arch which Hawthorne visited.
+It is in one of the wildest parts of the picturesque valley, where
+mountain-walls rise a thousand feet on either side. Through a mass of
+rock projecting from the margin the stream has wrought for itself a
+symmetrically arched passage as large as and very like the door-way of
+an Old-World cathedral. The summit of the arch and the water-worn
+pillars upon either side display "pot-holes" and other evidences of
+erosion, and in the bed of the current lie fragments of similarly
+attrite rocks which seem to indicate that at some period a series of
+arches spanned the entire space from mountain to mountain. Hawthorne's
+pleasing fancy makes this arch the entrance to an enchanted palace which
+has all vanished except the door-way that "now opens only into
+nothingness and empty space."
+
+[Sidenote: Williamstown]
+
+On other days our saunterings follow Hawthorne's to beautiful
+Williamstown and through the picturesque scenery which environs it.
+Within the park-like village the alma mater of Bryant, Garfield, and
+Hawthorne's "Eustace Bright" stands embowered in noble elms and
+overlooked by mighty Graylock. Viewed from here, Emerson thought
+Graylock "a serious mountain." Thoreau considered its proximity worth at
+least "one endowed professorship; it were as well to be educated in the
+shadow of a mount as in more classic shades. Some will remember not only
+that they went to the college but that they went to the mountain."
+Hawthorne visited both. At the college commencement we find him more
+attentive to the eccentric characters in the assemblage without the
+church than to the literary exercises within, as evidenced by his
+piquant description of the enterprising pedler with the "heterogeny" of
+wares, the gingerbread man, the negroes, and other oddities of the
+out-door company.
+
+[Sidenote: Bryant--Emerson]
+
+About us here lie the scenes which stirred in William Cullen Bryant that
+intense love of nature which inspired his best stanzas. A winsome walk
+brings us to a sequestered glen where a brooklet winds amid moss-covered
+rocks and dainty ferns, and mirrors in its clear pools the overhanging
+boughs and the patches of azure; this was a favorite haunt of the
+youthful Bryant, and here he pondered or composed his earlier poems,
+including some portion of the matchless
+
+"Thanatopsis." Here Emerson, lingering under the spell of the spot, was
+moved to recite Wordsworth's "Excursion" to a companion, who must
+evermore feel an enviable thrill when he recalls the exquisite lines
+falling from the lips of the "great evangel and seer" amid the
+loveliness of such a scene.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+LENOX AND MIDDLE BERKSHIRE
+
+_Beloved of the Littérateurs--La Maison Rouge--Where The House of the
+  Seven Gables was written--Wonder-Book and Tanglewood Scenes--The
+  Bowl--Beecher's Laurel Lake--Kemble--Bryant's Monument Mountain--
+  Stockbridge--Catherine Sedgwick--Melville's Piazza and Chimney--
+  Holmes--Longfellow--Pittsfield._
+
+
+We have only to accompany Eustace Bright of "Wonder-Book" from Williams
+College to his home, where Catherine Sedgwick's "Stockbridge Bowl"
+nestles among the summer-enchanted hills of central Berkshire, to find
+the abode of Hawthorne during the most fertile period of his life. This
+region of inspiring landscapes has long been a favorite residence of
+_littérateurs_. Here Jonathan Edwards compiled his predestined
+treatises; here Catherine Sedgwick wrote the romances which charmed her
+generation; here Elihu Burritt "the Learned Blacksmith," wrought out the
+"Sparks" that made him famous; here Bryant composed his best stanzas and
+made Monument Mountain and Green River classic spots; here Henry Ward
+Beecher indited many "Star Papers;" here Herman Melville produced his
+sea-tales and brilliant essays; here Headley and Holmes, Lowell and
+Longfellow, Curtis and James, Audubon and Whipple, Mrs. Sigourney and
+Martineau, Fanny Kemble and Frederika Bremer, the gifted sisters
+Goodale, and many other shining spirits, have had home or haunt and have
+invested the scenery with the splendors of their genius. Half a score of
+this galaxy were in Berkshire at the time of Hawthorne's residence
+there.
+
+After his sojourn in northern Berkshire he returned to Salem, where he
+married the lovely Sophia Peabody, endured some years of custom-house
+drudgery, and wrote the "Scarlet Letter," which made him famous: he then
+sought again the seclusion of the mountains.
+
+[Sidenote: Hawthorne's Return to Berkshire]
+
+Poverty, which he had long and bravely endured, has been assigned as the
+cause of his removal to the humble Berkshire abode in 1850; one writer
+refers to the slenderness of his larder here, another says the rent for
+his poor dwelling was paid by his friends, another that the rent was
+remitted by the owner, who was his friend. But the success of the
+"Scarlet Letter" had relieved the necessitous condition of its author;
+and his landlord here--Tappan of "Tanglewood"--testifies and Hawthorne's
+letters show that he was able to pay his rent. His motive in returning
+to Berkshire is stated in a letter to Bridge: "I have taken a house in
+Lenox--I long to get into the country, for my health is not what it has
+been. An hour or two of labor in a garden and a daily ramble in country
+air would keep me all right." Doubtless, too, he hoped to find the quiet
+and seclusion of the place favorable for his work.
+
+[Sidenote: His Home and Study]
+
+The habitation to which he brought his family he describes as "the very
+ugliest little bit of an old red farm-house you ever saw," "the most
+inconvenient and wretched hovel I ever put my head in." His wife's
+letters characterize it, "the reddest and smallest of houses," with such
+a low stud that she "fears to be crushed."
+
+In later years we have found it scarcely changed since Hawthorne's
+occupancy; it was indeed of the humblest and plainest,--a low-eaved,
+one-and-a-half-storied structure, with a lower wing at the side, dingy
+red in color, with window-shutters of green. The interior was cosy and
+more commodious than the exterior would indicate, and one could readily
+conceive that the artistic taste and deft fingers of Mrs. Hawthorne
+might create here the idyllic home her letters portray. We have been
+indebted to the courtesy of Hawthorne's friend Tappan for glimpses of
+the rooms which Mrs. Hawthorne had already made familiar to us: the tiny
+reception-room, where she "sewed at her stand and read to the children
+about Christ;" the drawing-room, where she disposed "the embroidered
+furniture," and where, in the farther corner, stood "Apollo with his
+head tied on;" the dining-room, where the "Pembroke table stood between
+the windows;" the small boudoir, with its enchanting outlook; the
+"golden chamber" where the baby Rose was born; the room of the "little
+lady Una;" and the low, dingy apartment which was the study of the
+master-genius. Of this room she says, "it can boast of nothing but his
+presence in the morning and the picture out of the window in the
+evening." His secretary was so placed that as he sat at his work he
+could look out upon a landscape of forest and meadow, lake and mountain,
+as beautiful as a poet's dream. It was the exquisite loveliness of this
+scene--which Hawthorne thought surpassed all others in Berkshire--that
+for a time reconciled him to the deficiencies of his situation here.
+
+Monument Mountain, looming almost across the valley, is the most
+prominent feature of this view, and it was from his study window that he
+noted most of its varying aspects which are depicted in the
+"Wonder-Book" and in his letters and journals. Its contour is to him
+that of a "huge, headless sphinx," and when--as on the days we beheld it
+from his window--it blazes from base to summit with the resplendent hues
+of autumn, his fancy suggested that "the sphinx is wrapped in a rich
+Persian shawl;" with the sunshine upon it, "it has the aspect of
+burnished copper;" now it has "a fleece of sun-brightened mist," again
+it seems "founded on a cloud;" on other days it is "enveloped as if in
+the smoke of a great battle." Upon the pane through which he had looked
+upon these changeful phases his hand inscribed, "Nathaniel Hawthorne,
+February 9, 1851."
+
+[Sidenote: Site of his Little Red House]
+
+He could scarcely have found a lovelier location for his home. The
+valley, which sometimes seemed to him "a vast basin filled with sunshine
+as with wine," is enclosed by groups of mountains piled and terraced to
+the horizon. As we behold them in the splendor of the October days,
+great patches of sunshine and sable cloud-shadows flit along the glowing
+slopes in the sport of the wind. On the one side, the ground sweeps
+upward from the cottage site to the "Bald Summit" of the "Wonder-Book;"
+on the other, a meadow--as long as the finger of the giant of "Three
+Golden Apples"--slopes to the lake a furlong distant. That beautiful
+water, sung by Sigourney, Sedgwick, and Fanny Kemble, stretches its bays
+three miles among the hills to the southward and mirrors its own wooded
+margins and the farther mountains. Beyond the lake, rising in mid-air
+like a great gray wall, are the sheer precipices of Monument Mountain,
+and in the hazy distance the loftier Taconics uprear their grand Dome in
+the illimitable blue.
+
+Of "La Maison Rouge" of Hawthorne's letters, the pilgrim of to-day finds
+only the blackened and broken foundation walls: a devouring fire, from
+which Tappan saved little of his furniture, has laid it low. These walls
+(which remain only because relic-hunters cannot easily carry them away)
+measurably indicate the form and dimensions of the cottage and its
+general arrangement. Its site is close upon the highway, from which it
+is partially screened by evergreen trees. The gate of the enclosure is
+of course an unworthy successor to that upon which Fields found
+Hawthorne swinging his children, but these near-by elms have shaded the
+great romancer, the tallest of the evergreens is the tree his wife
+thought "full of a thousand memories," and all about the spot cluster
+reminders of the simple, healthful life Hawthorne led here. Here are
+the garden ground he tilled and where he buried the pet rabbit "Bunny;"
+the "patch," ploughed for him by Tappan, where he raised beans for
+himself and corn for his hens (he had learned something of agriculture
+at Brook Farm, albeit it was said there he could do nothing but feed the
+hogs); the now great fruit-trees whose leaden labels little Julian
+destroyed, as Tappan remembers; the place of the "scientific hennery,"
+fitted up by the "Man of Genius and the Naval Officer,"--Hawthorne and
+Horatio Bridge; the long declivity where the novelist as well as his
+Eustace Bright used to coast "in the nectared air of winter" with the
+children of the "Wonder-Book;" the leafy woods--his refuge from
+visitors--where he walked with his children and where Bright nutted with
+the little Pringles; the lake-shore where Hawthorne loitered or lay
+extended in the shade during summer hours, "smoking cigars, reading
+foolish novels, and thinking of nothing at all," while the children
+played about him or covered his chin and breast with long grasses to
+make him "look like the mighty Pan."
+
+Near by are other friends he has made known to us. Yonder copse shades a
+narrow glen whose braes border a brooklet winding and chattering on its
+way to the lake; this glen was a summer haunt of Hawthorne, where he
+doubtless pondered much of his work. Here he brought his children
+"to play with the brook" and helped them to build water-falls, or
+reclined in the shade and told them stories as described in the
+"Wonder-Book,"--for this is the "dell of Shadow-Brook," where the
+children picnicked with Bright and where he told them the story of "The
+Golden Touch" on such an afternoon as this, on which we behold the dell
+thickly strewn with golden leaves, as if King Midas had newly emptied
+his coffers there.
+
+[Sidenote: Tanglewood and Wonder-Book Scenes]
+
+Yonder mansion of Hawthorne's landlord, just beyond the highway, is
+"Tanglewood,"--place of the Pringles' home and still the abode of
+Tappan's daughters,--where Bright spent his vacations and where
+Hawthorne makes him tell many of the "Tales." The view described on the
+porch, where the "Gorgon's Head" was narrated, is the one Hawthorne saw
+from his study window. Glimpses of various rooms of the mansion which
+Tappan then inhabited and called "Highwood" are prefixed to the stories
+told in them. Beyond "Tanglewood" steeply rises an eminence whose bare
+acclivity Hawthorne often climbed with his family,--the "Bald Summit"
+where the Pringles listened to the tale of "The Chimera." We ascend by
+the novelist's accustomed way "through Luther Butler's orchard," and are
+repaid by a view extending from the mountains of Vermont to the
+Catskills and deserving the high praise Hawthorne bestowed. A golden
+cloud floating close to Graylock's shaggy head reminds us of Hawthorne's
+conceit that a mortal might step from the mountain to the cloud and thus
+ascend heavenly heights. The farther ranges enclose a valley of
+wave-like hills,--which look as if a tumultuous ocean had been
+transfixed and solidified,--dotted with farmsteads and picturesque
+villages whose white spires rise from embowering trees. At our feet the
+"Bowl" ripples and scintillates, farther away the "Echo Lake" of
+Christine Nilsson and many smaller lakelets "open their blue eyes to the
+sun," while the placid stream, fringed by overhanging willows, circles
+here and there through the valley like a shining ribbon. Here we may
+realize the immensity of Hawthorne's giant in the "Three Golden Apples,"
+who was so tall he "might have seated himself on Taconic and had
+Monument Mountain for a footstool."
+
+[Sidenote: Resorts and Reminiscences]
+
+[Sidenote: Fanny Kemble]
+
+Not far away, near another shore of the shimmering "Bowl," that
+versatile genius "Carl Benson"--Charles Astor Bristed--dwelt for some
+time in a quaint old farm-house which has since been destroyed by fire,
+and here accomplished some of his literary work. Laurel Lake (the
+Scott's Pond of Hawthorne's "Note-Books"), where Beecher "bought a
+hundred acres to lie down upon,"--and called them Blossom Farm in the
+"Star Papers" written there,--was another resort of Hawthorne. We find
+it a pretty water, although its margins are mostly denuded of large
+trees. A bright matron of the vicinage, who, when a child, thought the
+author of the "Wonder-Book" the "greatest man in the world save only
+Franklin Pierce," lived then by Hawthorne's road to Laurel Lake. Her
+admiration for him (heightened by his intimacy with Pierce) led her to
+daily watch the road by which he would come from Tanglewood, and when
+she saw him approaching--which would be twice a week in good
+weather--she would go into the yard and reverently gaze at him until his
+swift gait had carried him out of sight. To her he was a tall, dark man
+with a handsome clean-shaven face and lustrous eyes which saw nothing
+but the ground directly before him, habitually dressed in black, with a
+wide-brimmed soft hat. Usually his walk was solitary, but sometimes
+Herman Melville, who was well known in the neighborhood, was his
+companion, and one autumn he was twice or thrice accompanied by "a
+light spare man,"--the poet Ellery Channing. Once Hawthorne strode past
+toward the lake when Fanny Kemble, who lived near by, rode her black
+steed by his side and "seemed to be doing all the talking"--she was
+capable of that--and "was talking politics." Having secured a Democratic
+auditor, she doubtless "improved the occasion" with her habitual
+vivaciousness. A neighbor of Hawthorne's tells us this incident of the
+following year, when the novelist's friend Pierce had been named for the
+Presidency. One dark night this neighbor went on foot to a campaign
+lecture at Lenox Furnace. At its close, he essayed to shorten the
+homeward walk by a "short cut" across the fields, and, of course, lost
+his way. Descrying a light, he directed his steps toward it, but found
+himself involved in a labyrinth of obstacles, and had to make so many
+détours that when he finally reached the house whence the light
+proceeded, and when in response to his hail the door was opened by
+Kemble herself, he was so distraught and amazed at being lost among his
+own farms that he could hardly explain his plight; but she quickly
+interrupted his incoherent account: "Yes, I see, poor benighted man!
+you've been to a Democratic meeting; no wonder you are bewildered! Now
+I'll lend you a good Whig lantern that will light you safe home." We
+find Mrs. Kemble-Butler's "Perch"--as she named her home here--a little
+enlarged, but not otherwise changed since the time of her occupancy. She
+was a general favorite, and her dark steed, which had cost her the
+proceeds of a volume of her poems, used to stop before every house in
+the vicinage. She often came, habited in a sort of bloomer costume which
+shocked some of her friends, to fish in the "Bowl" at the time Hawthorne
+dwelt by its shore.
+
+The death of Louis Kossuth, some time ago, reminded her former neighbors
+here that she led the dance with him at a ball in Lenox, when the exiled
+patriot was a guest of the Sedgwicks.
+
+[Sidenote: Monument Mountain]
+
+Our approach to Monument Mountain is along one of those sequestered
+by-ways which Hawthorne loved, with "an unseen torrent roaring at an
+unseen depth" near by. A rift in the morning mists which enshroud the
+valley displays the mountain summit bathed in sunshine. We ascend by
+Bryant's "path which conducts up the narrow battlement to the north,"
+the same along which Hawthorne and his friends--Holmes, James T. Fields,
+Sedgwick, and the rest--were piloted by the historian Headley on a
+summer's day more than forty years ago. Standing upon the beetling
+verge, which is scarred and splintered by thunderbolts and overhangs a
+precipice of five hundred feet or more, we look abroad upon a landscape
+of wondrous expanse and beauty. Here we may realize all the prospect
+Bryant portrayed as he stood upon this spot:
+
+                "A beautiful river
+  Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads;
+                        On either side
+  The fields swell upward to the hills; beyond,
+  Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise
+  The mighty columns with which earth props heaven."
+
+In the middle distance, across the Bowl, which gleams a veritable
+"mountain mirror," we see the site of the home whence Hawthorne so often
+looked upon these cliffs. Yonder detached pinnacle, rising from the base
+of the precipice beneath us, is the "Pulpit Rock" which Catherine
+Sedgwick christened when Hawthorne's party picnicked here; from the crag
+projecting from the verge Fanny Kemble declaimed Bryant's poem, and
+Herman Melville, bestriding the same rock for a bowsprit, "pulled and
+hauled imaginary ropes" for the amusement of the company. Among these
+splintered masses the company lunched that day and drank quantities of
+Heidsieck to the health of the "dear old poet of Monument Mountain." On
+the east, almost within sight from this eminence, is the spot where he
+was born, near the birthplaces of Warner and the gifted Mrs. Howe.
+
+[Sidenote: Hawthorne at Stockbridge]
+
+Another day we follow the same brilliant party of Hawthorne's friends
+through the Stockbridge Ice Glen,--a narrow gorge which cleaves a rugged
+mountain from base to summit, its riven sides being apparently held
+asunder by immense rocky masses hurled upon each other in wild
+confusion. Beneath are weird grottos and great recesses which the sun
+never penetrates, and within these we make our way--clambering and
+sliding over huge boulders--through the heart of the mountain. One of
+Hawthorne's company here testifies that in all the extemporaneous
+jollity of the scramble through the glen the usually silent novelist was
+foremost, and, being sometimes in the dark, dared use his
+tongue,--"calling out lustily and pretending that certain destruction
+threatened us all. I never saw him in better spirits than throughout
+this day."
+
+From the glen we trace Hawthorne to the staid old house of Burr's
+boyhood, where lived and wrote Jonathan Edwards, and the statelier
+dwelling whence Catherine Sedgwick gave her tales to the world. Near by
+we find the grave where she lies amid the scenes of her own "Hope
+Leslie," and not far from the sojourn of her gifted niece whose
+translation of Sand's "Fadette" has been so well received.
+Overlooking the village is the summer residence of Field of the
+"Evangelist,"--author of the delightful books of travel.
+
+Farther away is a little farm-house, with a "huge, corpulent, old Harry
+VIII. of a chimney," to which Hawthorne was a frequent visitor,--the
+"Arrow-Head" of Herman Melville. "Godfrey Graylock" says the friendship
+between Hawthorne and Melville originated in their taking refuge
+together, during an electric shower, in a narrow cleft of Monument
+Mountain. They had been coy of each other on account of Melville's
+review of the "Scarlet Letter" in Duyckinck's _Literary World_, but
+during some hours of enforced intercourse and propinquity in very
+contracted quarters they discovered in each other a correlation of
+thought and feeling which made them fast friends for life. Thereafter
+Melville was often at the little red house, where the children knew him
+as "Mr. Omoo," and less often Hawthorne came to chat with the racy
+romancer and philosopher by the great chimney. Once he was accompanied
+by little Una--"Onion" he sometimes called her--and remained a whole
+week. This visit--certainly unique in the life of the shy Hawthorne--was
+the topic when, not so long agone, we last looked upon the living face
+of Melville in his city home. March weather prevented walks abroad, so
+the pair spent most of the week in smoking and talking metaphysics in
+the barn,--Hawthorne usually lounging upon a carpenter's bench. When he
+was leaving, he jocosely declared he would write a report of their
+psychological discussions for publication in a volume to be called "A
+Week on a Work-Bench in a Barn," the title being a travesty upon that of
+Thoreau's then recent book, "A Week on Concord River," etc.
+
+[Sidenote: Melville's Arrow-Head]
+
+Sitting upon the north piazza, of "Piazza Tales," at Arrow-Head, where
+Hawthorne and his friend lingered in summer days, we look away to
+Graylock and enjoy "the calm prospect of things from a fair piazza"
+which Melville so whimsically describes. At Arrow-Head, too, we find the
+astonishing chimney which suggested the essay, still occupying the
+centre of the house and "leaving only the odd holes and corners" to
+Melville's nieces, who now inhabit the place in summer; the study where
+Hawthorne and Melville discussed the plot of the "White Whale" and other
+tales; the great fireplace, with its inscriptions from "I and my
+Chimney;" the window-view of Melville's "October Mountain,"--beloved of
+Longfellow,--whose autumn glories inspired that superb word-picture and
+metaphysical sketch.
+
+On a near knoll, commanding a view of the circle of mountains and the
+winding river, stands the sometime summer residence of Holmes among his
+ancestral acres, where Hawthorne and Fields came to visit him. His
+"den," in which he did much literary work, overlooks the beautiful
+meadows, and is now expanded into a large library, while the trees he
+planted are grown to be the crowning beauty of the place, which the
+owner calls Holmesdale. It was the hereditary home of the Wendells.
+
+[Sidenote: Pittsfield]
+
+Beyond, at the edge of the town of Pittsfield, is the mansion where
+Longfellow found his wife and his famous "Old Clock on the Stairs." At
+the Athenæum in the town some thousands of Holmes's books will soon be
+placed, and here is preserved the secretary from Hawthorne's study in
+the little red house,--a time-worn mahogany combination of desk,
+drawers, and shelves, at which he wrote "The House of the Seven Gables,"
+"The Wonder-Book," "The Snow Image," and part of "The Blithedale
+Romance." Pittsfield was long the home of "Godfrey Graylock;" here the
+gifted Rose Terry Cooke passed her closing years of life with her
+husband, and not far away Josh Billings, "the Yankee Solomon," was born
+and reared as Henry Savage Shaw. One day we trace from Pittsfield the
+footsteps of Hawthorne and Melville across the Taconics to the whilom
+home of "Mother Ann" and to the higher Hancock peaks.
+
+Hawthorne's daily walk to the post-office was past the later residence
+of Charlotte Cushman, and by the church where the older Channing
+delivered his last discourse and where twenty years ago Parkhurst was
+preacher. In the church-tower Fanny Kemble's clock still tells the hours
+above the lovely spot where she desired to be buried.
+
+[Sidenote: Hawthorne's Habit of Meditation]
+
+These various excursions compass the range of Hawthorne's rambles in
+this region: he was never ten miles away from the little red house
+during his residence here. Obviously he preferred short and solitary
+strolls which allowed undisturbed meditation upon the work in hand. The
+quantity and finish of the writing done here indicate that much thought
+was expended upon it outside his study. We may be sure that upon "The
+House of the Seven Gables" were bestowed, besides the five months of
+daily sessions at his desk, other months of study and thought as he
+strolled the country roads and loitered by the lake-side or in the dell
+of "Blossom-Brook." He avowed himself a shameless idler in warm weather,
+declaring he was "good for nothing in a literary way until after the
+autumnal frosts" brightened his imagination as they did the foliage
+about him here; yet the meditations of one summer in Berkshire produced
+his masterpiece, and the next summer accomplished "The Wonder-Book,"
+quickly followed by "The Snow Image" and "Blithedale." During this
+summer also he had a voluminous correspondence with the many "Pyncheon
+jackasses" who thought themselves aggrieved by his use of their name in
+"The House of the Seven Gables."
+
+[Sidenote: Life in the Little Red House]
+
+Of the simple home-life at the little red house, Hawthorne's diaries and
+letters, as well as some of the books written here, afford pleasing
+glimpses. The "Violet" and "Peony" of the "Snow Image" story are the
+novelist's own little Una and Julian, and the tale was suggested by some
+occurrence in their play; the incidents related of Eustace Bright and
+the young Pringles, which are prefixed to the "Wonder-Book" stories, are
+merely experiences of Hawthorne and his children, and during the
+composition of these tales he delighted these children--as one of them
+remembers--by reading to them each evening the work of the day. A
+grim-visaged negress named Peters, who was the servant here in the
+little red house, is said to have suggested the character of Aunt Keziah
+in "Septimius Felton."
+
+Hawthorne's chickens receive notice as members of the family in his
+diary,--thus: "Seven chickens hatched, J. T. Headley called--eight
+chickens;" "ascended a mountain with my wife, eight more chickens
+hatched." In a letter to Horatio Bridge, "Our children grow apace and so
+do our chickens;" "we are so intimate with every individual chicken that
+it seems like cannibalism to think of eating one of them." Hawthorne's
+daily walk with pail in hand to Luther Butler's, the next farm-house, he
+speaks of as his "milky way." Butler lives now two miles distant. The
+novelist thus announces to his friend Bridge the birth of the present
+gifted poetess, Mrs. Lathrop, the daughter of his age: "Mrs. Hawthorne
+has published a little work which still lies in sheets, but makes some
+noise in the world; it is a healthy miss with no present pretensions to
+beauty." Five cats were cherished by the novelist and his children; a
+snowy morning after Hawthorne's removal, three of the cats came to a
+neighboring house, where their descendants are still petted and
+cherished.
+
+A few visitors came to the little red house--Kemble, James, Lowell,
+Holmes, E. P. Whipple, and the others already mentioned--in whose
+presence the "statue of night and silence" was wont to relax, but for
+the most part his life was that of a recluse. Here, as elsewhere, his
+thoughts dwelt apart in "a twilight region" where the company of his
+kind was usually a perturbing intrusion. For companionship, his family,
+the lake, the woods, his own thoughts, sufficed; he seldom sought any
+other, and therefore was unpopular in the neighborhood. It is hardly to
+be supposed that the creator of Zenobia, Hester Prynne, and the
+Pyncheons would greatly enjoy the society of his rural neighbors, but
+they were not therefore the less displeased by his habitually going out
+of his way--sometimes across the fields--to avoid meeting them. Some of
+them had a notion that he was the author of "a poem, or an arithmetic,
+or some other kind of a book,"--as he makes "Primrose Pringle" to say of
+him in the tale,--but to most he was incomprehensible, perhaps a little
+uncanny, and the great genius of romance is yet mentioned here as "a
+queer sort o' man that lived in Tappan's red house."
+
+[Sidenote: Reasons for leaving Berkshire]
+
+His son records that after Hawthorne had freed himself from Salem "he
+soon wearied of any particular locality;" after a time he tired even of
+beautiful Berkshire. Its obtrusive scenery "with the same strong
+impressions repeated day after day" became irksome; then he grew tired
+of the mountains and "would joyfully see them laid flat." He writes to
+Fields, "I am sick of Berkshire, and hate to think of spending another
+winter here." Doubtless the region which we behold in the glamour of the
+early autumn seemed very different to Hawthorne in the season when he
+had daily "to trudge two miles to the post-office through snow or slush
+knee-deep." Ellery Channing--who had knowledge of the winter here--in
+his letters to Hawthorne calls Berkshire "that satanic institution of
+Spitzbergen," "that ice-plant of the Sedgwicks."
+
+A more cogent reason for Hawthorne's discontent here is found in his
+failing health. He writes to Pike, "I am not vigorous as I used to be on
+the coast;" to Fields, "For the first time since boyhood I feel languid
+and dispirited. Oh, that Providence would build me the merest shanty and
+mark me out a rood or two of garden near the coast."
+
+For these and other reasons Hawthorne finally left Berkshire at the end
+of 1851, going first to West Newton and a few months later to "the
+Wayside," while his friend Tappan occupied the thenceforth famous little
+red house.
+
+The world of readers owes much to Hawthorne's residence among the
+mountains. Besides the material here gathered and the exquisite settings
+for his tales these landscapes afforded, we are indebted to his
+environment in Berkshire for the quality of the work here accomplished
+and for its quantity as well; for he responded so readily to the
+inspiriting influence of his surroundings that he produced more during
+his stay here than at any similar period of his life. The soulful beauty
+and the seclusion of the haunts to which we here trace him, suiting well
+his solitary mood, may measurably account to us for his habit of thought
+and for the manner of expression by which nature was here portrayed and
+life expounded by the great master of American romance.
+
+
+
+
+A DAY WITH THE GOOD GRAY POET
+
+
+
+
+A DAY WITH THE GOOD GRAY POET
+
+_Walk and Talk with Socrates in Camden--The Bard's Appearance and
+  Surroundings--Recollections of his Life and Work--Hospital Service--
+  Praise for his Critics--His Literary Habit, Purpose, Equipment, and
+  Style--His Religious Bent--Readings._
+
+
+"How can you find him? Nothing is easier," quoth the Philadelphia friend
+who some time before Whitman's death brought us an invitation from the
+bard; "you have only to cross the ferry and apply to the first man or
+woman you meet, for there is no one in Camden who does not know Walt
+Whitman or who would not go out of his way to bring you to him." The
+event justifies the prediction, for when we make inquiry of a tradesman
+standing before a shop, he speedily throws aside his apron, closes his
+door against evidently needed customers, and--despite our protest--sets
+out to conduct us to the home of the poet. This is done with such
+obvious ardor that we hint to our guide that he must be one of the
+"Whitmaniacs," whereupon he rejoins, "I never read a word Whitman wrote.
+I don't know why they call him Socrates, but I do know he never passes
+me without a friendly nod and a word of greeting that warms me all
+through." We subsequently find that it is this sort of "Whitmania,"
+rather than that Swinburne deplores, which pervades the vicinage of the
+poet's home.
+
+Our conductor leaves us at the door of three hundred and twenty-eight
+Mickle Street, a neat thoroughfare bordered by unpretentious frame
+dwellings, hardly a furlong from the Delaware. The dingy little
+two-storied domicile is so disappointingly different from what we were
+expecting to see that the confirmatory testimony of the name "W.
+Whitman" upon the door-plate is needed to convince us that this is the
+oft-mentioned "neat and comfortable" dwelling of one of the world's
+celebrities.
+
+We are kept waiting upon the door-step long enough to observe that the
+unpainted boards of the house are weather-worn and that the shabby
+window-shutters and the cellar-door, which opens aslant upon the
+sidewalk, are in sad need of repair, and then we are admitted by the
+"good, faithful, young Jersey woman who," as he lovingly testifies,
+"cooks for and vigilantly sees to" the venerable bard. A moment later we
+are in his presence, in the spacious second-story room which is his
+sleeping apartment and work-room.
+
+"You are good to come early while I am fresh and rested," exclaims Walt
+Whitman, rising to his six feet of burly manhood and advancing a heavy
+step or two to greet us; "we are going to have a talk, and we have
+something to talk about, you know," referring to a literary venture of
+ours which had procured us the invitation to visit him. When he has
+regained the depths of his famous and phenomenal chair, the "Jersey
+woman" hands him a score of letters, which he offers to lay aside, but
+we insist that he shall read them at once, and while he is thus occupied
+we have opportunity to observe more closely the bard and his
+surroundings.
+
+[Sidenote: Whitman's Personal Appearance]
+
+We see a man made in massive mould, stalwart and symmetrical,--not bowed
+by the weight of time nor deformed by the long years of hemiplegia; a
+majestic head, large, leonine, Homeric, crowned with a wealth of flowing
+silvery hair; a face like "the statued Greek" (Bucke says it is the
+noblest he ever saw); all the features are full and handsome; the
+forehead, high and thoughtful, is marked by "deep furrows which life has
+ploughed;" the heavy brows are highly arched above eyes of gray-blue
+which in repose seem suave rather than brilliant; the upper lid droops
+over the eye nearly to the pupil,--a condition which obtains in partial
+ptosis,--and we afterward observe that when he speaks of matters which
+deeply move him his eyelids have a tendency to decline still farther,
+imparting to his eyes an appearance of lethargy altogether at variance
+with the thrilling earnestness and tremor of his voice. A strong nose,
+cheeks round and delicate, a complexion of florid and transparent
+pink,--its hue being heightened by the snowy whiteness of the fleecy
+beard which frames the face and falls upon the breast. The face is sweet
+and wholesome rather than refined, vital and virile rather than
+intellectual. Joaquin Miller has said that, even when destitute and
+dying, Whitman "looked like a Titan god."
+
+We think the habitual expression of his face to be that of the sage
+benignity that comes with age when life has been well lived and life's
+work well done. The expression bespeaks a soul at ease with itself,
+unbroken by age, poverty, and disease, unsoured by calumny and insult.
+Certainly his bufferings and his brave endurance of wrong have left no
+record of malice or even of impatience upon his kindly face. His manly
+form is clad in a loosely fitting suit of gray; his rolling and ample
+shirt-collar, worn without a tie, is open at the throat and exposes the
+upper part of his breast; all his attire, "from snowy linen to
+burnished boot," is scrupulously clean and neat.
+
+[Sidenote: His Study and Surroundings]
+
+His room is of generous proportions, occupying nearly the entire width
+of the house, and lighted by three windows in front. The floor is partly
+uncarpeted, and the furniture is of the simplest; his bed, covered by a
+white counterpane, occupies a corner; there are two large tables; an
+immense iron-bound trunk stands by one wall and an old-fashioned stove
+by another; a number of boxes and uncushioned seats are scattered
+through the apartment; on the walls are wardrobe-hooks, shelves, and
+many pictures,--a few fine engravings, a print of the Seminole Osceola,
+portraits of the poet's parents (his father's face is a good one) and
+sisters, and of "another--not a sister."
+
+There are many books here and there, some of them well worn; one corner
+holds several Greek and Latin classics and copies of Burns, Tennyson,
+Scott, Ossian, Emerson, etc. On the large table near his chair are his
+writing materials, with the Bible, Shakespeare, Dante, and the Iliad
+within reach. Bundles of papers lie in odd places about the room; piles
+of books, magazines, and manuscripts are heaped high upon the tables,
+litter the chairs, and overflow and encumber the floor. This room holds
+what Whitman has called the "storage collection" of his life.
+
+"And now you are to tell me about yourself and your work," says the
+poet, pushing aside his letters. But, although he is the best of
+listeners, we are intent to make him talk, and a fortunate remark
+concerning one of his letters which had seemed to interest him more than
+the others--it came from a friend of his far-away boyhood--enables us to
+profit by the reminiscential mood the letter has inspired.
+
+In his low-toned voice he pictures his early home, his parents, and his
+first ventures into the world; with evident relish he narrates his
+ludicrous experience when he--a stripling school-master--"went boarding
+'round." Than this, there was but one happier period of his life, and
+that was when he drove among the farms and villages distributing his
+_Long Islander_: "that was bliss."
+
+Later he was a politician and "stumped the island" for the Democratic
+candidates, but the enactment of the fugitive slave law disgusted him,
+and he declared his political emancipation in the poem "Blood-Money." At
+odd times he has done "a deal of newspaper drudgery" and other work, but
+his "forte always was loafing and writing poetry,--at least until the
+war." He began early to clothe his thought in verse, and was but a lad
+when a poem of his was accepted for publication in the New York
+_Mirror_, and he depicts for us the surprised delight with which he
+beheld his stanzas in that fashionable journal.
+
+[Sidenote: His Recollections]
+
+A pleasure of those early years was the companionship of Bryant, and he
+details to us the "glorious walks and talks" they had together along the
+North Shore in sweet summer days. This, he says with a sigh, was the
+dearest of the friendships lost to him by the publication of "Leaves of
+Grass;" "but there were compensations, Emerson and Tennyson." Of later
+events he speaks less freely. Of the years of devoted service to the
+wounded and dying in army hospitals, when day and night he literally
+gave himself for others,--living upon the coarsest fare that he might
+bestow his earnings upon "his sick boys,"--of these years he speaks not
+at all, save as to the causation of his "war paralysis." "Yes, it made
+an old man of me; but I would like to do it all again if there were
+need." Of his long years of suffering and his brave and patient
+confronting of pain, poverty, and imminent death, his "Specimen Days" is
+the fitting record.
+
+Replying to a question concerning a dainty volume of his poems which lay
+near us, and which we have been secretly coveting, he says, "You know I
+have never been the fashion; publishers were afraid of me, and I have
+sold the books myself, though I always advise people not to buy them,
+for I fear they are worthless." But when he writes his name and ours
+upon the title-page, and lays within the cover several portraits taken
+at different periods of his life, we wonder if he can ever know how very
+far from "worthless" the book will be to us. We tender in payment a
+bank-note of larger denomination than we could be supposed to possess,
+with a deprecating remark upon the novelty of an author's handling a
+fifty-dollar note, whereupon he laughs heartily: "A novelty to you, is
+it? I tell you it's an impossibility to me; why, my whole income from my
+books during a recent half-year was only twenty-two dollars and six
+cents: don't forget the six cents," he adds, with a twinkle. Then he
+assures us that he is not in want, and that his "shanty," as he calls
+his home, is nearly paid for.
+
+[Sidenote: Popularity with his Neighbors]
+
+He proposes a walk,--"a hobble" it must be for him,--which may afford
+opportunity to change the note; and as we saunter toward the river, he
+leaning heavily upon his cane, it is a pleasure to observe the evident
+feeling of liking and camaraderie which people have for him.
+
+They go out of their way to meet him and to receive merely a friendly
+nod, for he stops to speak with none save the children who leave their
+play to run to him. He seems mightily amused when one wee toddler calls
+him "Mister Socrates," and he tells us this is the first time he has
+been so addressed, although he understands that some of his friends
+speak of him among themselves by the name of that philosopher. So far as
+he knows, the name was first applied to him in Buchanan's lines "To
+Socrates in Camden."
+
+Everywhere we go, on the ferry, at the hotel where we lunch, he receives
+affectionate greeting from people of every rank, yet he is not
+loquacious, certainly not effusive. He shakes hands but once while we
+are out, and that is with an unknown man, and because he _is_ unknown,
+as Whitman afterward tells us.
+
+During luncheon we speak of a recent visit to Mrs. Howarth (the poetess
+"Clementine"). Whitman is at once interested, and questions until he has
+drawn out the pathetic story of her struggles with poverty, disease, and
+impeding environment, and then declares he will go to see her as soon as
+he is able. He declines to receive a copy of her poems, saying he is far
+more interested in her than he could possibly be in her books, and that
+he "nowadays religiously abstains from reading poetry." Confirmation of
+this latter statement occurs in our subsequent conversation. A friend of
+ours had met Swinburne, and had been assured by that erratic (please
+don't print it erotic) bard that he thinks Whitman, next to Hugo, the
+best of recent poets. When we tell our poet of this, and endeavor to
+ascertain if the admiration be reciprocal, we find him unfamiliar with
+Swinburne's recent works. Reference to the latter's retraction of his
+first praise elicits the pertinent observation, "The trouble with
+Swinburne seems to be he don't know his own mind," but this is followed
+by warm encomiums upon "Atalanta" and its gifted author.
+
+Whitman had seen Emerson for the last time when the philosopher's memory
+had failed and all his powers were weakening: instead of being shocked
+by this condition, Whitman thinks it fit and natural, "nature gradually
+reclaiming the elements she had lent, work all nobly done, soul and
+senses preparing for rest." Mentioning George Arnold,--
+
+  "Doubly dead because he died so young,"--
+
+we find that Whitman loved and mourned him tenderly. He expresses an
+especial pleasure and pride in the successes of the poet Richard Watson
+Gilder,--"young Gilder," as he familiarly calls him. He loves Browning,
+and laments that "Browning never took to" him. He thinks our own country
+is fortunate in having felt the clean and healthful influences of four
+such natures as Emerson, Bryant, Whittier, and Longfellow.
+
+[Sidenote: His Good Word for Everybody]
+
+Indeed, he has a good word for everybody, and discerns laudable
+qualities in some whom the world has agreed to contemn and cast out. He
+has glowing expressions of affection for his devoted friends in all
+lands, and only words of excuse for his enemies. Of the pharisaic
+Harlan, who dismissed him from a government clerkship solely because he
+had, ten years before, published the poems of "Enfans d'Adam," he
+charitably says, "No doubt the man thought he was doing right."
+Concerning his harshest critics, including the author of the choice
+epithet "swan of the sewers," he speaks only in justification: from
+their stand-point, their denunciations of him and his book were
+deserved; "he never dreamt of blaming them for not seeing as he sees."
+
+After our return to his "shanty" we read to him a laudatory notice from
+the current number of one of our great magazines, in which one of his
+poems is mentioned with especial favor; whereupon he produces from his
+trunk a note written some years before from the same magazine,
+contemptuously refusing to publish that very poem. Evidences like this
+of a change in popular opinion are not needed to confirm Whitman's faith
+in his own future, nor in that of the great humanity of which he is the
+prophet and exponent.
+
+Questioned concerning his habits and methods of literary work, he says
+he carries some sheets of paper loosely fastened together and pencils
+upon these "the rough draft of his thought" wherever the thought comes
+to him. Thus, "Leaves of Grass" was composed on the Brooklyn ferry, on
+the top of stages amid the roar of Broadway, at the opera, in the
+fields, on the sea-shore. "Drum Taps" was written amid war scenes, on
+battle-fields, in camps, at hospital bedsides, in actual contact with
+the subjects it portrays with such tenderness and power. The poems thus
+born of spontaneous impulse are finally given to the world in a crisp
+diction which is the result of much study and thought; every word is
+well considered,--the work of revision being done "almost anywhere" and
+without the ordinary aids to literary composition. In late years he
+wrote mostly upon the broad right arm of his chair.
+
+Complete equipment for his work was derived from contact with Nature in
+her abounding moods, from sympathetic intimacy with men and women in all
+phases of their lives, and from life-long study of the best books;
+these--Job, Isaiah, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare--have been his teachers,
+and possibly his models, although he has never consciously imitated any
+of them. His matter and manner are alike his own; he has not borrowed
+Blake's style, as Stedman believed, to recast Emerson's thoughts, as
+Clarence Cook alleged. His style would naturally resemble that of the
+Semitic prophets and Gaelic bards,--"the large utterance of the early
+gods,"--because inspired by familiarity with the same objects: the
+surging sea, the wind-swept mountain, the star-decked heaven, the forest
+primeval.
+
+[Sidenote: His Literary Work--Its Aims]
+
+His purpose, the moral elevation of humanity, he trusts is apparent in
+every page of his book. By his book he means "Leaves of Grass," the real
+work of his life, representing the truest thoughts and the highest
+imaginings of forty years, to which his other work has been incidental
+and tributary. After its eight periods of growth, "hitches," he calls
+them, he completes them with the annex, "Good-bye my Fancy," and thinks
+his record for the future is made up; "hit or miss, he will bother
+himself no more about it."
+
+When questioned concerning the lines whose "naked naturalness" has been
+an offence to many, he impressively avers that he has pondered them
+earnestly in these latest days, and is sure he would not alter or recall
+them if he could.
+
+[Sidenote: His Religious Trust]
+
+While not professing a moral regeneration or confessing the need of it,
+he yet assures us, "No array of words can describe how much I am at
+peace about God and about death." The author of "Whispers of Heavenly
+Death" cannot be an irreverent person; the impassioned "prayer"--
+
+  "That Thou, O God, my life hast lighted
+  With ray of light, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee.
+  For that, O God, be it my latest word, here on my knees,
+  Old, poor, and paralyzed, I thank Thee....
+  I will cling to Thee, O God, though the waves buffet me.
+  Thee, Thee, at least, I know"--
+
+is not the utterance of an irreligious heart. One who has known Whitman
+long and well testifies that he was always a religious _exalté_, and his
+stanzas show that his musings on death and immortality are inspired by
+fullest faith. As we listen to him, calmly discoursing upon the great
+mysteries,--which to him are now mysteries no longer,--we wonder how
+many of those who call him "beast" or "atheist" can confront the vast
+unknown with his lofty trust, to say nothing of actual thanksgiving for
+death itself!
+
+  "Praised be the fathomless universe
+  For life and joy, for objects and knowledge curious,
+  And for love, sweet love,--but praise! praise! praise!
+  For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death."
+
+We who survive him will not forget his peaceful yielding of himself to
+"the sure-enwinding arms," nor the abounding trust breathed in his last
+message, sent back from the mystic frontier of the shadowy realm: "Tell
+them it makes no difference whether I live or die."
+
+[Sidenote: Readings]
+
+In our chat he discloses a surprising knowledge of men and things, and a
+more surprising lack of knowledge of his own poetry. More than once it
+strangely appears that the visitor is more familiar with the lines under
+discussion than is their author. When this is commented upon he
+laughingly says, "Oh, yes, my friends often tell me there is a book
+called 'Leaves of Grass' which I ought to read." So when we, about to
+take leave, ask him to recite one of his shorter poems, he assures us he
+does not remember one of them, but will read anything we wish. We ask
+for the wonderful elegy, "Out of the Cradle endlessly Rocking," and
+afterward for the night hymn, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard
+Bloomed," and his compliance confers a never-to-be-forgotten pleasure.
+He reads slowly and without effort, his voice often tremulous with
+emotion, the lines gaining new grandeur and pathos as they come from his
+lips.
+
+And this--alas that it must be!--is our final recollection of one of the
+world's immortals: a hoar and reverend bard,--"old, poor, and
+paralyzed," yet clinging to the optimistic creeds of his youth,--throned
+in his great chair among his books, with the waning light falling like a
+benediction upon his uplifted head, his face and eyes suffused with the
+exquisite tenderness of his theme, and all the air about him vibrating
+with the tones of his immortal chant to Death,--the "dark mother always
+gliding near with soft feet."
+
+Another hand-clasp, a prayerful "God keep you," and we have left him
+alone in the gathering twilight.
+
+[Sidenote: His Future Fame]
+
+We will not here discuss his literary merits. The encomiums of Emerson,
+Thoreau, Burroughs, Sanborn, Stedman, Ruskin, Tennyson, Rossetti,
+Buchanan, Sarrazin, etc., show what he is to men of their intellectual
+stature; but will he ever reach the great, struggling mass for whose
+uplifting he wrought? His own brave faith is contagious, and we may
+discern in the wide-spread sorrow over his death, in the changed
+attitude of critics and reviewers, as well as in the largely increased
+demand for his books, evidences of his general acceptance.
+
+His day is coming,--is come. He died with its dawn shining full upon
+him.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Abbot, C. C., 104.
+
+  Agassiz, 49, 104, 115.
+
+  Alcott, Bronson, 21, 73, 78, 92, 144;
+    Orchard House, 54;
+    Wayside, 58.
+
+  Alcott, L. M., 21, 54, 102;
+    Grave, 78;
+    Homes, 21, 55.
+
+  Aldrich, 91, 111, 140;
+    In Boston, 92;
+    Ponkapog, 146.
+
+  Amesbury, 124.
+
+  Auburndale, 146.
+
+  Austin, J. G., 102.
+
+
+  Bartlett, G. B., 25, 34, 41.
+
+  Bartol, Dr., 48, 94.
+
+  Beecher, H. W., 176, 185.
+
+  Benson, Carl, 184.
+
+  Berkshire, 155-198.
+
+  Billings, Josh, 193.
+
+  Boston, 83-102.
+
+  Bridge, Horatio, 34, 182.
+
+  Brook Farm, 147.
+
+  Brown, John, 20, 23.
+
+  Bryant, W. C., 174, 188, 189, 207.
+
+  Burritt, Elihu, 176.
+
+
+  Cambridge, 103.
+
+  Carter, Robert, 109.
+
+  Channing, W. E., 24, 41, 50, 72, 186;
+    Homes, 22, 24, 52.
+
+  Clarke, J. F., 27, 76.
+
+  Clough, Arthur, 49, 104, 118.
+
+  Concord, 17-80;
+    Battle-Field, 43;
+    River, 39.
+
+  Conway, Moncure, quoted, 29, 48.
+
+  Cooke, Rose Terry, 193.
+
+  Corner Book-Store, Boston, 87.
+
+  Curtis, G. W., 33, 48, 148, 149.
+
+  Cushman, Charlotte, 114, 193.
+
+
+  Dana, C. A., 149.
+
+  Dana, R. H., 105.
+
+  Danvers, Oak-Knoll, 138.
+
+  Day with Walt Whitman, 201.
+
+  Deerfield Arch, 173.
+
+  Deland, Margaret, 93.
+
+
+  Elmwood, 110.
+
+  Emerson, R. W., 26, 27, 28, 36, 41, 43, 69, 86, 144, 175;
+    Grave, 77;
+    Home, 45.
+
+  Emerson, William, 26, 29, 35.
+
+  Ethan Brand, 166.
+
+
+  Fanny Fern's Grave, 115.
+
+  Felton, Professor, 104.
+
+  Field, H. M., 190.
+
+  Fields, Annie, 89, 91.
+
+  Fields, J. T., 65, 87;
+    Home, 89.
+
+  Fuller, Margaret, 48, 53, 86, 115, 149;
+    Brattle House, 105.
+
+
+  Gail Hamilton, 66, 139.
+
+  Garrison, W. L., 85, 102, 139.
+
+  Gilder, R. W., 211.
+
+  Gladden, Washington, 164.
+
+  Grant, Robert, 89, 99.
+
+  Gray, Asa, 105.
+
+  Graylock, 158, 167, 174, 184.
+
+  Guiney, L. I., 99, 102;
+    Home, 146.
+
+
+  Hale, E. E., 94;
+    Study and Abode, 100.
+
+  Hale, Lucretia P., 99.
+
+  Hamilton, Gail, 66, 139.
+
+  Harris, Professor, 56.
+
+  Haverhill, 122.
+
+  Hawthorne, 27, 41, 50, 53, 85, 88, 91;
+    Berkshire, 155-198;
+    Brook Farm, 149;
+    Manse, 28-39;
+    Salem, 128-138;
+    Sleepy Hollow, 75-77;
+    Wayside, 59-67.
+
+  Headley, J. T., 187, 195.
+
+  Higginson, T. W., 94, 99, 104.
+
+  Hilliard, George, 34, 66, 91.
+
+  Hoar, Elizabeth, 25.
+
+  Hoar, Judge, 27.
+
+  Holmes, 84;
+    Boston Abodes, 91, 95;
+    Cambridge, 103;
+    Grave, 114;
+    Pittsfield, 192.
+
+  House of the Seven Gables, 132, 193, 194.
+
+  Howarth, Clementine, 209.
+
+  Howe, Julia W., 98.
+
+  Howells, 49, 66;
+    Homes, 97, 105, 117.
+
+
+  Jamaica Plain, 145.
+
+  Jewett, Sarah Orne, 91.
+
+
+  Kemble, Fanny, 169, 186, 188, 193.
+
+  Kossuth, Louis, 49, 187.
+
+
+  Larcom, Lucy, 139.
+
+  Lathrop, G. P., 59.
+
+  Lathrop, Rose H., 195.
+
+  Laurel Lake, 185.
+
+  Lenox (Hawthorne), 176-198.
+
+  Little Men, 21.
+
+  Little Women, 21, 55, 78.
+
+  Longfellow, 106, 110, 139, 192;
+    Grave, 114;
+    Home, 107;
+    Wayside Inn, 118.
+
+  Lowell, J. R., 43, 118;
+    Elmwood, 110;
+    Mount Auburn, 113.
+
+
+  Marshfield, 142.
+
+  Martineau, Harriet, 85, 106.
+
+  Melville, Herman, 177, 185, 188;
+    Arrow-Head, 190.
+
+  Monument Mountain, 168, 179, 187.
+
+  Moulton, L. C., 93, 98.
+
+  Mount Auburn, 113.
+
+
+  Natural Bridge, 169.
+
+  North Adams, 158-171.
+
+  Norton, Professor, 104.
+
+
+  Oak-Knoll, 138.
+
+  Old Manse, 28-39.
+
+  Orchard House, 53-56.
+
+
+  Parker, Theodore, 49, 85.
+
+  Parkman, Francis, 94, 113;
+    Home, 145.
+
+  Parsons, T. W., 118, 119, 120.
+
+  Parton, James, 115;
+    Study, 140.
+
+  Peabody, Elizabeth, 29, 54, 145.
+
+  Phelps-Ward, Mrs., 91, 125, 139.
+
+  Phillips, Wendell, 49, 85.
+
+  Pittsfield, 190-193.
+
+  Plymouth, 144.
+
+  Prescott, W. H., 86.
+
+
+  Ripley, Ezra, 28, 33, 34.
+
+  Ripley, Mrs. Samuel, 29, 35, 48.
+
+
+  Salem, 128.
+
+  Sanborn, F. B., 20-24.
+
+  Scarlet Letter, 95, 135, 136.
+
+  Sedgwick, Catherine, 176, 189, 190.
+
+  Septimius Felton, 55, 60-65.
+
+  Silas Lapham, 97, 99.
+
+  Sleepy Hollow, 75-80.
+
+  Sprague, Charles, 86.
+
+  Stockbridge, 189;
+    Bowl, 176, 181;
+    Glen, 189.
+
+  Stone, J. A., 25.
+
+  Sudbury, 118.
+
+  Summer School of Philosophy, 55, 56.
+
+  Sumner, Charles, 85, 92, 124.
+
+  Swinburne, A. C., 210.
+
+
+  Tanglewood, 183.
+
+  Thaxter, Celia, 91, 139, 140.
+
+  Thoreau, 19, 22, 27, 33, 41, 50, 63, 76, 169, 174;
+    Abodes, 20, 24;
+    Walden, 68-74.
+
+  Ticknor, George, 94.
+
+
+  Walden Pond, 68.
+
+  Wayside, The, 58.
+
+  Wayside Inn, The, 118.
+
+  Webster, Daniel, 19;
+    Marshfield, 142.
+
+  Wheildon, William, 25.
+
+  Whipple, E. P., 66, 76, 91.
+
+  Whitefield, George, 140.
+
+  Whitman, Walt, 50;
+    A Day with, 201;
+    Leaves of Grass, 212, 213.
+
+  Whittier, 90, 93;
+    Homes, 122, 124, 138;
+    Scenes, 122, 123, 124, 126;
+    Sepulchre, 127.
+
+  Williamstown, 173.
+
+  Willis, N. P., 84, 115.
+
+  Woodworth;
+    Old Oaken Bucket, 141.
+
+
+  Zenobia, 40, 150.
+
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+  Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from
+    the original.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY SHRINES***
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+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Literary Shrines, by Theodore F. Wolfe</title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+
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+
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+</head>
+<body>
+<h1 class="center">The Project Gutenberg eBook, Literary Shrines, by Theodore F. Wolfe</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Literary Shrines</p>
+<p>       The Haunts of Some Famous American Authors</p>
+<p>Author: Theodore F. Wolfe</p>
+<p>Release Date: February 17, 2012  [eBook #38889]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY SHRINES***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4 class="center">E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br />
+    from page images generously made available by<br />
+    Internet Archive<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.archive.org">http://www.archive.org</a>)</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      Note:
+    </td>
+    <td>
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/literaryshrinesh00wolfrich">
+      http://www.archive.org/details/literaryshrinesh00wolfrich</a>
+	</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="giant">LITERARY SHRINES</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">FIFTH EDITION</span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="center"><i>BY DR. WOLFE</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Uniform with this volume</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">AMONG THE HAUNTS OF SOME FAMOUS BRITISH AUTHORS</p>
+
+
+<p class="blockquot"><i>Treating descriptively and reminiscently of the homes and resorts of
+English writers from the time of Chaucer to the present, and of the
+scenes commemorated in their works</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">262 pages. Illustrated with four photogravures. $1.25</p>
+
+<p class="center">A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE AND LITERARY SHRINES</p>
+
+<p class="center">Two volumes in a box, $2.50</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1"></a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/frontis.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">The Wayside, Concord</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p class="center"><span class="giant">LITERARY<br />
+SHRINES</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">THE HAUNTS OF SOME<br />
+FAMOUS AMERICAN<br />
+AUTHORS</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">BY THEODORE F. WOLFE<br />
+M.D. <span class="smcap">Ph.D.</span></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">AUTHOR OF A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE ETC.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/title.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY<br />
+
+PHILADELPHIA. MDCCCXCV</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1895,<br />
+by<br />
+Theodore F. Wolfe.</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A.</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p class="center">TO<br />
+<br />
+<span class="big">MY WIFE,</span><br />
+<br />
+MY SYMPATHETIC AND APPRECIATIVE<br />
+COMPANION IN PILGRIMAGES<br />
+TO MANY<br />
+<br />
+<span class="big">LITERARY SHRINES</span><br />
+<br />
+IN THE NEW WORLD AND THE OLD,<br />
+THIS VOLUME<br />
+IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">PREFACE</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p class="right">T. F. W.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">CONTENTS</span></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" summary="table">
+<tr><td align="center" colspan="2"><span class="big">THE CONCORD PILGRIMAGE</span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">I. <span class="smcap">A Village of Literary Shrines.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Abodes of Thoreau&mdash;The Alcotts&mdash;Channing&mdash;Sanborn&mdash;Hudson&mdash;Hoar&mdash;Wheildon&mdash;Bartlett&mdash;The
+Historic
+Common&mdash;Cemetery&mdash;Church</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">II. <span class="smcap">The Old Manse.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Abode of Dr. Ripley&mdash;The Emersons&mdash;Hawthorne&mdash;Learned
+Mrs. Ripley&mdash;Its Famed Study and
+Apartments&mdash;Grounds&mdash;Guests&mdash;Ghosts&mdash;A Transcendental
+Social Court</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">III. <span class="smcap">A Storied River and Battle-field.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Where Zenobia Drowned&mdash;Where Embattled Farmers
+Fought&mdash;Thoreau's Hemlocks&mdash;Haunts of Hawthorne&mdash;Channing&mdash;Thoreau&mdash;Emerson,
+etc.</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">IV. <span class="smcap">The Home of Emerson.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>An Intellectual Capitol and Pharos&mdash;Its Grounds, Library,
+and Literary Workshop&mdash;Famous Rooms
+and Visitants&mdash;Relics and Reminiscences of the
+Concord Sage</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">V. <span class="smcap">The Orchard House and its Neighbors.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Ellery Channing&mdash;Margaret Fuller&mdash;The Alcotts&mdash;Professor
+Harris&mdash;Summer School of Philosophy&mdash;Where</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+<i>Little Women was written and Robert
+Hagburn lived&mdash;Where Cyril Norton was slain</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_52">52</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">VI. <span class="smcap">Hawthorne's Wayside Home.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Sometime Abode of Alcott&mdash;Hawthorne&mdash;Lathrop&mdash;Margaret
+Sidney&mdash;Storied Apartments&mdash;Hawthorne's
+Study&mdash;His Mount of Vision&mdash;Where Septimius
+Felton and Rose Garfield dwelt</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">VII. <span class="smcap">The Walden of Thoreau.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>A Transcendental Font&mdash;Emerson's Garden&mdash;Thoreau's
+Cove&mdash;Cairn&mdash;Beanfield&mdash;Resort of Emerson&mdash;Hawthorne&mdash;Channing&mdash;Hosmer&mdash;Alcott,
+etc.</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_68">68</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">VIII. <span class="smcap">The Hill-top Hearsed with Pines.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Last Resting-Place of the Illustrious Concord Company&mdash;Their
+Graves beneath the Piny Boughs</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="center" colspan="2"><span class="big">IN AND OUT OF LITERARY BOSTON</span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="center" colspan="2">IN BOSTON</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>A Golden Age of Letters&mdash;Literary Associations&mdash;Isms&mdash;Clubs&mdash;Where
+Hester Prynne and Silas Lapham
+lived&mdash;The Corner Book-store&mdash;Home of Fields&mdash;Sargent&mdash;Hilliard&mdash;Aldrich&mdash;Deland&mdash;Parkman&mdash;Holmes&mdash;Howells&mdash;Moulton&mdash;Hale&mdash;Howe&mdash;Jane
+Austin, etc.</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_83">83</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="center" colspan="2">OUT OF BOSTON</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">I. <span class="smcap">Cambridge: Elmwood: Mount Auburn.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Holmes's Church-yard&mdash;Bridge&mdash;Smithy, Chapel, and
+River of Longfellow's Verse&mdash;Abodes of Lettered</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+<i>Culture&mdash;Holmes&mdash;Higginson&mdash;Agassiz&mdash;Norton&mdash;Clough&mdash;Howells&mdash;Fuller&mdash;Longfellow&mdash;Lowell&mdash;Longfellow's
+City of the Dead and its Precious
+Graves</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">II. <span class="smcap">Belmont: The Wayside Inn: Home of Whittier.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Lowell's Beaver Brook&mdash;Abode of Trowbridge&mdash;Red
+Horse Tavern&mdash;Parsons and the Company of Longfellow's
+Friends&mdash;Birthplace of Whittier&mdash;Scenes of
+his Poems&mdash;Dwelling and Grave of the Countess&mdash;Powow
+Hill&mdash;Whittier's Amesbury Home&mdash;His
+Church and Tomb</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_117">117</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">III. <span class="smcap">Salem: Whittier's Oak-Knoll and Beyond.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Cemetery of Hawthorne's Ancestors&mdash;Birthplace of Hawthorne
+and his Wife&mdash;Where Fame was won&mdash;House
+of the Seven Gables&mdash;Custom-House&mdash;Where
+Scarlet Letter was written&mdash;Main Street and
+Witch Hill&mdash;Sights from a Steeple&mdash;Later Home
+of Whittier&mdash;Norman's Woe&mdash;Lucy Larcom&mdash;Parton,
+etc.&mdash;Rivermouth&mdash;Thaxter</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_128">128</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">IV. <span class="smcap">Webster's Marshfield: Brook Farm, etc.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Scenes of the Old Oaken Bucket&mdash;Webster's Home and
+Grave&mdash;Where Emerson won his Wife&mdash;Home of
+Miss Peabody&mdash;Parkman&mdash;Miss Guiney&mdash;Aldrich's
+Ponkapog&mdash;Farm of Ripley's Community&mdash;Relics
+and Reminiscences</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="center" colspan="2"><span class="big">IN BERKSHIRE WITH HAWTHORNE</span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">I. <span class="smcap">The Graylock and Hoosac Region.</span></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>North Adams and about&mdash;Hawthorne's Acquaintances
+and Excursions&mdash;Actors and Incidents of Ethan
+Brand&mdash;Kiln of Bertram the Lime-Burner&mdash;Natural
+Bridge&mdash;Graylock&mdash;Thoreau&mdash;Hoosac Mountain&mdash;Deerfield
+Arch&mdash;Williamstown&mdash;Bryant</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_155">155</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">II. <span class="smcap">Lenox and Middle Berkshire.</span></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Beloved of the Littérateurs&mdash;La Maison Rouge&mdash;Where
+The House of the Seven Gables was written&mdash;Wonder-Book
+and Tanglewood Scenes&mdash;The Bowl&mdash;Beecher's
+Laurel Lake&mdash;Kemble&mdash;Bryant's Monument
+Mountain&mdash;Stockbridge&mdash;Catherine Sedgwick&mdash;Melville's
+Piazza and Chimney&mdash;Holmes&mdash;Longfellow&mdash;Pittsfield</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_176">176</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="center" colspan="2"><span class="big">A DAY WITH THE GOOD GRAY POET</span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Walk and Talk with Socrates in Camden&mdash;The Bard's
+Appearance and Surroundings&mdash;Recollections of his
+Life and Work&mdash;Hospital Service&mdash;Praise for his
+Critics&mdash;His Literary Habit, Purpose, Equipment,
+and Style&mdash;His Religious Bent&mdash;Readings</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_201">201</a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">ILLUSTRATIONS</span></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" summary="table">
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>The Wayside, Concord</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_1"><i>Frontispiece.</i></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>The Thoreau-Alcott House,&mdash;Present Appearance&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; </td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>The Grave of Emerson</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Where Longfellow lived</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td></tr></table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">THE CONCORD PILGRIMAGE</span></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" summary="table">
+
+<tr><td align="right">I.</td><td>A Village of Literary Shrines</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">II.</td><td>The Old Manse</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">III.</td><td> Storied River and Battle-field</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">IV.</td><td> The Home of Emerson</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">V.</td><td> Alcott's Orchard House, etc.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VI.</td><td> Hawthorne's Wayside Home</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VII.</td><td> The Walden of Thoreau</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VIII.</td><td> The Hill-top Hearsed with Pines</td></tr></table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">I</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">A VILLAGE OF LITERARY SHRINES</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Abodes of Thoreau&mdash;The
+Alcotts&mdash;Channing&mdash;Sanborn&mdash;Hudson&mdash;Hoar&mdash;Wheildon&mdash;Bartlett&mdash;The
+Historic Common&mdash;Cemetery&mdash;Church.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">IF to trace the footsteps of genius and to linger and muse in the
+sometime haunts of the authors we read and love, serve to bring us
+nearer their personality, to place us <i>en rapport</i> with their
+aspirations, and thus to incite our own spiritual development and
+broaden and exalt our moral nature, then the Concord pilgrimage should
+be one of the most fruitful and beneficent of human experiences.
