Identifier: bookofboston00shack (find matches)
Title: The book of Boston
Year: 1916 (1910s)
Authors: Shackleton, Robert, 1860-1923
Subjects: Boston (Mass.) -- Description and travel
Publisher: Philadelphia, The Penn publishing company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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ullet-marked houses standing that witnessed thegathering and the flight. Here is a beautiful oldchurch, not indeed the one that stood here in 1775, butone heedfully following that design and giving com-pletion to the general effect, with its beauty of detailand proportion. And at the bridge, the brimmingriver calmly flows, and close beside the battlefield stillstands the sweet Old Manse, weather-worn, dun-col-ored, almost gloomy, shaded by great pines andfronted by an avenue of ancient ash trees; and at theside of the house is the old road to the bridge, lined bya mighty double line of gloomy firs, and in their shadeis the grave of the first two of the British to be killed,who, as the inscription has it, came three thousandmiles to die. The ministers wife watched the skirmish from theOld Manse, from the window of a room afterwards tobe the study, in turn, of Ralph Waldo Emerson andNathaniel Hawthorne. For this ancient Manse hasassociations even better known than those that connect 294
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THE MOST IMPOETANT KOAD IN AMERICA it with the battle. In fact, when Concord is men-tioned, it is probable that more people think of itsliterary associations than of its connection with ourwarlike history. And probably no house was evergiven a more charming description than was given byHawthorne to this romantic Old Manse, to which heand his wife came to make the first home of their mar-ried life. But both Emerson and Hawthorne moved,in turn, to other homes in the village. The house which was the home of Emerson for thebest part of his lifetime, a square-front building ofmuch dignity, is but a few minutes^ walk from the cen-ter of the village, on the road along which the Britishadvanced and retreated. Emerson was dearly lovedby the entire village; he seems to have been the benefi-cent deity of the place, though ever far from being arich man. When, returning from a visit to Europe,he found that the townsfolk had repaired his house,which had been injured by fire, and that they had gath-

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