Behind a row of dense-leaved horse-chestnuts ranged along the highway, the quondam home of Emerson nestles among clustering evergreens which were planted by Bronson Alcott and Henry D. Thoreau for their friend. A copse of pines sighs in the summer wind close by; an orchard planted and pruned by Emerson's hands, and a garden tended by Thoreau, extend from the house to a brook flowing through the grounds and later joining the Concord by the famous old Manse; beyond the brook lies the way to Walden. At the left of the house is a narrow open reach of greensward on the farther verge of which erst stood the unique rustic bower--with a wind-harp of untrimmed branches above it--which was fashioned by the loving hands of Alcott. The mansion is a substantial, square, clapboarded structure of two stories, with hip-roofs; a square window projects at one side; a wing is joined at the back; covered porches protect the entrances; light paint covers the plain walls which gleam through the bowering foliage, and the whole aspect of the place is delightfully attractive and home-like. Its pleasant and unpretentious apartments more than realize the comfortable suggestion of the exterior. Adjoining the hall on the right is the plain, rectangular room which was the philosopher's library and workshop. The cheerful fireplace and the simple furnishings of the room are little changed since he here laid down his pen for the last time; the heavy table held his manuscript, his books are ranged upon the shelves, the busts and portraits he cherished adorn the walls, his accustomed chair is upon the spot where he sat to write.
Emerson's afternoons were usually spent abroad, but his mornings were habitually passed among his books in this small corner-room--"the study under the pines"--recording, in "a pellucid style which his genius made classic," the truths which had come to him as he mused by shadowy lake or songful stream, in deep wood glade or wayside path. Most of all his pen produced, of divinest poetry, of gravest philosophy, of grandest thought, was minted into words and inscribed in this simple apartment.
The adjoining parlor--a spacious, pleasant, home-like room, furnished forth with many mementos of illustrious friends and guests--is scarcely less interesting than the library. This house was the intellectual capitol of the village; to it freely came the Concord circle of shining ones,--Thoreau, Channing, Sanborn, the Alcotts, the Hoars,--less frequently, Hawthorne. For a long time Mrs. Samuel Ripley habitually passed her Sabbath evenings here. The Delphic Margaret Fuller, who was as truly the "blood of transcendentalism" as Emerson "was its brain," was here for months an honored guest. For long periods Thoreau, whose fame owes much to Emerson's generosity, was here an inmate and intimate. In Emerson's parlor were held the more formal _séances_ of the Concord galaxy; here met the short-lived "Monday Evening Club," which George William Curtis whimsically describes as a "congress of oracles," who ate russet-apples and discoursed celestially while Hawthorne looked on from his corner,--"a statue of night and silence;" here were held many of Bronson Alcott's famous "conversations," as well as those of that disciple of Platonism, Dr. Jones.
