Biographical Stories / Nathaniel Hawthorne

This small volume and others of a similar character, from the same hand,

have not been composed without a deep sense of responsibility. The

author regards children as sacred, and would not, for the world, cast

anything into the fountain of a young heart that might imbitter and

pollute its waters. And, even in point of the reputation to be aimed

at, juvenile literature is as well worth cultivating as any other. The

writer, if he succeed in pleasing his little readers, may hope to be

remembered by them till their own old age,--a far longer period of

literary existence than is generally attained by those who seek

immortality from the judgments of full-grown men.

CHAPTER 1.

When Edward Temple was about eight or nine years old he was afflicted

with a disorder of the eyes. It was so severe, and his sight was

naturally so delicate, that the surgeon felt some apprehensions lest the

boy should become totally blind. He therefore gave strict directions to

keep him in a darkened chamber, with a bandage over his eyes. Not a ray

of the blessed light of heaven could be suffered to visit the poor lad.

Biographical Sketches / Nathaniel Hawthorne

MRS. HUTCHINSON.

The character of this female suggests a train of thought which will form

as natural an Introduction to her story, as most of the Prefaces to

Gay's Fables, or the tales of Prior; besides that, the general soundness

of the moral may excuse any want of present applicability. We will not

look for a living resemblance of Mrs. Hutchinson, though the search

might not be altogether fruitless. But there are portentous

indications, changes gradually taking place in the habits and feelings

of the gentle sex, which seem to threaten our posterity with many of

those public women, whereof one was a burden too grievous for our

fathers. The press, however, is now the medium through which feminine

ambition chiefly manifests itself; and we will not anticipate the period

(trusting to be gone hence ere it arrive) when fair orators shall be as

numerous as the fair authors of our own day.

Beneath An Umbrella / Nathaniel Hawthorne

Pleasant is a rainy winter's day, within doors! The best study for

such a day, or the best amusement,--call it which you will,--is a

book of travels, describing scenes the most unlike that sombre one,

which is mistily presented through the windows. I have experienced,

that fancy is then most successful in imparting distinct shapes and

vivid colors to the objects which the author has spread upon his

page, and that his words become magic spells to summon up a thousand

varied pictures. Strange landscapes glimmer through the familiar

walls of the room, and outlandish figures thrust themselves almost

within the sacred precincts of the hearth. Small as my chamber is, it

has space enough to contain the ocean-like circumference of an

Arabian desert, its parched sands tracked by the long line of a

caravan, with the camels patiently journeying through the heavy

sunshine.

A Bell's Biography / Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hearken to our neighbor with the iron tongue. While I sit musing over my

sheet of foolscap, he emphatically tells the hour, in tones loud enough

for all the town to hear, though doubtless intended only as a gentle hint

to myself, that I may begin his biography before the evening shall be

further wasted. Unquestionably, a personage in such an elevated

position, and making so great a noise in the world, has a fair claim to

the services of a biographer. He is the representative and most

illustrious member of that innumerable class, whose characteristic

feature is the tongue, and whose sole business, to clamor for the public

good. If any of his noisy brethren, in our tongue-governed democracy, be

envious of the superiority which I have assigned him, they have my free

consent to hang themselves as high as he. And, for his history, let not

the reader apprehend an empty repetition of ding-dong-bell.

He has been the passive hero of wonderful vicissitudes, with which I have

chanced to become acquainted, possibly from his own mouth; while the

careless multitude supposed him to be talking merely of the time of day,

or calling them to dinner or to church, or bidding drowsy people go

bedward, or the dead to their graves. Many a revolution has it been his

fate to go through, and invariably with a prodigious uproar. And whether

or no he have told me his reminiscences, this at least is true, that the

more I study his deep-toned language, the more sense, and sentiment, and

soul, do I discover in it.

John Inglefield's Thanksgiving / Nathaniel Hawthorne

On the evening of Thanksgiving day, John Inglefield, the blacksmith, sat

in his elbow-chair, among those who had been keeping festival at his

board. Being the central figure of the domestic circle, the fire threw

its strongest light on his massive and sturdy frame, reddening his rough

visage, so that it looked like the head of an iron statue, all aglow,

from his own forge, and with its features rudely fashioned on his own

anvil. At John Inglefield's right hand was an empty chair. The other

places round the hearth were filled by the members of the family, who all

sat quietly, while, with a semblance of fantastic merriment, their

shadows danced on the wall behind then. One of the group was John

Inglefield's son, who had been bred at college, and was now a student of

theology at Andover. There was also a daughter of sixteen, whom nobody

could look at without thinking of a rosebud almost blossomed. The only

other person at the fireside was Robert Moore, formerly an apprentice of

the blacksmith, but now his journeyman, and who seemed more like an own

son of John Inglefield than did the pale and slender student.

