NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

(‡ decoration)NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.“THE GREATEST OF AMERICAN ROMANCERS.”NO black knight in Sir Walter Scott’s novels, nor the red Indians of Cooper, nor his famous pioneer, Leather Stocking of the forest, nor his long Tom of the ocean, ever seemed more truly romantic than do Hawthorne’s stern and gloomy Calvinists of “The Scarlet Letter,” and “The House of Seven Gables,” or his Italian hero of “The Marble Faun.”We have characterized Hawthorne as the greatest of American romancers. We might have omitted the wordAmerican, for he has no equal in romance perhaps in the world of letters. An eminent critic declares: “His genius was greater than that of the idealist, Emerson. In all his mysticism his style was always clear and exceedingly graceful, while in those delicate, varied and permanent effects which are gained by a happy arrangement of words in their sentences, together with that unerring directness and unswerving force which characterize his writings, no author in modern times has equalled him. To the rhetorician, his style is a study; to the lay reader, a delight that eludes analysis. He is the most eminent representative of the American spirit in literature.”It was in the old town of Salem, Massachusetts—where his Puritan ancestors had lived for nearly two hundred years—with its haunted memories of witches and strange sea tales; its stories of Endicott and the Indians, and the sombre traditions of witchcraft and Puritan persecution that Nathaniel Hawthorne was born July 4, 1804. And it was in this grim, ancient city by the sea that the life of the renowned romancer was greatly bound up. In his childhood the town was already falling to decay, and his lonely surroundings filled his young imagination with a♦weirdness that found expression in the books of his later life, and impressed upon his character a seriousness that clung to him ever after. His father was a sea-captain,—but a most melancholy and silent man,—who died when Nathaniel was four years old. His mother lived a sad and secluded life, and the boy thus early learned to exist in a strange and imaginative world of his own creation. So fond of seclusion did he become that even after his graduation from college in 1825, he returned to his old haunt at Salem and resumed his solitary, dreamy existence. For twelve years, from 1825 to 1837, he went nowhere, he saw no one; he worked in his room by day, reading and writing; at twilight he wandered out along the shore, or through the darkened streets of the town. Certainly this was no attractive life to most young men; but for Hawthorne it had its fascination and during this time he was storinghis mind, forming his style, training his imagination and preparing for the splendid literary fame of his later years.♦‘wierdness’ replaced with ‘weirdness’“THE OLD MANSE,” CONCORD,MASS.Built for Emerson’s grandfather. In this house Ralph Waldo Emerson dwelt for ten years, and, here, in the same room where Emerson wrote “Nature” and other philosophic essays, Hawthorne prepared his “Twice Told Tales,” and “Mosses from an Old Manse.” He declares the four years (1842–1846) spent in this house were the happiest of his life.Hawthorne received his early education in Salem, partly at the school of Joseph E. Worcester, the author of “Worcester’s Dictionary.” He entered Bowdoin College in 1821. The poet, Longfellow, and John S. C. Abbott were his classmates; and Franklin Pierce—one class in advance of him—was his close friend. He graduated in 1825 without any special distinction. His first book, “Fanshawe,” a novel, was issued in 1826, but so poor was its success that he suppressed its further publication. Subsequently he placed the manuscript of a collection of stories in the hands of his publisher, but timidly withdrew and destroyed them. His first practical encouragement was received from Samuel G. Goodrich, who published four stories in the “Token,” one of the annuals of that time, in 1831.Mr.Goodrich also engaged Hawthorne as editor of the “American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge,” which position he occupied from 1836 to 1838. About this time he also contributed some of his best stories to the “New England Magazine,” “The Knickerbocker,” and the “Democratic Review.” It was a part of these magazine stories which he collected and published in 1837 in the volume entitled, “Twice Told Tales,” embodying the fruits of his twelve years’ labor.This book stamped the author as a man of stronger imagination and deeper insight into human nature than Washington Irving evinced in his famous sketches of the Hudson or Cooper in his frontier stories, for delightful as was Irving’s writings and vivid as were Cooper’s pictures, it was plain to be seen that Hawthorne had a richer style and a firmer grasp of the art of fiction than either of them. Longfellow, the poet, reviewed the book with hearty commendation, and Poe predicted a brilliant future for the writer if he would abandon allegory. Thus encouraged, Hawthorne came out from his seclusion into the world again, and mixed once more with his fellow-men. His friend, the historian, Bancroft, secured him a position in the Custom House at Salem, in 1839, which he held for two years. This position he lost through political jobbery on a trumped-up charge. For a few months he then joined in the Brook Farm settlement, though he was never in sympathy with the movement; nor was he a believer in the transcendental notions of Emerson and his school. He remained a staunch Democrat in the midst of the Abolitionists. His note-books were full of his discontent with the life at the Brook Farm. His observations of this enterprise took shape in the “Blythedale Romance” which is the only literary memorial of the association. The heroine of this novel was Margaret Fuller, under the name of “Zenobia,” and the description of the drowning of Zenobia—a fate which Margaret Fuller had met—is the most tragic passage in all the writings of the author.In 1842 Hawthorne married Miss Sophia Peabody—a most fortunate and happy marriage—and the young couple moved to Concord where they lived in the house known as the “Old Manse,” which had been built for Emerson’s grandfather, and in which Emerson himself dwelt ten years. He chose for his study the same room in which the philosopher had written his famous book “Nature.” Hawthorne declares that the happiest period of his life were the four years spent in the “Old Manse.” While living there he collected another lot of miscellaneous stories and published them in 1845 as a second volume of “Twice-Told Tales,” and the next year came his “Mosses from an Old Manse,” being also a collection from his published writings. In 1846 a depleted income and larger demands of a growing family made it necessary for him to seek a business engagement. Through a friend he received an appointment as Surveyor of Customs at Salem, and again removed to the old town where he was born forty-two years before. It was during his engagement here, from 1846 to 1849, that he planned and wrote his famous book “The Scarlet Letter,” which was published in 1850.A broader experience is needed to compose a full-grown novel than to sketch a short tale. Scott was more than fifty when he published “Waverly.” Cooper wrote the “Spy” when thirty-three. Thackeray, the author of “Vanity Fair,” was almost forty when he finished that work. “Adam Bede” appeared when George Elliot was in her fortieth year; and the “Scarlet Letter,” greater than them all, did not appear until 1850, when its author was in his forty-seventh year. All critics readily agree that this romance is the masterpiece in American fiction. The only novel in the United States that can be compared with it isMrs.Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and, as a study of a type of life—Puritan life in New England—“The Scarlet Letter” is superior toMrs.Stowe’s immortal work. One-half a century has passed since “The Scarlet Letter” was written; but it stands to-day more popular than ever before.Enumerated briefly, the books written by Hawthorne in the order of their publication are as follows: “Fanshawe,” a novel (1826), suppressed by the author; “Twice-Told Tales” (1837), a collection of magazine stories; “Twice-Told Tales” (second volume, 1845) “Mosses from an Old Manse” (1846), written while he lived at the “Old Manse”; “The Scarlet Letter” (1850), his greatest book; “The House of Seven Gables” (1851), written while he lived at Lenox, Massachusetts; “The Wonder Book” (1851), a volume of classic stories for children; “The Blythedale Romance” (1852); “Life of Franklin Pierce” (1852), which was written to assist his friend Pierce, who was running for President of the United States; “Tanglewood Tales” (1853), another work for children, continuing the classic legends of his “Wonder Book,” reciting the adventures of those who went forth to seek the “Golden Fleece,” to explore the labyrinth of the “Minotaur” and sow the “Dragon’s Teeth.” Pierce was elected President in 1853 and rewarded Hawthorne by appointing him Consul to Liverpool. This position he filled for four years and afterwards spent three years in traveling on the Continent, during which time he gathered material for the greatest of his books—next to “The Scarlet Letter”—entitled “The Marble Faun,” which was brought out in England in 1860, and the same yearMr.Hawthorne returned to America and spent the remainder of his life at “The Wayside” in Concord. During his residence here he wrote for the “Atlantic Monthly” the papers which were collected and published in 1863 under the title of “Our Old Home.” AfterMr.Hawthorne’s death, his unpublished manuscripts, “The Dolliver Romance,” “Septimius Felton” and “Dr.Grimshawe’s Secret,” were published.Mrs.Hawthorne, also, edited and published her husband’s “American and English Note-Books” and his “French and Italian Note-Books” in 1869. The best life of the author is perhaps that written by his son, Julian Hawthorne, which appeared in 1885, entitled “Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife; a Biography.”A new and complete edition of Hawthorne’s works has been lately issued in twenty volumes; also a compact and illustrated library edition in seven volumes.Nathaniel Hawthorne died May 18, 1864, while traveling with his friend and college-mate, Ex-President Pierce, in the White Mountains, and was buried near where Emerson and Thoreau were later placed in Concord Cemetery. Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell and Whittier were at the funeral. His publisher,Mr.Field, was also there and wrote: “We carried him through the blossoming orchards of Concord and laid him down in a group of pines on the hillside, the unfinished romance which had cost him such anxiety laid upon his coffin.”Mr.Longfellow, in an exquisite poem describes the scene, and referring to the uncompleted romance in the closing lines says:“Ah, who shall lift that wand of magic power,And the lost clue regain?The unfinished window in Alladin’s towerUnfinished must remain.”The noble wife, who had been the inspiration and practical stimulus of the great romancer, survived her distinguished husband nearly seven years. She died in London, aged sixty, February 26, 1871, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, near the grave of Leigh Hunt.EMERSON AND THE EMERSONITES.