Showing posts with label Nathaniel Hawthorne. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nathaniel Hawthorne. Show all posts

The Old Manse / Nathaniel Hawthorne



Between two tall gate-posts of rough-hewn stone (the gate itself
having fallen from its hinges at some unknown epoch) we beheld the
gray front of the old parsonage, terminating the vista of an avenue of
black-ash trees. It was now a twelvemonth since the funeral
procession of the venerable clergyman, its last inhabitant, had turned
from that gateway towards the village burying-ground. The wheel-track
leading to the door, as well as the whole breadth of the avenue, was
almost overgrown with grass, affording dainty mouthfuls to two or
three vagrant cows and an old white horse who had his own living to
pick up along the roadside. The glimmering shadows that lay half
asleep between the door of the house and the public highway were a
kind of spiritual medium, seen through which the edifice had not quite
the aspect of belonging to the material world. Certainly it had
little in common with those ordinary abodes which stand so imminent
upon the road that every passer-by can thrust his head, as it were,
into the domestic circle.

The New Adam and Eve / Nathaniel Hawthorne



We who are born into the world's artificial system can never
adequately know how little in our present state and circumstances is
natural, and how much is merely the interpolation of the perverted
mind and heart of man. Art has become a second and stronger nature;
she is a step-mother, whose crafty tenderness has taught us to
despise the bountiful and wholesome ministrations of our true
parent. It is only through the medium of the imagination that we
can lessen those iron fetters, which we call truth and reality, and
make ourselves even partially sensible what prisoners we are. For
instance, let us conceive good Father Miller's interpretation of the
prophecies to have proved true. The Day of Doom has burst upon the
globe and swept away the whole race of men.

The Man of Adamant / Nathaniel Hawthorne



In the old times of religious gloom and intolerance lived Richard Digby,
the gloomiest and most intolerant of a stern brotherhood. His plan of
salvation was so narrow, that, like a plank in a tempestuous sea, it
could avail no sinner but himself, who bestrode it triumphantly, and
hurled anathemas against the wretches whom he saw struggling with the
billows of eternal death. In his view of the matter, it was a most
abominable crime--as, indeed, it is a great folly--for men to trust to
their own strength, or even to grapple to any other fragment of the
wreck, save this narrow plank, which, moreover, he took special care to
keep out of their reach. In other words, as his creed was like no man's
else, and being well pleased that Providence had intrusted him alone, of
mortals, with the treasure of a true faith, Richard Digby determined to
seclude himself to the sole and constant enjoyment of his happy fortune.

Little Annie's Ramble / Nathaniel Hawthorne



DING-DONG! Ding-dong! Ding-dong!

The town crier has rung his bell, at a distant corner, and little Annie
stands on her father's doorsteps, trying to hear what the man with the
loud voice is talking about. Let me listen too. O, he is telling the
people that an elephant, and a lion, and a royal tiger, and a horse with
horns, and other strange beasts from foreign countries, have come to
town, and will receive all visitors who choose to wait upon them!
Perhaps little Annie would like to go. Yes; and I can see that the
pretty child is weary of this wide and pleasant street, with the green
trees flinging their shade across the quiet sunshine, and the pavements
and the sidewalks all as clean as if the housemaid had just swept them
with her broom. She feels that impulse to go strolling away--that
longing after the mystery of the great world--which many children feel,
and which I felt in my childhood. Little Annie shall take a ramble with
me. See! I do but hold out my hand, and, like some bright bird in the
sunny air, with her blue silk frock fluttering upwards from her white
pantalets, she comes bounding on tiptoe across the street.

The Lily's Quest / Nathaniel Hawthorne



Two lovers, once upon a time, had planned a little summer-house, in
the form of an antique temple, which it was their purpose to
consecrate to all manner of refined and innocent enjoyments. There
they would hold pleasant intercourse with one another, and the circle
of their familiar friends; there they would give festivals of
delicious fruit; there they would hear lightsome music, intermingled
with the strains of pathos which make joy more sweet; there they would
read poetry and fiction, and permit their own minds to flit away in
daydreams and romance; there, in short,--for why should we shape out
the vague sunshine of their hopes?--there all pure delights were to
cluster like roses among the pillars of the edifice, and blossom ever
new and spontaneously. So, one breezy and cloudless afternoon, Adam
Forrester and Lilias Fay set out upon a ramble over the wide estate
which they were to possess together, seeking a proper site for their
Temple of Happiness. They were themselves a fair and happy spectacle,
fit priest and priestess for such a shrine; although, making poetry of
the pretty name of Lilias, Adam Forrester was wont to call her LILY,
because her form was as fragile, and her cheek almost as pale.

