field. He soon after joined the army as chaplain and died the next year
at Rutland, and his widow married some years after the Rev. Dr. Ripley
who succeeded him in his church and home, and lived until his death in
the Manse which has always remained in the possession of his
descendants. Dr. Ripley ruled the church and town with the iron sway of
an old-fashioned New England minister, and the old Manse has for years
been a literary centre. In the old dining room, the solemn conclave of
clergymen have cracked many a hard doctrine and many a merry jest,
seated in the high-backed leather chairs which have stood for one
hundred and twenty years around the old table. Here Mrs. Sarah Ripley
fitted many a noted scholar for college in the intervals of her
housekeeping labors before the open kitchen fireplace. In an attic
room, called the Saint's chamber, from the penciled names of honored
occupants, Emerson is said to have written _Nature_, and perhaps
other works, as much of his time was spent in the Manse at various
periods of his life. Here Hawthorne came on his wedding tour and lived
for two happy years and wrote the _Mosses from an Old Manse_ and
other works. In his study over the dining-room, his name is written
with a diamond on one of the little window panes, and with the same
instrument his wife has recorded on the dining-room window annals of
her daughter who was born in the house.

[Illustration: Nathaniel Hawthorne.]

On the hill opposite, the solitary poplar, the last of a group set
out by some school-girls eighty years ago, still stands. Each of its
companions died about the time of the decease of its lady planter, and
as the one who set out the present tree has lately died, the poplar
suffered last year from a stroke of lightning which may cause it to
follow soon.