+Familiarity with the physical stand-point of our authors, with the
+scenes amid which they lived and wrote, and with the objects which
+suggested the imagery of their poems, the settings of their tales, and
+which gave tone and color to their work, will not only bring us into
+closer sympathy with the writers, but will help us to a better
+understanding of the writings.</p>
+
+<p>A plain, straggling village, set in a low country amid a landscape
+devoid of any striking beauty or grandeur, Concord yet attracts more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+pilgrims than any other place of equal size upon the continent, not
+because it holds an historic battle-field, but because it has been the
+dwelling-place of some of the brightest and best in American letters,
+who have here written their books and warred against creeds, forms, and
+intellectual servitude. It is another Stratford, another Mecca, to which
+come reverent pilgrims from the Old World and the New to worship at its
+shrines and to wander through the scenes hallowed by the memories of its
+illustrious <i>littérateurs</i>, seers, and evangels. To the literary prowler
+it is all sacred ground,&mdash;its streets, its environing hills, forests,
+lakes, and streams have alike been blessed by the loving presence of
+genius, have alike been the theatres and the inspirations of noble
+literary achievement.</p>
+
+<p>Our way lies by historic Lexington, and thence, through a pleasant
+country and by the road so fateful to the British soldiery, we approach
+Concord. It is a placid, almost somnolent village of villas, abounding
+with delightful lawns and gardens, with great elms shading its
+old-fashioned thoroughfares and drooping their pliant boughs above its
+comfortable homes.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth Hoar has said, "Concord is Thoreau's monument, adorned with
+inscriptions by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> his hand;" of the circle of brilliant souls who have
+given the town its world-wide fame, he alone was native here; he has
+left his imprint upon the place, and we meet some reminder of him at
+every turn. By the historic village Common is the quondam home of his
+grandfather, where his father was reared, and where the "New England
+Essene" himself lived some time with the unmarried aunt who made the
+ample homespun suit he wore at Walden. The house of his maternal
+grandmother, where Henry David Thoreau was born, stood a little way out
+on a by-road to Lexington, and a daughter of this home&mdash;Thoreau's
+winsome aunt Louisa Dunbar&mdash;was ineffectually wooed by the famous Daniel
+Webster. At the age of eight months the infant Thoreau was removed to
+the village, in which nearly the whole of his life was passed. Believing
+that Concord, with its sylvan environment, was a microcosm "by the study
+of which the whole world could be comprehended," this wildest of
+civilized men seldom strayed beyond its familiar precincts. Alcott
+declared that Thoreau thought he dwelt in the centre of the universe,
+and seriously contemplated annexing the rest of the planet to Concord.</p>
+
+<p>On the south side of the elm-shaded Main street of the village we find a
+pleasant and comfortable,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> old-fashioned wooden dwelling,&mdash;the home
+which, in his later years, the philosopher, poet, and mystic shared with
+his mother and sisters. About it are great trees which Thoreau planted;
+a stairway and some of the partition walls of the house are said to have
+been erected by him. In the second story of an extension at the back of
+the main edifice, some of the family worked at their father's trade of
+pencil-making. In the large room at the right of the entrance, afterward
+the sitting-room of the Alcotts, some of Thoreau's later writing was
+done, and here, one May morning of 1862, he breathed out a life all too
+brief and doubtless abbreviated by the storms and drenchings endured in
+his pantheistic pursuits. In this house Thoreau's "spiritual brother,"
+John Brown of Osawatomie, was a welcome guest, and more than one
+wretched fugitive from slavery found shelter and protection. From his
+village home Thoreau made, with the poet Ellery Channing, the journey
+described in his "Yankee in Canada," and several shorter
+"Excursions,"&mdash;shared with Edward Hoar, Channing, and others,&mdash;which he
+has detailed in the delightful manner which gives him a distinct
+position in American literature.</p>
+
+<p>After the removal of Sophia, the last of Thoreau's family, his friend
+Frank B. Sanborn<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> occupied the Thoreau house for some years, and then
+it became the home of the Alcott family. Here Mrs. Alcott, the "Marmee"
+of "Little Women," died; here Bronson Alcott was stricken with the fatal
+paralysis; here commenced the malady which contributed to the death of
+his illustrious daughter Louisa; here lived "Meg," the mother of the
+"Little Men" and widow of "John Brooke" of the Alcott books; and here
+now lives her son, while his brother, "Demi-John," dwells just around
+the corner in the next street. In the room at the left of the hall,
+fitted up for her study and workshop, Louisa Alcott wrote some of the
+tales which the world will not forget. An added apartment at the right
+of the sitting-room was long the sick-room of the Orphic philosopher and
+the scene of Louisa's tender care. Here the writer saw them both for the
+last time: Alcott helpless upon his couch, his bright intelligence
+dulled by a veil of darkness; the daughter at his bedside, sedulous of
+his comfort, devoted, hopeful, helpful to the end. A cherished memento
+of that interview is a photograph of the Thoreau-Alcott mansion, made by
+one of the "Little Men," and presented to the writer, with her latest
+book, by "Jo" herself. The front fence has since been removed, and the
+illustration shows the present view.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img1.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">The Thoreau-Alcott House</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>In Thoreau's time, a modest dwelling, with a low roof sloping to the
+rear,&mdash;now removed to the other side of the street,&mdash;stood directly
+opposite his home, and was for some time the abode of his friend and
+earliest biographer, the sweet poet William Ellery Channing. Thoreau
+thought Channing one of the few who understood "the art of taking
+walks," and the two were almost constant companions in saunterings
+through the countryside, or in idyllic excursions upon the river in the
+boat which Thoreau kept moored to a riverside willow at the foot of
+Channing's garden. The beneficent influence of their comradeship is
+apparent in the work of both these recluse writers, and many of the most
+charming of Channing's stanzas are either inspired by or are poetic
+portrayals of the scenes he saw with Thoreau,&mdash;the "Rudolpho" and the
+"Idolon" of his verse. Thoreau's last earthly "Excursion" was with this
+friend to Monadnoc, where they encamped some days in 1860. To this home
+of Channing came, in 1855, Sanborn, who was welcomed to Concord by all
+the literary galaxy, and quickly became a familiar associate of each
+particular star. To go swimming together seems to have been, among these
+earnest and exalted thinkers, the highest evidence of mutual esteem, and
+so favored was Sanborn<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> that he is able to record, "I have swum with
+Alcott in Thoreau's Cove, with Thoreau in the Assabet, with Channing in
+every water of Concord."</p>
+
+<p>In this home Sanborn entertained John Brown on the eve of his Virginia
+venture; here escaping slaves found refuge; here fugitives from the
+Harper's Ferry fight were concealed; here Sanborn was arrested for
+supposed complicity in Brown's abortive schemes, and was forcibly
+rescued by his indignant neighbors. This modest dwelling gave place to
+the later residence of Frederic Hudson, the historian of journalism, who
+here produced many of his contributions to literature. Professor Folsom,
+of "Translations of the Four Gospels," and the popular authoress Mrs.
+Austin have also lived in this neighborhood.</p>
+
+<p>For some years Sanborn had a famous select school on a street back of
+Thoreau's house, not far from the recent hermit-home of his friend
+Channing, at whose request Hawthorne sent some of his children to this
+school, in which Emerson's daughter&mdash;the present Mrs. Forbes&mdash;was a
+beloved pupil, and where, also, the daughters of John Brown were for
+some time placed.</p>
+
+<p>A few rods westward from his former dwelling we find Sanborn in a
+tasteful modern villa,&mdash;spending<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> life's early autumn among his books.
+He abounds with memories of his friends of the by-gone time, and his
+reminiscences and biographies of some of them have largely employed his
+pen in his pleasant study here.</p>
+
+<p>Some time ago the sweet singer Channing suffered in his hermitage a
+severe illness, which prompted his appreciative friend Sanborn to take
+him into his own home; so we find two surviving witnesses or
+participants in the moral, intellectual, and political renaissance
+dwelling under the same roof. In the kindly atmosphere of this home, the
+shy poet&mdash;who in his age is more recluse than ever, and scarce known to
+his neighbors&mdash;so far regained physical vigor that he has resumed his
+frequent visits to the Boston library, long time a favorite haunt of
+his. The world refused to listen to this exquisite singer, and now "his
+songs have ceased." He has been celebrated by Emerson in the "Dial," by
+Thoreau in his "Week," by Hawthorne in "Mosses" and "Note-Books," by the
+generous and sympathetic Sanborn in many ways and places; but even such
+poems as "Earth-Spirit," "Poet's Hope," and "Reverence" found few
+readers,&mdash;the dainty little volumes fewer purchasers.</p>
+
+<p>Below the Thoreau-Alcott house on the village street was a prior home of
+Thoreau, from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> which he made, with his brother, the voyage described in
+his "Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers," and from which, in superb
+disdain of "civilization" and social conventionalities, he went to the
+two years' hermitage of "Walden."</p>
+
+<p>Nearly opposite the earlier residence of the stoic is the home of the
+Hoars, where lived Thoreau's comrade Edward Hoar, and Edward's
+sister,&mdash;styled "Elizabeth the Wise" by Emerson, of whom she was the
+especial friend and favorite, having been the <i>fiancée</i> of his brother
+Charles, who died in early manhood. The adjacent spacious mansion was
+long the home of Wheildon, the historian, essayist, and pamphleteer.
+Nearer the village Common lived John A. Stone, dramatist of "The Ancient
+Briton" and of the "Metamora" in which Forrest won his first fame. In
+this part of the village the eminent correspondent "Warrington," author
+of "Manual of Parliamentary Law," was born and reared; and in Lowell
+Street, not far away, lives the gifted George B. Bartlett, of the
+"Carnival of Authors,"&mdash;poet, scenic artist, and local historian.</p>
+
+<p>In the public library we find copies of the printed works of the many
+Concord authors, and portraits or busts of most of the writers.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> Among
+the treasures of the institution are priceless manuscripts of Curtis,
+Motley, Lowell, Holmes, Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and others.</p>
+
+<p>Among the thickly-strewn graves on the hill-side above the Common repose
+the ashes of Emerson's ancestors; about them lie the fore-fathers of the
+settlement,&mdash;some of them asleep here for two centuries, reckless alike
+of the resistance to British oppression and of the later struggle for
+freedom of thought which their townsmen have waged. A tree on the Common
+is pointed out as that beneath which Emerson made an address at the
+dedication of the soldiers' monument, and Bartlett records the tradition
+that the grandfather of the Concord sage stood on the same spot a
+hundred years before to harangue the "embattled farmers" on the morning
+of the Concord fight.</p>
+
+<p>Near by is the ancient church where Emerson's ancestors preached, and
+within whose framework the Provincial Congress met. Of the religious
+services here Emerson was always a supporter, often an attendant; here
+he sometimes preached in early manhood; here his children were
+christened by the elder Channing,&mdash;"the first minister he had known who
+was as good as they;" here Emerson's daughter is a devout worshipper.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>The comparatively few of the transcendental company who prayed within a
+pew came to this temple, but here all were brought at last for funeral
+rites: here lay Thoreau among his thronging townsmen while Emerson and
+Bronson Alcott made their touching eulogies and Ellery Channing read a
+dirge in a voice almost hushed with emotion; here James Freeman Clarke,
+who had married Hawthorne twenty-two years before, preached his funeral
+sermon above the lifeless body which bore upon its breast the unfinished
+"Dolliver Romance;" before the pulpit here lay the coffined
+Emerson,&mdash;"his eyes forever closed, his voice forever still,"&mdash;while a
+vast concourse looked upon him for the last time, and his neighbor Judge
+Hoar pronounced one of the most impressive panegyrics that ever fell
+from human lips, and the devoted Alcott read a sonnet.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">II</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">THE OLD MANSE</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Abode of Dr. Ripley&mdash;The Emersons&mdash;Hawthorne&mdash;Learned Mrs.
+Ripley&mdash;Its Famed Study and Apartments&mdash;Grounds&mdash;Guests&mdash;Ghosts&mdash;A
+Transcendental Social Court.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">NORTHWARD from the village Common, a delightful stroll along a shaded
+highway, less secluded now than when Hawthorne "daily trudged" upon it
+to the post-office or trundled the carriage of "baby Una," brings us to
+the famous "Old Manse" about which he culled his "Mosses."</p>
+
+<p>This antique mansion was first tenanted by Ralph Waldo Emerson's
+grandsire, and next by Dr. Ezra Ripley, who married the previous
+occupant's widow and became guardian of her children,&mdash;born under its
+roof,&mdash;of whom Emerson's father was one. When his father died Emerson
+found a secondary home here with Dr. Ripley. The Manse was again the
+abode of Emerson and his mother in 1834-35, when he here wrote his first
+volume. In 1842, the year following the demise of the good Dr. Ripley,
+the Manse was profaned by its first lay occupant, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+He brought here his bride, lovely Sophia Peabody (who, with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> gifted
+Elizabeth and Mrs. Horace Mann, formed a famous triune sisterhood), and
+for four years lived here the ideal life of which his "Note-Books" and
+"Mosses" give us such delicious glimpses. Hawthorne's landlord, Samuel
+Ripley, was related to the George Ripley with whom Hawthorne had
+recently been associated at Brook Farm. He was uncle of Emerson, and
+preached his ordination sermon; was himself reared in the old Manse, and
+succeeded Hawthorne as resident there. His widow, born Sarah Bradford,
+and celebrated as "the most learned woman ever seen in New England," the
+close friend of Emerson and of the brilliant Concord company, survived
+here until 1876. She made a valuable collection of lichens, and
+sometimes trained young men for Harvard University. Conway records that
+a <i>savant</i> called here one day and found her hearing at once the lesson
+of one student in Sophocles and that of another in Differential
+Calculus, while rocking her grandchild's cradle with one foot and
+shelling peas for dinner. The place is now owned by her daughters, who
+reside in Cambridge, and is rented in summer.</p>
+
+<p>It is little changed since the time Emerson's ancestor hurried thence to
+the gathering of his parishioners by his church-door before the Concord<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+battle,&mdash;still less changed since the halcyon days when the great wizard
+of romance dwelt&mdash;the "most unknown of authors"&mdash;within its shades. It
+is still the unpretentious Eden, "the El Dorado for dreamers," which so
+completely won the heart of the sensitive Hawthorne.</p>
+
+<p>The picturesque old mansion stands amid greensward and foliage, its
+ample grounds divided from the highway by a low wall. The gate-way is
+flanked by tall posts of rough-hewn stone, whence a grass-grown avenue,
+bordered by a colonnade of overarching trees, leads to the house. Within
+the scattered sunshine and shade of the avenue, a row of stone slabs
+sunken in the turf like gravestones paves the path paced by Ripley,
+Emerson, and Hawthorne as they pondered and planned their compositions.
+Of the trees aligned upon either side, some, gray-lichened and broken,
+are survivors of Hawthorne's time; others are set to replace fallen
+patriarchs and keep the stately lines complete. At the right of the
+broad <i>allée</i> and extending away to the battle-ground is the field,
+waving now with lush grass, where Hawthorne and Thoreau found the flint
+arrow-heads and other relics of an aboriginal village. Upon the space
+which skirts the other side of the avenue, Hawthorne had the garden
+which engaged so much of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> time and thought, and where he produced
+for us abundant crops of something better than his vegetables. Here his
+Brook-Farm experience was useful. Passing neighbors would often see the
+darkly-clad figure of the recluse hoeing in this "patch," or, as often,
+standing motionless, gazing upon the ground so fixedly and so
+long&mdash;sometimes for hours together&mdash;that they thought him daft. Of the
+delights of summer mornings spent here with his peas, potatoes, and
+squashes, he gives us many glimpses in his record of that happy time;
+but the "Note-Books" show us, alas! that this simple pleasure was not
+without alloy, for, although his "garden flourished like Eden," there
+are hints of "weeds," next "more weeds," then a "ferocious banditti of
+weeds" with which "the other Adam" could never have contended. But a
+greater woe came with the foes who menaced his artistic squashes,&mdash;"the
+unconscionable squash-bugs," "those infernal squash-bugs," against which
+he must "carry on continual war." For the moments that we contemplate
+the scene of his entomic warfare, the greater battle-field, a few rods
+away, seems hardly more impressive. Few of the trees which in
+Hawthorne's time stood nearest the house remain; the producers of the
+peaches<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> and "thumping pears" have gone the way of all trees. So has Dr.
+Ripley's famous willow&mdash;celebrated in Emerson's and Channing's exquisite
+verse and in Hawthorne's matchless prose&mdash;which veiled the western face
+of the mansion and through which Hawthorne's study-windows peeped out
+upon orchard, river, and mead. In the orchard that has borne such
+luscious fruit of fancy, some of the contorted and moss-grown trees,
+whose branches&mdash;"like withered hands and arms"&mdash;hold out the sweet
+blossoms on this June day, are the same that Hawthorne pictures among
+his "Mosses," and beneath which he lay in summer reverie. Few vines now
+clamber upon the house-walls, lilacs still grow beneath the old
+study-window, and a tall mass of their foliage screens a corner of the
+venerable edifice, which time has toned into perfect harmony with its
+picturesque environment. It is a great, square, wooden structure of two
+stories, with added attic rooms beneath an overwhelming gambrel roof,
+which is the conspicuous feature of the edifice and contributes to its
+antique form. The heavy roof settles down close upon the small,
+multipaned windows. From above the door little convex glasses, like a
+row of eyes, look out upon the visitor as he applies for admission.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>A spacious central hall, rich in antique panelling and sombre with grave
+tints, extends through the house. From its dusk and coolness we look out
+upon the bright summer day through its open doors; through one we see
+the "hill of the Emersons" beyond the highway, the other frames a
+pleasing picture of orchard and sward with glimpses of the river shining
+through its bordering shrubbery. The quaint apartments are darkly
+wainscoted and low-ceiled, with massive beams crossing overhead. Some of
+these rooms Hawthorne has shown us. The one at the left, which the
+novelist believed to have been the sleeping-room of Dr. Ripley, was the
+parlor of the Hawthornes, and&mdash;decked with a gladsome carpet, pictures,
+and flowers daily gathered from the river-bank&mdash;Hawthorne averred it was
+"one of the prettiest and pleasantest rooms in the whole world." To this
+room then came the sage Emerson "with a sunbeam in his face;" the
+"cast-iron man" Thoreau, "long-nosed, queer-mouthed, ugly as sin," but
+with whom to talk "is like hearing the wind among the boughs of a forest
+tree;" Ellery Channing, with his wife and her illustrious sister,
+Margaret Fuller; the gifted George William Curtis, then tilling a farm
+not far from the Manse, long before<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> he lounged in an "Easy Chair;"
+genial Bradford, relative of Ripley, and associate and firm friend of
+Hawthorne; Horatio Bridge, of the "African Cruiser" and of the recent
+Hawthorne "Recollections;" the critic George Hillard, at whose house
+Hawthorne was married; "Prince" Lowell, the large-hearted; Franklin
+Pierce, Hawthorne's life-long friend. Concerning the discussion of
+things physical and metaphysical, to which these old walls then
+listened, the host gives us little hint. Sometimes the guests were
+"feasted on nectar and ambrosia" by the new Adam and Eve; sometimes they
+"listened to the music of the spheres which, for private convenience, is
+packed into a music-box,"&mdash;left here by Thoreau when he went to teach in
+the family of Emerson's brother; once here before this wide fireplace
+they sat late and told ghost stories,&mdash;doubtless suggested by the
+clerical phantom whose sighs they used to hear in yonder dusky corner,
+and whose rustling gown sometimes almost touched the company as he moved
+about among them. In this room Dr. Ripley penned, besides his "History
+of the Concord Fight" and "Treatise on Education," three thousand of his
+protracted homilies,&mdash;a fact upon which Hawthorne found it "awful to
+reflect,"&mdash;and here in our day the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> gifted George B. Bartlett wrote some
+part of his Concord sketches, etc. Here, too, and in the larger room
+opposite, the erudite and versatile Mrs. Samuel Ripley held her social
+court and received the exalted Concord conclave, with other earnest
+leaders of thought.</p>
+
+<p>In the front chamber at the right Hawthorne's first child, the hapless
+Una,&mdash;named from Spenser's "Faerie Queene,"&mdash;was born. Behind this is
+the "ten-foot-square" apartment which was Hawthorne's study and
+workshop. Two windows of small, prismatic-hued panes look into the
+orchard, and upon one of these Hawthorne has inscribed,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Nath<sup>l</sup>. Hawthorne.</span><br />
+This is his study, 1843."</p>
+
+<p>Below this another hand has graven,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Inscribed by my husband at</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Sunset Apr 3<sup>d</sup> 1843</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the gold light &nbsp;  &nbsp;S. A. H.</span><br />
+<br/>
+Man's accidents are God's purposes.<br/>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><span class="smcap">Sophia A. Hawthorne 1843.</span></span>"</p>
+
+<p>From its north window, said to have been cracked by the explosions of
+musketry in the conflict, we see the battle-field and a reach of the
+placid river. This room had been the study of Emerson's grandfather;
+from its window his wife watched<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> the fight between his undrilled
+parishioners and the British veterans. His daughter Mary&mdash;aunt of our
+American Plato and herself a gifted writer&mdash;used to boast "she was in
+arms at the battle," having been held up at this window to see the
+soldiery in the highway. Years later Emerson himself came into
+possession of this room, and here wrote his "Nature," antagonizing many
+of the orthodox tenets. Perhaps it was well for the moral serenity of
+his ancestor&mdash;to whom the transcendental movement would have seemed
+arrant March-madness&mdash;that he could not foresee the composition of such
+a volume here within the sanctity of his old study. The book was
+published anonymously, and Sanborn says that when inquiry was made, "Who
+is the author of 'Nature?'" a Concord wit replied, "God and Waldo
+Emerson."</p>
+
+<p>Next, the dreamy Hawthorne succeeded to the little study, and here, with
+the sunlight glimmering through the willow boughs, he worked in solitude
+upon his charming productions for three or four hours of each day. Here,
+besides the copious entries in his journals, he prepared most of the
+papers of his "Mosses," wrote many articles for the "Democratic Review"
+and other magazines, edited "Old Dartmoor Prisoner" and Horatio Bridge's
+"African Cruiser." It is note-worthy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> that the "Celestial Railroad," in
+which Hawthorne records his condemnation of the spiritual renaissance by
+substituting the "terrible giant Transcendentalist" (who feeds upon
+pilgrims bound for the Celestial City) in place of the Pope and Pagan of
+Bunyan's allegory, was written in the same room with Emerson's volume,
+which inaugurated the great transcendental movement in the Western
+World.</p>
+
+<p>Among the recesses of the great attic of the Manse we may still see the
+"Saints' Chamber," with its fireplace and single window; but it is
+tenanted by sprouting clergymen no longer. The atmosphere of theological
+twilight and mustiness&mdash;acquired from generations of clerical
+inhabitants&mdash;which pervaded the place in Hawthorne's time has been
+dissipated by the larger and happier home-life of Mrs. Samuel Ripley and
+the blithe and brilliant company that gathered about her here. Dismayed
+by these beneficent influences, the ghosts have indignantly deserted the
+mansion: even the persistive clerical, who sighed in Hawthorne's parlor
+and noisily turned his sermon-leaves in the upper hall, has not
+disturbed the later occupants of the Manse.</p>
+
+<p>One might muse and linger long about the old place which, as his
+"Mosses" and journals show, Hawthorne made a part of his very life. Its
+air<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> of antiquity, its traditional associations, its seclusion, and all
+its peaceful environment were pleasing to the shy and susceptible nature
+of the subtle romancer, and accorded well with his introspective habit.
+Besides, it was "the first home he ever had," and it was shared with his
+"new Eve." No wonder is it that he could here declare, "I had rather be
+on earth than in the seventh heaven, just now."</p>
+
+<p>It is saddening to remember that, from this paradise, poverty drove him
+forth.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">III</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">A STORIED RIVER AND BATTLE-FIELD</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Where Zenobia Drowned&mdash;Where Embattled Farmers Fought&mdash;Thoreau's
+Hemlocks&mdash;Haunts of Hawthorne&mdash;Channing&mdash;Thoreau&mdash;Emerson, etc.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">BEHIND Hawthorne's "Old Manse"&mdash;its course so tortuous that Thoreau
+suggested for Concord's escutcheon "a field verdant with the river
+circling nine times round," so noiseless that he likened it to the
+"moccasined tread" of an Indian, so sluggish that Hawthorne had dwelt
+some weeks beside it before he determined which way its current
+lies&mdash;flows the Concord, "river of peace." This placid stream is the
+aboriginal "Musketaquid" of Emerson's poem,&mdash;sung of Thoreau, Channing,
+and many another bard, beloved of Hawthorne and pictured in rapturous
+phrase in his "Note-Books" and "Mosses from an Old Manse." It was the
+delightful haunt of Hawthorne's leisure, the scene of the occurrence
+which inspired the most thrilling and high-wrought chapter of his
+romance.</p>
+
+<p>A grassy path, shaded by orchard trees, leads from the west door of the
+Manse to the river's margin at the place where Hawthorne kept his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> boat
+under the willows. The boat had before been the property of Thoreau,
+built by his hands and used by him on the famous voyage described in his
+"Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers." Hawthorne named the craft
+"Pond-Lily," because it brought so many cargoes of that beautiful flower
+to decorate his home. In it, alone or accompanied by Thoreau or Ellery
+Channing, he made the many delightful excursions he has described.
+Embarking on the slumberous stream, we follow the course of Hawthorne's
+boat to many a scene made familiar by that dreamful romancer and by the
+poets and philosophers of Concord. First to the place, below the bridge
+of the battle, where one dark night Hawthorne and Channing assisted in
+recovering from the water the ghastly body of the girl-suicide, an
+incident which made a profoundly horrible impression upon the sensitive
+novelist, and which he employed as the thrilling termination of the tale
+of Zenobia in "The Blithedale Romance,"&mdash;portraying it with a tragic
+power which has never been surpassed. Thence we paddle up the placid
+stream, as it slumbers along its winding course between the meadows,
+kisses the tangled grasses and wild flowers that fringe its margins,
+bathes the roots and boughs of the elders and dwarf willows which
+overhang its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> surface as if to gaze upon the reflections of their own
+loveliness mirrored there. The reach of river&mdash;"from Nashawtuc to the
+Cliff"&mdash;above the confluence of the two branches was most beloved and
+frequented of Thoreau; here he sometimes brought Emerson, as on that
+summer evening when the sage's diary records, "the river-god took the
+form of my valiant Henry Thoreau and introduced me to the riches of his
+shadowy, starlit, moonlit stream," etc.</p>
+
+<p>The deeper portion of the river near the Manse was Hawthorne's habitual
+resort for bathing and fishing, but his longer solitary voyages and his
+"wild, free days" with Ellery Channing were upon the beautiful and
+sheltered North Branch,&mdash;the Assabeth of the "Mosses,"&mdash;which flows into
+the Concord a half-mile above the Manse. Into this branch we turn our
+boat, and through sunshine and shade we follow the winsome course of the
+lingering stream, finding new and delightful seclusion at every turn. A
+railway now lies along one lofty bank, but its unsightliness is
+concealed by long lines of willows planted by the loving hands of poet
+and artist,&mdash;Bartlett and French,&mdash;and the infrequent trains little
+disturb the seclusion of the place. Giant trees, standing with "their
+feet fixed in the flood," bend their bright foliage<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> above the
+softly-flowing stream and fleck its surface with shadows; pond-lilies
+are still up-borne by its dreaming waters, and cardinal flowers bedeck
+its banks; its barer reaches are ribbons of reflected sky. The spot on
+the margin locally known as "The Hemlocks," and noted by Hawthorne as
+being only less sacred in his memory than the household hearth, remains
+itself undisturbed. Here a clump of great evergreens projects from the
+base of the lofty bank above and across the stream, and forms on the
+shore a shaded bower, carpeted by the brown needles which have fallen
+through many a year. This was a favorite haunt of Hawthorne and Channing
+in blissful days; here they prepared their sylvan noontide feasts; here
+they lounged and dreamed; here their "talk gushed up like the babble of
+a fountain." As we recline in their accustomed resting-place beside the
+sighing stream, and look up at the azure heaven through the boughs where
+erstwhile often curled the smoke of their fire, we vainly try to imagine
+something of what would be the converse, merry or profound, of such
+starry spirits amid such an inspiring scene, and we more than ever
+regret that neither the gentle poet nor the subtle romancer has chosen
+to share that converse with his readers.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>Long and lovingly we loiter in this consecrated spot, and then slowly
+float back to Hawthorne's landing-place by his orchard wall.</p>
+
+<p>A few rods distant, at the corner of his field, is the site of the "rude
+bridge that arched the flood," and the first battle-ground of the
+American Revolution. On the farther side a colossal minute-man in
+bronze, modelled by the Concord sculptor French, surmounts a granite
+pedestal inscribed with Emerson's immortal epic, and marks the spot
+where stood the irregular array of the "embattled farmers" when they
+here "fired the shot heard round the world." The statue replaces a bush
+which sprang from the soil fertilized by the blood of Davis, and which
+Emerson imaged as the "burning bush where God spake for his people."</p>
+
+<p>The position of the British regulars on the hither shore is indicated by
+the "votive stone" of Emerson's poem,&mdash;a slender obelisk of
+granite,&mdash;and near it, close under the wall of the Manse enclosure, is
+the rude memorial that marks the grave of the British soldiers who were
+slain on this spot. The current tradition that a lad who, after the
+battle, came, axe in hand, from the Manse wood-pile, found one of the
+soldiers yet alive and dispatched him with the axe, was first related to
+Hawthorne by James Russell Lowell,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> as they stood together above this
+grave. The effect of this story upon the feelings of the susceptible
+Hawthorne is told on a page of "The Old Manse," and&mdash;a score of years
+later and in different shape&mdash;is related in the romance of "Septimius
+Felton."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">IV</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">THE HOME OF EMERSON</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>An Intellectual Capitol and Pharos&mdash;Its Grounds, Library, and
+Literary Workshop&mdash;Famous Rooms and Visitants&mdash;Relics and
+Reminiscences of the Concord Sage.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">FOLLOWING the direction of the British retreat from the historic Common,
+we come, beyond the village, to the modest mansion which was for half a
+century the abode of the princely man who was not only "the Sage of
+Concord," but, in the esteem of some contemporaries, "was Concord
+itself."</p>
+
+<p>Emerson declares, "great men never live in a crowd,"&mdash;"a scholar must
+embrace solitude as a bride, must have his glees and glooms alone." Of
+himself he says, "I am a poet and must therefore live in the country; a
+sunset, a forest, a river view are more to me than many friends, and
+must divide my day with my books;" and this was the consideration which
+finally determined his withdrawal from the storm and fret of the city to
+his chosen home here by Walden woods and among the scenes of his
+childhood. It was his retirement to this semi-seclusion which called
+forth his much-quoted poem, "Good-by, proud world! I'm going home." To
+him here<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> came the afflatus he had before lacked, here his faculties
+were inspirited, and here his literary productiveness commenced.</p>
+
+<p>Behind a row of dense-leaved horse-chestnuts ranged along the highway,
+the quondam home of Emerson nestles among clustering evergreens which
+were planted by Bronson Alcott and Henry D. Thoreau for their friend. A
+copse of pines sighs in the summer wind close by; an orchard planted and
+pruned by Emerson's hands, and a garden tended by Thoreau, extend from
+the house to a brook flowing through the grounds and later joining the
+Concord by the famous old Manse; beyond the brook lies the way to
+Walden. At the left of the house is a narrow open reach of greensward on
+the farther verge of which erst stood the unique rustic bower&mdash;with a
+wind-harp of untrimmed branches above it&mdash;which was fashioned by the
+loving hands of Alcott. The mansion is a substantial, square,
+clapboarded structure of two stories, with hip-roofs; a square window
+projects at one side; a wing is joined at the back; covered porches
+protect the entrances; light paint covers the plain walls which gleam
+through the bowering foliage, and the whole aspect of the place is
+delightfully attractive and home-like. Its pleasant and unpretentious
+apartments more than realize<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> the comfortable suggestion of the
+exterior. Adjoining the hall on the right is the plain, rectangular room
+which was the philosopher's library and workshop. The cheerful fireplace
+and the simple furnishings of the room are little changed since he here
+laid down his pen for the last time; the heavy table held his
+manuscript, his books are ranged upon the shelves, the busts and
+portraits he cherished adorn the walls, his accustomed chair is upon the
+spot where he sat to write.</p>
+
+<p>Emerson's afternoons were usually spent abroad, but his mornings were
+habitually passed among his books in this small corner-room&mdash;"the study
+under the pines"&mdash;recording, in "a pellucid style which his genius made
+classic," the truths which had come to him as he mused by shadowy lake
+or songful stream, in deep wood glade or wayside path. Most of all his
+pen produced, of divinest poetry, of gravest philosophy, of grandest
+thought, was minted into words and inscribed in this simple apartment.</p>
+
+<p>The adjoining parlor&mdash;a spacious, pleasant, home-like room, furnished
+forth with many mementos of illustrious friends and guests&mdash;is scarcely
+less interesting than the library. This house was the intellectual
+capitol of the village; to it freely came the Concord circle of shining
+ones,&mdash;Thoreau, Channing, Sanborn, the Alcotts,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> the Hoars,&mdash;less
+frequently, Hawthorne. For a long time Mrs. Samuel Ripley habitually
+passed her Sabbath evenings here. The Delphic Margaret Fuller, who was
+as truly the "blood of transcendentalism" as Emerson "was its brain,"
+was here for months an honored guest. For long periods Thoreau, whose
+fame owes much to Emerson's generosity, was here an inmate and intimate.
+In Emerson's parlor were held the more formal <i>séances</i> of the Concord
+galaxy; here met the short-lived "Monday Evening Club," which George
+William Curtis whimsically describes as a "congress of oracles," who ate
+russet-apples and discoursed celestially while Hawthorne looked on from
+his corner,&mdash;"a statue of night and silence;" here were held many of
+Bronson Alcott's famous "conversations," as well as those of that
+disciple of Platonism, Dr. Jones.</p>
+
+<p>Emerson belonged not to Concord only, but to the whole world,&mdash;"his
+thought was the thought of Christendom." To these plain rooms as to an
+intellectual court came, from his own and other lands, hundreds famed in
+art, literature, and politics. Here came Curtis and Bartol to sit at the
+feet of the sage; Charles Sumner and Moncure Conway to bear hence&mdash;as
+one of them has said&mdash;"memories like those Bunyan's pilgrim<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> must have
+cherished of the Interpreter." Here "came Theodore Parker from the fight
+for free thought," and Wendell Phillips and John Brown from the conflict
+for free men; here came Howells, bearing the line from Hawthorne, "I
+find this young man worthy;" here came Whittier, Agassiz, Hedge,
+Longfellow, Bradford, Lowell, Colonel Higginson, Elizabeth Peabody,
+Julia Ward Howe, as to a fount of wisdom and purity. In this
+unpretentious parlor have gathered such guests as Stanley, Walt Whitman,
+Bret Harte, Henry James, Louis Kossuth, Arthur Clough, Lord Amberley,
+Jones Very, Fredrika Bremer, Harriet Martineau, and many others who,
+like these, would have felt repaid for their journey over leagues of
+land and sea by a hand-clasp and an hour's communion with the intellect
+that has been the beacon of thousands in mental darkness and storm. With
+these came another class of pilgrims, the great army of impracticables,
+"men with long hair, long beards, long collars,&mdash;many with long ears,
+each in full chase after the millennium," and each intent upon securing
+the endorsement of Emerson for his own pet scheme. The wonder is that
+the little library saw any work accomplished, so many came to it and
+claimed the time of the master; for to every one&mdash;scholar, tradesman,
+and "crank"&mdash;were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> accorded his never-failing courtesy and kindly
+interest. Any one might be the bearer of a divine message, so he
+listened to all,&mdash;the most uncouth and <i>outré</i> visitant might be the
+coming man for whom his faith waited, therefore all were admitted.</p>
+
+<p>Here all were "assayed, not analyzed." Emerson's habitual quest for only
+the divinest traits and his quickened perception of the best in men
+enabled him to recognize excellencies which were yet unseen by others.
+While Hawthorne, the shy hermit at the Manse, was unheeded by the world
+and thought crazed by his neighbors, Emerson knew and proclaimed his
+transcendent genius. He first recognized the inspiration of Ellery
+Channing, and made for his exquisite verse exalted claims which have
+been fully justified, and which the world may yet allow. While to others
+Henry Thoreau was yet only an eccentric egotist, Emerson knew him as a
+poet and philosopher, and made him the "forest seer, the heart of all
+the scene," in his lyrical masterpiece "Wood-Notes." He promptly hailed
+Walt Whitman as a true poet while many of us were yet wondering if it
+were not charitable to think him insane.</p>
+
+<p>Emerson's cordiality won for him the honor which prophets rarely enjoy
+in their own country;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> the objects and places once associated with him
+here are still esteemed sacred by his old neighbors. We find among them
+at this day many who can know nothing of his books, but who, for memory
+of his simple kindness, go far from their furrow or swath to show us
+spots he loved and frequented in woodland or meadow, on swelling
+hill-side or by winding river.</p>
+
+<p>To his home here Emerson brought his bride sixty years ago; here he
+lived his fruitful life and accomplished his work; here he rose to the
+zenith of poesy and prophecy; to him here came the "great and grave
+transition which may not king or priest or conqueror spare;" from here
+his wife, lingering behind him in the eternal march, went a year or two
+ago to rejoin him on the piny hill-top; and here his unmarried
+daughter&mdash;of "saint-like face and nun-like garb"&mdash;inhabits his home and
+cherishes its treasures.</p>
+
+<p>Emerson's son and biographer some time ago relinquished his medical
+practice in Concord, and has since devoted himself to art. He has a
+residence a mile or so out of the village, but spends much of his time
+abroad. Last year he lectured in London upon the lives and writings of
+some of the Concord authors.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">V</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">THE ORCHARD HOUSE AND ITS NEIGHBORS</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Ellery Channing&mdash;Margaret Fuller&mdash;The Alcotts&mdash;Professor
+Harris&mdash;Summer School of Philosophy&mdash;Where Little Women was written
+and Robert Hagburn lived&mdash;Where Cyril Norton was slain.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">A PLAIN little cottage by the road, not far from Emerson's home, was for
+some time the abode of the companion of many of his rambles through the
+countryside,&mdash;the poet Ellery Channing. It was to this simple dwelling,
+as the author of "Little Women" once told the writer, that Channing
+brought his young wife&mdash;sister of Margaret Fuller&mdash;before the Alcotts
+had come to live in their hill-side home under the wooded ridge, and it
+was here he commenced the sequestered life so suited to his nature and
+tastes.</p>
+
+<p>Some of his descriptive poems of Concord landscapes were written in this
+little cottage. The scenes of one of his earlier winters in the
+neighborhood&mdash;when he chopped wood in a rude clearing&mdash;are portrayed in
+the exquisite lines of his "Woodman." In those days he thought his poems
+"too sacred to be sold for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> money," and they were kept for his circle of
+friends. Of the poet's modest home Miss Fuller&mdash;that "dazzling woman
+with the flame in her heart"&mdash;was a frequent inmate; it was from Concord
+that she went to live in the family of Horace Greeley in New York. At
+the time of her visits at Channing's cottage Thoreau was sojourning with
+Emerson, and we may be sure that the quartette of starry souls, thus
+<i>juxtaposé</i>, held much soulful and edifying converse. But those of us
+who deplore our lack of the supreme transcendental spirit which we
+ascribe to the Concord circle may find consolation in reflecting that
+some of this gifted company had also earthly tastes, and found even
+discourse concerning the "over-soul" sometimes tiresome. The "strained
+pitch of intellectual intensity" was, upon occasion, gladly relaxed;
+thus we discover the exalted Channing sometime profanely inviting
+Hawthorne&mdash;"the gentlest man that kindly Nature ever drew"&mdash;to visit him
+in Concord, alluring the novelist with prospects of strong-waters, pipes
+and tobacco without end, and urging, as the utmost inducement, "Emerson
+is gone and there is nobody here to bore you."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>A few furlongs farther eastward, under the high-soaring elms of the
+Lexington road, we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> come to the "Orchard House" of Bronson Alcott, "the
+grandfather of the 'Little Women.'" The tasteful dwelling stands several
+rods back from the street, nestling cosily at the foot of a pine-crowned
+slope, and having a wide, sunny outlook in front. Embowered in orchards
+and vines, and shaded by the overreaching arms of giant elms, it seems a
+most delightful home for culture and contemplative study. The cottage
+itself is a low, wide, gabled, picturesquely irregular edifice, which
+our Pythagorean mystic evolved from a forlorn, box-like farm-house which
+he found here when he purchased the place. The rustic fence he set along
+the highway is replaced by an ambitious modern structure. On this
+hill-side Alcott, the "most transcendent of the transcendentalists,"
+lived for nearly thirty years,&mdash;but not all of that time in this
+house,&mdash;coming here first after the failure of his "Fruitlands"
+community in 1845, and finally twelve years later. Prior to this he had
+been assisted by Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Peabody in his renowned
+Boston Temple School, which was a failure in a financial sense only,
+since it furnished a theme for Miss Peabody's "Record of a School," and
+Louisa Alcott's girlish recollections of it provided her a model for the
+delightful "Plumfield" of her books.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>Alcott's treatise on "Early Education," his "Gospels" and "Orphic
+Sayings," had been published, and his "very best contribution to
+literature"&mdash;his daughter Louisa&mdash;was also extant before he came to this
+home, but it was here that his maturer works and most of his charming
+essays and "Conversations" were produced.</p>
+
+<p>In this house were held the early sessions of the Summer School of
+Philosophy, of which Alcott was the leading spirit; here his daughter,
+the "Beth" of "Jo's" books, died. The interior of the "Orchard House" is
+roomy and quaint and abounds in surprising nooks and cosy recesses. In
+the corner-room Louisa wrote "Little Women" and other delicious books;
+in the room behind it, May, "our Madonna,"&mdash;who died Madame
+Nieriker,&mdash;had her studio and practised the art which made her famous
+before her untimely end. In the great attic under the sloping roof the
+"Little Women" acted the "comic tragedies" written by "Jo" and "Meg"
+(some of them now published in a volume with a "Foreword" by "Meg")
+until the increasing audiences of Concord children caused the removal of
+the mimic stage to the big barn on the hill-side.</p>
+
+<p>Hawthorne makes this house the abode of Robert Hagburn in "Septimius
+Felton." Along<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> the brow of the tree-clad ridge which overlooks the
+place, and to which Bronson Alcott resorted for the morning and evening
+view, the patriots hastened to intercept the retreat of the British
+troops, "blackened and bloody." In the depression of the ridge just back
+of the house we find the spot where "Septimius Felton" shot the young
+officer, Cyril Norton, and buried him under the trees. On the grave here
+"Septimius" sat with Rose Garfield and the half-crazed Sibyl Dacy; here
+grew the crimson flower which he distilled in his "elixir of
+immortality," and here Sibyl came to die after her draught of the
+compound.</p>
+
+<p>After the removal of the Alcotts to the Thoreau house in the village,
+"Apple Slump"&mdash;as Louisa sometimes called this orchard home&mdash;became the
+property and residence of that disciple of Hegel, Professor
+Harris,&mdash;once principal of the Summer School of Philosophy, and now the
+head of the National Bureau of Education at Washington,&mdash;who sometimes
+comes here in summer.</p>
+
+<p>The "Hillside Chapel," erected by Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, of New York,
+for the sessions of the Summer Philosophers, is placed among the trees
+of the orchard adjoining Alcott's old home. It is a plain little
+structure of wood,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> tasteful in design, with pointed gables and
+vine-draped porch and windows. Its embowered walls, unpainted and
+unplastered, seem "scarcely large enough to contain the wisdom of the
+world," but they have held assemblages of such lights as Emerson,
+Alcott, Sanborn, Bartol, McCosh, Holland, Porter, Lathrop, Stedman,
+Wilder, Hedge, Dr. Jones, Elizabeth Peabody, Ward Howe, Ednah Cheney,
+and other like seekers and promoters of fundamental truth.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">VI</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">HAWTHORNE'S WAYSIDE HOME.</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Sometime Abode of Alcott&mdash;Hawthorne&mdash;Lathrop&mdash;Margaret
+Sidney&mdash;Storied Apartments&mdash;Hawthorne's Study&mdash;His Mount of
+Vision&mdash;Where Septimius Felton and Rose Garfield dwelt.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">ON the Lexington road, a little way beyond the Orchard House, is the
+once Wayside home of Hawthorne, the dwelling in which, at a tender age,
+Louisa M. Alcott made her first literary essay. It is a curious, wide,
+straggling, and irregular structure, of varying ages, heights, and
+styles. The central gambrel-roofed portion was the original house of
+four rooms, described as the residence of "Septimius Felton;" other
+rooms have been added at different periods and to serve the need of
+successive occupants, until an architecturally incongruous and
+altogether delightful mansion has been produced. To the ugly little
+square house which Alcott found here in 1845 and christened "Hillside"
+he added a low wing at each side, the central gable in the front of the
+old roof, and wide rustic piazzas across the front of the wings. No
+additions were made during Hawthorne's first residence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> here, nor during
+the occupancy of Mrs. Hawthorne's brother, while the novelist was
+abroad; but when Hawthorne returned to it in 1860, with "most of his
+family twice as big as when they left," he enlarged one wing by adding
+the barn to it, heightened the other side-wing, erected two spacious
+apartments at the back, and crowned the edifice with a square
+third-story study, which, with its great chimney and many gables,
+overtops the rambling roofs like an observatory, and may have been
+suggested by the tower of the Villa Montauto, where he wrote "The Marble
+Faun." No important changes have been made by the subsequent owners of
+the place.</p>
+
+<p>Hawthorne's widow left the Wayside in 1868. It was afterward occupied by
+a school for young ladies; then by Hawthorne's daughter Rose&mdash;herself a
+charming writer&mdash;with her husband, the gifted and versatile George
+Parsons Lathrop; later it was purchased by the Boston publisher Daniel
+Lothrop, and has since been the summer home of his widow, who is widely
+known as "Margaret Sidney," the creator of "Five Little Peppers," and
+writer of many delightful books. Hawthorne said, anent his visit to
+Abbotsford, "A house is forever ruined as a home by having been the
+abode of a great man,"&mdash;a truth well attested by the present amiable
+mistress of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> own Wayside, whose experience with a legion of
+unaccredited, intrusive, and often insolent persons who come at all
+hours of the day, and sometimes in the night, demanding to be shown over
+the place, would be more ludicrous were it less provoking.</p>
+
+<p>Some details of the interior have been beautified by the æsthetic taste
+of Mrs. Lothrop, but an appreciative reverence for Hawthorne leads her
+to preserve his home and its belongings essentially unchanged. At the
+right of the entrance is an antique reception-room, which was
+Hawthorne's study during his first residence here, as it had long before
+been the study of "Septimius Felton" in the tale. It is a low-studded
+apartment with floor of oaken planks, heavy beams strutting from its
+ceiling, a generous fireplace against a side wall, and with two windows
+looking out upon the near highway. In this room Hawthorne wrote
+"Tanglewood Tales" and "Life of Franklin Pierce;" and here that creature
+of his imagination, "Septimius," brooded over his doubts and questions.
+Through yonder windows "Septimius" saw the British soldiery pass and
+repass; above this oaken mantel&mdash;now artistically fitted and embellished
+with rare pottery&mdash;he hung the sword of the officer he had slain; before
+this fireplace he pored over the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> mysterious manuscript his dying victim
+had given him; on this hearth he distilled the mystic potion, and here
+poor Sibyl quaffed it. The spacious room at the left, across the hall,
+was at first Hawthorne's parlor; but after he enlarged the dwelling this
+became the library, where he read aloud to the assembled family on
+winter evenings, and where his widow afterward transcribed his
+"Note-Books" for publication. The sunny room above this was the chamber
+of the unfortunate Una; Hawthorne's own sleeping apartment, on the
+second floor, is entered from the hall through the narrowest of
+door-ways. In the upper hall a little wall-closet was the repository of
+Hawthorne's manuscripts, and here, to the surprise of all, an entire
+unpublished romance was found after his death. From this hall a narrow
+stairway, so steep that one need cling to the iron rail at the side in
+order to scale it, ascends to Hawthorne's study in the tower, a lofty
+room with vaulted ceiling. On one side wall is the Gothic enclosure of
+the stairs, against which once stood his plain oaken writing-desk; upon
+it the bronze inkstand he brought from Italy, where it held the ink for
+"The Marble Faun." In this inkstand, he declared, lurked "the little
+imp" which sometimes controlled his pen. Attached to a side of the
+staircase was the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> high desk or shelf upon which he often wrote
+standing. Book-closets filled the corners at the back, and a little
+fireplace with a plain mantel was placed between two of the windows.
+Loving hands have neatly decorated the ceiling, and painted upon the
+walls mottoes commemorative of the master who wrought here. The views he
+beheld through the windows of this sanctum when he lifted his eyes from
+his book or manuscript are tranquil and soothing: across his roofs in
+one direction he looked upon the sunny grasslands of the valley; in
+another he saw placid slopes of darkly-wooded hills and a reach of the
+elm-bordered road; in a third direction, smiling fields and the
+vineyards where the famous Concord grape first grew met his vision; and
+through his north windows appeared the thick woods that crowned his own
+hill-top,&mdash;so near that he "could see the nodding wild flowers" among
+the trees and breathe the woodland odors.</p>
+
+<p>Local tradition declares that, to prevent intrusion into this den,
+Hawthorne habitually sat upon a trap-door in the floor, which was the
+only entrance. Without this precaution he found in this eyrie the
+seclusion he coveted, and here, among the birds and the tree-tops,
+remote from the tumult of life and above ordinary distracting
+influences, he could linger undisturbed in that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> border-land between
+shadow and substance which was his delight, could evoke and fix upon his
+pages the weird creatures of his fancy. Several hours of each day he
+passed here alone in musing or composition, and here, besides some
+papers for the "Atlantic," he wrote "Our Old Home," "Grimshaw's Secret,"
+"Septimius Felton," and the "Dolliver Romance" fragment. Years before,
+Thoreau told him, the Wayside had once been inhabited by a man who
+believed he would never die. The thus suggested idea, of a deathless man
+associated with this house, seems to have clung to Hawthorne in his last
+years, and was embodied in both his later works,&mdash;the scene of
+"Septimius Felton" being laid here at the Wayside. No one knew aught of
+its composition, and the author, rereading the tale in the solitude of
+this study and finding it in some way lacking the perfection of his
+ideal, laid it away in his closet, and, in weariness and failing health,
+commenced and vainly tried to finish the "Dolliver Romance" from the
+same materials.</p>
+
+<p>The house is separated from the highway by a narrow strip of sward, out
+of which grow elms planted by Bronson Alcott and clustering evergreens
+rooted by Hawthorne himself. The greater part of his domain lies along
+the dark slope and the wooded summit of the ridge which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> rises close
+behind the house. At the extremity of the grounds nearest the Orchard
+House, a depression in the turf marks the site of the little house where
+dwelt the Rose Garfield of "Septimius." Hawthorne planted sunflowers in
+this hollow, and Julian, his son, remembers seeing the novelist stand
+here and contemplate their wide disks above the old cellar.</p>
+
+<p>On the steep hill-side remain the rough terraces Alcott fashioned when
+he occupied the place, and many of the flowering locusts and fruit-trees
+he and Thoreau planted. Here, too, are the sombre spruces and firs which
+Hawthorne sent from "Our Old Home" or planted after his return, and all
+are grown until they overshadow the whole place and fairly embower the
+house with their branches. Along the hill-side are the famous "Acacia
+path" of Mrs. Hawthorne and other walks planned by the novelist, some of
+them having been opened by him in the last summer of his life. By one
+path, once familiar to his feet, we find our way up the steep ascent
+among the locusts to the "Mount of Vision,"&mdash;as Mrs. Hawthorne named the
+ridge to which the novelist daily resorted for study and meditation.</p>
+
+<p>The hill-top is clothed with a tangled growth of trees which hides it
+from the lower world<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> and renders it a fitting trysting-place for the
+wizard romancer and the mystic figures which abound in his tales. Along
+the brow we trace, among the ferns, vestiges of the pathway worn by his
+feet. In the safe seclusion of this spot he spent delectable hours,
+lying under the trees "with a book in his hands and an unwritten book in
+his thoughts," while the pines murmured to him of the mystery and shadow
+he loved. More often he sat on a rustic seat between yonder pair of
+giant trees, or paced his foot-path hour after hour, as he pondered his
+plots and worked out the mystic details of many romances, some of them
+never to be written. Walking here with Fields he unfolded his design of
+the "Dolliver" tale, which he left half told. Here he composed the weird
+story of "Septimius Felton," while trudging on the very path he
+describes as having been worn by his hero,&mdash;Hawthorne himself habitually
+walking, with hands clasped behind him and with eyes bent on the ground,
+in the very attitude he ascribes to "Septimius" as Rose saw him
+"treading, treading, treading, many a year," on this foot-path by the
+grave of the officer he had slain. In this refuge Hawthorne remained a
+whole day alone with his grief, when tidings came to him of the loss of
+his sister in the burning of the "Henry Clay."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> Here he sat with Howells
+one memorable afternoon. In the last years his wife was often with him
+here, sometimes walking, but more frequently sitting, with him,&mdash;as did
+Rose with "Septimius,"&mdash;and looking out, through an opening in the
+foliage near the western end of his path, upon the restful landscape,
+not less charming to-day than when his eyes lovingly lingered upon it.
+We see the same broad, sun-kissed meadows awave with lush grass and
+flecked with fleeting cloud-shadows, and beyond, the dark forests of
+Thoreau's Walden and the gentle outlines of low-lying hills which shut
+in the valley like a human life.</p>
+
+<p>For some months after the election to the Presidency of his friend
+Franklin Pierce, the Wayside was frequented by office-seekers; but
+ordinarily Hawthorne had few visitors besides his Concord friends.
+Fields, Holmes, Hilliard, Whipple, Longfellow, Howells, Horatio Bridge,
+the poet Stoddard, Henry Bright, came to him here. The visits of "Gail
+Hamilton" (Miss Abigail Dodge), mentioned by Hawthorne as "a sensible,
+healthy-minded woman," were especially enjoyed by him. His own visits
+were very infrequent; "Orphic" Alcott said that in the several years he
+lived next door Hawthorne came but twice into his house: the first time
+he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> quickly excused himself "because the stove was too hot," next time
+"because the clock ticked too loud."</p>
+
+<p>The Wayside was the only home Hawthorne ever owned. To it he came soon
+after his removal from the "little red house" in Berkshire, and to it he
+returned from his sojourn abroad; here, with failing health and
+desponding spirits, he lived in the gloomy war-days,&mdash;writing in his
+study or, with steps more and more uncertain, pacing his hill-top; from
+here he set out with his life-long friend Pierce on the last sad journey
+which ended so quickly and quietly.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">VII</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">THE WALDEN OF THOREAU</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>A Transcendental Font&mdash;Emerson's Garden&mdash;Thoreau's
+Cove&mdash;Cairn&mdash;Beanfield&mdash;Resort of
+Emerson&mdash;Hawthorne&mdash;Channing&mdash;Hosmer&mdash;Alcott, etc.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">ONE long-to-be-remembered day we follow the shady foot-paths, once
+familiar to the sublimated Concord company, through their favorite
+forest retreats to "the blue-eyed Walden,"&mdash;sung by many a bard, beloved
+by transcendental saint and seer. After a delightful stroll of a mile or
+more, we emerge from the wood and see the lovely lakelet "smiling upon
+its neighbor pines." We find it a half-mile in diameter, with bold and
+picturesquely irregular margins indented with deep bays and mostly
+wooded to the pebbles at the water's edge. From this setting of emerald
+foliage it scintillates like a gem: its wavelets lave a narrow pebbly
+shore within which a bottom of pure white sand gleams upward through the
+most transparent water ever seen. At one point where the railway skirts
+the margin, the woods are disfigured with pavilions and tables for
+summer pleasure-seekers, and a farther wooded slope has recently been
+ravaged by fire; but most of the shore has escaped both<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> profanation and
+devastation, so that the literary pilgrim will find the shrines he seeks
+little disturbed since the Concord luminaries here had their haunt.</p>
+
+<p>From the summit of the forest ledge which rises from the southern shore,
+the lakelet seems a foliage-framed patch of the firmament. This
+rocky eminence affords a wide and enchanting prospect, and was the
+terminus and object of many excursions of Emerson and the other
+"Walden-Pond-Walkers," as the transcendentalists were styled by their
+more prosy and orthodox neighbors. It was upon this elevation in the
+midst of a portion of his estate which he celebrates in his poetry as
+"My Garden"&mdash;whose "banks slope down to the blue lake-edge"&mdash;that
+Emerson proposed to erect a lodge or retreat for retirement and thought.
+A mossy path, once trodden almost daily by the philosopher and his
+friends, brings us to the beautiful and secluded cove where Emerson and
+Thoreau kept a boat, and where the shining ones often came to bathe in
+this limpid water. Ablution here seems to have been a sort of
+transcendent baptism, and many a visitor, eminent in art, thought, or
+letters, has boasted that he walked and talked with Emerson in Walden
+woods and bathed with him in Walden water. In this romantic nook
+Thoreau<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> spent much time during his hermitage, sitting in reverie on its
+banks or afloat on its glassy surface, fishing or playing his flute to
+the charmed perch. On the shore of this cove he procured the stones for
+the foundations and the sand for the plastering of his cabin. From the
+water's edge an obscure path, bordered by the wild flowers he loved,
+winds among the murmuring pines up to the site of Thoreau's retreat, on
+a gentle hill-side which falls away to the shore a few rods distant. A
+cairn of small stones, placed by reverent pilgrims, stands upon or near
+the spot where he erected his dwelling at an outlay of twenty-eight
+dollars and lived upon an income of one dollar per month.</p>
+
+<p>The hermit would hardly know the place now; his young pines are grown
+into giants that allow but glimpses of the shimmering lake; even the
+"potato hole" he dug under his cabin, whence the squirrels chirped at
+him from beneath the floor as he sat to write, and where he kept his
+winter store,&mdash;the "beans with the weevil in them" and the "potatoes
+with every third one nibbled by chipmunks,"&mdash;is obliterated and
+overgrown with the glabrous sumach. His near-by field, where he learned
+to "know beans" and gathered relics of a previous and aboriginal race of
+bean-hoers, is covered by a growth of pines<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> and dwarf oaks, in places
+so dense as to be almost impassable.</p>
+
+<p>Some one has said, "Thoreau experienced Nature as other men experience
+religion." Certainly the life at Walden, which he depicted in one of the
+most fascinating of books, was in all its details&mdash;whether he was
+ecstatically hoeing beans in his field or dreaming on his door-step,
+floating on the lake or rambling in forest and field&mdash;that of an ascetic
+and devout worshipper of Nature in all her moods. Thoreau "built himself
+in Walden woods a den" in 1845,&mdash;after his return from tutoring in the
+family of Emerson's brother at Staten Island; here he wrote most of
+"Walden" and the "Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers," and much
+more that has been posthumously published; from here he went to jail for
+refusing to pay a tax on his poll, from here he made the excursion
+described in "The Maine Woods."</p>
+
+<p>He finally removed from Walden in the autumn of 1847, to reside in the
+house of Emerson during that sage's absence in Europe. An old neighbor
+of Thoreau's, who had often watched his "stumpy" figure as he hoed the
+beans, and had even once or twice assisted him in that celestial
+agriculture, tells us that Thoreau's hut was removed by a gardener to
+the middle of the bean-field<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> and there occupied for some years. Later
+it was purchased by a farmer, who set it upon wheels and conveyed it to
+his farm some miles distant, where it has decayed and gone to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>In Concord it is not difficult to identify the personages associated
+with Thoreau's life at Walden Pond and referred to in his book. The
+"landlord and waterlord" of the domain, on which Thoreau was "a
+squatter," was Waldo Emerson; the owner of the axe which the hermit
+borrowed to hew the frame of his hut was Bronson Alcott; the "honorable
+raisers" of the structure were Emerson, Curtis the Nile "Howadji,"
+Alcott, Hosmer, and others; the lady who made the sketch of the
+hermitage which appears on the title-page of "Walden" was the author's
+sister Sophia. Of the hermit's visitors here, "the one who came
+oftenest" was Emerson; "the one who came farthest" was also the poet
+whom the hermit "took to board for a fortnight," Ellery Channing; the
+"long-headed farmer," who had "donned a frock instead of a professor's
+gown," was Thoreau's neighbor and life-long friend Edmund Hosmer, who is
+celebrated in the poetry of Emerson and Channing; the "last of the
+philosophers," the "Great Looker&mdash;great Expecter," who "first peddled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+wares and then his own brains," was Bronson Alcott, who spent long
+evenings here in converse with the hermit, or in listening to chapters
+from his manuscript. Here came Hawthorne to talk with his "cast-iron
+man" about trees and arrow-heads; here came George Hilliard and James T.
+Fields, and others,&mdash;sometimes so many that the hut would scarce contain
+them; the only complaint heard from Thoreau anent the narrowness of his
+quarters being that there was not room for the words to ricochet between
+him and his guests. Here, too, came humbler visitors, hunted slaves, who
+were never denied the shelter of the hermitage nor the sympathy and aid
+of the hermit.</p>
+
+<p>Another generation of visitors comes now to this spot,&mdash;pilgrims from
+far, like ourselves, to the shrine of a "stoic greater than Zeno or
+Xenophanes,"&mdash;a man whose "breath and core was conscience." We linger
+till the twilight, for the genius of this shrine seems very near us as
+we muse in the place where he dwelt incarnate alone with Nature, and
+there is for us a hint of his healthful spirit in the odor of his pines
+and of the wild flowers beside his path,&mdash;a vague whisper of his
+earnest, honest thought in the murmur of the clustering boughs and in
+the lapping of the wavelets upon the mimic strand.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>We bring from the shore a stone&mdash;the whitest we can find&mdash;for his cairn,
+and place with it a bright leaf, like those his callers in other days
+left for visiting cards upon his door-step, and then, through the
+wondrous half-lights of the summer evening, we walk silently away.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">VIII</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">THE HILL-TOP HEARSED WITH PINES</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Last Resting-Place of the Illustrious Concord Company&mdash;Their Graves
+beneath the Piny Boughs.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">DURING Hawthorne's habitation of the "Old Manse" and his first residence
+at the Wayside, his favorite walk was to the "Sleepy Hollow," a
+beautifully diversified precinct of hill and vale which lies a little
+way eastward from the village. His habitual resting-place here was a
+pine-shaded hill-top where he often met Emerson, Thoreau, Bronson
+Alcott, Elizabeth Hoar, Mrs. Ripley, or Margaret Fuller,&mdash;for all that
+sublimated company loved and frequented this spot. More often Hawthorne
+lounged and mused or chatted here alone with his lovely wife. Their
+letters and journals of this period make frequent mention of the walks
+to this place and of "our castle,"&mdash;a fanciful structure which, in their
+happy converse here under the pines, they planned to erect for their
+habitation on this hill-top. In their pleasant conceit, the terraced
+path which skirts the verge of the hollow and thence ascends the ridge
+was the grand "chariot-road"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> to their castle. This park has become a
+cemetery,&mdash;at its dedication Emerson made an oration and Frank B.