The Intelligence Office / Nathaniel Hawthorne



Grave figure, with a pair of mysterious spectacles on his nose and a
pen behind his ear, was seated at a desk in the corner of a
metropolitan office. The apartment was fitted up with a counter,
and furnished with an oaken cabinet and a Chair or two, in simple
and business-like style. Around the walls were stuck advertisements
of articles lost, or articles wanted, or articles to be disposed of;
in one or another of which classes were comprehended nearly all the
Conveniences, or otherwise, that the imagination of man has
contrived. The interior of the room was thrown into shadow, partly
by the tall edifices that rose on the opposite side of the street,
and partly by the immense show-bills of blue and crimson paper that
were expanded over each of the three windows. Undisturbed by the
tramp of feet, the rattle of wheels, the hump of voices, the shout
of the city crier, the scream of the newsboys, and other tokens of
the multitudinous life that surged along in front of the office, the
figure at the desk pored diligently over a folio volume, of ledger-
like size and aspect, He looked like the spirit of a record--the
soul of his own great volume made visible in mortal shape.

The Haunted Mind / Nathaniel Hawthorne



What a singular moment is the first one, when you have hardly begun to
recollect yourself after starting from midnight slumber! By unclosing
your eyes so suddenly, you seem to have surprised the personages of
your dream in full convocation round your bed, and catch one broad
glance at them before they can flit into obscurity. Or, to vary the
metaphor, you find yourself, for a single instant, wide awake in that
realm of illusions, whither sleep has been the passport, and behold
its ghostly inhabitants and wondrous scenery, with a perception of
their strangeness, such as you never attain while the dream is
undisturbed. The distant sound of a church-clock is borne faintly on
the wind. You question with yourself, half seriously, whether it has
stolen to your waking ear from some gray tower, that stood within the
precincts of your dream. While yet in suspense, another clock flings
its heavy clang over the slumbering town, with so full and distinct a
sound, and such a long murmur in the neighboring air, that you are
certain it must proceed from the steeple at the nearest corner. You
count the strokes--one--two, and there they cease, with a booming
sound, like the gathering of a third stroke within the bell.

The Hall of Fantasy / Nathaniel Hawthorne



It has happened to me, on various occasions, to find myself in a
certain edifice which would appear to have some of the
characteristics of a public exchange. Its interior is a spacious
hall, with a pavement of white marble. Overhead is a lofty dome,
supported by long rows of pillars of fantastic architecture, the
idea of which was probably taken from the Moorish ruins of the
Alhambra, or perhaps from some enchanted edifice in the Arabian
tales. The windows of this hall have a breadth and grandeur of
design and an elaborateness of workmanship that have nowhere been
equalled, except in the Gothic cathedrals of the Old World. Like
their prototypes, too, they admit the light of heaven only through
stained and pictured glass, thus filling the hall with many-colored
radiance and painting its marble floor with beautiful or grotesque
designs; so that its inmates breathe, as it were, a visionary
atmosphere, and tread upon the fantasies of poetic minds. These
peculiarities, combining a wilder mixture of styles than even an
American architect usually recognizes as allowable,--Grecian,
Gothic, Oriental, and nondescript,--cause the whole edifice to give
the impression of a dream, which might be dissipated and shattered
to fragments by merely stamping the foot upon the pavement. Yet,
with such modifications and repairs as successive ages demand, the
Hall of Fantasy is likely to endure longer than the most substantial
structure that ever cumbered the earth.

The Gorgon's Head / Nathaniel Hawthorne



Perseus was the son of Danae, who was the daughter of a king. And when
Perseus was a very little boy, some wicked people put his mother and
himself into a chest, and set them afloat upon the sea. The wind blew
freshly, and drove the chest away from the shore, and the uneasy billows
tossed it up and down; while Danae clasped her child closely to her
bosom, and dreaded that some big wave would dash its foamy crest over
them both. The chest sailed on, however, and neither sank nor was
upset; until, when night was coming, it floated so near an island that
it got entangled in a fisherman's nets, and was drawn out high and dry
upon the sand. The island was called Seriphus, and it was reigned over
by King Polydectes, who happened to be the fisherman's brother.

