Lincoln
road. They had been at Brook Farm and came to Concord, I
suppose attracted by Emerson. They came to my father's house
during their stay there every afternoon, and their call was
as much a regular incident of the day as any stated meal.
Each of them was a boy of a very pleasant and delightful nature.
I think if George Curtis had dwelt almost anywhere but in
New York city, he would have been a very powerful influence
in the public life of his generation. But he did not find
any congenial associates in the men in New York who had any
capacity to effect much good. His pure and lofty counsel
fell unheeded upon the ears of his near neighbors, and the
people of Massachusetts did not listen very patiently to lectures
on political purity or reform in civil service from New York
city.

I never maintained any considerable intimacy with Curtis,
although I have a few letters from him, expressing his regard
for some of my kindred or his interest and sympathy in something
I had said or done. These I value exceedingly. One of the
very last articles he wrote for _Harper's Weekly,_ written
just before his death, contains a far too kind estimate of
my public service.

The Concord quality has come down with its people from the
first settlement. The town was founded by Peter Bulkeley.
He was a clergyman at Odell in Bedfordshire, where the church
over which he was settled is still standing. He was a gentleman
of good family and of a considerable estate which he spent
for the benefit of the people whom he led into the wilderness.
He encountered the hostility of Laud and, to use the phrase
of that time, was "silenced for non-conformity." With Major
Simon Willard, he made a bargain with the Indians, just to
both parties, and with which both parties were perfectly satisfied,
which rendered the name of Concord so appropriate, although
in fact the name was given to the settlement before the company
left Boston. That pulpit was occupied by Bulkeley and his
descendants either by blood or marriage, from 1635 to 1696;
from 1738 to 1841; and from 1882 to 1893.

I was able some forty years ago to settle in Concord a matter
which had puzzled English historians, as to the legitimacy
of the famous statesman and Chief Justice, Oliver St. John.
Lord Campbell, in his "Lives of the Chief Justices," says:
"It is a curious circumstance that there should be a dispute
about the parentage of such a distinguished individual, who
flourished