Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/39

Rh the river-slope, was the hostess of many famous visitors from the political and social ranks. Mrs. Thoreau and her daughters, no less than her sisters and her husband's sisters, had assured places among the Concord women who contributed large measure to the mental prestige of the town. Like other women of this transcendental age and circle, they were often harassed by severe anxieties, for to their prudent, sagacious brains were relegated many problems of domestic economy. "Plain living and high thinking," a spiritual preference to their husbands, became a practical necessity to these women, that they might preserve the health of their children and, at the same time, maintain their own mental poise.

Among these noted and noble women, though somewhat isolated from them, was Miss Mary Emerson, the aunt of the philosopher-poet. She delighted to link herself with the past by recalling that, when she was eight months old, she w^as held at the window of the Old Manse to watch the Concord fight in the meadow below. Among Concord families, her eccentricity as well as her intellectual vigor, survive in memories. During early life she prepared a white burial shroud and, as the occasion failed to demand its use, she afterwards often wore it upon the street and in the house. Such