S the country in general; it is a small sort of village, almost entirely of wood houses, painted white, with Venetian blinds, green outside, with two white wooden churches. There are some American elms of a weeping kind, and sycamores, i.e. planes; but the wood is mostly pine--white pine and yellow pine--somewhat scrubby, occupying the tops of the low banks, and marshy hay-land between, very brown now. A little brook runs through to the Concord River.'[3] The brook flowed across the few acres that were Emerson's first modest homestead. 'The whole external appearance of the place,' says one who visited him, 'suggests old-fashioned comfort and hospitality. Within the house the flavour of antiquity is still more noticeable. Old pictures look down from the walls; quaint blue-and-white china holds the simple dinner; old furniture brings to mind the generations of the past. At the right as you enter is Mr. Emerson's library, a large square room, plainly furnished, but made pleasant by pictures and sunshine. The homely shelves that line the walls are well filled with books. There is a lack of showy covers or rich bindings, and each volume seems to have soberly grown old in constant service. Mr. Emerson's study is a quiet room upstairs.' [Footnote 3: Clough's _Life and Letters_, i. 185.] Fate did not spare him the strokes of the common lot. His first wife died after three short years of wedded happiness. He lost a little son, who was the light of his eyes. But others were born to him, and in all the relations and circumstances of domestic life he was one of the best and most beloved of men. He long carried in his mind the picture of Carlyle's life at Craigenputtock as the ideal for the sage, but his own choice was far wiser and happier, 'not wholly i
