retreated in disorder. The undisciplined minute-men were not very
good at standing up in an open square and awaiting the onslaught
of a company of regulars,--it takes regulars to meet regulars out
in the open; but behind trees and fences, from breast-works and
scattered points of advantage, each minute-man was a whole army in
himself, and the regulars had a hard time of it on their retreat,
--the trees and stones which a few hours before had been just trees
and stones, became miniature fortresses.

The old vineyard, where in 1855 Ephraim Bull produced the now well
known Concord grape by using the native wild grape in a cross with
a cultivated variety, is at the outskirts of Concord.

A little farther on is "The Wayside," so named by Hawthorne, who
purchased the place from Alcott in 1852, lived there until his
appointment as Consul at Liverpool in 1853, and again on his
return from England in 1860, until he died in 1864. But "The
Wayside" was not Hawthorne's first Concord home. He came there
with his bride in 1842 and lived four years in the Old Manse.

There has never been written but one adequate description of this
venerable dwelling, and that by Hawthorne himself in "Mosses from
an Old Manse." To most readers the description seems part and
parcel of the fanciful tales that follow; no more real than the
"House of the Seven Gables." We of the outside world who know our
Concord only by hearsay cannot realize that "The Wayside" and the
"Old Manse" and "Sleepy Hollow" are verities,--verities which the
plodding language of prose tails to compass, unless the pen is
wielded by a master hand.