(FROM “MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE.”)THERE were circumstances around me which made it difficult to view the world precisely as it exists; for severe and sober as was the Old Manse, it was necessary to go but a little way beyond its threshold before meeting with stranger moral shapes of men than might have been encountered elsewhere in a circuit of a thousand miles. These hobgoblins of flesh and blood were attracted thither by the wide spreading influence of a great original thinker who had his earthly abode at the opposite extremity of our village. His mind acted upon other minds of a certain constitution with wonderful magnetism, and drew many men upon long pilgrimages to speak with him face to face.Young visionaries, to whom just so much of insight had been imparted as to make life all a labyrinth around them, came to seek the clew which should guide them out of their self-involved bewilderment. Gray-headed theorists, whose systems—at first air—had finally imprisoned them in a fiery framework, traveled painfully to his door, not to ask deliverance, but to invite the free spirit into their own thralldom. People that had lighted upon a new thought—or thought they had fancied new—came to Emerson as a finder of a glittering gem hastens to a lapidary to ascertain its quality and value. Uncertain, troubled, earnest wanderers through the midnight of the moral world beheld his intellectual fire as a beacon burning upon a hill-top, and climbing the difficult ascent, looked forth into the surrounding obscurity more hopefully than hitherto. The light revealed objects unseen before:—mountains, gleaming lakes, glimpses of creation among the chaos: but also, as was unavoidable, it attracted bats and owls and the whole host of night-birds, which flapped their dusty wings against the gazer’s eyes, and sometimes were mistaken for fowls of angelic feather. Such delusions always hover nigh whenever a beacon-fire of truth is kindled.For myself there had been epochs of my life when I too might have asked of this prophet the master-word that should solve me the riddle of the universe; but now, being happy, I felt as if there were no question to be put; and therefore admired Emerson as a poet of deep beauty and austere tenderness, but sought nothing from him as a philosopher. It was good, nevertheless, to meet him in the wood-paths, or sometimes in our avenue, with that pure intellectual gleam diffused about his presence, like the garment of a shining one; and he so quiet, so simple, so without pretension, encountering each man alive as if expecting to receive more than he could impart. And in truth, the heart of many a man had, perchance, inscriptions which he could not read. But it was impossible to dwell in his vicinity without inhaling more or less the mountain atmosphere of his lofty thought, which in the brains of some people wrought a singular giddiness—new truth being as heady as new wine.Never was a poor country village infected with such a variety of queer, strangely-dressed, oddly-behaved mortals, most of whom took upon themselves to be important agents of this world’s destiny, yet were simply bores of the first water. Such, I imagine, is the invariable character of persons who crowd so closely about an original thinker as to draw in his unuttered breath, and thus become imbued with a false originality. This triteness of noveltry is enough to make any man of common sense blaspheme at all ideas of less than a century’s standing, and pray that the world may be petrified and rendered immovable in precisely the worst moral and physical state that it ever yet arrived at, rather than be benefitted by such schemes of such philosophers.PEARL.(THE SCARLET LETTER. A ROMANCE. 1850.)WE have as yet hardly spoken of the infant; that little creature, whose innocent life had sprung, by the inscrutable decree of Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman, as she watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day more brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshineover the tiny features of this child! Her Pearl!—For so had Hester called her; not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of the calm, white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by the comparison. But she named the infant “Pearl,” as being of great price,—purchased with all she had,—her mother’s only treasure! How strange, indeed! Men had marked this woman’s sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct consequence of the sin which was thus punished, had given her a lovely child, whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her parent forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven! Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynne less with hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed had been evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be good. Day after day, she looked fearfully into the child’s expanding nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity, that should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being.Certainly, there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape, its vigor, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden; worthy to have been left there, to be the plaything of the angels, after the world’s first parents were driven out. The child had a native grace which does not invariably coexist with faultless beauty; its attire, however simple, always impressed the beholder as if it were the very garb that precisely became it best. But little Pearl was not clad in rustic weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore before the public eye. So magnificent was the small figure, when thus arrayed, and such was the splendor of Pearl’s own proper beauty, shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around her, on the darksome cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn and soiled with the child’s rude play, made a picture of her just as perfect. Pearl’s aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety; in this one child there were many children, comprehending the full scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the pomp, in little, of an infant princess. Throughout all, however, there was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never lost; and if, in any of her changes she had grown fainter or paler, she would have ceased to be herself,—it would have been no longer Pearl!One peculiarity of the child’s deportment remains yet to be told. The very first thing which she had noticed, in her life, was—what?—not the mother’s smile, responding to it, as other babies do, by that faint embryo smile of the little mouth, remembered so doubtfully afterwards, and with such fond discussion whether it were indeed a smile. By no means! But that first object of which Pearl seemed to become aware was—shall we say it?—the scarlet letter on Hester’s bosom! One day, as the mother stooped over the cradle, the infant’s eyes had been caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the letter; and, putting up her little hand, she grasped at it, smiling, not doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her face the look of a much older child. Then, gasping for breath, did Hester Prynne clutch the fatal token, instinctively endeavoring to tear it away; so infinite was the torture inflicted by the intelligent touch of Pearl’s baby-hand. Again, as if her mother’s agonized gesture were meant only to make sport of her, did little Pearl look into her eyes, and smile! From that epoch, except when the child was asleep, Hester had never felt a moment’s safety; not a moment’s calm enjoyment of her. Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during which Pearl’s gaze might never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter; but then, again, it would come at unawares, like the stroke of sudden death, and always with that peculiar smile and odd expression of the eyes.SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE.HOW various are the situations of the people covered by the roofs beneath me, and how diversified are the events at this moment befalling them! The new-born, the aged, the dying, the strong in life, and the recent dead, are in the chambers of these many mansions. The full of hope, the happy, the miserable, and the desperate, dwell together within the circle of my glance. In some of the houses over which my eyes roam so coldly, guilt is entering into hearts that are still tenanted by a debased and trodden virtue—guilt is on the very edge of commission, and the impending deed might be averted; guilt is done, and the criminal wonders if it be irrevocable. There are broad thoughts struggling in my mind, and, were I able to give them distinctness, they would make their way in eloquence. Lo! the rain-drops are descending.The clouds, within a little time, have gathered over all the sky, hanging heavily, as if about to drop in one unbroken mass upon the earth. At intervals the lightning flashes from their brooding hearts, quivers, disappears, and then comes the thunder, traveling slowly after its twin-born flame. A strong wind has sprung up, howls through the darkened streets, and raises the dust in dense bodies, to rebel against the approaching storm. All people hurry homeward—all that have a home; while a few lounge by the corners, or trudge on desperately, at their leisure.And now the storm lets loose its fury. In every dwelling I perceive the faces of the chambermaids as they shut down the windows, excluding the impetuous shower, and shrinking away from the quick, fiery glare. The large drops descend with force upon the slated roofs, and rise again in smoke. There is a rush and roar, as of a river through the air, and muddy streams bubble majestically along the pavement, whirl their dusky foam into the kennel, and disappear beneath iron grates. Thus did Arethusa sink. I love not my station here aloft, in the midst of the tumult which I am powerless to direct or quell, with the blue lightning wrinkling on my brow, and the thunder muttering its first awful syllables in my ear. I will descend. Yet let me give another glance to the sea, where the foam breaks in long white lines upon a broad expanse of blackness, or boils up in far-distant points, like snowy mountain-tops in the eddies of a flood; and let me look once more at the green plain, and little hills of the country, over which the giant of the storm is riding in robes of mist, and at the town, whose obscured and desolate streets might beseem a city of the dead; and turning a single moment to the sky, now gloomy as an author’s prospects, I prepare to resume my station on lower earth. But stay! A little speck of azure has widened in the western heavens; the sunbeams find a passage, and go rejoicing through the tempest; and on yonder darkest cloud, born, like hallowed hopes, of the glory of another world, and the trouble and tears of this, brightens forth the Rainbow!A REMINISCENCE OF EARLY LIFE.(FROM AMERICAN NOTE BOOKS.)Salem,Oct.4th.Union Street, [Family Mansion.]... Here I sit in my old accustomed chamber, where I used to sit in days gone by.... Here I have written many tales,—many that have been burned to ashes, many that doubtless deserved the same fate. This claims to be called a haunted chamber, for thousands upon thousands of visions have appeared to me in it; and some few of them have become visible to the world. If ever I should have a biographer, he ought to make great mention of this chamber in my memoirs, because so much of my lonely youth was wasted here, and here my mind and character were formed; and here I have been glad and hopeful, and here I have been despondent. And here I sat a long, long time, waiting patiently for the world to know me, and sometimes wondering why it did not know me sooner, or whether it would ever know me at all,—at least, till I were in my grave. And sometimes it seemed as if I were already in the grave, with only life enough to be chilled and benumbed. But oftenerI was happy,—at least, as happy as I then knew how to be, or was aware of the possibility of being. By and by, the world found me out in my lonely chamber, and called me forth,—not, indeed, with a loud roar of acclamation, but rather with a still, small voice,—and forth I went, but found nothing in the world that I thought preferable to my old solitude till now.... And now I begin to understand why I was imprisoned so many years in this lonely chamber, and why I could never break through the viewless bolts and bars; for if I had sooner made my escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and been covered with earthly dust, and my heart might have become callous by rude encounters with the multitude.... But living in solitude till the fulness of time was come, I still kept the dew of my youth, and the freshness of my heart.... I used to think that I could imagine all passions, all feelings, and states of the heart and mind; but how little did I know!... Indeed, we are but shadows; we are not endowed with real life, and all that seems most real about us is but the thinnest substance of a dream,—till the heart be touched. That touch creates us,—then we begin to be,—thereby we are beings of reality and inheritors of eternity....When we shall be endowed with our spiritual bodies, I think that they will be so constituted that we may send thoughts and feelings any distance in no time at all, and transfuse them, warm and fresh, into the consciousness of those whom we love.... But, after all, perhaps it is not wise to intermix fantastic ideas with the reality of affection. Let us content ourselves to be earthly creatures, and hold communion of spirit in such modes as are ordained to us.Souvenir of Hawthorne

