something accordant with every
passage of his sermon, were it of tenderness or reverential fear. The
boughs over my head seemed shadowy with solemn thoughts, as well as
with rustling leaves.

I took shame to myself for having been so long a writer of idle
stories, and ventured to hope that wisdom would descend upon me with
the falling leaves of the avenue, and that I should light upon an
intellectual treasure in the Old Manse well worth those hoards of
long-hidden gold which people seek for in moss-grown houses. Profound
treatises of morality, a layman's unprofessional and therefore
unprejudiced views of religion, histories (such as Bancroft might have
written had he taken up his abode here, as he once proposed) bright
with picture, gleaming over a depth of philosophic thought--these were
the works that might fitly have flowed from such a retirement. In the
humblest event, I resolved at least to achieve a novel that should
evolve some deep lesson, and should possess physical substance enough
to stand alone....

The study had three windows set with little old-fashioned panes of
glass, each with a crack across it. The two on the western side looked
or rather peeped between the willow branches down into the orchard,
with glimpses of the river through the trees. The third, facing
northward, commanded a broader view of the river at a spot where its
hitherto obscure waters gleam forth into the light of history. It was
at this window that the clergyman who then dwelt in the manse stood
watching the outbreak of a long and deadly struggle between two
nations.[75] He saw the irregular array of his parishioners on the
farther side of the river, and the glittering line of the British on
the hither bank; he awaited in an agony of suspense the rattle of the
musketry. It came; and there needed but a gentle wind to sweep the
battle smoke around this quiet house....

[Footnote 75: The bridge at Concord, where the battle of April, 1775,
was fought, stands only a short distance from the old manse.]

When summer was dead and buried, the Old Manse became as lonely as a
hermitage. Not that ever--in my time at least--it had been thronged
with company; but at no rare intervals we welcomed some friend out of
the dusty glare and tumult of the world, and rejoiced to share with
him the transparent obscurity that was floating over us. In one
respect our precincts were like the Enchanted Ground through which the
pilgrim traveled on his way to