396. Ancestry. The interesting historic town of Salem, Mass., has the distinction of being the birthplace of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Here he first saw the light, July 4, 1804. He sprang from Puritan stock almost as old as the Plymouth colony. The strong traits of his ancestry, as he himself recognized, intertwined

themselves with his personality. His ancestors occupied a position of social and official prominence, and won an unenviable distinction in persecuting Quakers and killing witches. For a hundred years before his birth they followed the sea, "a grayheaded shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from the quarterdeck to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale,

which had blustered against his sire and grandsire." His father was a reserved, thoughtful man of strong will; his mother, a gifted, sensitive woman, who led the life of a recluse after her husband's death. These traits, as will be seen, were transmitted to their son in an intensified degree.

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397. School Days. Only glimpses of his boyhood — brief, but very distinct are afforded us. One of the peculiarities of my boyhood," he tells us, "was a grievous disinclination to go to school, and (Providence favoring me in this natural repugnance) I never did go half as much as other boys, partly owing to delicate health (which I made the most of for the purpose), and partly because, much of the time, there were no schools within reach." One of his early teachers was Worcester of dictionary fame. He spent a year at Raymond on the banks of Sebago Lake in Maine, where he ran wild, hunting, fishing, skating, and reading at pleasure, a period that subsequently remained with him as a happy memory. Returning to Salem, he was tutored for college, and entered Bowdoin in the autumn of 1821.

398. Careless College Career. His college career cannot be cited as a model. "I was an idle student," he confesses, "negligent of college rules and the Procrustean details of academic life, rather choosing to nurse my own fancies than to dig into Greek roots and be numbered among the learned Thebans." He played cards on the sly; he drank (a student never drinks anything stronger) "wine" and "hard cider "; he went fishing and hunting when the faculty thought he was at his books. But in spite of his easy-going habits he maintained a respectable standing in his classes, and his Latin composition and his rendering of the classics were favorably spoken of. He was an exceedingly handsome young man; and it is said that an old gypsy woman, suddenly meeting him in a lonely forest path, was startled into the question, 66 Are you a man or an angel?" Among his college associates, who afterwards achieved distinction, were Henry W. Longfellow and Franklin Pierce.

399. Inclination to Literature.

The youth of Hawthorne

gave no startling premonitions of future greatness. But there is evidence that he was not unconscious of his latent extraordinary powers; and some at least of his intimate friends discerned his literary gifts. In a letter to his mother, written in his boyhood, he says: "I do not want to be a doctor and live by men's diseases, nor a minister to live by their sins, nor a lawyer and live by their quarrels; so I don't see that there is anything left for me but to be an author. How would you like, some day, to see a whole shelf full of books written by your son, with 'Hawthorne's Works' printed on their backs? To Horatio Bridge, an old and intimate friend, he says: I know not whence your faith

came;

but while we were lads together at a country college, doing a hundred things that the faculty never heard of, or else it had been the worse for us, still it was your prognosis of your friend's destiny that he was to be a writer of fiction."

400. Reading and Observation. His youthful reading was sufficiently extensive. "The Pilgrim's Progress," as with so many others, was a favorite book. He read Scott, Rousseau, and Froissart, though he was not fond of history in general. He loved poetry; and with catholic taste he studied Thomson and Pope, as well as Milton and Shakespeare. The first book he bought with his own money was "The Faerie Queene." But it can hardly be said that he was a great lover of books. He never made any pretence to scholarship, and there are few quotations in his writings. But he was one of the keenest observers; and the books he loved most were the forms of nature and the faces of men. These he read as it were by stealth; and, excepting the mighty Shakespeare, no one else ever read them more deeply. The quiet forest and the stirring city were to him great libraries, where he traced the almost invisible writing of the Creator. Thus, as he said of the simple husbandman in "The Great Stone Face," he "had ideas unlike those of other men, not gained from books, but of a higher tone, — a tranquil and familiar majesty, as if he had been talking with the angels as his daily friends.”

401. Study and Seclusion. After his graduation, in 1825,

Hawthorne returned to his home in Salem, and for several years led a life of phenomenal seclusion and toil. His habits were almost mechanical in their regularity. He studied in the morning, wrote in the afternoon, and wandered by the seashore in the evening. He sedulously shunned society; and "destiny itself," he afterwards wrote, "has often been worsted in the attempt to get me out to dinner." But his recluse life should not be looked upon as gloomy and morbid. In pondering human life, he was indeed fond of the weird and the mysterious. He explored the hidden crypts of the soul. But his mind was far too healthy and strong to be weighed down with permanent gloom. He never lost his anchorage of common sense; and a genial humor cast its cheerful light upon his darkest musings.

402. Literary Apprenticeship. — During this period of retirement he was serving a laborious apprenticeship to his craft. Never was a writer more exacting in self-criticism. Much that he wrote was mercilessly consigned to the flames. In these years of painstaking toil, from which even the highest genius is not exempt, he acquired his exquisite sense of form, and his marvellous mastery of English. "Hawthorne's English," as Hilliard says, is "absolutely unique; very careful and exact, but never studied; with the best word always in the best place; pellucid as crystal; full of delicate and varied music; with gleams of poetry, and touches of that peculiar humor of his, which is half smile and half sigh."

403. "Twice-Told Tales." - During the period in question he published in the Token, the New England Magazine, and other periodicals a considerable number of tales. They appeared anonymously, and attracted but little attention. Hawthorne had for a good many years what he called "the distinction of being the obscurest man of letters in America." It was a grievous disappointment and humiliation. In 1837 most of these scattered productions were brought together, and published in a volume with the happy title of " Twice-Told Tales." It had but a limited circulation. While it charmed a class of cultivated, reflective readers, its very excellence prevented it from becoming widely

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popular. In a review of the book, Longfellow, with clear, critical acumen, said: "It comes from the hand of a man of genius. Everything about it has the freshness of morning and of May. These flowers and green leaves of poetry have not the dust of the highway upon them. They have been gathered fresh from the secret places of a peaceful and gentle heart. There flow deep waters, silent, calm, and cool; and the green trees look into them, and God's blue heaven.' The book, though in prose, is written, nevertheless, by a poet. He looks upon all things in the spirit of love and with lively sympathies, for to him external form is but the representation of internal being, all things having a life, and end and aim." This volume, together with a second series of Tales " published in 1842, was in truth a remarkable contribution to American literature, and, by its enduring interest, beauty, and truth, has since established itself as a classic. 404. The Boston Custom-House. The year 1838 brought an important change in Hawthorne's life. Under the Democratic administration of Van Buren, he was appointed weigher and gauger in the Boston custom-house. It was well for him that he

was thus called to common labor. He himself recognized that his life of seclusion had been sufficiently protracted. "I want to have something to do with this material world," he said. His new employment rescued him from the danger of becoming morbid, broadened his sympathies, and enriched his mind with new stores of observation and experience. He learned to know life, not as it may be conceived of in seclusion, but as it is in reality. Henceforth he was able to take up his pen with the conviction that mankind was a solid reality, and that he himself was not a dream.” 405. At Brook Farm. After two years of laborious and faithful service, during which his literary work was suspended, a change of administration resulted in his being turned out of office. He engaged in the socialistic experiment of Brook Farm; and, as we learn from his letters, he entered upon his new duties with considerable enthusiasm. He chopped hay with such "righteous vehemence " that he broke the machine in ten minutes. Armed