“You know what a captivating charm there always was in Emerson’s presence, but I can never tell you how this line of thought then impressed a country boy.  I do not remember anything about the remainder of that walk, nor of the after-incidents of that day,—­I only remember that I went home wondering about that mystical dream of the Universal Spirit, and about what manner of man he was under whose influence I had for the first time come....

“The interview left impressions that led me into new channels of thought which have been a life-long pleasure to me, and, I doubt not, taught me somewhat how to distinguish between mere theological dogma and genuine religion in the soul.”

In the summer of 1834 Emerson became a resident of Concord, Massachusetts, the town of his forefathers, and the place destined to be his home for life.  He first lived with his venerable connection, Dr. Ripley, in the dwelling made famous by Hawthorne as the “Old Manse.”  It is an old-fashioned gambrel-roofed house, standing close to the scene of the Fight on the banks of the river.  It was built for the Reverend William Emerson, his grandfather.  In one of the rooms of this house Emerson wrote “Nature,” and in the same room, some years later, Hawthorne wrote “Mosses from an Old Manse.”

The place in which Emerson passed the greater part of his life well deserves a special notice.  Concord might sit for its portrait as an ideal New England town.  If wanting in the variety of surface which many other towns can boast of, it has at least a vision of the distant summits of Monadnock and Wachusett.  It has fine old woods, and noble elms to give dignity to its open spaces.  Beautiful ponds, as they modestly call themselves,—­one of which, Walden, is as well known in our literature as Windermere in that of Old England,—­lie quietly in their clean basins.  And through the green meadows runs, or rather lounges, a gentle, unsalted stream, like an English river, licking its grassy margin with a sort of bovine placidity and contentment.  This is the Musketaquid, or Meadow River, which, after being joined by the more restless Assabet, still keeps its temper and flows peacefully along by and through other towns, to lose itself in the broad Merrimac.  The names of these rivers tell us that Concord has an Indian history, and there is evidence that it was a favorite residence of the race which preceded our own.  The native tribes knew as well as the white settlers where were pleasant streams and sweet springs, where corn grew tall in the meadows and fish bred fast in the unpolluted waters.

The place thus favored by nature can show a record worthy of its physical attractions.  Its settlement under the lead of Emerson’s ancestor, Peter Bulkeley, was effected in the midst of many difficulties, which the enterprise and self-sacrifice of that noble leader were successful in overcoming.  On the banks of the Musketaquid was fired the first fatal shot of the “rebel” farmers.  Emerson appeals to the Records of the town for two hundred years as illustrating the working of our American institutions and the character of the men of Concord:—­