The wedding took place quietly, and Hawthorne carried his bride to the Manse at Concord, the old parsonage of that town. It belonged to the descendants of Dr. Ezra Ripley, who had been pastor there at the close of the last century; they were relatives of the George Ripley with whom Hawthorne had so recently been associated at Brook Farm. Hawthorne had succeeded in hiring the place for a time, and was happy in beginning his married life in a house so well in keeping with his tastes. The best account of this, his first sojourn in Concord, is to be found in the "American Note-Books," and in the Introduction to the "Mosses from an Old Manse." Here his first child was born, a daughter, to whom the name of Una[7] was given, from "The Faërie Queen"; and here he saw something of Emerson and of Margaret Fuller. Among his visitors, who were never many, was George Stillman Hillard, a Democrat, a lawyer, an editor, an orator in high favor with the Bostonians, and the author of several works both of travel and of an educational kind. Mr. George P. Bradford, with whom Hawthorne had talked and toiled at Brook Farm, was a cousin of the Ripleys, and also came hither as a friend. Another Brook Farmer appeared at the Manse, in the person of one Frank Farley, a man of some originality, who had written a little book on natural scenery and had been a frontiersman, but was subject to a mild, loquacious form of insanity. (Mention of him as "Mr. F----" is made in the "American Note-Books," under date of June 6 and June 10, 1844.) A writer in one of the magazines has recorded the impression which Hawthorne left on the minds of others who saw him during this period, but did not know him. Among the villagers "a report was current that this man Hawthorne was somewhat uncanny--in point of fact, not altogether sane. My friend, the son of a Concord farmer and at that time a raw college youth, had heard these bucolic whisperings as to the sanity of the recluse dweller at the ancient parsonage; but he knew nothing of the man, had read none of his productions, and of course took no interest in what was said or surmised about him. And one day, casting his eye toward the Manse as he was passing, he saw Hawthorne up the pathway, standing with folded arms in motionless attitude, and with eyes fixed upon the ground. 'Poor fellow,' was his unspoken comment: 'he does look as if he might be daft.' And when, on his return a full hour afterward, Hawthorne was still standing in the same place and attitude, the lad's very natural conclusion was, 'The man _is_ daft, sure enough!'" Mr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson has presented quite a different view, in his "Short Studies of American Authors." He says:--