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“THE GREATEST OF AMERICAN ROMANCERS.”

NO black knight in Sir Walter Scott’s novels, nor the red Indians of Cooper, nor his famous pioneer, Leather Stocking of the forest, nor his long Tom of the ocean, ever seemed more truly romantic than do Hawthorne’s stern and gloomy Calvinists of “The Scarlet Letter,” and “The House of Seven Gables,” or his Italian hero of “The Marble Faun.”

We have characterized Hawthorne as the greatest of American romancers. We might have omitted the wordAmerican, for he has no equal in romance perhaps in the world of letters. An eminent critic declares: “His genius was greater than that of the idealist, Emerson. In all his mysticism his style was always clear and exceedingly graceful, while in those delicate, varied and permanent effects which are gained by a happy arrangement of words in their sentences, together with that unerring directness and unswerving force which characterize his writings, no author in modern times has equalled him. To the rhetorician, his style is a study; to the lay reader, a delight that eludes analysis. He is the most eminent representative of the American spirit in literature.”

It was in the old town of Salem, Massachusetts—where his Puritan ancestors had lived for nearly two hundred years—with its haunted memories of witches and strange sea tales; its stories of Endicott and the Indians, and the sombre traditions of witchcraft and Puritan persecution that Nathaniel Hawthorne was born July 4, 1804. And it was in this grim, ancient city by the sea that the life of the renowned romancer was greatly bound up. In his childhood the town was already falling to decay, and his lonely surroundings filled his young imagination with a♦weirdness that found expression in the books of his later life, and impressed upon his character a seriousness that clung to him ever after. His father was a sea-captain,—but a most melancholy and silent man,—who died when Nathaniel was four years old. His mother lived a sad and secluded life, and the boy thus early learned to exist in a strange and imaginative world of his own creation. So fond of seclusion did he become that even after his graduation from college in 1825, he returned to his old haunt at Salem and resumed his solitary, dreamy existence. For twelve years, from 1825 to 1837, he went nowhere, he saw no one; he worked in his room by day, reading and writing; at twilight he wandered out along the shore, or through the darkened streets of the town. Certainly this was no attractive life to most young men; but for Hawthorne it had its fascination and during this time he was storinghis mind, forming his style, training his imagination and preparing for the splendid literary fame of his later years.

♦‘wierdness’ replaced with ‘weirdness’

“THE OLD MANSE,” CONCORD,MASS.Built for Emerson’s grandfather. In this house Ralph Waldo Emerson dwelt for ten years, and, here, in the same room where Emerson wrote “Nature” and other philosophic essays, Hawthorne prepared his “Twice Told Tales,” and “Mosses from an Old Manse.” He declares the four years (1842–1846) spent in this house were the happiest of his life.

“THE OLD MANSE,” CONCORD,MASS.

Built for Emerson’s grandfather. In this house Ralph Waldo Emerson dwelt for ten years, and, here, in the same room where Emerson wrote “Nature” and other philosophic essays, Hawthorne prepared his “Twice Told Tales,” and “Mosses from an Old Manse.” He declares the four years (1842–1846) spent in this house were the happiest of his life.

Hawthorne received his early education in Salem, partly at the school of Joseph E. Worcester, the author of “Worcester’s Dictionary.” He entered Bowdoin College in 1821. The poet, Longfellow, and John S. C. Abbott were his classmates; and Franklin Pierce—one class in advance of him—was his close friend. He graduated in 1825 without any special distinction. His first book, “Fanshawe,” a novel, was issued in 1826, but so poor was its success that he suppressed its further publication. Subsequently he placed the manuscript of a collection of stories in the hands of his publisher, but timidly withdrew and destroyed them. His first practical encouragement was received from Samuel G. Goodrich, who published four stories in the “Token,” one of the annuals of that time, in 1831.Mr.Goodrich also engaged Hawthorne as editor of the “American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge,” which position he occupied from 1836 to 1838. About this time he also contributed some of his best stories to the “New England Magazine,” “The Knickerbocker,” and the “Democratic Review.” It was a part of these magazine stories which he collected and published in 1837 in the volume entitled, “Twice Told Tales,” embodying the fruits of his twelve years’ labor.

This book stamped the author as a man of stronger imagination and deeper insight into human nature than Washington Irving evinced in his famous sketches of the Hudson or Cooper in his frontier stories, for delightful as was Irving’s writings and vivid as were Cooper’s pictures, it was plain to be seen that Hawthorne had a richer style and a firmer grasp of the art of fiction than either of them. Longfellow, the poet, reviewed the book with hearty commendation, and Poe predicted a brilliant future for the writer if he would abandon allegory. Thus encouraged, Hawthorne came out from his seclusion into the world again, and mixed once more with his fellow-men. His friend, the historian, Bancroft, secured him a position in the Custom House at Salem, in 1839, which he held for two years. This position he lost through political jobbery on a trumped-up charge. For a few months he then joined in the Brook Farm settlement, though he was never in sympathy with the movement; nor was he a believer in the transcendental notions of Emerson and his school. He remained a staunch Democrat in the midst of the Abolitionists. His note-books were full of his discontent with the life at the Brook Farm. His observations of this enterprise took shape in the “Blythedale Romance” which is the only literary memorial of the association. The heroine of this novel was Margaret Fuller, under the name of “Zenobia,” and the description of the drowning of Zenobia—a fate which Margaret Fuller had met—is the most tragic passage in all the writings of the author.

