Any assumption is better than no assumption, any belief better than none.
Hypotheses enlarge the boundaries of knowledge.

With assumptions the intellectual prospector stakes out the infinite.

In life we may not verify our premises, but death is the proof of all things.
We stopped at Wright's tavern, where patriots used to meet before the days of the revolution, and where Major Pitcairn is said-- wrongfully in all probability--to have made his boast on the morning of the 19th, as he stirred his toddy, that they would stir the rebels' blood before night.
One realizes that "there is but one Concord" as the carriages of pilgrims are counted in the Square, and the swarm of young guides, with pamphlets and maps, importune the chance visitor.
We chose the most persistent little urchin, not that we could not find our way about so small a village, but because he wanted to ride, and it is always interesting to draw out a child; his story of the town and its famous places was, of course, the one he had learned from the others, but his comments were his own, and the incongruity of going over the sacred ground in an automobile had its effect.
It was a short run down Monument Street to the turn just beyond the "Old Manse." Here the British turned to cross the North Bridge on their way to Colonel Barrett's house, where the ammunition was stored.

Just across the narrow bridge the "embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world." A monument marks the spot where the British received the fire of the farmers, and a stone at the side recites "Graves of two British soldiers,"-- unknown wanderers from home they surrendered their lives in a quarrel, the merits of which they did not know.

"Soon was their warfare ended; a weary night march from Boston, a rattling volley of musketry across the river, and then these many years of rest.
In the long procession of slain invaders who passed into eternity from the battle-field of the revolution, these two nameless soldiers led the way." While standing by the grave, Hawthorne was told a story, a tradition of how a youth, hurrying to the battle-field axe in hand, came upon these two soldiers, one not yet dead raised himself up painfully on his hands and knees, and how the youth on the impulse of the moment cleft the wounded man's head with the axe.