in his chair, dead, in the house which his father | site. The town accepted the bequest, and decided and grandfather had occupied before him. By will to procure and erect a statue of a continental minhe left one thousand dollars to aid in the construc- ute-man, to rebuild the bridge, and to complete tion of a monument on that side of the river on and dedicate the statue on the hundredth anniverwhich the Americans had stood in arms on April 19, sary of Concord Fight. Reuben N. Rice took 1775; and before his death he had placed six hun- charge of the bridge, adding some adornment at dred dollars in the hands of the town treasurer to his own cost. A committee, with John S. Keyes help rebuild the Old North Bridge on its original as chairman, was appointed to obtain and place the statue. Daniel C. French, a young artist, a resident of the town, furnished an admirable model. The government gave ten condemned brass cannon, and at the appointed time all was completed. Meanwhile the town had appointed a committee of thirty, of which George Keyes was chairman, to arrange for the centennial. E. R. Hoar was appointed president for the day, and Grindall Reynolds chaplain. Mr. Emerson consented to deliver the address at the unveiling of the statue. George William Curtis gave the oration, James Russell Lowell recited an ode, and General Francis C. Barlow acted as chief marshal. These three gentlemen had all been residents for a longer or shorter period in the town. The Concord centennial was a striking occasion. "To a New England man the 19th of April is the birthday of the nation," and its hundredth anniversary called forth the greatest enthusiasm. The celebration really began on Sunday, the 18th, when the President and his Cabinet, governors of states with their military escorts, and a great crowd of interested worshippers, gathered in the old church, where the Provincial Congress first met, and where the measures which made resistance possible had been passed. The morning of the 19th of April rose clear and cold. At an early hour the long trains, crowded to their utmost capacity, and the lines of vehicles coming from all directions, showed that the attendance was to be beyond all precedent; and, by eleven o'clock, not less than fifty thousand people filled the streets. The national government was represented by President Grant and his Cabinet, by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, by senators and judges, by famous soldiers and sailors. Each New England state sent its governor, with a military organization. Every one of the towns which sprang to arms on the eventful day had its delegation. The centennial at Concord was no mere pageant, but an occasion full of living interest. The men who took part in it were not selected simply as great names to lend lustre to the hour, but because they had had some vital relations with the town or the occasion. The president of the day, the chaplain, Mr. Emerson, and a majority of the committee of arrangements were descendants of the men who fought a hundred years before, and the ranks of the procession were filled with people who had come back from the East and the West to their early home. The sobriety, the good behavior, the manifest interest of fifty thousand people, dropped in the streets of a little village, furnished striking evidence of the elevating influ- | the state, and more strawberries than any except ence of free institutions. By half-past six o'clock Dighton. the crowd had disappeared, and the town resumed its ordinary quiet. The centennial closed with a ball in the evening at the Agricultural Hall, whose walls were bright with flags, whose pillars flashed with stars and shields wrought of bayonets and sword-blades, and whose whole space was filled with a cheerful, animated company. A hundred years has made a great change in the mode of caring for the poor. For fortyfive years of that period they were, in accordance with a barbarous custom, let to the lowest bidder; although for twenty years of that time the Cargill farm, left for the benefit of the poor, had been in the possession of the town. From 1821-27, for the use of this farm and a specified sum, Messrs. Stows and Merriam took charge of them. Since then they have been kept by the town under the care of a suitable person. A comfortable building was erected for a poor-house a few years ago. One of the most interesting things connected with the care of the poor is what is called the Silent Poor Fund. In 1718 Perez Wright, weaver, died. He ordered that his little estate, upon the death of his wife and his cousin Elizabeth Hartwell, should go to the poor of Concord. This estate produced a fund of $300. To this fund at various times, and chiefly by bequests, Abel Barrett, John Beaton, John Cummings, Jonathan Wheeler, Ephraim Merriam, Peter Blood, Charles Merriam, Reuben Hunt, Samuel Barrett, Ebenezer Hubbard, and Abel Hunt have added, until the principal now amounts to $8,100. The interest of this fund is annually divided just before Thanksgiving. The In the summer of 1873 the Lexington Brauch Railroad, under the name of the Middlesex Central, was extended to Concord, giving to the village another way of communication with Boston. This road in the month of February, 1879, began a still farther extension, to enable it to connect with the Acton and Nashua Road. The Framingham and Lowell Railroad was built in 1871, and crossed the Fitchburg Railroad two miles above the village, making the