+Sanborn read a beautiful ode,&mdash;and on their beloved hill-top nearly all
+the transcendent company whom Hawthorne used to meet there, save
+Margaret Fuller who rests beneath the sea, lie at last in "the dreamless
+sleep that lulls the dead."</p>
+
+<p>First came Thoreau, to lie among his kindred under the wild flowers and
+the fallen needles of his dear pines, in a grave marked now by a simple
+stone graven with his name and age. Next came Hawthorne: with his
+"half-told tale" and a wreath of apple-blossoms from the "Old Manse"
+resting on his coffin, and with Emerson, Longfellow, Fields, Ellery
+Channing, Agassiz, Hoar, Lowell, Whipple, Alcott, Holmes, and George
+Hilliard walking mournfully by his side, he was borne, through the
+flowering orchards and up the hill-side path,&mdash;which was to have been
+his "chariot-road,"&mdash;to a grave on the site of the "castle" of his
+fancy; where his dearest friend Franklin Pierce covered him with flowers
+and James Freeman Clarke committed his mortal part to the lap of earth.
+Alas, that the beloved cohabitant of his dream-castle must lie in death
+a thousand leagues away! in no dream of his would such a separation from
+her have seemed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> possible. She tried to mark his tomb by a leafy
+monument of hawthorn shrubbery, but the rigorous climate prevented; now
+a low marble, inscribed with the one word "Hawthorne," stands at either
+extremity of his grave, and a glossy growth of periwinkle covers the
+spot where sleeps the great master of American romance. Some smaller
+graves are beside his: in one lies a child of Julian Hawthorne; in
+another, Rose&mdash;the daughter of Hawthorne's age&mdash;laid the son which her
+husband, Parsons Lathrop, commemorates in the lines of "The Flown Soul."
+Next Mrs. Ripley and Elizabeth Hoar were borne to this "God's acre," and
+then Emerson&mdash;followed by a vast concourse and mourned by all the
+world&mdash;was brought to "give his body back to earth again," in this loved
+retreat, near Hawthorne and his own "forest-seer" Thoreau. A gigantic
+pine towers above him here, and a massive triangular boulder of untooled
+pink quartz&mdash;already marred by the vandalism of relic-seekers&mdash;is placed
+to mark the grave of the great "King of Thought." It bore no inscription
+or device of any sort until a few months ago, when a bronze plate
+inscribed with his name and years and the lines&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+"The passive master lent his hand<br />
+To the vast soul that o'er him planned"&mdash;</td></tr></table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>was set in the rough surface of the stone. By Emerson lie his wife, his
+mother, two children of his son and biographer Dr. Emerson, and his own
+little child,&mdash;the "wondrous, deep-eyed boy" whom Emerson mourned in his
+matchless "Threnody."</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+"O child of paradise,<br />
+Boy who made dear his father's home,<br />
+In whose deep eyes<br />
+Men read the welfare of the times to come,&mdash;<br />
+I am too much bereft."</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Six years after Emerson, Bronson Alcott and his illustrious daughter
+Louisa were laid here, within a few yards of Hawthorne and the rest, on
+a spot selected by the "Beth" of the Alcott books who was herself the
+first to be interred in it. Now all the "Little Women" repose here with
+their parents and good "John Brooke,"&mdash;"Jo" being so placed as to
+suggest to her biographer that she is still to take care of parents and
+sisters "as she had done all her life."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img2.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">The Grave of Emerson</span></p>
+
+<p>No other spot of earth holds dust more precious than does this "hill-top
+hearsed with pines." We are pleased to find the native beauty of the
+place little disturbed,&mdash;the trees, the indigenous grasses, ferns, and
+flowers remaining for the most part as they were known and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> loved by
+those who sleep beneath them. The contour of the ground and the foliage
+which clusters upon the slopes measurably shut out the view of other
+portions of the enclosure from this secluded hill-top, and, as we sit by
+the graves under the moaning pines, we seem to be alone with these <i>our</i>
+dead. Through the boughs we have glimpses of the motionless deeps of a
+summer sky; the patches of sunshine which illumine the graves about us
+are broken by foliate shadows sometimes as still as if painted upon the
+turf. No discordant sound from the haunts of men disturbs our
+meditations; the silence is unbroken save by the frequent sighs of the
+mourning pines.</p>
+
+<p>As we linger, the pervading quiet becomes something more than mere
+silence, it acquires the air and sense of reserve: the impression is
+borne into our thought that these asleep here, who once freely gave us
+their richest and best, are withholding something from us now,&mdash;some
+newly-learned wisdom, some higher thought. Does "an awful spell bind
+them to silence," or are they vainly repeating to us in the tender
+monotone of the pines a message we cannot hear or cannot bear? Or have
+they ceased from all ken or care for earthly things? Do they no longer
+love this once beloved spot? Do they not rejoice in the beauty of this
+summer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> day and the sunshine that falls upon their windowless palace?
+Are they conscious of our reverent tread on the turf above them, of our
+low words of remembrance and affection? Do they care that we have come
+from far to bend over them here?</p>
+
+<p>"For knowledge of all these things, we must"&mdash;as the greatest of this
+transcendent circle once said&mdash;"wait for to-morrow morning."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">IN AND OUT OF LITERARY BOSTON</span></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" summary="table">
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="center"><span class="smcap">In Boston</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="center"><span class="smcap">Out of Boston</span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right">I.</td><td> Cambridge; Elmwood, etc.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">II.</td><td> Belmont; Wayside Inn; Homes of Whittier</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">III.</td><td> The Salem of Hawthorne; Whittier's Oak Knoll</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">IV.</td><td> Webster's Marsh-field; Brook Farm and other Shrines</td></tr></table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">IN BOSTON</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>A Golden Age of Letters&mdash;Literary Associations&mdash;Isms&mdash;Clubs&mdash;Where
+Hester Prynne and Silas Lapham lived&mdash;The Corner Book-store&mdash;Home of
+Fields&mdash;Sargent&mdash;Hilliard&mdash;Aldrich&mdash;Deland&mdash;Parkman&mdash;Holmes&mdash;Howells&mdash;Moulton&mdash;Hale&mdash;Howe&mdash;Jane
+Austin, etc.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">OF the cisatlantic cities our "modern Athens" is, to the literary
+pilgrim, the most interesting; for, whatever may be the claims of other
+cities to the present literary primacy, all must concede that Boston was
+long the intellectual capital of the continent and its centre of
+literary culture and achievement. If the pilgrim have attained to middle
+life and be loyal to the literary idols of his youth, his regard for the
+Boston of to-day must be largely reminiscential of a past that is
+rapidly becoming historic; for, of the constellation of brilliant
+authors and thinkers who first gained for the place its pre-eminence in
+letters, few or none remain alive. The requirements of labor and trade
+are transforming the old streets; the sedate and comfortable dwellings,
+once the abodes or the resorts of the <i>littérateurs</i>, are giving place
+to palatial shops or great factories; the neighborhood where Bancroft,
+Choate, Winthrop, Webster, and Edward Everett dwelt within a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> few rods
+of each other was long ago surrendered to merchandise and mammon; yet
+for us the busy scenes are haunted by memories and peopled by presences
+which the spirit of trade is powerless to exorcise.</p>
+
+<p>To tread the streets which have daily echoed the foot-falls of the
+illustrious company who created here a golden age of learning and
+culture were alone a pleasure, but the city holds many closer and more
+personal mementos of her dead prophets, as well as the homes of a
+present generation who worthily strive to sustain her place and
+prestige.</p>
+
+<p>Interwoven with the older Boston are literary associations hardly less
+memorable and enduring than its history: in the belfry of its historic
+holy of holies&mdash;Old South Church&mdash;was the study of the historian Dr.
+Belknap, and the dove that nested beneath the church-bell is preserved
+in the poetry of N. P. Willis; King's Chapel, the sanctuary where the
+beloved Dr. Holmes worshipped for so many years, and whence he was not
+long ago sadly borne to his burial, figures in the fiction of Fenimore
+Cooper; historic Copp's Hill is also a scene in a tale of the same
+novelist; the court-house occupies the site of the "beetle-browed"
+prison of Hester Prynne of "The Scarlet Letter;" the storied old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+State-house marked the place of her pillory; the theatre of the Boston
+Massacre is the scene of the thrilling episode of Hawthorne's "Gray
+Champion;" his "Legends of Province House" commemorate the ancient
+structure which stood nearly opposite the Old South Church; the Tremont
+House, where the "Jacobins' Club" used to assemble with Ripley,
+Channing, Theodore Parker, Bronson Alcott, Peabody, and the extreme
+reformers, was the resort of Hawthorne's "Miles Coverdale," as it was of
+the novelist himself, and on the street here he saw "ragamuffin Moodie"
+of "The Blithedale Romance." On the site of Bowdoin School, Charles
+Sumner was born; at one hundred and twenty Hancock Street he lived and
+composed the early orations which made his fame; at number one Exeter
+Place, Theodore Parker, the Vulcan of the New England pulpit, forged his
+bolts and wrote the "Discourses of Religion;" in Essex Street lived and
+wrote Wendell Phillips, at thirty-seven Common Street he died; at
+thirty-one Hollis Street the gifted Harriet Martineau was the guest of
+Francis Jackson; at the corner of Congress and Water Streets Lloyd
+Garrison wrote and published "The Liberator." In this older city,
+antedating the luxury of the Back Bay district of the new Boston, Mather
+wrote<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> the "Magnalia," Paine sang his songs, Allston composed his
+tales, Buckminster wrote his homilies, Bowditch translated La Place's
+"<i>Mécanique céleste</i>." Here Emerson, Motley, Parkman, and Poe were born;
+here Bancroft lived, Combe wrote, Spurzheim died. Here Maffit, Channing,
+and Pierpont preached; Agassiz, Phillips, and Lyell lectured; Alcott,
+Elizabeth Peabody, and Fuller taught. Here Sargent wrote "Dealings with
+the Dead," Sprague his "Curiosity," Prescott his "Ferdinand and
+Isabella;" here Margaret Fuller held the "Conversations" which attracted
+and impressed the leading spirits of the time, and Bronson Alcott
+favored elect circles with his Orphic and oracular utterances; here
+lived Melvill, pictured in Holmes's "Last Leaf;" here Emerson preached
+Unitarianism "until he had carried it to the jumping-off-place," as one
+of his quondam parishioners avers, and here commenced his career as
+philosopher and lecturer. Here, besides those above mentioned, Dwight,
+Brisbane, Quincy, Ripley, Graham, Thompson, Hovey, Loring, Miller, Mrs.
+Folsom, and others of similar ability or zeal, discoursed and wrote in
+advocacy of the various reforms and "isms" in vogue half a century or
+more ago.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said that, according to the local creed, whoso is born in
+Boston needs not to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> born again, but some decades ago a literary
+prowler, like ourselves, discovered that "nobody is born in Boston," the
+people who have made its fame in letters and art being usually allured
+to it from other places. This is true in less degree of the present age,
+since Hale, Robert Grant, Ballou,&mdash;of "The Pearl of India,"&mdash;Bates,
+Guiney, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and others are "to the manor born;"
+but, if Boston has few birthplaces, she cherishes the homes and haunts
+of two generations of adult intellectual giants.</p>
+
+<p>Prominent among the literary landmarks is the "Corner Book-store"&mdash;once
+the shop of the father of Dr. Clarke&mdash;at School and Washington Streets,
+which, like Murray's in London, has long been the rendezvous of the
+<i>littérateurs</i>. Here appeared the first American edition of "The Opium
+Eater" and of Tennyson's poems. Here was the early home of the
+"Atlantic," then edited by James T. Fields, who was the literary partner
+of the firm and the presiding genius of the old store. This lover of
+letters and sympathetic friend of literary men&mdash;always kind of heart and
+generous of hand&mdash;drew to him here the foremost of that galaxy who first
+achieved for America a place in the world of letters. To this literary
+Rialto, as familiar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> loungers, came in that golden age George Hilliard,
+Emerson, Ticknor, Saxe, Whipple, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Lowell, Agassiz,
+the "Autocrat," and the rest, to loiter among and discuss the new books,
+or, more often, to chat with their friend Fields at his desk, in the
+nook behind the green baize curtain. The store is altered some since
+Fields left it; the curtained back-corner, which was the domain of the
+Celtic urchin "Michael Angelo" and the trysting spot of the literary
+fraternity, has given place to shelves of shining books. The side
+entrance&mdash;used mostly by the authors because it brought them more
+directly to Fields's desk and den&mdash;is replaced by a window which looks
+out upon the spot where, as we remember with a thrill, Fields last shook
+Hawthorne's hand and stood looking after him as&mdash;faltering with
+weakness&mdash;he walked up this side street with Pierce to start upon the
+journey from which he never returned.</p>
+
+<p>Literary tourists come to the store as to a shrine: thus in later years
+Matthew Arnold, Cable, Edmund Gosse, Professor Drummond, Dr. Doyle, and
+others like them, have visited the old corner. Nor is it deserted by the
+authors of the day; Holmes was often here up to the time of his death,
+and the visitor may still see,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> turning the glossy pages, some who are
+writers as well as readers of books: Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Scudder,
+Alger, Robert Grant,&mdash;whose "Reflections" and "Opinions" have been so
+widely read,&mdash;Miss Winthrop, Miss Jewett, Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton,
+and Mrs. Coffin are among those who still come to the familiar place.
+Near by, in Washington Street, Hawthorne's first romance, "Fanshawe,"
+was published in 1828. From Fields's famous store the transition to the
+staid old mansion which was long his home, and in which his widow still
+lives, is easy and natural. We find it pleasantly placed below the
+western slope of Beacon Hill, overlooking an enchanting prospect of blue
+waters and sunset skies. It is one of those dignified, substantial, and
+altogether comfortable dwellings&mdash;with spacious rooms, wide halls, easy
+stairways, and generous fireplaces&mdash;which we inherit from a previous
+generation. Here Fields, hardly less famed as an author than as the
+friend of authors, and his gifted wife&mdash;who is still a charming
+writer&mdash;created in their beautiful home an atmosphere which attracted to
+it the best and highest of their kind, and made it what it has been for
+more than forty years, a centre and ganglion of literary life and
+interest. The old-fashioned rooms are aglow with most<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> precious memories
+and teem with artistic and literary treasures, many of them being
+<i>souvenirs</i> of the illustrious authors whom the Fields have numbered
+among their friends and guests. The letters of Dickens, Hawthorne,
+Emerson, and others reveal the quality of the hospitality of this house
+and show how it was prized by its recipients. For years this was the
+Boston home of Hawthorne; to it came Emerson, Longfellow, and Whittier
+almost as freely as to their own abodes; here Holmes, Lowell, Charles
+Sumner, Greene, Bayard Taylor, Joseph Jefferson, were frequent guests;
+and here we see a quaintly furnished bedchamber which has at various
+times been occupied by Dickens, Trollope, Arthur Clough, Thackeray,
+Charles Kingsley, Matthew Arnold, Charlotte Cushman, and others of equal
+fame. Of the delights of familiar intercourse with the starry spirits
+who frequented this house, of their brilliant discussions of men and
+books, their scintillations of wit, their sage and sober words of
+wisdom, Mrs. Annie Fields affords but tantalizing hints in her
+reminiscences and the glimpses she occasionally allows us of her
+husband's diary and letters. Fields's library on the second
+floor&mdash;described as "My Friend's Library"&mdash;is a most alluring apartment,
+where we see, besides the "Shelf of Old Books" of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> which Mrs. Fields
+gives such a sympathetic account, other shelves containing numerous
+curious and uniquely precious volumes,&mdash;among them the few hundreds of
+worn and much annotated books which constituted the library of Leigh
+Hunt. In this room Emerson, while awaiting breakfast, wrote one of his
+poems, to which the hostess gave title.</p>
+
+<p>In later years a younger generation of writers came to this mansion:
+Celia Thaxter was a frequent guest; the princess-like Sarah Orne Jewett,
+beloved by Whittier as a daughter, has made it her Boston home; Aldrich
+comes to see the widow of his friend; Miss Preston, Mrs. Ward, and other
+luminous spirits may be met among the company who assemble in these
+memory-haunted rooms. For several years Holmes lived in the same street,
+within a few doors of Fields's house.</p>
+
+<p>At number fifty-four in quaint Pinckney Street, around the corner from
+Mrs. Fields's and near the former residence of Aldrich, we find the
+house in which the brilliant George Hilliard lived and died, scarcely
+changed since the time James Freeman Clarke here married Hawthorne to
+the lovely Sophia Peabody.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the opposite side, at number eleven, dwells Mrs. E. P. Whipple,
+widow of the eminent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> author and critic,&mdash;herself a lady of refined
+critical tastes,&mdash;who keeps unchanged the home in which her husband
+died. In his lifetime a select circle of friends usually assembled here
+on Sunday evenings,&mdash;a circle in which Fields, Bronson Alcott, Lowell,
+Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, Sumner, Clarke, Dr. Bartol, Ole Bull,
+Lucretia Hale, Edwin Booth, and others of similar eminence in letters or
+art were included. Just around the corner, in Louisburg Square, Bronson
+Alcott died in the house of his daughter Mrs. Pratt,&mdash;the "Meg" of
+Louisa Alcott's books.</p>
+
+<p>On Beacon Hill, in the next&mdash;Mount Vernon&mdash;street, we find near the "hub
+of the Hub" a tall, deep-roomed dwelling, surmounted by an observatory
+which commands a charming view of the city and its environs, and this is
+the elegant city home of the poet, novelist, and prince of
+conversationalists, Thomas Bailey Aldrich. His library, full of
+treasures, is on a lower floor, but the study in which he pens his
+delightful compositions is high above the distractions of the world. As
+one sees the author of "Marjorie Daw" and the recent "Unguarded Gates"
+among his books, there is no hint of his sixty years in his fresh, ruddy
+face, with its carefully waxed moustache, nor in his sprightly speech
+and manner.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>In the same street, the spacious mansion of ex-Governor Claflin was long
+a resort of a wise, earnest, and dazzling company of sublimated
+intellects. This house was in later years the usual haven of Whittier,
+the gentle Quaker bard, during his visits to Boston; and here, protected
+by the hostess from the eager kindness of his numerous friends, he spent
+many restful days when rest was most needed.</p>
+
+<p>Near by, on the same hill-side, the talented authoress of "John Ward,
+Preacher" inhabits a many-windowed home of sober brick. Within, we find
+everywhere evidences of the fastidious personality of Mrs. Margaret
+Deland. In her parlors are dainty articles of furniture and bric-à-brac,
+wide fireplaces, deep windows full of flowers, many pictures, many more
+books. In her study and work-room, her desk stands near another
+fireplace, about it are still more flowers, pictures and books galore;
+here, not long ago, that tragedy of selfishness&mdash;"Philip and His
+Wife"&mdash;was written.</p>
+
+<p>At the sumptuous home of the Sargents in the adjoining street have been
+held some of the <i>séances</i> of the noted Radical Club, in which, as Mrs.
+Moulton says, "somebody read a paper and everybody else pulled it to
+pieces." At these sessions such spirits as Emerson, Bronson<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> Alcott,
+Holmes, Edward Everett Hale, Carl Schurz, the genial Colonel Higginson,
+the serene James Freeman Clarke, the mystic Dr. Bartol,&mdash;who still lives
+in retirement in his old home,&mdash;and other representatives of advanced
+thought have discussed the ethics of life as well as of letters.</p>
+
+<p>A plain brick house of three stories in the same quiet street was the
+abode of Francis Parkman's sister, where, after the death of his wife,
+the historian spent his winters, his study here being a simple front
+room on the upper floor, with open fireplace and book-lined walls.</p>
+
+<p>In Park Street, above the Common, the ample mansion of George
+Ticknor&mdash;the chronicler of "Spanish Literature" and the autocrat of
+literary taste&mdash;was during many years a haunt of the best of Boston
+culture. We find its stately walls still standing, but the interior has
+been surrendered to the Philistines.</p>
+
+<p>On Beacon Street, but a door or two removed from the birthplace of
+Wendell Phillips, in a house whose number the poet-lover said he
+"remembered by thinking of the Thirty-Nine Articles," Longfellow won
+Miss Appleton to be his wife. Just across the Common, in Carver Street,
+Hawthorne's son was born.</p>
+
+<p>At many of the homes here mentioned were held the assemblages of the
+Ladies' Social Club.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> Among its readers were Agassiz, Emerson, Greene,
+Whipple, Clarke, and E. E. Hale. It was ironically styled the "Brain
+Club," and died after many years because, according to one ex-member,
+"the newer members brought into it too much Supper and Stomach and no
+Brain at all." A successor has been the Round Table Club, with Colonel
+Higginson for first president,&mdash;its meetings for essays and discussions
+being held in the homes of its literary or artistic members.</p>
+
+<p>Boston's Belgravia occupies a district which has been reclaimed from the
+waters of the "Back Bay" of the Charles River,&mdash;on whose shore Hawthorne
+placed the shunned and isolated thatched cottage of Hester Prynne in
+"The Scarlet Letter," and the windows of many of Boston's Four Hundred
+overlook the same delightful vista of water, hills, and western skies
+which to the sad eyes of Hester and little Pearl were a daily vision. On
+the water side of Beacon Street, within this select region, is the
+four-floored, picturesque mansion of brick&mdash;its front embellished with a
+growth of ivy which clusters about the bay-windows&mdash;where not long ago
+we found the gentle and genial Holmes sitting among his books, serene in
+the golden sunset of life, happy in the love of friends and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> in the
+benedictions of the thousands his work has uplifted and beatified. The
+mansion is redolent of literary associations, and throughout its
+apartments were tastefully disposed articles of virtu, curios, and
+mementos&mdash;literary, artistic, or historic&mdash;of affection and regard from
+Holmes's many friends at home and abroad. His study was a large room at
+the back of the house, occupying the entire width of the second floor.
+Its broad window commands a sweep of the Charles, with its tides and its
+many craft, beyond which the poet could see, as he said, Cambridge where
+he was born, Harvard where he was educated, and Mount Auburn where he
+expected to lie in his last sleep. We last saw the "Autocrat" in his
+easy-chair, among the treasures of this apartment, with a portrait of
+his ancestress "Dorothy Q" looking down at him from a side wall. His
+hair was silvered and his kindly face had lost its smoothness,&mdash;for he
+was eighty-five "years young," as he would say,&mdash;but his faculties were
+keen and alert, and, in benign age, his greeting was no less cordial and
+his outlook upon men and affairs was no less cheery and optimistic than
+in the flush and vigor of early manhood. In this luxurious study were
+written several of his twenty-five volumes,&mdash;"Over the Teacups" being
+the most popular of those produced here,&mdash;and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> we found him still
+devoting some hours of each day to light literary tasks, oftenest
+dictating materials for his memoirs, which are yet to be published.</p>
+
+<p>Above the study, and overlooking the river on which he used to row and
+the farther green hills, is the chamber immortalized in "My Aviary;" and
+here, as he sat in his favorite chair, surrounded by his family, death
+came to him, and his spirit peacefully passed into the eternal silence.
+Then the "Last Leaf" had fallen, to be mourned by all the world.</p>
+
+<p>A door or two from Holmes sometime dwelt the versatile novelist, poet,
+playwright, and "Altrurian Traveller." A popular print of "Howells in
+his Library" is an interior of his Beacon Street house; the view of the
+glassy river-basin, with the roofs and spires of Cambridge rising from
+banks and bowers of foliage beyond,&mdash;which he pictures from the new
+house of "Silas Lapham" on this street,&mdash;is the one Howells daily beheld
+from his study window here. His latest Boston home was in the same
+district on the superb Commonwealth Avenue, near the statue of Garrison,
+and here, in a sumptuous, six-storied, bow-fronted mansion, he wrote
+"The Shadow of a Dream" and other widely read books.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>A modest, old-fashioned house on Beacon Street has long been the home of
+the poet and starry genius Julia Ward Howe, writer of the "Battle-Hymn
+of the Republic." Other members of her singularly gifted family have
+sojourned here, and the "home of the Howes" has been frequented by men
+and women eminent for culture and thought and for achievement in
+literature or art.</p>
+
+<p>In the adjacent Marlborough Street recently died the polished author and
+orator Robert C. Winthrop, and here, too, was the home of Dr. Ellis, the
+friend of Lowell's father.</p>
+
+<p>Farther away in this newer Boston of luxury and culture is the charming
+and hospitable home of the poet, essayist, novelist, and critic Mrs.
+Louise Chandler Moulton, whose American admirers complain that in late
+years she remains too much in London. When at home, she inhabits a
+delightful dwelling which, from entrance to attic, teems with pictures,
+rare books, curios, and other <i>souvenirs</i> of her many friends in many
+lands. In her library, where much of "Garden of Dreams," "Swallow
+Flights," and other books was written, and where more of all "the work
+nearest her heart" was accomplished, are preserved many autograph copies
+of books by recent writers&mdash;several of them dedicated to Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+Moulton&mdash;and a priceless collection of letters from illustrious literary
+workers. In her drawing-rooms one may meet many of the famed authors of
+the day,&mdash;Higginson, Wendell, Horsford, Bynner, Nora Perry of the
+charming books for girls, Miss Conway, Miss Louise Imogen Guiney, Mrs.
+Howe, Arlo Bates, Adams, the jocosely serious Robert Grant, and others
+of Boston's newer lights of literature.</p>
+
+<p>If we "drive on down Washington Street" with "Silas Lapham," we shall
+find in Chester Square the "Nankeen Square" where he dwelt in his less
+ambitious days, and the pretty oval green with the sturdy trees which
+the worthy colonel saw grow from saplings.</p>
+
+<p>In a pleasant dwelling on the contiguous street lives and works the
+bright and busy Lucretia P. Hale, sister of the author-divine. She was
+the favorite scholar of Miss Elizabeth Peabody; and she has, through her
+writings and her classes, acquired an influence and discipleship little
+smaller than that which Margaret Fuller once possessed.</p>
+
+<p>Farther south, in the Roxbury district, we seek the abode of the famed
+author of "The Man without a Country." Sauntering along the shady and
+delectable Highland Street, we interrogate a uniformed guardian of the
+law, who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> heartily rejoins, "Dr. Hale's is a temple on the right a block
+further on: and if any man's fit to live in a temple, it's him." As we
+walk the "block further on" we think that, however defective his
+grammar, the policeman's estimate of Hale is beyond criticism and agrees
+with that of the thousands of readers and friends of the indefatigable
+author, lecturer, preacher, editor, reformer, and promoter of all good.
+We find the house&mdash;very like a Greek temple&mdash;standing back from the
+street in the midst of an ample lawn, shaded by noble trees and decked
+with a wealth of shrubbery and bloom. The mansion is a large square
+edifice, with great dormer-windows in its roofs, surmounted by a cupola,
+and having in front a lofty portico upheld by heavy Ionic pillars,
+between which interlacing woodbine forms a leafy screen. Within is a
+wide hall, and opening out of it are generously proportioned rooms, some
+of them lined from floor to ceiling with thousands of books. The study
+is a commodious room, with a "pamphlet-annex" adjoining it on the garden
+side, and is crammed with book-shelves and drawers, while piles of
+books, magazines, portfolios, manuscripts, and memoranda are disposed on
+cases, tables, and stands about the apartment. Everything is obviously
+arranged for convenient and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> ready use, and well it may be so, for this
+is the work-room and "thinking-shop" of the hardest-working literary man
+in America. The books which made his first fame were written before he
+came to this house; of all the works produced in this study, the
+numerous poems, romances, histories, essays, editorials, reviews,
+discussions, translations,&mdash;to say nothing of the many hundreds of
+well-considered and carefully written sermons,&mdash;we may not here mention
+even the names, for no writer since Voltaire is more fruitful of
+finished and masterly work. It is notable that Hale regards "In His
+Name" as his best work from a literary point of view; of his other
+productions, he thinks some of the poems of the latest collection, "For
+Fifty Years," as good as anything,&mdash;"always excepting his sermons."
+Among the abundant treasures of his study, Hale has a most interesting
+and valuable collection of autograph letters, of which he is justly
+proud. His father was Nathan Hale of the Boston "Advertiser," his mother
+was sister to Edward Everett and herself an author and translator, his
+wife is niece to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, his son Robert has already
+acquired a reputation in the domain of letters. The doctor himself has
+been a writer from childhood, his earliest contributions being<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> to his
+father's paper. His illustrious sister declares that in their nursery
+days she and her brother used to take their meals with the "Advertiser"
+pinned under their chins,&mdash;a practice to which their literary precocity
+has been attributed. We find Hale at the age of seventy-three blithe and
+hopeful, working as much and manifestly accomplishing more than ever
+before.</p>
+
+<p>A little farther out on the same street is the dwelling where William
+Lloyd Garrison spent his last years, and in this neighborhood lived Mrs.
+Blake, poet of "Verses Along the Way." Here also are the early home of
+Miss Guiney and the school to which she was first sent,&mdash;or rather
+"carried neck and heels," because she refused to walk. Close by we find
+the pleasant home in which Jane G. Austin wrote some of her famed
+colonial tales and where she died not many months ago; and in the same
+delightful suburb, a half-mile beyond Hale's house, is the retreat where
+the beloved author of "Little Women" breathed out her too brief life.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">OUT OF BOSTON</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">I</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">CAMBRIDGE: ELMWOOD: MOUNT AUBURN</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Holmes's Church-yard&mdash;Bridge, Smithy, Chapel, and River of
+Longfellow's Verse&mdash;Abodes of Lettered
+Culture&mdash;Holmes&mdash;Higginson&mdash;Agassiz&mdash;Norton&mdash;Clough&mdash;Howells&mdash;Fuller&mdash;Longfellow&mdash;Lowell&mdash;Longfellow's
+City of the Dead and its Precious Graves.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">CROSSING the Charles by "The Bridge" of Longfellow's popular poem, a
+stroll along elm-shaded streets brings us to the ancient Common of
+Cambridge and a vicinage which has much besides its historic traditions
+to allure the literary pilgrim. For centuries the site of a celebrated
+college and a conspicuous centre of learning, it has long been the
+abiding-place of representatives of the best and foremost in American
+culture and mental achievement.</p>
+
+<p>Close by the Common, and opposite the remains of the elm beneath which
+Washington assumed the command of the patriot army, stood the old
+gambrel-roofed house in which that "gentlest of autocrats," Holmes, was
+born and reared, and upon whose door-post was first displayed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> his
+"shingle," on which he whimsically proposed to inscribe "The Smallest
+Fevers Thankfully Received;" across the college grounds is the home-like
+edifice where lived the erudite Professor Felton, loved by Dickens and
+oft mentioned in his letters; not far away, at the corner of Broadway,
+was the home of Agassiz, since occupied by his son; and a few rods
+eastward is the picturesque residence of the witty and profound Colonel
+Higginson,&mdash;poet, essayist, novelist, and reformer. In the adjacent
+Kirkland Street dwelt the delightful Dr. Estes Howe, brother-in-law to
+Lowell, with whom the poet sometime lived and whom he celebrated as "the
+Doctor" in the "Fable for Critics." Dr. C. C. Abbott formerly lived in
+this neighborhood, and the collections on which his best-known books are
+founded are preserved in the near-by Peabody Museum, beyond which we
+find the tasteful abode of Professor Charles Eliot Norton, the friend
+and literary executor of Lowell. Near the Common, too, dwelt for a year
+or so that rare poet Arthur Clough, author of "The Bothie" and "Qua
+Cursum Ventus;" and the sweet singer Charlotte Fiske Bates&mdash;the intimate
+friend of Longfellow&mdash;had her habitation in the same neighborhood.
+Opposite the southern end of the Common is the ancient village cemetery<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+celebrated in the poetry of Holmes and Longfellow; a little way
+westward, Howells lived in a delightful rose-embowered cottage and
+pleasantly pictured many features of the old town in the "Charlesbridge"
+of his "Suburban Sketches." Two or three furlongs distant, within the
+grounds of the Botanic Garden, long lived the American Linnæus,
+Professor Asa Gray.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the Cambridge thoroughfares, the shady and venerable Brattle
+Street, which curves westward from the University Press, is most
+interesting and attractive. Near the Press building stands the historic
+Brattle House,&mdash;its beautiful stairway and other antique features
+preserved by the Social Club, to whom the property now belongs,&mdash;where
+Margaret Fuller, the priestess and queen of modern Transcendentalism,
+passed much of her youth and young womanhood, and where her sister, wife
+to the poet Ellery Channing, was reared. Margaret, who is said to have
+stood for the Theodora of Beaconsfield's "Lothair," first saw the light
+in a modest little dwelling in Main Street nearer the Boston bridge, and
+here attended school with Holmes and Richard Henry Dana; but it was in
+this Brattle House that her marvellous, and in some respects unique,
+intellectual career commenced. Here<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> she acquired the moral and mental
+equipment which fitted her for leadership in the most vital epoch of
+American culture and thought, and here she attracted and attached all
+the wisest and noblest spirits within her range. To her here came
+Theodore Parker, the older Channing, Harriet Martineau, James Freeman
+Clarke,&mdash;the earnest, brilliant, and thoughtful of all ages and
+conditions. One noble soul who knew her here speaks of her friendship as
+a "gift of the gods," and some eminent in thought and achievement
+testify that they have ever striven toward standards set up for them by
+her in that early period of her residence here.</p>
+
+<p>Close by Miss Fuller's home, "under a spreading chestnut-tree" at the
+intersection of Story Street, stood the smithy of Pratt, who was
+immortalized by Longfellow as "The Village Blacksmith." To the poet,
+passing daily on the way between his home and the college, the "mighty
+man" at his anvil in the shaded smithy was long a familiar vision. The
+tree&mdash;a horse-chestnut&mdash;has been removed, the shop has given place to a
+modern dwelling, and years ago the worthy smith rejoined his wife,
+"singing in Paradise."</p>
+
+<p>A few steps westward from the site of the smithy is the "Chapel of St.
+John" of another<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> sweet poem of Longfellow; and just beyond this we
+find, bowered by lilacs and environed by acres of shade and sward, the
+colonial Cragie House, once the sojourn of Washington, but holding for
+us more precious associations, since Sparks, Worcester, and Everett have
+lived within its time-honored walls, and our popular poet of grace and
+sentiment for near half a century here had his home, and from here
+passed into the unknown. The picturesque mansion wears the aspect of an
+old acquaintance, and the interior, with its princely proportioned
+rooms, spacious fireplaces, wide halls, curious carvings and tiles, has
+much that Longfellow has shared with his readers. On the entrance door
+is the ponderous knocker; a landing of the broad stairway holds "The Old
+Clock on the Stairs;" the right of the hall is the study, with its
+priceless mementos of the tender and sympathetic bard who wrought here
+the most and best of his life-work, from early manhood onward into the
+mellow twilight of sweet and benign age. Here is his chair, vacated by
+him but a few days before he died; his desk; his inkstand which had been
+Coleridge's; his pen with its "link from the chain of Bonnivard;" the
+antique pitcher of his "Drinking Song;" the fireplace of "The Wind over
+the Chimney;" the arm-chair carved from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> the "spreading chestnut-tree"
+of the smithy, which was presented to him by the village children and
+celebrated in his poem "From my Arm-Chair." About us here are his
+cherished books, his pictures, his manuscripts, all his precious
+belongings, and from his window we see, beyond the Longfellow Memorial
+Park, the river so often sung in his verse, "stealing onward, like the
+stream of life." In this room Washington held his war councils. Of the
+many intellectual <i>séances</i> its walls have witnessed we contemplate with
+greatest pleasure the Wednesday evening meetings of the "Dante Club,"
+when Lowell, Howells, Fields, Norton, Greene, and other friends and
+scholars sat here with Longfellow to revise the new translation of
+Dante.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img3.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Where Longfellow Lived</span></p>
+
+<p>The book-lined apartment over the study&mdash;once the bedchamber of
+Washington and later of Talleyrand&mdash;was occupied by Longfellow when he
+first lived as a lodger in the old house. It was here he heard
+"Footsteps of Angels" and "Voices of the Night," and saw by the fitful
+firelight the "Being Beauteous" at his side; here he wrote "Hyperion"
+and the earlier poems which made him known and loved in every clime.
+Later this room became the nursery of his children, and some of the
+grotesque<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> tiles which adorn its chimney are mentioned in his poem
+"To a Child:"</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+"The lady with the gay macaw,<br />
+The dancing-girl, the grave bashaw.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The Chinese mandarin."</span></td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Along the western façade of the mansion stretches a wide veranda, where
+the poet was wont to take his daily exercise when "the goddess
+Neuralgia" or "the two Ws" (Work and Weather) prevented his walking
+abroad. In this stately old house his children were born and reared,
+here his wife met her tragic death, and here his daughter&mdash;the "grave
+Alice" of "The Children's Hour"&mdash;abides and preserves its precious
+relics, while "laughing Allegra" (Anna) and "Edith with golden
+hair"&mdash;now Mrs. Dana and Mrs. Thorp&mdash;have dwellings within the grounds
+of their childhood home, and their brother Ernst owns a modern cottage a
+few rods westward on the same street.</p>
+
+<p>In Sparks Street, just out of Brattle, dwelt the author Robert
+Carter,&mdash;familiarly, "The Don,"&mdash;sometime secretary to Prescott and long
+the especial friend of Lowell, with whom he was associated in the
+editorship of the short-lived "Pioneer." Carter's home here was the
+rendezvous of a circle of choice spirits, where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> one might often meet
+"Prince" Lowell,&mdash;as his friends delighted to call him,&mdash;Bartlett of
+"Familiar Quotations," and that "songless poet" John Holmes, brother of
+the "American Montaigne."</p>
+
+<p>A short walk under the arching elms of Brattle Street brings us to
+Elmwood, the life-long home of Lowell. The house, erected by the last
+British lieutenant-governor of the province, is a plain, square
+structure of wood, three stories in height, and is surrounded by a park
+of simple and natural beauty, whose abundant growth of trees gives to
+some portions of the grounds the sombreness and apparent seclusion of a
+forest. A gigantic hedge of trees encloses the place like a leafy wall,
+excluding the vision of the world and harboring thousands of birds who
+tenant its shades. Some of the aquatic fowl of the vicinage are referred
+to in Longfellow's "Herons of Elmwood." In the old mansion, long the
+home of Elbridge Gerry, Lowell was born and grew to manhood, and to it
+he brought the bride of his youth, the lovely Maria White, herself the
+writer of some exquisite poems; here, a few years later, she died in the
+same night that a child was born to Longfellow, whose poem "The Two
+Angels" commemorates both events. Here, too, Lowell lost his children
+one by one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> until a daughter, the present Mrs. Burnett,&mdash;now owner and
+occupant of Elmwood,&mdash;alone remained. During the poet's stay abroad, his
+house was tenanted by Mrs. Ole Bull and by Lowell's brother-bard Bailey
+Aldrich, who in this sweet retirement wrought some of his delicious
+work. To the beloved trees and birds of his old home Lowell returned
+from his embassage, and here, with his daughter, he passed his last
+years among his books and a chosen circle of friends. Here, where he
+wished to die, he died, and here his daughter preserves his former home
+and its contents unchanged since he was borne hence to his burial. Until
+the death of his father, Lowell's study was an upper front room at the
+left of the entrance. It is a plain, low-studded corner apartment, which
+the poet called "his garret," and where he slept as a boy. Its windows
+now look only into the neighboring trees, but when autumn has shorn the
+boughs of their foliage the front window commands a wide level of the
+sluggish Charles and its bordering lowlands, while the side window
+overlooks the beautiful slopes of Mount Auburn, where Lowell now lies
+with his poet-wife and the children who went before. His study windows
+suggested the title of his most interesting volume of prose essays. In
+this upper chamber he wrote his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> "Conversations on the Poets" and the
+early poems which made his fame,&mdash;"Irene," "Prometheus," "Rh&oelig;cus,"
+"Sir Launfal,"&mdash;which was composed in five days,&mdash;and the first series
+of that collection of grotesque drolleries, "The Biglow Papers." Here
+also he prepared his editorial contributions to the "Atlantic." His
+later study was on the lower floor, at the left of the ample hall which
+traverses the centre of the house. It is a prim and delightful
+old-fashioned apartment, with low walls, a wide and cheerful fireplace,
+and pleasant windows which look out among the trees and lilacs upon a
+long reach of lawn. In this room the poet's best-loved books, copiously
+annotated by his hand, remain upon his shelves; here we see his table,
+his accustomed chair, the desk upon which he wrote the "Commemoration
+Ode," "Under the Willows," and many famous poems, besides the volumes of
+prose essays. In this study he sometimes gathered his classes in Dante,
+and to him here came his friends familiarly and informally,&mdash;for
+"receptions" were rare at Elmwood: most often came "The Don," "The
+Doctor," Norton, Owen, Bartlett, Felton, Stillman,&mdash;less frequently
+Godkin, Fields, Holmes, Child, Motley, Edmund Quincy, and the historian
+Parkman.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>While the older trees of the place were planted by Gerry, the pines and
+clustering lilacs were rooted by Lowell or his father. All who remember
+the poet's passionate love for this home will rejoice in the assurance
+that the old mansion, with its precious associations and mementos, and
+the acres immediately adjoining it, will not be in any way disturbed
+during the life of his daughter and her children. At most, the memorial
+park which has been planned by the literary people of Boston and
+Cambridge will include only that portion of the grounds which belonged
+to the poet's brothers and sisters.</p>
+
+<p>A narrow street separates the hedges of Elmwood from the peaceful shades
+of Mount Auburn,&mdash;the "City of the Dead" of Longfellow's sonnet. Lowell
+thought this the most delightful spot on earth. The late Francis Parkman
+told the writer that Lowell, in his youth, had confided to him that he
+habitually went into the cemetery at midnight and sat upon a tombstone,
+hoping to find there the poetic afflatus. He confessed he had not
+succeeded, and was warned by his friend that the custom would bring him
+more rheumatism than inspiration. Dr. Ellis testified that at this
+period his friend Dr. Lowell often expressed to him his anxiety "lest
+his son<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> James would amount to nothing, because he had taken to writing
+poetry."</p>
+
+<p>In the sanctuary of Mount Auburn we find many of the names mentioned in
+these chapters,&mdash;names written on the scroll of fame, blazoned on
+title-pages, borne in the hearts of thousands of readers in all
+lands,&mdash;now, alas! inscribed above their graves. From the eminence of
+Mount Auburn, we look upon Longfellow's river "stealing with silent
+pace" around the sacred enclosure; the verdant meads along the stream;
+the distant cities, erst the abodes of those who sleep about us
+here,&mdash;for whom life's fever is ended and life's work done. Near this
+summit, Charlotte Cushman rests at the base of a tall obelisk, her
+favorite myrtle growing dense and dark above her. By the elevated Ridge
+Path, on a site long ago selected by him, Longfellow lies in a grave
+decked with profuse flowers and marked by a monument of brown stone. On
+Fountain Avenue we find a beautiful spot, shaded by two giant trees,
+which was a beloved resort of Lowell, and where he now lies among his
+kindred, his sepulchre marked by a simple slab of slate: "Good-night,
+sweet Prince!" Not far away is the beautiful Jackson plot, where not
+long ago the beloved Holmes was tenderly laid in the same grave with his
+wife beneath a burden<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> of flowers. Some of the blossoms we lately saw
+upon this grave were newly placed by the creator of "Micah Clarke" and
+"Sherlock Holmes," Dr. Conan Doyle. By a great oak near the main avenue
+is the sarcophagus of Sumner, and one shady slope bears the memorial of
+Margaret Fuller and her husband,&mdash;buried beneath the sea on the coast of
+Fire Island. Near by we find the grave of "Fanny Fern,"&mdash;wife of Parton
+and sister of N. P. Willis,&mdash;with its white cross adorned with
+exquisitely carved ferns; the pillar of granite and marble which
+designates the resting-place of Everett; the granite boulder&mdash;its
+unchiselled surface overgrown with the lichens he loved&mdash;which covers
+the ashes of Agassiz; the simple sarcophagus of Rufus Choate; the
+cenotaph of Kirkland; the tomb of Spurzheim; and on the lovely slopes
+about us, under the dreaming trees, amid myriad witcheries of bough and
+bloom, are the enduring memorials of affection beneath which repose the
+mortal parts of Sargent, Quincy, Story, Parker, Worcester, Greene,
+Bigelow, William Ellery Channing, Edwin Booth, Phillips Brooks, and many
+like them whom the world will not soon forget.</p>
+
+<p>In this sweet summer day, their place of rest is so quiet and
+beautiful,&mdash;with the birds singing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> here their lowest and tenderest
+songs, the soft winds breathing a lullaby in the leafy boughs, the air
+full of a grateful peace and calm, the trees spreading their great
+branches in perpetual benediction above the turf-grown graves,&mdash;it seems
+that here, if anywhere, the restless wayfarer might learn to love
+restful death.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">OUT OF BOSTON</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">II</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">BELMONT: THE WAYSIDE INN: HOME OF WHITTIER</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Lowell's Beaver Brook&mdash;Abode of Trowbridge&mdash;Red Horse
+Tavern&mdash;Parsons and the Company of Longfellow's Friends&mdash;Birthplace
+of Whittier&mdash;Scenes of his Poems&mdash;Dwelling and Grave of the
+Countess&mdash;Powow Hill&mdash;Whittier's Amesbury Home&mdash;His Church and
+Tomb.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">A FEW miles westward from the classic shades of Cambridge we found,
+perched upon a breezy height of Belmont, a picturesque, red-roofed
+villa, for some years the summer home of our "Altrurian Traveller." From
+its verandas he overlooked a slumberous plain, diversified with meads,
+fields, country-seats, and heavy-tinted copses, and bordered by a circle
+of verdant hills; while on the eastern horizon rises the distant city,
+crowned by the resplendent dome of the capitol. In his dainty white
+study here, with its gladsome fireplace and curious carvings and
+mottoes, Howells wrote&mdash;besides other good things&mdash;his "Lady of the
+Aroostook," in which some claim to have discerned an answer to Henry
+James's "Daisy Miller."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>In this neighborhood is the valley of "Beaver Brook," a favorite haunt
+of Lowell, to which he brought the English poet Arthur Clough. The old
+mill is removed, but we find the water-fall and the other romantic
+features little changed since the poet depicted the ideal beauties of
+this dale, in what has been adjudged one of the most artistic poems of
+modern times.</p>
+
+<p>In a charming retreat among the hills of Arlington, scarce a mile away
+from Howells's sometime Belmont home, dwells and writes that genial and
+gifted poet and novelist, John T. Trowbridge, whose books&mdash;notably his
+war-time tales&mdash;have found readers round the world.</p>
+
+<p>Westward again from Belmont, a prolonged drive through a delightful
+country brings us to "Sudbury town" and the former hostelry of 'Squire
+Howe,&mdash;the "Wayside Inn"<span class="sidenote">Longfellow's Wayside Inn</span> of Longfellow's "Tales." Our companion and
+guide is one who well knew the old house and its neighborhood in the
+halcyon days when Professor Treadwell, Parsons,&mdash;the poet of the "Bust
+of Dante,"&mdash;and the quiet coterie of Longfellow's friends came, summer
+after summer, to find rest and seclusion under its ample roof and
+sheltering trees, among the hills of this remote region. The environment
+of fragrant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> meadow and smiling field, of deep wood glade and
+forest-clad height, is indeed alluring. About the ancient inn remain
+some of the giant elms and the "oak-trees, broad and high," shading it
+now as in the day when the "Tales" immortalized it with the "Tabard" of
+Chaucer; while through the near meadow circles the "well-remembered
+brook" of the poet's verse, in which his friends saw the inverted
+landscape and their own faces "looking up at them from below."</p>
+
+<p>The house is a great, old-fashioned, bare and weather-worn edifice of
+wood,&mdash;"somewhat fallen to decay."&mdash;standing close upon the highway. Its
+two stories of spacious rooms are supplemented by smaller chambers in a
+vast attic; two or three chimneys, "huge and tiled and tall," rise
+through its gambrel roofs among the bowering foliage; a wing abuts upon
+one side and imparts a pleasing irregularity to the otherwise plain
+parallelogram. The wide, low-studded rooms are lighted by windows of
+many small panes. Among the apartments we find the one once occupied by
+Major Molineaux, "whom Hawthorne hath immortal made," and that of Dr.
+Parsons, the laureate of this place, who has celebrated it in the
+stanzas of "Old House at Sudbury" and other poems. But it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> is the old
+inn parlor which most interests the literary visitor,&mdash;a great, low,
+square apartment, with oaken floors, ponderous beams overhead, and a
+broad hearth, where in the olden time blazed a log fire whose ruddy glow
+filled the room and shone out through the windows. It is this room which
+Longfellow peoples with his friends, who sat about the old fireplace and
+told his "Tales of a Wayside Inn." The "rapt musician" whose
+transfiguring portraiture we have in the Prelude is Ole Bull; the
+student "of old books and days" is Henry Wales; the young Sicilian, "in
+sight of Etna born and bred," is Luigi Monti, who dined every Sunday
+with Longfellow; the "Spanish Jew from Alicant" is Edrelei, a Boston
+Oriental dealer; the "Theologian from the school of Cambridge on the
+Charles" is Professor Daniel Treadwell; the Poet is T. W. Parsons, the
+Dantean student and translator of "Divina Commedia;" the Landlord is
+'Squire Lyman Howe, the portly bachelor who then kept this "Red Horse
+Tavern," as it was called. Most of this goodly circle have been here in
+the flesh, and our companion has seen them in this old room, as well as
+Longfellow himself, who came here years afterward, when the Landlord was
+dead and the poet's company had left the old inn forever.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> In this room
+we see the corner where stood the ancient spinet, the spot on the wall
+where hung the highly colored coat of arms of Howe and the sword of his
+knightly grandfather near Queen Mary's pictured face, the places on the
+prismatic-hued windows where the names of Molineaux, Treadwell, etc.,
+had been inscribed by hands that now are dust.</p>
+
+<p>Descendants of the woman who died of the "Shoc o' Num Palsy" are said to
+live in the neighborhood, as well as some other odd characters who are
+embalmed in Parsons's humorous verse. But the ancient edifice is no
+longer an inn; the Red Horse on the swinging sign-board years ago ceased
+to invite the weary wayfarer to rest and cakes and ale; the
+memory-haunted chambers, where starry spirits met and tarried in the
+golden past, were later inhabited by laborers, who displayed the rooms
+for a fee and plied the pilgrim with lies anent the former famed
+occupants. The storied structure has recently passed to the possession
+of appreciative owners,&mdash;Hon. Herbert Howe being one of them,&mdash;who have
+made the repairs needful for its preservation and have placed it in the
+charge of a proper custodian.</p>
+
+<p>A longer way out of Boston, in another direction, our guest is among the
+haunts of the beloved<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> Quaker bard. On the bank of the Merrimac&mdash;his
+own "lowland river"&mdash;and among darkly wooded hills of hackmatack and
+pine, we find the humble farm-house, guarded by giant sentinel poplars,
+where eighty-eight years agone Whittier came into the world.</p>
+
+<p>Among the plain and bare apartments, with their low ceilings, antique
+cross-beams, and multipaned windows, we see the lowly chamber of his
+birth; the simple study where his literary work was begun; the great
+kitchen, with its brick oven and its heavy crane in the wide fireplace,
+where he laid the famous winter's evening scene<span class="sidenote">Scenes of Whittier's Poems</span> in "Snow-Bound,"
+peopling the plain "old rude-furnished room" with the persons he here
+best knew and loved. We see the dwelling little changed since the time
+when Whittier dwelt&mdash;a dark-haired lad&mdash;under its roof; it is now
+carefully preserved, and through the old rooms are disposed articles of
+furniture from his Amesbury cottage, which are objects of interest to
+many visitors.</p>
+
+<p>All about the place are spots of tender identification of poet and poem:
+here are the brook and the garden wall of his "Barefoot Boy;" the scene
+of his "Telling the Bees;" the spring and meadow of "Maud Muller;" not
+far away, with the sumachs and blackberries clustering about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> it still,
+is the site of the rude academy of his "School Days;" and beyond the low
+hill the grasses grow upon the grave of the dear, brown-eyed girl who
+"hated to go above him." We may still loiter beneath the overarching
+sycamores planted by poor Tallant,&mdash;"pioneer of Erin's outcasts,"&mdash;where
+young Whittier pondered the story of "Floyd Ireson with the hard heart."</p>
+
+<p>Delightful rambles through the country-side bring us to many scenes
+familiar to the tender poet and by him made familiar to all the world.
+Thus we come to the "stranded village" of Aunt Mose,&mdash;"the muttering
+witch-wife of the gossip's tale,"&mdash;where Whittier found the materials
+out of which he wrought the touching poem "The Countess," and where we
+see the poor low rooms in which pretty, blue-eyed Mary Ingalls was born
+and lived a too brief life of love, and her sepulchre&mdash;now reclaimed
+from a tangle of brake and brier&mdash;in the lonely old burial-ground that
+"slopes against the west." Her grave is in the row nearest the dusty
+highway, and is marked by a mossy slab of slate, which is now protected
+from the avidity of relic-gatherers by a net-work of iron, bearing the
+inscription, "The Grave of the Countess."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>Thus, too, we come to the ruined foundation of the cottage of "Mabel
+Martin, the Witch's Daughter," and look thence upon other haunts of the
+beloved bard, as well as upon his river "glassing the heavens" and the
+wave-like swells of foliage-clad hills which are "The Laurels" of his
+verse. In West Newbury, the town of his "Northman's Written Rock," we
+find the comfortable "Maplewood" homestead where lived and lately died
+the supposed sweetheart of the poet's early manhood.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Whittier's Amesbury Cottage</div>
+
+<p>Whittier's beloved Amesbury, the "home of his heart," is larger and
+busier than he knew it, but, as we dally on its dusty avenues, we find
+them aglow with living memories of the sweet singer. In Friend Street
+stands&mdash;still occupied by Whittier's former friends&mdash;the plain little
+frame house which was so long his home. A bay window has been placed
+above the porch, but the place is otherwise little changed since he left
+it; the same noble elms shade the front, the fruit-trees he planted and
+pruned and beneath which the saddened throng sat at his funeral are in
+the garden; here too are the grape-vines which were the especial objects
+of his loving care,&mdash;one of them grown from a rootlet sent to him in a
+letter by Charles Sumner.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>Within, we see the famous "garden room," which was his sanctum and
+workshop, and where this gentle man of peace waged valiant warfare with
+his pen for the rights of man. In this room, with its sunny outlook
+among his vines and pear-trees, he kept his chosen books, his treasured
+souvenirs; and here he welcomed his friends,&mdash;Longfellow, Fields,
+Sumner, Lowell, Colonel Higginson, Bayard Taylor, Mrs. Thaxter, Mrs.
+Phelps-Ward, Alice Cary, Lucy Larcom, Sarah Orne Jewett, and many
+another illustrious child of genius.</p>
+
+<p>A quaint Franklin fireplace stood by one side wall,&mdash;usually surmounted
+in summer by a bouquet; in the nook between this and the sash-door was
+placed an old-fashioned writing-desk, and here he wrote many of the
+poems which brought him world-wide fame and voiced the convictions and
+the conscience of half the nation. Here are still preserved some of his
+cherished books. Above the study was Whittier's bedchamber, near the
+rooms of his mother, his "youngest and dearest" sister, and the "dear
+aunt" (Mercy) of "Snow-Bound," who came with him to this home and shared
+it until their deaths. After the others were gone, the brother and
+sister long dwelt here alone, later a niece<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> was for some years his
+house-keeper, and at her marriage the poet gave up most of the house to
+some old friends, who kept his study and chamber in constant readiness
+for his return upon the prolonged sojourns which were continued until
+his last year of life,&mdash;this being always his best-loved home.</p>
+
+<p>Near by are the "painted shingly town-house" of his verse, where during
+many years he failed not to meet with his neighbors to deposit "the
+freeman's vote for Freedom," and the little, wooden Friends'
+meeting-house, where he loved to sit in silent introspection among the
+people of his faith. The trees which now shade its plain old walls with
+abundant foliage were long ago planted by his hands. The "Powow Hill" of
+his "Preacher" and "The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall" rises steeply near
+his home, and was a favorite resort, to which he often came, alone or
+with his guests. One who has often stood with Whittier there pilots us
+to his accustomed place on the lofty rounded summit, whence we overlook
+the village, the long reach of the "sea-seeking" river, and the
+entrancing scene pictured by the poet in the beautiful lines of
+"Miriam."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Whittier's Tomb</div>
+
+<p>From these precious haunts our pilgrim shoon trace the revered bard to
+the peaceful precincts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> of the God's-acre&mdash;just without the town&mdash;where,
+in a sequestered spot beneath a dark cedar which sobs and soughs in the
+summer wind, his mortal part is forever laid, with his beloved sister
+and kindred, within</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">"the low green tent</span><br />
+Whose curtain never outward swings."</td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">OUT OF BOSTON</span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">III</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">SALEM: WHITTIER'S OAK-KNOLL AND BEYOND</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Cemetery of Hawthorne's Ancestors&mdash;Birthplace of Hawthorne and his
+Wife&mdash;Where Fame was won&mdash;House of the Seven
+Gables&mdash;Custom-House&mdash;Where Scarlet Letter was written&mdash;Main Street
+and Witch Hill&mdash;Sights from a Steeple&mdash;Later Home of
+Whittier&mdash;Norman's Woe&mdash;Lucy Larcom&mdash;Parton,
+etc.&mdash;Rivermouth&mdash;Thaxter.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Hawthorne's Salem</div>
+
+<p class="cap">A HALF-HOUR'S jaunt by train brings us to the shaded streets of quaint
+old Salem and the scenes of Hawthorne's early life, work, and triumph.
+Here we find on Charter Street, in the old cemetery of "Dr. Grimshaw's
+Secret" and "Dolliver Romance," the sunken and turf-grown graves of
+Hawthorne's mariner ancestors, some of whom sailed forth on the ocean of
+eternity nearly two centuries ago. Among the curiously carved
+gravestones of slate we see that of John Hathorn, the "witch-judge" of
+Hawthorne's "Note-Books." Close at hand repose the ancestors of the
+novelist's wife, and the Doctor Swinnerton who preceded "Dolliver" and
+who was called to consider the cause of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> Colonel Pyncheon's death in the
+opening chapter of "The House of the Seven Gables."</p>
+
+<p>The sombre house which encroaches upon a corner of the cemetery
+enclosure&mdash;with the green billows surging about it so closely that its
+side windows are within our reach from the gravestones&mdash;was the home of
+the Peabodys, whence Hawthorne wooed the amiable Sophia, and where, in
+his tales, he domiciled Grandsir "Dolliver" and also "Doctor Grimshaw"
+with Ned and Elsie. We found it a rather depressing, hip-roofed,
+low-studded, and irregular edifice of wood, standing close upon the
+street, and obviously degenerated a little from the degree of
+respectability&mdash;"not sinking below the boundary of the genteel"&mdash;which
+the romancer ascribed to it. The little porch or hood protects the front
+entrance, and the back door communicates with the cemetery,&mdash;a
+circumstance which recalls the novelist's fancy that the dead might get
+out of their graves at night and steal into this house to warm
+themselves at the convenient fireside.</p>
+
+<p>Not many rods distant, in Union Street, stands the little house where
+Captain Hathorn left his family when he went away to sea, and where the
+novelist was born. The street is small, shabby, shadeless,
+dispiriting,&mdash;its inhabitants not select.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> The house&mdash;builded by
+Hawthorne's grandfather and lately numbered twenty-seven&mdash;stands close
+to the sidewalk, upon which its door-stone encroaches, leaving no space
+for flower or vine; the garden where Hawthorne "rolled on a grass-plot
+under an apple-tree and picked abundant currants" is despoiled of turf
+and tree, and the wooden house walls rise bare and bleak. It is a plain,
+uninviting, eight-roomed structure, with a lower addition at the back,
+and with a square central chimney-stack rising like a tower above the
+gambrel roof. The rooms are low and contracted, with quaint corner
+fireplaces and curiously designed closets, and with protuberant beams
+crossing the ceilings. From the entrance between the front rooms a
+narrow winding stair leads to an upper landing, at the left of which we
+find the little, low-ceiled chamber where, ninety years ago, America's
+greatest romancer first saw the light. It is one of the most cheerless
+of rooms, with rude fireplace of bricks, a mantel of painted planks, and
+two small windows which look into the verdureless yard. In a modest
+brick house upon the opposite side of the street, and but a few rods
+distant from the birthplace of her future husband, Hawthorne's wife was
+born five years subsequent to his nativity.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Manning House</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>Abutting upon the back yard of Hawthorne's birthplace is the old Manning
+homestead of his maternal ancestors, the home of his own youth and
+middle age and the theatre of his struggles and triumph. It is known as
+number twelve Herbert Street, and is a tall, unsightly, erratic fabric
+of wood, with nothing pleasing or gracious in its aspect or environment.
+The ugly and commonplace character of his surroundings here during half
+his life must have been peculiarly depressing to such a sensitive
+temperament as Hawthorne's, and doubtless accounts for his mental
+habits. That he had no joyous memories of this old house his letters and
+journals abundantly show. Its interior arrangement has been somewhat
+changed to accommodate the several families of laborers who have since
+inhabited it, and one front room seems to have been used as a shop; but
+it is not difficult to identify the haunted chamber which was
+Hawthorne's bed-room and study. This little, dark, dreary apartment
+under the eaves, with its multipaned window looking down into the room
+where he was born, is to us one of the most interesting of all the
+Hawthorne shrines. Here the magician kept his solitary vigil during the
+long period of his literary probation, shunning his family, declining
+all human sympathy and fellowship, for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> some time going abroad only
+after nightfall; here he studied, pondered, wrote, revised, destroyed,
+day after day as the slow months went by; and here, after ten years of
+working and waiting for the world to know him, he triumphantly recorded,
+"In this dismal chamber FAME was won." Here he wrote "Twice-Told Tales"
+and many others, which were published in various periodicals, and here,
+after his residence at the old Manse,&mdash;for it was to this Manning house
+that he "always came back, like the bad halfpenny," as he said,&mdash;he
+completed the "Mosses." This old dwelling is one of the several which
+have been fixed upon as being the original "House of the Seven Gables,"
+despite the novelist's averment that the Pyncheon mansion was "of
+materials long in use for constructing castles in the air." The pilgrim
+in Salem will be persistently assured that a house which stands near the
+shore by the foot of Turner Street, and is known as number thirty-four,
+was the model of Hawthorne's structure. It is an antique edifice of some
+architectural pretensions, displays five fine gables, and has spacious
+wainscoted and frescoed apartments, with quaint mantels and other
+evidences of colonial stateliness. It was an object familiar to the
+novelist from his boyhood,&mdash;he had often visited<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> it while it was the
+home of pretty "Susie" Ingersol,&mdash;and it may have suggested the style of
+architecture he employed for the visionary mansion of the tale. The
+names Maule and Pyncheon, employed in the story, were those of old
+residents of Salem.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Hawthorne's Custom-House</div>
+
+<p>But a few rods from Herbert Street is the Custom-House where Hawthorne
+did irksome duty as "Locofoco Surveyor," its exterior being&mdash;except for
+the addition of a cupola&mdash;essentially unchanged since his description
+was written, and its interior being even more somnolent than of yore.
