He asked the landlord if he had any books. The only one he could find was a first volume of Scott's "Redgauntlet," which was just then being published in Boston by a bookseller named Parker, in what was called Parker's revised edition. Father read it with infinite delight. His eyes were opened to the excellence of Scott. He got home the next day at about noon, and immediately sent one of the children down to the circulating library to get the second volume. He subscribed to Parker's edition, and was a great lover of Scott ever after. We were permitted, however, to read the "Tales of a Grandfather." I hope if any boy reads this book he will read the "Tales of a Grandfather," especially the parts which give the history of Scotland. It is a most interesting and noble story. I can remember now how the tears ran down my cheeks as I read Scott's description of finding the bones of Robert Bruce in the old abbey at Dunfermline: "As the church would not hold half the numbers, the people were allowed to pass through it one after another, that each one, the poorest as well as the richest, might see all that remained of the great king, Robert Bruce. Many people shed tears; for there was the wasted skull which once was the head, that thought so wisely and boldly for his country's deliverance; and there was the dry bone which had once been the sturdy arm that killed Sir Henry de Bohun, between the two armies, at a single blow on the evening before the Battle of Bannockburn." I account it one of the chief blessings of my life that my boyhood was spent in the pure, noble and simple society of the people of Concord. I am afraid I did not do it much credit then. Old Dr. Bartlett, one of the worthiest and kindliest of men, but who always uttered what was in his heart, said after my two oldest brothers and I had grown up, that Samuel Hoar's boys used to be the three biggest rascals in Concord, but they all seemed to have turned out pretty well. I have so far kept this statement strictly from the knowledge of the Democratic papers. But I suppose it is too late to do any harm now. CHAPTER V FAMOUS CONCORD MEN There were in Concord in my boyhood three writers who afterward became very famous indeed--Emerson, Hawthorne and Thoreau. Mr. Lowell said that these three names shine among all others in American literature as the three blazing stars in the belt of Orion shine in the sky. The town is represented in the beautiful building of the Congressional Library at Washington by busts of Emerson and Hawthorne on the outside front of the building; by Emerson's name on the mosaic ceiling in the entrance pavilion, and by three sentences from his writings inscribed on the walls. There are two out of eight such busts. It is also represented by two figures, a symbolic Statue of History, and a bronze Statue of Herodotus, both by Daniel Chester French, the sculptor, a Concord man.