live in the spirit,"
still walked his ancient haunts; his mind in many ways yet unimpaired,
though sadly troubled by aphasia, or the failure of verbal memory. It
was an instance of pathetic irony that in his lecture on "Memory,"
delivered in the Town Hall, he was prompted constantly by his daughter.

It seemed an inappropriate manner of arrival--the Fitchburg Railroad.
One should have dropped down upon the sacred spot by parachute; or, at
worst, have come on foot, with staff and scrip, along the Lexington
pike, reversing the fleeing steps of the British regulars on that April
day, when the embattled farmers made their famous stand. But I
remembered that Thoreau, whose Walden solitude was disturbed by gangs of
Irish laborers laying the tracks of this same Fitchburg Railroad,
consoled himself with the reflection that hospitable nature made the
intruder a part of herself. The embankment runs along one end of the
pond, and the hermit only said:

It fills a few hollows
And makes banks for the swallows,
And sets the sand a-blowing
And the black-berries growing.

Afterwards I witnessed, and participated in, a more radical profanation
of these crystal waters, when two hundred of the dirtiest children in
Boston, South-enders, were brought down by train on a fresh-air-fund
picnic and washed in the lake just in front of the spot where Thoreau's
cabin stood, after having been duly swung in the swings, teetered on
the see-saws, and fed with a sandwich, a slice of cake, a pint of
peanuts, and a lemonade apiece, by a committee of charitable ladies--one
of whom was Miss Louisa Alcott, certainly a high authority on "Little
Women" and "Little Men."

Miss Alcott I had encountered on the evening of my first day in Concord,
when I rang the door bell of the Alcott residence and asked if the seer
was within. I fancied that there was a trace of acerbity in the manner
of the tall lady who answered my ring, and told me abruptly that Mr.
Alcott was not at home, and that I would probably find him at Mr.
Sanborn's farther up the street. Perspiring philosophers with dusters
and grip-sacks had been arriving all day and applying at the Alcott
house for addresses of boarding houses and for instructions of all
kinds; and Miss Louisa's patience may well have been tried. She did not
take much stock in the School anyway. Her father was supremely happy.
One of the dreams of his life was realized, and endless talk and
soul-commu