There were two humps in the Monument Land near the Old Manse which were supposed to be the graves of British soldiers killed in the Revolutionary War. Hawthorne tells the legend of a boy who chopping wood there at the time of the battle of Concord, saw one soldier fall, and went over and finished him with his ax. When my dog Cuff used to start digging at this place, I always wanted to let him go on, just to see if one of the skulls was split. During this period of my life, no doubt aided by the usual school history, I formed a definite idea of the battle of Concord, and it was not until I tried to paint it for the Boston State House that I found out the real truth of the matter. And my enlightenment came from a Britisher! I naturally started out with a composition of men in red coats, but, thinking it over, decided to be sure, so I wrote to Trevelyan, author of that wonderful history of the Revolutionary period, asking him where I could get information. A very courteous reply told me that he was in the country and that he did not have his books of reference with him, but added, “Why do you not go to that excellent library of yours, the Boston Athenæum, and consult the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for June, 1775? You’ll find what you want there.” I did find what I wanted, and a lot more. For instance, only one out of ten British soldiers at Concord were redcoats. Those who fought at the Bridge were the ones who afterward formed the “King’s Own”—a flying wedge of two hundred men in dark-blue-and-black uniforms. Another little error of the poet Longfellow’s is that Paul Revere may have been a very good silversmith, but he never got to Concord. He was only one of a group of men sent out to warn the countryside, and he, with many others, was caught by the British and sent back to Boston. And then the flag! Despite Betsy Ross, I shall have to confess that the Stars and Stripes turned up the first time at the siege of Boston and were carried by a body of Connecticut militia. One of our well-known illustrators has made a drawing of Washington reviewing his troops under the famous elm at Cambridge (again the flag floating proudly in the breeze), the soldiers being carefully clothed in Colonial uniforms. According to the statement of the Rev. William Emerson, we find a blacksmith of Concord, during the siege of Boston, which was after the battle at the Bridge, carrying his own gun and wearing his leather apron. Also, Washington made a pathetic appeal to Congress for some form of shirt that should distinguish his soldiers from the citizens, saying that the only way he had to mark his officers was a red, white, or blue ribbon which they wore in their coats. About this point in my reading I stopped and changed my entire composition, taking my cue from the letter which remains for us, from the American commander at the Bridge. He says: “I then sprang to my feet, crying, ‘Fire, fellow citizens! Fire!’”