The History of Concord, Massachusetts

The text is closely confined to the colonial period; but the mode of presentation is extraordinary indeed to those accustomed to the prosaic methods of town and village historians. Mr. Hudson has tried to transport his readers and himself back two hundred years or more, as in a vision. In imagination we sit before the humble firesides of the first settlers; hear and join in their gossip, superstitions, and communings, social and religious; inspect their farm lands and homestends, and mark well and remember their boundaries and their family histories. At the same moment we are supposed to be living in the present, and viewing these days through the customary haze of retrospect. It is asking a good deal of any one to fancy himself in two centuries at the same time, but Mr. Hudson’s humor is insistent on this point, and he keeps up the illusion, which is, unfortunately. no illusion whatever, and then finds himself on the safe road of steady and progressive narrative.