ntention by proclaiming it aloud
in the church three Sundays in succession. So just before
the service began, the old town clerk would get up and proclaim:
"There is a marriage intended between Mr. John Brown of this
town and Miss Sarah Smith of Sudbury," and there was great
curiosity in the congregation to hear the announcement. The
town clerk in my boyhood had been a wealthy old bachelor for
whom the young ladies had set their caps in vain for two generations.
One day he astonished the congregation by proclaiming: "There
is a marriage intended between Dr. Abiel Keywood"--which
was his own name--"and Miss Lucy P. Fay, both of Concord."
That was before I can remember, as his boys were about my
age.

Doctor Ripley, the minister in Concord, was an old man who
had been settled there during the Revolutionary War and was
over the parish sixty-two years. He was an excellent preacher
and scholar, and his kindly despotism was submitted to by
the whole town. His way of pronouncing would sound very queer
now, though it was common then. I well remember his reading
the lines of the hymn--

Let every critter jine
To praise the eternal God.

Scattered about the church were the good gray heads of many
survivors of the Revolution--the men who had been at the bridge
on the 19th of April, and who made the first armed resistance
to the British power. They were very striking and venerable
figures, with their queues and knee-breeches and shoes with
shining buckles. Men were more particular about their apparel
in those days than we are now. They had great stateliness
of behavior, and admitted of little familiarity.

They had heard John Buttrick's order to fire, which marked
the moment when our country was born. The order was given
to British subjects. It was obeyed by American citizens.
Among them was old Master Blood, who saw a ball strike the
water when the British fired their first volley. I heard
many of the old men tell their stories of the Battle of Concord,
and of the capture of Burgoyne.

I lay down on the grass one summer afternoon, when old Amos
Baker of Lincoln, who was in the Lincoln Company on the 19th
of April, told me the whole story. He was very indignant
at the claim that the Acton men marched first to attack the
British because the others hesitated. He said, "It was because
they had bagnets [bayonets]. The rest of us hadn't no bagnets."

One day a few years later, when I was in college, I walke