Concord Junction, which two years later became the real terminus of the Acton and Nashua Road. The establishment of this junction, from which communication with all parts of the state was easy, was probably one of the reasons why Concord was selected as the site of the new stateprison. The Cook farm, a little estate of fifty or sixty acres of dry, sandy land, lying between the Assabet River and Pail-factory Brook, was purchased by the state, and extensive buildings erected, to which in June, 1878, the convicts were re-recipients are deserving persons, who from age or inoved. The last hundred years have wrought a great change. A hundred years ago the farmer lived more within himself. He raised his own flax and wool, and his wife spun and wove them. His beef, pork, corn, rye, oats, were the products of his own farm. His fuel came from his woodlands. The articles which he sent to Boston now come from towns farther back. The Fitchburg Railroad reached Concord in 1844. It left its mark on agriculture as upon everything else. Joseph D. Brown began the next year to run a milk-car. At first the farmers held back. But the tendency was irresist ible, and in twenty years the daily supply had risen to more than eight hundred cans, bringing back a return to the town of nearly $100,000 a year. The vast enlargement of Boston, and the great improvement in railroad transportation, began fifteen years ago to produce another change. Early vegetables and small fruits were more largely raised; so that in 1875, while retaining three quarters of the milk business, Concord sent to market more asparagus, cucumbers, and grapes than any other town in other cause are able to earn only a partial support, and who are thus kept from coming upon the town. If we turn from material- to higher interests we shall find an equal change. The new schoolhouses, which in 1799 were thought to be so good, have been replaced again and again; each generation seeking to improve upon the work of its predecessor, while the methods of education have kept pace with the times. The Cummings and Beaton fund, left for the benefit of the schools, reaches about $1,300; Cyrus Stow having given a lot of land and $200 towards the erection of a high-school house, left at his death $3,000 for the benefit of the high school; and the library has received legacies from Charles Merriam, William Whiting, Ebenezer Hubbard, Cyrus Stow, and others. Before 1835 Concord sent to college seventy-one persons, and she has sent forty since. From graduates, born in a little cluster of halfa-dozen houses on the main street of the village, Massachusetts has chosen four members of Congress. Of later years Concord has attracted many literary and professional people. In 1835 Mr. lican, began in Concord his newspaper experience as editor of the Yeoman's Gazelle. Frank B. Sanborn, his successor, has his home on the banks of the quiet river. Frederic Hudson, an editor of the New York Herald and author of the History of Journalism, ended his days in the town. Mrs. Samuel Ripley, who was chosen as one of five to represent "the worthy women of the first century of the Republic," and who was said to have been the most learned woman in America, came in 1845 to live in the Old Manse. Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody, the earnest advocate of the Kindergarten Emerson, then in his early manhood, made his | trenchant correspondent of the Springfield Repubhome in the town in which his father was born and where his grandfather preached, and here wrote the essays by which his name is known wherever the English tongue is spoken. Henry D. Thoreau was born in Boston, but came to Concord in boyhood, and lived and died here, and found, in its quiet rivers, lakes, and woods, inspiration for works which are full of the flavor of Nature. Channing, the poet, has lived in Concord thirty or forty years. George William Curtis was here in early manhood. Nathaniel Hawthorne found the seclusion he loved in the Old Manse and at the Wayside, and at these places wrote sev-system, has come to Concord; while Miss Louisa eral of his powerful romances. A. Bronson Alcott, whose conversation's have made his ideas and presence so widely known, has been a resident since 1857. Warrington (William S. Robinson), the M. Alcott, the author of the most fascinating books for the young which have appeared in our generation, lives with her father and sister in the Thoreau house. This list might be greatly "The Wayside." Hawthorne's Residence. enlarged. Fifteen members of the bar, five of whom have occupied judicial positions, also live at Concord. For nearly two centuries-if we except the brief period of secession in the time of Mr. BlissConcord had but one church organization. But June 5, 1826, the Trinitarian Congregational Church was gathered, and the following December dedicated a place of worship. The First Universalist Society was formed December 29, 1838, and had a meeting-house on Bedford Street, but ceased to maintain worship in the year 1852. The Roman Catholics held occasional meetings in private houses as early as 1857. But by the purchase of the Universalist meeting-house they came into possession of a church edifice, which they moved so as to face upon the public square. Fathers Flood, O'Brien, Bresnehan, and McCall have had charge of this society. On the 21st of September, 1841, in his ninetyfirst year, died Ezra Ripley, who for sixty-three years had been ininister, at first of the town and |