9 8 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



ley. Here was the scholar and the preacher 

 instead of the farmer, but born of the same old 

 sturdy stock and come back to set roots in Con- 

 cord soil. Here he walked daily in the fields and 

 woods with his veins open to that same ichor of 

 the gods which had not made patriots and heroes 

 indeed, but had given them tongues, which seems 

 to have given power of expression to him who 

 was already poet and seer. Here with him, 

 grown up out of the same town, was Thoreau. 

 Hither came Alcott to paint the bubbles of his 

 inchoate dreams in rainbow conversation. Hither 

 too came Hawthorne, to tramp the woods as did 

 the others and feel as did they the divine afflatus 

 drumming in their veins and the impulse to 

 sturdy independence coming up to them out of 

 the Concord soil as it thrilled up to the Minute 

 Man through his plow handle. It was not so 

 much that these men had within them the poetic 

 fire, but that it burned there on the hearth of 

 freedom, independence, and intense individuality. 

 With them Concord came again into the eye of 

 the world, and because they preached as well as 

 wrought, the world's eye is still upon it. And, 