+The wide and worn granite steps still lead up to the entrance portico;
+above it hovers the same enormous specimen of the American eagle, and a
+recent reburnishing has rendered even more evident the truculent
+attitude of that "unhappy fowl." The entry-way where the venerable
+officials of Hawthorne's time sat at the receipt of customs has been
+renovated, the antique chairs in which they used to drowse, "tilted back
+against the wall," have given place to others of more modern and elegant
+fashion, and the patriarchal dozers themselves&mdash;lying now in the
+profounder slumber of death&mdash;are replaced by younger and sprightlier
+successors, who wear their dignities and pocket their emoluments. At the
+left we find the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> room, "fifteen feet square and of lofty height," which
+was Hawthorne's office during the period of his surveyorship: it is no
+longer "cobwebbed and dingy," but is tastefully refitted and
+refurnished, and the once sanded floor, which the romancer "paced from
+corner to corner" like a caged lion, is now neatly carpeted. The
+"exceedingly decrepit and infirm" chairs, and the three-legged stool on
+which he lounged with his elbow on the old pine desk, have been retired,
+and the desk itself is now tenderly cherished among the treasures of the
+Essex Institute, on Essex Street, a few blocks distant, where the
+custodian proudly shows us the name of Hawthorne graven within the lid,
+in some idle moment, by the thumb-nail of the novelist. Some yellow
+documents bearing his official stamp and signature are preserved at the
+Custom-House, and the courteous official who now occupies Hawthorne's
+room displays to us here a rough stencil plate marked "Salem N Hawthorne
+Surr 1847," by means of which knowledge of Hawthorne's existence was
+blazoned abroad "on pepper-bags, cigar-boxes, and bales of dutiable
+merchandise," instead of on title-pages. The arched window, by which
+stood his desk, commands a view upon which his vision often rested, and
+which seems to us decidedly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> more pleasing and attractive than he has
+led us to expect. The picturesque old wharf in the foreground, the
+white-sailed shipping, and a shimmering expanse of water extending to
+the farther bold headlands of the coast form, we think, a pleasant
+picture for the lounger here.</p>
+
+<p>The apartment opposite to Hawthorne's was, in his day, occupied by the
+brave warrior General James Miller, who is graphically described as the
+"old Collector" in the introduction to "Scarlet Letter;" the room
+directly above it&mdash;which is the private office of the present chief
+executive, the genial Collector Waters&mdash;a portrait of the hero of
+Lundy's Lane now looks down from the wall upon the visitor; but no
+picture of Hawthorne is to be found in the edifice.</p>
+
+<p>An ample room at the right of the hall on the second floor, now
+handsomely fitted and furnished, was in Hawthorne's time open and
+unfinished, its bare beams festooned with cobwebs and its floor lumbered
+with barrels and bundles of musty official documents; and it was here
+that he discovered, among the accumulated rubbish of the past, the
+"scarlet, gold-embroidered letter," and the manuscript of Surveyor
+Prue,&mdash;Hawthorne's ancient predecessor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> in office,&mdash;which recorded the
+"doings and sufferings" of Hester Prynne.</p>
+
+<p>A short walk from the Custom-House brings us to the spot where, with
+"public notices posted upon its front and an iron goblet chained to its
+waist," stood that "eloquent monologist," the town-pump of Hawthorne's
+famous "Rill." Already its locality, at the corner of Essex and
+Washington Streets, is pointed out with pride as being among the sites
+memorable in the town's history, and thus the playful prophecy with
+which Hawthorne terminates the sketch of his official life is more than
+fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>The spacious and well-preserved old frame house at number fourteen Mall
+Street&mdash;a neighborhood superior to that of his former residences&mdash;was
+Hawthorne's abode for three or four years. It was here that he, on the
+day of his official death, announced to his wife, "Well, Sophie, my head
+is off, so I must write a book;" and here, in the ensuing six months,
+disturbed and distressed by illness of his family, by the death of his
+mother, and by financial needs, he wrote our most famous romance, "The
+Scarlet Letter." A bare little room in the front of the third story was
+his study here, and while he wrote in solitude his wife worked in a
+sitting-room<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> just beneath, decorating lamp-shades whose sale helped to
+sustain the household.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Salem</div>
+
+<p>As we saunter along the "Main Street" of Hawthorne's sketch and the
+other shady avenues he knew so well, the curious old town, which in his
+discontent he called tame and unattractive, seems to our eyes
+picturesque and beautiful, with its wide elm-bordered streets, its
+grassy waysides, its many gardens and square, embowered dwellings, not
+greatly changed since he knew them. If we follow "the long and lazy
+street" to the Witch Hill,<span class="sidenote">Witch Hill</span> which the novelist describes in "Alice
+Doane's Appeal," we may behold from that unhappy spot, where men and
+women suffered death for imagined misdoing, the whole of Hawthorne's
+Salem, with the environment he pictures in "Sights from a Steeple." We
+see the house-roofs of the town&mdash;half hidden by clustering
+foliage&mdash;extending now from the slopes of the fateful hill to the
+glinting waters of the harbor; the farther expanse of field and meadow,
+dotted with white villages and scored with shadowy water-ways; the
+craggy coast, with the Atlantic thundering endlessly against its
+headlands. Yonder is the steeple of Hawthorne's vision, beyond is the
+scene of the exquisite "Footprints in the Sand," and across the blue of
+the rippling sea we behold the place<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> of the fierce fight in which the
+gallant Lawrence lost at once his ship and his life.</p>
+
+<p>Not far from Salem is Oak-Knoll, where the white-souled Whittier,
+"wearing his silver crown," passed "life's late afternoon" with his
+devoted relatives. It is a delightful, sheltered old country-seat, with
+wide lawns, and scores of broad acres wooded with noble trees, beneath
+which the poet loved to stroll or sit, soothed and inspirited by the
+gracious and generous beauty of the scene about him.</p>
+
+<p>One spot in the glimmering shade of an overarching oak is shown as his
+favorite resort. Close by the house is a circular, green-walled garden,
+where, in summer mornings, he delighted to work with rake and hoe among
+the flowers. The mansion is a dreamful, old-fashioned edifice, with wide
+and lofty piazzas, whose roofs are upheld by massive columns; and, with
+its grand setting of trees, it presents a pleasing picture. Whittier's
+study&mdash;a pleasant, cheerful room, with a delightful outlook and sunny
+exposure, a friendly-looking fireplace, and a glass door opening upon
+the veranda&mdash;was especially erected for him in a corner of the house,
+and here his later poems were penned. A bright and ample chamber above
+the parlor was his sleeping-apartment.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Whittier</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>The sweet poetess Miss Preston and the sprightly and versatile "Gail
+Hamilton" dwelt in the neighborhood and came often to this room to talk
+with the "transplanted prophet of Amesbury." Lucy Larcom and that
+"Sappho of the isles," Celia Thaxter, came less frequently. The place is
+still occupied by the relatives Whittier loved, who have preserved
+essentially unchanged the scenes he here inhabited.</p>
+
+<p>A little farther up the rock-bound coast are the scene of Lucy Larcom's
+touching poem "Hannah's at the Window Binding Shoes;" the hearth-stone
+where Longfellow saw his "Fire of Drift-Wood;" and the bleak sea-side
+home of "Floyd Ireson" of Whittier's verse. Beyond these lie the
+sometime summer homes of the poet Dana, Harriet Prescott Spofford,
+Fields, and Whipple, with that Mecca of the tourist, the savage reef of
+Norman's Woe,&mdash;celebrated in Longfellow's<span class="sidenote">Longfellow, etc.</span> pathetic poem as the scene of
+"The Wreck of the Hesperus,"&mdash;not far away; while across the harbor a
+summer resort of the gifted Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward stands&mdash;an "Old
+Maid's Paradise" no longer&mdash;among the rocks of the shore.</p>
+
+<p>By the mouth of Whittier's "lowland river" we find the birthplace of
+Lloyd Garrison, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> ancestral abode of the Longfellows, the tomb of
+Whitefield beneath the spot where he preached, the once sojourn of
+Talleyrand. Here, too, still inhabited by his family, we find the large,
+three-storied corner house in which Parton spent his last twenty years
+of busy life, and the low book-lined attic study where, in his cherished
+easy-chair with his manuscript resting upon a lap-board, he did much of
+his valuable work.</p>
+
+<p>Still farther northward, we come to the ancient town of Aldrich's "Bad
+Boy"-hood,&mdash;immortalized as the "Rivermouth" of his prose,&mdash;the place of
+Longfellow's "Lady Wentworth," the home of Hawthorne's Sir William
+Pepperell; and to the picturesque island realm of that "Princess of
+Thule," Celia Thaxter, and her gifted poet-brother Laighton;&mdash;but these
+shrines are worthy of a separate pilgrimage.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">OUT OF BOSTON</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">IV</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">WEBSTER'S MARSHFIELD: BROOK FARM, ETC</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Scenes of the Old Oaken Bucket&mdash;Webster's Home and Grave&mdash;Where
+Emerson won his Wife&mdash;Home of Miss Peabody&mdash;Parkman&mdash;Miss
+Guiney&mdash;Aldrich's Ponkapog&mdash;Farm of Ripley's Community&mdash;Relics and
+Reminiscences.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">ONE day's excursion out of Boston is southward through the birthplace
+and ancestral home of the brilliant essayist Quincy to the boyhood
+haunts of Woodworth and the scenes which inspired his sweetest lyric. In
+Scituate, by the village of Greenbush, we find the well of the "Old
+Oaken Bucket" remaining at the site of the dwelling where the poet was
+born and reared. Most of the "loved scenes" of his childhood&mdash;the
+wide-spreading pond, the venerable orchard, the flower-decked meadow,
+the "deep-tangled wildwood"&mdash;may still be seen, little changed since he
+knew them; but the rock of the cataract has been removed and the cascade
+itself somewhat altered by the widening of the highway; the "cot of his
+father" has given place to a modern farm-house; and the "moss-covered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+bucket that hung in the well" has been supplanted by a convenient but
+unpoetical pump.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Webster's Home and Grave</div>
+
+<p>A few miles beyond this romantic spot we come to the Marshfield home of
+Daniel Webster, set in the midst of a pleasant rural region, not far
+from the ancient abode of Governor Winslow of the Plymouth colony. On
+the site of Webster's farm-house of thirty rooms&mdash;destroyed by fire some
+years ago&mdash;his son's widow erected a pretty and tasteful modern cottage,
+in which she preserved many relics of the illustrious statesman and
+orator, which had been rescued from the flames. Some of the relics were
+afterward removed to Boston, and, the family becoming extinct with the
+death of Mrs. Fletcher Webster, the place found an appreciatory
+proprietor in Mr. Walton Hall, a Boston business-man who was reared in
+this neighborhood, where Webster's was "a name to conjure by."</p>
+
+<p>The objects connected with the memory of the statesman have been as far
+as possible preserved, and we find the cottage partially furnished with
+his former belongings. Here we see his writing-table, covered with
+ink-stained green baize; his phenomenally large arm-chair with seat of
+leather; the andirons from his study fireplace; the heavy cane he used
+in his walks<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> about the farm; portraits of the great <i>genius loci</i>&mdash;one
+of them representing him in his coarse farm attire&mdash;and of members of
+his family; a fine cabinet of beetles and butterflies presented to him
+by the Emperor of Brazil; and a number of paintings, articles of
+furniture, and bric-à-brac which had once been Webster's.</p>
+
+<p>Near the house stand the great memorial elms, each planted by Webster's
+hand at the death of one of his children. His favorite tree, beneath
+which his coffined figure lay at his funeral, was injured by the fire
+and has since been removed. Behind the house is a pretty lakelet, on
+whose surface&mdash;by his desire&mdash;lights were kept burning at night during
+his last illness, so that he might see them from his bed in the Pink
+Room where he died.</p>
+
+<p>His study window looked out through a colonnade of trees upon the
+hill-side cemetery&mdash;a furlong distant&mdash;where he now sleeps in a spot he
+loved and chose for his sepulchre. His tomb, on the brow of the hill, is
+marked by a huge mound of earth crowned by a ponderous marble slab. The
+memorial stones about it were erected by him to commemorate his family,
+already sleeping in the vault here before he came to lie among
+them:&mdash;all save one, and that one died at Bull Run.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>Not far away lie Governor Winslow and the Peregrine White who was born
+on the Mayflower. From among the neglected graves we look abroad upon
+the acres Webster tilled, the creeks he fished, the meadows he hunted,
+the haunts of his leisure during many years: on the one hand, we see a
+stretch of verdant pastures and lowly hills dotted by white cottages and
+bounded by distant forests; on the other hand, across the wave-like
+dunes and glistening sands we see a silver rim flecked with white
+sails,&mdash;the ocean, whose low-sounding monotone, eternally responding to
+some whisper of the infinite, mayhap lulls the dreamless sleepers
+beneath our feet.</p>
+
+<p>Southward again, we come to historic old Plymouth, with its many Puritan
+shrines and associations, which did not prevent its becoming a
+shire-town of Transcendentalism. Here we see the house (framed in
+England, and erected here upside down) where Emerson, the fountain-head
+of that great "wave of spirituality," wooed and won Miss Jackson to be
+his wife; and not far away the lovely spot where, among his gardens,
+groves, and orchards, Marston Watson had his "Hillside" home,&mdash;to which
+resorted Emerson, Theodore Parker, Peabody, Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott,
+and which the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> latter celebrated in a sonnet. Here, too, we find the
+church where Kendall preached, and the farm of Morton, the earliest
+historian of the Western world.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Miss Peabody</div>
+
+<p>In the Boston suburb of Jamaica Plain we find, near the station, the
+modest apartments where Miss Elizabeth Peabody&mdash;the "Saint Elizabeth" of
+her friends&mdash;passed her later years, and where, not many months ago, she
+died, having survived nearly all her associates in the earlier struggle
+for the enlargement of the bounds of spiritual freedom. She had been the
+intimate friend of Emerson, Channing, Theodore Parker, and the rest; and
+of the wider spirituality which they proclaimed she was esteemed a
+prophetess. Most of her literary work was done before she came to this
+home; and the latest literary effort of her life, her autobiography
+(which was undertaken here in age and weariness), was frustrated by her
+increasing infirmities.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Parkman</div>
+
+<p>In the same delightful suburb was the ideally beautiful home of the
+historian Francis Parkman. His wide and tasteful dwelling surmounted an
+elevation overlooking a pretty lakelet, and was environed by ample
+grounds filled with choicest shrubbery and flowers, where there were
+roods of the roses and lilies he loved<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> and studied. In this place he
+lived thirty-four years, and, although practically blind and rarely free
+from torturing pain, he here produced many volumes and accomplished the
+work which places him among the foremost historians of the age. In this
+home he died a year or so ago: his grounds having been taken for a
+public park, it is now proposed to erect here a bronze memorial of the
+great historian amid the floral beauty he created and cherished.</p>
+
+<p>In the remoter region of Canton, Thomas Bailey Aldrich has a sometime
+summer home, erected among enchanting landscapes, where he has pondered
+and written much of his dainty prose and daintier poesy. The curious
+name of this rural retreat is preserved in the title of his entertaining
+volume of travel-sketches, "From Ponkapog to Pesth." The tree near his
+door was the home of the pair of birds he described in the delightful
+sketch "Our New Neighbors at Ponkapog."</p>
+
+<p>A morning's drive westward through the shade and sheen of a delectable
+urban district conveys us to the village of Auburndale, where we find
+the tasteful cottage home of Louise Imogen Guiney,<span class="sidenote">Miss Guiney</span> with its French
+roofs, wide windows, square tower, and embosoming foliage. Here, if we
+come properly accredited, we may (or might<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> before she became the
+village postmistress) see the gifted poetess of "White Sail" and
+"Roadside Harp" and essayist of "English Gallery" and "Prose Idyls"&mdash;a
+<i>petite</i> and attractive young lady&mdash;at her desk, surrounded by her
+treasures of books and bric-à-brac and with the portraits of many
+friends looking down upon her from the walls of the square upper room
+where she writes. She has little to say concerning her own
+work,&mdash;fascinating as it is to her,&mdash;but discourses pleasantly on many
+topics and narrates <i>con amore</i> the history of the precious tomes and
+the literary relics she has gathered here, and describes the traits and
+lineage of her beloved canine pets, who have been execrated by some of
+her neighbors.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Brook Farm</div>
+
+<p>Nearer Jamaica Plain is the quiet corner of West Roxbury, where the
+exalted community of Brook Farmers attempted to realize in external and
+material fashion their high ideals and to inaugurate the precursor of an
+Arcadian era. In this season, "the sweet o' the year," we find the farm
+a delightful spot, fully warranting Hawthorne's eulogium in "Blithedale
+Romance." The songful stream which gives the place its name is margined
+by verdant and sun-kissed meads which slope away to the circling
+Charles; on either side, fields and picturesque pastures<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>&mdash;broken here
+and there by rocky ledges and copse-covered knolls&mdash;swell upward to
+feathery acclivities of pine and oak, with rugged escarpments of rock.
+From the elevation about the farm-house we overlook most of the domain
+of these social reformers,&mdash;the many acres of woodlands, the orchards
+and fields where Ripley, George William Curtis, Hawthorne, Dwight,
+Bedford, Pratt, Dana, and other transcendental enthusiasts held
+sublimated discourse while they performed the coarsest farm drudgery,
+applied uncelestial fertilizers, "belabored rugged furrows," or delved
+for the infinite in a peat-bog. Curtis has said "there never were such
+witty potato-patches, such sparkling corn-fields; the weeds were
+scratched out of the ground to the music of Tennyson and Browning." The
+farm-house stands above the highway, and is shaded by giant trees
+planted by Ripley and his associates. It is a commodious, antiquated
+structure of weather-worn wood, two stories in height, with a vast attic
+beneath the sloping roofs and an extension which has been recently
+enlarged. The original edifice is a ponderous fabric of almost square
+form, with an entrance in the middle of the front, massive chimneys at
+either end, and contains four spacious lower rooms, besides an outer
+scullery. Here we see the sitting-room<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> of the reformers, where at first
+Channing sometimes preached and the now "Nestor of American journalism"
+sang bass in the choir; their refectory, where Dana served as
+head-waiter; and their brick-paved kitchen, where the erudite Mrs.
+Ripley and the soulful Margaret Fuller sometimes helped to prepare the
+bran bread and baked beans for the exalted brotherhood. Adjoining is the
+old "wash-room," where some who have since become famous in literature
+or politics pounded the soiled linen in a hogshead with a heavy wooden
+pestle; and just without is the turf-carpeted yard where the dignified
+and handsome Hawthorne, the brilliant Charles A. Dana (who certainly was
+the most popular member of the community), and the genial Curtis were
+sometimes seen hanging the moist garments upon the lines, a truly
+edifying spectacle for gods and men. It was from Curtis's pockets that
+the clothes-pins sometimes dropped during the evening dances. Some of
+the trees yet to be seen near the house were rooted from the nursery
+established here by Dana.</p>
+
+<p>This old house was the original "Hive" of the community, who added the
+extensive wing at the back, but increasing numbers soon forced a
+portion of the company to swarm, and other dormitories were erected.
+Of these we find vestiges<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> of the "Eyrie"&mdash;which was also used as a
+school-house&mdash;upon a commanding ledge at a little distance from the
+house, and nearer the grove where the rural festivals of the association
+were held. Of the "Nest," the little house where Miss Ripley lived, the
+"Cottage," where Margaret Fuller lodged during her sojourns at the farm,
+the large barn, where social <i>séances</i> were held while the starry
+company prepared vegetables for the market, and the other steading
+erected by the community, only the cellars and broken foundations
+remain. In the wood at some distance from the house is the "Eliot's
+Pulpit" of Coverdale's narrative, a mass of rock crowning a knoll and
+having a great fissure through its core; in the forest beyond we may
+find "Coverdale's Walk," and the "Hermitage" where he heard by accident
+the colloquy of Westervelt and Zenobia.</p>
+
+<p>After the day of Ripley's brilliant colony the broad acres of Brook Farm
+were tilled by the town poor, and&mdash;"to what base uses!"&mdash;the pretty
+cottage of Margaret Fuller became a loathsome small-pox pest-house; the
+rooms of the "Hive," after six years of familiarity with ideal refiners
+and reformers, became the abode of paupers, and at this day are aswarm
+with an odorous multitude of German orphans, wards<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> of a Lutheran
+society that now owns the place.</p>
+
+<p>While the pilgrim may find but few traces of the physical labors of the
+choice spirits who once inhabited this spot, the beneficent results of
+the mental and moral work here accomplished&mdash;especially among the
+young&mdash;are manifest and ineffaceable. These infertile fields yielded but
+scant returns for the manual toil of the optimistic philosophers, but
+their earnest strivings toward social and mental emancipation have borne
+abundant fruit.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">IN BERKSHIRE WITH HAWTHORNE</span></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" summary="table">
+<tr><td align="right">I.</td><td> The Graylock and Hoosac Region</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">II.</td><td> Lenox and Middle Berkshire</td></tr></table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">I</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">THE GRAYLOCK AND HOOSAC REGION</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>North Adams and about&mdash;Hawthorne's Acquaintances and
+Excursions&mdash;Actors and Incidents of Ethan Brand&mdash;Kiln of Bertram the
+Lime-Burner&mdash;Natural Bridge&mdash;Graylock&mdash;Thoreau&mdash;Hoosac
+Mountain&mdash;Deerfield Arch&mdash;Williamstown&mdash;Bryant.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">THE Hawthorne pilgrimage has drawn us to many shrines: the sunny scenes
+of "The Marble Faun," the peaceful landscapes of "Our Old Home," the now
+busy city of "The Scarlet Letter," the elm-shaded Salem of "Dr.
+Grimshaw" and "The House of the Seven Gables," the Manse of the
+"Mosses," the Wayside of "Septimius Felton" and "The Dolliver
+Romance,"&mdash;these and many another resort of the subtile romancer, in the
+Old World and the New, have held our lingering feet.</p>
+
+<p>Amid the splendors of a New England September we follow him into the
+"headlong Berkshire" of "Ethan Brand" and "Tanglewood Tales."</p>
+
+<p>Hawthorne was more than most writers influenced by environment; the
+situations and circumstances under which his work was produced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> often
+determined its tone and color, while the persons, localities, and
+occurrences observed by his alert senses in the real world about him
+were skilfully wrought into his romance. His residence in Berkshire
+affected not only the books written there, but some subsequently
+produced, and the scenery of this loveliest corner of New England
+supplied the setting for many of his tales. Some of the best passages of
+his "American Note-Books" are records of his observations in this
+region,&mdash;sundry scenes, characters, and incidents being afterward
+literally transcribed therefrom into his fiction,&mdash;while a few of his
+shorter stories seem to have been suggested by legends once current in
+Berkshire. It passes, therefore, that for us the greatest charm of this
+realm of delights is that all its beauties&mdash;the grandeur of its
+mountains, the enchantment of its valleys, the glamour of its autumn
+woods, the sheen of its lakelets, the sapphire of its skies&mdash;serve to
+bring us into closer sympathy with Hawthorne, to whom these beauties
+were once a familiar vision.</p>
+
+<p>He first came to Berkshire in the summer of 1838. For thirteen years he
+had bravely "waited for the world to know" him. His "Twice-Told Tales"
+had brought him little fame or money, but they had procured him the
+friendship<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> of the Peabodys, and it would appear that he and the lovely
+Sophia already loved each other. In a letter to her sister Elizabeth,
+written early in the summer, Sophia says, "Hawthorne came one morning
+for a take-leave call, looking radiant. He said he was not going to tell
+any one, not even his mother, where he should be for the next months; he
+thought he should change his name, so that if he died no one would be
+able to find his gravestone. We asked him to keep a journal while he was
+gone. He at first said he would not write anything, but finally
+concluded it would suit very well for hints for future stories." It was
+from his journal of these months of mysterious retirement that, forty
+years later, the gentle Sophia&mdash;then his widow&mdash;transcribed those pages
+of the "Note-Books" which contain the account of his sojourn in upper
+Berkshire and of his observations and meditations there. How far the
+journal furnished "hints for future stories" the literary world well
+knows.</p>
+
+<p>A few days after this "take-leave call" we find Hawthorne at Pittsfield,
+where his Berkshire saunterings (and ours) fitly began. We follow him
+northward along a curving valley hemmed by mountains that slope upward
+to the azure; on the right rise the rugged Hoosacs in</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+"Wave-like walls that block the sky<br />
+With tints of gold and mists of blue;"</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>on the left loom the darkly-wooded domes of the Taconics above the
+bright upland pastures, while before us grand old "Graylock" uprears his
+head "shaggy with primeval forest,"&mdash;his gigantic shape forming the
+culmination of the superb landscape. Hawthorne's superlative pleasure of
+beholding this grandeur and beauty from the driver's seat of a stage and
+being regaled at the same time by the converse of the driver is
+denied to us, but we enjoy quite as much as did Hawthorne the
+little "love-pats" and passages of a newly-wedded pair of our
+fellow-passengers. The stage has disappeared, the driver and the
+high-stepping steeds which served him "in wheel and in whoa" have given
+place to the engineer and the locomotive; the changes of the
+half-century since Hawthorne journeyed here have well-nigh overturned
+the world; only the eternal beauty of these hills and the bewraying
+demeanor of the newly-married remain evermore unchanged.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Hawthorne at North Adams</div>
+
+<p>At North Adams, which the magician, "liking indifferent well, made his
+head-quarters," we have lodgings near the place of his on the Main
+Street and in the domicile of one who, as a lad of fourteen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> years, had
+known Hawthorne during his stay here. Apparently he did not attempt to
+carry out his plan of concealing his identity; he certainly was known to
+some of the villagers as the author of "Twice-Told Tales," and a
+descendant of one of Hawthorne's "seven doctors of the place" recalls
+his delight on being told that the "Whig Tavern boarder" was the creator
+of "The Gentle Boy;" and he remembers his subsequent and consequent
+worshipful espionage of the wonderful being. To this espionage we are
+indebted for some edifying details of Hawthorne's sojourn in upper
+Berkshire. The world has known few handsomer men than Hawthorne was at
+this period of his life,&mdash;he had been styled Oberon at college,&mdash;and our
+informant recollects him as "the most brilliantly handsome person he
+ever beheld," tall, dark, with an expressive mobile face and a lustrous
+eye which held something "indescribably more than keenness" in its quick
+glances. (Charles Reade said Hawthorne's eye was "like a violet with a
+soul in it.") As remembered here, his expression was often abstracted,
+sometimes despondent. He would sit for hours at a time on the broad
+porch of the old "North Adams House," or in a corner of the bar-room,
+silently smoking and apparently oblivious to his surroundings, yet,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> as
+we know, vigilant to note the oddities of character and opinion he
+encountered. It is certain that he did not drink immoderately at this
+time. There were a few persons&mdash;<i>not</i> the model men of the community&mdash;to
+whom he occasionally unbent and whom he admitted to a sort of
+comradeship, which, as his diary shows, often became confessionary upon
+their part. <span class="sidenote">Characters of his Fiction</span>With these he held prolonged converse upon the tavern
+porch,&mdash;his part in the conversations being mainly suggestions
+calculated to elicit the whimsical conceits or experiences of his
+companions,&mdash;sitting the while in the posture of the venerable
+custom-house officials, described in the sketch introductory to the
+"Scarlet Letter," with "chair tipped on its hind legs" and his feet
+elevated against a pillar of the porch. Among those remembered to have
+been thus favored was Captain C&mdash;&mdash;, called Captain Gavett in the
+"Note-Books," who dispensed metaphysics and maple sugar from the tavern
+steps, and a jolly blacksmith named Wetherel, described by Hawthorne as
+"big in the paunch and enormous in the rear," who came regularly to the
+bar for his stimulant. Another was the "lath-like, round-backed,
+rough-bearded, thin-visaged" stage-driver, Platt, whom Hawthorne honors
+as "a friend of mine" in the diary, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> whose acquaintance he made
+during the ride from Pittsfield. In later years Platt's pride in having
+known Hawthorne eclipsed even his sense of distinction in being "the
+first and only man to drive an ox-team to the top of Graylock, sir." He
+had once been employed to haul the materials for an observatory up that
+mountain's steep inclines. Of the other "hangers-on" who were wont to
+infest the bar-room and porch fifty years ago and whom Hawthorne depicts
+in his journal and his fiction, few of the present generation of
+loungers in the place have ever heard. Orrin &mdash;&mdash;, the sportive widower
+whose peccadilloes are hinted at in the "Note-Books," is remembered by
+older residents of the town, and the "fellow who refused to pay six
+dollars for the coffin in which his wife was buried" may still be named
+as the personification of meanness. The maimed and dissolute Daniel
+Haines&mdash;nicknamed "Black Hawk"&mdash;was then a familiar figure in the
+village streets, and his unique history and appearance could not escape
+the notice of the great romancer nor be soon forgotten by the
+towns-people. As Hawthorne says, "he had slid down by degrees from law
+to the soap-vat." Once a reputable lawyer, his bibulous habits and an
+accident&mdash;his hand being "torn away by the devilish grip of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+steam-engine"&mdash;had so reduced him that at the time Hawthorne saw him he
+maintained himself by boiling soap and practising phrenology. It is
+remembered that he used to "feel of bumps" for the price of a drink, and
+that, Hawthorne's head being submitted to his manipulation, he gravely
+assured the tavern company, "This man was created to shine as a bank
+president," and then privately advised the landlord to "make that chap
+pay in advance for his board." A resident tells us that this dirty and
+often drunken Haines used to make biweekly visits to his father's house,
+with a cart drawn by disreputable-looking dogs, to receive fat in
+exchange for soap. The novelist touches this odd character many times in
+his journal, and utilizes it in the romance of "Ethan Brand," where it
+is the "Lawyer Giles, the elderly ragamuffin," who, with the rest of the
+lazy regiment from the village tavern, came in response to the summons
+of the "boy Joe" to see poor Brand returned from his long search after
+the Unpardonable Sin. This "boy Joe," son of "Bertram the lime-burner,"
+was also a bar-room character, noted here by Hawthorne, but obviously
+for a different use than that made of him in "Ethan Brand,"&mdash;a reference
+to him in the "Note-Books" being supplemented by this memorandum:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> "take
+this boy as the germ of a tavern-haunter, a country <i>roué</i>, to spend a
+wild and brutal youth, ten years of his prime in prison and his old age
+in the poor-house." This sketch may have been written in the spirit of
+prophecy, so exactly has the life of one bar-room boy coincided with
+Hawthorne's outline; the career of another lad whom he here saw and
+possibly had in mind was happier.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Characters and Scenes</div>
+
+<p>A modern hotel has replaced the "Whig Tavern" of Hawthorne's time, and a
+new set of <i>habitués</i> now frequent its bar-room; another generation of
+fat men has succeeded the individuals whose breadth of back was a marvel
+to the novelist, and in the increased population of the place the "many
+obese" would no longer provoke comment. The lapsing decades have
+expanded the pretty and busy factory-village he found into a prettier
+and busier factory-city without materially changing its prevailing air.
+The vigorous young city has not wholly out-grown the "hollow vale"
+walled in by towering mountains; the aspect of its grand environment is
+therefore essentially unaltered, and it chances that there is scarcely a
+spot, in or about the town, which received the notice of Hawthorne which
+may not still be identified. It is our crowning pleasure in the
+resplendent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> autumn days to follow his thoughtful step and dreamy vision
+through town and country-side to the spots he frequented and described,
+thus sharing, in a way, his companionship and beholding through his eyes
+the beauties which he has depicted of mountain and vale, forest and
+stream. On the summit of a hill in the village cemetery, where white
+gravestones gleam amid the evergreens, the grave of a child at whose
+burial Hawthorne assisted is pointed out by one who was present with
+him. The well-known author-divine Washington Gladden, sometime preached
+in a near-by church. The ever-varying phases of the heights which look
+down upon the town&mdash;the wondrous play of light and shade upon the great
+sweeps of foliage which clothe the mountain-sides, the shadows chasing
+each other along the slopes and changing from side to side as the day
+declines, until the vale lies in twilight while the near summits are
+gilded with sunset gold, the exquisite cloud-effects as the fleecy
+masses drift above the ridges or cling to the higher peaks&mdash;were a
+never-failing source of pleasure to Hawthorne, as they are to the
+loiterer of this day. Every shifting of the point of view as we stroll
+in the town reveals a new aspect of its mountain ramparts and arouses
+fresh delight. Hawthorne thought the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> village itself most beautiful when
+clouds deeply shaded the mountains while sunshine flooded the valley
+and, by contrast, made streets and houses a bright, rich gold.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Hawthorne's Rambles</div>
+
+<p>The investing mountains give to the place the "snug and insular" air
+which Hawthorne observed; from many points it seems completely severed
+from the rest of the world. On some dark days sombre banks of cloud
+settle along the ridges and apparently so strengthen and heighten the
+beleaguering walls that we recall Hawthorne's fancy that egress is
+impossible save by "climbing above the clouds." However, the railways
+tunnel the base of one mountain and curve around the flanks of others,
+while</p>
+
+<p class="center">"Old roads winding, as old roads will,"</p>
+
+<p>find easy grades about and over the ramparts, so that the bustling
+"Tunnel-city" is by no means isolated from the outside world.</p>
+
+<p>The rambles among and beyond these investing mountains, by which
+Hawthorne made himself and "Eustace Bright" of "Wonder-Book" and
+"Tanglewood Tales" familiar with "rough, rugged, broken, headlong"
+Berkshire, were usually solitary. The before-mentioned admirer of the
+"Gentle Boy" sometimes offered to guide the novelist to places of
+interest in the vicinage,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> but he usually preferred to be alone with
+nature and his own reveries. Once when the lad proposed to pilot him to
+the peak of Graylock, Hawthorne replied he "did not care to soar so
+high; the Bellows-Pipe was sightly enough for him." He visited the
+latter point many times; it is a long walk from the village, and once he
+returned so late that the hotel was closed for the night and our lad
+pommelled the door for him until the landlord descended, in wrath and
+confidentially scant attire, to admit the novelist.</p>
+
+<p>One starless night we were guided to the kiln of "Bertram the
+lime-burner" which Hawthorne visited with Mr. Leach,&mdash;one of several
+kilns high up on the steep slope without the town, where the marble of
+the mountain is converted into snow-white lime. The graphic imagery of
+the tale may all be realized here upon the spot where it is laid. Amid
+the darkness, the iron door which encloses the glowing limestone
+apparently opens into the mountain-side, and seems a veritable entrance
+to the infernal regions whose lurid flames escape by every crevice. The
+dark and silent figure, revealed to us by the weird light, sitting and
+musing before the kiln, is surely "Ethan Brand"<span class="sidenote">Ethan Brand</span> on his solitary vigil,
+intent on perilous thoughts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> as he looks into the flame, or mutely
+listening to the fiend he has evoked from the fire to tell him of the
+Unpardonable Sin; or it is the same Brand returned to the foot of
+Graylock after eighteen years of weary searching abroad, to find the Sin
+in his own heart and to burn that heart into snowy whiteness and purity
+in the kiln he had watched so long. As we ponder the scene we would
+scarce be surprised to witness the approach of the village rabble led by
+Joe, the old Jew exhibiting his "peep-show" at the foot of the kiln, and
+the self-pursuing cur violently chasing his own shortened tail, or to
+hear the demoniac laughter of Brand which scattered the terror-stricken
+rabble in the surrounding darkness. Certain it is that, thirteen years
+before he wrote the tale, Hawthorne saw here, at a kiln on the foot-hill
+of Graylock, his "Bertram," and heard the legend of a demented creature
+who threw himself into the midst of the circle of fire. The name "Ethan
+Brand" was that of an old resident of Hawthorne's Salem.</p>
+
+<p>The summit of Graylock,<span class="sidenote">Graylock</span> whose rugged beauty has been sung by Holmes,
+Thoreau, Bryant, and Fanny Kemble, had for Hawthorne a sort of
+fascination. From the streets of the village, from all the ways by which
+he sauntered through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> the country-side, his eyes were continually
+turning to that lofty height, observant of its ever-changing aspects.
+His diary of the time abounds with records of its phases, presented in
+varying conditions of cloud and sunshine and from different places of
+prospect, and of the fanciful impressions suggested to his subtile
+thought by each fresh and unfamiliar appearance. A walk repeatedly
+enjoyed by him is along a primitive road on the mountain-side to the
+southern end of The Notch,&mdash;"where it slopes upward to the
+skies,"&mdash;whence he could see most of the enchanting valley of
+Berkshire&mdash;with its lakes, embowered villages, and billowy expanses of
+upland and mead&mdash;extending between mountain-borders to the great Dome
+which looms across it sixty miles away. In the distance he could see the
+crags of Bryant's Monument Mountain&mdash;the "headless sphinx" of his own
+"Wonder-Book"&mdash;rising above the gleaming lake whose margin was to be his
+later home.</p>
+
+<p>Our route to the peak of Graylock is that taken by Hawthorne and Thoreau
+through the savage cleft of The Notch. We follow up a dashing
+mountain-stream past a charming cascade beneath darkening hemlocks, then
+along a rough road by the houses whose inhabitants Hawthorne thought
+"ought to be temperance people"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> from the quality of the water they gave
+him to drink. In the remoter parts of the glen a stranger-pedestrian is
+still a wonder, and will be regarded as curiously as was the romancer.
+From the extremity of The Notch, Graylock rises steeply, his sides
+clothed with forests, through which we climb to the summit and our
+reward. From the site of Thoreau's bivouac, where Fanny Kemble once
+declaimed Romeo and Juliet to a picnic party, we behold a scene of
+unrivalled vastness and beauty,&mdash;on every side peak soaring beyond peak
+until the shadowy outlines blend with the distant sky. The view ranges
+from Grand Monadnock and the misty Adirondacks to the Catskills, the
+Dome of Mount Washington, and the far-away hills of Connecticut, while
+at our feet smiles the bright valley, as beautiful as that in which
+Rasselas dwelt.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Natural Bridge</div>
+
+<p>A mile from the town we find one of the most picturesque spectacles in
+New England, the Natural Bridge, to which Hawthorne came again and again
+during his sojourn in this region. Amid a grove of pines apparently
+rooted in the solid rock, a tributary of the Hoosac has, during
+measureless eons of time, worn in the white marble a chasm sixty feet
+deep and fifteen feet wide, spanned at one point by a beautifully arched
+mass which forms a bridge high above<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> the stream which frets along the
+rock-strewn floor of the canyon. Within the ravine the brook falls in a
+rainbow-crowned cascade, and below this is a placid pool with margins of
+polished marble, where Hawthorne once meditated a bath, but, alarmed by
+the approach of visitors, he hastily resumed his habiliments, "not
+caring to be to them the most curious part of the spectacle."</p>
+
+<p>From the deep bed of the brook the gazer looks heavenward between lofty
+walls of crystalline whiteness which seem to converge as they rise,
+whose surmounting crags jutting from the verge are crowned by sombre
+evergreens which overhang the chasm and almost shut out the sky. As we
+traverse the gorge whose wildness so impressed Hawthorne and listen to
+the re-echoing roar of the now diminished stream, we are reminded of his
+conceit that the scene is "like a heart that has been rent asunder by a
+torrent of passion which has raged and left ineffaceable traces, though
+now there is but a rill of feeling at the bottom."</p>
+
+<p>Our way back to the town is along a riotous stream which took strong
+hold upon the liking of the novelist, by which he often walked and in
+whose cool depths he bathed. His brief descriptions of its secluded and
+turbulent course,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> through resounding hollows, amid dark woods, under
+pine-crowned cliffs,&mdash;"talking to itself of its own wild fantasies in
+the voice of solitude and the wilderness,"&mdash;although written at the time
+but for his own perusal, are among the gems of the language. Farther
+down, the boisterous stream is now subdued and harnessed by man and made
+to turn wheels of factories; its limpid waters are discolored by
+dye-stuffs; its beauty is lost with its freedom; it becomes useful
+and&mdash;ugly.</p>
+
+<p>One day our excursion is into the romantic valley of the Deerfield by
+the old stage-road over the Hoosac range, the route which Hawthorne took
+with his friends Birch and Leach. The many turns by which the road
+accomplishes the ascent afford constantly varying vistas of the valley
+out of which we rise, and progressively widening prospects of the
+forest-clad mountains beyond. At the summit we are in the centre of the
+magnificent panorama of mountains&mdash;glowing now with autumnal crimson and
+gold&mdash;which extorted from Henry Clay the declaration that he had "never
+beheld anything so beautiful."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Incidents and Characters of Tales</div>
+
+<p>On the bare and wind-swept plain which lies along the summit are a few
+farm-dwellings. Among these at the time of Hawthorne's visit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>&mdash;before
+the great tunnel had pierced the mountain and superseded the
+stage-route&mdash;was a homely wayside inn, afterward a farm-house, at whose
+bar passengers were wont to "wet their whistles." It may be assumed that
+the romancer and his companions failed not to conform to this
+time-honored custom, for it was in that rude bar-room&mdash;since a
+farm-kitchen&mdash;that Hawthorne met the itinerant Jew with a diorama of
+execrable scratchings which he carried upon his back and exhibited as
+"specimens of the fine arts;" in that room also the novelist witnessed
+the whimsical performance of the usually sensible and sedate old dog,
+who periodically broke out in an infuriated pursuit of his own tail, "as
+if one half of his body were at deadly enmity with the other." These
+incidents were carefully noted at the time for possible future use, and
+in such choice diction that when, many years afterward, he wove them
+into the fabric of a tale of "The Snow Image" volume, he transcribed
+them from his diary to his manuscript essentially unchanged. This
+instance illustrates the method of this consummate literary artist and
+his alertness to perceive and utilize the details of real life. His
+journals abundantly show that he was by no means the aphelxian dreamer
+he has been adjudged.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Deerfield Arch</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>As we descend into the deep valley we find a wild gulf where a brooklet
+from the top of Hoosac falls a hundred feet into a rock-bordered pool,
+whence it hastens to lose itself in the river; and a mile or two farther
+along the Deerfield we come to the Natural Arch which Hawthorne visited.
+It is in one of the wildest parts of the picturesque valley, where
+mountain-walls rise a thousand feet on either side. Through a mass of
+rock projecting from the margin the stream has wrought for itself a
+symmetrically arched passage as large as and very like the door-way of
+an Old-World cathedral. The summit of the arch and the water-worn
+pillars upon either side display "pot-holes" and other evidences of
+erosion, and in the bed of the current lie fragments of similarly
+attrite rocks which seem to indicate that at some period a series of
+arches spanned the entire space from mountain to mountain. Hawthorne's
+pleasing fancy makes this arch the entrance to an enchanted palace which
+has all vanished except the door-way that "now opens only into
+nothingness and empty space."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Williamstown</div>
+
+<p>On other days our saunterings follow Hawthorne's to beautiful
+Williamstown and through the picturesque scenery which environs it.
+Within the park-like village the alma mater of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> Bryant, Garfield, and
+Hawthorne's "Eustace Bright" stands embowered in noble elms and
+overlooked by mighty Graylock. Viewed from here, Emerson thought
+Graylock "a serious mountain." Thoreau considered its proximity worth at
+least "one endowed professorship; it were as well to be educated in the
+shadow of a mount as in more classic shades. Some will remember not only
+that they went to the college but that they went to the mountain."
+Hawthorne visited both. At the college commencement we find him more
+attentive to the eccentric characters in the assemblage without the
+church than to the literary exercises within, as evidenced by his
+piquant description of the enterprising pedler with the "heterogeny" of
+wares, the gingerbread man, the negroes, and other oddities of the
+out-door company.</p>
+
+<p>About us here lie the scenes which stirred in William Cullen Bryant that
+intense love of nature which inspired his best stanzas. A winsome walk
+brings us to a sequestered glen where a brooklet winds amid moss-covered
+rocks and dainty ferns, and mirrors in its clear pools the overhanging
+boughs and the patches of azure; this was a favorite haunt of the
+youthful Bryant,<span class="sidenote">Bryant</span> and here he pondered or composed his earlier poems,
+including some portion of the matchless<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+"Thanatopsis." Here Emerson,<span class="sidenote">Emerson</span> lingering under the spell of the spot, was
+moved to recite Wordsworth's "Excursion" to a companion, who must
+evermore feel an enviable thrill when he recalls the exquisite lines
+falling from the lips of the "great evangel and seer" amid the
+loveliness of such a scene.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">II</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">LENOX AND MIDDLE BERKSHIRE</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Beloved of the Littérateurs&mdash;La Maison Rouge&mdash;Where The House of
+the Seven Gables was written&mdash;Wonder-Book and Tanglewood Scenes&mdash;The
+Bowl&mdash;Beecher's Laurel Lake&mdash;Kemble&mdash;Bryant's Monument
+Mountain&mdash;Stockbridge&mdash;Catherine Sedgwick&mdash;Melville's Piazza and
+Chimney&mdash;Holmes&mdash;Longfellow&mdash;Pittsfield.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">WE have only to accompany Eustace Bright of "Wonder-Book" from Williams
+College to his home, where Catherine Sedgwick's "Stockbridge Bowl"
+nestles among the summer-enchanted hills of central Berkshire, to find
+the abode of Hawthorne during the most fertile period of his life. This
+region of inspiring landscapes has long been a favorite residence of
+<i>littérateurs</i>. Here Jonathan Edwards compiled his predestined
+treatises; here Catherine Sedgwick wrote the romances which charmed her
+generation; here Elihu Burritt "the Learned Blacksmith," wrought out the
+"Sparks" that made him famous; here Bryant composed his best stanzas and
+made Monument Mountain and Green River classic spots; here Henry Ward
+Beecher indited many "Star Papers;" here Herman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> Melville produced his
+sea-tales and brilliant essays; here Headley and Holmes, Lowell and
+Longfellow, Curtis and James, Audubon and Whipple, Mrs. Sigourney and
+Martineau, Fanny Kemble and Frederika Bremer, the gifted sisters
+Goodale, and many other shining spirits, have had home or haunt and have
+invested the scenery with the splendors of their genius. Half a score of
+this galaxy were in Berkshire at the time of Hawthorne's residence
+there.</p>
+
+<p>After his sojourn in northern Berkshire he returned to Salem, where he
+married the lovely Sophia Peabody, endured some years of custom-house
+drudgery, and wrote the "Scarlet Letter," which made him famous: he then
+sought again the seclusion of the mountains.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Hawthorne's Return to Berkshire</div>
+
+<p>Poverty, which he had long and bravely endured, has been assigned as the
+cause of his removal to the humble Berkshire abode in 1850; one writer
+refers to the slenderness of his larder here, another says the rent for
+his poor dwelling was paid by his friends, another that the rent was
+remitted by the owner, who was his friend. But the success of the
+"Scarlet Letter" had relieved the necessitous condition of its author;
+and his landlord here&mdash;Tappan of "Tanglewood"&mdash;testifies and Hawthorne's
+letters show that he was able to pay his rent. His motive in returning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+to Berkshire is stated in a letter to Bridge: "I have taken a house in
+Lenox&mdash;I long to get into the country, for my health is not what it has
+been. An hour or two of labor in a garden and a daily ramble in country
+air would keep me all right." Doubtless, too, he hoped to find the quiet
+and seclusion of the place favorable for his work.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">His Home and Study</div>
+
+<p>The habitation to which he brought his family he describes as "the very
+ugliest little bit of an old red farm-house you ever saw," "the most
+inconvenient and wretched hovel I ever put my head in." His wife's
+letters characterize it, "the reddest and smallest of houses," with such
+a low stud that she "fears to be crushed."</p>
+
+<p>In later years we have found it scarcely changed since Hawthorne's
+occupancy; it was indeed of the humblest and plainest,&mdash;a low-eaved,
+one-and-a-half-storied structure, with a lower wing at the side, dingy
+red in color, with window-shutters of green. The interior was cosy and
+more commodious than the exterior would indicate, and one could readily
+conceive that the artistic taste and deft fingers of Mrs. Hawthorne
+might create here the idyllic home her letters portray. We have been
+indebted to the courtesy of Hawthorne's friend Tappan<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> for glimpses of
+the rooms which Mrs. Hawthorne had already made familiar to us: the tiny
+reception-room, where she "sewed at her stand and read to the children
+about Christ;" the drawing-room, where she disposed "the embroidered
+furniture," and where, in the farther corner, stood "Apollo with his
+head tied on;" the dining-room, where the "Pembroke table stood between
+the windows;" the small boudoir, with its enchanting outlook; the
+"golden chamber" where the baby Rose was born; the room of the "little
+lady Una;" and the low, dingy apartment which was the study of the
+master-genius. Of this room she says, "it can boast of nothing but his
+presence in the morning and the picture out of the window in the
+evening." His secretary was so placed that as he sat at his work he
+could look out upon a landscape of forest and meadow, lake and mountain,
+as beautiful as a poet's dream. It was the exquisite loveliness of this
+scene&mdash;which Hawthorne thought surpassed all others in Berkshire&mdash;that
+for a time reconciled him to the deficiencies of his situation here.</p>
+
+<p>Monument Mountain, looming almost across the valley, is the most
+prominent feature of this view, and it was from his study window that he
+noted most of its varying aspects which are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> depicted in the
+"Wonder-Book" and in his letters and journals. Its contour is to him
+that of a "huge, headless sphinx," and when&mdash;as on the days we beheld it
+from his window&mdash;it blazes from base to summit with the resplendent hues
+of autumn, his fancy suggested that "the sphinx is wrapped in a rich
+Persian shawl;" with the sunshine upon it, "it has the aspect of
+burnished copper;" now it has "a fleece of sun-brightened mist," again
+it seems "founded on a cloud;" on other days it is "enveloped as if in
+the smoke of a great battle." Upon the pane through which he had looked
+upon these changeful phases his hand inscribed, "Nathaniel Hawthorne,
+February 9, 1851."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Site of his Little Red House</div>
+
+<p>He could scarcely have found a lovelier location for his home. The
+valley, which sometimes seemed to him "a vast basin filled with sunshine
+as with wine," is enclosed by groups of mountains piled and terraced to
+the horizon. As we behold them in the splendor of the October days,
+great patches of sunshine and sable cloud-shadows flit along the glowing
+slopes in the sport of the wind. On the one side, the ground sweeps
+upward from the cottage site to the "Bald Summit" of the "Wonder-Book;"
+on the other, a meadow&mdash;as long as the finger of the giant of "Three
+Golden Apples"&mdash;slopes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> to the lake a furlong distant. That beautiful
+water, sung by Sigourney, Sedgwick, and Fanny Kemble, stretches its bays
+three miles among the hills to the southward and mirrors its own wooded
+margins and the farther mountains. Beyond the lake, rising in mid-air
+like a great gray wall, are the sheer precipices of Monument Mountain,
+and in the hazy distance the loftier Taconics uprear their grand Dome in
+the illimitable blue.</p>
+
+<p>Of "La Maison Rouge" of Hawthorne's letters, the pilgrim of to-day finds
+only the blackened and broken foundation walls: a devouring fire, from
+which Tappan saved little of his furniture, has laid it low. These walls
+(which remain only because relic-hunters cannot easily carry them away)
+measurably indicate the form and dimensions of the cottage and its
+general arrangement. Its site is close upon the highway, from which it
+is partially screened by evergreen trees. The gate of the enclosure is
+of course an unworthy successor to that upon which Fields found
+Hawthorne swinging his children, but these near-by elms have shaded the
+great romancer, the tallest of the evergreens is the tree his wife
+thought "full of a thousand memories," and all about the spot cluster
+reminders of the simple, healthful life Hawthorne<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> led here. Here are
+the garden ground he tilled and where he buried the pet rabbit "Bunny;"
+the "patch," ploughed for him by Tappan, where he raised beans for
+himself and corn for his hens (he had learned something of agriculture
+at Brook Farm, albeit it was said there he could do nothing but feed the
+hogs); the now great fruit-trees whose leaden labels little Julian
+destroyed, as Tappan remembers; the place of the "scientific hennery,"
+fitted up by the "Man of Genius and the Naval Officer,"&mdash;Hawthorne and
+Horatio Bridge; the long declivity where the novelist as well as his
+Eustace Bright used to coast "in the nectared air of winter" with the
+children of the "Wonder-Book;" the leafy woods&mdash;his refuge from
+visitors&mdash;where he walked with his children and where Bright nutted with
+the little Pringles; the lake-shore where Hawthorne loitered or lay
+extended in the shade during summer hours, "smoking cigars, reading
+foolish novels, and thinking of nothing at all," while the children
+played about him or covered his chin and breast with long grasses to
+make him "look like the mighty Pan."</p>
+
+<p>Near by are other friends he has made known to us. Yonder copse shades a
+narrow glen whose braes border a brooklet winding and chattering on its
+way to the lake; this glen was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> a summer haunt of Hawthorne, where he
+doubtless pondered much of his work. Here he brought his children
+"to play with the brook" and helped them to build water-falls, or
+reclined in the shade and told them stories as described in the
+"Wonder-Book,"&mdash;for this is the "dell of Shadow-Brook," where the
+children picnicked with Bright and where he told them the story of "The
+Golden Touch" on such an afternoon as this, on which we behold the dell
+thickly strewn with golden leaves, as if King Midas had newly emptied
+his coffers there.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Tanglewood and Wonder-Book Scenes</div>
+
+<p>Yonder mansion of Hawthorne's landlord, just beyond the highway, is
+"Tanglewood,"&mdash;place of the Pringles' home and still the abode of
+Tappan's daughters,&mdash;where Bright spent his vacations and where
+Hawthorne makes him tell many of the "Tales." The view described on the
+porch, where the "Gorgon's Head" was narrated, is the one Hawthorne saw
+from his study window. Glimpses of various rooms of the mansion which
+Tappan then inhabited and called "Highwood" are prefixed to the stories
+told in them. Beyond "Tanglewood" steeply rises an eminence whose bare
+acclivity Hawthorne often climbed with his family,&mdash;the "Bald Summit"
+where the Pringles listened to the tale of "The Chimera." We<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> ascend by
+the novelist's accustomed way "through Luther Butler's orchard," and are
+repaid by a view extending from the mountains of Vermont to the
+Catskills and deserving the high praise Hawthorne bestowed. A golden
+cloud floating close to Graylock's shaggy head reminds us of Hawthorne's
+conceit that a mortal might step from the mountain to the cloud and thus
+ascend heavenly heights. The farther ranges enclose a valley of
+wave-like hills,&mdash;which look as if a tumultuous ocean had been
+transfixed and solidified,&mdash;dotted with farmsteads and picturesque
+villages whose white spires rise from embowering trees. At our feet the
+"Bowl" ripples and scintillates, farther away the "Echo Lake" of
+Christine Nilsson and many smaller lakelets "open their blue eyes to the
+sun," while the placid stream, fringed by overhanging willows, circles
+here and there through the valley like a shining ribbon. Here we may
+realize the immensity of Hawthorne's giant in the "Three Golden Apples,"
+who was so tall he "might have seated himself on Taconic and had
+Monument Mountain for a footstool."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Resorts and Reminiscences</div>
+
+<p>Not far away, near another shore of the shimmering "Bowl," that
+versatile genius "Carl Benson"&mdash;Charles Astor Bristed&mdash;dwelt for some
+time in a quaint old farm-house which has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> since been destroyed by fire,
+and here accomplished some of his literary work. Laurel Lake (the
+Scott's Pond of Hawthorne's "Note-Books"), where Beecher "bought a
+hundred acres to lie down upon,"&mdash;and called them Blossom Farm in the
+"Star Papers" written there,&mdash;was another resort of Hawthorne. We find
+it a pretty water, although its margins are mostly denuded of large
+trees. A bright matron of the vicinage, who, when a child, thought the
+author of the "Wonder-Book" the "greatest man in the world save only
+Franklin Pierce," lived then by Hawthorne's road to Laurel Lake. Her
+admiration for him (heightened by his intimacy with Pierce) led her to
+daily watch the road by which he would come from Tanglewood, and when
+she saw him approaching&mdash;which would be twice a week in good
+weather&mdash;she would go into the yard and reverently gaze at him until his
+swift gait had carried him out of sight. To her he was a tall, dark man
+with a handsome clean-shaven face and lustrous eyes which saw nothing
+but the ground directly before him, habitually dressed in black, with a
+wide-brimmed soft hat. Usually his walk was solitary, but sometimes
+Herman Melville, who was well known in the neighborhood, was his
+companion, and one autumn he was twice or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> thrice accompanied by "a
+light spare man,"&mdash;the poet Ellery Channing. <span class="sidenote">Fanny Kemble</span>Once Hawthorne strode past
+toward the lake when Fanny Kemble, who lived near by, rode her black
+steed by his side and "seemed to be doing all the talking"&mdash;she was
+capable of that&mdash;and "was talking politics." Having secured a Democratic
+auditor, she doubtless "improved the occasion" with her habitual
+vivaciousness. A neighbor of Hawthorne's tells us this incident of the
+following year, when the novelist's friend Pierce had been named for the
+Presidency. One dark night this neighbor went on foot to a campaign
+lecture at Lenox Furnace. At its close, he essayed to shorten the
+homeward walk by a "short cut" across the fields, and, of course, lost
+his way. Descrying a light, he directed his steps toward it, but found
+himself involved in a labyrinth of obstacles, and had to make so many
+détours that when he finally reached the house whence the light
+proceeded, and when in response to his hail the door was opened by
+Kemble herself, he was so distraught and amazed at being lost among his
+own farms that he could hardly explain his plight; but she quickly
+interrupted his incoherent account: "Yes, I see, poor benighted man!
+you've been to a Democratic meeting; no wonder you are bewildered! Now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+I'll lend you a good Whig lantern that will light you safe home." We
+find Mrs. Kemble-Butler's "Perch"&mdash;as she named her home here&mdash;a little
+enlarged, but not otherwise changed since the time of her occupancy. She
+was a general favorite, and her dark steed, which had cost her the
+proceeds of a volume of her poems, used to stop before every house in
+the vicinage. She often came, habited in a sort of bloomer costume which
+shocked some of her friends, to fish in the "Bowl" at the time Hawthorne
+dwelt by its shore.</p>
+
+<p>The death of Louis Kossuth, some time ago, reminded her former neighbors
+here that she led the dance with him at a ball in Lenox, when the exiled
+patriot was a guest of the Sedgwicks.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Monument Mountain</span>Our approach to Monument Mountain is along one of those sequestered
+by-ways which Hawthorne loved, with "an unseen torrent roaring at an
+unseen depth" near by. A rift in the morning mists which enshroud the
+valley displays the mountain summit bathed in sunshine. We ascend by
+Bryant's "path which conducts up the narrow battlement to the north,"
+the same along which Hawthorne and his friends&mdash;Holmes, James T. Fields,
+Sedgwick, and the rest&mdash;were piloted by the historian Headley on a
+summer's day more than forty years ago. Standing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> upon the beetling
+verge, which is scarred and splintered by thunderbolts and overhangs a
+precipice of five hundred feet or more, we look abroad upon a landscape
+of wondrous expanse and beauty. Here we may realize all the prospect
+Bryant portrayed as he stood upon this spot:</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">"A beautiful river</span><br />
+Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">On either side</span><br />
+The fields swell upward to the hills; beyond,<br />
+Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise<br />
+The mighty columns with which earth props heaven."</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>In the middle distance, across the Bowl, which gleams a veritable
+"mountain mirror," we see the site of the home whence Hawthorne so often
+looked upon these cliffs. Yonder detached pinnacle, rising from the base
+of the precipice beneath us, is the "Pulpit Rock" which Catherine
+Sedgwick christened when Hawthorne's party picnicked here; from the crag
+projecting from the verge Fanny Kemble declaimed Bryant's poem, and
+Herman Melville, bestriding the same rock for a bowsprit, "pulled and
+hauled imaginary ropes" for the amusement of the company. Among these
+splintered masses the company lunched that day and drank quantities of
+Heidsieck to the health<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> of the "dear old poet of Monument Mountain." On
+the east, almost within sight from this eminence, is the spot where he
+was born, near the birthplaces of Warner and the gifted Mrs. Howe.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Hawthorne at Stockbridge</div>
+
+<p>Another day we follow the same brilliant party of Hawthorne's friends
+through the Stockbridge Ice Glen,&mdash;a narrow gorge which cleaves a rugged
+mountain from base to summit, its riven sides being apparently held
+asunder by immense rocky masses hurled upon each other in wild
+confusion. Beneath are weird grottos and great recesses which the sun
+never penetrates, and within these we make our way&mdash;clambering and
+sliding over huge boulders&mdash;through the heart of the mountain. One of
+Hawthorne's company here testifies that in all the extemporaneous
+jollity of the scramble through the glen the usually silent novelist was
+foremost, and, being sometimes in the dark, dared use his
+tongue,&mdash;"calling out lustily and pretending that certain destruction
+threatened us all. I never saw him in better spirits than throughout
+this day."</p>
+
+<p>From the glen we trace Hawthorne to the staid old house of Burr's
+boyhood, where lived and wrote Jonathan Edwards, and the statelier
+dwelling whence Catherine Sedgwick gave her tales to the world. Near by
+we find the grave<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> where she lies amid the scenes of her own "Hope
+Leslie," and not far from the sojourn of her gifted niece whose
+translation of Sand's "Fadette" has been so well received.