In 1842 Hawthorne married Miss Sophia Peabody—a most fortunate and happy marriage—and the young couple moved to Concord where they lived in the house known as the “Old Manse,” which had been built for Emerson’s grandfather, and in which Emerson himself dwelt ten years. He chose for his study the same room in which the philosopher had written his famous book “Nature.” Hawthorne declares that the happiest period of his life were the four years spent in the “Old Manse.” While living there he collected another lot of miscellaneous stories and published them in 1845 as a second volume of “Twice-Told Tales,” and the next year came his “Mosses from an Old Manse,” being also a collection from his published writings. In 1846 a depleted income and larger demands of a growing family made it necessary for him to seek a business engagement. Through a friend he received an appointment as Surveyor of Customs at Salem, and again removed to the old town where he was born forty-two years before. It was during his engagement here, from 1846 to 1849, that he planned and wrote his famous book “The Scarlet Letter,” which was published in 1850.

A broader experience is needed to compose a full-grown novel than to sketch a short tale. Scott was more than fifty when he published “Waverly.” Cooper wrote the “Spy” when thirty-three. Thackeray, the author of “Vanity Fair,” was almost forty when he finished that work. “Adam Bede” appeared when George Elliot was in her fortieth year; and the “Scarlet Letter,” greater than them all, did not appear until 1850, when its author was in his forty-seventh year. All critics readily agree that this romance is the masterpiece in American fiction. The only novel in the United States that can be compared with it isMrs.Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and, as a study of a type of life—Puritan life in New England—“The Scarlet Letter” is superior toMrs.Stowe’s immortal work. One-half a century has passed since “The Scarlet Letter” was written; but it stands to-day more popular than ever before.

Enumerated briefly, the books written by Hawthorne in the order of their publication are as follows: “Fanshawe,” a novel (1826), suppressed by the author; “Twice-Told Tales” (1837), a collection of magazine stories; “Twice-Told Tales” (second volume, 1845) “Mosses from an Old Manse” (1846), written while he lived at the “Old Manse”; “The Scarlet Letter” (1850), his greatest book; “The House of Seven Gables” (1851), written while he lived at Lenox, Massachusetts; “The Wonder Book” (1851), a volume of classic stories for children; “The Blythedale Romance” (1852); “Life of Franklin Pierce” (1852), which was written to assist his friend Pierce, who was running for President of the United States; “Tanglewood Tales” (1853), another work for children, continuing the classic legends of his “Wonder Book,” reciting the adventures of those who went forth to seek the “Golden Fleece,” to explore the labyrinth of the “Minotaur” and sow the “Dragon’s Teeth.” Pierce was elected President in 1853 and rewarded Hawthorne by appointing him Consul to Liverpool. This position he filled for four years and afterwards spent three years in traveling on the Continent, during which time he gathered material for the greatest of his books—next to “The Scarlet Letter”—entitled “The Marble Faun,” which was brought out in England in 1860, and the same yearMr.Hawthorne returned to America and spent the remainder of his life at “The Wayside” in Concord. During his residence here he wrote for the “Atlantic Monthly” the papers which were collected and published in 1863 under the title of “Our Old Home.” AfterMr.Hawthorne’s death, his unpublished manuscripts, “The Dolliver Romance,” “Septimius Felton” and “Dr.Grimshawe’s Secret,” were published.Mrs.Hawthorne, also, edited and published her husband’s “American and English Note-Books” and his “French and Italian Note-Books” in 1869. The best life of the author is perhaps that written by his son, Julian Hawthorne, which appeared in 1885, entitled “Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife; a Biography.”

A new and complete edition of Hawthorne’s works has been lately issued in twenty volumes; also a compact and illustrated library edition in seven volumes.

Nathaniel Hawthorne died May 18, 1864, while traveling with his friend and college-mate, Ex-President Pierce, in the White Mountains, and was buried near where Emerson and Thoreau were later placed in Concord Cemetery. Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell and Whittier were at the funeral. His publisher,Mr.Field, was also there and wrote: “We carried him through the blossoming orchards of Concord and laid him down in a group of pines on the hillside, the unfinished romance which had cost him such anxiety laid upon his coffin.”Mr.Longfellow, in an exquisite poem describes the scene, and referring to the uncompleted romance in the closing lines says:

“Ah, who shall lift that wand of magic power,And the lost clue regain?The unfinished window in Alladin’s towerUnfinished must remain.”

“Ah, who shall lift that wand of magic power,And the lost clue regain?The unfinished window in Alladin’s towerUnfinished must remain.”

“Ah, who shall lift that wand of magic power,

And the lost clue regain?

The unfinished window in Alladin’s tower

Unfinished must remain.”

The noble wife, who had been the inspiration and practical stimulus of the great romancer, survived her distinguished husband nearly seven years. She died in London, aged sixty, February 26, 1871, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, near the grave of Leigh Hunt.

EMERSON AND THE EMERSONITES.

(FROM “MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE.”)

THERE were circumstances around me which made it difficult to view the world precisely as it exists; for severe and sober as was the Old Manse, it was necessary to go but a little way beyond its threshold before meeting with stranger moral shapes of men than might have been encountered elsewhere in a circuit of a thousand miles. These hobgoblins of flesh and blood were attracted thither by the wide spreading influence of a great original thinker who had his earthly abode at the opposite extremity of our village. His mind acted upon other minds of a certain constitution with wonderful magnetism, and drew many men upon long pilgrimages to speak with him face to face.Young visionaries, to whom just so much of insight had been imparted as to make life all a labyrinth around them, came to seek the clew which should guide them out of their self-involved bewilderment. Gray-headed theorists, whose systems—at first air—had finally imprisoned them in a fiery framework, traveled painfully to his door, not to ask deliverance, but to invite the free spirit into their own thralldom. People that had lighted upon a new thought—or thought they had fancied new—came to Emerson as a finder of a glittering gem hastens to a lapidary to ascertain its quality and value. Uncertain, troubled, earnest wanderers through the midnight of the moral world beheld his intellectual fire as a beacon burning upon a hill-top, and climbing the difficult ascent, looked forth into the surrounding obscurity more hopefully than hitherto. The light revealed objects unseen before:—mountains, gleaming lakes, glimpses of creation among the chaos: but also, as was unavoidable, it attracted bats and owls and the whole host of night-birds, which flapped their dusty wings against the gazer’s eyes, and sometimes were mistaken for fowls of angelic feather. Such delusions always hover nigh whenever a beacon-fire of truth is kindled.For myself there had been epochs of my life when I too might have asked of this prophet the master-word that should solve me the riddle of the universe; but now, being happy, I felt as if there were no question to be put; and therefore admired Emerson as a poet of deep beauty and austere tenderness, but sought nothing from him as a philosopher. It was good, nevertheless, to meet him in the wood-paths, or sometimes in our avenue, with that pure intellectual gleam diffused about his presence, like the garment of a shining one; and he so quiet, so simple, so without pretension, encountering each man alive as if expecting to receive more than he could impart. And in truth, the heart of many a man had, perchance, inscriptions which he could not read. But it was impossible to dwell in his vicinity without inhaling more or less the mountain atmosphere of his lofty thought, which in the brains of some people wrought a singular giddiness—new truth being as heady as new wine.Never was a poor country village infected with such a variety of queer, strangely-dressed, oddly-behaved mortals, most of whom took upon themselves to be important agents of this world’s destiny, yet were simply bores of the first water. Such, I imagine, is the invariable character of persons who crowd so closely about an original thinker as to draw in his unuttered breath, and thus become imbued with a false originality. This triteness of noveltry is enough to make any man of common sense blaspheme at all ideas of less than a century’s standing, and pray that the world may be petrified and rendered immovable in precisely the worst moral and physical state that it ever yet arrived at, rather than be benefitted by such schemes of such philosophers.

THERE were circumstances around me which made it difficult to view the world precisely as it exists; for severe and sober as was the Old Manse, it was necessary to go but a little way beyond its threshold before meeting with stranger moral shapes of men than might have been encountered elsewhere in a circuit of a thousand miles. These hobgoblins of flesh and blood were attracted thither by the wide spreading influence of a great original thinker who had his earthly abode at the opposite extremity of our village. His mind acted upon other minds of a certain constitution with wonderful magnetism, and drew many men upon long pilgrimages to speak with him face to face.