Young Goodman Brown / Nathaniel Hawthorne

Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street at Salem village; but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap while she called to Goodman Brown.

"Dearest heart," whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close to his ear, "prithee put off your journey until sunrise and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts that she's afeard of herself sometimes. Pray tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year."

The Wedding Knell / Nathaniel Hawthorne

There is a certain church in the city of New York which I have always regarded with peculiar interest, on account of a marriage there solemnized, under very singular circumstances, in my grandmother's girlhood. That venerable lady chanced to be a spectator of the scene, and ever after made it her favorite narrative. Whether the edifice now standing on the same site be the identical one to which she referred, I am not antiquarian enough to know; nor would it be worth while to correct myself, perhaps, of an agreeable error, by reading the date of its erection on the tablet over the door. It is a stately church, surrounded by an inclosure of the loveliest green, within which appear urns, pillars, obelisks, and other forms of monumental marble, the tributes of private affection, or more splendid memorials of historic dust. With such a place, though the tumult of the city rolls beneath its tower, one would be willing to connect some legendary interest.

Wakefield / Nathaniel Hawthorne

In some old magazine or newspaper I recollect a story, told as truth, of a man--let us call him Wakefield--who absented himself for a long time from his wife. The fact, thus abstractedly stated, is not very uncommon, nor--without a proper distinction of circumstances--to be condemned either as naughty or nonsensical. Howbeit, this, though far from the most aggravated, is perhaps the strangest, instance on record, of marital delinquency; and, moreover, as remarkable a freak as may be found in the whole list of human oddities. The wedded couple lived in London. The man, under pretence of going a journey, took lodgings in the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or friends, and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment, dwelt upwards of twenty years. During that period, he beheld his home every day, and frequently the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield. And after so great a gap in his matrimonial felicity--when his death was reckoned certain, his estate settled, his name dismissed from memory, and his wife, long, long ago, resigned to her autumnal widowhood--he entered the door one evening, quietly, as from a day's absence, and became a loving spouse till death.

The Snow Image: A Childish Miracle / Nathaniel Hawthorne

One afternoon of a cold winter's day, when the sun shone forth with chilly brightness, after a long storm, two children asked leave of their mother to run out and play in the new-fallen snow. The elder child was a little girl, whom, because she was of a tender and modest disposition, and was thought to be very beautiful, her parents, and other people who were familiar with her, used to call Violet. But her brother was known by the style and title of Peony, on account of the ruddiness of his broad and round little phiz, which made everybody think of sunshine and great scarlet flowers. The father of these two children, a certain Mr. Lindsey, it is important to say, was an excellent but exceedingly matter-of-fact sort of man, a dealer in hardware, and was sturdily accustomed to take what is called the common-sense view of all matters that came under his consideration. With a heart about as tender as other people's, he had a head as hard and impenetrable, and therefore, perhaps, as empty, as one of the iron pots which it was a part of his business to sell. The mother's character, on the other hand, had a strain of poetry in it, a trait of unworldly beauty,--a delicate and dewy flower, as it were, that had survived out of her imaginative youth, and still kept itself alive amid the dusty realities of matrimony and motherhood.

The Shaker Bridal / Nathaniel Hawthorne

One day, in the sick chamber of Father Ephraim, who had been forty years the presiding elder over the Shaker settlement at Goshen, there was an assemblage of several of the chief men of the sect. Individuals had come from the rich establishment at Lebanon, from Canterbury, Harvard, and Alfred, and from all the other localities where this strange people have fertilized the rugged hills of New England by their systematic industry. An elder was likewise there, who had made a pilgrimage of a thousand miles from a village of the faithful in Kentucky, to visit his spiritual kindred, the children of the sainted mother Ann. He had partaken of the homely abundance of their tables, had quaffed the far-famed Shaker cider, and had joined in the sacred dance, every step of which is believed to alienate the enthusiast from earth, and bear him onward to heavenly purity and bliss. His brethren of the north had now courteously invited him to be present on an occasion, when the concurrence of every eminent member of their community was peculiarly desirable.

