"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world."
Concord has about six thousand people, and is also famous for its literary history and associations. It is near the tranquil Concord River and the junction of the little Assabet and Sudbury Rivers, a pleasant tree-embowered quiet place of rural residence. Peter Bulkley, an English rector, who was oppressed by Archbishop Laud, fled to New England, and in 1636 buying of the Indians their domain of Musketaquid, founded the town and church of Concord, thus naming it because of its peaceful acquisition. In the nineteenth century it became noted as the home of some of the greatest men of letters in America. Near Concord bridge is an ancient gambrel-roofed house built for Parson William Emerson in 1765, and from its windows he watched the fight. This is the "Old Manse" in which Ralph Waldo Emerson, himself once a clergyman, and descended from seven generations of clergymen, was born in 1803. Emerson was known as the "Sage of Concord," or, as Fredrika Bremer the novelist, who visited him there, described him, the "Sphinx in Concord," and was the head of the modern school of transcendental philosophy. He died in 1882. Nathaniel Hawthorne lived for awhile in the "Old Manse" at Concord, and there wrote his "Mosses from an Old Manse." The house was afterwards burnt. Hawthorne died in 1864. Both Emerson and Hawthorne are buried in the attractive little Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Emerson's grave being marked by a large block of pink quartz. Henry D. Thoreau, the eccentric but profound scholar and naturalist, in 1845 built himself a hut on the shores of the sequestered Walden Pond near Concord, leading the life of a recluse, raising a few vegetables, and now and then, to get a little money, doing some work as carpenter or surveyor. He was profoundly skilled in Oriental and classic literature, and was an ardent naturalist, delighting in making long pedestrian excursions to the forests, lakes and ocean shores of New England. He never voted, nor paid a tax, nor entered a church for worship, and of himself he said, "I am as unfit for any practical purpose as gossamer is for ship-timber." Emerson tells us that "Thoreau dedicated his genius with such entire love to the fields, hills and waters of his native town, that he made them known and interesting to all; he grew to be revered and admired by his townsmen, who had at first known him only as an oddity." Dying in 1862, he, too, is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. In the Orchard House in Concord lived the Alcotts, of whom Louisa M. Alcott, author of Little Women, is so widely known. Adjacent is the building used by the "Concord School of Philosophy," established in 1879 by A. Bronson Alcott. They also rest in the little Cemetery. Thus is Concord famed, and it has well been said of this historic old place that "it is dangerous to turn a corner suddenly for fear of running over some first-class saint, philosopher or sage."
THE MASSACHUSETTS NORTH SHORE.
The outer verge of Boston Harbor may be described as protected on the south by the long projection of Nantasket Beach, while on the northern side there comes out, as if to meet it, another curiously-formed peninsula, making the bluffs of Winthrop, and a strip beyond terminating in the rounded headland of Point Shirley. Deer Island, almost connected with the Point, stretches farther, and we were anciently told it was so called "because of the deare who often swim thither from the maine when they are chased by the wolves." All these places are popular resorts, and their odd formations assist in making the Boston surroundings picturesque. Some distance up the coast, and eleven miles from Boston, is the shoemaking city of Lynn, with seventy thousand people, the flourishing society of the "Knights of St. Crispin" ruling the shoemakers' "teams" and largely running the politics of the town. Most of the work is done by machinery, there being over two hundred factories, making more women's shoes than any other place in the country. The first colonists were brought by their pastor from Lynn-Regis, England, in 1629, and thus the town was named. It spreads broadly along the water-front, its attractive City Hall seen from afar, and many ornamental villas adorning the shore. Out beyond it, thrust into the sea, is the long, low and narrow sand-strip barely a hundred yards wide, leading for nearly four miles to Nahant. This is a most curious formation, the name meaning the "Lovers' Walk," a mass of rocks and soil at the outer end of the sand-strip covering nearly five hundred acres, and crowned with villas, the neat tower of a pretty white church rising on the highest part near the centre. The Bostonians have made Nahant, thus surrounded by the ocean, one of their most fashionable suburban sections, and it is popularly known as "Cold Roast Boston." This strange rocky promontory was originally bought from the Sagamore Poquanum for a suit of clothes, and it is now valued at over $10,000,000. Many are the poems written about this curious projection, and N. P. Willis says of it: "If you can imagine a buried Titan lying along the length of a continent, with one arm stretched out into the midst of the sea, the spot to which I would transport you, reader mine, would be, as it were, in the palm of the giant's hand." Invocations have been addressed to Nahant by Longfellow, Whittier and Mrs. Sigourney; there Longfellow wrote part of Hiawatha, Motley began his Dutch Republic, Prescott wrote his Spanish histories, and Agassiz composed Brazil.
The region beyond Lynn and Nahant is the famous Massachusetts "North Shore," stretching to the extremity of Cape Ann, a domain of villas and summer homes, pleasant sea-beaches, and brisk towns with interesting past history, now devoted largely to shoemaking and the fisheries. From Boston State House to the extremity of the Cape at Halibut Point, or the Land's End, is thirty-one miles, and Lucy Larcom thus attractively describes the route along the shore:
"You may ride in an hour or two, if you will,
From Halibut Point to Beacon Hill,