Winthrop Packard

“ IN OLD CONCORD The Unspoiled Haunts of Emerson, Hawthorne and Thoreau
One may seek in vain in Concord the reason for Concord. “It is an odd jealousy,” says Emerson, “but the poet finds himself not near enough to his object. The pine tree, the river, the bank of flowers before him, does not seem to be nature. Nature is still elsewhere. This or this is but outskirt and far-off reflection and echo of the triumph that has passed by, and is now in its glancing splendor and heyday, perchance in the neighboring fields, or if you stand in the field, then in the adjacent wood.” ”

“ Between Boston Light and the tip of the Cape the voyager gets a taste of that same sea which Bradford and his friends breasted for two long months. If the sweet summer winds have been off shore for long enough there is little trouble, even for the landsman in this sea. It is likely to be smooth and smiling as an inland lake. If on the other hand the salt vigor of the east winds has shouldered it for a day or two the pilgrim of to-day may well hail the sight of the sand hills of the Cape with a joy as great and a hope of early relief as intense as did the lone voyagers of 1620. ”

“ So the world thinks of Salem to-day as the city of romantic memories. It may weave cotton cloth and tan hides and make shoes and carry on a thousand other inventions of modern business, yet we who dwell away from it, far or near, will always know it best for its romance of elder days, the dread delusion of its witch finding, the astounding deeds of its merchant sailors, and in the end most of all perhaps, for its man of dreams, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who dreamed there the grim story of “The Scarlet Letter” and made it live for all men for all time. ”

“ Down stream a little, not far below the bridge, I found an old-time path of their day, now long since disused, along which in the rich bottom land the meadow thistles grew ten feet tall. Such virility the Concord soil no doubt gave to the heroes who ceased delving in it only to grasp their muskets for the fray. The Minute Man holds to his plow still, the sculptor justly thus carving him. Out of the good brown earth one can easily know that courage and self-reliance thrilled through share and beam and handle into the bone of the man himself. Till the earth is fluid such men do not run. ”

“ In a sense you are its eye and look upon the world as it does. Day breaks for the swimmer as it does for Walden, and the flash of the sun above the wood to eastward warms [63] you both with the same sudden sweep of its August fire. In the same sense you are the pond’s ear and hear as it does. The morning rustle of the trees, shaking the dusk from their boughs, comes to you as a clear ecstasy, and you think you can hear the wan tinkling of the invisible feet of fairy mists as they leap sunward from the surface and vanish in the day. ”

“ Down in Marshfield early morning brings to the roadside troops of blue-eyed chicory blooms, shy memories of fair Pilgrim children who once trod these ways. They do not stay long with the wanderer, these early morning blooms. The turmoil and heat of the mid-summer day close them, but the dreams they bring ramble with the roads in happy freedom from all care among drumlins and kames, vanishing in the flooding heat of some wood-enclosed pasture corner to spring laughingly back again as the way tops a hill and gives a glimpse of the purple velvet of the sea. ”

“ The free, wholesome air of the mountains is in it all, and as you breathe more and more of it you feel that the good old-time New Englander does not need to come back. He is there, up under the purple shadow of Haystack, talking maple sugar and drawing its essence of vitality from the white wood of mighty trees that clothe mountain slopes with the kindly peace of their stately groves. ”

“ Down river to the old chain bridge the rough rocks of the New Hampshire hills, wandering far, come to get a taste of salt, and put their lips to the water at the island home of Harriet Prescott Spofford, whose sparkling verse and piquant prose has made the name of Newburyport known in literary annals for more than half a century. Hills and sea meet there, and all the beauty of marsh, pasture and woodland surround the spot. It is no wonder that romance, vivid life and rich atmosphere inform her work. ”

“ Before the last wood thrush had finished his “Good night; all’s well; God is good,” other songs of praise and the joy of life were echoing from swamp and wood and lake margin. Where the birds had ceased a myriad other voices took up new refrains. The dreamy trill of the tree frogs sounds from the perfumed dusk, a lullaby of the world primeval that sang the first man to sleep in some safe refuge in the deep woods. From the distant marsh the mingled voices of innumerable hylas ring a chorus of fairy sleighbells that rises and falls as the wind of evening drifts by. ”