Footprints on the Sea-Shore / Nathaniel Hawthorne



It must be a spirit much unlike my own, which can keep itself in
health and vigor without sometimes stealing from the sultry sunshine
of the world, to plunge into the cool bath of solitude. At intervals,
and not infrequent ones, the forest and the ocean summon me--one with
the roar of its waves, the other with the murmur of its boughs--forth
from the haunts of men. But I must wander many a mile, ere I could
stand beneath the shadow of even one primeval tree, much less be lost
among the multitude of hoary trunks, and hidden from earth and sky by
the mystery of darksome foliage. Nothing is within my daily reach
more like a forest than the acre or two of woodland near some suburban
farm-house. When, therefore, the yearning for seclusion becomes a
necessity within me, I am drawn to the sea-shore, which extends its
line of rude rocks and seldom-trodden sands, for leagues around our
bay.

Fire Worship / Nathaniel Hawthorne



It is a great revolution in social and domestic life, and no less so
in the life of a secluded student, this almost universal exchange of
the open fireplace for the cheerless and ungenial stove. On such a
morning as now lowers around our old gray parsonage, I miss the
bright face of my ancient friend, who was wont to dance upon the
hearth and play the part of more familiar sunshine. It is sad to
turn from the cloudy sky and sombre landscape; from yonder hill,
with its crown of rusty, black pines, the foliage of which is so
dismal in the absence of the sun; that bleak pasture-land, and the
broken surface of the potato-field, with the brown clods partly
concealed by the snowfall of last night; the swollen and sluggish
river, with ice-incrusted borders, dragging its bluish-gray stream
along the verge of our orchard like a snake half torpid with the
cold,--it is sad to turn from an outward scene of so little comfort
and find the same sullen influences brooding within the precincts of
my study.

Fancy's Show-Box / Nathaniel Hawthorne



What is Guilt? A stain upon the soul. And it is a point of vast
interest, whether the soul may contract such stains, in all their depth
and flagrancy, from deeds which may have been plotted and resolved upon,
but which, physically, have never had existence. Must the fleshly hand
and visible frame of man set its seal to the evil designs of the soul, in
order to give them their entire validity against the sinner? Or, while
none but crimes perpetrated are cognizable before an earthly tribunal,
will guilty thoughts,--of which guilty deeds are no more than shadows,--
will these draw down the full weight of a condemning sentence, in the
supreme court of eternity? In the solitude of a midnight chamber, or in
a desert, afar from men, or in a church, while the body is kneeling, the
soul may pollute itself even with those crimes, which we are accustomed
to deem altogether carnal. If this be true, it is a fearful truth.

Edward Fane's Rosebud / Nathaniel Hawthorne



There is hardly a more difficult exercise of fancy, than, while gazing
at a figure of melancholy age, to re-create its youth, and, without
entirely obliterating the identity of form and features, to restore
those graces which time has snatched away. Some old people,
especially women, so age-worn and woful are they, seem never to have
been young and gay. It is easier to conceive that such gloomy
phantoms were sent into the world as withered and decrepit as we
behold them now, with sympathies only for pain and grief, to watch at
death-beds, and weep at funerals. Even the sable garments of their
widowhood appear essential to their existence; all their attributes
combine to render them darksome shadows, creeping strangely amid the
sunshine of human life. Yet it is no unprofitable task, to take one
of these doleful creatures, and set fancy resolutely at work to
brighten the dim eye, and darken the silvery locks, and paint the
ashen cheek with rose-color, and repair the shrunken and crazy form,
till a dewy maiden shall be seen in the old matron's elbow-chair. The
miracle being wrought, then let the years roll back again, each sadder
than the last, and the whole weight of age and sorrow settle down upon
the youthful figure.

Earth's Holocaust / Nathaniel Hawthorne



Once upon a time--but whether in the time past or time to come is a
matter of little or no moment--this wide world had become so
overburdened with an accumulation of worn-out trumpery, that the
inhabitants determined to rid themselves of it by a general bonfire.
The site fixed upon at the representation of the insurance
companies, and as being as central a spot as any other on the globe,
was one of the broadest prairies of the West, where no human
habitation would be endangered by the flames, and where a vast
assemblage of spectators might commodiously admire the show. Having
a taste for sights of this kind, and imagining, likewise, that the
illumination of the bonfire might reveal some profundity of moral
truth heretofore hidden in mist or darkness, I made it convenient to
journey thither and be present.

Dr. Bullivant / Nathaniel Hawthorne



His person was not eminent enough, either by nature or circumstance, to
deserve a public memorial simply for his own sake, after the lapse of a
century and a half from the era in which he flourished. His character,
in the view which we propose to take of it, may give a species of
distinctness and point to some remarks on the tone and composition of
New England society, modified as it became by new ingredients from the
eastern world, and by the attrition of sixty or seventy years over the
rugged peculiarities of the original settlers. We are perhaps
accustomed to employ too sombre a pencil in picturing the earlier times
among the Puritans, because at our cold distance, we form our ideas
almost wholly from their severest features.

