With them Concord came again into the eye of the world, and because they preached as well as wrought, the world’s eye is still upon it. And, as after the Minute Man and his times passed the little village slumbered, seeming to wait placidly for the next troubling of the waters, so now Sleepy Hollow, where these four dreamers lie, seems to be the real center of the town. The mystic dreams of Hawthorne, the golden serenity of Emerson, the primal wisdom of Thoreau, and the roseate fog of Alcott’s transcendentalism all flow serenely forth over its rim and flood the green hills and shadowy valleys of the region with peace and sweet content. Here, almost side by side, rest the four, and such blood of the gods as flowed in them is piped to all the world by way of what each wrote. No wonder Concord is a place of pilgrimage and people come by thousands to these graves as devout Mohammedans go to that of the prophet. Red oaks set their roots deep in the knoll where these lie, and white pines tower above them as if forming the first and most fitting round in their ladder to the stars. Out of the tops of these pines the harper wind should pluck harmonies beyond those common to groves.
Hither come the pilgrims that have hastily viewed the Minute Man and the bridge, puffing in rows up the hillside and standing, breathless but voluble, before the stone they have sought. Reverence in their hearts they have without doubt, yet little of it gets to the surface as they, panting, recite one to another the legend of the stone and pass on. It is a wonderful piece of white quartz that marks Emerson’s grave. There is dignity in its roughness, and something of the pure opacity of Emerson’s thought seems to dwell in its white crystals, fittingly touched here and there with a color which might be the matrix of all gems. One thinks from what he sees of those who pass that Emerson is best known, Hawthorne most loved, while Thoreau and the Alcotts have each their own special worshipers. Now and then one sees much reverence based upon a rather slender knowledge, as when a young man balancing a year-old baby on his arm said to his wife, “This, my dear, is the grave of Thorough, David Thorough, the man who wrote ‘Zounds.’” One can fancy David, who was Henry to most of us, being willing to be called thorough, yet hesitating to acknowledge “Zounds,” except perhaps as an exclamation of astonishment. As an offset for this I might cite the small boy who, having been shown the stone which marks the grave of Louisa Alcott, gave it shyly a little loving hug and a pat before he went away. In the highest group of Concord immortals it is not customary to include the talented daughter of the transcendentalist, yet of the worshipers who pass not a few lay their fondest offering on the turf that covers her.
For a few hours out of the twenty-four, visitors to Sleepy Hollow come and go. Except for that the hollow indeed sleeps, steeped in the gentle peace of all nature which seems to well up out of it and encompass all the region round about in its golden haze. Surely the lotos grows where the Assabet and the Sudbury join to make the Concord, that sleeps on so gently that one may hardly know that it is on its way. The lotos grows there and the land has eaten of it, for the bustle of the world passes over it but does not change nor wake it. The very farms of Revolutionary time linger on, and if they are tilled now as they were then I do not know, but the cattle graze on the hills in herds as great now as then, and as broad cornfields toss their golden plumes toward the sky. The houses where dwelt Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, still stand, and into the fields round about them few others have crowded. The fertile soil still yields crops to the husbandman, in whose breast slumbers mayhap the same sturdy courage which made the Minute Men and would make others should the need arise. Manufacturing, summer hotel keeping, these things do not seem to have touched the town much. I fancy it as lying fallow, waiting the flow of that ichor of the immortals that shall some day again waken it to great things.
“The Sphinx is drowsy,
Her wings are furled;
Her ear is heavy,
She broods on the world,
Who’ll tell me my secret,
The ages have kept?
I awaited the seer