From Alcott, in his old age,—he was in his eightieth year when the experiment began,—came the impulse to that later manifestation of the same spirit which had led Emerson and his youthful friends to the heights and depths of Transcendentalism. I speak of the Concord School of Philosophy, which, in the last years of Emerson and Alcott, and with the co-operation of disciples of other philosophic opinion, gave to the town a celebrity in some degree commensurate with its earlier reputation. It began in the library of Alcott’s Orchard House, where his genial daughter, Louisa, had written several of her charming books; it was continued in a chapel, built for the purpose, under the lee of Alcott’s pineclad hill, and amid his orchard and vineyard. It brought to reside in Concord that first of American philosophers, Dr. W. T. Harris; and it gathered hundreds of eager or curious hearers to attend the lectures and debates on grave subjects which a learned body of teachers gave forth. It continued in existence from the summer of 1879 to that of 1888, when its lessons were fitly closed with a memorial service for Bronson Alcott, its founder, who had died in March, 1888. As was said by the Boston wit of the fight on the 19th of April,—“The Battle of Lexington; Concord furnished the ground, and Acton the men,”—so it might
be said of this summer university, that Concord provided chiefly the place in which St. Louis and Illinois, New York and Boston, Harvard and Yale, held converse on high topics. Yet Concord gave the school hospitality, and several of its famous authors took part in the exercises,—sometimes posthumously, by the reading of their manuscripts, as in the case of Thoreau.
Along with the events and the literature that have given our town a name throughout the world, there has flowed quietly the stream of civil society, local self-government and domestic life; broadened at critical times by manifestations of political energy, in which families like those of Hoar, Heywood, Barrett, Whiting, Robinson, Gourgas, etc., have distinguished themselves. Benefactors like Munroe, who built the Public Library, Dr. Ripley, who for half a century filled the pulpit and took pastoral care, and John Tileston, who brought the public schools to their present useful form; soldiers of the Civil War, like Colonel Prescott and Lieutenant Ripley, and hundreds of unnamed soldiers in the battle of life,—women no less than men,—have given their innumerable touch of vigor and grace to the ever-building structure of Concord life. Painters of our own have added color, and sculptors like French, Elwell and Ricketson have adorned the town with art. And so we pass on into the new century, with no conscious loss of vital power,—yet with a keen regret for the great men who have gone from among us.
