AMERICA TO-DAY
used to drive his mother's cows: not, of course, a Gothic pile like that which commemorates the genius of Scott, but a statue by the incomparable St. Gaudens, under a modest classic canopy.
But if, or when, such a monument is erected, it will absolve no one of the duty of making a pilgrimage to Concord. Even if it had no historic or literary associations, this simple, dignified, beautiful New England village, with its plain frame houses and its stately elm avenues, would be well worth a visit. Village I call it, but township would be a better word. Let no one go there with less than half a day to spare, for the places of interest are widely scattered. My companion and I went first to Walden Pond, then to the Emerson and Hawthorne houses, then to that ideal burying-place, Sleepy Hollow, where Emerson and Hawthorne and Thoreau rest side by side, and finally to the bridge—
Where once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
Everything here is beautifully appropriate. The commemorative statue of the "minute-man" with his musket is simple and expressive, and the four lines of Emerson's hymn graven on the pedestal are the right words written by the right man, entwining, as it were, the historical and literary associations of the place. An exquisite appropriateness, too, presides over the Poets' Corner of Sleepy Hollow. The grave of Emerson is marked by a rough block of pure white
80