+Overlooking the village is the summer residence of Field of the
+"Evangelist,"&mdash;author of the delightful books of travel.</p>
+
+<p>Farther away is a little farm-house, with a "huge, corpulent, old Harry
+VIII. of a chimney," to which Hawthorne was a frequent visitor,&mdash;the
+"Arrow-Head" of Herman Melville. "Godfrey Graylock" says the friendship
+between Hawthorne and Melville originated in their taking refuge
+together, during an electric shower, in a narrow cleft of Monument
+Mountain. They had been coy of each other on account of Melville's
+review of the "Scarlet Letter" in Duyckinck's <i>Literary World</i>, but
+during some hours of enforced intercourse and propinquity in very
+contracted quarters they discovered in each other a correlation of
+thought and feeling which made them fast friends for life. Thereafter
+Melville was often at the little red house, where the children knew him
+as "Mr. Omoo," and less often Hawthorne came to chat with the racy
+romancer and philosopher by the great chimney. Once he was accompanied
+by little Una&mdash;"Onion" he sometimes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> called her&mdash;and remained a whole
+week. This visit&mdash;certainly unique in the life of the shy Hawthorne&mdash;was
+the topic when, not so long agone, we last looked upon the living face
+of Melville in his city home. March weather prevented walks abroad, so
+the pair spent most of the week in smoking and talking metaphysics in
+the barn,&mdash;Hawthorne usually lounging upon a carpenter's bench. When he
+was leaving, he jocosely declared he would write a report of their
+psychological discussions for publication in a volume to be called "A
+Week on a Work-Bench in a Barn," the title being a travesty upon that of
+Thoreau's then recent book, "A Week on Concord River," etc.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Melville's Arrow-Head</div>
+
+<p>Sitting upon the north piazza, of "Piazza Tales," at Arrow-Head, where
+Hawthorne and his friend lingered in summer days, we look away to
+Graylock and enjoy "the calm prospect of things from a fair piazza"
+which Melville so whimsically describes. At Arrow-Head, too, we find the
+astonishing chimney which suggested the essay, still occupying the
+centre of the house and "leaving only the odd holes and corners" to
+Melville's nieces, who now inhabit the place in summer; the study where
+Hawthorne and Melville discussed the plot of the "White Whale" and other
+tales; the great fireplace,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> with its inscriptions from "I and my
+Chimney;" the window-view of Melville's "October Mountain,"&mdash;beloved of
+Longfellow,&mdash;whose autumn glories inspired that superb word-picture and
+metaphysical sketch.</p>
+
+<p>On a near knoll, commanding a view of the circle of mountains and the
+winding river, stands the sometime summer residence of Holmes among his
+ancestral acres, where Hawthorne and Fields came to visit him. His
+"den," in which he did much literary work, overlooks the beautiful
+meadows, and is now expanded into a large library, while the trees he
+planted are grown to be the crowning beauty of the place, which the
+owner calls Holmesdale. It was the hereditary home of the Wendells.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Pittsfield</div>
+
+<p>Beyond, at the edge of the town of Pittsfield, is the mansion where
+Longfellow found his wife and his famous "Old Clock on the Stairs." At
+the Athenæum in the town some thousands of Holmes's books will soon be
+placed, and here is preserved the secretary from Hawthorne's study in
+the little red house,&mdash;a time-worn mahogany combination of desk,
+drawers, and shelves, at which he wrote "The House of the Seven Gables,"
+"The Wonder-Book," "The Snow Image," and part of "The Blithedale
+Romance." Pittsfield was long the home of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> "Godfrey Graylock;" here the
+gifted Rose Terry Cooke passed her closing years of life with her
+husband, and not far away Josh Billings, "the Yankee Solomon," was born
+and reared as Henry Savage Shaw. One day we trace from Pittsfield the
+footsteps of Hawthorne and Melville across the Taconics to the whilom
+home of "Mother Ann" and to the higher Hancock peaks.</p>
+
+<p>Hawthorne's daily walk to the post-office was past the later residence
+of Charlotte Cushman, and by the church where the older Channing
+delivered his last discourse and where twenty years ago Parkhurst was
+preacher. In the church-tower Fanny Kemble's clock still tells the hours
+above the lovely spot where she desired to be buried.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Hawthorne's Habit of Meditation</div>
+
+<p>These various excursions compass the range of Hawthorne's rambles in
+this region: he was never ten miles away from the little red house
+during his residence here. Obviously he preferred short and solitary
+strolls which allowed undisturbed meditation upon the work in hand. The
+quantity and finish of the writing done here indicate that much thought
+was expended upon it outside his study. We may be sure that upon "The
+House of the Seven Gables" were bestowed, besides the five months of
+daily sessions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> at his desk, other months of study and thought as he
+strolled the country roads and loitered by the lake-side or in the dell
+of "Blossom-Brook." He avowed himself a shameless idler in warm weather,
+declaring he was "good for nothing in a literary way until after the
+autumnal frosts" brightened his imagination as they did the foliage
+about him here; yet the meditations of one summer in Berkshire produced
+his masterpiece, and the next summer accomplished "The Wonder-Book,"
+quickly followed by "The Snow Image" and "Blithedale." During this
+summer also he had a voluminous correspondence with the many "Pyncheon
+jackasses" who thought themselves aggrieved by his use of their name in
+"The House of the Seven Gables."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Life in the Little Red House</div>
+
+<p>Of the simple home-life at the little red house, Hawthorne's diaries and
+letters, as well as some of the books written here, afford pleasing
+glimpses. The "Violet" and "Peony" of the "Snow Image" story are the
+novelist's own little Una and Julian, and the tale was suggested by some
+occurrence in their play; the incidents related of Eustace Bright and
+the young Pringles, which are prefixed to the "Wonder-Book" stories, are
+merely experiences of Hawthorne and his children, and during the
+composition of these tales he delighted these children&mdash;as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> one of them
+remembers&mdash;by reading to them each evening the work of the day. A
+grim-visaged negress named Peters, who was the servant here in the
+little red house, is said to have suggested the character of Aunt Keziah
+in "Septimius Felton."</p>
+
+<p>Hawthorne's chickens receive notice as members of the family in his
+diary,&mdash;thus: "Seven chickens hatched, J. T. Headley called&mdash;eight
+chickens;" "ascended a mountain with my wife, eight more chickens
+hatched." In a letter to Horatio Bridge, "Our children grow apace and so
+do our chickens;" "we are so intimate with every individual chicken that
+it seems like cannibalism to think of eating one of them." Hawthorne's
+daily walk with pail in hand to Luther Butler's, the next farm-house, he
+speaks of as his "milky way." Butler lives now two miles distant. The
+novelist thus announces to his friend Bridge the birth of the present
+gifted poetess, Mrs. Lathrop, the daughter of his age: "Mrs. Hawthorne
+has published a little work which still lies in sheets, but makes some
+noise in the world; it is a healthy miss with no present pretensions to
+beauty." Five cats were cherished by the novelist and his children; a
+snowy morning after Hawthorne's removal, three of the cats came to a
+neighboring<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> house, where their descendants are still petted and
+cherished.</p>
+
+<p>A few visitors came to the little red house&mdash;Kemble, James, Lowell,
+Holmes, E. P. Whipple, and the others already mentioned&mdash;in whose
+presence the "statue of night and silence" was wont to relax, but for
+the most part his life was that of a recluse. Here, as elsewhere, his
+thoughts dwelt apart in "a twilight region" where the company of his
+kind was usually a perturbing intrusion. For companionship, his family,
+the lake, the woods, his own thoughts, sufficed; he seldom sought any
+other, and therefore was unpopular in the neighborhood. It is hardly to
+be supposed that the creator of Zenobia, Hester Prynne, and the
+Pyncheons would greatly enjoy the society of his rural neighbors, but
+they were not therefore the less displeased by his habitually going out
+of his way&mdash;sometimes across the fields&mdash;to avoid meeting them. Some of
+them had a notion that he was the author of "a poem, or an arithmetic,
+or some other kind of a book,"&mdash;as he makes "Primrose Pringle" to say of
+him in the tale,&mdash;but to most he was incomprehensible, perhaps a little
+uncanny, and the great genius of romance is yet mentioned here as "a
+queer sort o' man that lived in Tappan's red house."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Reasons for leaving Berkshire</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>His son records that after Hawthorne had freed himself from Salem "he
+soon wearied of any particular locality;" after a time he tired even of
+beautiful Berkshire. Its obtrusive scenery "with the same strong
+impressions repeated day after day" became irksome; then he grew tired
+of the mountains and "would joyfully see them laid flat." He writes to
+Fields, "I am sick of Berkshire, and hate to think of spending another
+winter here." Doubtless the region which we behold in the glamour of the
+early autumn seemed very different to Hawthorne in the season when he
+had daily "to trudge two miles to the post-office through snow or slush
+knee-deep." Ellery Channing&mdash;who had knowledge of the winter here&mdash;in
+his letters to Hawthorne calls Berkshire "that satanic institution of
+Spitzbergen," "that ice-plant of the Sedgwicks."</p>
+
+<p>A more cogent reason for Hawthorne's discontent here is found in his
+failing health. He writes to Pike, "I am not vigorous as I used to be on
+the coast;" to Fields, "For the first time since boyhood I feel languid
+and dispirited. Oh, that Providence would build me the merest shanty and
+mark me out a rood or two of garden near the coast."</p>
+
+<p>For these and other reasons Hawthorne finally left Berkshire at the end
+of 1851, going first to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> West Newton and a few months later to "the
+Wayside," while his friend Tappan occupied the thenceforth famous little
+red house.</p>
+
+<p>The world of readers owes much to Hawthorne's residence among the
+mountains. Besides the material here gathered and the exquisite settings
+for his tales these landscapes afforded, we are indebted to his
+environment in Berkshire for the quality of the work here accomplished
+and for its quantity as well; for he responded so readily to the
+inspiriting influence of his surroundings that he produced more during
+his stay here than at any similar period of his life. The soulful beauty
+and the seclusion of the haunts to which we here trace him, suiting well
+his solitary mood, may measurably account to us for his habit of thought
+and for the manner of expression by which nature was here portrayed and
+life expounded by the great master of American romance.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">A DAY WITH THE GOOD GRAY POET</span></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">A DAY WITH THE GOOD GRAY POET</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Walk and Talk with Socrates in Camden&mdash;The Bard's Appearance and
+Surroundings&mdash;Recollections of his Life and Work&mdash;Hospital
+Service&mdash;Praise for his Critics&mdash;His Literary Habit, Purpose,
+Equipment, and Style&mdash;His Religious Bent&mdash;Readings.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">"HOW can you find him? Nothing is easier," quoth the Philadelphia friend
+who some time before Whitman's death brought us an invitation from the
+bard; "you have only to cross the ferry and apply to the first man or
+woman you meet, for there is no one in Camden who does not know Walt
+Whitman or who would not go out of his way to bring you to him." The
+event justifies the prediction, for when we make inquiry of a tradesman
+standing before a shop, he speedily throws aside his apron, closes his
+door against evidently needed customers, and&mdash;despite our protest&mdash;sets
+out to conduct us to the home of the poet. This is done with such
+obvious ardor that we hint to our guide that he must be one of the
+"Whitmaniacs," whereupon he rejoins, "I never read a word Whitman wrote.
+I don't know why they call him Socrates, but I do know he never passes
+me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> without a friendly nod and a word of greeting that warms me all
+through." We subsequently find that it is this sort of "Whitmania,"
+rather than that Swinburne deplores, which pervades the vicinage of the
+poet's home.</p>
+
+<p>Our conductor leaves us at the door of three hundred and twenty-eight
+Mickle Street, a neat thoroughfare bordered by unpretentious frame
+dwellings, hardly a furlong from the Delaware. The dingy little
+two-storied domicile is so disappointingly different from what we were
+expecting to see that the confirmatory testimony of the name "W.
+Whitman" upon the door-plate is needed to convince us that this is the
+oft-mentioned "neat and comfortable" dwelling of one of the world's
+celebrities.</p>
+
+<p>We are kept waiting upon the door-step long enough to observe that the
+unpainted boards of the house are weather-worn and that the shabby
+window-shutters and the cellar-door, which opens aslant upon the
+sidewalk, are in sad need of repair, and then we are admitted by the
+"good, faithful, young Jersey woman who," as he lovingly testifies,
+"cooks for and vigilantly sees to" the venerable bard. A moment later we
+are in his presence, in the spacious second-story room which is his
+sleeping apartment and work-room.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>"You are good to come early while I am fresh and rested," exclaims Walt
+Whitman, rising to his six feet of burly manhood and advancing a heavy
+step or two to greet us; "we are going to have a talk, and we have
+something to talk about, you know," referring to a literary venture of
+ours which had procured us the invitation to visit him. When he has
+regained the depths of his famous and phenomenal chair, the "Jersey
+woman" hands him a score of letters, which he offers to lay aside, but
+we insist that he shall read them at once, and while he is thus occupied
+we have opportunity to observe more closely the bard and his
+surroundings.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Whitman's Personal Appearance</div>
+
+<p>We see a man made in massive mould, stalwart and symmetrical,&mdash;not bowed
+by the weight of time nor deformed by the long years of hemiplegia; a
+majestic head, large, leonine, Homeric, crowned with a wealth of flowing
+silvery hair; a face like "the statued Greek" (Bucke says it is the
+noblest he ever saw); all the features are full and handsome; the
+forehead, high and thoughtful, is marked by "deep furrows which life has
+ploughed;" the heavy brows are highly arched above eyes of gray-blue
+which in repose seem suave rather than brilliant; the upper lid droops
+over the eye nearly to the pupil,&mdash;a condition which obtains in partial
+ptosis,&mdash;and we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> afterward observe that when he speaks of matters which
+deeply move him his eyelids have a tendency to decline still farther,
+imparting to his eyes an appearance of lethargy altogether at variance
+with the thrilling earnestness and tremor of his voice. A strong nose,
+cheeks round and delicate, a complexion of florid and transparent
+pink,&mdash;its hue being heightened by the snowy whiteness of the fleecy
+beard which frames the face and falls upon the breast. The face is sweet
+and wholesome rather than refined, vital and virile rather than
+intellectual. Joaquin Miller has said that, even when destitute and
+dying, Whitman "looked like a Titan god."</p>
+
+<p>We think the habitual expression of his face to be that of the sage
+benignity that comes with age when life has been well lived and life's
+work well done. The expression bespeaks a soul at ease with itself,
+unbroken by age, poverty, and disease, unsoured by calumny and insult.
+Certainly his bufferings and his brave endurance of wrong have left no
+record of malice or even of impatience upon his kindly face. His manly
+form is clad in a loosely fitting suit of gray; his rolling and ample
+shirt-collar, worn without a tie, is open at the throat and exposes the
+upper part of his breast; all his attire, "from snowy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> linen to
+burnished boot," is scrupulously clean and neat.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">His Study and Surroundings</div>
+
+<p>His room is of generous proportions, occupying nearly the entire width
+of the house, and lighted by three windows in front. The floor is partly
+uncarpeted, and the furniture is of the simplest; his bed, covered by a
+white counterpane, occupies a corner; there are two large tables; an
+immense iron-bound trunk stands by one wall and an old-fashioned stove
+by another; a number of boxes and uncushioned seats are scattered
+through the apartment; on the walls are wardrobe-hooks, shelves, and
+many pictures,&mdash;a few fine engravings, a print of the Seminole Osceola,
+portraits of the poet's parents (his father's face is a good one) and
+sisters, and of "another&mdash;not a sister."</p>
+
+<p>There are many books here and there, some of them well worn; one corner
+holds several Greek and Latin classics and copies of Burns, Tennyson,
+Scott, Ossian, Emerson, etc. On the large table near his chair are his
+writing materials, with the Bible, Shakespeare, Dante, and the Iliad
+within reach. Bundles of papers lie in odd places about the room; piles
+of books, magazines, and manuscripts are heaped high upon the tables,
+litter the chairs, and overflow and encumber the floor. This room holds<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+what Whitman has called the "storage collection" of his life.</p>
+
+<p>"And now you are to tell me about yourself and your work," says the
+poet, pushing aside his letters. But, although he is the best of
+listeners, we are intent to make him talk, and a fortunate remark
+concerning one of his letters which had seemed to interest him more than
+the others&mdash;it came from a friend of his far-away boyhood&mdash;enables us to
+profit by the reminiscential mood the letter has inspired.</p>
+
+<p>In his low-toned voice he pictures his early home, his parents, and his
+first ventures into the world; with evident relish he narrates his
+ludicrous experience when he&mdash;a stripling school-master&mdash;"went boarding
+'round." Than this, there was but one happier period of his life, and
+that was when he drove among the farms and villages distributing his
+<i>Long Islander</i>: "that was bliss."</p>
+
+<p>Later he was a politician and "stumped the island" for the Democratic
+candidates, but the enactment of the fugitive slave law disgusted him,
+and he declared his political emancipation in the poem "Blood-Money." At
+odd times he has done "a deal of newspaper drudgery" and other work, but
+his "forte always was loafing and writing poetry,&mdash;at least until the
+war."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> He began early to clothe his thought in verse, and was but a lad
+when a poem of his was accepted for publication in the New York
+<i>Mirror</i>, and he depicts for us the surprised delight with which he
+beheld his stanzas in that fashionable journal.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">His Recollections</div>
+
+<p>A pleasure of those early years was the companionship of Bryant, and he
+details to us the "glorious walks and talks" they had together along the
+North Shore in sweet summer days. This, he says with a sigh, was the
+dearest of the friendships lost to him by the publication of "Leaves of
+Grass;" "but there were compensations, Emerson and Tennyson." Of later
+events he speaks less freely. Of the years of devoted service to the
+wounded and dying in army hospitals, when day and night he literally
+gave himself for others,&mdash;living upon the coarsest fare that he might
+bestow his earnings upon "his sick boys,"&mdash;of these years he speaks not
+at all, save as to the causation of his "war paralysis." "Yes, it made
+an old man of me; but I would like to do it all again if there were
+need." Of his long years of suffering and his brave and patient
+confronting of pain, poverty, and imminent death, his "Specimen Days" is
+the fitting record.</p>
+
+<p>Replying to a question concerning a dainty volume of his poems which lay
+near us, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> which we have been secretly coveting, he says, "You know I
+have never been the fashion; publishers were afraid of me, and I have
+sold the books myself, though I always advise people not to buy them,
+for I fear they are worthless." But when he writes his name and ours
+upon the title-page, and lays within the cover several portraits taken
+at different periods of his life, we wonder if he can ever know how very
+far from "worthless" the book will be to us. We tender in payment a
+bank-note of larger denomination than we could be supposed to possess,
+with a deprecating remark upon the novelty of an author's handling a
+fifty-dollar note, whereupon he laughs heartily: "A novelty to you, is
+it? I tell you it's an impossibility to me; why, my whole income from my
+books during a recent half-year was only twenty-two dollars and six
+cents: don't forget the six cents," he adds, with a twinkle. Then he
+assures us that he is not in want, and that his "shanty," as he calls
+his home, is nearly paid for.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Popularity with his Neighbors</div>
+
+<p>He proposes a walk,&mdash;"a hobble" it must be for him,&mdash;which may afford
+opportunity to change the note; and as we saunter toward the river, he
+leaning heavily upon his cane, it is a pleasure to observe the evident
+feeling of liking and camaraderie which people have for him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+They go out of their way to meet him and to receive merely a friendly
+nod, for he stops to speak with none save the children who leave their
+play to run to him. He seems mightily amused when one wee toddler calls
+him "Mister Socrates," and he tells us this is the first time he has
+been so addressed, although he understands that some of his friends
+speak of him among themselves by the name of that philosopher. So far as
+he knows, the name was first applied to him in Buchanan's lines "To
+Socrates in Camden."</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere we go, on the ferry, at the hotel where we lunch, he receives
+affectionate greeting from people of every rank, yet he is not
+loquacious, certainly not effusive. He shakes hands but once while we
+are out, and that is with an unknown man, and because he <i>is</i> unknown,
+as Whitman afterward tells us.</p>
+
+<p>During luncheon we speak of a recent visit to Mrs. Howarth (the poetess
+"Clementine"). Whitman is at once interested, and questions until he has
+drawn out the pathetic story of her struggles with poverty, disease, and
+impeding environment, and then declares he will go to see her as soon as
+he is able. He declines to receive a copy of her poems, saying he is far
+more interested in her than he could possibly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> be in her books, and that
+he "nowadays religiously abstains from reading poetry." Confirmation of
+this latter statement occurs in our subsequent conversation. A friend of
+ours had met Swinburne, and had been assured by that erratic (please
+don't print it erotic) bard that he thinks Whitman, next to Hugo, the
+best of recent poets. When we tell our poet of this, and endeavor to
+ascertain if the admiration be reciprocal, we find him unfamiliar with
+Swinburne's recent works. Reference to the latter's retraction of his
+first praise elicits the pertinent observation, "The trouble with
+Swinburne seems to be he don't know his own mind," but this is followed
+by warm encomiums upon "Atalanta" and its gifted author.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman had seen Emerson for the last time when the philosopher's memory
+had failed and all his powers were weakening: instead of being shocked
+by this condition, Whitman thinks it fit and natural, "nature gradually
+reclaiming the elements she had lent, work all nobly done, soul and
+senses preparing for rest." Mentioning George Arnold,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center">"Doubly dead because he died so young,"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>we find that Whitman loved and mourned him tenderly. He expresses an
+especial pleasure<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> and pride in the successes of the poet Richard Watson
+Gilder,&mdash;"young Gilder," as he familiarly calls him. He loves Browning,
+and laments that "Browning never took to" him. He thinks our own country
+is fortunate in having felt the clean and healthful influences of four
+such natures as Emerson, Bryant, Whittier, and Longfellow.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">His Good Word for Everybody</div>
+
+<p>Indeed, he has a good word for everybody, and discerns laudable
+qualities in some whom the world has agreed to contemn and cast out. He
+has glowing expressions of affection for his devoted friends in all
+lands, and only words of excuse for his enemies. Of the pharisaic
+Harlan, who dismissed him from a government clerkship solely because he
+had, ten years before, published the poems of "Enfans d'Adam," he
+charitably says, "No doubt the man thought he was doing right."
+Concerning his harshest critics, including the author of the choice
+epithet "swan of the sewers," he speaks only in justification: from
+their stand-point, their denunciations of him and his book were
+deserved; "he never dreamt of blaming them for not seeing as he sees."</p>
+
+<p>After our return to his "shanty" we read to him a laudatory notice from
+the current number of one of our great magazines, in which one of his
+poems is mentioned with especial favor;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> whereupon he produces from his
+trunk a note written some years before from the same magazine,
+contemptuously refusing to publish that very poem. Evidences like this
+of a change in popular opinion are not needed to confirm Whitman's faith
+in his own future, nor in that of the great humanity of which he is the
+prophet and exponent.</p>
+
+<p>Questioned concerning his habits and methods of literary work, he says
+he carries some sheets of paper loosely fastened together and pencils
+upon these "the rough draft of his thought" wherever the thought comes
+to him. Thus, "Leaves of Grass" was composed on the Brooklyn ferry, on
+the top of stages amid the roar of Broadway, at the opera, in the
+fields, on the sea-shore. "Drum Taps" was written amid war scenes, on
+battle-fields, in camps, at hospital bedsides, in actual contact with
+the subjects it portrays with such tenderness and power. The poems thus
+born of spontaneous impulse are finally given to the world in a crisp
+diction which is the result of much study and thought; every word is
+well considered,&mdash;the work of revision being done "almost anywhere" and
+without the ordinary aids to literary composition. In late years he
+wrote mostly upon the broad right arm of his chair.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>Complete equipment for his work was derived from contact with Nature in
+her abounding moods, from sympathetic intimacy with men and women in all
+phases of their lives, and from life-long study of the best books;
+these&mdash;Job, Isaiah, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare&mdash;have been his teachers,
+and possibly his models, although he has never consciously imitated any
+of them. His matter and manner are alike his own; he has not borrowed
+Blake's style, as Stedman believed, to recast Emerson's thoughts, as
+Clarence Cook alleged. His style would naturally resemble that of the
+Semitic prophets and Gaelic bards,&mdash;"the large utterance of the early
+gods,"&mdash;because inspired by familiarity with the same objects: the
+surging sea, the wind-swept mountain, the star-decked heaven, the forest
+primeval.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">His Literary Work&mdash;Its Aims</div>
+
+<p>His purpose, the moral elevation of humanity, he trusts is apparent in
+every page of his book. By his book he means "Leaves of Grass," the real
+work of his life, representing the truest thoughts and the highest
+imaginings of forty years, to which his other work has been incidental
+and tributary. After its eight periods of growth, "hitches," he calls
+them, he completes them with the annex, "Good-bye my Fancy," and thinks
+his record for the future is made up;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> "hit or miss, he will bother
+himself no more about it."</p>
+
+<p>When questioned concerning the lines whose "naked naturalness" has been
+an offence to many, he impressively avers that he has pondered them
+earnestly in these latest days, and is sure he would not alter or recall
+them if he could.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">His Religious Trust</div>
+
+<p>While not professing a moral regeneration or confessing the need of it,
+he yet assures us, "No array of words can describe how much I am at
+peace about God and about death." The author of "Whispers of Heavenly
+Death" cannot be an irreverent person; the impassioned "prayer"&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+"That Thou, O God, my life hast lighted<br />
+With ray of light, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee.<br />
+For that, O God, be it my latest word, here on my knees,<br />
+Old, poor, and paralyzed, I thank Thee....<br />
+I will cling to Thee, O God, though the waves buffet me.<br />
+Thee, Thee, at least, I know"&mdash;</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>is not the utterance of an irreligious heart. One who has known Whitman
+long and well testifies that he was always a religious <i>exalté</i>, and his
+stanzas show that his musings on death and immortality are inspired by
+fullest faith. As we listen to him, calmly discoursing upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span> the great
+mysteries,&mdash;which to him are now mysteries no longer,&mdash;we wonder how
+many of those who call him "beast" or "atheist" can confront the vast
+unknown with his lofty trust, to say nothing of actual thanksgiving for
+death itself!</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+"Praised be the fathomless universe<br />
+For life and joy, for objects and knowledge curious,<br />
+And for love, sweet love,&mdash;but praise! praise! praise!<br />
+For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death."</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>We who survive him will not forget his peaceful yielding of himself to
+"the sure-enwinding arms," nor the abounding trust breathed in his last
+message, sent back from the mystic frontier of the shadowy realm: "Tell
+them it makes no difference whether I live or die."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Readings</div>
+
+<p>In our chat he discloses a surprising knowledge of men and things, and a
+more surprising lack of knowledge of his own poetry. More than once it
+strangely appears that the visitor is more familiar with the lines under
+discussion than is their author. When this is commented upon he
+laughingly says, "Oh, yes, my friends often tell me there is a book
+called 'Leaves of Grass' which I ought to read." So when we, about to
+take leave, ask him to recite one of his shorter poems, he assures us he
+does not remember<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> one of them, but will read anything we wish. We ask
+for the wonderful elegy, "Out of the Cradle endlessly Rocking," and
+afterward for the night hymn, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard
+Bloomed," and his compliance confers a never-to-be-forgotten pleasure.
+He reads slowly and without effort, his voice often tremulous with
+emotion, the lines gaining new grandeur and pathos as they come from his
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>And this&mdash;alas that it must be!&mdash;is our final recollection of one of the
+world's immortals: a hoar and reverend bard,&mdash;"old, poor, and
+paralyzed," yet clinging to the optimistic creeds of his youth,&mdash;throned
+in his great chair among his books, with the waning light falling like a
+benediction upon his uplifted head, his face and eyes suffused with the
+exquisite tenderness of his theme, and all the air about him vibrating
+with the tones of his immortal chant to Death,&mdash;the "dark mother always
+gliding near with soft feet."</p>
+
+<p>Another hand-clasp, a prayerful "God keep you," and we have left him
+alone in the gathering twilight.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">His Future Fame</div>
+
+<p>We will not here discuss his literary merits. The encomiums of Emerson,
+Thoreau, Burroughs, Sanborn, Stedman, Ruskin, Tennyson, Rossetti,
+Buchanan, Sarrazin, etc., show what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> he is to men of their intellectual
+stature; but will he ever reach the great, struggling mass for whose
+uplifting he wrought? His own brave faith is contagious, and we may
+discern in the wide-spread sorrow over his death, in the changed
+attitude of critics and reviewers, as well as in the largely increased
+demand for his books, evidences of his general acceptance.</p>
+
+<p>His day is coming,&mdash;is come. He died with its dawn shining full upon
+him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">INDEX</span></p>
+
+
+<p>
+Abbot, C. C., <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Agassiz, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Alcott, Bronson, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Orchard House, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wayside, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Alcott, L. M., <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Grave, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Homes, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Aldrich, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In Boston, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ponkapog, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Amesbury, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Auburndale, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Austin, J. G., <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Bartlett, G. B., <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bartol, Dr., <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Beecher, H. W., <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Benson, Carl, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Berkshire, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>-<a href="#Page_198">198</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Billings, Josh, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Boston, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>-<a href="#Page_102">102</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bridge, Horatio, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Brook Farm, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Brown, John, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bryant, W. C., <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Burritt, Elihu, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Cambridge, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Carter, Robert, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Channing, W. E., <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Homes, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Clarke, J. F., <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Clough, Arthur, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Concord, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>-<a href="#Page_80">80</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Battle-Field, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">River, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Conway, Moncure, quoted, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cooke, Rose Terry, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>Corner Book-Store, Boston, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Curtis, G. W., <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cushman, Charlotte, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Dana, C. A., <a href="#Page_149">149</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dana, R. H., <a href="#Page_105">105</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Danvers, Oak-Knoll, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Day with Walt Whitman, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Deerfield Arch, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Deland, Margaret, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Elmwood, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Emerson, R. W., <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Grave, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Home, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Emerson, William, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ethan Brand, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Fanny Fern's Grave, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Felton, Professor, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Field, H. M., <a href="#Page_190">190</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Fields, Annie, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Fields, J. T., <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Home, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Fuller, Margaret, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Brattle House, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Gail Hamilton, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Garrison, W. L., <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gilder, R. W., <a href="#Page_211">211</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gladden, Washington, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Grant, Robert, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gray, Asa, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Graylock, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Guiney, L. I., <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Home, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Hale, E. E., <a href="#Page_94">94</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Study and Abode, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Hale, Lucretia P., <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hamilton, Gail, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Harris, Professor, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>Haverhill, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hawthorne, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Berkshire, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>-<a href="#Page_198">198</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Brook Farm, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Manse, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>-<a href="#Page_39">39</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Salem, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>-<a href="#Page_138">138</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sleepy Hollow, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>-<a href="#Page_77">77</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wayside, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>-<a href="#Page_67">67</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Headley, J. T., <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Higginson, T. W., <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hilliard, George, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hoar, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hoar, Judge, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Holmes, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Boston Abodes, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cambridge, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Grave, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pittsfield, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+House of the Seven Gables, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Howarth, Clementine, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Howe, Julia W., <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Howells, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Homes, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Jamaica Plain, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Jewett, Sarah Orne, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Kemble, Fanny, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Kossuth, Louis, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Larcom, Lucy, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lathrop, G. P., <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lathrop, Rose H., <a href="#Page_195">195</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Laurel Lake, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lenox (Hawthorne), <a href="#Page_176">176</a>-<a href="#Page_198">198</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Little Men, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Little Women, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Longfellow, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Grave, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Home, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wayside Inn, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Lowell, J. R., <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Elmwood, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mount Auburn, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Marshfield, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Martineau, Harriet, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Melville, Herman, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Arrow-Head, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>Monument Mountain, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Moulton, L. C., <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Mount Auburn, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Natural Bridge, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>.<br />
+<br />
+North Adams, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>-<a href="#Page_171">171</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Norton, Professor, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Oak-Knoll, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Old Manse, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>-<a href="#Page_39">39</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Orchard House, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>-<a href="#Page_56">56</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Parker, Theodore, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Parkman, Francis, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Home, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Parsons, T. W., <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Parton, James, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Study, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Peabody, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Phelps-Ward, Mrs., <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Phillips, Wendell, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Pittsfield, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>-<a href="#Page_193">193</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Plymouth, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Prescott, W. H., <a href="#Page_86">86</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Ripley, Ezra, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ripley, Mrs. Samuel, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Salem, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sanborn, F. B., <a href="#Page_20">20</a>-<a href="#Page_24">24</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Scarlet Letter, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sedgwick, Catherine, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Septimius Felton, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>-<a href="#Page_65">65</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Silas Lapham, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sleepy Hollow, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>-<a href="#Page_80">80</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sprague, Charles, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Stockbridge, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bowl, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Glen, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Stone, J. A., <a href="#Page_25">25</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sudbury, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Summer School of Philosophy, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>Sumner, Charles, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Swinburne, A. C., <a href="#Page_210">210</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Tanglewood, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Thaxter, Celia, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Thoreau, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Abodes, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Walden, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>-<a href="#Page_74">74</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Ticknor, George, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Walden Pond, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Wayside, The, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Wayside Inn, The, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Webster, Daniel, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Marshfield, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Wheildon, William, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Whipple, E. P., <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Whitefield, George, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Whitman, Walt, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A Day with, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Leaves of Grass, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Whittier, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Homes, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Scenes, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sepulchre, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Williamstown, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Willis, N. P., <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Woodworth;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Old Oaken Bucket, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Zenobia, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
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@@ -0,0 +1,4969 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Literary Shrines, by Theodore F. Wolfe
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Literary Shrines
+       The Haunts of Some Famous American Authors
+
+
+Author: Theodore F. Wolfe
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 17, 2012  [eBook #38889]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY SHRINES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+(http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by
+Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 38889-h.htm or 38889-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38889/38889-h/38889-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38889/38889-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/literaryshrinesh00wolfrich
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
+
+      Superscripted characters are indicated with a carat followed
+      by the superscripted character(s) in curly braces.
+
+
+
+
+LITERARY SHRINES
+
+FIFTH EDITION
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+  _BY DR. WOLFE_
+
+  Uniform with this volume
+
+  A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE
+  AMONG THE HAUNTS OF SOME FAMOUS BRITISH AUTHORS
+
+  _Treating descriptively and reminiscently of the homes and resorts of
+  English writers from the time of Chaucer to the present, and of the
+  scenes commemorated in their works_
+
+  262 pages. Illustrated with four photogravures. $1.25
+
+  A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE AND LITERARY SHRINES
+
+  Two volumes in a box, $2.50
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+  [Illustration: THE WAYSIDE, CONCORD]
+
+
+LITERARY SHRINES
+
+The Haunts of Some Famous American Authors
+
+by
+
+THEODORE F. WOLFE
+M.D. PH.D.
+
+Author of A Literary Pilgrimage etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+J. B. Lippincott Company
+Philadelphia. MDCCCXCV
+
+Copyright, 1895,
+By
+Theodore F. Wolfe.
+
+Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+  TO
+
+  MY WIFE,
+
+  MY SYMPATHETIC AND APPRECIATIVE
+  COMPANION IN PILGRIMAGES
+  TO MANY
+
+  LITERARY SHRINES
+
+  IN THE NEW WORLD AND THE OLD,
+  THIS VOLUME
+  IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.
+
+
+
+
+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
+
+    V. THE ORCHARD HOUSE AND ITS NEIGHBORS.
+
+  _Ellery Channing--Margaret Fuller--The Alcotts--Professor
+    Harris--Summer School of Philosophy--Where Little Women was
+    written and Robert Hagburn lived--Where Cyril Norton was slain_   52
+
+    VI. HAWTHORNE'S WAYSIDE HOME.
+
+  _Sometime Abode of Alcott--Hawthorne--Lathrop--Margaret Sidney--
+    Storied Apartments--Hawthorne's Study--His Mount of Vision--Where
+    Septimius Felton and Rose Garfield dwelt_                         58
+
+    VII. THE WALDEN OF THOREAU.
+
+  _A Transcendental Font--Emerson's Garden--Thoreau's
+    Cove--Cairn--Beanfield--Resort of Emerson--Hawthorne--Channing--
+    Hosmer--Alcott, etc._                                             68
+
+    VIII. THE HILL-TOP HEARSED WITH PINES.
+
+  _Last Resting-Place of the Illustrious Concord Company--Their
+    Graves beneath the Piny Boughs_                                   75
+
+
+  IN AND OUT OF LITERARY BOSTON
+
+
+  IN BOSTON
+
+  _A Golden Age of Letters--Literary Associations--Isms--Clubs--Where
+    Hester Prynne and Silas Lapham lived--The Corner Book-store--Home
+    of Fields--Sargent--Hilliard--Aldrich--Deland--Parkman--Holmes--
+    Howells--Moulton--Hale--Howe--Jane Austin, etc._                  83
+
+
+  OUT OF BOSTON
+
+    I. CAMBRIDGE: ELMWOOD: MOUNT AUBURN.
+
+  _Holmes's Church-yard--Bridge--Smithy, Chapel, and River of
+    Longfellow's Verse--Abodes of Lettered Culture--Holmes--
+    Higginson--Agassiz--Norton--Clough--Howells--Fuller--
+    Longfellow--Lowell--Longfellow's City of the Dead and its
+    Precious Graves_                                                 103
+
+    II. BELMONT: THE WAYSIDE INN: HOME OF WHITTIER.
+
+  _Lowell's Beaver Brook--Abode of Trowbridge--Red Horse Tavern--
+    Parsons and the Company of Longfellow's Friends--Birthplace of
+    Whittier--Scenes of his Poems--Dwelling and Grave of the
+    Countess--Powow Hill--Whittier's Amesbury Home--His Church and
+    Tomb_                                                            117
+
+    III. SALEM: WHITTIER'S OAK-KNOLL AND BEYOND.
+
+  _Cemetery of Hawthorne's Ancestors--Birthplace of Hawthorne and his
+    Wife--Where Fame was won--House of the Seven Gables--
+    Custom-House--Where Scarlet Letter was written--Main Street
+    and Witch Hill--Sights from a Steeple--Later Home of Whittier--
+    Norman's Woe--Lucy Larcom--Parton, etc.--Rivermouth--Thaxter_    128
+
+    IV. WEBSTER'S MARSHFIELD: BROOK FARM, ETC.
+
+  _Scenes of the Old Oaken Bucket--Webster's Home and Grave--Where
+    Emerson won his Wife--Home of Miss Peabody--Parkman--Miss
+    Guiney--Aldrich's Ponkapog--Farm of Ripley's Community--Relics
+    and Reminiscences_                                               141
+
+
+  IN BERKSHIRE WITH HAWTHORNE
+
+    I. THE GRAYLOCK AND HOOSAC REGION.
+
+  _North Adams and about--Hawthorne's Acquaintances and Excursions--
+    Actors and Incidents of Ethan Brand--Kiln of Bertram the
+    Lime-Burner--Natural Bridge--Graylock--Thoreau--Hoosac
+    Mountain--Deerfield Arch--Williamstown--Bryant_                  155
+
+    II. LENOX AND MIDDLE BERKSHIRE.
+
+  _Beloved of the Litterateurs--La Maison Rouge--Where The House of
+    the Seven Gables was written--Wonder-Book and Tanglewood Scenes--
+    The Bowl--Beecher's Laurel Lake--Kemble--Bryant's Monument
+    Mountain--Stockbridge--Catherine Sedgwick--Melville's Piazza
+    and Chimney--Holmes--Longfellow--Pittsfield_                     176
+
+
+  A DAY WITH THE GOOD GRAY POET
+
+  _Walk and Talk with Socrates in Camden--The Bard's Appearance and
+    Surroundings--Recollections of his Life and Work--Hospital
+    Service--Praise for his Critics--His Literary Habit, Purpose,
+    Equipment, and Style--His Religious Bent--Readings_              201
+
+
+
+
+  ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+  The Wayside, Concord                                   _Frontispiece._
+
+  The Thoreau-Alcott House,--Present Appearance                       21
+
+  The Grave of Emerson                                                78
+
+  Where Longfellow lived                                             108
+
+
+
+
+THE CONCORD PILGRIMAGE
+
+
+  I. A Village of Literary Shrines
+  II. The Old Manse
+  III. Storied River and Battle-field
+  IV. The Home of Emerson
+  V. Alcott's Orchard House, etc.
+  VI. Hawthorne's Wayside Home
+  VII. The Walden of Thoreau
+  VIII. The Hill-top Hearsed with Pines
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+A VILLAGE OF LITERARY SHRINES
+
+_Abodes of Thoreau--The Alcotts--Channing--Sanborn--Hudson--Hoar--
+  Wheildon--Bartlett--The Historic Common--Cemetery--Church._
+
+
+If to trace the footsteps of genius and to linger and muse in the
+sometime haunts of the authors we read and love, serve to bring us
+nearer their personality, to place us _en rapport_ with their
+aspirations, and thus to incite our own spiritual development and
+broaden and exalt our moral nature, then the Concord pilgrimage should
+be one of the most fruitful and beneficent of human experiences.
+Familiarity with the physical stand-point of our authors, with the
+scenes amid which they lived and wrote, and with the objects which
+suggested the imagery of their poems, the settings of their tales, and
+which gave tone and color to their work, will not only bring us into
+closer sympathy with the writers, but will help us to a better
+understanding of the writings.
+
+A plain, straggling village, set in a low country amid a landscape
+devoid of any striking beauty or grandeur, Concord yet attracts more
+pilgrims than any other place of equal size upon the continent, not
+because it holds an historic battle-field, but because it has been the
+dwelling-place of some of the brightest and best in American letters,
+who have here written their books and warred against creeds, forms, and
+intellectual servitude. It is another Stratford, another Mecca, to which
+come reverent pilgrims from the Old World and the New to worship at its
+shrines and to wander through the scenes hallowed by the memories of its
+illustrious _litterateurs_, seers, and evangels. To the literary prowler
+it is all sacred ground,--its streets, its environing hills, forests,
+lakes, and streams have alike been blessed by the loving presence of
+genius, have alike been the theatres and the inspirations of noble
+literary achievement.
+
+Our way lies by historic Lexington, and thence, through a pleasant
+country and by the road so fateful to the British soldiery, we approach
+Concord. It is a placid, almost somnolent village of villas, abounding
+with delightful lawns and gardens, with great elms shading its
+old-fashioned thoroughfares and drooping their pliant boughs above its
+comfortable homes.
+
+Elizabeth Hoar has said, "Concord is Thoreau's monument, adorned with
+inscriptions by his hand;" of the circle of brilliant souls who have
+given the town its world-wide fame, he alone was native here; he has
+left his imprint upon the place, and we meet some reminder of him at
+every turn. By the historic village Common is the quondam home of his
+grandfather, where his father was reared, and where the "New England
+Essene" himself lived some time with the unmarried aunt who made the
+ample homespun suit he wore at Walden. The house of his maternal
+grandmother, where Henry David Thoreau was born, stood a little way out
+on a by-road to Lexington, and a daughter of this home--Thoreau's
+winsome aunt Louisa Dunbar--was ineffectually wooed by the famous Daniel
+Webster. At the age of eight months the infant Thoreau was removed to
+the village, in which nearly the whole of his life was passed. Believing
+that Concord, with its sylvan environment, was a microcosm "by the study
+of which the whole world could be comprehended," this wildest of
+civilized men seldom strayed beyond its familiar precincts. Alcott
+declared that Thoreau thought he dwelt in the centre of the universe,
+and seriously contemplated annexing the rest of the planet to Concord.
+
+On the south side of the elm-shaded Main street of the village we find a
+pleasant and comfortable, old-fashioned wooden dwelling,--the home
+which, in his later years, the philosopher, poet, and mystic shared with
+his mother and sisters. About it are great trees which Thoreau planted;
+a stairway and some of the partition walls of the house are said to have
+been erected by him. In the second story of an extension at the back of
+the main edifice, some of the family worked at their father's trade of
+pencil-making. In the large room at the right of the entrance, afterward
+the sitting-room of the Alcotts, some of Thoreau's later writing was
+done, and here, one May morning of 1862, he breathed out a life all too
+brief and doubtless abbreviated by the storms and drenchings endured in
+his pantheistic pursuits. In this house Thoreau's "spiritual brother,"
+John Brown of Osawatomie, was a welcome guest, and more than one
+wretched fugitive from slavery found shelter and protection. From
+his village home Thoreau made, with the poet Ellery Channing, the
+journey described in his "Yankee in Canada," and several shorter
+"Excursions,"--shared with Edward Hoar, Channing, and others,--which he
+has detailed in the delightful manner which gives him a distinct
+position in American literature.
+
+  [Illustration: THE THOREAU-ALCOTT HOUSE]
+
+After the removal of Sophia, the last of Thoreau's family, his friend
+Frank B. Sanborn occupied the Thoreau house for some years, and then
+it became the home of the Alcott family. Here Mrs. Alcott, the "Marmee"
+of "Little Women," died; here Bronson Alcott was stricken with the fatal
+paralysis; here commenced the malady which contributed to the death of
+his illustrious daughter Louisa; here lived "Meg," the mother of the
+"Little Men" and widow of "John Brooke" of the Alcott books; and here
+now lives her son, while his brother, "Demi-John," dwells just around
+the corner in the next street. In the room at the left of the hall,
+fitted up for her study and workshop, Louisa Alcott wrote some of the
+tales which the world will not forget. An added apartment at the right
+of the sitting-room was long the sick-room of the Orphic philosopher and
+the scene of Louisa's tender care. Here the writer saw them both for the
+last time: Alcott helpless upon his couch, his bright intelligence
+dulled by a veil of darkness; the daughter at his bedside, sedulous of
+his comfort, devoted, hopeful, helpful to the end. A cherished memento
+of that interview is a photograph of the Thoreau-Alcott mansion, made by
+one of the "Little Men," and presented to the writer, with her latest
+book, by "Jo" herself. The front fence has since been removed, and the
+illustration shows the present view.
+
+In Thoreau's time, a modest dwelling, with a low roof sloping to the
+rear,--now removed to the other side of the street,--stood directly
+opposite his home, and was for some time the abode of his friend and
+earliest biographer, the sweet poet William Ellery Channing. Thoreau
+thought Channing one of the few who understood "the art of taking
+walks," and the two were almost constant companions in saunterings
+through the countryside, or in idyllic excursions upon the river in the
+boat which Thoreau kept moored to a riverside willow at the foot of
+Channing's garden. The beneficent influence of their comradeship is
+apparent in the work of both these recluse writers, and many of the most
+charming of Channing's stanzas are either inspired by or are poetic
+portrayals of the scenes he saw with Thoreau,--the "Rudolpho" and the
+"Idolon" of his verse. Thoreau's last earthly "Excursion" was with this
+friend to Monadnoc, where they encamped some days in 1860. To this home
+of Channing came, in 1855, Sanborn, who was welcomed to Concord by all
+the literary galaxy, and quickly became a familiar associate of each
+particular star. To go swimming together seems to have been, among these
+earnest and exalted thinkers, the highest evidence of mutual esteem, and
+so favored was Sanborn that he is able to record, "I have swum with
+Alcott in Thoreau's Cove, with Thoreau in the Assabet, with Channing in
+every water of Concord."
+
+In this home Sanborn entertained John Brown on the eve of his Virginia
+venture; here escaping slaves found refuge; here fugitives from the
+Harper's Ferry fight were concealed; here Sanborn was arrested for
+supposed complicity in Brown's abortive schemes, and was forcibly
+rescued by his indignant neighbors. This modest dwelling gave place to
+the later residence of Frederic Hudson, the historian of journalism, who
+here produced many of his contributions to literature. Professor Folsom,
+of "Translations of the Four Gospels," and the popular authoress Mrs.
+Austin have also lived in this neighborhood.
+
+For some years Sanborn had a famous select school on a street back of
+Thoreau's house, not far from the recent hermit-home of his friend
+Channing, at whose request Hawthorne sent some of his children to this
+school, in which Emerson's daughter--the present Mrs. Forbes--was a
+beloved pupil, and where, also, the daughters of John Brown were for
+some time placed.
+
+A few rods westward from his former dwelling we find Sanborn in a
+tasteful modern villa,--spending life's early autumn among his books.
+He abounds with memories of his friends of the by-gone time, and his
+reminiscences and biographies of some of them have largely employed his
+pen in his pleasant study here.
+
+Some time ago the sweet singer Channing suffered in his hermitage a
+severe illness, which prompted his appreciative friend Sanborn to take
+him into his own home; so we find two surviving witnesses or
+participants in the moral, intellectual, and political renaissance
+dwelling under the same roof. In the kindly atmosphere of this home, the
+shy poet--who in his age is more recluse than ever, and scarce known to
+his neighbors--so far regained physical vigor that he has resumed his
+frequent visits to the Boston library, long time a favorite haunt of
+his. The world refused to listen to this exquisite singer, and now "his
+songs have ceased." He has been celebrated by Emerson in the "Dial," by
+Thoreau in his "Week," by Hawthorne in "Mosses" and "Note-Books," by the
+generous and sympathetic Sanborn in many ways and places; but even such
+poems as "Earth-Spirit," "Poet's Hope," and "Reverence" found few
+readers,--the dainty little volumes fewer purchasers.
+
+Below the Thoreau-Alcott house on the village street was a prior home of
+Thoreau, from which he made, with his brother, the voyage described in
+his "Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers," and from which, in superb
+disdain of "civilization" and social conventionalities, he went to the
+two years' hermitage of "Walden."
+
+Nearly opposite the earlier residence of the stoic is the home of the
+Hoars, where lived Thoreau's comrade Edward Hoar, and Edward's
+sister,--styled "Elizabeth the Wise" by Emerson, of whom she was the
+especial friend and favorite, having been the _fiancee_ of his brother
+Charles, who died in early manhood. The adjacent spacious mansion was
+long the home of Wheildon, the historian, essayist, and pamphleteer.
+Nearer the village Common lived John A. Stone, dramatist of "The Ancient
+Briton" and of the "Metamora" in which Forrest won his first fame. In
+this part of the village the eminent correspondent "Warrington," author
+of "Manual of Parliamentary Law," was born and reared; and in Lowell
+Street, not far away, lives the gifted George B. Bartlett, of the
+"Carnival of Authors,"--poet, scenic artist, and local historian.
+
+In the public library we find copies of the printed works of the many
+Concord authors, and portraits or busts of most of the writers. Among
+the treasures of the institution are priceless manuscripts of Curtis,
+Motley, Lowell, Holmes, Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and others.
+
+Among the thickly-strewn graves on the hill-side above the Common repose
+the ashes of Emerson's ancestors; about them lie the fore-fathers of the
+settlement,--some of them asleep here for two centuries, reckless alike
+of the resistance to British oppression and of the later struggle for
+freedom of thought which their townsmen have waged. A tree on the Common
+is pointed out as that beneath which Emerson made an address at the
+dedication of the soldiers' monument, and Bartlett records the tradition
+that the grandfather of the Concord sage stood on the same spot a
+hundred years before to harangue the "embattled farmers" on the morning
+of the Concord fight.
+
+Near by is the ancient church where Emerson's ancestors preached, and
+within whose framework the Provincial Congress met. Of the religious
+services here Emerson was always a supporter, often an attendant; here
+he sometimes preached in early manhood; here his children were
+christened by the elder Channing,--"the first minister he had known who
+was as good as they;" here Emerson's daughter is a devout worshipper.
+
+The comparatively few of the transcendental company who prayed within a
+pew came to this temple, but here all were brought at last for funeral
+rites: here lay Thoreau among his thronging townsmen while Emerson and
+Bronson Alcott made their touching eulogies and Ellery Channing read a
+dirge in a voice almost hushed with emotion; here James Freeman Clarke,
+who had married Hawthorne twenty-two years before, preached his funeral
+sermon above the lifeless body which bore upon its breast the unfinished
+"Dolliver Romance;" before the pulpit here lay the coffined
+Emerson,--"his eyes forever closed, his voice forever still,"--while a
+vast concourse looked upon him for the last time, and his neighbor Judge
+Hoar pronounced one of the most impressive panegyrics that ever fell
+from human lips, and the devoted Alcott read a sonnet.
+
+
+
+
+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._
+
+
+Northward from the village Common, a delightful stroll along a shaded
+highway, less secluded now than when Hawthorne "daily trudged" upon it
+to the post-office or trundled the carriage of "baby Una," brings us to
+the famous "Old Manse" about which he culled his "Mosses."
+
+This antique mansion was first tenanted by Ralph Waldo Emerson's
+grandsire, and next by Dr. Ezra Ripley, who married the previous
+occupant's widow and became guardian of her children,--born under its
+roof,--of whom Emerson's father was one. When his father died Emerson
+found a secondary home here with Dr. Ripley. The Manse was again the
+abode of Emerson and his mother in 1834-35, when he here wrote his first
+volume. In 1842, the year following the demise of the good Dr. Ripley,
+the Manse was profaned by its first lay occupant, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+He brought here his bride, lovely Sophia Peabody (who, with the gifted
+Elizabeth and Mrs. Horace Mann, formed a famous triune sisterhood), and
+for four years lived here the ideal life of which his "Note-Books" and
+"Mosses" give us such delicious glimpses. Hawthorne's landlord, Samuel
+Ripley, was related to the George Ripley with whom Hawthorne had
+recently been associated at Brook Farm. He was uncle of Emerson, and
+preached his ordination sermon; was himself reared in the old Manse, and
+succeeded Hawthorne as resident there. His widow, born Sarah Bradford,
+and celebrated as "the most learned woman ever seen in New England," the
+close friend of Emerson and of the brilliant Concord company, survived
+here until 1876. She made a valuable collection of lichens, and
+sometimes trained young men for Harvard University. Conway records that
+a _savant_ called here one day and found her hearing at once the lesson
+of one student in Sophocles and that of another in Differential
+Calculus, while rocking her grandchild's cradle with one foot and
+shelling peas for dinner. The place is now owned by her daughters, who
+reside in Cambridge, and is rented in summer.
+
+It is little changed since the time Emerson's ancestor hurried thence to
+the gathering of his parishioners by his church-door before the Concord
+battle,--still less changed since the halcyon days when the great wizard
+of romance dwelt--the "most unknown of authors"--within its shades. It
+is still the unpretentious Eden, "the El Dorado for dreamers," which so
+completely won the heart of the sensitive Hawthorne.
+
+The picturesque old mansion stands amid greensward and foliage, its
+ample grounds divided from the highway by a low wall. The gate-way is
+flanked by tall posts of rough-hewn stone, whence a grass-grown avenue,
+bordered by a colonnade of overarching trees, leads to the house. Within
+the scattered sunshine and shade of the avenue, a row of stone slabs
+sunken in the turf like gravestones paves the path paced by Ripley,
+Emerson, and Hawthorne as they pondered and planned their compositions.
+Of the trees aligned upon either side, some, gray-lichened and broken,
+are survivors of Hawthorne's time; others are set to replace fallen
+patriarchs and keep the stately lines complete. At the right of the
+broad _allee_ and extending away to the battle-ground is the field,
+waving now with lush grass, where Hawthorne and Thoreau found the flint
+arrow-heads and other relics of an aboriginal village. Upon the space
+which skirts the other side of the avenue, Hawthorne had the garden
+which engaged so much of his time and thought, and where he produced
+for us abundant crops of something better than his vegetables. Here his
+Brook-Farm experience was useful. Passing neighbors would often see the
+darkly-clad figure of the recluse hoeing in this "patch," or, as often,
+standing motionless, gazing upon the ground so fixedly and so
+long--sometimes for hours together--that they thought him daft. Of the
+delights of summer mornings spent here with his peas, potatoes, and
+squashes, he gives us many glimpses in his record of that happy time;
+but the "Note-Books" show us, alas! that this simple pleasure was not
+without alloy, for, although his "garden flourished like Eden," there
+are hints of "weeds," next "more weeds," then a "ferocious banditti of
+weeds" with which "the other Adam" could never have contended. But a
+greater woe came with the foes who menaced his artistic squashes,--"the
+unconscionable squash-bugs," "those infernal squash-bugs," against which
+he must "carry on continual war." For the moments that we contemplate
+the scene of his entomic warfare, the greater battle-field, a few rods
+away, seems hardly more impressive. Few of the trees which in
+Hawthorne's time stood nearest the house remain; the producers of the
+peaches and "thumping pears" have gone the way of all trees. So has Dr.
+Ripley's famous willow--celebrated in Emerson's and Channing's exquisite
+verse and in Hawthorne's matchless prose--which veiled the western face
+of the mansion and through which Hawthorne's study-windows peeped out
+upon orchard, river, and mead. In the orchard that has borne such
+luscious fruit of fancy, some of the contorted and moss-grown trees,
+whose branches--"like withered hands and arms"--hold out the sweet
+blossoms on this June day, are the same that Hawthorne pictures among
+his "Mosses," and beneath which he lay in summer reverie. Few vines now
+clamber upon the house-walls, lilacs still grow beneath the old
+study-window, and a tall mass of their foliage screens a corner of the
+venerable edifice, which time has toned into perfect harmony with its
+picturesque environment. It is a great, square, wooden structure of two
+stories, with added attic rooms beneath an overwhelming gambrel roof,
+which is the conspicuous feature of the edifice and contributes to its
+antique form. The heavy roof settles down close upon the small,
+multipaned windows. From above the door little convex glasses, like a
+row of eyes, look out upon the visitor as he applies for admission.
+
+A spacious central hall, rich in antique panelling and sombre with grave
+tints, extends through the house. From its dusk and coolness we look out
+upon the bright summer day through its open doors; through one we see
+the "hill of the Emersons" beyond the highway, the other frames a
+pleasing picture of orchard and sward with glimpses of the river shining
+through its bordering shrubbery. The quaint apartments are darkly
+wainscoted and low-ceiled, with massive beams crossing overhead. Some of
+these rooms Hawthorne has shown us. The one at the left, which the
+novelist believed to have been the sleeping-room of Dr. Ripley, was the
+parlor of the Hawthornes, and--decked with a gladsome carpet, pictures,
+and flowers daily gathered from the river-bank--Hawthorne averred it was
+"one of the prettiest and pleasantest rooms in the whole world." To this
+room then came the sage Emerson "with a sunbeam in his face;" the
+"cast-iron man" Thoreau, "long-nosed, queer-mouthed, ugly as sin," but
+with whom to talk "is like hearing the wind among the boughs of a forest
+tree;" Ellery Channing, with his wife and her illustrious sister,
+Margaret Fuller; the gifted George William Curtis, then tilling a farm
+not far from the Manse, long before he lounged in an "Easy Chair;"
+genial Bradford, relative of Ripley, and associate and firm friend of
+Hawthorne; Horatio Bridge, of the "African Cruiser" and of the recent
+Hawthorne "Recollections;" the critic George Hillard, at whose house
+Hawthorne was married; "Prince" Lowell, the large-hearted; Franklin
+Pierce, Hawthorne's life-long friend. Concerning the discussion of
+things physical and metaphysical, to which these old walls then
+listened, the host gives us little hint. Sometimes the guests were
+"feasted on nectar and ambrosia" by the new Adam and Eve; sometimes they
+"listened to the music of the spheres which, for private convenience, is
+packed into a music-box,"--left here by Thoreau when he went to teach in
+the family of Emerson's brother; once here before this wide fireplace
+they sat late and told ghost stories,--doubtless suggested by the
+clerical phantom whose sighs they used to hear in yonder dusky corner,
+and whose rustling gown sometimes almost touched the company as he moved
+about among them. In this room Dr. Ripley penned, besides his "History
+of the Concord Fight" and "Treatise on Education," three thousand of his
+protracted homilies,--a fact upon which Hawthorne found it "awful to
+reflect,"--and here in our day the gifted George B. Bartlett wrote some
+part of his Concord sketches, etc. Here, too, and in the larger room
+opposite, the erudite and versatile Mrs. Samuel Ripley held her social
+court and received the exalted Concord conclave, with other earnest
+leaders of thought.
+
+In the front chamber at the right Hawthorne's first child, the hapless
+Una,--named from Spenser's "Faerie Queene,"--was born. Behind this is
+the "ten-foot-square" apartment which was Hawthorne's study and
+workshop. Two windows of small, prismatic-hued panes look into the
+orchard, and upon one of these Hawthorne has inscribed,--
+
+    "Nath^{l}. Hawthorne.
+  This is his study, 1843."
+
+Below this another hand has graven,--
+
+    "Inscribed by my husband at
+      Sunset Apr 3^{d} 1843
+    In the gold light S. A. H.
+
+  Man's accidents are God's purposes.
+                      SOPHIA A. HAWTHORNE 1843."
+
+From its north window, said to have been cracked by the explosions of
+musketry in the conflict, we see the battle-field and a reach of the
+placid river. This room had been the study of Emerson's grandfather;
+from its window his wife watched the fight between his undrilled
+parishioners and the British veterans. His daughter Mary--aunt of our
+American Plato and herself a gifted writer--used to boast "she was in
+arms at the battle," having been held up at this window to see the
+soldiery in the highway. Years later Emerson himself came into
+possession of this room, and here wrote his "Nature," antagonizing many
+of the orthodox tenets. Perhaps it was well for the moral serenity of
+his ancestor--to whom the transcendental movement would have seemed
+arrant March-madness--that he could not foresee the composition of such
+a volume here within the sanctity of his old study. The book was
+published anonymously, and Sanborn says that when inquiry was made, "Who
+is the author of 'Nature?'" a Concord wit replied, "God and Waldo
+Emerson."
+
+Next, the dreamy Hawthorne succeeded to the little study, and here, with
+the sunlight glimmering through the willow boughs, he worked in solitude
+upon his charming productions for three or four hours of each day. Here,
+besides the copious entries in his journals, he prepared most of the
+papers of his "Mosses," wrote many articles for the "Democratic Review"
+and other magazines, edited "Old Dartmoor Prisoner" and Horatio Bridge's
+"African Cruiser." It is note-worthy that the "Celestial Railroad," in
+which Hawthorne records his condemnation of the spiritual renaissance by
+substituting the "terrible giant Transcendentalist" (who feeds upon
+pilgrims bound for the Celestial City) in place of the Pope and Pagan of
+Bunyan's allegory, was written in the same room with Emerson's volume,
+which inaugurated the great transcendental movement in the Western
+World.
+
+Among the recesses of the great attic of the Manse we may still see the
+"Saints' Chamber," with its fireplace and single window; but it is
+tenanted by sprouting clergymen no longer. The atmosphere of theological
+twilight and mustiness--acquired from generations of clerical
+inhabitants--which pervaded the place in Hawthorne's time has been
+dissipated by the larger and happier home-life of Mrs. Samuel Ripley and
+the blithe and brilliant company that gathered about her here. Dismayed
+by these beneficent influences, the ghosts have indignantly deserted the
+mansion: even the persistive clerical, who sighed in Hawthorne's parlor
+and noisily turned his sermon-leaves in the upper hall, has not
+disturbed the later occupants of the Manse.
+
+One might muse and linger long about the old place which, as his
+"Mosses" and journals show, Hawthorne made a part of his very life. Its
+air of antiquity, its traditional associations, its seclusion, and all
+its peaceful environment were pleasing to the shy and susceptible nature
+of the subtle romancer, and accorded well with his introspective habit.
+Besides, it was "the first home he ever had," and it was shared with his
+"new Eve." No wonder is it that he could here declare, "I had rather be
+on earth than in the seventh heaven, just now."
+
+It is saddening to remember that, from this paradise, poverty drove him
+forth.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+A STORIED RIVER AND BATTLE-FIELD
+
+_Where Zenobia Drowned--Where Embattled Farmers Fought--Thoreau's
+  Hemlocks--Haunts of Hawthorne--Channing--Thoreau--Emerson, etc._
+
+
+Behind Hawthorne's "Old Manse"--its course so tortuous that Thoreau
+suggested for Concord's escutcheon "a field verdant with the river
+circling nine times round," so noiseless that he likened it to the
+"moccasined tread" of an Indian, so sluggish that Hawthorne had dwelt
+some weeks beside it before he determined which way its current
+lies--flows the Concord, "river of peace." This placid stream is the
+aboriginal "Musketaquid" of Emerson's poem,--sung of Thoreau, Channing,
+and many another bard, beloved of Hawthorne and pictured in rapturous
+phrase in his "Note-Books" and "Mosses from an Old Manse." It was the
+delightful haunt of Hawthorne's leisure, the scene of the occurrence
+which inspired the most thrilling and high-wrought chapter of his
+romance.
+
+A grassy path, shaded by orchard trees, leads from the west door of the
+Manse to the river's margin at the place where Hawthorne kept his boat
+under the willows. The boat had before been the property of Thoreau,
+built by his hands and used by him on the famous voyage described in his
+"Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers." Hawthorne named the craft
+"Pond-Lily," because it brought so many cargoes of that beautiful flower
+to decorate his home. In it, alone or accompanied by Thoreau or Ellery
+Channing, he made the many delightful excursions he has described.