Roger Malvin's Burial / Nathaniel Hawthorne

One of the few incidents of Indian warfare naturally susceptible of the moonlight of romance was that expedition undertaken for the defence of the frontiers in the year 1725, which resulted in the well-remembered "Lovell's Fight." Imagination, by casting certain circumstances judicially into the shade, may see much to admire in the heroism of a little band who gave battle to twice their number in the heart of the enemy's country. The open bravery displayed by both parties was in accordance with civilized ideas of valor; and chivalry itself might not blush to record the deeds of one or two individuals. The battle, though so fatal to those who fought, was not unfortunate in its consequences to the country; for it broke the strength of a tribe and conduced to the peace which subsisted during several ensuing years. History and tradition are unusually minute in their memorials of their affair; and the captain of a scouting party of frontier men has acquired as actual a military renown as many a victorious leader of thousands. Some of the incidents contained in the following pages will be recognized, notwithstanding the substitution of fictitious names, by such as have heard, from old men's lips, the fate of the few combatants who were in a condition to retreat after "Lovell's Fight." . . . . . . . . .

Rappaccini's Daughter / Nathaniel Hawthorne

We do not remember to have seen any translated specimens of the productions of M. de l'Aubepine--a fact the less to be wondered at, as his very name is unknown to many of his own countrymen as well as to the student of foreign literature. As a writer, he seems to occupy an unfortunate position between the Transcendentalists (who, under one name or another, have their share in all the current literature of the world) and the great body of pen-and-ink men who address the intellect and sympathies of the multitude. If not too refined, at all events too remote, too shadowy, and unsubstantial in his modes of development to suit the taste of the latter class, and yet too popular to satisfy the spiritual or metaphysical requisitions of the former, he must necessarily find himself without an audience, except here and there an individual or possibly an isolated clique.

The Procession of Life / Nathaniel Hawthorne

Life figures itself to me as a festal or funereal procession. All of us have our places, and are to move onward under the direction of the Chief Marshal. The grand difficulty results from the invariably mistaken principles on which the deputy marshals seek to arrange this immense concourse of people, so much more numerous than those that train their interminable length through streets and highways in times of political excitement. Their scheme is ancient, far beyond the memory of man or even the record of history, and has hitherto been very little modified by the innate sense of something wrong, and the dim perception of better methods, that have disquieted all the ages through which the procession has taken its march. Its members are classified by the merest external circumstances, and thus are more certain to be thrown out of their true positions than if no principle of arrangement were attempted.

Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure / Nathaniel Hawthorne

"And so, Peter, you won't even consider of the business?" said Mr. John Brown, buttoning his surtout over the snug rotundity of his person, and drawing on his gloves. "You positively refuse to let me have this crazy old house, and the land under and adjoining, at the price named?"

"Neither at that, nor treble the sum," responded the gaunt, grizzled, and threadbare Peter Goldthwaite. "The fact is, Mr. Brown, you must find another site for your brick block, and be content to leave my estate with the present owner. Next summer, I intend to put a splendid new mansion over the cellar of the old house."

My Kinsman, Major Molineux / Nathaniel Hawthorne

After the kings of Great Britain had assumed the right of appointing the colonial governors, the measures of the latter seldom met with the ready and generous approbation which had been paid to those of their predecessors, under the original charters. The people looked with most jealous scrutiny to the exercise of power which did not emanate from themselves, and they usually rewarded their rulers with slender gratitude for the compliances by which, in softening their instructions from beyond the sea, they had incurred the reprehension of those who gave them. The annals of Massachusetts Bay will inform us, that of six governors in the space of about forty years from the surrender of the old charter, under James II, two were imprisoned by a popular insurrection; a third, as Hutchinson inclines to believe, was driven from the province by the whizzing of a musket-ball; a fourth, in the opinion of the same historian, was hastened to his grave by continual bickerings with the House of Representatives; and the remaining two, as well as their successors, till the Revolution, were favored with few and brief intervals of peaceful sway. The inferior members of the court party, in times of high political excitement, led scarcely a more desirable life. These remarks may serve as a preface to the following adventures, which chanced upon a summer night, not far from a hundred years ago. The reader, in order to avoid a long and dry detail of colonial affairs, is requested to dispense with an account of the train of circumstances that had caused much temporary inflammation of the popular mind.