The Dolliver Romance / Nathaniel Hawthorne



A SCENE FROM THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE.


Dr. Dolliver, a worthy personage of extreme antiquity, was aroused rather
prematurely, one summer morning, by the shouts of the child Pansie, in an
adjoining chamber, summoning old Martha (who performed the duties of
nurse, housekeeper, and kitchen-maid, in the Doctor's establishment) to
take up her little ladyship and dress her. The old gentleman woke with
more than his customary alacrity, and, after taking a moment to gather his
wits about him, pulled aside the faded moreen curtains of his ancient bed,
and thrust his head into a beam of sunshine that caused him to wink and
withdraw it again. This transitory glimpse of good Dr. Dolliver showed a
flannel night-cap, fringed round with stray locks of silvery white hair,
and surmounting a meagre and duskily yellow visage, which was crossed and
criss-crossed with a record of his long life in wrinkles, faithfully
written, no doubt, but with such cramped chirography of Father Time that
the purport was illegible.

The Christmas Banquet / Nathaniel Hawthorne



"I have here attempted," said Roderick, unfolding a few sheets of
manuscript, as he sat with Rosina and the sculptor in the summer-
house,--"I have attempted to seize hold of a personage who glides
past me, occasionally, in my walk through life. My former sad
experience, as you know, has gifted me with some degree of insight
into the gloomy mysteries of the human heart, through which I have
wandered like one astray in a dark cavern, with his torch fast
flickering to extinction. But this man, this class of men, is a
hopeless puzzle."

"Well, but propound him," said the sculptor. "Let us have an idea
of hint, to begin with."

Chippings With A Chisel / Nathaniel Hawthorne



Passing a summer, several years since, at Edgartown, on the island of
Martha's Vineyard, I became acquainted with a certain carver of
tombstones, who had travelled and voyaged thither from the interior of
Massachusetts, in search of professional employment. The speculation
had turned out so successful, that my friend expected to transmute
slate and marble into silver and gold, to the amount of at least a
thousand dollars, during the few months of his sojourn at Nantucket
and the Vineyard. The secluded life, and the simple and primitive
spirit which still characterizes the inhabitants of those islands,
especially of Martha's Vineyard, insure their dead friends a longer
and dearer remembrance than the daily novelty and revolving bustle of
the world can elsewhere afford to beings of the past. Yet while every
family is anxious to erect a memorial to its departed members, the
untainted breath of ocean bestows such health and length of days upon
the people of the isles, as would cause a melancholy dearth of
business to a resident artist in that line. His own monument,
recording his disease by starvation, would probably be an early
specimen of his skill. Gravestones, therefore, have generally been an
article of imported merchandise.

A Book of Autographs / Nathaniel Hawthorne



We have before us a volume of autograph letters, chiefly of soldiers and
statesmen of the Revolution, and addressed to a good and brave man,
General Palmer, who himself drew his sword in the cause. They are
profitable reading in a quiet afternoon, and in a mood withdrawn from
too intimate relation with the present time; so that we can glide
backward some three quarters of a century, and surround ourselves with
the ominous sublimity of circumstances that then frowned upon the
writers. To give them their full effect, we should imagine that these
letters have this moment been brought to town by the splashed and way-
worn postrider, or perhaps by an orderly dragoon, who has ridden in a
perilous hurry to deliver his despatches. They are magic scrolls, if
read in the right spirit. The roll of the drum and the fanfare of the
trumpet is latent in some of them; and in others, an echo of the oratory
that resounded in the old halls of the Continental Congress, at
Philadelphia; or the words may come to us as with the living utterance
of one of those illustrious men, speaking face to face, in friendly
communion.

Buds and Bird Voices / Nathaniel Hawthorne



Balmy Spring--weeks later than we expected and months later than we
longed for her--comes at last to revive the moss on the roof and
walls of our old mansion. She peeps brightly into my study-window,
inviting me to throw it open and create a summer atmosphere by the
intermixture of her genial breath with the black and cheerless
comfort of the stove. As the casement ascends, forth into infinite
space fly the innumerable forms of thought or fancy that have kept me
company in the retirement of this little chamber during the sluggish
lapse of wintry weather; visions, gay, grotesque, and sad; pictures
of real life, tinted with nature's homely gray and russet; scenes in
dreamland, bedizened with rainbow hues which faded before they were
well laid on,--all these may vanish now, and leave me to mould a
fresh existence out of sunshine, Brooding Meditation may flap her
dusky wings and take her owl-like Right, blinking amid the
cheerfulness of noontide.

Popular Posts