+Embarking on the slumberous stream, we follow the course of Hawthorne's
+boat to many a scene made familiar by that dreamful romancer and by the
+poets and philosophers of Concord. First to the place, below the bridge
+of the battle, where one dark night Hawthorne and Channing assisted in
+recovering from the water the ghastly body of the girl-suicide, an
+incident which made a profoundly horrible impression upon the sensitive
+novelist, and which he employed as the thrilling termination of the tale
+of Zenobia in "The Blithedale Romance,"--portraying it with a tragic
+power which has never been surpassed. Thence we paddle up the placid
+stream, as it slumbers along its winding course between the meadows,
+kisses the tangled grasses and wild flowers that fringe its margins,
+bathes the roots and boughs of the elders and dwarf willows which
+overhang its surface as if to gaze upon the reflections of their own
+loveliness mirrored there. The reach of river--"from Nashawtuc to the
+Cliff"--above the confluence of the two branches was most beloved and
+frequented of Thoreau; here he sometimes brought Emerson, as on that
+summer evening when the sage's diary records, "the river-god took the
+form of my valiant Henry Thoreau and introduced me to the riches of his
+shadowy, starlit, moonlit stream," etc.
+
+The deeper portion of the river near the Manse was Hawthorne's habitual
+resort for bathing and fishing, but his longer solitary voyages and his
+"wild, free days" with Ellery Channing were upon the beautiful and
+sheltered North Branch,--the Assabeth of the "Mosses,"--which flows into
+the Concord a half-mile above the Manse. Into this branch we turn our
+boat, and through sunshine and shade we follow the winsome course of the
+lingering stream, finding new and delightful seclusion at every turn. A
+railway now lies along one lofty bank, but its unsightliness is
+concealed by long lines of willows planted by the loving hands of poet
+and artist,--Bartlett and French,--and the infrequent trains little
+disturb the seclusion of the place. Giant trees, standing with "their
+feet fixed in the flood," bend their bright foliage above the
+softly-flowing stream and fleck its surface with shadows; pond-lilies
+are still up-borne by its dreaming waters, and cardinal flowers bedeck
+its banks; its barer reaches are ribbons of reflected sky. The spot on
+the margin locally known as "The Hemlocks," and noted by Hawthorne as
+being only less sacred in his memory than the household hearth, remains
+itself undisturbed. Here a clump of great evergreens projects from the
+base of the lofty bank above and across the stream, and forms on the
+shore a shaded bower, carpeted by the brown needles which have fallen
+through many a year. This was a favorite haunt of Hawthorne and Channing
+in blissful days; here they prepared their sylvan noontide feasts; here
+they lounged and dreamed; here their "talk gushed up like the babble of
+a fountain." As we recline in their accustomed resting-place beside the
+sighing stream, and look up at the azure heaven through the boughs where
+erstwhile often curled the smoke of their fire, we vainly try to imagine
+something of what would be the converse, merry or profound, of such
+starry spirits amid such an inspiring scene, and we more than ever
+regret that neither the gentle poet nor the subtle romancer has chosen
+to share that converse with his readers.
+
+Long and lovingly we loiter in this consecrated spot, and then slowly
+float back to Hawthorne's landing-place by his orchard wall.
+
+A few rods distant, at the corner of his field, is the site of the "rude
+bridge that arched the flood," and the first battle-ground of the
+American Revolution. On the farther side a colossal minute-man in
+bronze, modelled by the Concord sculptor French, surmounts a granite
+pedestal inscribed with Emerson's immortal epic, and marks the spot
+where stood the irregular array of the "embattled farmers" when they
+here "fired the shot heard round the world." The statue replaces a bush
+which sprang from the soil fertilized by the blood of Davis, and which
+Emerson imaged as the "burning bush where God spake for his people."
+
+The position of the British regulars on the hither shore is indicated by
+the "votive stone" of Emerson's poem,--a slender obelisk of
+granite,--and near it, close under the wall of the Manse enclosure, is
+the rude memorial that marks the grave of the British soldiers who were
+slain on this spot. The current tradition that a lad who, after the
+battle, came, axe in hand, from the Manse wood-pile, found one of the
+soldiers yet alive and dispatched him with the axe, was first related to
+Hawthorne by James Russell Lowell, as they stood together above this
+grave. The effect of this story upon the feelings of the susceptible
+Hawthorne is told on a page of "The Old Manse," and--a score of years
+later and in different shape--is related in the romance of "Septimius
+Felton."
+
+
+
+
+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._
+
+
+Following the direction of the British retreat from the historic Common,
+we come, beyond the village, to the modest mansion which was for half a
+century the abode of the princely man who was not only "the Sage of
+Concord," but, in the esteem of some contemporaries, "was Concord
+itself."
+
+Emerson declares, "great men never live in a crowd,"--"a scholar must
+embrace solitude as a bride, must have his glees and glooms alone." Of
+himself he says, "I am a poet and must therefore live in the country; a
+sunset, a forest, a river view are more to me than many friends, and
+must divide my day with my books;" and this was the consideration which
+finally determined his withdrawal from the storm and fret of the city to
+his chosen home here by Walden woods and among the scenes of his
+childhood. It was his retirement to this semi-seclusion which called
+forth his much-quoted poem, "Good-by, proud world! I'm going home." To
+him here came the afflatus he had before lacked, here his faculties
+were inspirited, and here his literary productiveness commenced.
+
+Behind a row of dense-leaved horse-chestnuts ranged along the highway,
+the quondam home of Emerson nestles among clustering evergreens which
+were planted by Bronson Alcott and Henry D. Thoreau for their friend. A
+copse of pines sighs in the summer wind close by; an orchard planted and
+pruned by Emerson's hands, and a garden tended by Thoreau, extend from
+the house to a brook flowing through the grounds and later joining the
+Concord by the famous old Manse; beyond the brook lies the way to
+Walden. At the left of the house is a narrow open reach of greensward on
+the farther verge of which erst stood the unique rustic bower--with a
+wind-harp of untrimmed branches above it--which was fashioned by the
+loving hands of Alcott. The mansion is a substantial, square,
+clapboarded structure of two stories, with hip-roofs; a square window
+projects at one side; a wing is joined at the back; covered porches
+protect the entrances; light paint covers the plain walls which gleam
+through the bowering foliage, and the whole aspect of the place is
+delightfully attractive and home-like. Its pleasant and unpretentious
+apartments more than realize the comfortable suggestion of the
+exterior. Adjoining the hall on the right is the plain, rectangular room
+which was the philosopher's library and workshop. The cheerful fireplace
+and the simple furnishings of the room are little changed since he here
+laid down his pen for the last time; the heavy table held his
+manuscript, his books are ranged upon the shelves, the busts and
+portraits he cherished adorn the walls, his accustomed chair is upon the
+spot where he sat to write.
+
+Emerson's afternoons were usually spent abroad, but his mornings were
+habitually passed among his books in this small corner-room--"the study
+under the pines"--recording, in "a pellucid style which his genius made
+classic," the truths which had come to him as he mused by shadowy lake
+or songful stream, in deep wood glade or wayside path. Most of all his
+pen produced, of divinest poetry, of gravest philosophy, of grandest
+thought, was minted into words and inscribed in this simple apartment.
+
+The adjoining parlor--a spacious, pleasant, home-like room, furnished
+forth with many mementos of illustrious friends and guests--is scarcely
+less interesting than the library. This house was the intellectual
+capitol of the village; to it freely came the Concord circle of shining
+ones,--Thoreau, Channing, Sanborn, the Alcotts, the Hoars,--less
+frequently, Hawthorne. For a long time Mrs. Samuel Ripley habitually
+passed her Sabbath evenings here. The Delphic Margaret Fuller, who was
+as truly the "blood of transcendentalism" as Emerson "was its brain,"
+was here for months an honored guest. For long periods Thoreau, whose
+fame owes much to Emerson's generosity, was here an inmate and intimate.
+In Emerson's parlor were held the more formal _seances_ of the Concord
+galaxy; here met the short-lived "Monday Evening Club," which George
+William Curtis whimsically describes as a "congress of oracles," who ate
+russet-apples and discoursed celestially while Hawthorne looked on from
+his corner,--"a statue of night and silence;" here were held many of
+Bronson Alcott's famous "conversations," as well as those of that
+disciple of Platonism, Dr. Jones.
+
+Emerson belonged not to Concord only, but to the whole world,--"his
+thought was the thought of Christendom." To these plain rooms as to an
+intellectual court came, from his own and other lands, hundreds famed in
+art, literature, and politics. Here came Curtis and Bartol to sit at the
+feet of the sage; Charles Sumner and Moncure Conway to bear hence--as
+one of them has said--"memories like those Bunyan's pilgrim must have
+cherished of the Interpreter." Here "came Theodore Parker from the fight
+for free thought," and Wendell Phillips and John Brown from the conflict
+for free men; here came Howells, bearing the line from Hawthorne, "I
+find this young man worthy;" here came Whittier, Agassiz, Hedge,
+Longfellow, Bradford, Lowell, Colonel Higginson, Elizabeth Peabody,
+Julia Ward Howe, as to a fount of wisdom and purity. In this
+unpretentious parlor have gathered such guests as Stanley, Walt Whitman,
+Bret Harte, Henry James, Louis Kossuth, Arthur Clough, Lord Amberley,
+Jones Very, Fredrika Bremer, Harriet Martineau, and many others who,
+like these, would have felt repaid for their journey over leagues of
+land and sea by a hand-clasp and an hour's communion with the intellect
+that has been the beacon of thousands in mental darkness and storm. With
+these came another class of pilgrims, the great army of impracticables,
+"men with long hair, long beards, long collars,--many with long ears,
+each in full chase after the millennium," and each intent upon securing
+the endorsement of Emerson for his own pet scheme. The wonder is that
+the little library saw any work accomplished, so many came to it and
+claimed the time of the master; for to every one--scholar, tradesman,
+and "crank"--were accorded his never-failing courtesy and kindly
+interest. Any one might be the bearer of a divine message, so he
+listened to all,--the most uncouth and _outre_ visitant might be the
+coming man for whom his faith waited, therefore all were admitted.
+
+Here all were "assayed, not analyzed." Emerson's habitual quest for only
+the divinest traits and his quickened perception of the best in men
+enabled him to recognize excellencies which were yet unseen by others.
+While Hawthorne, the shy hermit at the Manse, was unheeded by the world
+and thought crazed by his neighbors, Emerson knew and proclaimed his
+transcendent genius. He first recognized the inspiration of Ellery
+Channing, and made for his exquisite verse exalted claims which have
+been fully justified, and which the world may yet allow. While to others
+Henry Thoreau was yet only an eccentric egotist, Emerson knew him as a
+poet and philosopher, and made him the "forest seer, the heart of all
+the scene," in his lyrical masterpiece "Wood-Notes." He promptly hailed
+Walt Whitman as a true poet while many of us were yet wondering if it
+were not charitable to think him insane.
+
+Emerson's cordiality won for him the honor which prophets rarely enjoy
+in their own country; the objects and places once associated with him
+here are still esteemed sacred by his old neighbors. We find among them
+at this day many who can know nothing of his books, but who, for memory
+of his simple kindness, go far from their furrow or swath to show us
+spots he loved and frequented in woodland or meadow, on swelling
+hill-side or by winding river.
+
+To his home here Emerson brought his bride sixty years ago; here he
+lived his fruitful life and accomplished his work; here he rose to the
+zenith of poesy and prophecy; to him here came the "great and grave
+transition which may not king or priest or conqueror spare;" from here
+his wife, lingering behind him in the eternal march, went a year or two
+ago to rejoin him on the piny hill-top; and here his unmarried
+daughter--of "saint-like face and nun-like garb"--inhabits his home and
+cherishes its treasures.
+
+Emerson's son and biographer some time ago relinquished his medical
+practice in Concord, and has since devoted himself to art. He has a
+residence a mile or so out of the village, but spends much of his time
+abroad. Last year he lectured in London upon the lives and writings of
+some of the Concord authors.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE ORCHARD HOUSE AND ITS NEIGHBORS
+
+_Ellery Channing--Margaret Fuller--The Alcotts--Professor Harris--Summer
+  School of Philosophy--Where Little Women was written and Robert
+  Hagburn lived--Where Cyril Norton was slain._
+
+
+A plain little cottage by the road, not far from Emerson's home, was for
+some time the abode of the companion of many of his rambles through the
+countryside,--the poet Ellery Channing. It was to this simple dwelling,
+as the author of "Little Women" once told the writer, that Channing
+brought his young wife--sister of Margaret Fuller--before the Alcotts
+had come to live in their hill-side home under the wooded ridge, and it
+was here he commenced the sequestered life so suited to his nature and
+tastes.
+
+Some of his descriptive poems of Concord landscapes were written in this
+little cottage. The scenes of one of his earlier winters in the
+neighborhood--when he chopped wood in a rude clearing--are portrayed in
+the exquisite lines of his "Woodman." In those days he thought his poems
+"too sacred to be sold for money," and they were kept for his circle of
+friends. Of the poet's modest home Miss Fuller--that "dazzling woman
+with the flame in her heart"--was a frequent inmate; it was from Concord
+that she went to live in the family of Horace Greeley in New York. At
+the time of her visits at Channing's cottage Thoreau was sojourning with
+Emerson, and we may be sure that the quartette of starry souls, thus
+_juxtapose_, held much soulful and edifying converse. But those of us
+who deplore our lack of the supreme transcendental spirit which we
+ascribe to the Concord circle may find consolation in reflecting that
+some of this gifted company had also earthly tastes, and found even
+discourse concerning the "over-soul" sometimes tiresome. The "strained
+pitch of intellectual intensity" was, upon occasion, gladly relaxed;
+thus we discover the exalted Channing sometime profanely inviting
+Hawthorne--"the gentlest man that kindly Nature ever drew"--to visit him
+in Concord, alluring the novelist with prospects of strong-waters, pipes
+and tobacco without end, and urging, as the utmost inducement, "Emerson
+is gone and there is nobody here to bore you."
+
+
+A few furlongs farther eastward, under the high-soaring elms of the
+Lexington road, we come to the "Orchard House" of Bronson Alcott, "the
+grandfather of the 'Little Women.'" The tasteful dwelling stands several
+rods back from the street, nestling cosily at the foot of a pine-crowned
+slope, and having a wide, sunny outlook in front. Embowered in orchards
+and vines, and shaded by the overreaching arms of giant elms, it seems a
+most delightful home for culture and contemplative study. The cottage
+itself is a low, wide, gabled, picturesquely irregular edifice, which
+our Pythagorean mystic evolved from a forlorn, box-like farm-house which
+he found here when he purchased the place. The rustic fence he set along
+the highway is replaced by an ambitious modern structure. On this
+hill-side Alcott, the "most transcendent of the transcendentalists,"
+lived for nearly thirty years,--but not all of that time in this
+house,--coming here first after the failure of his "Fruitlands"
+community in 1845, and finally twelve years later. Prior to this he had
+been assisted by Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Peabody in his renowned
+Boston Temple School, which was a failure in a financial sense only,
+since it furnished a theme for Miss Peabody's "Record of a School," and
+Louisa Alcott's girlish recollections of it provided her a model for the
+delightful "Plumfield" of her books.
+
+Alcott's treatise on "Early Education," his "Gospels" and "Orphic
+Sayings," had been published, and his "very best contribution to
+literature"--his daughter Louisa--was also extant before he came to this
+home, but it was here that his maturer works and most of his charming
+essays and "Conversations" were produced.
+
+In this house were held the early sessions of the Summer School of
+Philosophy, of which Alcott was the leading spirit; here his daughter,
+the "Beth" of "Jo's" books, died. The interior of the "Orchard House" is
+roomy and quaint and abounds in surprising nooks and cosy recesses. In
+the corner-room Louisa wrote "Little Women" and other delicious books;
+in the room behind it, May, "our Madonna,"--who died Madame
+Nieriker,--had her studio and practised the art which made her famous
+before her untimely end. In the great attic under the sloping roof the
+"Little Women" acted the "comic tragedies" written by "Jo" and "Meg"
+(some of them now published in a volume with a "Foreword" by "Meg")
+until the increasing audiences of Concord children caused the removal of
+the mimic stage to the big barn on the hill-side.
+
+Hawthorne makes this house the abode of Robert Hagburn in "Septimius
+Felton." Along the brow of the tree-clad ridge which overlooks the
+place, and to which Bronson Alcott resorted for the morning and evening
+view, the patriots hastened to intercept the retreat of the British
+troops, "blackened and bloody." In the depression of the ridge just back
+of the house we find the spot where "Septimius Felton" shot the young
+officer, Cyril Norton, and buried him under the trees. On the grave here
+"Septimius" sat with Rose Garfield and the half-crazed Sibyl Dacy; here
+grew the crimson flower which he distilled in his "elixir of
+immortality," and here Sibyl came to die after her draught of the
+compound.
+
+After the removal of the Alcotts to the Thoreau house in the village,
+"Apple Slump"--as Louisa sometimes called this orchard home--became the
+property and residence of that disciple of Hegel, Professor
+Harris,--once principal of the Summer School of Philosophy, and now the
+head of the National Bureau of Education at Washington,--who sometimes
+comes here in summer.
+
+The "Hillside Chapel," erected by Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, of New York,
+for the sessions of the Summer Philosophers, is placed among the trees
+of the orchard adjoining Alcott's old home. It is a plain little
+structure of wood, tasteful in design, with pointed gables and
+vine-draped porch and windows. Its embowered walls, unpainted and
+unplastered, seem "scarcely large enough to contain the wisdom of the
+world," but they have held assemblages of such lights as Emerson,
+Alcott, Sanborn, Bartol, McCosh, Holland, Porter, Lathrop, Stedman,
+Wilder, Hedge, Dr. Jones, Elizabeth Peabody, Ward Howe, Ednah Cheney,
+and other like seekers and promoters of fundamental truth.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+HAWTHORNE'S WAYSIDE HOME.
+
+_Sometime Abode of Alcott--Hawthorne--Lathrop--Margaret Sidney--Storied
+  Apartments--Hawthorne's Study--His Mount of Vision--Where Septimius
+  Felton and Rose Garfield dwelt._
+
+
+On the Lexington road, a little way beyond the Orchard House, is the
+once Wayside home of Hawthorne, the dwelling in which, at a tender age,
+Louisa M. Alcott made her first literary essay. It is a curious, wide,
+straggling, and irregular structure, of varying ages, heights, and
+styles. The central gambrel-roofed portion was the original house of
+four rooms, described as the residence of "Septimius Felton;" other
+rooms have been added at different periods and to serve the need of
+successive occupants, until an architecturally incongruous and
+altogether delightful mansion has been produced. To the ugly little
+square house which Alcott found here in 1845 and christened "Hillside"
+he added a low wing at each side, the central gable in the front of the
+old roof, and wide rustic piazzas across the front of the wings. No
+additions were made during Hawthorne's first residence here, nor during
+the occupancy of Mrs. Hawthorne's brother, while the novelist was
+abroad; but when Hawthorne returned to it in 1860, with "most of his
+family twice as big as when they left," he enlarged one wing by adding
+the barn to it, heightened the other side-wing, erected two spacious
+apartments at the back, and crowned the edifice with a square
+third-story study, which, with its great chimney and many gables,
+overtops the rambling roofs like an observatory, and may have been
+suggested by the tower of the Villa Montauto, where he wrote "The Marble
+Faun." No important changes have been made by the subsequent owners of
+the place.
+
+Hawthorne's widow left the Wayside in 1868. It was afterward occupied by
+a school for young ladies; then by Hawthorne's daughter Rose--herself a
+charming writer--with her husband, the gifted and versatile George
+Parsons Lathrop; later it was purchased by the Boston publisher Daniel
+Lothrop, and has since been the summer home of his widow, who is widely
+known as "Margaret Sidney," the creator of "Five Little Peppers," and
+writer of many delightful books. Hawthorne said, anent his visit to
+Abbotsford, "A house is forever ruined as a home by having been the
+abode of a great man,"--a truth well attested by the present amiable
+mistress of his own Wayside, whose experience with a legion of
+unaccredited, intrusive, and often insolent persons who come at all
+hours of the day, and sometimes in the night, demanding to be shown over
+the place, would be more ludicrous were it less provoking.
+
+Some details of the interior have been beautified by the aesthetic taste
+of Mrs. Lothrop, but an appreciative reverence for Hawthorne leads her
+to preserve his home and its belongings essentially unchanged. At the
+right of the entrance is an antique reception-room, which was
+Hawthorne's study during his first residence here, as it had long before
+been the study of "Septimius Felton" in the tale. It is a low-studded
+apartment with floor of oaken planks, heavy beams strutting from its
+ceiling, a generous fireplace against a side wall, and with two windows
+looking out upon the near highway. In this room Hawthorne wrote
+"Tanglewood Tales" and "Life of Franklin Pierce;" and here that creature
+of his imagination, "Septimius," brooded over his doubts and questions.
+Through yonder windows "Septimius" saw the British soldiery pass and
+repass; above this oaken mantel--now artistically fitted and embellished
+with rare pottery--he hung the sword of the officer he had slain; before
+this fireplace he pored over the mysterious manuscript his dying victim
+had given him; on this hearth he distilled the mystic potion, and here
+poor Sibyl quaffed it. The spacious room at the left, across the hall,
+was at first Hawthorne's parlor; but after he enlarged the dwelling this
+became the library, where he read aloud to the assembled family on
+winter evenings, and where his widow afterward transcribed his
+"Note-Books" for publication. The sunny room above this was the chamber
+of the unfortunate Una; Hawthorne's own sleeping apartment, on the
+second floor, is entered from the hall through the narrowest of
+door-ways. In the upper hall a little wall-closet was the repository of
+Hawthorne's manuscripts, and here, to the surprise of all, an entire
+unpublished romance was found after his death. From this hall a narrow
+stairway, so steep that one need cling to the iron rail at the side in
+order to scale it, ascends to Hawthorne's study in the tower, a lofty
+room with vaulted ceiling. On one side wall is the Gothic enclosure of
+the stairs, against which once stood his plain oaken writing-desk; upon
+it the bronze inkstand he brought from Italy, where it held the ink for
+"The Marble Faun." In this inkstand, he declared, lurked "the little
+imp" which sometimes controlled his pen. Attached to a side of the
+staircase was the high desk or shelf upon which he often wrote
+standing. Book-closets filled the corners at the back, and a little
+fireplace with a plain mantel was placed between two of the windows.
+Loving hands have neatly decorated the ceiling, and painted upon the
+walls mottoes commemorative of the master who wrought here. The views he
+beheld through the windows of this sanctum when he lifted his eyes from
+his book or manuscript are tranquil and soothing: across his roofs in
+one direction he looked upon the sunny grasslands of the valley; in
+another he saw placid slopes of darkly-wooded hills and a reach of the
+elm-bordered road; in a third direction, smiling fields and the
+vineyards where the famous Concord grape first grew met his vision; and
+through his north windows appeared the thick woods that crowned his own
+hill-top,--so near that he "could see the nodding wild flowers" among
+the trees and breathe the woodland odors.
+
+Local tradition declares that, to prevent intrusion into this den,
+Hawthorne habitually sat upon a trap-door in the floor, which was the
+only entrance. Without this precaution he found in this eyrie the
+seclusion he coveted, and here, among the birds and the tree-tops,
+remote from the tumult of life and above ordinary distracting
+influences, he could linger undisturbed in that border-land between
+shadow and substance which was his delight, could evoke and fix upon his
+pages the weird creatures of his fancy. Several hours of each day he
+passed here alone in musing or composition, and here, besides some
+papers for the "Atlantic," he wrote "Our Old Home," "Grimshaw's Secret,"
+"Septimius Felton," and the "Dolliver Romance" fragment. Years before,
+Thoreau told him, the Wayside had once been inhabited by a man who
+believed he would never die. The thus suggested idea, of a deathless man
+associated with this house, seems to have clung to Hawthorne in his last
+years, and was embodied in both his later works,--the scene of
+"Septimius Felton" being laid here at the Wayside. No one knew aught of
+its composition, and the author, rereading the tale in the solitude of
+this study and finding it in some way lacking the perfection of his
+ideal, laid it away in his closet, and, in weariness and failing health,
+commenced and vainly tried to finish the "Dolliver Romance" from the
+same materials.
+
+The house is separated from the highway by a narrow strip of sward, out
+of which grow elms planted by Bronson Alcott and clustering evergreens
+rooted by Hawthorne himself. The greater part of his domain lies along
+the dark slope and the wooded summit of the ridge which rises close
+behind the house. At the extremity of the grounds nearest the Orchard
+House, a depression in the turf marks the site of the little house where
+dwelt the Rose Garfield of "Septimius." Hawthorne planted sunflowers in
+this hollow, and Julian, his son, remembers seeing the novelist stand
+here and contemplate their wide disks above the old cellar.
+
+On the steep hill-side remain the rough terraces Alcott fashioned when
+he occupied the place, and many of the flowering locusts and fruit-trees
+he and Thoreau planted. Here, too, are the sombre spruces and firs which
+Hawthorne sent from "Our Old Home" or planted after his return, and all
+are grown until they overshadow the whole place and fairly embower the
+house with their branches. Along the hill-side are the famous "Acacia
+path" of Mrs. Hawthorne and other walks planned by the novelist, some of
+them having been opened by him in the last summer of his life. By one
+path, once familiar to his feet, we find our way up the steep ascent
+among the locusts to the "Mount of Vision,"--as Mrs. Hawthorne named the
+ridge to which the novelist daily resorted for study and meditation.
+
+The hill-top is clothed with a tangled growth of trees which hides it
+from the lower world and renders it a fitting trysting-place for the
+wizard romancer and the mystic figures which abound in his tales. Along
+the brow we trace, among the ferns, vestiges of the pathway worn by his
+feet. In the safe seclusion of this spot he spent delectable hours,
+lying under the trees "with a book in his hands and an unwritten book in
+his thoughts," while the pines murmured to him of the mystery and shadow
+he loved. More often he sat on a rustic seat between yonder pair of
+giant trees, or paced his foot-path hour after hour, as he pondered his
+plots and worked out the mystic details of many romances, some of them
+never to be written. Walking here with Fields he unfolded his design of
+the "Dolliver" tale, which he left half told. Here he composed the weird
+story of "Septimius Felton," while trudging on the very path he
+describes as having been worn by his hero,--Hawthorne himself habitually
+walking, with hands clasped behind him and with eyes bent on the ground,
+in the very attitude he ascribes to "Septimius" as Rose saw him
+"treading, treading, treading, many a year," on this foot-path by the
+grave of the officer he had slain. In this refuge Hawthorne remained a
+whole day alone with his grief, when tidings came to him of the loss of
+his sister in the burning of the "Henry Clay." Here he sat with Howells
+one memorable afternoon. In the last years his wife was often with him
+here, sometimes walking, but more frequently sitting, with him,--as did
+Rose with "Septimius,"--and looking out, through an opening in the
+foliage near the western end of his path, upon the restful landscape,
+not less charming to-day than when his eyes lovingly lingered upon it.
+We see the same broad, sun-kissed meadows awave with lush grass and
+flecked with fleeting cloud-shadows, and beyond, the dark forests of
+Thoreau's Walden and the gentle outlines of low-lying hills which shut
+in the valley like a human life.
+
+For some months after the election to the Presidency of his friend
+Franklin Pierce, the Wayside was frequented by office-seekers; but
+ordinarily Hawthorne had few visitors besides his Concord friends.
+Fields, Holmes, Hilliard, Whipple, Longfellow, Howells, Horatio Bridge,
+the poet Stoddard, Henry Bright, came to him here. The visits of "Gail
+Hamilton" (Miss Abigail Dodge), mentioned by Hawthorne as "a sensible,
+healthy-minded woman," were especially enjoyed by him. His own visits
+were very infrequent; "Orphic" Alcott said that in the several years he
+lived next door Hawthorne came but twice into his house: the first time
+he quickly excused himself "because the stove was too hot," next time
+"because the clock ticked too loud."
+
+The Wayside was the only home Hawthorne ever owned. To it he came soon
+after his removal from the "little red house" in Berkshire, and to it he
+returned from his sojourn abroad; here, with failing health and
+desponding spirits, he lived in the gloomy war-days,--writing in his
+study or, with steps more and more uncertain, pacing his hill-top; from
+here he set out with his life-long friend Pierce on the last sad journey
+which ended so quickly and quietly.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE WALDEN OF THOREAU
+
+_A Transcendental Font--Emerson's Garden--Thoreau's Cove--Cairn--
+  Beanfield--Resort of Emerson--Hawthorne--Channing--Hosmer--Alcott,
+  etc._
+
+
+One long-to-be-remembered day we follow the shady foot-paths, once
+familiar to the sublimated Concord company, through their favorite
+forest retreats to "the blue-eyed Walden,"--sung by many a bard, beloved
+by transcendental saint and seer. After a delightful stroll of a mile or
+more, we emerge from the wood and see the lovely lakelet "smiling upon
+its neighbor pines." We find it a half-mile in diameter, with bold and
+picturesquely irregular margins indented with deep bays and mostly
+wooded to the pebbles at the water's edge. From this setting of emerald
+foliage it scintillates like a gem: its wavelets lave a narrow pebbly
+shore within which a bottom of pure white sand gleams upward through the
+most transparent water ever seen. At one point where the railway skirts
+the margin, the woods are disfigured with pavilions and tables for
+summer pleasure-seekers, and a farther wooded slope has recently been
+ravaged by fire; but most of the shore has escaped both profanation and
+devastation, so that the literary pilgrim will find the shrines he seeks
+little disturbed since the Concord luminaries here had their haunt.
+
+From the summit of the forest ledge which rises from the southern shore,
+the lakelet seems a foliage-framed patch of the firmament. This
+rocky eminence affords a wide and enchanting prospect, and was the
+terminus and object of many excursions of Emerson and the other
+"Walden-Pond-Walkers," as the transcendentalists were styled by their
+more prosy and orthodox neighbors. It was upon this elevation in the
+midst of a portion of his estate which he celebrates in his poetry as
+"My Garden"--whose "banks slope down to the blue lake-edge"--that
+Emerson proposed to erect a lodge or retreat for retirement and thought.
+A mossy path, once trodden almost daily by the philosopher and his
+friends, brings us to the beautiful and secluded cove where Emerson and
+Thoreau kept a boat, and where the shining ones often came to bathe in
+this limpid water. Ablution here seems to have been a sort of
+transcendent baptism, and many a visitor, eminent in art, thought, or
+letters, has boasted that he walked and talked with Emerson in Walden
+woods and bathed with him in Walden water. In this romantic nook
+Thoreau spent much time during his hermitage, sitting in reverie on its
+banks or afloat on its glassy surface, fishing or playing his flute to
+the charmed perch. On the shore of this cove he procured the stones for
+the foundations and the sand for the plastering of his cabin. From the
+water's edge an obscure path, bordered by the wild flowers he loved,
+winds among the murmuring pines up to the site of Thoreau's retreat, on
+a gentle hill-side which falls away to the shore a few rods distant. A
+cairn of small stones, placed by reverent pilgrims, stands upon or near
+the spot where he erected his dwelling at an outlay of twenty-eight
+dollars and lived upon an income of one dollar per month.
+
+The hermit would hardly know the place now; his young pines are grown
+into giants that allow but glimpses of the shimmering lake; even the
+"potato hole" he dug under his cabin, whence the squirrels chirped at
+him from beneath the floor as he sat to write, and where he kept his
+winter store,--the "beans with the weevil in them" and the "potatoes
+with every third one nibbled by chipmunks,"--is obliterated and
+overgrown with the glabrous sumach. His near-by field, where he learned
+to "know beans" and gathered relics of a previous and aboriginal race of
+bean-hoers, is covered by a growth of pines and dwarf oaks, in places
+so dense as to be almost impassable.
+
+Some one has said, "Thoreau experienced Nature as other men experience
+religion." Certainly the life at Walden, which he depicted in one of the
+most fascinating of books, was in all its details--whether he was
+ecstatically hoeing beans in his field or dreaming on his door-step,
+floating on the lake or rambling in forest and field--that of an ascetic
+and devout worshipper of Nature in all her moods. Thoreau "built himself
+in Walden woods a den" in 1845,--after his return from tutoring in the
+family of Emerson's brother at Staten Island; here he wrote most of
+"Walden" and the "Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers," and much
+more that has been posthumously published; from here he went to jail for
+refusing to pay a tax on his poll, from here he made the excursion
+described in "The Maine Woods."
+
+He finally removed from Walden in the autumn of 1847, to reside in the
+house of Emerson during that sage's absence in Europe. An old neighbor
+of Thoreau's, who had often watched his "stumpy" figure as he hoed the
+beans, and had even once or twice assisted him in that celestial
+agriculture, tells us that Thoreau's hut was removed by a gardener to
+the middle of the bean-field and there occupied for some years. Later
+it was purchased by a farmer, who set it upon wheels and conveyed it to
+his farm some miles distant, where it has decayed and gone to pieces.
+
+In Concord it is not difficult to identify the personages associated
+with Thoreau's life at Walden Pond and referred to in his book. The
+"landlord and waterlord" of the domain, on which Thoreau was "a
+squatter," was Waldo Emerson; the owner of the axe which the hermit
+borrowed to hew the frame of his hut was Bronson Alcott; the "honorable
+raisers" of the structure were Emerson, Curtis the Nile "Howadji,"
+Alcott, Hosmer, and others; the lady who made the sketch of the
+hermitage which appears on the title-page of "Walden" was the author's
+sister Sophia. Of the hermit's visitors here, "the one who came
+oftenest" was Emerson; "the one who came farthest" was also the poet
+whom the hermit "took to board for a fortnight," Ellery Channing; the
+"long-headed farmer," who had "donned a frock instead of a professor's
+gown," was Thoreau's neighbor and life-long friend Edmund Hosmer, who is
+celebrated in the poetry of Emerson and Channing; the "last of the
+philosophers," the "Great Looker--great Expecter," who "first peddled
+wares and then his own brains," was Bronson Alcott, who spent long
+evenings here in converse with the hermit, or in listening to chapters
+from his manuscript. Here came Hawthorne to talk with his "cast-iron
+man" about trees and arrow-heads; here came George Hilliard and James T.
+Fields, and others,--sometimes so many that the hut would scarce contain
+them; the only complaint heard from Thoreau anent the narrowness of his
+quarters being that there was not room for the words to ricochet between
+him and his guests. Here, too, came humbler visitors, hunted slaves, who
+were never denied the shelter of the hermitage nor the sympathy and aid
+of the hermit.
+
+Another generation of visitors comes now to this spot,--pilgrims from
+far, like ourselves, to the shrine of a "stoic greater than Zeno or
+Xenophanes,"--a man whose "breath and core was conscience." We linger
+till the twilight, for the genius of this shrine seems very near us as
+we muse in the place where he dwelt incarnate alone with Nature, and
+there is for us a hint of his healthful spirit in the odor of his pines
+and of the wild flowers beside his path,--a vague whisper of his
+earnest, honest thought in the murmur of the clustering boughs and in
+the lapping of the wavelets upon the mimic strand.
+
+We bring from the shore a stone--the whitest we can find--for his cairn,
+and place with it a bright leaf, like those his callers in other days
+left for visiting cards upon his door-step, and then, through the
+wondrous half-lights of the summer evening, we walk silently away.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE HILL-TOP HEARSED WITH PINES
+
+_Last Resting-Place of the Illustrious Concord Company--Their Graves
+  beneath the Piny Boughs._
+
+
+During Hawthorne's habitation of the "Old Manse" and his first residence
+at the Wayside, his favorite walk was to the "Sleepy Hollow," a
+beautifully diversified precinct of hill and vale which lies a little
+way eastward from the village. His habitual resting-place here was a
+pine-shaded hill-top where he often met Emerson, Thoreau, Bronson
+Alcott, Elizabeth Hoar, Mrs. Ripley, or Margaret Fuller,--for all that
+sublimated company loved and frequented this spot. More often Hawthorne
+lounged and mused or chatted here alone with his lovely wife. Their
+letters and journals of this period make frequent mention of the walks
+to this place and of "our castle,"--a fanciful structure which, in their
+happy converse here under the pines, they planned to erect for their
+habitation on this hill-top. In their pleasant conceit, the terraced
+path which skirts the verge of the hollow and thence ascends the ridge
+was the grand "chariot-road" to their castle. This park has become a
+cemetery,--at its dedication Emerson made an oration and Frank B.
+Sanborn read a beautiful ode,--and on their beloved hill-top nearly all
+the transcendent company whom Hawthorne used to meet there, save
+Margaret Fuller who rests beneath the sea, lie at last in "the dreamless
+sleep that lulls the dead."
+
+First came Thoreau, to lie among his kindred under the wild flowers and
+the fallen needles of his dear pines, in a grave marked now by a simple
+stone graven with his name and age. Next came Hawthorne: with his
+"half-told tale" and a wreath of apple-blossoms from the "Old Manse"
+resting on his coffin, and with Emerson, Longfellow, Fields, Ellery
+Channing, Agassiz, Hoar, Lowell, Whipple, Alcott, Holmes, and George
+Hilliard walking mournfully by his side, he was borne, through the
+flowering orchards and up the hill-side path,--which was to have been
+his "chariot-road,"--to a grave on the site of the "castle" of his
+fancy; where his dearest friend Franklin Pierce covered him with flowers
+and James Freeman Clarke committed his mortal part to the lap of earth.
+Alas, that the beloved cohabitant of his dream-castle must lie in death
+a thousand leagues away! in no dream of his would such a separation from
+her have seemed possible. She tried to mark his tomb by a leafy
+monument of hawthorn shrubbery, but the rigorous climate prevented; now
+a low marble, inscribed with the one word "Hawthorne," stands at either
+extremity of his grave, and a glossy growth of periwinkle covers the
+spot where sleeps the great master of American romance. Some smaller
+graves are beside his: in one lies a child of Julian Hawthorne; in
+another, Rose--the daughter of Hawthorne's age--laid the son which her
+husband, Parsons Lathrop, commemorates in the lines of "The Flown Soul."
+Next Mrs. Ripley and Elizabeth Hoar were borne to this "God's acre," and
+then Emerson--followed by a vast concourse and mourned by all the
+world--was brought to "give his body back to earth again," in this loved
+retreat, near Hawthorne and his own "forest-seer" Thoreau. A gigantic
+pine towers above him here, and a massive triangular boulder of untooled
+pink quartz--already marred by the vandalism of relic-seekers--is placed
+to mark the grave of the great "King of Thought." It bore no inscription
+or device of any sort until a few months ago, when a bronze plate
+inscribed with his name and years and the lines--
+
+  "The passive master lent his hand
+  To the vast soul that o'er him planned"--
+
+was set in the rough surface of the stone. By Emerson lie his wife, his
+mother, two children of his son and biographer Dr. Emerson, and his own
+little child,--the "wondrous, deep-eyed boy" whom Emerson mourned in his
+matchless "Threnody."
+
+  "O child of paradise,
+  Boy who made dear his father's home,
+  In whose deep eyes
+  Men read the welfare of the times to come,--
+  I am too much bereft."
+
+Six years after Emerson, Bronson Alcott and his illustrious daughter
+Louisa were laid here, within a few yards of Hawthorne and the rest, on
+a spot selected by the "Beth" of the Alcott books who was herself the
+first to be interred in it. Now all the "Little Women" repose here with
+their parents and good "John Brooke,"--"Jo" being so placed as to
+suggest to her biographer that she is still to take care of parents and
+sisters "as she had done all her life."
+
+  [Illustration: THE GRAVE OF EMERSON]
+
+No other spot of earth holds dust more precious than does this "hill-top
+hearsed with pines." We are pleased to find the native beauty of the
+place little disturbed,--the trees, the indigenous grasses, ferns, and
+flowers remaining for the most part as they were known and loved by
+those who sleep beneath them. The contour of the ground and the foliage
+which clusters upon the slopes measurably shut out the view of other
+portions of the enclosure from this secluded hill-top, and, as we sit by
+the graves under the moaning pines, we seem to be alone with these _our_
+dead. Through the boughs we have glimpses of the motionless deeps of a
+summer sky; the patches of sunshine which illumine the graves about us
+are broken by foliate shadows sometimes as still as if painted upon the
+turf. No discordant sound from the haunts of men disturbs our
+meditations; the silence is unbroken save by the frequent sighs of the
+mourning pines.
+
+As we linger, the pervading quiet becomes something more than mere
+silence, it acquires the air and sense of reserve: the impression is
+borne into our thought that these asleep here, who once freely gave us
+their richest and best, are withholding something from us now,--some
+newly-learned wisdom, some higher thought. Does "an awful spell bind
+them to silence," or are they vainly repeating to us in the tender
+monotone of the pines a message we cannot hear or cannot bear? Or have
+they ceased from all ken or care for earthly things? Do they no longer
+love this once beloved spot? Do they not rejoice in the beauty of this
+summer day and the sunshine that falls upon their windowless palace?
+Are they conscious of our reverent tread on the turf above them, of our
+low words of remembrance and affection? Do they care that we have come
+from far to bend over them here?
+
+"For knowledge of all these things, we must"--as the greatest of this
+transcendent circle once said--"wait for to-morrow morning."
+
+
+
+
+IN AND OUT OF LITERARY BOSTON
+
+
+IN BOSTON
+
+OUT OF BOSTON
+
+  I. Cambridge; Elmwood, etc.
+  II. Belmont; Wayside Inn; Homes of Whittier
+  III. The Salem of Hawthorne; Whittier's Oak Knoll
+  IV. Webster's Marsh-field; Brook Farm and other Shrines
+
+
+
+
+IN BOSTON
+
+_A Golden Age of Letters--Literary Associations--Isms--Clubs--Where
+  Hester Prynne and Silas Lapham lived--The Corner Book-store--Home of
+  Fields--Sargent--Hilliard--Aldrich--Deland--Parkman--Holmes--Howells--
+  Moulton--Hale--Howe--Jane Austin, etc._
+
+
+Of the cisatlantic cities our "modern Athens" is, to the literary
+pilgrim, the most interesting; for, whatever may be the claims of other
+cities to the present literary primacy, all must concede that Boston was
+long the intellectual capital of the continent and its centre of
+literary culture and achievement. If the pilgrim have attained to middle
+life and be loyal to the literary idols of his youth, his regard for the
+Boston of to-day must be largely reminiscential of a past that is
+rapidly becoming historic; for, of the constellation of brilliant
+authors and thinkers who first gained for the place its pre-eminence in
+letters, few or none remain alive. The requirements of labor and trade
+are transforming the old streets; the sedate and comfortable dwellings,
+once the abodes or the resorts of the _litterateurs_, are giving place
+to palatial shops or great factories; the neighborhood where Bancroft,
+Choate, Winthrop, Webster, and Edward Everett dwelt within a few rods
+of each other was long ago surrendered to merchandise and mammon; yet
+for us the busy scenes are haunted by memories and peopled by presences
+which the spirit of trade is powerless to exorcise.
+
+To tread the streets which have daily echoed the foot-falls of the
+illustrious company who created here a golden age of learning and
+culture were alone a pleasure, but the city holds many closer and more
+personal mementos of her dead prophets, as well as the homes of a
+present generation who worthily strive to sustain her place and
+prestige.
+
+Interwoven with the older Boston are literary associations hardly less
+memorable and enduring than its history: in the belfry of its historic
+holy of holies--Old South Church--was the study of the historian Dr.
+Belknap, and the dove that nested beneath the church-bell is preserved
+in the poetry of N. P. Willis; King's Chapel, the sanctuary where the
+beloved Dr. Holmes worshipped for so many years, and whence he was not
+long ago sadly borne to his burial, figures in the fiction of Fenimore
+Cooper; historic Copp's Hill is also a scene in a tale of the same
+novelist; the court-house occupies the site of the "beetle-browed"
+prison of Hester Prynne of "The Scarlet Letter;" the storied old
+State-house marked the place of her pillory; the theatre of the Boston
+Massacre is the scene of the thrilling episode of Hawthorne's "Gray
+Champion;" his "Legends of Province House" commemorate the ancient
+structure which stood nearly opposite the Old South Church; the Tremont
+House, where the "Jacobins' Club" used to assemble with Ripley,
+Channing, Theodore Parker, Bronson Alcott, Peabody, and the extreme
+reformers, was the resort of Hawthorne's "Miles Coverdale," as it was of
+the novelist himself, and on the street here he saw "ragamuffin Moodie"
+of "The Blithedale Romance." On the site of Bowdoin School, Charles
+Sumner was born; at one hundred and twenty Hancock Street he lived and
+composed the early orations which made his fame; at number one Exeter
+Place, Theodore Parker, the Vulcan of the New England pulpit, forged his
+bolts and wrote the "Discourses of Religion;" in Essex Street lived and
+wrote Wendell Phillips, at thirty-seven Common Street he died; at
+thirty-one Hollis Street the gifted Harriet Martineau was the guest of
+Francis Jackson; at the corner of Congress and Water Streets Lloyd
+Garrison wrote and published "The Liberator." In this older city,
+antedating the luxury of the Back Bay district of the new Boston, Mather
+wrote the "Magnalia," Paine sang his songs, Allston composed his
+tales, Buckminster wrote his homilies, Bowditch translated La Place's
+"_Mecanique celeste_." Here Emerson, Motley, Parkman, and Poe were born;
+here Bancroft lived, Combe wrote, Spurzheim died. Here Maffit, Channing,
+and Pierpont preached; Agassiz, Phillips, and Lyell lectured; Alcott,
+Elizabeth Peabody, and Fuller taught. Here Sargent wrote "Dealings with
+the Dead," Sprague his "Curiosity," Prescott his "Ferdinand and
+Isabella;" here Margaret Fuller held the "Conversations" which attracted
+and impressed the leading spirits of the time, and Bronson Alcott
+favored elect circles with his Orphic and oracular utterances; here
+lived Melvill, pictured in Holmes's "Last Leaf;" here Emerson preached
+Unitarianism "until he had carried it to the jumping-off-place," as one
+of his quondam parishioners avers, and here commenced his career as
+philosopher and lecturer. Here, besides those above mentioned, Dwight,
+Brisbane, Quincy, Ripley, Graham, Thompson, Hovey, Loring, Miller, Mrs.
+Folsom, and others of similar ability or zeal, discoursed and wrote in
+advocacy of the various reforms and "isms" in vogue half a century or
+more ago.
+
+It has been said that, according to the local creed, whoso is born in
+Boston needs not to be born again, but some decades ago a literary
+prowler, like ourselves, discovered that "nobody is born in Boston," the
+people who have made its fame in letters and art being usually allured
+to it from other places. This is true in less degree of the present age,
+since Hale, Robert Grant, Ballou,--of "The Pearl of India,"--Bates,
+Guiney, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and others are "to the manor born;"
+but, if Boston has few birthplaces, she cherishes the homes and haunts
+of two generations of adult intellectual giants.
+
+Prominent among the literary landmarks is the "Corner Book-store"--once
+the shop of the father of Dr. Clarke--at School and Washington Streets,
+which, like Murray's in London, has long been the rendezvous of the
+_litterateurs_. Here appeared the first American edition of "The Opium
+Eater" and of Tennyson's poems. Here was the early home of the
+"Atlantic," then edited by James T. Fields, who was the literary partner
+of the firm and the presiding genius of the old store. This lover of
+letters and sympathetic friend of literary men--always kind of heart and
+generous of hand--drew to him here the foremost of that galaxy who first
+achieved for America a place in the world of letters. To this literary
+Rialto, as familiar loungers, came in that golden age George Hilliard,
+Emerson, Ticknor, Saxe, Whipple, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Lowell, Agassiz,
+the "Autocrat," and the rest, to loiter among and discuss the new books,
+or, more often, to chat with their friend Fields at his desk, in the
+nook behind the green baize curtain. The store is altered some since
+Fields left it; the curtained back-corner, which was the domain of the
+Celtic urchin "Michael Angelo" and the trysting spot of the literary
+fraternity, has given place to shelves of shining books. The side
+entrance--used mostly by the authors because it brought them more
+directly to Fields's desk and den--is replaced by a window which looks
+out upon the spot where, as we remember with a thrill, Fields last shook
+Hawthorne's hand and stood looking after him as--faltering with
+weakness--he walked up this side street with Pierce to start upon the
+journey from which he never returned.
+
+Literary tourists come to the store as to a shrine: thus in later years
+Matthew Arnold, Cable, Edmund Gosse, Professor Drummond, Dr. Doyle, and
+others like them, have visited the old corner. Nor is it deserted by the
+authors of the day; Holmes was often here up to the time of his death,
+and the visitor may still see, turning the glossy pages, some who are
+writers as well as readers of books: Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Scudder,
+Alger, Robert Grant,--whose "Reflections" and "Opinions" have been so
+widely read,--Miss Winthrop, Miss Jewett, Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton,
+and Mrs. Coffin are among those who still come to the familiar place.
+Near by, in Washington Street, Hawthorne's first romance, "Fanshawe,"
+was published in 1828. From Fields's famous store the transition to the
+staid old mansion which was long his home, and in which his widow still
+lives, is easy and natural. We find it pleasantly placed below the
+western slope of Beacon Hill, overlooking an enchanting prospect of blue
+waters and sunset skies. It is one of those dignified, substantial, and
+altogether comfortable dwellings--with spacious rooms, wide halls, easy
+stairways, and generous fireplaces--which we inherit from a previous
+generation. Here Fields, hardly less famed as an author than as the
+friend of authors, and his gifted wife--who is still a charming
+writer--created in their beautiful home an atmosphere which attracted to
+it the best and highest of their kind, and made it what it has been for
+more than forty years, a centre and ganglion of literary life and
+interest. The old-fashioned rooms are aglow with most precious memories
+and teem with artistic and literary treasures, many of them being
+_souvenirs_ of the illustrious authors whom the Fields have numbered
+among their friends and guests. The letters of Dickens, Hawthorne,
+Emerson, and others reveal the quality of the hospitality of this house
+and show how it was prized by its recipients. For years this was the
+Boston home of Hawthorne; to it came Emerson, Longfellow, and Whittier
+almost as freely as to their own abodes; here Holmes, Lowell, Charles
+Sumner, Greene, Bayard Taylor, Joseph Jefferson, were frequent guests;
+and here we see a quaintly furnished bedchamber which has at various
+times been occupied by Dickens, Trollope, Arthur Clough, Thackeray,
+Charles Kingsley, Matthew Arnold, Charlotte Cushman, and others of equal
+fame. Of the delights of familiar intercourse with the starry spirits
+who frequented this house, of their brilliant discussions of men and
+books, their scintillations of wit, their sage and sober words of
+wisdom, Mrs. Annie Fields affords but tantalizing hints in her
+reminiscences and the glimpses she occasionally allows us of her
+husband's diary and letters. Fields's library on the second
+floor--described as "My Friend's Library"--is a most alluring apartment,
+where we see, besides the "Shelf of Old Books" of which Mrs. Fields
+gives such a sympathetic account, other shelves containing numerous
+curious and uniquely precious volumes,--among them the few hundreds of
+worn and much annotated books which constituted the library of Leigh
+Hunt. In this room Emerson, while awaiting breakfast, wrote one of his
+poems, to which the hostess gave title.
+
+In later years a younger generation of writers came to this mansion:
+Celia Thaxter was a frequent guest; the princess-like Sarah Orne Jewett,
+beloved by Whittier as a daughter, has made it her Boston home; Aldrich
+comes to see the widow of his friend; Miss Preston, Mrs. Ward, and other
+luminous spirits may be met among the company who assemble in these
+memory-haunted rooms. For several years Holmes lived in the same street,
+within a few doors of Fields's house.
+
+At number fifty-four in quaint Pinckney Street, around the corner from
+Mrs. Fields's and near the former residence of Aldrich, we find the
+house in which the brilliant George Hilliard lived and died, scarcely
+changed since the time James Freeman Clarke here married Hawthorne to
+the lovely Sophia Peabody.
+
+Upon the opposite side, at number eleven, dwells Mrs. E. P. Whipple,
+widow of the eminent author and critic,--herself a lady of refined
+critical tastes,--who keeps unchanged the home in which her husband
+died. In his lifetime a select circle of friends usually assembled here
+on Sunday evenings,--a circle in which Fields, Bronson Alcott, Lowell,
+Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, Sumner, Clarke, Dr. Bartol, Ole Bull,
+Lucretia Hale, Edwin Booth, and others of similar eminence in letters or
+art were included. Just around the corner, in Louisburg Square, Bronson
+Alcott died in the house of his daughter Mrs. Pratt,--the "Meg" of
+Louisa Alcott's books.
+
+On Beacon Hill, in the next--Mount Vernon--street, we find near the "hub
+of the Hub" a tall, deep-roomed dwelling, surmounted by an observatory
+which commands a charming view of the city and its environs, and this is
+the elegant city home of the poet, novelist, and prince of
+conversationalists, Thomas Bailey Aldrich. His library, full of
+treasures, is on a lower floor, but the study in which he pens his
+delightful compositions is high above the distractions of the world. As
+one sees the author of "Marjorie Daw" and the recent "Unguarded Gates"
+among his books, there is no hint of his sixty years in his fresh, ruddy
+face, with its carefully waxed moustache, nor in his sprightly speech
+and manner.
+
+In the same street, the spacious mansion of ex-Governor Claflin was long
+a resort of a wise, earnest, and dazzling company of sublimated
+intellects. This house was in later years the usual haven of Whittier,
+the gentle Quaker bard, during his visits to Boston; and here, protected
+by the hostess from the eager kindness of his numerous friends, he spent
+many restful days when rest was most needed.
+
+Near by, on the same hill-side, the talented authoress of "John Ward,
+Preacher" inhabits a many-windowed home of sober brick. Within, we find
+everywhere evidences of the fastidious personality of Mrs. Margaret
+Deland. In her parlors are dainty articles of furniture and bric-a-brac,
+wide fireplaces, deep windows full of flowers, many pictures, many more
+books. In her study and work-room, her desk stands near another
+fireplace, about it are still more flowers, pictures and books galore;
+here, not long ago, that tragedy of selfishness--"Philip and His
+Wife"--was written.
+
+At the sumptuous home of the Sargents in the adjoining street have been
+held some of the _seances_ of the noted Radical Club, in which, as Mrs.
+Moulton says, "somebody read a paper and everybody else pulled it to
+pieces." At these sessions such spirits as Emerson, Bronson Alcott,
+Holmes, Edward Everett Hale, Carl Schurz, the genial Colonel Higginson,
+the serene James Freeman Clarke, the mystic Dr. Bartol,--who still lives
+in retirement in his old home,--and other representatives of advanced
+thought have discussed the ethics of life as well as of letters.
+
+A plain brick house of three stories in the same quiet street was the
+abode of Francis Parkman's sister, where, after the death of his wife,
+the historian spent his winters, his study here being a simple front
+room on the upper floor, with open fireplace and book-lined walls.
+
+In Park Street, above the Common, the ample mansion of George
+Ticknor--the chronicler of "Spanish Literature" and the autocrat of
+literary taste--was during many years a haunt of the best of Boston
+culture. We find its stately walls still standing, but the interior has
+been surrendered to the Philistines.
+
+On Beacon Street, but a door or two removed from the birthplace of
+Wendell Phillips, in a house whose number the poet-lover said he
+"remembered by thinking of the Thirty-Nine Articles," Longfellow won
+Miss Appleton to be his wife. Just across the Common, in Carver Street,
+Hawthorne's son was born.
+
+At many of the homes here mentioned were held the assemblages of the
+Ladies' Social Club. Among its readers were Agassiz, Emerson, Greene,
+Whipple, Clarke, and E. E. Hale. It was ironically styled the "Brain
+Club," and died after many years because, according to one ex-member,
+"the newer members brought into it too much Supper and Stomach and no
+Brain at all." A successor has been the Round Table Club, with Colonel
+Higginson for first president,--its meetings for essays and discussions
+being held in the homes of its literary or artistic members.
+
+Boston's Belgravia occupies a district which has been reclaimed from the
+waters of the "Back Bay" of the Charles River,--on whose shore Hawthorne
+placed the shunned and isolated thatched cottage of Hester Prynne in
+"The Scarlet Letter," and the windows of many of Boston's Four Hundred
+overlook the same delightful vista of water, hills, and western skies
+which to the sad eyes of Hester and little Pearl were a daily vision. On
+the water side of Beacon Street, within this select region, is the
+four-floored, picturesque mansion of brick--its front embellished with a
+growth of ivy which clusters about the bay-windows--where not long ago
+we found the gentle and genial Holmes sitting among his books, serene in
+the golden sunset of life, happy in the love of friends and in the
+benedictions of the thousands his work has uplifted and beatified. The
+mansion is redolent of literary associations, and throughout its
+apartments were tastefully disposed articles of virtu, curios, and
+mementos--literary, artistic, or historic--of affection and regard from
+Holmes's many friends at home and abroad. His study was a large room at
+the back of the house, occupying the entire width of the second floor.
+Its broad window commands a sweep of the Charles, with its tides and its
+many craft, beyond which the poet could see, as he said, Cambridge where
+he was born, Harvard where he was educated, and Mount Auburn where he
+expected to lie in his last sleep. We last saw the "Autocrat" in his
+easy-chair, among the treasures of this apartment, with a portrait of
+his ancestress "Dorothy Q" looking down at him from a side wall. His
+hair was silvered and his kindly face had lost its smoothness,--for he
+was eighty-five "years young," as he would say,--but his faculties were
+keen and alert, and, in benign age, his greeting was no less cordial and
+his outlook upon men and affairs was no less cheery and optimistic than
+in the flush and vigor of early manhood. In this luxurious study were
+written several of his twenty-five volumes,--"Over the Teacups" being
+the most popular of those produced here,--and we found him still
+devoting some hours of each day to light literary tasks, oftenest
+dictating materials for his memoirs, which are yet to be published.
+
+Above the study, and overlooking the river on which he used to row and
+the farther green hills, is the chamber immortalized in "My Aviary;" and
+here, as he sat in his favorite chair, surrounded by his family, death
+came to him, and his spirit peacefully passed into the eternal silence.
+Then the "Last Leaf" had fallen, to be mourned by all the world.
+
+A door or two from Holmes sometime dwelt the versatile novelist, poet,
+playwright, and "Altrurian Traveller." A popular print of "Howells in
+his Library" is an interior of his Beacon Street house; the view of the
+glassy river-basin, with the roofs and spires of Cambridge rising from
+banks and bowers of foliage beyond,--which he pictures from the new
+house of "Silas Lapham" on this street,--is the one Howells daily beheld
+from his study window here. His latest Boston home was in the same
+district on the superb Commonwealth Avenue, near the statue of Garrison,
+and here, in a sumptuous, six-storied, bow-fronted mansion, he wrote
+"The Shadow of a Dream" and other widely read books.
+
+A modest, old-fashioned house on Beacon Street has long been the home of
+the poet and starry genius Julia Ward Howe, writer of the "Battle-Hymn
+of the Republic." Other members of her singularly gifted family have
+sojourned here, and the "home of the Howes" has been frequented by men
+and women eminent for culture and thought and for achievement in
+literature or art.
+
+In the adjacent Marlborough Street recently died the polished author and
+orator Robert C. Winthrop, and here, too, was the home of Dr. Ellis, the
+friend of Lowell's father.
+
+Farther away in this newer Boston of luxury and culture is the charming
+and hospitable home of the poet, essayist, novelist, and critic Mrs.
+Louise Chandler Moulton, whose American admirers complain that in late
+years she remains too much in London. When at home, she inhabits a
+delightful dwelling which, from entrance to attic, teems with pictures,
+rare books, curios, and other _souvenirs_ of her many friends in many
+lands. In her library, where much of "Garden of Dreams," "Swallow
+Flights," and other books was written, and where more of all "the work
+nearest her heart" was accomplished, are preserved many autograph copies
+of books by recent writers--several of them dedicated to Mrs.
+Moulton--and a priceless collection of letters from illustrious literary
+workers. In her drawing-rooms one may meet many of the famed authors of
+the day,--Higginson, Wendell, Horsford, Bynner, Nora Perry of the
+charming books for girls, Miss Conway, Miss Louise Imogen Guiney, Mrs.
+Howe, Arlo Bates, Adams, the jocosely serious Robert Grant, and others
+of Boston's newer lights of literature.
+
+If we "drive on down Washington Street" with "Silas Lapham," we shall
+find in Chester Square the "Nankeen Square" where he dwelt in his less
+ambitious days, and the pretty oval green with the sturdy trees which
+the worthy colonel saw grow from saplings.
+
+In a pleasant dwelling on the contiguous street lives and works the
+bright and busy Lucretia P. Hale, sister of the author-divine. She was
+the favorite scholar of Miss Elizabeth Peabody; and she has, through her
+writings and her classes, acquired an influence and discipleship little
+smaller than that which Margaret Fuller once possessed.
+
+Farther south, in the Roxbury district, we seek the abode of the famed
+author of "The Man without a Country." Sauntering along the shady and
+delectable Highland Street, we interrogate a uniformed guardian of the
+law, who heartily rejoins, "Dr. Hale's is a temple on the right a block
+further on: and if any man's fit to live in a temple, it's him." As we
+walk the "block further on" we think that, however defective his
+grammar, the policeman's estimate of Hale is beyond criticism and agrees
+with that of the thousands of readers and friends of the indefatigable
+author, lecturer, preacher, editor, reformer, and promoter of all good.
+We find the house--very like a Greek temple--standing back from the
+street in the midst of an ample lawn, shaded by noble trees and decked
+with a wealth of shrubbery and bloom. The mansion is a large square
+edifice, with great dormer-windows in its roofs, surmounted by a cupola,
+and having in front a lofty portico upheld by heavy Ionic pillars,
+between which interlacing woodbine forms a leafy screen. Within is a
+wide hall, and opening out of it are generously proportioned rooms, some
+of them lined from floor to ceiling with thousands of books. The study
+is a commodious room, with a "pamphlet-annex" adjoining it on the garden
+side, and is crammed with book-shelves and drawers, while piles of
+books, magazines, portfolios, manuscripts, and memoranda are disposed on
+cases, tables, and stands about the apartment. Everything is obviously
+arranged for convenient and ready use, and well it may be so, for this
+is the work-room and "thinking-shop" of the hardest-working literary man
+in America. The books which made his first fame were written before he
+came to this house; of all the works produced in this study, the
+numerous poems, romances, histories, essays, editorials, reviews,
+discussions, translations,--to say nothing of the many hundreds of
+well-considered and carefully written sermons,--we may not here mention
+even the names, for no writer since Voltaire is more fruitful of
+finished and masterly work. It is notable that Hale regards "In His
+Name" as his best work from a literary point of view; of his other
+productions, he thinks some of the poems of the latest collection, "For
+Fifty Years," as good as anything,--"always excepting his sermons."
+Among the abundant treasures of his study, Hale has a most interesting
+and valuable collection of autograph letters, of which he is justly
+proud. His father was Nathan Hale of the Boston "Advertiser," his mother
+was sister to Edward Everett and herself an author and translator, his
+wife is niece to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, his son Robert has already
+acquired a reputation in the domain of letters. The doctor himself has
+been a writer from childhood, his earliest contributions being to his
+father's paper. His illustrious sister declares that in their nursery
+days she and her brother used to take their meals with the "Advertiser"
+pinned under their chins,--a practice to which their literary precocity
+has been attributed. We find Hale at the age of seventy-three blithe and
+hopeful, working as much and manifestly accomplishing more than ever
+before.
+
+A little farther out on the same street is the dwelling where William
+Lloyd Garrison spent his last years, and in this neighborhood lived Mrs.
+Blake, poet of "Verses Along the Way." Here also are the early home of
+Miss Guiney and the school to which she was first sent,--or rather
+"carried neck and heels," because she refused to walk. Close by we find
+the pleasant home in which Jane G. Austin wrote some of her famed
+colonial tales and where she died not many months ago; and in the same
+delightful suburb, a half-mile beyond Hale's house, is the retreat where
+the beloved author of "Little Women" breathed out her too brief life.
