“How my heart beat at the sight of those faces! I have seen many famous sights since, but nothing that ever stirred my blood like that,” said Mildred, with glowing eyes. “I was scarcely more than a child, Ruby, but I stood there for two mortal hours, unable to move forward or backward, to right or left, quivering from head to foot with enthusiasm and excitement. That day my American patriotism was born. I had studied a little text-book at school, and learned names and dates; but not until under the spell of Curtis’s eloquence, and face to face with the men whose fathers had shed their blood in the brave fight one hundred years before, did I begin to realize what it all meant. I remember particularly a little old man with weather-beaten face, clad in a simple suit,—his ‘Sunday best,’—who stood beside me listening with eager, upturned face, his blue eyes filled with unshed tears. I could see his lips quiver; and once, as if carried away by the fervor of his emotion, he grasped my arm with his brown, withered hand and whispered huskily, ‘Little girl, when you get as old as I be, you’ll understand what all this means.’ “Since then,” said Mildred gravely, “the words ‘my country’ have meant something new to me. A distinctly new idea took hold of me, an idea that some time I hope to make blossom into deeds.” I confess I was getting a little impatient for an account of the love-making, and this did not sound much like it. But after musing a bit, Mildred continued: “This little experience which my companion and I had in common made us quickly acquainted. He frankly told me of his college life and of himself. He had been studying for the ministry, he said, though whether he was to be a clergyman or not I inferred was somewhat doubtful. “We passed Walden Pond, gleaming like silver in the sunshine, and he talked of Thoreau, whom he seemed to know well, though I had at that time read nothing of him. Presently we rolled up to the Concord station, and while a crowd of people alighted and took the ‘barge,’ we went down one of the long, shady streets, bordered by tall hedges and close-clipped lawns, with comfortable, roomy mansions set back from the street; past the little gem of a town library, on its carpet of emerald green; past the cluster of shops and the cool-plashing fountain, and down the famous old road which saw the redcoats’ flight, and which Hosea Biglow, you remember, says he ‘most gin’ally calls “John Bull’s Run.”’ “Such a lovely, quiet old street! Dear, you must see it some day—with the broad, green meadow lands on one side, and the hill crowned with trees and vines on the other. “‘Along this ridge lived Hawthorne’s Septimius Felton,’ said my companion. “‘And here,’ said I, as we passed a tiny antique house on the hillside with curtains drawn, and no path through the grass that surrounded it,—‘here, I am positive, an old witch with a black cat must have lived a hundred years ago.’