t because trolleys, automobiles, and bicycles
have made the town more accessible; but also because our literature is a
generation older than it was in 1879. The study of American authors has
been systematically introduced into the public schools. The men who made
Concord famous are dead, but their habitat has become increasingly
classic ground as they themselves have receded into a dignified,
historic past. At any rate, the trail of the excursionist--the "cheap
tripper," as he is called in England,--is over it all. Basket parties
had evidently eaten many a luncheon on the first battle-field of the
Revolution, and notices were posted about, asking the public not to
deface the trees, and instructing them where to put their paper
wrappers and _fragmenta regalia_. I could imagine Boston schoolma'ams
pointing out to their classes, the minuteman, the monument, and other
objects of interest, and calling for names and dates. The shores of
Walden were trampled and worn in spots. There were springboards there
for diving, and traces of the picnicker were everywhere. Trespassers
were warned away from the grounds of the Old Manse and similar historic
spots, by signs of "Private Property."

Concord has grown more self-conscious under the pressure of all this
publicity and resort. Tablets and inscriptions have been put up at
points of interest. As I was reading one of these on the square, I was
approached by a man who handed me a business card with photographs of
the monument, the Wayside, the four-hundred-year-old oak, with
information to the effect that Mr. ---- would furnish guides and livery
teams about the town and to places as far distant as Walden Pond and
Sudbury Inn. Thus poetry becomes an asset, and transcendentalism is
exploited after the poet and the philosopher are dead. It took Emerson
eleven years to sell five hundred copies of "Nature," and Thoreau's
books came back upon his hands as unsalable and were piled up in the
attic like cord-wood. I was impressed anew with the tameness of the
Concord landscape. There is nothing salient about it: it is the average
mean of New England nature. Berkshire is incomparably more beautiful.
And yet those flat meadows and low hills and slow streams are dear to
the imagination, since genius has looked upon them and made them its
own. "The eye," said Emerson, "is the first circle: the horizon the
second."

And the Concord books--how do they bear the test of revisitation? To me,
at least