Just a letter, the outpouring of a loving young heart, written with no thought of print and strange eye, slumbering for more than fifty years to come to light at last;—­just one of many, all of them well worth reading.

The three great men of Concord were happy in their wives.  Mrs. Hawthorne and Mrs. Alcott were not only great wives and mothers, but they could express their prayers, meditations, fancies, and emotions in clear and exquisite English.

It was after the prosperous days of the Liverpool Consulate that Hawthorne returned to Concord to spend the remainder of his all too short life.

He made many changes in “The Wayside” and surrounding grounds.  He enlarged the house and added the striking but quite unpicturesque tower which rises from the centre of the main part; here he had his study and point of observation; he could see the unwelcome visitor while yet a far way off, or contemplate the lazy travel of a summer’s day.

Just beyond is “Orchard House,” into which the Alcotts moved in October, 1858.

A philosopher may not be a good neighbor, and Alcott lived just a little too near Hawthorne.  “It was never so well understood at ‘The Wayside’ that its owner had retiring habits as when Alcott was reported to be approaching along Larch Path, which stretched in feathery bowers between our house and his.  Yet I was not aware that the seer failed at any hour to gain admittance,—­one cause, perhaps, of the awe in which his visits were held.  I remember that my observation was attracted to him curiously from the fact that my mother’s eyes changed to a darker gray at his advents, as they did only when she was silently sacrificing herself.  I clearly understood that Mr. Alcott was admirable, but he sometimes brought manuscript poetry with him, the dear child of his own Muse.  There was one particularly long poem which he had read aloud to my mother and father; a seemingly harmless thing, from which they never recovered.”

The appreciation the great men of Concord had of one another is interesting to the outside world.  Great souls are seldom congenial,—­popular impression to the contrary notwithstanding.  Minds of a feather flock together; but minds of gold are apt to remain apart, each sufficient unto itself.  It is in sports, pastimes, business, politics, that men congregate with facility; in literary and intellectual pursuits the leaders are anti-pathetic in proportion to their true greatness.  Now and then two, and more rarely three, are united by bonds of quick understanding and sympathy, but men of profound convictions attract followers and repel companions.

Emerson’s was the most catholic spirit; he understood his neighbors better than they understood one another; his vision was very clear.  For a man who mingled so little with the world, who spent so much of his life in contemplation—­in communing with his inner self—­Emerson was very sane indeed; his idiosyncrasies did not prevent his judging men and things quite correctly.