Young visionaries, to whom just so much of insight had been imparted as to make life all a labyrinth around them, came to seek the clew which should guide them out of their self-involved bewilderment. Gray-headed theorists, whose systems—at first air—had finally imprisoned them in a fiery framework, traveled painfully to his door, not to ask deliverance, but to invite the free spirit into their own thralldom. People that had lighted upon a new thought—or thought they had fancied new—came to Emerson as a finder of a glittering gem hastens to a lapidary to ascertain its quality and value. Uncertain, troubled, earnest wanderers through the midnight of the moral world beheld his intellectual fire as a beacon burning upon a hill-top, and climbing the difficult ascent, looked forth into the surrounding obscurity more hopefully than hitherto. The light revealed objects unseen before:—mountains, gleaming lakes, glimpses of creation among the chaos: but also, as was unavoidable, it attracted bats and owls and the whole host of night-birds, which flapped their dusty wings against the gazer’s eyes, and sometimes were mistaken for fowls of angelic feather. Such delusions always hover nigh whenever a beacon-fire of truth is kindled.

For myself there had been epochs of my life when I too might have asked of this prophet the master-word that should solve me the riddle of the universe; but now, being happy, I felt as if there were no question to be put; and therefore admired Emerson as a poet of deep beauty and austere tenderness, but sought nothing from him as a philosopher. It was good, nevertheless, to meet him in the wood-paths, or sometimes in our avenue, with that pure intellectual gleam diffused about his presence, like the garment of a shining one; and he so quiet, so simple, so without pretension, encountering each man alive as if expecting to receive more than he could impart. And in truth, the heart of many a man had, perchance, inscriptions which he could not read. But it was impossible to dwell in his vicinity without inhaling more or less the mountain atmosphere of his lofty thought, which in the brains of some people wrought a singular giddiness—new truth being as heady as new wine.

Never was a poor country village infected with such a variety of queer, strangely-dressed, oddly-behaved mortals, most of whom took upon themselves to be important agents of this world’s destiny, yet were simply bores of the first water. Such, I imagine, is the invariable character of persons who crowd so closely about an original thinker as to draw in his unuttered breath, and thus become imbued with a false originality. This triteness of noveltry is enough to make any man of common sense blaspheme at all ideas of less than a century’s standing, and pray that the world may be petrified and rendered immovable in precisely the worst moral and physical state that it ever yet arrived at, rather than be benefitted by such schemes of such philosophers.

PEARL.

(THE SCARLET LETTER. A ROMANCE. 1850.)

WE have as yet hardly spoken of the infant; that little creature, whose innocent life had sprung, by the inscrutable decree of Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman, as she watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day more brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshineover the tiny features of this child! Her Pearl!—For so had Hester called her; not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of the calm, white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by the comparison. But she named the infant “Pearl,” as being of great price,—purchased with all she had,—her mother’s only treasure! How strange, indeed! Men had marked this woman’s sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct consequence of the sin which was thus punished, had given her a lovely child, whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her parent forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven! Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynne less with hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed had been evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be good. Day after day, she looked fearfully into the child’s expanding nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity, that should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being.Certainly, there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape, its vigor, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden; worthy to have been left there, to be the plaything of the angels, after the world’s first parents were driven out. The child had a native grace which does not invariably coexist with faultless beauty; its attire, however simple, always impressed the beholder as if it were the very garb that precisely became it best. But little Pearl was not clad in rustic weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore before the public eye. So magnificent was the small figure, when thus arrayed, and such was the splendor of Pearl’s own proper beauty, shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around her, on the darksome cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn and soiled with the child’s rude play, made a picture of her just as perfect. Pearl’s aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety; in this one child there were many children, comprehending the full scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the pomp, in little, of an infant princess. Throughout all, however, there was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never lost; and if, in any of her changes she had grown fainter or paler, she would have ceased to be herself,—it would have been no longer Pearl!One peculiarity of the child’s deportment remains yet to be told. The very first thing which she had noticed, in her life, was—what?—not the mother’s smile, responding to it, as other babies do, by that faint embryo smile of the little mouth, remembered so doubtfully afterwards, and with such fond discussion whether it were indeed a smile. By no means! But that first object of which Pearl seemed to become aware was—shall we say it?—the scarlet letter on Hester’s bosom! One day, as the mother stooped over the cradle, the infant’s eyes had been caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the letter; and, putting up her little hand, she grasped at it, smiling, not doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her face the look of a much older child. Then, gasping for breath, did Hester Prynne clutch the fatal token, instinctively endeavoring to tear it away; so infinite was the torture inflicted by the intelligent touch of Pearl’s baby-hand. Again, as if her mother’s agonized gesture were meant only to make sport of her, did little Pearl look into her eyes, and smile! From that epoch, except when the child was asleep, Hester had never felt a moment’s safety; not a moment’s calm enjoyment of her. Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during which Pearl’s gaze might never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter; but then, again, it would come at unawares, like the stroke of sudden death, and always with that peculiar smile and odd expression of the eyes.

WE have as yet hardly spoken of the infant; that little creature, whose innocent life had sprung, by the inscrutable decree of Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman, as she watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day more brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshineover the tiny features of this child! Her Pearl!—For so had Hester called her; not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of the calm, white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by the comparison. But she named the infant “Pearl,” as being of great price,—purchased with all she had,—her mother’s only treasure! How strange, indeed! Men had marked this woman’s sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct consequence of the sin which was thus punished, had given her a lovely child, whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her parent forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven! Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynne less with hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed had been evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be good. Day after day, she looked fearfully into the child’s expanding nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity, that should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being.

Certainly, there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape, its vigor, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden; worthy to have been left there, to be the plaything of the angels, after the world’s first parents were driven out. The child had a native grace which does not invariably coexist with faultless beauty; its attire, however simple, always impressed the beholder as if it were the very garb that precisely became it best. But little Pearl was not clad in rustic weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore before the public eye. So magnificent was the small figure, when thus arrayed, and such was the splendor of Pearl’s own proper beauty, shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around her, on the darksome cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn and soiled with the child’s rude play, made a picture of her just as perfect. Pearl’s aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety; in this one child there were many children, comprehending the full scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the pomp, in little, of an infant princess. Throughout all, however, there was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never lost; and if, in any of her changes she had grown fainter or paler, she would have ceased to be herself,—it would have been no longer Pearl!

One peculiarity of the child’s deportment remains yet to be told. The very first thing which she had noticed, in her life, was—what?—not the mother’s smile, responding to it, as other babies do, by that faint embryo smile of the little mouth, remembered so doubtfully afterwards, and with such fond discussion whether it were indeed a smile. By no means! But that first object of which Pearl seemed to become aware was—shall we say it?—the scarlet letter on Hester’s bosom! One day, as the mother stooped over the cradle, the infant’s eyes had been caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the letter; and, putting up her little hand, she grasped at it, smiling, not doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her face the look of a much older child. Then, gasping for breath, did Hester Prynne clutch the fatal token, instinctively endeavoring to tear it away; so infinite was the torture inflicted by the intelligent touch of Pearl’s baby-hand. Again, as if her mother’s agonized gesture were meant only to make sport of her, did little Pearl look into her eyes, and smile! From that epoch, except when the child was asleep, Hester had never felt a moment’s safety; not a moment’s calm enjoyment of her. Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during which Pearl’s gaze might never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter; but then, again, it would come at unawares, like the stroke of sudden death, and always with that peculiar smile and odd expression of the eyes.

SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE.

HOW various are the situations of the people covered by the roofs beneath me, and how diversified are the events at this moment befalling them! The new-born, the aged, the dying, the strong in life, and the recent dead, are in the chambers of these many mansions. The full of hope, the happy, the miserable, and the desperate, dwell together within the circle of my glance. In some of the houses over which my eyes roam so coldly, guilt is entering into hearts that are still tenanted by a debased and trodden virtue—guilt is on the very edge of commission, and the impending deed might be averted; guilt is done, and the criminal wonders if it be irrevocable. There are broad thoughts struggling in my mind, and, were I able to give them distinctness, they would make their way in eloquence. Lo! the rain-drops are descending.The clouds, within a little time, have gathered over all the sky, hanging heavily, as if about to drop in one unbroken mass upon the earth. At intervals the lightning flashes from their brooding hearts, quivers, disappears, and then comes the thunder, traveling slowly after its twin-born flame. A strong wind has sprung up, howls through the darkened streets, and raises the dust in dense bodies, to rebel against the approaching storm. All people hurry homeward—all that have a home; while a few lounge by the corners, or trudge on desperately, at their leisure.And now the storm lets loose its fury. In every dwelling I perceive the faces of the chambermaids as they shut down the windows, excluding the impetuous shower, and shrinking away from the quick, fiery glare. The large drops descend with force upon the slated roofs, and rise again in smoke. There is a rush and roar, as of a river through the air, and muddy streams bubble majestically along the pavement, whirl their dusky foam into the kennel, and disappear beneath iron grates. Thus did Arethusa sink. I love not my station here aloft, in the midst of the tumult which I am powerless to direct or quell, with the blue lightning wrinkling on my brow, and the thunder muttering its first awful syllables in my ear. I will descend. Yet let me give another glance to the sea, where the foam breaks in long white lines upon a broad expanse of blackness, or boils up in far-distant points, like snowy mountain-tops in the eddies of a flood; and let me look once more at the green plain, and little hills of the country, over which the giant of the storm is riding in robes of mist, and at the town, whose obscured and desolate streets might beseem a city of the dead; and turning a single moment to the sky, now gloomy as an author’s prospects, I prepare to resume my station on lower earth. But stay! A little speck of azure has widened in the western heavens; the sunbeams find a passage, and go rejoicing through the tempest; and on yonder darkest cloud, born, like hallowed hopes, of the glory of another world, and the trouble and tears of this, brightens forth the Rainbow!