Mrs. Bullfrog / Nathaniel Hawthorne

It makes me melancholy to see how like fools some very sensible people act in the matter of choosing wives. They perplex their judgments by a most undue attention to little niceties of personal appearance, habits, disposition, and other trifles which concern nobody but the lady herself. An unhappy gentleman, resolving to wed nothing short of perfection, keeps his heart and hand till both get so old and withered that no tolerable woman will accept them. Now this is the very height of absurdity. A kind Providence has so skilfully adapted sex to sex and the mass of individuals to each other, that, with certain obvious exceptions, any male and female may be moderately happy in the married state. The true rule is to ascertain that the match is fundamentally a good one, and then to take it for granted that all minor objections, should there be such, will vanish, if you let them alone. Only put yourself beyond hazard as to the real basis of matrimonial bliss, and it is scarcely to be imagined what miracles, in the way of recognizing smaller incongruities, connubial love will effect.

Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe / Nathaniel Hawthorne

A young fellow, a tobacco pedlar by trade, was on his way from Morristown, where he had dealt largely with the Deacon of the Shaker settlement, to the village of Parker's Falls, on Salmon River. He had a neat little cart, painted green, with a box of cigars depicted on each side panel, and an Indian chief, holding a pipe and a golden tobacco stalk, on the rear. The pedlar drove a smart little mare, and was a young man of excellent character, keen at a bargain, but none the worse liked by the Yankees; who, as I have heard them say, would rather be shaved with a sharp razor than a dull one. Especially was he beloved by the pretty girls along the Connecticut, whose favor he used to court by presents of the best smoking tobacco in his stock; knowing well that the country lasses of New England are generally great performers on pipes. Moreover, as will be seen in the course of my story, the pedlar was inquisitive, and something of a tattler, always itching to hear the news and anxious to tell it again.

The Minister's Black Veil / Nathaniel Hawthorne

The sexton stood in the porch of Milford meeting-house, pulling busily at the bell-rope. The old people of the village came stooping along the street. Children, with bright faces, tripped merrily beside their parents, or mimicked a graver gait, in the conscious dignity of their Sunday clothes. Spruce bachelors looked sidelong at the pretty maidens, and fancied that the Sabbath sunshine made them prettier than on week days. When the throng had mostly streamed into the porch, the sexton began to toll the bell, keeping his eye on the Reverend Mr. Hooper's door. The first glimpse of the clergyman's figure was the signal for the bell to cease its summons.

"But what has good Parson Hooper got upon his face?" cried the sexton in astonishment.

The Maypole of Merry Mount / Nathaniel Hawthorne

There is an admirable foundation for a philosophic romance in the curious history of the early settlement of Mount Wollaston, or Merry Mount. In the slight sketch here attempted, the facts, recorded on the grave pages of our New England annalists, have wrought themselves, almost spontaneously, into a sort of allegory. The masques, mummeries, and festive customs, described in the text, are in accordance with the manners of the age. Authority on these points may be found in Strutt's Book of English Sports and Pastimes.

Legends of the Province House: IV. Old Esther Dudley / Nathaniel Hawthorne

Our host having resumed the chair, he, as well as Mr. Tiffany and myself; expressed much eagerness to be made acquainted with the story to which the loyalist had alluded. That venerable man first of all saw fit to moisten his throat with another glass of wine, and then, turning his face towards our coal fire, looked steadfastly for a few moments into the depths of its cheerful glow. Finally, he poured forth a great fluency of speech. The generous liquid that he had imbibed, while it warmed his age-chilled blood, likewise took off the chill from his heart and mind, and gave him an energy to think and feel, which we could hardly have expected to find beneath the snows of fourscore winters. His feelings, indeed, appeared to me more excitable than those of a younger man; or at least, the same degree of feeling manifested itself by more visible effects than if his judgment and will had possessed the potency of meridian life. At the pathetic passages of his narrative he readily melted into tears. When a breath of indignation swept across his spirit the blood flushed his withered visage even to the roots of his white hair; and he shook his clinched fist at the trio of peaceful auditors, seeming to fancy enemies in those who felt very kindly towards the desolate old soul. But ever and anon, sometimes in the midst of his most earnest talk, this ancient person's intellect would wander vaguely, losing its hold of the matter in hand, and groping for it amid misty shadows. Then would he cackle forth a feeble laugh, and express a doubt whether his wits--for by that phrase it pleased our ancient friend to signify his mental powers--were not getting a little the worse for wear.