One realizes that “there is but one Concord” as the carriages of pilgrims are counted in the Square, and the swarm of young guides, with pamphlets and maps, importune the chance visitor.

We chose the most persistent little urchin, not that we could not find our way about so small a village, but because he wanted to ride, and it is always interesting to draw out a child; his story of the town and its famous places was, of course, the one he had learned from the others, but his comments were his own, and the incongruity of going over the sacred ground in an automobile had its effect.

It was a short run down Monument Street to the turn just beyond the “Old Manse.”  Here the British turned to cross the North Bridge on their way to Colonel Barrett’s house, where the ammunition was stored.  Just across the narrow bridge the “embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world.”  A monument marks the spot where the British received the fire of the farmers, and a stone at the side recites “Graves of two British soldiers,”—­ unknown wanderers from home they surrendered their lives in a quarrel, the merits of which they did not know.  “Soon was their warfare ended; a weary night march from Boston, a rattling volley of musketry across the river, and then these many years of rest.  In the long procession of slain invaders who passed into eternity from the battle-field of the revolution, these two nameless soldiers led the way.”  While standing by the grave, Hawthorne was told a story, a tradition of how a youth, hurrying to the battle-field axe in hand, came upon these two soldiers, one not yet dead raised himself up painfully on his hands and knees, and how the youth on the impulse of the moment cleft the wounded man’s head with the axe.  The tradition is probably false, but it made its impression on Hawthorne, who continues, “I could wish that the grave might be opened; for I would fain know whether either of the skeleton soldiers has the mark of an axe in his skull.  The story comes home to me like truth.  Oftentimes, as an intellectual and moral exercise, I have sought to follow that poor youth through his subsequent career and observe how his soul was tortured by the blood-stain, contracted as it had been before the long custom of war had robbed human life of its sanctity, and while it still seemed murderous to slay a brother man.  This one circumstance has borne more fruit for me than all that history tells us of the fight.”

There are souls so callous that the taking of a human life is no more than the killing of a beast; there are souls so sensitive that they will not kill a living thing.  The man who can relate without regret so profound it is close akin to remorse the killing of another—­no matter what the provocation, no matter what the circumstances—­is next kin to the common hangman.

From the windows of the “Old Manse,” the Rev. William Emerson, grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson, looked out upon the battle, and he would have taken part in the fight had not his neighbors held him back; as it was, he sacrificed his life the following year in attempting to join the army at Ticonderoga, contracting a fever which proved fatal.