ss that its past is LIVING, that the "mosses of the Old
Manse" and the hickories of Walden are not far away. Here is the home
of the "Marches"--all pervaded with the trials and happiness of the
family and telling, in a simple way, the story of "the richness of not
having." Within the house, on every side, lie remembrances of what
imagination can do for the better amusement of fortunate children who
have to do for themselves-much-needed lessons in these days of
automatic, ready-made, easy entertainment which deaden rather than
stimulate the creative faculty. And there sits the little old
spinet-piano Sophia Thoreau gave to the Alcott children, on which Beth
played the old Scotch airs, and played at the Fifth Symphony.

There is a commonplace beauty about "Orchard House"--a kind of
spiritual sturdiness underlying its quaint picturesqueness--a kind of
common triad of the New England homestead, whose overtones tell us that
there must have been something aesthetic fibered in the Puritan
severity--the self-sacrificing part of the ideal--a value that seems to
stir a deeper feeling, a stronger sense of being nearer some perfect
truth than a Gothic cathedral or an Etruscan villa. All around you,
under the Concord sky, there still floats the influence of that human
faith melody, transcendent and sentimental enough for the enthusiast or
the cynic respectively, reflecting an innate hope--a common interest in
common things and common men--a tune the Concord bards are ever
playing, while they pound away at the immensities with a Beethovenlike
sublimity, and with, may we say, a vehemence and perseverance--for that
part of greatness is not so difficult to emulate.

We dare not attempt to follow the philosophic raptures of Bronson
Alcott--unless you will assume that his apotheosis will show how
"practical" his vision in this world would be in the next. And so we
won't try to reconcile the music sketch of the Alcotts with much
besides the memory of that home under the elms--the Scotch songs and
the family hymns that were sung at the end of each day--though there
may be an attempt to catch something of that common sentiment (which we
have tried to suggest above)-a strength of hope that never gives way to
despair--a conviction in the power of the common soul which, when all
is said and done, may be as typical as any theme of Concord and its
transcendentalists.

V--Thoreau

Thoreau was a great musician, not because he played the