+
+
+
+
+OUT OF BOSTON
+
+I
+
+CAMBRIDGE: ELMWOOD: MOUNT AUBURN
+
+_Holmes's Church-yard--Bridge, Smithy, Chapel, and River of Longfellow's
+  Verse--Abodes of Lettered Culture--Holmes--Higginson--Agassiz--
+  Norton--Clough--Howells--Fuller--Longfellow--Lowell--Longfellow's City
+  of the Dead and its Precious Graves._
+
+
+Crossing the Charles by "The Bridge" of Longfellow's popular poem, a
+stroll along elm-shaded streets brings us to the ancient Common of
+Cambridge and a vicinage which has much besides its historic traditions
+to allure the literary pilgrim. For centuries the site of a celebrated
+college and a conspicuous centre of learning, it has long been the
+abiding-place of representatives of the best and foremost in American
+culture and mental achievement.
+
+Close by the Common, and opposite the remains of the elm beneath which
+Washington assumed the command of the patriot army, stood the old
+gambrel-roofed house in which that "gentlest of autocrats," Holmes, was
+born and reared, and upon whose door-post was first displayed his
+"shingle," on which he whimsically proposed to inscribe "The Smallest
+Fevers Thankfully Received;" across the college grounds is the home-like
+edifice where lived the erudite Professor Felton, loved by Dickens and
+oft mentioned in his letters; not far away, at the corner of Broadway,
+was the home of Agassiz, since occupied by his son; and a few rods
+eastward is the picturesque residence of the witty and profound Colonel
+Higginson,--poet, essayist, novelist, and reformer. In the adjacent
+Kirkland Street dwelt the delightful Dr. Estes Howe, brother-in-law to
+Lowell, with whom the poet sometime lived and whom he celebrated as "the
+Doctor" in the "Fable for Critics." Dr. C. C. Abbott formerly lived in
+this neighborhood, and the collections on which his best-known books are
+founded are preserved in the near-by Peabody Museum, beyond which we
+find the tasteful abode of Professor Charles Eliot Norton, the friend
+and literary executor of Lowell. Near the Common, too, dwelt for a year
+or so that rare poet Arthur Clough, author of "The Bothie" and "Qua
+Cursum Ventus;" and the sweet singer Charlotte Fiske Bates--the intimate
+friend of Longfellow--had her habitation in the same neighborhood.
+Opposite the southern end of the Common is the ancient village cemetery
+celebrated in the poetry of Holmes and Longfellow; a little way
+westward, Howells lived in a delightful rose-embowered cottage and
+pleasantly pictured many features of the old town in the "Charlesbridge"
+of his "Suburban Sketches." Two or three furlongs distant, within the
+grounds of the Botanic Garden, long lived the American Linnaeus,
+Professor Asa Gray.
+
+Of all the Cambridge thoroughfares, the shady and venerable Brattle
+Street, which curves westward from the University Press, is most
+interesting and attractive. Near the Press building stands the historic
+Brattle House,--its beautiful stairway and other antique features
+preserved by the Social Club, to whom the property now belongs,--where
+Margaret Fuller, the priestess and queen of modern Transcendentalism,
+passed much of her youth and young womanhood, and where her sister, wife
+to the poet Ellery Channing, was reared. Margaret, who is said to have
+stood for the Theodora of Beaconsfield's "Lothair," first saw the light
+in a modest little dwelling in Main Street nearer the Boston bridge, and
+here attended school with Holmes and Richard Henry Dana; but it was in
+this Brattle House that her marvellous, and in some respects unique,
+intellectual career commenced. Here she acquired the moral and mental
+equipment which fitted her for leadership in the most vital epoch of
+American culture and thought, and here she attracted and attached all
+the wisest and noblest spirits within her range. To her here came
+Theodore Parker, the older Channing, Harriet Martineau, James Freeman
+Clarke,--the earnest, brilliant, and thoughtful of all ages and
+conditions. One noble soul who knew her here speaks of her friendship as
+a "gift of the gods," and some eminent in thought and achievement
+testify that they have ever striven toward standards set up for them by
+her in that early period of her residence here.
+
+Close by Miss Fuller's home, "under a spreading chestnut-tree" at the
+intersection of Story Street, stood the smithy of Pratt, who was
+immortalized by Longfellow as "The Village Blacksmith." To the poet,
+passing daily on the way between his home and the college, the "mighty
+man" at his anvil in the shaded smithy was long a familiar vision. The
+tree--a horse-chestnut--has been removed, the shop has given place to a
+modern dwelling, and years ago the worthy smith rejoined his wife,
+"singing in Paradise."
+
+A few steps westward from the site of the smithy is the "Chapel of St.
+John" of another sweet poem of Longfellow; and just beyond this we
+find, bowered by lilacs and environed by acres of shade and sward, the
+colonial Cragie House, once the sojourn of Washington, but holding for
+us more precious associations, since Sparks, Worcester, and Everett have
+lived within its time-honored walls, and our popular poet of grace and
+sentiment for near half a century here had his home, and from here
+passed into the unknown. The picturesque mansion wears the aspect of an
+old acquaintance, and the interior, with its princely proportioned
+rooms, spacious fireplaces, wide halls, curious carvings and tiles, has
+much that Longfellow has shared with his readers. On the entrance door
+is the ponderous knocker; a landing of the broad stairway holds "The Old
+Clock on the Stairs;" the right of the hall is the study, with its
+priceless mementos of the tender and sympathetic bard who wrought here
+the most and best of his life-work, from early manhood onward into the
+mellow twilight of sweet and benign age. Here is his chair, vacated by
+him but a few days before he died; his desk; his inkstand which had been
+Coleridge's; his pen with its "link from the chain of Bonnivard;" the
+antique pitcher of his "Drinking Song;" the fireplace of "The Wind over
+the Chimney;" the arm-chair carved from the "spreading chestnut-tree"
+of the smithy, which was presented to him by the village children and
+celebrated in his poem "From my Arm-Chair." About us here are his
+cherished books, his pictures, his manuscripts, all his precious
+belongings, and from his window we see, beyond the Longfellow Memorial
+Park, the river so often sung in his verse, "stealing onward, like the
+stream of life." In this room Washington held his war councils. Of the
+many intellectual _seances_ its walls have witnessed we contemplate with
+greatest pleasure the Wednesday evening meetings of the "Dante Club,"
+when Lowell, Howells, Fields, Norton, Greene, and other friends and
+scholars sat here with Longfellow to revise the new translation of
+Dante.
+
+The book-lined apartment over the study--once the bedchamber of
+Washington and later of Talleyrand--was occupied by Longfellow when he
+first lived as a lodger in the old house. It was here he heard
+"Footsteps of Angels" and "Voices of the Night," and saw by the fitful
+firelight the "Being Beauteous" at his side; here he wrote "Hyperion"
+and the earlier poems which made him known and loved in every clime.
+Later this room became the nursery of his children, and some of the
+grotesque tiles which adorn its chimney are mentioned in his poem
+"To a Child:"
+
+  "The lady with the gay macaw,
+  The dancing-girl, the grave bashaw.
+      The Chinese mandarin."
+
+  [Illustration: WHERE LONGFELLOW LIVED]
+
+Along the western facade of the mansion stretches a wide veranda, where
+the poet was wont to take his daily exercise when "the goddess
+Neuralgia" or "the two Ws" (Work and Weather) prevented his walking
+abroad. In this stately old house his children were born and reared,
+here his wife met her tragic death, and here his daughter--the "grave
+Alice" of "The Children's Hour"--abides and preserves its precious
+relics, while "laughing Allegra" (Anna) and "Edith with golden
+hair"--now Mrs. Dana and Mrs. Thorp--have dwellings within the grounds
+of their childhood home, and their brother Ernst owns a modern cottage a
+few rods westward on the same street.
+
+In Sparks Street, just out of Brattle, dwelt the author Robert
+Carter,--familiarly, "The Don,"--sometime secretary to Prescott and long
+the especial friend of Lowell, with whom he was associated in the
+editorship of the short-lived "Pioneer." Carter's home here was the
+rendezvous of a circle of choice spirits, where one might often meet
+"Prince" Lowell,--as his friends delighted to call him,--Bartlett of
+"Familiar Quotations," and that "songless poet" John Holmes, brother of
+the "American Montaigne."
+
+A short walk under the arching elms of Brattle Street brings us to
+Elmwood, the life-long home of Lowell. The house, erected by the last
+British lieutenant-governor of the province, is a plain, square
+structure of wood, three stories in height, and is surrounded by a park
+of simple and natural beauty, whose abundant growth of trees gives to
+some portions of the grounds the sombreness and apparent seclusion of a
+forest. A gigantic hedge of trees encloses the place like a leafy wall,
+excluding the vision of the world and harboring thousands of birds who
+tenant its shades. Some of the aquatic fowl of the vicinage are referred
+to in Longfellow's "Herons of Elmwood." In the old mansion, long the
+home of Elbridge Gerry, Lowell was born and grew to manhood, and to it
+he brought the bride of his youth, the lovely Maria White, herself the
+writer of some exquisite poems; here, a few years later, she died in the
+same night that a child was born to Longfellow, whose poem "The Two
+Angels" commemorates both events. Here, too, Lowell lost his children
+one by one until a daughter, the present Mrs. Burnett,--now owner and
+occupant of Elmwood,--alone remained. During the poet's stay abroad, his
+house was tenanted by Mrs. Ole Bull and by Lowell's brother-bard Bailey
+Aldrich, who in this sweet retirement wrought some of his delicious
+work. To the beloved trees and birds of his old home Lowell returned
+from his embassage, and here, with his daughter, he passed his last
+years among his books and a chosen circle of friends. Here, where he
+wished to die, he died, and here his daughter preserves his former home
+and its contents unchanged since he was borne hence to his burial. Until
+the death of his father, Lowell's study was an upper front room at the
+left of the entrance. It is a plain, low-studded corner apartment, which
+the poet called "his garret," and where he slept as a boy. Its windows
+now look only into the neighboring trees, but when autumn has shorn the
+boughs of their foliage the front window commands a wide level of the
+sluggish Charles and its bordering lowlands, while the side window
+overlooks the beautiful slopes of Mount Auburn, where Lowell now lies
+with his poet-wife and the children who went before. His study windows
+suggested the title of his most interesting volume of prose essays. In
+this upper chamber he wrote his "Conversations on the Poets" and the
+early poems which made his fame,--"Irene," "Prometheus," "Rhoecus,"
+"Sir Launfal,"--which was composed in five days,--and the first series
+of that collection of grotesque drolleries, "The Biglow Papers." Here
+also he prepared his editorial contributions to the "Atlantic." His
+later study was on the lower floor, at the left of the ample hall which
+traverses the centre of the house. It is a prim and delightful
+old-fashioned apartment, with low walls, a wide and cheerful fireplace,
+and pleasant windows which look out among the trees and lilacs upon a
+long reach of lawn. In this room the poet's best-loved books, copiously
+annotated by his hand, remain upon his shelves; here we see his table,
+his accustomed chair, the desk upon which he wrote the "Commemoration
+Ode," "Under the Willows," and many famous poems, besides the volumes of
+prose essays. In this study he sometimes gathered his classes in Dante,
+and to him here came his friends familiarly and informally,--for
+"receptions" were rare at Elmwood: most often came "The Don," "The
+Doctor," Norton, Owen, Bartlett, Felton, Stillman,--less frequently
+Godkin, Fields, Holmes, Child, Motley, Edmund Quincy, and the historian
+Parkman.
+
+While the older trees of the place were planted by Gerry, the pines and
+clustering lilacs were rooted by Lowell or his father. All who remember
+the poet's passionate love for this home will rejoice in the assurance
+that the old mansion, with its precious associations and mementos, and
+the acres immediately adjoining it, will not be in any way disturbed
+during the life of his daughter and her children. At most, the memorial
+park which has been planned by the literary people of Boston and
+Cambridge will include only that portion of the grounds which belonged
+to the poet's brothers and sisters.
+
+A narrow street separates the hedges of Elmwood from the peaceful shades
+of Mount Auburn,--the "City of the Dead" of Longfellow's sonnet. Lowell
+thought this the most delightful spot on earth. The late Francis Parkman
+told the writer that Lowell, in his youth, had confided to him that he
+habitually went into the cemetery at midnight and sat upon a tombstone,
+hoping to find there the poetic afflatus. He confessed he had not
+succeeded, and was warned by his friend that the custom would bring him
+more rheumatism than inspiration. Dr. Ellis testified that at this
+period his friend Dr. Lowell often expressed to him his anxiety "lest
+his son James would amount to nothing, because he had taken to writing
+poetry."
+
+In the sanctuary of Mount Auburn we find many of the names mentioned in
+these chapters,--names written on the scroll of fame, blazoned on
+title-pages, borne in the hearts of thousands of readers in all
+lands,--now, alas! inscribed above their graves. From the eminence of
+Mount Auburn, we look upon Longfellow's river "stealing with silent
+pace" around the sacred enclosure; the verdant meads along the stream;
+the distant cities, erst the abodes of those who sleep about us
+here,--for whom life's fever is ended and life's work done. Near this
+summit, Charlotte Cushman rests at the base of a tall obelisk, her
+favorite myrtle growing dense and dark above her. By the elevated Ridge
+Path, on a site long ago selected by him, Longfellow lies in a grave
+decked with profuse flowers and marked by a monument of brown stone. On
+Fountain Avenue we find a beautiful spot, shaded by two giant trees,
+which was a beloved resort of Lowell, and where he now lies among his
+kindred, his sepulchre marked by a simple slab of slate: "Good-night,
+sweet Prince!" Not far away is the beautiful Jackson plot, where not
+long ago the beloved Holmes was tenderly laid in the same grave with his
+wife beneath a burden of flowers. Some of the blossoms we lately saw
+upon this grave were newly placed by the creator of "Micah Clarke" and
+"Sherlock Holmes," Dr. Conan Doyle. By a great oak near the main avenue
+is the sarcophagus of Sumner, and one shady slope bears the memorial of
+Margaret Fuller and her husband,--buried beneath the sea on the coast of
+Fire Island. Near by we find the grave of "Fanny Fern,"--wife of Parton
+and sister of N. P. Willis,--with its white cross adorned with
+exquisitely carved ferns; the pillar of granite and marble which
+designates the resting-place of Everett; the granite boulder--its
+unchiselled surface overgrown with the lichens he loved--which covers
+the ashes of Agassiz; the simple sarcophagus of Rufus Choate; the
+cenotaph of Kirkland; the tomb of Spurzheim; and on the lovely slopes
+about us, under the dreaming trees, amid myriad witcheries of bough and
+bloom, are the enduring memorials of affection beneath which repose the
+mortal parts of Sargent, Quincy, Story, Parker, Worcester, Greene,
+Bigelow, William Ellery Channing, Edwin Booth, Phillips Brooks, and many
+like them whom the world will not soon forget.
+
+In this sweet summer day, their place of rest is so quiet and
+beautiful,--with the birds singing here their lowest and tenderest
+songs, the soft winds breathing a lullaby in the leafy boughs, the air
+full of a grateful peace and calm, the trees spreading their great
+branches in perpetual benediction above the turf-grown graves,--it seems
+that here, if anywhere, the restless wayfarer might learn to love
+restful death.
+
+
+
+
+OUT OF BOSTON
+
+II
+
+BELMONT: THE WAYSIDE INN: HOME OF WHITTIER
+
+_Lowell's Beaver Brook--Abode of Trowbridge--Red Horse Tavern--Parsons
+  and the Company of Longfellow's Friends--Birthplace of Whittier--
+  Scenes of his Poems--Dwelling and Grave of the Countess--Powow Hill--
+  Whittier's Amesbury Home--His Church and Tomb._
+
+
+A few miles westward from the classic shades of Cambridge we found,
+perched upon a breezy height of Belmont, a picturesque, red-roofed
+villa, for some years the summer home of our "Altrurian Traveller." From
+its verandas he overlooked a slumberous plain, diversified with meads,
+fields, country-seats, and heavy-tinted copses, and bordered by a circle
+of verdant hills; while on the eastern horizon rises the distant city,
+crowned by the resplendent dome of the capitol. In his dainty white
+study here, with its gladsome fireplace and curious carvings and
+mottoes, Howells wrote--besides other good things--his "Lady of the
+Aroostook," in which some claim to have discerned an answer to Henry
+James's "Daisy Miller."
+
+In this neighborhood is the valley of "Beaver Brook," a favorite haunt
+of Lowell, to which he brought the English poet Arthur Clough. The old
+mill is removed, but we find the water-fall and the other romantic
+features little changed since the poet depicted the ideal beauties of
+this dale, in what has been adjudged one of the most artistic poems of
+modern times.
+
+In a charming retreat among the hills of Arlington, scarce a mile away
+from Howells's sometime Belmont home, dwells and writes that genial and
+gifted poet and novelist, John T. Trowbridge, whose books--notably his
+war-time tales--have found readers round the world.
+
+[Sidenote: Longfellow's Wayside Inn]
+
+Westward again from Belmont, a prolonged drive through a delightful
+country brings us to "Sudbury town" and the former hostelry of 'Squire
+Howe,--the "Wayside Inn" of Longfellow's "Tales." Our companion and
+guide is one who well knew the old house and its neighborhood in the
+halcyon days when Professor Treadwell, Parsons,--the poet of the "Bust
+of Dante,"--and the quiet coterie of Longfellow's friends came, summer
+after summer, to find rest and seclusion under its ample roof and
+sheltering trees, among the hills of this remote region. The environment
+of fragrant meadow and smiling field, of deep wood glade and
+forest-clad height, is indeed alluring. About the ancient inn remain
+some of the giant elms and the "oak-trees, broad and high," shading it
+now as in the day when the "Tales" immortalized it with the "Tabard" of
+Chaucer; while through the near meadow circles the "well-remembered
+brook" of the poet's verse, in which his friends saw the inverted
+landscape and their own faces "looking up at them from below."
+
+The house is a great, old-fashioned, bare and weather-worn edifice of
+wood,--"somewhat fallen to decay."--standing close upon the highway. Its
+two stories of spacious rooms are supplemented by smaller chambers in a
+vast attic; two or three chimneys, "huge and tiled and tall," rise
+through its gambrel roofs among the bowering foliage; a wing abuts upon
+one side and imparts a pleasing irregularity to the otherwise plain
+parallelogram. The wide, low-studded rooms are lighted by windows of
+many small panes. Among the apartments we find the one once occupied by
+Major Molineaux, "whom Hawthorne hath immortal made," and that of Dr.
+Parsons, the laureate of this place, who has celebrated it in the
+stanzas of "Old House at Sudbury" and other poems. But it is the old
+inn parlor which most interests the literary visitor,--a great, low,
+square apartment, with oaken floors, ponderous beams overhead, and a
+broad hearth, where in the olden time blazed a log fire whose ruddy glow
+filled the room and shone out through the windows. It is this room which
+Longfellow peoples with his friends, who sat about the old fireplace and
+told his "Tales of a Wayside Inn." The "rapt musician" whose
+transfiguring portraiture we have in the Prelude is Ole Bull; the
+student "of old books and days" is Henry Wales; the young Sicilian, "in
+sight of Etna born and bred," is Luigi Monti, who dined every Sunday
+with Longfellow; the "Spanish Jew from Alicant" is Edrelei, a Boston
+Oriental dealer; the "Theologian from the school of Cambridge on the
+Charles" is Professor Daniel Treadwell; the Poet is T. W. Parsons, the
+Dantean student and translator of "Divina Commedia;" the Landlord is
+'Squire Lyman Howe, the portly bachelor who then kept this "Red Horse
+Tavern," as it was called. Most of this goodly circle have been here in
+the flesh, and our companion has seen them in this old room, as well as
+Longfellow himself, who came here years afterward, when the Landlord was
+dead and the poet's company had left the old inn forever. In this room
+we see the corner where stood the ancient spinet, the spot on the wall
+where hung the highly colored coat of arms of Howe and the sword of his
+knightly grandfather near Queen Mary's pictured face, the places on the
+prismatic-hued windows where the names of Molineaux, Treadwell, etc.,
+had been inscribed by hands that now are dust.
+
+Descendants of the woman who died of the "Shoc o' Num Palsy" are said to
+live in the neighborhood, as well as some other odd characters who are
+embalmed in Parsons's humorous verse. But the ancient edifice is no
+longer an inn; the Red Horse on the swinging sign-board years ago ceased
+to invite the weary wayfarer to rest and cakes and ale; the
+memory-haunted chambers, where starry spirits met and tarried in the
+golden past, were later inhabited by laborers, who displayed the rooms
+for a fee and plied the pilgrim with lies anent the former famed
+occupants. The storied structure has recently passed to the possession
+of appreciative owners,--Hon. Herbert Howe being one of them,--who have
+made the repairs needful for its preservation and have placed it in the
+charge of a proper custodian.
+
+A longer way out of Boston, in another direction, our guest is among the
+haunts of the beloved Quaker bard. On the bank of the Merrimac--his
+own "lowland river"--and among darkly wooded hills of hackmatack and
+pine, we find the humble farm-house, guarded by giant sentinel poplars,
+where eighty-eight years agone Whittier came into the world.
+
+[Sidenote: Scenes of Whittier's Poems]
+
+Among the plain and bare apartments, with their low ceilings, antique
+cross-beams, and multipaned windows, we see the lowly chamber of his
+birth; the simple study where his literary work was begun; the great
+kitchen, with its brick oven and its heavy crane in the wide fireplace,
+where he laid the famous winter's evening scene in "Snow-Bound,"
+peopling the plain "old rude-furnished room" with the persons he here
+best knew and loved. We see the dwelling little changed since the time
+when Whittier dwelt--a dark-haired lad--under its roof; it is now
+carefully preserved, and through the old rooms are disposed articles of
+furniture from his Amesbury cottage, which are objects of interest to
+many visitors.
+
+All about the place are spots of tender identification of poet and poem:
+here are the brook and the garden wall of his "Barefoot Boy;" the scene
+of his "Telling the Bees;" the spring and meadow of "Maud Muller;" not
+far away, with the sumachs and blackberries clustering about it still,
+is the site of the rude academy of his "School Days;" and beyond the low
+hill the grasses grow upon the grave of the dear, brown-eyed girl who
+"hated to go above him." We may still loiter beneath the overarching
+sycamores planted by poor Tallant,--"pioneer of Erin's outcasts,"--where
+young Whittier pondered the story of "Floyd Ireson with the hard heart."
+
+Delightful rambles through the country-side bring us to many scenes
+familiar to the tender poet and by him made familiar to all the world.
+Thus we come to the "stranded village" of Aunt Mose,--"the muttering
+witch-wife of the gossip's tale,"--where Whittier found the materials
+out of which he wrought the touching poem "The Countess," and where we
+see the poor low rooms in which pretty, blue-eyed Mary Ingalls was born
+and lived a too brief life of love, and her sepulchre--now reclaimed
+from a tangle of brake and brier--in the lonely old burial-ground that
+"slopes against the west." Her grave is in the row nearest the dusty
+highway, and is marked by a mossy slab of slate, which is now protected
+from the avidity of relic-gatherers by a net-work of iron, bearing the
+inscription, "The Grave of the Countess."
+
+Thus, too, we come to the ruined foundation of the cottage of "Mabel
+Martin, the Witch's Daughter," and look thence upon other haunts of the
+beloved bard, as well as upon his river "glassing the heavens" and the
+wave-like swells of foliage-clad hills which are "The Laurels" of his
+verse. In West Newbury, the town of his "Northman's Written Rock," we
+find the comfortable "Maplewood" homestead where lived and lately died
+the supposed sweetheart of the poet's early manhood.
+
+[Sidenote: Whittier's Amesbury Cottage]
+
+Whittier's beloved Amesbury, the "home of his heart," is larger and
+busier than he knew it, but, as we dally on its dusty avenues, we find
+them aglow with living memories of the sweet singer. In Friend Street
+stands--still occupied by Whittier's former friends--the plain little
+frame house which was so long his home. A bay window has been placed
+above the porch, but the place is otherwise little changed since he left
+it; the same noble elms shade the front, the fruit-trees he planted and
+pruned and beneath which the saddened throng sat at his funeral are in
+the garden; here too are the grape-vines which were the especial objects
+of his loving care,--one of them grown from a rootlet sent to him in a
+letter by Charles Sumner.
+
+Within, we see the famous "garden room," which was his sanctum and
+workshop, and where this gentle man of peace waged valiant warfare with
+his pen for the rights of man. In this room, with its sunny outlook
+among his vines and pear-trees, he kept his chosen books, his treasured
+souvenirs; and here he welcomed his friends,--Longfellow, Fields,
+Sumner, Lowell, Colonel Higginson, Bayard Taylor, Mrs. Thaxter, Mrs.
+Phelps-Ward, Alice Cary, Lucy Larcom, Sarah Orne Jewett, and many
+another illustrious child of genius.
+
+A quaint Franklin fireplace stood by one side wall,--usually surmounted
+in summer by a bouquet; in the nook between this and the sash-door was
+placed an old-fashioned writing-desk, and here he wrote many of the
+poems which brought him world-wide fame and voiced the convictions and
+the conscience of half the nation. Here are still preserved some of his
+cherished books. Above the study was Whittier's bedchamber, near the
+rooms of his mother, his "youngest and dearest" sister, and the "dear
+aunt" (Mercy) of "Snow-Bound," who came with him to this home and shared
+it until their deaths. After the others were gone, the brother and
+sister long dwelt here alone, later a niece was for some years his
+house-keeper, and at her marriage the poet gave up most of the house to
+some old friends, who kept his study and chamber in constant readiness
+for his return upon the prolonged sojourns which were continued until
+his last year of life,--this being always his best-loved home.
+
+Near by are the "painted shingly town-house" of his verse, where during
+many years he failed not to meet with his neighbors to deposit "the
+freeman's vote for Freedom," and the little, wooden Friends'
+meeting-house, where he loved to sit in silent introspection among the
+people of his faith. The trees which now shade its plain old walls with
+abundant foliage were long ago planted by his hands. The "Powow Hill" of
+his "Preacher" and "The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall" rises steeply near
+his home, and was a favorite resort, to which he often came, alone or
+with his guests. One who has often stood with Whittier there pilots us
+to his accustomed place on the lofty rounded summit, whence we overlook
+the village, the long reach of the "sea-seeking" river, and the
+entrancing scene pictured by the poet in the beautiful lines of
+"Miriam."
+
+[Sidenote: Whittier's Tomb]
+
+From these precious haunts our pilgrim shoon trace the revered bard to
+the peaceful precincts of the God's-acre--just without the town--where,
+in a sequestered spot beneath a dark cedar which sobs and soughs in the
+summer wind, his mortal part is forever laid, with his beloved sister
+and kindred, within
+
+                "the low green tent
+  Whose curtain never outward swings."
+
+
+
+
+OUT OF BOSTON
+
+III
+
+SALEM: WHITTIER'S OAK-KNOLL AND BEYOND
+
+_Cemetery of Hawthorne's Ancestors--Birthplace of Hawthorne and his
+  Wife--Where Fame was won--House of the Seven Gables--Custom-House--
+  Where Scarlet Letter was written--Main Street and Witch Hill--Sights
+  from a Steeple--Later Home of Whittier--Norman's Woe--Lucy Larcom--
+  Parton, etc.--Rivermouth--Thaxter._
+
+
+[Sidenote: Hawthorne's Salem]
+
+A half-hour's jaunt by train brings us to the shaded streets of quaint
+old Salem and the scenes of Hawthorne's early life, work, and triumph.
+Here we find on Charter Street, in the old cemetery of "Dr. Grimshaw's
+Secret" and "Dolliver Romance," the sunken and turf-grown graves of
+Hawthorne's mariner ancestors, some of whom sailed forth on the ocean of
+eternity nearly two centuries ago. Among the curiously carved
+gravestones of slate we see that of John Hathorn, the "witch-judge" of
+Hawthorne's "Note-Books." Close at hand repose the ancestors of the
+novelist's wife, and the Doctor Swinnerton who preceded "Dolliver" and
+who was called to consider the cause of Colonel Pyncheon's death in the
+opening chapter of "The House of the Seven Gables."
+
+The sombre house which encroaches upon a corner of the cemetery
+enclosure--with the green billows surging about it so closely that its
+side windows are within our reach from the gravestones--was the home of
+the Peabodys, whence Hawthorne wooed the amiable Sophia, and where, in
+his tales, he domiciled Grandsir "Dolliver" and also "Doctor Grimshaw"
+with Ned and Elsie. We found it a rather depressing, hip-roofed,
+low-studded, and irregular edifice of wood, standing close upon the
+street, and obviously degenerated a little from the degree of
+respectability--"not sinking below the boundary of the genteel"--which
+the romancer ascribed to it. The little porch or hood protects the front
+entrance, and the back door communicates with the cemetery,--a
+circumstance which recalls the novelist's fancy that the dead might get
+out of their graves at night and steal into this house to warm
+themselves at the convenient fireside.
+
+Not many rods distant, in Union Street, stands the little house where
+Captain Hathorn left his family when he went away to sea, and where the
+novelist was born. The street is small, shabby, shadeless,
+dispiriting,--its inhabitants not select. The house--builded by
+Hawthorne's grandfather and lately numbered twenty-seven--stands close
+to the sidewalk, upon which its door-stone encroaches, leaving no space
+for flower or vine; the garden where Hawthorne "rolled on a grass-plot
+under an apple-tree and picked abundant currants" is despoiled of turf
+and tree, and the wooden house walls rise bare and bleak. It is a plain,
+uninviting, eight-roomed structure, with a lower addition at the back,
+and with a square central chimney-stack rising like a tower above the
+gambrel roof. The rooms are low and contracted, with quaint corner
+fireplaces and curiously designed closets, and with protuberant beams
+crossing the ceilings. From the entrance between the front rooms a
+narrow winding stair leads to an upper landing, at the left of which we
+find the little, low-ceiled chamber where, ninety years ago, America's
+greatest romancer first saw the light. It is one of the most cheerless
+of rooms, with rude fireplace of bricks, a mantel of painted planks, and
+two small windows which look into the verdureless yard. In a modest
+brick house upon the opposite side of the street, and but a few rods
+distant from the birthplace of her future husband, Hawthorne's wife was
+born five years subsequent to his nativity.
+
+[Sidenote: The Manning House]
+
+Abutting upon the back yard of Hawthorne's birthplace is the old Manning
+homestead of his maternal ancestors, the home of his own youth and
+middle age and the theatre of his struggles and triumph. It is known as
+number twelve Herbert Street, and is a tall, unsightly, erratic fabric
+of wood, with nothing pleasing or gracious in its aspect or environment.
+The ugly and commonplace character of his surroundings here during half
+his life must have been peculiarly depressing to such a sensitive
+temperament as Hawthorne's, and doubtless accounts for his mental
+habits. That he had no joyous memories of this old house his letters and
+journals abundantly show. Its interior arrangement has been somewhat
+changed to accommodate the several families of laborers who have since
+inhabited it, and one front room seems to have been used as a shop; but
+it is not difficult to identify the haunted chamber which was
+Hawthorne's bed-room and study. This little, dark, dreary apartment
+under the eaves, with its multipaned window looking down into the room
+where he was born, is to us one of the most interesting of all the
+Hawthorne shrines. Here the magician kept his solitary vigil during the
+long period of his literary probation, shunning his family, declining
+all human sympathy and fellowship, for some time going abroad only
+after nightfall; here he studied, pondered, wrote, revised, destroyed,
+day after day as the slow months went by; and here, after ten years of
+working and waiting for the world to know him, he triumphantly recorded,
+"In this dismal chamber FAME was won." Here he wrote "Twice-Told Tales"
+and many others, which were published in various periodicals, and here,
+after his residence at the old Manse,--for it was to this Manning house
+that he "always came back, like the bad halfpenny," as he said,--he
+completed the "Mosses." This old dwelling is one of the several which
+have been fixed upon as being the original "House of the Seven Gables,"
+despite the novelist's averment that the Pyncheon mansion was "of
+materials long in use for constructing castles in the air." The pilgrim
+in Salem will be persistently assured that a house which stands near the
+shore by the foot of Turner Street, and is known as number thirty-four,
+was the model of Hawthorne's structure. It is an antique edifice of some
+architectural pretensions, displays five fine gables, and has spacious
+wainscoted and frescoed apartments, with quaint mantels and other
+evidences of colonial stateliness. It was an object familiar to the
+novelist from his boyhood,--he had often visited it while it was the
+home of pretty "Susie" Ingersol,--and it may have suggested the style of
+architecture he employed for the visionary mansion of the tale. The
+names Maule and Pyncheon, employed in the story, were those of old
+residents of Salem.
+
+[Sidenote: Hawthorne's Custom-House]
+
+But a few rods from Herbert Street is the Custom-House where Hawthorne
+did irksome duty as "Locofoco Surveyor," its exterior being--except for
+the addition of a cupola--essentially unchanged since his description
+was written, and its interior being even more somnolent than of yore.
+The wide and worn granite steps still lead up to the entrance portico;
+above it hovers the same enormous specimen of the American eagle, and a
+recent reburnishing has rendered even more evident the truculent
+attitude of that "unhappy fowl." The entry-way where the venerable
+officials of Hawthorne's time sat at the receipt of customs has been
+renovated, the antique chairs in which they used to drowse, "tilted back
+against the wall," have given place to others of more modern and elegant
+fashion, and the patriarchal dozers themselves--lying now in the
+profounder slumber of death--are replaced by younger and sprightlier
+successors, who wear their dignities and pocket their emoluments. At the
+left we find the room, "fifteen feet square and of lofty height," which
+was Hawthorne's office during the period of his surveyorship: it is no
+longer "cobwebbed and dingy," but is tastefully refitted and
+refurnished, and the once sanded floor, which the romancer "paced from
+corner to corner" like a caged lion, is now neatly carpeted. The
+"exceedingly decrepit and infirm" chairs, and the three-legged stool on
+which he lounged with his elbow on the old pine desk, have been retired,
+and the desk itself is now tenderly cherished among the treasures of the
+Essex Institute, on Essex Street, a few blocks distant, where the
+custodian proudly shows us the name of Hawthorne graven within the lid,
+in some idle moment, by the thumb-nail of the novelist. Some yellow
+documents bearing his official stamp and signature are preserved at the
+Custom-House, and the courteous official who now occupies Hawthorne's
+room displays to us here a rough stencil plate marked "Salem N Hawthorne
+Surr 1847," by means of which knowledge of Hawthorne's existence was
+blazoned abroad "on pepper-bags, cigar-boxes, and bales of dutiable
+merchandise," instead of on title-pages. The arched window, by which
+stood his desk, commands a view upon which his vision often rested, and
+which seems to us decidedly more pleasing and attractive than he has
+led us to expect. The picturesque old wharf in the foreground, the
+white-sailed shipping, and a shimmering expanse of water extending to
+the farther bold headlands of the coast form, we think, a pleasant
+picture for the lounger here.
+
+The apartment opposite to Hawthorne's was, in his day, occupied by the
+brave warrior General James Miller, who is graphically described as the
+"old Collector" in the introduction to "Scarlet Letter;" the room
+directly above it--which is the private office of the present chief
+executive, the genial Collector Waters--a portrait of the hero of
+Lundy's Lane now looks down from the wall upon the visitor; but no
+picture of Hawthorne is to be found in the edifice.
+
+An ample room at the right of the hall on the second floor, now
+handsomely fitted and furnished, was in Hawthorne's time open and
+unfinished, its bare beams festooned with cobwebs and its floor lumbered
+with barrels and bundles of musty official documents; and it was here
+that he discovered, among the accumulated rubbish of the past, the
+"scarlet, gold-embroidered letter," and the manuscript of Surveyor
+Prue,--Hawthorne's ancient predecessor in office,--which recorded the
+"doings and sufferings" of Hester Prynne.
+
+A short walk from the Custom-House brings us to the spot where, with
+"public notices posted upon its front and an iron goblet chained to its
+waist," stood that "eloquent monologist," the town-pump of Hawthorne's
+famous "Rill." Already its locality, at the corner of Essex and
+Washington Streets, is pointed out with pride as being among the sites
+memorable in the town's history, and thus the playful prophecy with
+which Hawthorne terminates the sketch of his official life is more than
+fulfilled.
+
+The spacious and well-preserved old frame house at number fourteen Mall
+Street--a neighborhood superior to that of his former residences--was
+Hawthorne's abode for three or four years. It was here that he, on the
+day of his official death, announced to his wife, "Well, Sophie, my head
+is off, so I must write a book;" and here, in the ensuing six months,
+disturbed and distressed by illness of his family, by the death of his
+mother, and by financial needs, he wrote our most famous romance, "The
+Scarlet Letter." A bare little room in the front of the third story was
+his study here, and while he wrote in solitude his wife worked in a
+sitting-room just beneath, decorating lamp-shades whose sale helped to
+sustain the household.
+
+[Sidenote: Salem--Witch Hill]
+
+As we saunter along the "Main Street" of Hawthorne's sketch and the
+other shady avenues he knew so well, the curious old town, which in his
+discontent he called tame and unattractive, seems to our eyes
+picturesque and beautiful, with its wide elm-bordered streets, its
+grassy waysides, its many gardens and square, embowered dwellings, not
+greatly changed since he knew them. If we follow "the long and lazy
+street" to the Witch Hill, which the novelist describes in "Alice
+Doane's Appeal," we may behold from that unhappy spot, where men and
+women suffered death for imagined misdoing, the whole of Hawthorne's
+Salem, with the environment he pictures in "Sights from a Steeple." We
+see the house-roofs of the town--half hidden by clustering
+foliage--extending now from the slopes of the fateful hill to the
+glinting waters of the harbor; the farther expanse of field and meadow,
+dotted with white villages and scored with shadowy water-ways; the
+craggy coast, with the Atlantic thundering endlessly against its
+headlands. Yonder is the steeple of Hawthorne's vision, beyond is the
+scene of the exquisite "Footprints in the Sand," and across the blue of
+the rippling sea we behold the place of the fierce fight in which the
+gallant Lawrence lost at once his ship and his life.
+
+Not far from Salem is Oak-Knoll, where the white-souled Whittier,
+"wearing his silver crown," passed "life's late afternoon" with his
+devoted relatives. It is a delightful, sheltered old country-seat, with
+wide lawns, and scores of broad acres wooded with noble trees, beneath
+which the poet loved to stroll or sit, soothed and inspirited by the
+gracious and generous beauty of the scene about him.
+
+One spot in the glimmering shade of an overarching oak is shown as his
+favorite resort. Close by the house is a circular, green-walled garden,
+where, in summer mornings, he delighted to work with rake and hoe among
+the flowers. The mansion is a dreamful, old-fashioned edifice, with wide
+and lofty piazzas, whose roofs are upheld by massive columns; and, with
+its grand setting of trees, it presents a pleasing picture. Whittier's
+study--a pleasant, cheerful room, with a delightful outlook and sunny
+exposure, a friendly-looking fireplace, and a glass door opening upon
+the veranda--was especially erected for him in a corner of the house,
+and here his later poems were penned. A bright and ample chamber above
+the parlor was his sleeping-apartment.
+
+[Sidenote: Whittier--Longfellow, etc.]
+
+The sweet poetess Miss Preston and the sprightly and versatile "Gail
+Hamilton" dwelt in the neighborhood and came often to this room to talk
+with the "transplanted prophet of Amesbury." Lucy Larcom and that
+"Sappho of the isles," Celia Thaxter, came less frequently. The place is
+still occupied by the relatives Whittier loved, who have preserved
+essentially unchanged the scenes he here inhabited.
+
+A little farther up the rock-bound coast are the scene of Lucy Larcom's
+touching poem "Hannah's at the Window Binding Shoes;" the hearth-stone
+where Longfellow saw his "Fire of Drift-Wood;" and the bleak sea-side
+home of "Floyd Ireson" of Whittier's verse. Beyond these lie the
+sometime summer homes of the poet Dana, Harriet Prescott Spofford,
+Fields, and Whipple, with that Mecca of the tourist, the savage reef of
+Norman's Woe,--celebrated in Longfellow's pathetic poem as the scene of
+"The Wreck of the Hesperus,"--not far away; while across the harbor a
+summer resort of the gifted Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward stands--an "Old
+Maid's Paradise" no longer--among the rocks of the shore.
+
+By the mouth of Whittier's "lowland river" we find the birthplace of
+Lloyd Garrison, the ancestral abode of the Longfellows, the tomb of
+Whitefield beneath the spot where he preached, the once sojourn of
+Talleyrand. Here, too, still inhabited by his family, we find the large,
+three-storied corner house in which Parton spent his last twenty years
+of busy life, and the low book-lined attic study where, in his cherished
+easy-chair with his manuscript resting upon a lap-board, he did much of
+his valuable work.
+
+Still farther northward, we come to the ancient town of Aldrich's "Bad
+Boy"-hood,--immortalized as the "Rivermouth" of his prose,--the place of
+Longfellow's "Lady Wentworth," the home of Hawthorne's Sir William
+Pepperell; and to the picturesque island realm of that "Princess of
+Thule," Celia Thaxter, and her gifted poet-brother Laighton;--but these
+shrines are worthy of a separate pilgrimage.
+
+
+
+
+OUT OF BOSTON
+
+IV
+
+WEBSTER'S MARSHFIELD: BROOK FARM, ETC
+
+_Scenes of the Old Oaken Bucket--Webster's Home and Grave--Where Emerson
+  won his Wife--Home of Miss Peabody--Parkman--Miss Guiney--Aldrich's
+  Ponkapog--Farm of Ripley's Community--Relics and Reminiscences._
+
+
+One day's excursion out of Boston is southward through the birthplace
+and ancestral home of the brilliant essayist Quincy to the boyhood
+haunts of Woodworth and the scenes which inspired his sweetest lyric. In
+Scituate, by the village of Greenbush, we find the well of the "Old
+Oaken Bucket" remaining at the site of the dwelling where the poet was
+born and reared. Most of the "loved scenes" of his childhood--the
+wide-spreading pond, the venerable orchard, the flower-decked meadow,
+the "deep-tangled wildwood"--may still be seen, little changed since he
+knew them; but the rock of the cataract has been removed and the cascade
+itself somewhat altered by the widening of the highway; the "cot of his
+father" has given place to a modern farm-house; and the "moss-covered
+bucket that hung in the well" has been supplanted by a convenient but
+unpoetical pump.
+
+[Sidenote: Webster's Home and Grave]
+
+A few miles beyond this romantic spot we come to the Marshfield home of
+Daniel Webster, set in the midst of a pleasant rural region, not far
+from the ancient abode of Governor Winslow of the Plymouth colony. On
+the site of Webster's farm-house of thirty rooms--destroyed by fire some
+years ago--his son's widow erected a pretty and tasteful modern cottage,
+in which she preserved many relics of the illustrious statesman and
+orator, which had been rescued from the flames. Some of the relics were
+afterward removed to Boston, and, the family becoming extinct with the
+death of Mrs. Fletcher Webster, the place found an appreciatory
+proprietor in Mr. Walton Hall, a Boston business-man who was reared in
+this neighborhood, where Webster's was "a name to conjure by."
+
+The objects connected with the memory of the statesman have been as far
+as possible preserved, and we find the cottage partially furnished with
+his former belongings. Here we see his writing-table, covered with
+ink-stained green baize; his phenomenally large arm-chair with seat of
+leather; the andirons from his study fireplace; the heavy cane he used
+in his walks about the farm; portraits of the great _genius loci_--one
+of them representing him in his coarse farm attire--and of members of
+his family; a fine cabinet of beetles and butterflies presented to him
+by the Emperor of Brazil; and a number of paintings, articles of
+furniture, and bric-a-brac which had once been Webster's.
+
+Near the house stand the great memorial elms, each planted by Webster's
+hand at the death of one of his children. His favorite tree, beneath
+which his coffined figure lay at his funeral, was injured by the fire
+and has since been removed. Behind the house is a pretty lakelet, on
+whose surface--by his desire--lights were kept burning at night during
+his last illness, so that he might see them from his bed in the Pink
+Room where he died.
+
+His study window looked out through a colonnade of trees upon the
+hill-side cemetery--a furlong distant--where he now sleeps in a spot he
+loved and chose for his sepulchre. His tomb, on the brow of the hill, is
+marked by a huge mound of earth crowned by a ponderous marble slab. The
+memorial stones about it were erected by him to commemorate his family,
+already sleeping in the vault here before he came to lie among
+them:--all save one, and that one died at Bull Run.
+
+Not far away lie Governor Winslow and the Peregrine White who was born
+on the Mayflower. From among the neglected graves we look abroad upon
+the acres Webster tilled, the creeks he fished, the meadows he hunted,
+the haunts of his leisure during many years: on the one hand, we see a
+stretch of verdant pastures and lowly hills dotted by white cottages and
+bounded by distant forests; on the other hand, across the wave-like
+dunes and glistening sands we see a silver rim flecked with white
+sails,--the ocean, whose low-sounding monotone, eternally responding to
+some whisper of the infinite, mayhap lulls the dreamless sleepers
+beneath our feet.
+
+Southward again, we come to historic old Plymouth, with its many Puritan
+shrines and associations, which did not prevent its becoming a
+shire-town of Transcendentalism. Here we see the house (framed in
+England, and erected here upside down) where Emerson, the fountain-head
+of that great "wave of spirituality," wooed and won Miss Jackson to be
+his wife; and not far away the lovely spot where, among his gardens,
+groves, and orchards, Marston Watson had his "Hillside" home,--to which
+resorted Emerson, Theodore Parker, Peabody, Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott,
+and which the latter celebrated in a sonnet. Here, too, we find the
+church where Kendall preached, and the farm of Morton, the earliest
+historian of the Western world.
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Peabody]
+
+In the Boston suburb of Jamaica Plain we find, near the station, the
+modest apartments where Miss Elizabeth Peabody--the "Saint Elizabeth" of
+her friends--passed her later years, and where, not many months ago, she
+died, having survived nearly all her associates in the earlier struggle
+for the enlargement of the bounds of spiritual freedom. She had been the
+intimate friend of Emerson, Channing, Theodore Parker, and the rest; and
+of the wider spirituality which they proclaimed she was esteemed a
+prophetess. Most of her literary work was done before she came to this
+home; and the latest literary effort of her life, her autobiography
+(which was undertaken here in age and weariness), was frustrated by her
+increasing infirmities.
+
+[Sidenote: Parkman]
+
+In the same delightful suburb was the ideally beautiful home of the
+historian Francis Parkman. His wide and tasteful dwelling surmounted an
+elevation overlooking a pretty lakelet, and was environed by ample
+grounds filled with choicest shrubbery and flowers, where there were
+roods of the roses and lilies he loved and studied. In this place he
+lived thirty-four years, and, although practically blind and rarely free
+from torturing pain, he here produced many volumes and accomplished the
+work which places him among the foremost historians of the age. In this
+home he died a year or so ago: his grounds having been taken for a
+public park, it is now proposed to erect here a bronze memorial of the
+great historian amid the floral beauty he created and cherished.
+
+In the remoter region of Canton, Thomas Bailey Aldrich has a sometime
+summer home, erected among enchanting landscapes, where he has pondered
+and written much of his dainty prose and daintier poesy. The curious
+name of this rural retreat is preserved in the title of his entertaining
+volume of travel-sketches, "From Ponkapog to Pesth." The tree near his
+door was the home of the pair of birds he described in the delightful
+sketch "Our New Neighbors at Ponkapog."
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Guiney]
+
+A morning's drive westward through the shade and sheen of a delectable
+urban district conveys us to the village of Auburndale, where we find
+the tasteful cottage home of Louise Imogen Guiney, with its French
+roofs, wide windows, square tower, and embosoming foliage. Here, if we
+come properly accredited, we may (or might before she became the
+village postmistress) see the gifted poetess of "White Sail" and
+"Roadside Harp" and essayist of "English Gallery" and "Prose Idyls"--a
+_petite_ and attractive young lady--at her desk, surrounded by her
+treasures of books and bric-a-brac and with the portraits of many
+friends looking down upon her from the walls of the square upper room
+where she writes. She has little to say concerning her own
+work,--fascinating as it is to her,--but discourses pleasantly on many
+topics and narrates _con amore_ the history of the precious tomes and
+the literary relics she has gathered here, and describes the traits and
+lineage of her beloved canine pets, who have been execrated by some of
+her neighbors.
+
+[Sidenote: Brook Farm]
+
+Nearer Jamaica Plain is the quiet corner of West Roxbury, where the
+exalted community of Brook Farmers attempted to realize in external and
+material fashion their high ideals and to inaugurate the precursor of an
+Arcadian era. In this season, "the sweet o' the year," we find the farm
+a delightful spot, fully warranting Hawthorne's eulogium in "Blithedale
+Romance." The songful stream which gives the place its name is margined
+by verdant and sun-kissed meads which slope away to the circling
+Charles; on either side, fields and picturesque pastures--broken here
+and there by rocky ledges and copse-covered knolls--swell upward to
+feathery acclivities of pine and oak, with rugged escarpments of rock.
+From the elevation about the farm-house we overlook most of the domain
+of these social reformers,--the many acres of woodlands, the orchards
+and fields where Ripley, George William Curtis, Hawthorne, Dwight,
+Bedford, Pratt, Dana, and other transcendental enthusiasts held
+sublimated discourse while they performed the coarsest farm drudgery,
+applied uncelestial fertilizers, "belabored rugged furrows," or delved
+for the infinite in a peat-bog. Curtis has said "there never were such
+witty potato-patches, such sparkling corn-fields; the weeds were
+scratched out of the ground to the music of Tennyson and Browning." The
+farm-house stands above the highway, and is shaded by giant trees
+planted by Ripley and his associates. It is a commodious, antiquated
+structure of weather-worn wood, two stories in height, with a vast attic
+beneath the sloping roofs and an extension which has been recently
+enlarged. The original edifice is a ponderous fabric of almost square
+form, with an entrance in the middle of the front, massive chimneys at
+either end, and contains four spacious lower rooms, besides an outer
+scullery. Here we see the sitting-room of the reformers, where at first
+Channing sometimes preached and the now "Nestor of American journalism"
+sang bass in the choir; their refectory, where Dana served as
+head-waiter; and their brick-paved kitchen, where the erudite Mrs.
+Ripley and the soulful Margaret Fuller sometimes helped to prepare the
+bran bread and baked beans for the exalted brotherhood. Adjoining is the
+old "wash-room," where some who have since become famous in literature
+or politics pounded the soiled linen in a hogshead with a heavy wooden
+pestle; and just without is the turf-carpeted yard where the dignified
+and handsome Hawthorne, the brilliant Charles A. Dana (who certainly was
+the most popular member of the community), and the genial Curtis were
+sometimes seen hanging the moist garments upon the lines, a truly
+edifying spectacle for gods and men. It was from Curtis's pockets that
+the clothes-pins sometimes dropped during the evening dances. Some of
+the trees yet to be seen near the house were rooted from the nursery
+established here by Dana.
+
+This old house was the original "Hive" of the community, who added the
+extensive wing at the back, but increasing numbers soon forced a
+portion of the company to swarm, and other dormitories were erected.
+Of these we find vestiges of the "Eyrie"--which was also used as a
+school-house--upon a commanding ledge at a little distance from the
+house, and nearer the grove where the rural festivals of the association
+were held. Of the "Nest," the little house where Miss Ripley lived, the
+"Cottage," where Margaret Fuller lodged during her sojourns at the farm,
+the large barn, where social _seances_ were held while the starry
+company prepared vegetables for the market, and the other steading
+erected by the community, only the cellars and broken foundations
+remain. In the wood at some distance from the house is the "Eliot's
+Pulpit" of Coverdale's narrative, a mass of rock crowning a knoll and
+having a great fissure through its core; in the forest beyond we may
+find "Coverdale's Walk," and the "Hermitage" where he heard by accident
+the colloquy of Westervelt and Zenobia.
+
+After the day of Ripley's brilliant colony the broad acres of Brook Farm
+were tilled by the town poor, and--"to what base uses!"--the pretty
+cottage of Margaret Fuller became a loathsome small-pox pest-house; the
+rooms of the "Hive," after six years of familiarity with ideal refiners
+and reformers, became the abode of paupers, and at this day are aswarm
+with an odorous multitude of German orphans, wards of a Lutheran
+society that now owns the place.
+
+While the pilgrim may find but few traces of the physical labors of the
+choice spirits who once inhabited this spot, the beneficent results of
+the mental and moral work here accomplished--especially among the
+young--are manifest and ineffaceable. These infertile fields yielded but
+scant returns for the manual toil of the optimistic philosophers, but
+their earnest strivings toward social and mental emancipation have borne
+abundant fruit.
+
+
+
+
+IN BERKSHIRE WITH HAWTHORNE
+
+  I. The Graylock and Hoosac Region
+  II. Lenox and Middle Berkshire
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE GRAYLOCK AND HOOSAC REGION
+
+_North Adams and about--Hawthorne's Acquaintances and Excursions--Actors
+  and Incidents of Ethan Brand--Kiln of Bertram the Lime-Burner--Natural
+  Bridge--Graylock--Thoreau--Hoosac Mountain--Deerfield Arch--
+  Williamstown--Bryant._
+
+
+The Hawthorne pilgrimage has drawn us to many shrines: the sunny scenes
+of "The Marble Faun," the peaceful landscapes of "Our Old Home," the now
+busy city of "The Scarlet Letter," the elm-shaded Salem of "Dr.
+Grimshaw" and "The House of the Seven Gables," the Manse of the
+"Mosses," the Wayside of "Septimius Felton" and "The Dolliver
+Romance,"--these and many another resort of the subtile romancer, in the
+Old World and the New, have held our lingering feet.
+
+Amid the splendors of a New England September we follow him into the
+"headlong Berkshire" of "Ethan Brand" and "Tanglewood Tales."
+
+Hawthorne was more than most writers influenced by environment; the
+situations and circumstances under which his work was produced often
+determined its tone and color, while the persons, localities, and
+occurrences observed by his alert senses in the real world about him
+were skilfully wrought into his romance. His residence in Berkshire
+affected not only the books written there, but some subsequently
+produced, and the scenery of this loveliest corner of New England
+supplied the setting for many of his tales. Some of the best passages of
+his "American Note-Books" are records of his observations in this
+region,--sundry scenes, characters, and incidents being afterward
+literally transcribed therefrom into his fiction,--while a few of his
+shorter stories seem to have been suggested by legends once current in
+Berkshire. It passes, therefore, that for us the greatest charm of this
+realm of delights is that all its beauties--the grandeur of its
+mountains, the enchantment of its valleys, the glamour of its autumn
+woods, the sheen of its lakelets, the sapphire of its skies--serve to
+bring us into closer sympathy with Hawthorne, to whom these beauties
+were once a familiar vision.
+
+He first came to Berkshire in the summer of 1838. For thirteen years he
+had bravely "waited for the world to know" him. His "Twice-Told Tales"
+had brought him little fame or money, but they had procured him the
+friendship of the Peabodys, and it would appear that he and the lovely
+Sophia already loved each other. In a letter to her sister Elizabeth,
+written early in the summer, Sophia says, "Hawthorne came one morning
+for a take-leave call, looking radiant. He said he was not going to tell
+any one, not even his mother, where he should be for the next months; he
+thought he should change his name, so that if he died no one would be
+able to find his gravestone. We asked him to keep a journal while he was
+gone. He at first said he would not write anything, but finally
+concluded it would suit very well for hints for future stories." It was
+from his journal of these months of mysterious retirement that, forty
+years later, the gentle Sophia--then his widow--transcribed those pages
+of the "Note-Books" which contain the account of his sojourn in upper
+Berkshire and of his observations and meditations there. How far the
+journal furnished "hints for future stories" the literary world well
+knows.
+
+A few days after this "take-leave call" we find Hawthorne at Pittsfield,
+where his Berkshire saunterings (and ours) fitly began. We follow him
+northward along a curving valley hemmed by mountains that slope upward
+to the azure; on the right rise the rugged Hoosacs in
+
+  "Wave-like walls that block the sky
+  With tints of gold and mists of blue;"
+
+on the left loom the darkly-wooded domes of the Taconics above the
+bright upland pastures, while before us grand old "Graylock" uprears his
+head "shaggy with primeval forest,"--his gigantic shape forming the
+culmination of the superb landscape. Hawthorne's superlative pleasure of
+beholding this grandeur and beauty from the driver's seat of a stage and
+being regaled at the same time by the converse of the driver is
+denied to us, but we enjoy quite as much as did Hawthorne the
+little "love-pats" and passages of a newly-wedded pair of our
+fellow-passengers. The stage has disappeared, the driver and the
+high-stepping steeds which served him "in wheel and in whoa" have given
+place to the engineer and the locomotive; the changes of the
+half-century since Hawthorne journeyed here have well-nigh overturned
+the world; only the eternal beauty of these hills and the bewraying
+demeanor of the newly-married remain evermore unchanged.
+
+[Sidenote: Hawthorne at North Adams]
+
+[Sidenote: Characters of his Fiction]
+
+At North Adams, which the magician, "liking indifferent well, made his
+head-quarters," we have lodgings near the place of his on the Main
+Street and in the domicile of one who, as a lad of fourteen years, had
+known Hawthorne during his stay here. Apparently he did not attempt to
+carry out his plan of concealing his identity; he certainly was known to
+some of the villagers as the author of "Twice-Told Tales," and a
+descendant of one of Hawthorne's "seven doctors of the place" recalls
+his delight on being told that the "Whig Tavern boarder" was the creator
+of "The Gentle Boy;" and he remembers his subsequent and consequent
+worshipful espionage of the wonderful being. To this espionage we are
+indebted for some edifying details of Hawthorne's sojourn in upper
+Berkshire. The world has known few handsomer men than Hawthorne was at
+this period of his life,--he had been styled Oberon at college,--and our
+informant recollects him as "the most brilliantly handsome person he
+ever beheld," tall, dark, with an expressive mobile face and a lustrous
+eye which held something "indescribably more than keenness" in its quick
+glances. (Charles Reade said Hawthorne's eye was "like a violet with a
+soul in it.") As remembered here, his expression was often abstracted,
+sometimes despondent. He would sit for hours at a time on the broad
+porch of the old "North Adams House," or in a corner of the bar-room,
+silently smoking and apparently oblivious to his surroundings, yet, as
+we know, vigilant to note the oddities of character and opinion he
+encountered. It is certain that he did not drink immoderately at this
+time. There were a few persons--_not_ the model men of the community--to
+whom he occasionally unbent and whom he admitted to a sort of
+comradeship, which, as his diary shows, often became confessionary upon
+their part. With these he held prolonged converse upon the tavern
+porch,--his part in the conversations being mainly suggestions
+calculated to elicit the whimsical conceits or experiences of his
+companions,--sitting the while in the posture of the venerable
+custom-house officials, described in the sketch introductory to the
+"Scarlet Letter," with "chair tipped on its hind legs" and his feet
+elevated against a pillar of the porch. Among those remembered to have
+been thus favored was Captain C----, called Captain Gavett in the
+"Note-Books," who dispensed metaphysics and maple sugar from the tavern
+steps, and a jolly blacksmith named Wetherel, described by Hawthorne as
+"big in the paunch and enormous in the rear," who came regularly to the
+bar for his stimulant. Another was the "lath-like, round-backed,
+rough-bearded, thin-visaged" stage-driver, Platt, whom Hawthorne honors
+as "a friend of mine" in the diary, and whose acquaintance he made
+during the ride from Pittsfield. In later years Platt's pride in having
+known Hawthorne eclipsed even his sense of distinction in being "the
+first and only man to drive an ox-team to the top of Graylock, sir." He
+had once been employed to haul the materials for an observatory up that
+mountain's steep inclines. Of the other "hangers-on" who were wont to
+infest the bar-room and porch fifty years ago and whom Hawthorne depicts
+in his journal and his fiction, few of the present generation of
+loungers in the place have ever heard. Orrin ----, the sportive widower
+whose peccadilloes are hinted at in the "Note-Books," is remembered by
+older residents of the town, and the "fellow who refused to pay six
+dollars for the coffin in which his wife was buried" may still be named
+as the personification of meanness. The maimed and dissolute Daniel
+Haines--nicknamed "Black Hawk"--was then a familiar figure in the
+village streets, and his unique history and appearance could not escape
+the notice of the great romancer nor be soon forgotten by the
+towns-people. As Hawthorne says, "he had slid down by degrees from law
+to the soap-vat." Once a reputable lawyer, his bibulous habits and an
+accident--his hand being "torn away by the devilish grip of a
+steam-engine"--had so reduced him that at the time Hawthorne saw him he
+maintained himself by boiling soap and practising phrenology. It is
+remembered that he used to "feel of bumps" for the price of a drink, and
+that, Hawthorne's head being submitted to his manipulation, he gravely
+assured the tavern company, "This man was created to shine as a bank
+president," and then privately advised the landlord to "make that chap
+pay in advance for his board." A resident tells us that this dirty and
+often drunken Haines used to make biweekly visits to his father's house,
+with a cart drawn by disreputable-looking dogs, to receive fat in
+exchange for soap. The novelist touches this odd character many times in
+his journal, and utilizes it in the romance of "Ethan Brand," where it
+is the "Lawyer Giles, the elderly ragamuffin," who, with the rest of the
+lazy regiment from the village tavern, came in response to the summons
+of the "boy Joe" to see poor Brand returned from his long search after
+the Unpardonable Sin. This "boy Joe," son of "Bertram the lime-burner,"
+was also a bar-room character, noted here by Hawthorne, but obviously
+for a different use than that made of him in "Ethan Brand,"--a reference
+to him in the "Note-Books" being supplemented by this memorandum: "take
+this boy as the germ of a tavern-haunter, a country _roue_, to spend a
+wild and brutal youth, ten years of his prime in prison and his old age
+in the poor-house." This sketch may have been written in the spirit of
+prophecy, so exactly has the life of one bar-room boy coincided with
+Hawthorne's outline; the career of another lad whom he here saw and
+possibly had in mind was happier.
+
+[Sidenote: Characters and Scenes]
+
+A modern hotel has replaced the "Whig Tavern" of Hawthorne's time, and a
+new set of _habitues_ now frequent its bar-room; another generation of
+fat men has succeeded the individuals whose breadth of back was a marvel
+to the novelist, and in the increased population of the place the "many
+obese" would no longer provoke comment. The lapsing decades have
+expanded the pretty and busy factory-village he found into a prettier
+and busier factory-city without materially changing its prevailing air.
+The vigorous young city has not wholly out-grown the "hollow vale"
+walled in by towering mountains; the aspect of its grand environment is
+therefore essentially unaltered, and it chances that there is scarcely a
+spot, in or about the town, which received the notice of Hawthorne which
+may not still be identified. It is our crowning pleasure in the
+resplendent autumn days to follow his thoughtful step and dreamy vision
+through town and country-side to the spots he frequented and described,
+thus sharing, in a way, his companionship and beholding through his eyes
+the beauties which he has depicted of mountain and vale, forest and
+stream. On the summit of a hill in the village cemetery, where white
+gravestones gleam amid the evergreens, the grave of a child at whose
+burial Hawthorne assisted is pointed out by one who was present with
+him. The well-known author-divine Washington Gladden, sometime preached
+in a near-by church. The ever-varying phases of the heights which look
+down upon the town--the wondrous play of light and shade upon the great
+sweeps of foliage which clothe the mountain-sides, the shadows chasing
+each other along the slopes and changing from side to side as the day
+declines, until the vale lies in twilight while the near summits are
+gilded with sunset gold, the exquisite cloud-effects as the fleecy
+masses drift above the ridges or cling to the higher peaks--were a
+never-failing source of pleasure to Hawthorne, as they are to the
+loiterer of this day. Every shifting of the point of view as we stroll
+in the town reveals a new aspect of its mountain ramparts and arouses
+fresh delight. Hawthorne thought the village itself most beautiful when
+clouds deeply shaded the mountains while sunshine flooded the valley
+and, by contrast, made streets and houses a bright, rich gold.
