Sleepy Hollow Cemetery lies on Bedford Street not far from the Town Hall.  We followed the winding road to the hill where Hawthorne, Thoreau, the Alcotts, and Emerson lie buried within a half-dozen paces of one another.

Thoreau came first in May, 1862.  Emerson delivered the funeral address.  Mrs. Hawthorne writes in her diary, “Mr. Thoreau died this morning.  The funeral services were in the church.  Mr. Emerson spoke.  Mr. Alcott read from Mr. Thoreau’s writings.  The body was in the vestibule covered with wild flowers.  We went to the grave.”

Hawthorne came next, just two years later.  “On the 24th of May, 1864 we carried Hawthorne through the blossoming orchards of Concord,” says James T. Fields, “and laid him down under a group of pines, on a hillside, overlooking historic fields.  All the way from the village church to the grave the birds kept up a perpetual melody.  The sun shone brightly, and the air was sweet and pleasant, as if death had never entered the world.  Longfellow and Emerson, Channing and Hoar, Agassiz and Lowell, Greene and Whipple, Alcott and Clarke, Holmes and Hillard, and other friends whom he loved, walked slowly by his side that beautiful spring morning.  The companion of his youth and his manhood, for whom he would willingly, at any time, have given up his own life, Franklin Pierce, was there among the rest, and scattered flowers into the grave.  The unfinished ‘Romance,’ which had cost him so much anxiety, the last literary work on which he had ever been engaged, was laid in his coffin.”

Eighteen years later, on April 30, 1882, Emerson was laid at rest a little beyond Hawthorne and Thoreau in a spot chosen by himself.

A special train came from Boston, but many could not get inside the church.  The town was draped; “even the homes of the very poor bore outward marks of grief.”  At the house, Dr. Furness, of Philadelphia, conducted the services.  “The body lay in the front northeast room, in which were gathered the family and close friends.”  The only flowers were lilies of the valley, roses, and arbutus.

At the church, Judge Hoar, standing by the coffin, spoke briefly; Dr. Furness read selections from the Scriptures; James Freeman Clarke delivered the funeral address, and Alcott read a sonnet.

“Over an hour was occupied by the passing files of neighbors, friends, and visitors looking for the last time upon the face of the dead poet.  The body was robed completely in white, and the face bore a natural and peaceful expression.  From the church the procession took its way to the cemetery.  The grave was made beneath a tall pine-tree upon the hill-top of Sleepy Hollow, where lie the bodies of his friends Thoreau and Hawthorne, the upturned sod being concealed by strewings of pine boughs.  A border of hemlock spray surrounded the grave and completely lined its sides.  The services were very brief, and the casket was soon lowered to its final resting-place.  The grandchildren passed the open grave and threw flowers into it.”