IN OLD CONCORD 93 



boldly hazarded life and worldly comfort and 

 prosperity in the defense of these principles. 



For, after all, it was the men behind the prin- 

 ciples that counted. Here in a volley was the 

 summing up of the nature of the heroes that had 

 grown up, quite literally, in the Concord soil. 

 Did they come of the fertility within it? One 

 must say yes, in part. 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. Like it 

 they stand firm. Yet here is but the bony struc- 

 ture of the man in the Concord fight. Something 

 more must go in to the making of a hero. It has 

 been justly said that at the narrow bridge stood 