“ Winging to the milkweed out of the chestnut and maple shade of the deep wood comes Papilio turnus, striped tigerwise with rich yellow and black. Out of the long saw-edged grass that grows long [39] in the meadow and bows before the wind as do fields of grain sails Argynnis cybele, the great spangled fritillary, the fulvous glory of his broad wings spangled beneath with silver, as if he carried his coin of a fairy realm with him wherever he goes. Over the very pine tops soars the monarch, his rich dark red and black borne on wings that are the strongest in butterfly flight. ”

“ Wood warblers trill in the absurd forest, and the rich aroma of its leaves subtends the lighter fragrance of the blossoming wild flowers. In feathery glades among these Truro trees one might forget that winter is to come and bring bleakness and desolation unspeakable to the land with him. But if winter does not always warn, the sea does. Not so deep in any witch hollow can you hide, not so far may you wander in enchanted forests, as to escape its call. The trees murmur continually the song of the surf, and the crash of its breakers echoes continually in the air [87] overhead. ”

“ Out of the northeast they roll over gray-green leagues of cold sea, and as they bite deep into the sand of the shore behind Peaked Hill Bar, and drag it and all that is on it down into their maw and hurl it all back again, beating it on the beach and snatching it and beating it again, it roars inarticulate threats that make the onlooker draw back glad of a space of summer-dried sand between him and its depths. ”

“ The sky held a faint violet haze which deepened to royal purple in all distances, a violet which seemed to materialize into innumerable bluebirds which caroled coaxingly as they flew toward the grove. Over on the edge of it song sparrows sang invitingly, but the sugar makers did not move from the cosy doorstep until nearly noon. Then we went toward the grove somewhat warily, as a man tends his traps in the wilderness, rather hoping for luck but doubtful. The sap moves when it gets ready, and no man can surely say when. ”

“ To turn one’s back upon the fence as he does and look across the grassy Musketaquid vigilantly at those swaying lines of British bayonets is to dwell for a little in the Concord which, with a streak of yellow flame and a whizzing bullet, first leapt skyrocket-like into the world’s eye. Many things have made the beautiful village a Mecca whither journey pilgrims from all over the world. All come eager to look upon the spot where the farmers marched deliberately upon the king’s troops and dared fling back into their faces the red gauntlet of murder. ”

“ To climb this path yourself is to find the sky not so near after all. Standing on the summit, you realize first the depth of its great dome and the wide sweep of sea that rims the islands round. Here are but gray ledges that rise out of an immensity which dwarfs them. Far to the north and west is a thin, blue line of land that lifts in the farthest distance the peaks of the White Mountains. All else is but a vast expanse of sea that seems as if it might rise in a storm and overwhelm these rocks that it has washed so white and smooth. ”

“ Close to the walls, however well shorn the field, the winds of this first day of October toss yellow curls of goldenrod blooms, while the asters, children of the year’s late prime, open wide, roguish blue eyes among them. Particularly do these wayside children love to ramble along one of the old stone-walled lanes leading from the pasture to the cow barn, as if they came up with the cows night after night, and lingered outside only because the barn is closed on them before they managed to loiter in. ”

“ They croon in your ears [7] the strange sagas that the blood of no wanderer can resist, and you know something of the lure that led the vikings of old ever onward to new shores as you plunge down the grassy slope to meet them. The stately beauty of the home place may thrall you for a while beneath the trees and the friendly great barn try to lull you to contentment with the cradle songs of the swallows, but the marsh adds its wild, free tang to the muted trumpets which these east winds blow in your ears, and so you fare onward through a country of enchantment, toward the ocean. ”

“ You may throw a stone across this meadow cove and in any direction save at its narrow entrance from the pond you will hit tall woods that in dense array lean lovingly over it and give it cool shadows except when the sun is high. Between the tall trees and the meadow grasses grows the clethra, its white spikes of perfume [67] seeming to make a lace collar all about the place. In the bottom of this meadow grows much thoroughwort, which is a plain, homely weed to the passing glance, not considered fit for a garden nor thought to beautify a roadside as do so many fairer pasture blooms. ”

