"Marches"--all pervaded with the trials and happiness of the
family and telling, in a simple way, the story of "the richness
of not having." Within the house, on every side, lie remembrances
of what imagination can do for the better amusement of fortunate
children who have to do for themselves-much-needed lessons in
these days of automatic, ready-made, easy entertainment which
deaden rather than stimulate the creative faculty. And there sits
the little old spinet-piano Sophia Thoreau gave to the Alcott
children, on which Beth played the old Scotch airs, and played at
the Fifth Symphony.

There is a commonplace beauty about "Orchard House"--a kind of
spiritual sturdiness underlying its quaint picturesqueness--a
kind of common triad of the New England homestead, whose
overtones tell us that there must have been something aesthetic
fibered in the Puritan severity--the self-sacrificing part of the
ideal--a value that seems to stir a deeper feeling, a stronger
sense of being nearer some perfect truth than a Gothic cathedral
or an Etruscan villa. All around you, under the Concord sky,
there still floats the influence of that human faith melody,
transcendent and sentimental enough for the enthusiast or the
cynic respectively, reflecting an innate hope--a common interest
in common things and common men--a tune the Concord bards are
ever playing, while they pound away at the immensities with a
Beethovenlike sublimity, and with, may we say, a vehemence and
perseverance--for that part of greatness is not so difficult to
emulate.

We dare not attempt to follow the philosophic raptures of Bronson
Alcott--unless you will assume that his apotheosis will show how