ceremonies at Concord in celebration of the battle of the Minute Men with
the British troops a hundred years before. We both had special
invitations, including passage from Boston; but I said, Why bother to go
into Boston when we could just as well take the train for Concord at the
Cambridge station? He equally decided that it would be absurd; so we
breakfasted deliberately, and then walked to the station, reasoning of
many things as usual. When the train stopped, we found it packed inside
and out. People stood dense on the platforms of the cars; to our
startled eyes they seemed to project from the windows, and unless memory
betrays me they lay strewn upon the roofs like brakemen slain at the post
of duty.

Whether this was really so or not, it is certain that the train presented
an impenetrable front even to our imagination, and we left it to go its
way without the slightest effort to board. We remounted the fame-worn
steps of Porter's Station, and began exploring North Cambridge for some
means of transportation overland to Concord, for we were that far on the
road by which the British went and came on the day of the battle. The
liverymen whom we appealed to received us, some with compassion, some
with derision, but in either mood convinced us that we could not have
hired a cat to attempt our conveyance, much less a horse, or vehicle of
any description. It was a raw, windy day, very unlike the exceptionally
hot April day when the routed redcoats, pursued by the Colonials, fled
panting back to Boston, with "their tongues hanging out like dogs," but
we could not take due comfort in the vision of their discomfiture; we
could almost envy them, for they had at least got to Concord. A swift
procession of coaches, carriages, and buggies, all going to Concord,
passed us, inert and helpless, on the sidewalk in the peculiarly cold mud
of North Cambridge. We began to wonder if we might not stop one of them
and bribe it to take us, but we had not the courage to try, and Clemens
seized the opportunity to begin suffering with an acute indigestion,
which gave his humor a very dismal cast. I felt keenly the shame of
defeat, and the guilt of responsibility for our failure, and when a gay
party of students came toward us on the top of a tally ho, luxuriously
empty inside, we felt that our chance had come, and our last chance. He
said that if I would stop them and tell them who I was they would gladly,
perhaps proudly, give us passage; I