The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 | Page 7

the
idea of Mr. Alcott of whom he bought the place, by laying out beautiful
walks over the crest of the wooded hill. He has surrounded a tall pine
on the hill top with a strong staircase by which it can easily be climbed
to a height of 54 feet from the base and 110 feet from the road in front
of the school building or chapel. Orchard House was for years the home
of the Alcott family where Louisa wrote and May painted and their
father studied philosophy. A broken rustic fence one of the last traces
of Mr. Alcott's mechanical skill forms the slight barrier between the
grounds at the Orchard House and Wayside, which Mr. Alcott bought
in 1845 and a few years later sold to Nathaniel Hawthorne who owned
it at the time of his death. The house is a strange mixture of the old and
new, as the rear part bears evident traces of antiquity, at the right were
the Hawthorne parlors and reception rooms, at the left of the entry his
library, sometimes called the den, and in front a small room with a low
window separates the dining room from the reception room and the
whole is crowned with a tower built by Mr. Hawthorne for a study
where he found the quiet and seclusion which he loved. Much of Mr.
Hawthorne's composition seems to have been done as he wandered up
and down the shady paths which wind in every direction along the
terraced hillside, and a small crooked path is still shown as the one
worn by the restless step of genius. Mr. G.P. Lathrop who married Rose
Hawthorne sold the place to Daniel Lothrop, the Boston publisher, who
has thoroughly repaired it and greatly added to its beauty by reverently
preserving every landmark in his improvements, and now in summer
his accomplished wife, known to the public by her nom de plume of

Margaret Sidney, entertains many noted people at Wayside. On the
Boston road and a little farther on is the garden of Ephraim Bull, the
originator of the Concord grape and below is Merriam's Corner to
which the Minute-men crossed and attacked the British as above
mentioned. Half a mile across country lies Sandy Pond from which the
town has its water supply which can furnish daily half a million gallons
of pure water, each containing only one and three-fourths grains of
solid matter. From Sandy Pond several narrow wood-roads lead to
Walden, a mile distant where Thoreau lived for eight months at an
expense of one dollar and nine cents a month. His house cost thirty
dollars and was built by his own hands with a little help in raising and
in it he wrote Walden, considered by many his best book. Mr. Thoreau
died in May 1862, in the house occupied by the Alcott family on Main
street where many of the principal inhabitants live. At the junction of
this street with Sudbury street stands the Concord Free Public Library,
the generous gift of William Munroe, Esq. which was dedicated
October 1, 1873, and now owns nearly twenty thousand volumes and
numerous works of art, coins and relics, the germs of a gallery which
will be added in future. Behind the many fine estates which front on
Main street, Sudbury river forms another highway and many boats lie
along the green lawns ready to convey their owners up river to
Fairhaven bay, Martha's Point, the Cliffs and Baker Farm, the haunts of
the botanists, fishermen and authors of Concord, or down to Egg Rock
where the South Branch unites with the lovely Assabet to form the
Concord River which leads to the Merrimac by way of Bedford,
Billerica and Lowell. But most of the boats go up the Assabet to the
beautiful bend where the gaunt hemlocks lean over to see their
reflection in the amber stream, past the willows by which kindly hands
have hidden the railroad, to the shaded aisles of the vine-entangled
maples where the rowers moor their boats and climb Lee Hill which Mr.
C.H. Hood has so beautifully laid out.
* * * * *

THE CONSPIRACY OF 1860-61.

By George Lowell Austin.
I.
After the October elections, in the autumn of 1860, had been carried by
the Republicans, the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the
United States, in November, became a foregone conclusion. On the 5th
day of October,--the initial day of the American Rebellion,--Governor
Gist, of South Carolina, wrote a confidential circular-letter, which he
despatched by special messenger to the governors of the so-called
Cotton States. In this letter he requested an "interchange of opinions
which he might be at liberty to submit to a consultation of the leading
men" of his State. He added that South Carolina