After they had left
a small force to guard the bridge, the troops set fire to the
court house. They then cut down the liberty pole, spiked several
cannon, threw several barrels of flour into the river, and
proceeded to hunt for the arms and ammunition that were not
there. The burning flames from the court house kindled the wrath
of the little force of Minute Men, who had seen the ominous
clouds of smoke on that April day. Soon four hundred men were on
their way to Concord. Two hundred regulars, on arriving, seized
the bridge. Here they received and returned the British fire and
were only overcome by numbers. Major Buttrick forced them back
into the village.
As we gazed across again at the Old Manse we thought of the
wonderful essays that had been written here. In the rear of the
old house is a delightful study. It was here that Emerson wrote
"Nature." Here, too, Hawthorne wrote "Mosses from an Old Manse."
We thought of the brave clergyman who, from the north window,
commanding a broad view of the river, stood watching the first
conflict of a long and deadly struggle between the mother
country and her child.
Realizing the danger they were in, the British troops began
their retreat of eighteen miles. They had eaten little or
nothing for fourteen hours. Ages ago freedom loving Nature had
conspired to aid the Americans by shaping the field of battle.
Huge boulders had been left by the glacier, the potent rays of
the April sun made dense masses of verdure in willows, which
thus became an ally of the pine. Stone fences and haystacks
became ready-made fortifications, and every rising spot was
filled with irate hostile yeoman who harried them with aim true
and deadly. They soon began to run and leave their wounded
behind, and in place of a retreat their disorderly flight must
have had the appearance of a Marathon race, the rattle of
musketry acting or serving as signals for each to do his best on
the home stretch.
They were almost exhausted when they fell into a little hollow
square made by Percy's men to receive them. Here the weary,
frightened Redcoats took refuge as in a sanctuary, and
immediately threw themselves upon the ground to rest. Many of
them had either lost or thrown away their muskets. Pitcairn had
lost both his horse and the elegant pistols with which. the
first shot of the war for independence had been fired. They may
now be seen in the town library of Lexington. When the British
soldiers reached Arlington, several miles from Boston, they had
an obstinate fight with the Yanks. The road swarmed with Minute
Men and they could not keep order - but at sunset, when they
entered Charlestown under the welcome shelter of the fleet, it
was upon the full run. Considered as a race, the British stood
far in the lead. Two hundred and seventy-three British were lost
and but ninety-three Americans.
As we still lingered on the banks of the sleeping river we
recalled these lines from Emerson: "My home stands in lowland
with limited outlook, and on the outskirts of the village. But I
go with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one
stroke of the paddle I leave the village politics and
personalities behind and pass into a delicate realm of sunset
and moonlight." Alert and watchful still stood the figure near
the bridge, and as we turned away from this quiet spot "his
attitude of eternal vigilance still seemed prophetic." He became
at once the noble spirit of a brave Anglo-Saxon, standing for
Freedom and Right; the spirit that gained our independence; that
of 1867 that freed the slave; and that of 1917 that sent the
sons of America across the ocean. This glorious Freeman should
be placed on some lofty mountain peak in the pure, free air of
heaven, where all might read the lesson of Freedom and Human
Rights. This is one of America's shrines of which she may be
duly proud. Could the European tourist carry back no other
memory, it would be well to cross the Atlantic to see this
sight. Leaving the guardian at the bridge standing there, we
made our way to Sleepy Hollow.
We are not particularly fond of cemeteries, but the knowledge
that finally one has to go there himself makes a visit not
wholly purposeless. We strolled past. the quiet homes to the
more quiet plot of ground, "hallowed by many congenial and great
souls." Here on a lofty elevation of ground stood the headstones
of Louise May Alcott, Thoreau and Charming, with that of
Hawthorne enclosed by a fence and withdrawn a short distance.
"What a constellation of stars, whose radiance shall shine on
undimmed through countless centuries!"
Here is what Thoreau wrote concerning monuments: "When the stone
is a light one and stands upright, pointing to the sky, it does
not repress the spirits of the traveler to meditate by it; but
these men did seem a little heathenish to us; and so are all
large monuments over men's bodies from the Pyramids down."
A monument should at least be "starry-pointing," to indicate
whither the spirit has gone, and not prostrate like the body it
has deserted. There have been some nations who could do nothing
but construct tombs, and these are the only traces they have
left. They are the heathen. But why these stones so upright and
emphatic like exclamation points? What was there so remarkable
that lived? Why should the monument be so much more enduring
than the fame which it is designed to commemorate - a stone to a
bone? "Here lies ___" Why do they not sometimes write, "There
rises?" Is it a monument to the body only that is intended?
"Having ended the term of his natural life." Would it not be
truer to say, "Having ended the term of his unnatural life?" The
rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.
