344),
entrusting the American people with the task of seeing "that government of
the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the
earth."
RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 1803-1882
[Illustration: RALPH WALDO EMERSON]
LIFE.--Ralph Waldo Emerson, the most distinguished of New England
transcendentalists, came from a family of clergy. Peter Bulkeley, his
ancestor, was the first pastor of Concord in 1635. William Emerson, his
grandfather, was pastor in Concord at the opening of the Revolutionary War
and witnessed the fight of Concord Bridge from the window of the Old Manse,
that famous house which he had built and which Hawthorne afterwards
occupied. By that Bridge there stands a monument, commemorating the heroic
services of the men who there made the world-famous stand for freedom. On
the base of this monument are Ralph Waldo Emerson's lines:--
"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world."
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston in 1803. His father, who was pastor
of the First Church in Boston, died when Ralph Waldo was eight years old,
leaving in poverty a widow with six children under ten years of age.
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