The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson

This historic book may have numerous typos or missing text. Not indexed. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1914. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... HISTORICAL DISCOURSE DELIVERED BEFORE THE CITIZENS OF CONCORD, ON THE SECOND CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF THE INCORPORATION OF THE TOWN, SEPTEMBER 12, 1835 Fellow-Citizens, --The town of Concord begins, this day, the third century of its history. By a common consent, the people of New England, for a few years past, as the second centennial anniversary of each of its early settlements arrived, have seen fit to observe the day. You have thought it becoming to commemorate the planting of the first inland town. The sentiment is just, and the practice is wise. Our ears shall not be deaf to the voice of time. We will review the deeds of our fathers, and pass that just verdict on them we expect from posterity on our own. And yet, in the eternity of nature, how recent our antiquities appear! The imagination is impatient of a cycle so short. Who can tell how many thousand years, every day, the clouds have shaded these fields with their purple awning? The river by whose banks most of us were born, every winter, for ages, has spread its crust of ice over the great meadows which in ages it had formed. But the little society of men who now, for a few years, fish in this river, plough the fields it washes, mow the grass, and reap the corn, shortly shall hurry from its banks as did their forefathers. "Man's life," said the Witan to the Saxon king, "is the sparrow that enters at a window, flutters round the house, and flies out at another; and none knoweth whence he came, or whither he goes." The more reason that we should give to our being what permanence we can; that we should recall the past, and expect the future. Yet the race survives whilst the individual dies. In the country, without any interference of the law, the agricultural life favors the permanence of families. ...