HOW various are the situations of the people covered by the roofs beneath me, and how diversified are the events at this moment befalling them! The new-born, the aged, the dying, the strong in life, and the recent dead, are in the chambers of these many mansions. The full of hope, the happy, the miserable, and the desperate, dwell together within the circle of my glance. In some of the houses over which my eyes roam so coldly, guilt is entering into hearts that are still tenanted by a debased and trodden virtue—guilt is on the very edge of commission, and the impending deed might be averted; guilt is done, and the criminal wonders if it be irrevocable. There are broad thoughts struggling in my mind, and, were I able to give them distinctness, they would make their way in eloquence. Lo! the rain-drops are descending.

The clouds, within a little time, have gathered over all the sky, hanging heavily, as if about to drop in one unbroken mass upon the earth. At intervals the lightning flashes from their brooding hearts, quivers, disappears, and then comes the thunder, traveling slowly after its twin-born flame. A strong wind has sprung up, howls through the darkened streets, and raises the dust in dense bodies, to rebel against the approaching storm. All people hurry homeward—all that have a home; while a few lounge by the corners, or trudge on desperately, at their leisure.

And now the storm lets loose its fury. In every dwelling I perceive the faces of the chambermaids as they shut down the windows, excluding the impetuous shower, and shrinking away from the quick, fiery glare. The large drops descend with force upon the slated roofs, and rise again in smoke. There is a rush and roar, as of a river through the air, and muddy streams bubble majestically along the pavement, whirl their dusky foam into the kennel, and disappear beneath iron grates. Thus did Arethusa sink. I love not my station here aloft, in the midst of the tumult which I am powerless to direct or quell, with the blue lightning wrinkling on my brow, and the thunder muttering its first awful syllables in my ear. I will descend. Yet let me give another glance to the sea, where the foam breaks in long white lines upon a broad expanse of blackness, or boils up in far-distant points, like snowy mountain-tops in the eddies of a flood; and let me look once more at the green plain, and little hills of the country, over which the giant of the storm is riding in robes of mist, and at the town, whose obscured and desolate streets might beseem a city of the dead; and turning a single moment to the sky, now gloomy as an author’s prospects, I prepare to resume my station on lower earth. But stay! A little speck of azure has widened in the western heavens; the sunbeams find a passage, and go rejoicing through the tempest; and on yonder darkest cloud, born, like hallowed hopes, of the glory of another world, and the trouble and tears of this, brightens forth the Rainbow!

A REMINISCENCE OF EARLY LIFE.

(FROM AMERICAN NOTE BOOKS.)

Salem,Oct.4th.Union Street, [Family Mansion.]... Here I sit in my old accustomed chamber, where I used to sit in days gone by.... Here I have written many tales,—many that have been burned to ashes, many that doubtless deserved the same fate. This claims to be called a haunted chamber, for thousands upon thousands of visions have appeared to me in it; and some few of them have become visible to the world. If ever I should have a biographer, he ought to make great mention of this chamber in my memoirs, because so much of my lonely youth was wasted here, and here my mind and character were formed; and here I have been glad and hopeful, and here I have been despondent. And here I sat a long, long time, waiting patiently for the world to know me, and sometimes wondering why it did not know me sooner, or whether it would ever know me at all,—at least, till I were in my grave. And sometimes it seemed as if I were already in the grave, with only life enough to be chilled and benumbed. But oftenerI was happy,—at least, as happy as I then knew how to be, or was aware of the possibility of being. By and by, the world found me out in my lonely chamber, and called me forth,—not, indeed, with a loud roar of acclamation, but rather with a still, small voice,—and forth I went, but found nothing in the world that I thought preferable to my old solitude till now.... And now I begin to understand why I was imprisoned so many years in this lonely chamber, and why I could never break through the viewless bolts and bars; for if I had sooner made my escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and been covered with earthly dust, and my heart might have become callous by rude encounters with the multitude.... But living in solitude till the fulness of time was come, I still kept the dew of my youth, and the freshness of my heart.... I used to think that I could imagine all passions, all feelings, and states of the heart and mind; but how little did I know!... Indeed, we are but shadows; we are not endowed with real life, and all that seems most real about us is but the thinnest substance of a dream,—till the heart be touched. That touch creates us,—then we begin to be,—thereby we are beings of reality and inheritors of eternity....When we shall be endowed with our spiritual bodies, I think that they will be so constituted that we may send thoughts and feelings any distance in no time at all, and transfuse them, warm and fresh, into the consciousness of those whom we love.... But, after all, perhaps it is not wise to intermix fantastic ideas with the reality of affection. Let us content ourselves to be earthly creatures, and hold communion of spirit in such modes as are ordained to us.

Salem,Oct.4th.

Union Street, [Family Mansion.]

... Here I sit in my old accustomed chamber, where I used to sit in days gone by.... Here I have written many tales,—many that have been burned to ashes, many that doubtless deserved the same fate. This claims to be called a haunted chamber, for thousands upon thousands of visions have appeared to me in it; and some few of them have become visible to the world. If ever I should have a biographer, he ought to make great mention of this chamber in my memoirs, because so much of my lonely youth was wasted here, and here my mind and character were formed; and here I have been glad and hopeful, and here I have been despondent. And here I sat a long, long time, waiting patiently for the world to know me, and sometimes wondering why it did not know me sooner, or whether it would ever know me at all,—at least, till I were in my grave. And sometimes it seemed as if I were already in the grave, with only life enough to be chilled and benumbed. But oftenerI was happy,—at least, as happy as I then knew how to be, or was aware of the possibility of being. By and by, the world found me out in my lonely chamber, and called me forth,—not, indeed, with a loud roar of acclamation, but rather with a still, small voice,—and forth I went, but found nothing in the world that I thought preferable to my old solitude till now.... And now I begin to understand why I was imprisoned so many years in this lonely chamber, and why I could never break through the viewless bolts and bars; for if I had sooner made my escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and been covered with earthly dust, and my heart might have become callous by rude encounters with the multitude.... But living in solitude till the fulness of time was come, I still kept the dew of my youth, and the freshness of my heart.... I used to think that I could imagine all passions, all feelings, and states of the heart and mind; but how little did I know!... Indeed, we are but shadows; we are not endowed with real life, and all that seems most real about us is but the thinnest substance of a dream,—till the heart be touched. That touch creates us,—then we begin to be,—thereby we are beings of reality and inheritors of eternity....

When we shall be endowed with our spiritual bodies, I think that they will be so constituted that we may send thoughts and feelings any distance in no time at all, and transfuse them, warm and fresh, into the consciousness of those whom we love.... But, after all, perhaps it is not wise to intermix fantastic ideas with the reality of affection. Let us content ourselves to be earthly creatures, and hold communion of spirit in such modes as are ordained to us.