“ Behind your back is the rich green of Massachusetts woodland, beneath your feet this landscape of pasture, field and marsh, scarcely changed since Webster’s day, changed but little indeed since the days of Peregrine White and his pioneer neighbors, and rimming it round the deep sapphire romance of the sea. Across this blue romance of sea the winds of the world, fresh and vital with brine, come to woo you on your way. ”

“ Here was the great living-room with its hearth, where the life of the home centered. Without was the wonderful rolling country with all its majesty of hill, whence he saw the crystal mountains to north and the blue lure of the sea to eastward, with all its gentle delights of ravines where brooks laughed, and meadows and swamps where they slipped peacefully along, mirroring the sky, watering all wild flowers and offering refuge to all wild creatures. Within this wide circle, with the house its core and the hearth its shrine, [19] revolved the homely, cheerful, whole-hearted life of the farm. ”

“ The world is apt to be this way after rain. Yet if the vivid morning sun and exhilarating north wind had driven all ghosts away there had been necromancy at work. All the day before the blossoms on the staghorn sumac had been of that velvety pink that rivals the wild rose. Over night they had turned a warm, rich red. Autumn brings this richer, more stable color to the sumac blooms as they ripen toward seed time, but it does not do it in July, over night. The pukwudgies had been at work, painting with the rain, filling the sumac heads with it till they hung heavy. ”

“ Of dead weed stalks, grasses and brown leaves it is not only built but roofed, and with an entrance on one side that to the uninitiated might be an entrance to the nest of a field mouse, indeed, but never that to a bird’s nest. It is not for greater knowledge of nest hiding that the oven-bird need pray to the wood gods, nor may we know what further wisdom he seeks, but all summer long he asks for it in no uncertain tones.
Out of the very treetops while the oven-bird shouts his prayer below comes the voice of the red-eyed vireo, uttering moral platitudes from dawn till dusk. ”

“ Dykes of trap run through the island, and as this rock too is softer than its casing the winds and waves of centuries have worn it away, leaving chasms down which you may walk to the tide, between the sheer cliffs. One such chasm runs quite across Appledore from east to west near the northern end of the island, almost cutting off a round dome of granite from its fellow rock. The soil lies rich in this narrow hollow between ledges, and many things grow in it, lush with leaves and beautiful with bloom. ”

“ Thus we find Concord to-day an historical and literary Mecca, a fine example of what has always been best in a New England town, holding firmly to the old, choosing, one believes, the best in the new, brooding the past in dreamy persistency, biding its time for the good that the future is to bring. Some day out of its lush meadows and the rich mold of its hillsides will flow again into the veins of men that subtle fluid of flame that makes heroes and poets. ”

“ Along this path you may have your choice of varieties as you go, from the pale blue ones that grow so very near the earth on their tiny bushes that they seem the salt of it, giving the day its zest, through the low-bush-blacks, crisp with seeds and aromatic in flavor as if smoked with the incense of the sweet-fern, to those other black ones that grow on the high bushes and rightfully take the name of huckleberry. The soil of these sandy hills may be thin and not worth farming, but it produces fruit whose quality puts to shame the product of well-cultivated gardens. ”

“ In the moist hollows among the sand dunes this vine finds good sustenance, puts forth most vigorous growth, and barricades gullies sometimes with an almost impenetrable entanglement of its thorny ropes. I have rarely seen a tropical tangle which is more impenetrable than one of these. It climbs and twines among beach plums and scrubby wild cherry shrubs, weaving all together in a dense matting. To Pilgrim warriors fresh from English fields or Dutch meadows this thorny wild tangle must have been embarrassing indeed. ”

“ Such was the building of Newburyport, and such is the romance of memory that comes in to her on every wind of the sea to-day, though the ships have sailed away never to return and even the foundations of the old ship yards are hard to find. The wealth and dignity of the old sea-faring days remain. The custom house bravely hoists its flag each morning and waits in gray silence for the cargoes that rarely come. ”

“ Nor does any storied monument recite the deeds of the statesman or bear his name higher than that of his fellows. A simple slab with the name only stands above the mound beneath which he lies, and in the side of this mound a woodchuck has his burrow, seeming to emphasize by his presence the cosy friendliness of the little spot. It is a hillock, just a little way from the house, just a little way from the big orchard which Webster loved so well, surrounded by pasture and cranberry bog and with the marsh drawing lovingly up to it on one side. ”