Yon stern headstone, Which more of pride than pity gave To mark the Briton’s friendless grave. Yet it is a stately tomb; The grand return Of eve and morn, The year’s fresh bloom, The silver cloud, Might grace the dust that is most proud. [86] _Page 76, note 1._ Captain Miles commanded the Concord company that joined the Northern Army at Ticonderoga in August, 1776, as part of Colonel Reed’s regiment. [87] _Page 77, note 1._ Judge John S. Keyes, who clearly remembers the incidents of this celebration, seen from a boy’s coign of vantage, the top of one of the inner doors of the church, tells me that the ten aged survivors of the battle, who sat in front of the pulpit, bowed in recognition of this compliment by the orator, and then the audience all bowed to them. The sanctity of the church forbade in those days cheering or applause even at a civic festival. [88] _Page 77, note 2._ The following was Mr. Emerson’s note concerning his authorities:— “The importance which the skirmish at Concord Bridge derived from subsequent events, has, of late years, attracted much notice to the incidents of the day. There are, as might be expected, some discrepancies in the different narratives of the fight. In the brief summary in the text, I have relied mainly on the depositions taken by order of the Provincial Congress within a few days after the action, and on the other contemporary evidence. I have consulted the English narrative in the Massachusetts Historical Collections, and in the trial of Horne (_Cases adjudged in King’s Bench_; London, 1800, vol. ii., p. 677); the inscription made by order of the legislature of Massachusetts on the two field-pieces presented to the Concord Artillery; Mr. Phinney’s _History of the Battle at Lexington_; Dr. Ripley’s _History of Concord Fight_; Mr. Shattuck’s narrative in his _History_, besides some oral and some manuscript evidence of eye-witnesses. The following narrative, written by Rev. William Emerson, a spectator of the action, has never been published. A part of it has been in my possession for years: a part of it I discovered, only a few days since, in a trunk of family papers:—