Souvenir of Hawthorne

Souvenir of Hawthorne

(‡ decoration)EDWARD EVERETT HALE.“THE ROBINSON CRUSOE OF AMERICA.”EDWARD EVERETT HALE is to-day one of the best known and most beloved of American authors. He is also a lecturer of note. He has probably addressed as many audiences as any man in America. His work as a preacher, as a historian and as a story-teller, entitles him to fame; but his life has also been largely devoted to the formation of organizations to better the moral, social and educational conditions of the young people of his own and other lands. Recently he has been deeply interested in the great Chatauqua movement, which he has done much to develop.His name is a household word in American homes, and the keynote of his useful life may be expressed by the motto of one of his most popular books, “Ten Times One is Ten:”—“Look up and not down! Look forward and not backward! Look out and not in! Lend a hand!”Edward Everett Hale was born in Boston, Massachusetts, April 3, 1822. He graduated at Harvard University in 1839, at the age of seventeen years. He took a post graduate course for two years in a Latin school and read theology and church history. It was in 1842 that he was licensed to preach by the Boston Association of Congregational Ministers. During the winter of 1844–45 he served a church in Washington, but removed the next year to Worcester, Massachusetts, where he remained for ten years. In 1856 he was called to the South Congregational (Unitarian) Church in Boston, which he has served for more than three decades.When a boy young Hale learned to set type in his father’s printing office, and afterwards served on the “Daily Advertiser,” it is said, in every capacity from reporter up to editor-in-chief. Before he was twenty-one years old he wrote a large part of the “Monthly Chronicle” and “Boston Miscellany,” and from that time to the present has done an immense amount of newspaper and magazine work. He at one time edited the “Christian Examiner” and also the “Sunday School Gazette.” He founded a magazine entitled “The Old and the New” in 1869, which was afterwards merged into “Scribner’s Monthly.” In 1866 he began the publication of “Lend a Hand, a Record of Progress and Journal of Organized Charity.”As a writer of short stories, no man of modern times, perhaps, is his superior, if indeed he has any equals. “My Double and How He Undid Me,” published in 1859, was the first of his works to strike strongly the popular fancy; but it was “The Man Without a Country,” issued in 1863, which entitled its author to a prominentplace among the classic short story-tellers of America, and produced a deep impression on the public mind. His “Skeleton in a Closet” followed in 1866; and, since that time his prolific pen has sent forth in the form of books and magazine articles, a continuous stream of the most entertaining literature in our language. He has the faculty of De Foe in giving to his stories the appearance of reality, and thus has gained for himself the title of “The Robinson Crusoe of America.”Mr.Hale is also an historical writer and a student of great attainment, and has contributed many papers of rare value to the historical and antiquarian societies of both Europe and America. He is, perhaps, the greatest of all living authorities on Spanish-American affairs. He is the editor of “Original Documents from the State Paper Office, London, and the British Museum; illustrating the History of Sir Walter Raleigh’s First American Colony at Jamestown,” and other historical works.Throughout his life,Mr.Hale has always taken a patriotic interest in public affairs for the general good of the nation. While he dearly loves his native New England hills, his patriotism is bounded by no narrow limits; it is as wide as his country. His voice is always the foremost among those raised in praise or in defence of our national institutions and our liberties. His influence has always been exerted to make men and women better citizens and better Americans.LOST.¹(FROM “PHILIP NOLAN’S FRIENDS.”)¹Copyright, RobertsBros.BUT as she ran, the path confused her. Could she have passed that flaming sassafras without so much as noticing it? Any way she should recognize the great mass of bays where she had last noticed the panther’s tracks. She had seen them as she ran on, and as she came up. She hurried on; but she certainly had returned much farther than she went, when she came out on a strange log flung up in some freshet, which she knew she had not seen before. And there was no clump of bays. Was this being lost? Was she lost? Why, Inez had to confess to herself that she was lost just a little bit, but nothing to be afraid of; but still lost enough to talk about afterwards she certainly was.Yet, as she said to herself again and again, she could not be a quarter of a mile, nor half a quarter of a mile from camp. As soon as they missed her—and by this time they had missed her—they would be out to look for her. How provoking that she, of all the party, should make so much bother to the rest! They would watch her now like so many cats all the rest of the way. What a fool she was ever to leave the knoll! So Inez stopped again, shouted again, and listened and listened, to hear nothing but a swamp-owl.If the sky had been clear, she would have had no cause for anxiety. In that case they would have light enough to find her in. She would have had the sunset glow to steer by; and she would have had no difficulty in finding them. But with this horrid gray over everything she dared not turn round, without fearing that she might lose the direction in which the theory of the moment told her she ought to be faring. And these openings which she had called trails—which were probably broken by wild horses and wild oxen as they came down to the bayou to drink—would not go in one direction for ten paces. They bent right and left, this way and that; so that without some sure token of sun or star, it was impossible, as Inez felt, to know which way she was walking.And at last this perplexity increased. She was conscious that the sun must have set, and that the twilight, never long, was now fairly upon her. All the time there was this fearful silence, only brokenby her own voice and that hateful owl. Was she wise to keep on in her theories of this way or that way? She had never yet come back, either upon the fallen cottonwood tree, or upon the bunch of bays which was her landmark; and it was doubtless her wisest determination to stay where she was. The chances that the larger party would find her were much greater than that she alone would find them; but by this time she was sure that, if she kept on in any direction, there was an even chance that she was going farther and farther wrong.But it was too cold for her to sit down, wrap herself never so closely in her shawl. The poor girl tried this. She must keep in motion. Back and forth she walked, fixing her march by signs which she could not mistake even in the gathering darkness. How fast that darkness gathered! The wind seemed to rise, too, as the night came on, and a fine rain, that seemed as cold as snow to her, came to give the last drop to her wretchedness. If she were tempted for a moment to abandon her sentry-beat, and try this wild experiment or that, to the right or left, some odious fallen trunk, wet with moss and decay, lay just where she pressed into the shrubbery, as if placed there to reveal to her her absolute powerlessness. She was dead with cold, and even in all her wretchedness knew that she was hungry. How stupid to be hungry when she had so much else to trouble her! But at least she would make a system of her march. She would walk fifty times this way, to the stump, and fifty times that way; then she would stop and cry out and sound her war-whoop; then she would take up her sentry-march again. And so she did. This way, at least, time would not pass without her knowing whether it was midnight or no.“Hark! God be praised, there is a gun! and there is another! and there is another! They have come on the right track, and I am safe!” So she shouted again, and sounded her war-whoop again, and listened,—and then again, and listened again. One more gun! but then no more! Poor Inez! Certainly they were all on one side of her. If only it was not so piteously dark! If she could only walk half the distance in that direction which her fifty sentry-beats made put together! But when she struggled that way through the tangle, and over one wet log and another, it was only to find her poor wet feet sinking down into mud and water! She did not dare keep on. All that was left for her was to find her tramping-ground again, and this she did.“Good God, take care of me! My poor dear father—what would he say if he knew his child was dying close to her friends? Dear mamma, keep watch over your little girl!”—(‡ decoration)

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“THE ROBINSON CRUSOE OF AMERICA.”

EDWARD EVERETT HALE is to-day one of the best known and most beloved of American authors. He is also a lecturer of note. He has probably addressed as many audiences as any man in America. His work as a preacher, as a historian and as a story-teller, entitles him to fame; but his life has also been largely devoted to the formation of organizations to better the moral, social and educational conditions of the young people of his own and other lands. Recently he has been deeply interested in the great Chatauqua movement, which he has done much to develop.

His name is a household word in American homes, and the keynote of his useful life may be expressed by the motto of one of his most popular books, “Ten Times One is Ten:”—“Look up and not down! Look forward and not backward! Look out and not in! Lend a hand!”

Edward Everett Hale was born in Boston, Massachusetts, April 3, 1822. He graduated at Harvard University in 1839, at the age of seventeen years. He took a post graduate course for two years in a Latin school and read theology and church history. It was in 1842 that he was licensed to preach by the Boston Association of Congregational Ministers. During the winter of 1844–45 he served a church in Washington, but removed the next year to Worcester, Massachusetts, where he remained for ten years. In 1856 he was called to the South Congregational (Unitarian) Church in Boston, which he has served for more than three decades.

When a boy young Hale learned to set type in his father’s printing office, and afterwards served on the “Daily Advertiser,” it is said, in every capacity from reporter up to editor-in-chief. Before he was twenty-one years old he wrote a large part of the “Monthly Chronicle” and “Boston Miscellany,” and from that time to the present has done an immense amount of newspaper and magazine work. He at one time edited the “Christian Examiner” and also the “Sunday School Gazette.” He founded a magazine entitled “The Old and the New” in 1869, which was afterwards merged into “Scribner’s Monthly.” In 1866 he began the publication of “Lend a Hand, a Record of Progress and Journal of Organized Charity.”

As a writer of short stories, no man of modern times, perhaps, is his superior, if indeed he has any equals. “My Double and How He Undid Me,” published in 1859, was the first of his works to strike strongly the popular fancy; but it was “The Man Without a Country,” issued in 1863, which entitled its author to a prominentplace among the classic short story-tellers of America, and produced a deep impression on the public mind. His “Skeleton in a Closet” followed in 1866; and, since that time his prolific pen has sent forth in the form of books and magazine articles, a continuous stream of the most entertaining literature in our language. He has the faculty of De Foe in giving to his stories the appearance of reality, and thus has gained for himself the title of “The Robinson Crusoe of America.”

