He lived for forty-odd years to tell the story of his midnight
ride, and now he sleeps with Hancock and Adams, the parents of
Franklin, Peter Faneuil, and a host of worthy men in the
"Granary."
The good people of Massachusetts have done what they could to commemorate the events and obliterate the localities of those great days; they have erected monuments and put up tablets in great numbers; but while marking the spots where events occurred, they have changed the old names of roads and places until contemporary accounts require a glossary for interpretation.
Who would recognize classic Menotomy in the tinsel ring of Arlington? The good old Indian name, the very speaking of which is a pleasure, has given place to the first-class apartments, —steam-heated, electric-lights, hot and cold water, all improvements —in appellations of Arlington and Arlington Heights. A tablet marks the spot where on April 19 "the old men of Menotomy" captured a convoy of British soldiers. Poor old men, once the boast and glory of the place that knew you; but now the passing traveller curiously reads the inscription and wonders "Why were they called the old men 'of Menotomy'?" for there is now no such place.
Massachusetts Avenue—Massachusetts Avenue! there's a name, a great, big, luscious name, a name that savors of brown stone fronts and plush rockers: a name which goes well with the commercial prosperity of Boston. Massachusetts Avenue extends from Dorchester in Boston to Lexington Green; it has absorbed the old Cambridge and the old Lexington roads; the old Long Bridge lives in history, but, rechristened Brighton Bridge, the reader fails to identify it.
Concord remains and Lexington remains, simply because no real estate boom has yet reached them but Bunker Hill, there is a feeling that apartments would rent better if the musty associations of the spot were obliterated by some such name as "Buckingham Heights," or "Commonwealth Crest;" "The Acropolis" has been prayerfully considered by the freemen of the modern Athens;— whatever the decision may be, certain it is the name Bunker Hill is a heavy load for choice corners in the vicinity.
There are a few old names still left in Massachusetts,— Jingleberry Hill and Chillyshally** Brook sound as if they once meant something; Spot Pond, named by Governor Winthrop, has not lost its birthright; Powder-Horn Hill records its purchase from the Indians for a hornful of powder—probably damp; Drinkwater River is a good name,—Strong Water Brook by many is considered better. It is well to record these names before they are effaced by the commercialism rampant in the suburbs of Boston.
At the Town Hall in Lexington we turned to the right for East
Lexington, and made straight for Follen Church, and the home of
Dr. Follen close by, where Emerson preached in 1836 and 1837.
The church was not built until 1839. In January, 1840, the congregation had assembled in their new edifice for the dedication services. They waited for their pastor, who was expected home from a visit to New York, but the Long Island Sound steamer—Lexington, by strange coincidence it was called—had burned and Dr. Follen was among the lost. His home is now the East Lexington Branch of the Public Library.
We climbed the stairs that led to the small upper room where Emerson filled his last regular charge. Small as was the room, it probably more than sufficed for the few people who were sufficiently advanced for his notions of a preacher's mission. He did not believe in the rites the church clung to as indispensable; he did not believe in the use of bread and wine in the Lord's Supper; he did not believe in prayers from the pulpit unless the preacher felt impelled to pray; he did not believe in ritualism or formalism of any kind,—in short, he did not believe in a church, for a church, however broad and liberal, is, after all, an institution, and no one man, however great, can support an institution. A very great soul—and Emerson was a great soul—may carry a following through life and long after death, but that following is not a church, not an institution, not a living organized body, until forms, conventions, and traditions make it so; its vitalizing element may be the soul of its founder, but the framework of the structure, the skeleton, is made up of the more or less rigid conventions which are the results of natural and logical selection.
The ritual of Rome, the service of England, the dry formalism of Calvinism, the slender structure of Unitarianism were all equally repugnant to Emerson; he could not stretch himself in their fetters; he was not at ease in any priestly garment. Born a prophet, he could not become a priest. By nature a teacher and preacher, he never could submit to those restrictions which go so far to make preaching effective. He taught the lesson of the ages, but he mistook it for his own. He belonged to humanity, but he detached himself. He was a leader, but would acknowledge no discipline. Men cried out to him, but he wandered apart. He was an intellectual anarchist of rare and lovely type; few sweeter souls ever lived, but he defied order.