+
+[Sidenote: Hawthorne's Rambles]
+
+The investing mountains give to the place the "snug and insular" air
+which Hawthorne observed; from many points it seems completely severed
+from the rest of the world. On some dark days sombre banks of cloud
+settle along the ridges and apparently so strengthen and heighten the
+beleaguering walls that we recall Hawthorne's fancy that egress is
+impossible save by "climbing above the clouds." However, the railways
+tunnel the base of one mountain and curve around the flanks of others,
+while
+
+  "Old roads winding, as old roads will,"
+
+find easy grades about and over the ramparts, so that the bustling
+"Tunnel-city" is by no means isolated from the outside world.
+
+The rambles among and beyond these investing mountains, by which
+Hawthorne made himself and "Eustace Bright" of "Wonder-Book" and
+"Tanglewood Tales" familiar with "rough, rugged, broken, headlong"
+Berkshire, were usually solitary. The before-mentioned admirer of the
+"Gentle Boy" sometimes offered to guide the novelist to places of
+interest in the vicinage, but he usually preferred to be alone with
+nature and his own reveries. Once when the lad proposed to pilot him to
+the peak of Graylock, Hawthorne replied he "did not care to soar so
+high; the Bellows-Pipe was sightly enough for him." He visited the
+latter point many times; it is a long walk from the village, and once he
+returned so late that the hotel was closed for the night and our lad
+pommelled the door for him until the landlord descended, in wrath and
+confidentially scant attire, to admit the novelist.
+
+[Sidenote: Ethan Brand]
+
+One starless night we were guided to the kiln of "Bertram the
+lime-burner" which Hawthorne visited with Mr. Leach,--one of several
+kilns high up on the steep slope without the town, where the marble of
+the mountain is converted into snow-white lime. The graphic imagery of
+the tale may all be realized here upon the spot where it is laid. Amid
+the darkness, the iron door which encloses the glowing limestone
+apparently opens into the mountain-side, and seems a veritable entrance
+to the infernal regions whose lurid flames escape by every crevice. The
+dark and silent figure, revealed to us by the weird light, sitting and
+musing before the kiln, is surely "Ethan Brand" on his solitary vigil,
+intent on perilous thoughts as he looks into the flame, or mutely
+listening to the fiend he has evoked from the fire to tell him of the
+Unpardonable Sin; or it is the same Brand returned to the foot of
+Graylock after eighteen years of weary searching abroad, to find the Sin
+in his own heart and to burn that heart into snowy whiteness and purity
+in the kiln he had watched so long. As we ponder the scene we would
+scarce be surprised to witness the approach of the village rabble led by
+Joe, the old Jew exhibiting his "peep-show" at the foot of the kiln, and
+the self-pursuing cur violently chasing his own shortened tail, or to
+hear the demoniac laughter of Brand which scattered the terror-stricken
+rabble in the surrounding darkness. Certain it is that, thirteen years
+before he wrote the tale, Hawthorne saw here, at a kiln on the foot-hill
+of Graylock, his "Bertram," and heard the legend of a demented creature
+who threw himself into the midst of the circle of fire. The name "Ethan
+Brand" was that of an old resident of Hawthorne's Salem.
+
+[Sidenote: Graylock]
+
+The summit of Graylock, whose rugged beauty has been sung by Holmes,
+Thoreau, Bryant, and Fanny Kemble, had for Hawthorne a sort of
+fascination. From the streets of the village, from all the ways by which
+he sauntered through the country-side, his eyes were continually
+turning to that lofty height, observant of its ever-changing aspects.
+His diary of the time abounds with records of its phases, presented in
+varying conditions of cloud and sunshine and from different places of
+prospect, and of the fanciful impressions suggested to his subtile
+thought by each fresh and unfamiliar appearance. A walk repeatedly
+enjoyed by him is along a primitive road on the mountain-side to the
+southern end of The Notch,--"where it slopes upward to the
+skies,"--whence he could see most of the enchanting valley of
+Berkshire--with its lakes, embowered villages, and billowy expanses of
+upland and mead--extending between mountain-borders to the great Dome
+which looms across it sixty miles away. In the distance he could see the
+crags of Bryant's Monument Mountain--the "headless sphinx" of his own
+"Wonder-Book"--rising above the gleaming lake whose margin was to be his
+later home.
+
+Our route to the peak of Graylock is that taken by Hawthorne and Thoreau
+through the savage cleft of The Notch. We follow up a dashing
+mountain-stream past a charming cascade beneath darkening hemlocks, then
+along a rough road by the houses whose inhabitants Hawthorne thought
+"ought to be temperance people" from the quality of the water they gave
+him to drink. In the remoter parts of the glen a stranger-pedestrian is
+still a wonder, and will be regarded as curiously as was the romancer.
+From the extremity of The Notch, Graylock rises steeply, his sides
+clothed with forests, through which we climb to the summit and our
+reward. From the site of Thoreau's bivouac, where Fanny Kemble once
+declaimed Romeo and Juliet to a picnic party, we behold a scene of
+unrivalled vastness and beauty,--on every side peak soaring beyond peak
+until the shadowy outlines blend with the distant sky. The view ranges
+from Grand Monadnock and the misty Adirondacks to the Catskills, the
+Dome of Mount Washington, and the far-away hills of Connecticut, while
+at our feet smiles the bright valley, as beautiful as that in which
+Rasselas dwelt.
+
+[Sidenote: Natural Bridge]
+
+A mile from the town we find one of the most picturesque spectacles in
+New England, the Natural Bridge, to which Hawthorne came again and again
+during his sojourn in this region. Amid a grove of pines apparently
+rooted in the solid rock, a tributary of the Hoosac has, during
+measureless eons of time, worn in the white marble a chasm sixty feet
+deep and fifteen feet wide, spanned at one point by a beautifully arched
+mass which forms a bridge high above the stream which frets along the
+rock-strewn floor of the canyon. Within the ravine the brook falls in a
+rainbow-crowned cascade, and below this is a placid pool with margins of
+polished marble, where Hawthorne once meditated a bath, but, alarmed by
+the approach of visitors, he hastily resumed his habiliments, "not
+caring to be to them the most curious part of the spectacle."
+
+From the deep bed of the brook the gazer looks heavenward between lofty
+walls of crystalline whiteness which seem to converge as they rise,
+whose surmounting crags jutting from the verge are crowned by sombre
+evergreens which overhang the chasm and almost shut out the sky. As we
+traverse the gorge whose wildness so impressed Hawthorne and listen to
+the re-echoing roar of the now diminished stream, we are reminded of his
+conceit that the scene is "like a heart that has been rent asunder by a
+torrent of passion which has raged and left ineffaceable traces, though
+now there is but a rill of feeling at the bottom."
+
+Our way back to the town is along a riotous stream which took strong
+hold upon the liking of the novelist, by which he often walked and in
+whose cool depths he bathed. His brief descriptions of its secluded and
+turbulent course, through resounding hollows, amid dark woods, under
+pine-crowned cliffs,--"talking to itself of its own wild fantasies in
+the voice of solitude and the wilderness,"--although written at the time
+but for his own perusal, are among the gems of the language. Farther
+down, the boisterous stream is now subdued and harnessed by man and made
+to turn wheels of factories; its limpid waters are discolored by
+dye-stuffs; its beauty is lost with its freedom; it becomes useful
+and--ugly.
+
+[Sidenote: Incidents and Characters of Tales]
+
+One day our excursion is into the romantic valley of the Deerfield by
+the old stage-road over the Hoosac range, the route which Hawthorne took
+with his friends Birch and Leach. The many turns by which the road
+accomplishes the ascent afford constantly varying vistas of the valley
+out of which we rise, and progressively widening prospects of the
+forest-clad mountains beyond. At the summit we are in the centre of the
+magnificent panorama of mountains--glowing now with autumnal crimson and
+gold--which extorted from Henry Clay the declaration that he had "never
+beheld anything so beautiful."
+
+On the bare and wind-swept plain which lies along the summit are a few
+farm-dwellings. Among these at the time of Hawthorne's visit--before
+the great tunnel had pierced the mountain and superseded the
+stage-route--was a homely wayside inn, afterward a farm-house, at whose
+bar passengers were wont to "wet their whistles." It may be assumed that
+the romancer and his companions failed not to conform to this
+time-honored custom, for it was in that rude bar-room--since a
+farm-kitchen--that Hawthorne met the itinerant Jew with a diorama of
+execrable scratchings which he carried upon his back and exhibited as
+"specimens of the fine arts;" in that room also the novelist witnessed
+the whimsical performance of the usually sensible and sedate old dog,
+who periodically broke out in an infuriated pursuit of his own tail, "as
+if one half of his body were at deadly enmity with the other." These
+incidents were carefully noted at the time for possible future use, and
+in such choice diction that when, many years afterward, he wove them
+into the fabric of a tale of "The Snow Image" volume, he transcribed
+them from his diary to his manuscript essentially unchanged. This
+instance illustrates the method of this consummate literary artist and
+his alertness to perceive and utilize the details of real life. His
+journals abundantly show that he was by no means the aphelxian dreamer
+he has been adjudged.
+
+[Sidenote: Deerfield Arch]
+
+As we descend into the deep valley we find a wild gulf where a brooklet
+from the top of Hoosac falls a hundred feet into a rock-bordered pool,
+whence it hastens to lose itself in the river; and a mile or two farther
+along the Deerfield we come to the Natural Arch which Hawthorne visited.
+It is in one of the wildest parts of the picturesque valley, where
+mountain-walls rise a thousand feet on either side. Through a mass of
+rock projecting from the margin the stream has wrought for itself a
+symmetrically arched passage as large as and very like the door-way of
+an Old-World cathedral. The summit of the arch and the water-worn
+pillars upon either side display "pot-holes" and other evidences of
+erosion, and in the bed of the current lie fragments of similarly
+attrite rocks which seem to indicate that at some period a series of
+arches spanned the entire space from mountain to mountain. Hawthorne's
+pleasing fancy makes this arch the entrance to an enchanted palace which
+has all vanished except the door-way that "now opens only into
+nothingness and empty space."
+
+[Sidenote: Williamstown]
+
+On other days our saunterings follow Hawthorne's to beautiful
+Williamstown and through the picturesque scenery which environs it.
+Within the park-like village the alma mater of Bryant, Garfield, and
+Hawthorne's "Eustace Bright" stands embowered in noble elms and
+overlooked by mighty Graylock. Viewed from here, Emerson thought
+Graylock "a serious mountain." Thoreau considered its proximity worth at
+least "one endowed professorship; it were as well to be educated in the
+shadow of a mount as in more classic shades. Some will remember not only
+that they went to the college but that they went to the mountain."
+Hawthorne visited both. At the college commencement we find him more
+attentive to the eccentric characters in the assemblage without the
+church than to the literary exercises within, as evidenced by his
+piquant description of the enterprising pedler with the "heterogeny" of
+wares, the gingerbread man, the negroes, and other oddities of the
+out-door company.
+
+[Sidenote: Bryant--Emerson]
+
+About us here lie the scenes which stirred in William Cullen Bryant that
+intense love of nature which inspired his best stanzas. A winsome walk
+brings us to a sequestered glen where a brooklet winds amid moss-covered
+rocks and dainty ferns, and mirrors in its clear pools the overhanging
+boughs and the patches of azure; this was a favorite haunt of the
+youthful Bryant, and here he pondered or composed his earlier poems,
+including some portion of the matchless
+
+"Thanatopsis." Here Emerson, lingering under the spell of the spot, was
+moved to recite Wordsworth's "Excursion" to a companion, who must
+evermore feel an enviable thrill when he recalls the exquisite lines
+falling from the lips of the "great evangel and seer" amid the
+loveliness of such a scene.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+LENOX AND MIDDLE BERKSHIRE
+
+_Beloved of the Litterateurs--La Maison Rouge--Where The House of the
+  Seven Gables was written--Wonder-Book and Tanglewood Scenes--The
+  Bowl--Beecher's Laurel Lake--Kemble--Bryant's Monument Mountain--
+  Stockbridge--Catherine Sedgwick--Melville's Piazza and Chimney--
+  Holmes--Longfellow--Pittsfield._
+
+
+We have only to accompany Eustace Bright of "Wonder-Book" from Williams
+College to his home, where Catherine Sedgwick's "Stockbridge Bowl"
+nestles among the summer-enchanted hills of central Berkshire, to find
+the abode of Hawthorne during the most fertile period of his life. This
+region of inspiring landscapes has long been a favorite residence of
+_litterateurs_. Here Jonathan Edwards compiled his predestined
+treatises; here Catherine Sedgwick wrote the romances which charmed her
+generation; here Elihu Burritt "the Learned Blacksmith," wrought out the
+"Sparks" that made him famous; here Bryant composed his best stanzas and
+made Monument Mountain and Green River classic spots; here Henry Ward
+Beecher indited many "Star Papers;" here Herman Melville produced his
+sea-tales and brilliant essays; here Headley and Holmes, Lowell and
+Longfellow, Curtis and James, Audubon and Whipple, Mrs. Sigourney and
+Martineau, Fanny Kemble and Frederika Bremer, the gifted sisters
+Goodale, and many other shining spirits, have had home or haunt and have
+invested the scenery with the splendors of their genius. Half a score of
+this galaxy were in Berkshire at the time of Hawthorne's residence
+there.
+
+After his sojourn in northern Berkshire he returned to Salem, where he
+married the lovely Sophia Peabody, endured some years of custom-house
+drudgery, and wrote the "Scarlet Letter," which made him famous: he then
+sought again the seclusion of the mountains.
+
+[Sidenote: Hawthorne's Return to Berkshire]
+
+Poverty, which he had long and bravely endured, has been assigned as the
+cause of his removal to the humble Berkshire abode in 1850; one writer
+refers to the slenderness of his larder here, another says the rent for
+his poor dwelling was paid by his friends, another that the rent was
+remitted by the owner, who was his friend. But the success of the
+"Scarlet Letter" had relieved the necessitous condition of its author;
+and his landlord here--Tappan of "Tanglewood"--testifies and Hawthorne's
+letters show that he was able to pay his rent. His motive in returning
+to Berkshire is stated in a letter to Bridge: "I have taken a house in
+Lenox--I long to get into the country, for my health is not what it has
+been. An hour or two of labor in a garden and a daily ramble in country
+air would keep me all right." Doubtless, too, he hoped to find the quiet
+and seclusion of the place favorable for his work.
+
+[Sidenote: His Home and Study]
+
+The habitation to which he brought his family he describes as "the very
+ugliest little bit of an old red farm-house you ever saw," "the most
+inconvenient and wretched hovel I ever put my head in." His wife's
+letters characterize it, "the reddest and smallest of houses," with such
+a low stud that she "fears to be crushed."
+
+In later years we have found it scarcely changed since Hawthorne's
+occupancy; it was indeed of the humblest and plainest,--a low-eaved,
+one-and-a-half-storied structure, with a lower wing at the side, dingy
+red in color, with window-shutters of green. The interior was cosy and
+more commodious than the exterior would indicate, and one could readily
+conceive that the artistic taste and deft fingers of Mrs. Hawthorne
+might create here the idyllic home her letters portray. We have been
+indebted to the courtesy of Hawthorne's friend Tappan for glimpses of
+the rooms which Mrs. Hawthorne had already made familiar to us: the tiny
+reception-room, where she "sewed at her stand and read to the children
+about Christ;" the drawing-room, where she disposed "the embroidered
+furniture," and where, in the farther corner, stood "Apollo with his
+head tied on;" the dining-room, where the "Pembroke table stood between
+the windows;" the small boudoir, with its enchanting outlook; the
+"golden chamber" where the baby Rose was born; the room of the "little
+lady Una;" and the low, dingy apartment which was the study of the
+master-genius. Of this room she says, "it can boast of nothing but his
+presence in the morning and the picture out of the window in the
+evening." His secretary was so placed that as he sat at his work he
+could look out upon a landscape of forest and meadow, lake and mountain,
+as beautiful as a poet's dream. It was the exquisite loveliness of this
+scene--which Hawthorne thought surpassed all others in Berkshire--that
+for a time reconciled him to the deficiencies of his situation here.
+
+Monument Mountain, looming almost across the valley, is the most
+prominent feature of this view, and it was from his study window that he
+noted most of its varying aspects which are depicted in the
+"Wonder-Book" and in his letters and journals. Its contour is to him
+that of a "huge, headless sphinx," and when--as on the days we beheld it
+from his window--it blazes from base to summit with the resplendent hues
+of autumn, his fancy suggested that "the sphinx is wrapped in a rich
+Persian shawl;" with the sunshine upon it, "it has the aspect of
+burnished copper;" now it has "a fleece of sun-brightened mist," again
+it seems "founded on a cloud;" on other days it is "enveloped as if in
+the smoke of a great battle." Upon the pane through which he had looked
+upon these changeful phases his hand inscribed, "Nathaniel Hawthorne,
+February 9, 1851."
+
+[Sidenote: Site of his Little Red House]
+
+He could scarcely have found a lovelier location for his home. The
+valley, which sometimes seemed to him "a vast basin filled with sunshine
+as with wine," is enclosed by groups of mountains piled and terraced to
+the horizon. As we behold them in the splendor of the October days,
+great patches of sunshine and sable cloud-shadows flit along the glowing
+slopes in the sport of the wind. On the one side, the ground sweeps
+upward from the cottage site to the "Bald Summit" of the "Wonder-Book;"
+on the other, a meadow--as long as the finger of the giant of "Three
+Golden Apples"--slopes to the lake a furlong distant. That beautiful
+water, sung by Sigourney, Sedgwick, and Fanny Kemble, stretches its bays
+three miles among the hills to the southward and mirrors its own wooded
+margins and the farther mountains. Beyond the lake, rising in mid-air
+like a great gray wall, are the sheer precipices of Monument Mountain,
+and in the hazy distance the loftier Taconics uprear their grand Dome in
+the illimitable blue.
+
+Of "La Maison Rouge" of Hawthorne's letters, the pilgrim of to-day finds
+only the blackened and broken foundation walls: a devouring fire, from
+which Tappan saved little of his furniture, has laid it low. These walls
+(which remain only because relic-hunters cannot easily carry them away)
+measurably indicate the form and dimensions of the cottage and its
+general arrangement. Its site is close upon the highway, from which it
+is partially screened by evergreen trees. The gate of the enclosure is
+of course an unworthy successor to that upon which Fields found
+Hawthorne swinging his children, but these near-by elms have shaded the
+great romancer, the tallest of the evergreens is the tree his wife
+thought "full of a thousand memories," and all about the spot cluster
+reminders of the simple, healthful life Hawthorne led here. Here are
+the garden ground he tilled and where he buried the pet rabbit "Bunny;"
+the "patch," ploughed for him by Tappan, where he raised beans for
+himself and corn for his hens (he had learned something of agriculture
+at Brook Farm, albeit it was said there he could do nothing but feed the
+hogs); the now great fruit-trees whose leaden labels little Julian
+destroyed, as Tappan remembers; the place of the "scientific hennery,"
+fitted up by the "Man of Genius and the Naval Officer,"--Hawthorne and
+Horatio Bridge; the long declivity where the novelist as well as his
+Eustace Bright used to coast "in the nectared air of winter" with the
+children of the "Wonder-Book;" the leafy woods--his refuge from
+visitors--where he walked with his children and where Bright nutted with
+the little Pringles; the lake-shore where Hawthorne loitered or lay
+extended in the shade during summer hours, "smoking cigars, reading
+foolish novels, and thinking of nothing at all," while the children
+played about him or covered his chin and breast with long grasses to
+make him "look like the mighty Pan."
+
+Near by are other friends he has made known to us. Yonder copse shades a
+narrow glen whose braes border a brooklet winding and chattering on its
+way to the lake; this glen was a summer haunt of Hawthorne, where he
+doubtless pondered much of his work. Here he brought his children
+"to play with the brook" and helped them to build water-falls, or
+reclined in the shade and told them stories as described in the
+"Wonder-Book,"--for this is the "dell of Shadow-Brook," where the
+children picnicked with Bright and where he told them the story of "The
+Golden Touch" on such an afternoon as this, on which we behold the dell
+thickly strewn with golden leaves, as if King Midas had newly emptied
+his coffers there.
+
+[Sidenote: Tanglewood and Wonder-Book Scenes]
+
+Yonder mansion of Hawthorne's landlord, just beyond the highway, is
+"Tanglewood,"--place of the Pringles' home and still the abode of
+Tappan's daughters,--where Bright spent his vacations and where
+Hawthorne makes him tell many of the "Tales." The view described on the
+porch, where the "Gorgon's Head" was narrated, is the one Hawthorne saw
+from his study window. Glimpses of various rooms of the mansion which
+Tappan then inhabited and called "Highwood" are prefixed to the stories
+told in them. Beyond "Tanglewood" steeply rises an eminence whose bare
+acclivity Hawthorne often climbed with his family,--the "Bald Summit"
+where the Pringles listened to the tale of "The Chimera." We ascend by
+the novelist's accustomed way "through Luther Butler's orchard," and are
+repaid by a view extending from the mountains of Vermont to the
+Catskills and deserving the high praise Hawthorne bestowed. A golden
+cloud floating close to Graylock's shaggy head reminds us of Hawthorne's
+conceit that a mortal might step from the mountain to the cloud and thus
+ascend heavenly heights. The farther ranges enclose a valley of
+wave-like hills,--which look as if a tumultuous ocean had been
+transfixed and solidified,--dotted with farmsteads and picturesque
+villages whose white spires rise from embowering trees. At our feet the
+"Bowl" ripples and scintillates, farther away the "Echo Lake" of
+Christine Nilsson and many smaller lakelets "open their blue eyes to the
+sun," while the placid stream, fringed by overhanging willows, circles
+here and there through the valley like a shining ribbon. Here we may
+realize the immensity of Hawthorne's giant in the "Three Golden Apples,"
+who was so tall he "might have seated himself on Taconic and had
+Monument Mountain for a footstool."
+
+[Sidenote: Resorts and Reminiscences]
+
+[Sidenote: Fanny Kemble]
+
+Not far away, near another shore of the shimmering "Bowl," that
+versatile genius "Carl Benson"--Charles Astor Bristed--dwelt for some
+time in a quaint old farm-house which has since been destroyed by fire,
+and here accomplished some of his literary work. Laurel Lake (the
+Scott's Pond of Hawthorne's "Note-Books"), where Beecher "bought a
+hundred acres to lie down upon,"--and called them Blossom Farm in the
+"Star Papers" written there,--was another resort of Hawthorne. We find
+it a pretty water, although its margins are mostly denuded of large
+trees. A bright matron of the vicinage, who, when a child, thought the
+author of the "Wonder-Book" the "greatest man in the world save only
+Franklin Pierce," lived then by Hawthorne's road to Laurel Lake. Her
+admiration for him (heightened by his intimacy with Pierce) led her to
+daily watch the road by which he would come from Tanglewood, and when
+she saw him approaching--which would be twice a week in good
+weather--she would go into the yard and reverently gaze at him until his
+swift gait had carried him out of sight. To her he was a tall, dark man
+with a handsome clean-shaven face and lustrous eyes which saw nothing
+but the ground directly before him, habitually dressed in black, with a
+wide-brimmed soft hat. Usually his walk was solitary, but sometimes
+Herman Melville, who was well known in the neighborhood, was his
+companion, and one autumn he was twice or thrice accompanied by "a
+light spare man,"--the poet Ellery Channing. Once Hawthorne strode past
+toward the lake when Fanny Kemble, who lived near by, rode her black
+steed by his side and "seemed to be doing all the talking"--she was
+capable of that--and "was talking politics." Having secured a Democratic
+auditor, she doubtless "improved the occasion" with her habitual
+vivaciousness. A neighbor of Hawthorne's tells us this incident of the
+following year, when the novelist's friend Pierce had been named for the
+Presidency. One dark night this neighbor went on foot to a campaign
+lecture at Lenox Furnace. At its close, he essayed to shorten the
+homeward walk by a "short cut" across the fields, and, of course, lost
+his way. Descrying a light, he directed his steps toward it, but found
+himself involved in a labyrinth of obstacles, and had to make so many
+detours that when he finally reached the house whence the light
+proceeded, and when in response to his hail the door was opened by
+Kemble herself, he was so distraught and amazed at being lost among his
+own farms that he could hardly explain his plight; but she quickly
+interrupted his incoherent account: "Yes, I see, poor benighted man!
+you've been to a Democratic meeting; no wonder you are bewildered! Now
+I'll lend you a good Whig lantern that will light you safe home." We
+find Mrs. Kemble-Butler's "Perch"--as she named her home here--a little
+enlarged, but not otherwise changed since the time of her occupancy. She
+was a general favorite, and her dark steed, which had cost her the
+proceeds of a volume of her poems, used to stop before every house in
+the vicinage. She often came, habited in a sort of bloomer costume which
+shocked some of her friends, to fish in the "Bowl" at the time Hawthorne
+dwelt by its shore.
+
+The death of Louis Kossuth, some time ago, reminded her former neighbors
+here that she led the dance with him at a ball in Lenox, when the exiled
+patriot was a guest of the Sedgwicks.
+
+[Sidenote: Monument Mountain]
+
+Our approach to Monument Mountain is along one of those sequestered
+by-ways which Hawthorne loved, with "an unseen torrent roaring at an
+unseen depth" near by. A rift in the morning mists which enshroud the
+valley displays the mountain summit bathed in sunshine. We ascend by
+Bryant's "path which conducts up the narrow battlement to the north,"
+the same along which Hawthorne and his friends--Holmes, James T. Fields,
+Sedgwick, and the rest--were piloted by the historian Headley on a
+summer's day more than forty years ago. Standing upon the beetling
+verge, which is scarred and splintered by thunderbolts and overhangs a
+precipice of five hundred feet or more, we look abroad upon a landscape
+of wondrous expanse and beauty. Here we may realize all the prospect
+Bryant portrayed as he stood upon this spot:
+
+                "A beautiful river
+  Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads;
+                        On either side
+  The fields swell upward to the hills; beyond,
+  Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise
+  The mighty columns with which earth props heaven."
+
+In the middle distance, across the Bowl, which gleams a veritable
+"mountain mirror," we see the site of the home whence Hawthorne so often
+looked upon these cliffs. Yonder detached pinnacle, rising from the base
+of the precipice beneath us, is the "Pulpit Rock" which Catherine
+Sedgwick christened when Hawthorne's party picnicked here; from the crag
+projecting from the verge Fanny Kemble declaimed Bryant's poem, and
+Herman Melville, bestriding the same rock for a bowsprit, "pulled and
+hauled imaginary ropes" for the amusement of the company. Among these
+splintered masses the company lunched that day and drank quantities of
+Heidsieck to the health of the "dear old poet of Monument Mountain." On
+the east, almost within sight from this eminence, is the spot where he
+was born, near the birthplaces of Warner and the gifted Mrs. Howe.
+
+[Sidenote: Hawthorne at Stockbridge]
+
+Another day we follow the same brilliant party of Hawthorne's friends
+through the Stockbridge Ice Glen,--a narrow gorge which cleaves a rugged
+mountain from base to summit, its riven sides being apparently held
+asunder by immense rocky masses hurled upon each other in wild
+confusion. Beneath are weird grottos and great recesses which the sun
+never penetrates, and within these we make our way--clambering and
+sliding over huge boulders--through the heart of the mountain. One of
+Hawthorne's company here testifies that in all the extemporaneous
+jollity of the scramble through the glen the usually silent novelist was
+foremost, and, being sometimes in the dark, dared use his
+tongue,--"calling out lustily and pretending that certain destruction
+threatened us all. I never saw him in better spirits than throughout
+this day."
+
+From the glen we trace Hawthorne to the staid old house of Burr's
+boyhood, where lived and wrote Jonathan Edwards, and the statelier
+dwelling whence Catherine Sedgwick gave her tales to the world. Near by
+we find the grave where she lies amid the scenes of her own "Hope
+Leslie," and not far from the sojourn of her gifted niece whose
+translation of Sand's "Fadette" has been so well received.
+Overlooking the village is the summer residence of Field of the
+"Evangelist,"--author of the delightful books of travel.
+
+Farther away is a little farm-house, with a "huge, corpulent, old Harry
+VIII. of a chimney," to which Hawthorne was a frequent visitor,--the
+"Arrow-Head" of Herman Melville. "Godfrey Graylock" says the friendship
+between Hawthorne and Melville originated in their taking refuge
+together, during an electric shower, in a narrow cleft of Monument
+Mountain. They had been coy of each other on account of Melville's
+review of the "Scarlet Letter" in Duyckinck's _Literary World_, but
+during some hours of enforced intercourse and propinquity in very
+contracted quarters they discovered in each other a correlation of
+thought and feeling which made them fast friends for life. Thereafter
+Melville was often at the little red house, where the children knew him
+as "Mr. Omoo," and less often Hawthorne came to chat with the racy
+romancer and philosopher by the great chimney. Once he was accompanied
+by little Una--"Onion" he sometimes called her--and remained a whole
+week. This visit--certainly unique in the life of the shy Hawthorne--was
+the topic when, not so long agone, we last looked upon the living face
+of Melville in his city home. March weather prevented walks abroad, so
+the pair spent most of the week in smoking and talking metaphysics in
+the barn,--Hawthorne usually lounging upon a carpenter's bench. When he
+was leaving, he jocosely declared he would write a report of their
+psychological discussions for publication in a volume to be called "A
+Week on a Work-Bench in a Barn," the title being a travesty upon that of
+Thoreau's then recent book, "A Week on Concord River," etc.
+
+[Sidenote: Melville's Arrow-Head]
+
+Sitting upon the north piazza, of "Piazza Tales," at Arrow-Head, where
+Hawthorne and his friend lingered in summer days, we look away to
+Graylock and enjoy "the calm prospect of things from a fair piazza"
+which Melville so whimsically describes. At Arrow-Head, too, we find the
+astonishing chimney which suggested the essay, still occupying the
+centre of the house and "leaving only the odd holes and corners" to
+Melville's nieces, who now inhabit the place in summer; the study where
+Hawthorne and Melville discussed the plot of the "White Whale" and other
+tales; the great fireplace, with its inscriptions from "I and my
+Chimney;" the window-view of Melville's "October Mountain,"--beloved of
+Longfellow,--whose autumn glories inspired that superb word-picture and
+metaphysical sketch.
+
+On a near knoll, commanding a view of the circle of mountains and the
+winding river, stands the sometime summer residence of Holmes among his
+ancestral acres, where Hawthorne and Fields came to visit him. His
+"den," in which he did much literary work, overlooks the beautiful
+meadows, and is now expanded into a large library, while the trees he
+planted are grown to be the crowning beauty of the place, which the
+owner calls Holmesdale. It was the hereditary home of the Wendells.
+
+[Sidenote: Pittsfield]
+
+Beyond, at the edge of the town of Pittsfield, is the mansion where
+Longfellow found his wife and his famous "Old Clock on the Stairs." At
+the Athenaeum in the town some thousands of Holmes's books will soon be
+placed, and here is preserved the secretary from Hawthorne's study in
+the little red house,--a time-worn mahogany combination of desk,
+drawers, and shelves, at which he wrote "The House of the Seven Gables,"
+"The Wonder-Book," "The Snow Image," and part of "The Blithedale
+Romance." Pittsfield was long the home of "Godfrey Graylock;" here the
+gifted Rose Terry Cooke passed her closing years of life with her
+husband, and not far away Josh Billings, "the Yankee Solomon," was born
+and reared as Henry Savage Shaw. One day we trace from Pittsfield the
+footsteps of Hawthorne and Melville across the Taconics to the whilom
+home of "Mother Ann" and to the higher Hancock peaks.
+
+Hawthorne's daily walk to the post-office was past the later residence
+of Charlotte Cushman, and by the church where the older Channing
+delivered his last discourse and where twenty years ago Parkhurst was
+preacher. In the church-tower Fanny Kemble's clock still tells the hours
+above the lovely spot where she desired to be buried.
+
+[Sidenote: Hawthorne's Habit of Meditation]
+
+These various excursions compass the range of Hawthorne's rambles in
+this region: he was never ten miles away from the little red house
+during his residence here. Obviously he preferred short and solitary
+strolls which allowed undisturbed meditation upon the work in hand. The
+quantity and finish of the writing done here indicate that much thought
+was expended upon it outside his study. We may be sure that upon "The
+House of the Seven Gables" were bestowed, besides the five months of
+daily sessions at his desk, other months of study and thought as he
+strolled the country roads and loitered by the lake-side or in the dell
+of "Blossom-Brook." He avowed himself a shameless idler in warm weather,
+declaring he was "good for nothing in a literary way until after the
+autumnal frosts" brightened his imagination as they did the foliage
+about him here; yet the meditations of one summer in Berkshire produced
+his masterpiece, and the next summer accomplished "The Wonder-Book,"
+quickly followed by "The Snow Image" and "Blithedale." During this
+summer also he had a voluminous correspondence with the many "Pyncheon
+jackasses" who thought themselves aggrieved by his use of their name in
+"The House of the Seven Gables."
+
+[Sidenote: Life in the Little Red House]
+
+Of the simple home-life at the little red house, Hawthorne's diaries and
+letters, as well as some of the books written here, afford pleasing
+glimpses. The "Violet" and "Peony" of the "Snow Image" story are the
+novelist's own little Una and Julian, and the tale was suggested by some
+occurrence in their play; the incidents related of Eustace Bright and
+the young Pringles, which are prefixed to the "Wonder-Book" stories, are
+merely experiences of Hawthorne and his children, and during the
+composition of these tales he delighted these children--as one of them
+remembers--by reading to them each evening the work of the day. A
+grim-visaged negress named Peters, who was the servant here in the
+little red house, is said to have suggested the character of Aunt Keziah
+in "Septimius Felton."
+
+Hawthorne's chickens receive notice as members of the family in his
+diary,--thus: "Seven chickens hatched, J. T. Headley called--eight
+chickens;" "ascended a mountain with my wife, eight more chickens
+hatched." In a letter to Horatio Bridge, "Our children grow apace and so
+do our chickens;" "we are so intimate with every individual chicken that
+it seems like cannibalism to think of eating one of them." Hawthorne's
+daily walk with pail in hand to Luther Butler's, the next farm-house, he
+speaks of as his "milky way." Butler lives now two miles distant. The
+novelist thus announces to his friend Bridge the birth of the present
+gifted poetess, Mrs. Lathrop, the daughter of his age: "Mrs. Hawthorne
+has published a little work which still lies in sheets, but makes some
+noise in the world; it is a healthy miss with no present pretensions to
+beauty." Five cats were cherished by the novelist and his children; a
+snowy morning after Hawthorne's removal, three of the cats came to a
+neighboring house, where their descendants are still petted and
+cherished.
+
+A few visitors came to the little red house--Kemble, James, Lowell,
+Holmes, E. P. Whipple, and the others already mentioned--in whose
+presence the "statue of night and silence" was wont to relax, but for
+the most part his life was that of a recluse. Here, as elsewhere, his
+thoughts dwelt apart in "a twilight region" where the company of his
+kind was usually a perturbing intrusion. For companionship, his family,
+the lake, the woods, his own thoughts, sufficed; he seldom sought any
+other, and therefore was unpopular in the neighborhood. It is hardly to
+be supposed that the creator of Zenobia, Hester Prynne, and the
+Pyncheons would greatly enjoy the society of his rural neighbors, but
+they were not therefore the less displeased by his habitually going out
+of his way--sometimes across the fields--to avoid meeting them. Some of
+them had a notion that he was the author of "a poem, or an arithmetic,
+or some other kind of a book,"--as he makes "Primrose Pringle" to say of
+him in the tale,--but to most he was incomprehensible, perhaps a little
+uncanny, and the great genius of romance is yet mentioned here as "a
+queer sort o' man that lived in Tappan's red house."
+
+[Sidenote: Reasons for leaving Berkshire]
+
+His son records that after Hawthorne had freed himself from Salem "he
+soon wearied of any particular locality;" after a time he tired even of
+beautiful Berkshire. Its obtrusive scenery "with the same strong
+impressions repeated day after day" became irksome; then he grew tired
+of the mountains and "would joyfully see them laid flat." He writes to
+Fields, "I am sick of Berkshire, and hate to think of spending another
+winter here." Doubtless the region which we behold in the glamour of the
+early autumn seemed very different to Hawthorne in the season when he
+had daily "to trudge two miles to the post-office through snow or slush
+knee-deep." Ellery Channing--who had knowledge of the winter here--in
+his letters to Hawthorne calls Berkshire "that satanic institution of
+Spitzbergen," "that ice-plant of the Sedgwicks."
+
+A more cogent reason for Hawthorne's discontent here is found in his
+failing health. He writes to Pike, "I am not vigorous as I used to be on
+the coast;" to Fields, "For the first time since boyhood I feel languid
+and dispirited. Oh, that Providence would build me the merest shanty and
+mark me out a rood or two of garden near the coast."
+
+For these and other reasons Hawthorne finally left Berkshire at the end
+of 1851, going first to West Newton and a few months later to "the
+Wayside," while his friend Tappan occupied the thenceforth famous little
+red house.
+
+The world of readers owes much to Hawthorne's residence among the
+mountains. Besides the material here gathered and the exquisite settings
+for his tales these landscapes afforded, we are indebted to his
+environment in Berkshire for the quality of the work here accomplished
+and for its quantity as well; for he responded so readily to the
+inspiriting influence of his surroundings that he produced more during
+his stay here than at any similar period of his life. The soulful beauty
+and the seclusion of the haunts to which we here trace him, suiting well
+his solitary mood, may measurably account to us for his habit of thought
+and for the manner of expression by which nature was here portrayed and
+life expounded by the great master of American romance.
+
+
+
+
+A DAY WITH THE GOOD GRAY POET
+
+
+
+
+A DAY WITH THE GOOD GRAY POET
+
+_Walk and Talk with Socrates in Camden--The Bard's Appearance and
+  Surroundings--Recollections of his Life and Work--Hospital Service--
+  Praise for his Critics--His Literary Habit, Purpose, Equipment, and
+  Style--His Religious Bent--Readings._
+
+
+"How can you find him? Nothing is easier," quoth the Philadelphia friend
+who some time before Whitman's death brought us an invitation from the
+bard; "you have only to cross the ferry and apply to the first man or
+woman you meet, for there is no one in Camden who does not know Walt
+Whitman or who would not go out of his way to bring you to him." The
+event justifies the prediction, for when we make inquiry of a tradesman
+standing before a shop, he speedily throws aside his apron, closes his
+door against evidently needed customers, and--despite our protest--sets
+out to conduct us to the home of the poet. This is done with such
+obvious ardor that we hint to our guide that he must be one of the
+"Whitmaniacs," whereupon he rejoins, "I never read a word Whitman wrote.
+I don't know why they call him Socrates, but I do know he never passes
+me without a friendly nod and a word of greeting that warms me all
+through." We subsequently find that it is this sort of "Whitmania,"
+rather than that Swinburne deplores, which pervades the vicinage of the
+poet's home.
+
+Our conductor leaves us at the door of three hundred and twenty-eight
+Mickle Street, a neat thoroughfare bordered by unpretentious frame
+dwellings, hardly a furlong from the Delaware. The dingy little
+two-storied domicile is so disappointingly different from what we were
+expecting to see that the confirmatory testimony of the name "W.
+Whitman" upon the door-plate is needed to convince us that this is the
+oft-mentioned "neat and comfortable" dwelling of one of the world's
+celebrities.
+
+We are kept waiting upon the door-step long enough to observe that the
+unpainted boards of the house are weather-worn and that the shabby
+window-shutters and the cellar-door, which opens aslant upon the
+sidewalk, are in sad need of repair, and then we are admitted by the
+"good, faithful, young Jersey woman who," as he lovingly testifies,
+"cooks for and vigilantly sees to" the venerable bard. A moment later we
+are in his presence, in the spacious second-story room which is his
+sleeping apartment and work-room.
+
+"You are good to come early while I am fresh and rested," exclaims Walt
+Whitman, rising to his six feet of burly manhood and advancing a heavy
+step or two to greet us; "we are going to have a talk, and we have
+something to talk about, you know," referring to a literary venture of
+ours which had procured us the invitation to visit him. When he has
+regained the depths of his famous and phenomenal chair, the "Jersey
+woman" hands him a score of letters, which he offers to lay aside, but
+we insist that he shall read them at once, and while he is thus occupied
+we have opportunity to observe more closely the bard and his
+surroundings.
+
+[Sidenote: Whitman's Personal Appearance]
+
+We see a man made in massive mould, stalwart and symmetrical,--not bowed
+by the weight of time nor deformed by the long years of hemiplegia; a
+majestic head, large, leonine, Homeric, crowned with a wealth of flowing
+silvery hair; a face like "the statued Greek" (Bucke says it is the
+noblest he ever saw); all the features are full and handsome; the
+forehead, high and thoughtful, is marked by "deep furrows which life has
+ploughed;" the heavy brows are highly arched above eyes of gray-blue
+which in repose seem suave rather than brilliant; the upper lid droops
+over the eye nearly to the pupil,--a condition which obtains in partial
+ptosis,--and we afterward observe that when he speaks of matters which
+deeply move him his eyelids have a tendency to decline still farther,
+imparting to his eyes an appearance of lethargy altogether at variance
+with the thrilling earnestness and tremor of his voice. A strong nose,
+cheeks round and delicate, a complexion of florid and transparent
+pink,--its hue being heightened by the snowy whiteness of the fleecy
+beard which frames the face and falls upon the breast. The face is sweet
+and wholesome rather than refined, vital and virile rather than
+intellectual. Joaquin Miller has said that, even when destitute and
+dying, Whitman "looked like a Titan god."
+
+We think the habitual expression of his face to be that of the sage
+benignity that comes with age when life has been well lived and life's
+work well done. The expression bespeaks a soul at ease with itself,
+unbroken by age, poverty, and disease, unsoured by calumny and insult.
+Certainly his bufferings and his brave endurance of wrong have left no
+record of malice or even of impatience upon his kindly face. His manly
+form is clad in a loosely fitting suit of gray; his rolling and ample
+shirt-collar, worn without a tie, is open at the throat and exposes the
+upper part of his breast; all his attire, "from snowy linen to
+burnished boot," is scrupulously clean and neat.
+
+[Sidenote: His Study and Surroundings]
+
+His room is of generous proportions, occupying nearly the entire width
+of the house, and lighted by three windows in front. The floor is partly
+uncarpeted, and the furniture is of the simplest; his bed, covered by a
+white counterpane, occupies a corner; there are two large tables; an
+immense iron-bound trunk stands by one wall and an old-fashioned stove
+by another; a number of boxes and uncushioned seats are scattered
+through the apartment; on the walls are wardrobe-hooks, shelves, and
+many pictures,--a few fine engravings, a print of the Seminole Osceola,
+portraits of the poet's parents (his father's face is a good one) and
+sisters, and of "another--not a sister."
+
+There are many books here and there, some of them well worn; one corner
+holds several Greek and Latin classics and copies of Burns, Tennyson,
+Scott, Ossian, Emerson, etc. On the large table near his chair are his
+writing materials, with the Bible, Shakespeare, Dante, and the Iliad
+within reach. Bundles of papers lie in odd places about the room; piles
+of books, magazines, and manuscripts are heaped high upon the tables,
+litter the chairs, and overflow and encumber the floor. This room holds
+what Whitman has called the "storage collection" of his life.
+
+"And now you are to tell me about yourself and your work," says the
+poet, pushing aside his letters. But, although he is the best of
+listeners, we are intent to make him talk, and a fortunate remark
+concerning one of his letters which had seemed to interest him more than
+the others--it came from a friend of his far-away boyhood--enables us to
+profit by the reminiscential mood the letter has inspired.
+
+In his low-toned voice he pictures his early home, his parents, and his
+first ventures into the world; with evident relish he narrates his
+ludicrous experience when he--a stripling school-master--"went boarding
+'round." Than this, there was but one happier period of his life, and
+that was when he drove among the farms and villages distributing his
+_Long Islander_: "that was bliss."
+
+Later he was a politician and "stumped the island" for the Democratic
+candidates, but the enactment of the fugitive slave law disgusted him,
+and he declared his political emancipation in the poem "Blood-Money." At
+odd times he has done "a deal of newspaper drudgery" and other work, but
+his "forte always was loafing and writing poetry,--at least until the
+war." He began early to clothe his thought in verse, and was but a lad
+when a poem of his was accepted for publication in the New York
+_Mirror_, and he depicts for us the surprised delight with which he
+beheld his stanzas in that fashionable journal.
+
+[Sidenote: His Recollections]
+
+A pleasure of those early years was the companionship of Bryant, and he
+details to us the "glorious walks and talks" they had together along the
+North Shore in sweet summer days. This, he says with a sigh, was the
+dearest of the friendships lost to him by the publication of "Leaves of
+Grass;" "but there were compensations, Emerson and Tennyson." Of later
+events he speaks less freely. Of the years of devoted service to the
+wounded and dying in army hospitals, when day and night he literally
+gave himself for others,--living upon the coarsest fare that he might
+bestow his earnings upon "his sick boys,"--of these years he speaks not
+at all, save as to the causation of his "war paralysis." "Yes, it made
+an old man of me; but I would like to do it all again if there were
+need." Of his long years of suffering and his brave and patient
+confronting of pain, poverty, and imminent death, his "Specimen Days" is
+the fitting record.
+
+Replying to a question concerning a dainty volume of his poems which lay
+near us, and which we have been secretly coveting, he says, "You know I
+have never been the fashion; publishers were afraid of me, and I have
+sold the books myself, though I always advise people not to buy them,
+for I fear they are worthless." But when he writes his name and ours
+upon the title-page, and lays within the cover several portraits taken
+at different periods of his life, we wonder if he can ever know how very
+far from "worthless" the book will be to us. We tender in payment a
+bank-note of larger denomination than we could be supposed to possess,
+with a deprecating remark upon the novelty of an author's handling a
+fifty-dollar note, whereupon he laughs heartily: "A novelty to you, is
+it? I tell you it's an impossibility to me; why, my whole income from my
+books during a recent half-year was only twenty-two dollars and six
+cents: don't forget the six cents," he adds, with a twinkle. Then he
+assures us that he is not in want, and that his "shanty," as he calls
+his home, is nearly paid for.
+
+[Sidenote: Popularity with his Neighbors]
+
+He proposes a walk,--"a hobble" it must be for him,--which may afford
+opportunity to change the note; and as we saunter toward the river, he
+leaning heavily upon his cane, it is a pleasure to observe the evident
+feeling of liking and camaraderie which people have for him.
+
+They go out of their way to meet him and to receive merely a friendly
+nod, for he stops to speak with none save the children who leave their
+play to run to him. He seems mightily amused when one wee toddler calls
+him "Mister Socrates," and he tells us this is the first time he has
+been so addressed, although he understands that some of his friends
+speak of him among themselves by the name of that philosopher. So far as
+he knows, the name was first applied to him in Buchanan's lines "To
+Socrates in Camden."
+
+Everywhere we go, on the ferry, at the hotel where we lunch, he receives
+affectionate greeting from people of every rank, yet he is not
+loquacious, certainly not effusive. He shakes hands but once while we
+are out, and that is with an unknown man, and because he _is_ unknown,
+as Whitman afterward tells us.
+
+During luncheon we speak of a recent visit to Mrs. Howarth (the poetess
+"Clementine"). Whitman is at once interested, and questions until he has
+drawn out the pathetic story of her struggles with poverty, disease, and
+impeding environment, and then declares he will go to see her as soon as
+he is able. He declines to receive a copy of her poems, saying he is far
+more interested in her than he could possibly be in her books, and that
+he "nowadays religiously abstains from reading poetry." Confirmation of
+this latter statement occurs in our subsequent conversation. A friend of
+ours had met Swinburne, and had been assured by that erratic (please
+don't print it erotic) bard that he thinks Whitman, next to Hugo, the
+best of recent poets. When we tell our poet of this, and endeavor to
+ascertain if the admiration be reciprocal, we find him unfamiliar with
+Swinburne's recent works. Reference to the latter's retraction of his
+first praise elicits the pertinent observation, "The trouble with
+Swinburne seems to be he don't know his own mind," but this is followed
+by warm encomiums upon "Atalanta" and its gifted author.
+
+Whitman had seen Emerson for the last time when the philosopher's memory
+had failed and all his powers were weakening: instead of being shocked
+by this condition, Whitman thinks it fit and natural, "nature gradually
+reclaiming the elements she had lent, work all nobly done, soul and
+senses preparing for rest." Mentioning George Arnold,--
+
+  "Doubly dead because he died so young,"--
+
+we find that Whitman loved and mourned him tenderly. He expresses an
+especial pleasure and pride in the successes of the poet Richard Watson
+Gilder,--"young Gilder," as he familiarly calls him. He loves Browning,
+and laments that "Browning never took to" him. He thinks our own country
+is fortunate in having felt the clean and healthful influences of four
+such natures as Emerson, Bryant, Whittier, and Longfellow.
+
+[Sidenote: His Good Word for Everybody]
+
+Indeed, he has a good word for everybody, and discerns laudable
+qualities in some whom the world has agreed to contemn and cast out. He
+has glowing expressions of affection for his devoted friends in all
+lands, and only words of excuse for his enemies. Of the pharisaic
+Harlan, who dismissed him from a government clerkship solely because he
+had, ten years before, published the poems of "Enfans d'Adam," he
+charitably says, "No doubt the man thought he was doing right."
+Concerning his harshest critics, including the author of the choice
+epithet "swan of the sewers," he speaks only in justification: from
+their stand-point, their denunciations of him and his book were
+deserved; "he never dreamt of blaming them for not seeing as he sees."
+
+After our return to his "shanty" we read to him a laudatory notice from
+the current number of one of our great magazines, in which one of his
+poems is mentioned with especial favor; whereupon he produces from his
+trunk a note written some years before from the same magazine,
+contemptuously refusing to publish that very poem. Evidences like this
+of a change in popular opinion are not needed to confirm Whitman's faith
+in his own future, nor in that of the great humanity of which he is the
+prophet and exponent.
+
+Questioned concerning his habits and methods of literary work, he says
+he carries some sheets of paper loosely fastened together and pencils
+upon these "the rough draft of his thought" wherever the thought comes
+to him. Thus, "Leaves of Grass" was composed on the Brooklyn ferry, on
+the top of stages amid the roar of Broadway, at the opera, in the
+fields, on the sea-shore. "Drum Taps" was written amid war scenes, on
+battle-fields, in camps, at hospital bedsides, in actual contact with
+the subjects it portrays with such tenderness and power. The poems thus
+born of spontaneous impulse are finally given to the world in a crisp
+diction which is the result of much study and thought; every word is
+well considered,--the work of revision being done "almost anywhere" and
+without the ordinary aids to literary composition. In late years he
+wrote mostly upon the broad right arm of his chair.
+
+Complete equipment for his work was derived from contact with Nature in
+her abounding moods, from sympathetic intimacy with men and women in all
+phases of their lives, and from life-long study of the best books;
+these--Job, Isaiah, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare--have been his teachers,
+and possibly his models, although he has never consciously imitated any
+of them. His matter and manner are alike his own; he has not borrowed
+Blake's style, as Stedman believed, to recast Emerson's thoughts, as
+Clarence Cook alleged. His style would naturally resemble that of the
+Semitic prophets and Gaelic bards,--"the large utterance of the early
+gods,"--because inspired by familiarity with the same objects: the
+surging sea, the wind-swept mountain, the star-decked heaven, the forest
+primeval.
+
+[Sidenote: His Literary Work--Its Aims]
+
+His purpose, the moral elevation of humanity, he trusts is apparent in
+every page of his book. By his book he means "Leaves of Grass," the real
+work of his life, representing the truest thoughts and the highest
+imaginings of forty years, to which his other work has been incidental
+and tributary. After its eight periods of growth, "hitches," he calls
+them, he completes them with the annex, "Good-bye my Fancy," and thinks
+his record for the future is made up; "hit or miss, he will bother
+himself no more about it."
+
+When questioned concerning the lines whose "naked naturalness" has been
+an offence to many, he impressively avers that he has pondered them
+earnestly in these latest days, and is sure he would not alter or recall
+them if he could.
+
+[Sidenote: His Religious Trust]
+
+While not professing a moral regeneration or confessing the need of it,
+he yet assures us, "No array of words can describe how much I am at
+peace about God and about death." The author of "Whispers of Heavenly
+Death" cannot be an irreverent person; the impassioned "prayer"--
+
+  "That Thou, O God, my life hast lighted
+  With ray of light, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee.
+  For that, O God, be it my latest word, here on my knees,
+  Old, poor, and paralyzed, I thank Thee....
+  I will cling to Thee, O God, though the waves buffet me.
+  Thee, Thee, at least, I know"--
+
+is not the utterance of an irreligious heart. One who has known Whitman
+long and well testifies that he was always a religious _exalte_, and his
+stanzas show that his musings on death and immortality are inspired by
+fullest faith. As we listen to him, calmly discoursing upon the great
+mysteries,--which to him are now mysteries no longer,--we wonder how
+many of those who call him "beast" or "atheist" can confront the vast
+unknown with his lofty trust, to say nothing of actual thanksgiving for
+death itself!
+
+  "Praised be the fathomless universe
+  For life and joy, for objects and knowledge curious,
+  And for love, sweet love,--but praise! praise! praise!
+  For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death."
+
+We who survive him will not forget his peaceful yielding of himself to
+"the sure-enwinding arms," nor the abounding trust breathed in his last
+message, sent back from the mystic frontier of the shadowy realm: "Tell
+them it makes no difference whether I live or die."
+
+[Sidenote: Readings]
+
+In our chat he discloses a surprising knowledge of men and things, and a
+more surprising lack of knowledge of his own poetry. More than once it
+strangely appears that the visitor is more familiar with the lines under
+discussion than is their author. When this is commented upon he
+laughingly says, "Oh, yes, my friends often tell me there is a book
+called 'Leaves of Grass' which I ought to read." So when we, about to
+take leave, ask him to recite one of his shorter poems, he assures us he
+does not remember one of them, but will read anything we wish. We ask
+for the wonderful elegy, "Out of the Cradle endlessly Rocking," and
+afterward for the night hymn, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard
+Bloomed," and his compliance confers a never-to-be-forgotten pleasure.
+He reads slowly and without effort, his voice often tremulous with
+emotion, the lines gaining new grandeur and pathos as they come from his
+lips.
+
+And this--alas that it must be!--is our final recollection of one of the
+world's immortals: a hoar and reverend bard,--"old, poor, and
+paralyzed," yet clinging to the optimistic creeds of his youth,--throned
+in his great chair among his books, with the waning light falling like a
+benediction upon his uplifted head, his face and eyes suffused with the
+exquisite tenderness of his theme, and all the air about him vibrating
+with the tones of his immortal chant to Death,--the "dark mother always
+gliding near with soft feet."
+
+Another hand-clasp, a prayerful "God keep you," and we have left him
+alone in the gathering twilight.
+
+[Sidenote: His Future Fame]
+
+We will not here discuss his literary merits. The encomiums of Emerson,
+Thoreau, Burroughs, Sanborn, Stedman, Ruskin, Tennyson, Rossetti,
+Buchanan, Sarrazin, etc., show what he is to men of their intellectual
+stature; but will he ever reach the great, struggling mass for whose
+uplifting he wrought? His own brave faith is contagious, and we may
+discern in the wide-spread sorrow over his death, in the changed
+attitude of critics and reviewers, as well as in the largely increased
+demand for his books, evidences of his general acceptance.
+
+His day is coming,--is come. He died with its dawn shining full upon
+him.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Abbot, C. C., 104.
+
+  Agassiz, 49, 104, 115.
+
+  Alcott, Bronson, 21, 73, 78, 92, 144;
+    Orchard House, 54;
+    Wayside, 58.
+
+  Alcott, L. M., 21, 54, 102;
+    Grave, 78;
+    Homes, 21, 55.
+
+  Aldrich, 91, 111, 140;
+    In Boston, 92;
+    Ponkapog, 146.
+
+  Amesbury, 124.
+
+  Auburndale, 146.
+
+  Austin, J. G., 102.
+
+
+  Bartlett, G. B., 25, 34, 41.
+
+  Bartol, Dr., 48, 94.
+
+  Beecher, H. W., 176, 185.
+
+  Benson, Carl, 184.
+
+  Berkshire, 155-198.
+
+  Billings, Josh, 193.
+
+  Boston, 83-102.
+
+  Bridge, Horatio, 34, 182.
+
+  Brook Farm, 147.
+
+  Brown, John, 20, 23.
+
+  Bryant, W. C., 174, 188, 189, 207.
+
+  Burritt, Elihu, 176.
+
+
+  Cambridge, 103.
+
+  Carter, Robert, 109.
+
+  Channing, W. E., 24, 41, 50, 72, 186;
+    Homes, 22, 24, 52.
+
+  Clarke, J. F., 27, 76.
+
+  Clough, Arthur, 49, 104, 118.
+
+  Concord, 17-80;
+    Battle-Field, 43;
+    River, 39.
+
+  Conway, Moncure, quoted, 29, 48.
+
+  Cooke, Rose Terry, 193.
+
+  Corner Book-Store, Boston, 87.
+
+  Curtis, G. W., 33, 48, 148, 149.
+
+  Cushman, Charlotte, 114, 193.
+
+
+  Dana, C. A., 149.
+
+  Dana, R. H., 105.
+
+  Danvers, Oak-Knoll, 138.
+
+  Day with Walt Whitman, 201.
+
+  Deerfield Arch, 173.
+
+  Deland, Margaret, 93.
+
+
+  Elmwood, 110.
+
+  Emerson, R. W., 26, 27, 28, 36, 41, 43, 69, 86, 144, 175;
+    Grave, 77;
+    Home, 45.
+
+  Emerson, William, 26, 29, 35.
+
+  Ethan Brand, 166.
+
+
+  Fanny Fern's Grave, 115.
+
+  Felton, Professor, 104.
+
+  Field, H. M., 190.
+
+  Fields, Annie, 89, 91.
+
+  Fields, J. T., 65, 87;
+    Home, 89.
+
+  Fuller, Margaret, 48, 53, 86, 115, 149;
+    Brattle House, 105.
+
+
+  Gail Hamilton, 66, 139.
+
+  Garrison, W. L., 85, 102, 139.
+
+  Gilder, R. W., 211.
+
+  Gladden, Washington, 164.
+
+  Grant, Robert, 89, 99.
+
+  Gray, Asa, 105.
+
+  Graylock, 158, 167, 174, 184.
+
+  Guiney, L. I., 99, 102;
+    Home, 146.
+
+
+  Hale, E. E., 94;
+    Study and Abode, 100.
+
+  Hale, Lucretia P., 99.
+
+  Hamilton, Gail, 66, 139.
+
+  Harris, Professor, 56.
+
+  Haverhill, 122.
+
+  Hawthorne, 27, 41, 50, 53, 85, 88, 91;
+    Berkshire, 155-198;
+    Brook Farm, 149;
+    Manse, 28-39;
+    Salem, 128-138;
+    Sleepy Hollow, 75-77;
+    Wayside, 59-67.
+
+  Headley, J. T., 187, 195.
+
+  Higginson, T. W., 94, 99, 104.
+
+  Hilliard, George, 34, 66, 91.
+
+  Hoar, Elizabeth, 25.
+
+  Hoar, Judge, 27.
+
+  Holmes, 84;
+    Boston Abodes, 91, 95;
+    Cambridge, 103;
+    Grave, 114;
+    Pittsfield, 192.
+
+  House of the Seven Gables, 132, 193, 194.
+
+  Howarth, Clementine, 209.
+
+  Howe, Julia W., 98.
+
+  Howells, 49, 66;
+    Homes, 97, 105, 117.
+
+
+  Jamaica Plain, 145.
+
+  Jewett, Sarah Orne, 91.
+
+
+  Kemble, Fanny, 169, 186, 188, 193.
+
+  Kossuth, Louis, 49, 187.
+
+
+  Larcom, Lucy, 139.
+
+  Lathrop, G. P., 59.
+
+  Lathrop, Rose H., 195.
+
+  Laurel Lake, 185.
+
+  Lenox (Hawthorne), 176-198.
+
+  Little Men, 21.
+
+  Little Women, 21, 55, 78.
+
+  Longfellow, 106, 110, 139, 192;
+    Grave, 114;
+    Home, 107;
+    Wayside Inn, 118.
+
+  Lowell, J. R., 43, 118;
+    Elmwood, 110;
+    Mount Auburn, 113.
+
+
+  Marshfield, 142.
+
+  Martineau, Harriet, 85, 106.
+
+  Melville, Herman, 177, 185, 188;
+    Arrow-Head, 190.
+
+  Monument Mountain, 168, 179, 187.
+
+  Moulton, L. C., 93, 98.
+
+  Mount Auburn, 113.
+
+
+  Natural Bridge, 169.
+
+  North Adams, 158-171.
+
+  Norton, Professor, 104.
+
+
+  Oak-Knoll, 138.
+
+  Old Manse, 28-39.
+
+  Orchard House, 53-56.
+
+
+  Parker, Theodore, 49, 85.
+
+  Parkman, Francis, 94, 113;
+    Home, 145.
+
+  Parsons, T. W., 118, 119, 120.
+
+  Parton, James, 115;
+    Study, 140.
+
+  Peabody, Elizabeth, 29, 54, 145.
+
+  Phelps-Ward, Mrs., 91, 125, 139.
+
+  Phillips, Wendell, 49, 85.
+
+  Pittsfield, 190-193.
+
+  Plymouth, 144.
+
+  Prescott, W. H., 86.
+
+
+  Ripley, Ezra, 28, 33, 34.
+
+  Ripley, Mrs. Samuel, 29, 35, 48.
+
+
+  Salem, 128.
+
+  Sanborn, F. B., 20-24.
+
+  Scarlet Letter, 95, 135, 136.
+
+  Sedgwick, Catherine, 176, 189, 190.
+
+  Septimius Felton, 55, 60-65.
+
+  Silas Lapham, 97, 99.
+
+  Sleepy Hollow, 75-80.
+
+  Sprague, Charles, 86.
+
+  Stockbridge, 189;
+    Bowl, 176, 181;
+    Glen, 189.
+
+  Stone, J. A., 25.
+
+  Sudbury, 118.
+
+  Summer School of Philosophy, 55, 56.
+
+  Sumner, Charles, 85, 92, 124.
+
+  Swinburne, A. C., 210.
+
+
+  Tanglewood, 183.
+
+  Thaxter, Celia, 91, 139, 140.
+
+  Thoreau, 19, 22, 27, 33, 41, 50, 63, 76, 169, 174;
+    Abodes, 20, 24;
+    Walden, 68-74.
+
+  Ticknor, George, 94.
+
+
+  Walden Pond, 68.
+
+  Wayside, The, 58.
+
+  Wayside Inn, The, 118.
+
+  Webster, Daniel, 19;
+    Marshfield, 142.
+
+  Wheildon, William, 25.
+
+  Whipple, E. P., 66, 76, 91.
+
+  Whitefield, George, 140.
+
+  Whitman, Walt, 50;
+    A Day with, 201;
+    Leaves of Grass, 212, 213.
+
+  Whittier, 90, 93;
+    Homes, 122, 124, 138;
+    Scenes, 122, 123, 124, 126;
+    Sepulchre, 127.
+
+  Williamstown, 173.
+
+  Willis, N. P., 84, 115.
+
+  Woodworth;
+    Old Oaken Bucket, 141.
+
+
+  Zenobia, 40, 150.
+
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+  Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from
+    the original.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY SHRINES***
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