Mr.Hale is also an historical writer and a student of great attainment, and has contributed many papers of rare value to the historical and antiquarian societies of both Europe and America. He is, perhaps, the greatest of all living authorities on Spanish-American affairs. He is the editor of “Original Documents from the State Paper Office, London, and the British Museum; illustrating the History of Sir Walter Raleigh’s First American Colony at Jamestown,” and other historical works.

Throughout his life,Mr.Hale has always taken a patriotic interest in public affairs for the general good of the nation. While he dearly loves his native New England hills, his patriotism is bounded by no narrow limits; it is as wide as his country. His voice is always the foremost among those raised in praise or in defence of our national institutions and our liberties. His influence has always been exerted to make men and women better citizens and better Americans.

LOST.¹

(FROM “PHILIP NOLAN’S FRIENDS.”)

¹Copyright, RobertsBros.

BUT as she ran, the path confused her. Could she have passed that flaming sassafras without so much as noticing it? Any way she should recognize the great mass of bays where she had last noticed the panther’s tracks. She had seen them as she ran on, and as she came up. She hurried on; but she certainly had returned much farther than she went, when she came out on a strange log flung up in some freshet, which she knew she had not seen before. And there was no clump of bays. Was this being lost? Was she lost? Why, Inez had to confess to herself that she was lost just a little bit, but nothing to be afraid of; but still lost enough to talk about afterwards she certainly was.Yet, as she said to herself again and again, she could not be a quarter of a mile, nor half a quarter of a mile from camp. As soon as they missed her—and by this time they had missed her—they would be out to look for her. How provoking that she, of all the party, should make so much bother to the rest! They would watch her now like so many cats all the rest of the way. What a fool she was ever to leave the knoll! So Inez stopped again, shouted again, and listened and listened, to hear nothing but a swamp-owl.If the sky had been clear, she would have had no cause for anxiety. In that case they would have light enough to find her in. She would have had the sunset glow to steer by; and she would have had no difficulty in finding them. But with this horrid gray over everything she dared not turn round, without fearing that she might lose the direction in which the theory of the moment told her she ought to be faring. And these openings which she had called trails—which were probably broken by wild horses and wild oxen as they came down to the bayou to drink—would not go in one direction for ten paces. They bent right and left, this way and that; so that without some sure token of sun or star, it was impossible, as Inez felt, to know which way she was walking.And at last this perplexity increased. She was conscious that the sun must have set, and that the twilight, never long, was now fairly upon her. All the time there was this fearful silence, only brokenby her own voice and that hateful owl. Was she wise to keep on in her theories of this way or that way? She had never yet come back, either upon the fallen cottonwood tree, or upon the bunch of bays which was her landmark; and it was doubtless her wisest determination to stay where she was. The chances that the larger party would find her were much greater than that she alone would find them; but by this time she was sure that, if she kept on in any direction, there was an even chance that she was going farther and farther wrong.But it was too cold for her to sit down, wrap herself never so closely in her shawl. The poor girl tried this. She must keep in motion. Back and forth she walked, fixing her march by signs which she could not mistake even in the gathering darkness. How fast that darkness gathered! The wind seemed to rise, too, as the night came on, and a fine rain, that seemed as cold as snow to her, came to give the last drop to her wretchedness. If she were tempted for a moment to abandon her sentry-beat, and try this wild experiment or that, to the right or left, some odious fallen trunk, wet with moss and decay, lay just where she pressed into the shrubbery, as if placed there to reveal to her her absolute powerlessness. She was dead with cold, and even in all her wretchedness knew that she was hungry. How stupid to be hungry when she had so much else to trouble her! But at least she would make a system of her march. She would walk fifty times this way, to the stump, and fifty times that way; then she would stop and cry out and sound her war-whoop; then she would take up her sentry-march again. And so she did. This way, at least, time would not pass without her knowing whether it was midnight or no.“Hark! God be praised, there is a gun! and there is another! and there is another! They have come on the right track, and I am safe!” So she shouted again, and sounded her war-whoop again, and listened,—and then again, and listened again. One more gun! but then no more! Poor Inez! Certainly they were all on one side of her. If only it was not so piteously dark! If she could only walk half the distance in that direction which her fifty sentry-beats made put together! But when she struggled that way through the tangle, and over one wet log and another, it was only to find her poor wet feet sinking down into mud and water! She did not dare keep on. All that was left for her was to find her tramping-ground again, and this she did.“Good God, take care of me! My poor dear father—what would he say if he knew his child was dying close to her friends? Dear mamma, keep watch over your little girl!”—

BUT as she ran, the path confused her. Could she have passed that flaming sassafras without so much as noticing it? Any way she should recognize the great mass of bays where she had last noticed the panther’s tracks. She had seen them as she ran on, and as she came up. She hurried on; but she certainly had returned much farther than she went, when she came out on a strange log flung up in some freshet, which she knew she had not seen before. And there was no clump of bays. Was this being lost? Was she lost? Why, Inez had to confess to herself that she was lost just a little bit, but nothing to be afraid of; but still lost enough to talk about afterwards she certainly was.

Yet, as she said to herself again and again, she could not be a quarter of a mile, nor half a quarter of a mile from camp. As soon as they missed her—and by this time they had missed her—they would be out to look for her. How provoking that she, of all the party, should make so much bother to the rest! They would watch her now like so many cats all the rest of the way. What a fool she was ever to leave the knoll! So Inez stopped again, shouted again, and listened and listened, to hear nothing but a swamp-owl.

If the sky had been clear, she would have had no cause for anxiety. In that case they would have light enough to find her in. She would have had the sunset glow to steer by; and she would have had no difficulty in finding them. But with this horrid gray over everything she dared not turn round, without fearing that she might lose the direction in which the theory of the moment told her she ought to be faring. And these openings which she had called trails—which were probably broken by wild horses and wild oxen as they came down to the bayou to drink—would not go in one direction for ten paces. They bent right and left, this way and that; so that without some sure token of sun or star, it was impossible, as Inez felt, to know which way she was walking.

And at last this perplexity increased. She was conscious that the sun must have set, and that the twilight, never long, was now fairly upon her. All the time there was this fearful silence, only brokenby her own voice and that hateful owl. Was she wise to keep on in her theories of this way or that way? She had never yet come back, either upon the fallen cottonwood tree, or upon the bunch of bays which was her landmark; and it was doubtless her wisest determination to stay where she was. The chances that the larger party would find her were much greater than that she alone would find them; but by this time she was sure that, if she kept on in any direction, there was an even chance that she was going farther and farther wrong.

But it was too cold for her to sit down, wrap herself never so closely in her shawl. The poor girl tried this. She must keep in motion. Back and forth she walked, fixing her march by signs which she could not mistake even in the gathering darkness. How fast that darkness gathered! The wind seemed to rise, too, as the night came on, and a fine rain, that seemed as cold as snow to her, came to give the last drop to her wretchedness. If she were tempted for a moment to abandon her sentry-beat, and try this wild experiment or that, to the right or left, some odious fallen trunk, wet with moss and decay, lay just where she pressed into the shrubbery, as if placed there to reveal to her her absolute powerlessness. She was dead with cold, and even in all her wretchedness knew that she was hungry. How stupid to be hungry when she had so much else to trouble her! But at least she would make a system of her march. She would walk fifty times this way, to the stump, and fifty times that way; then she would stop and cry out and sound her war-whoop; then she would take up her sentry-march again. And so she did. This way, at least, time would not pass without her knowing whether it was midnight or no.

“Hark! God be praised, there is a gun! and there is another! and there is another! They have come on the right track, and I am safe!” So she shouted again, and sounded her war-whoop again, and listened,—and then again, and listened again. One more gun! but then no more! Poor Inez! Certainly they were all on one side of her. If only it was not so piteously dark! If she could only walk half the distance in that direction which her fifty sentry-beats made put together! But when she struggled that way through the tangle, and over one wet log and another, it was only to find her poor wet feet sinking down into mud and water! She did not dare keep on. All that was left for her was to find her tramping-ground again, and this she did.

“Good God, take care of me! My poor dear father—what would he say if he knew his child was dying close to her friends? Dear mamma, keep watch over your little girl!”—

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