station on the underground railway, came fugitive slaves, to receive aid from Alcott, Emerson, Sanborn and members of the Thoreau family. Concord welcomed lecturers and reformers of radical type during the crucial years of the mid-century. At the Concord Town-Hall in 1857, John Brown made his famous plea; thence he set forth on his fatal mission; here kind attentions were later given to his family.
Always active alike in movements of reform and of education, the little town possessed a rare mentality and her efforts to increase true culture mark the beginnings of the great revival of social and educational life in New England. The mental lethargy of the first quarter of the nineteenth century had resulted in narrow adherence to fixed tenets and customs in religion and society, with a corresponding self-satisfaction, which often hid real ignorance and was always fatal to creative advance along intellectual and educational lines. The movements towards freedom in thought and religion, exampled in Unitarianism and Transcendentalism, found many earnest disciples in Concord, men and women ever eager to know the truth in its free fulness. Among pioneer towns, she established higher schools, Atheneum and Reading Room, Mutual Improvement Society and the Lyceum,
