Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne [1 ed.]

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TALES BY

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

PRINTED IN ENGLAND AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY TRESS

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OXFORD EDITION

TALES BY

NATHANIEL HAWTHORN! SELECTED AND EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

CA 11 L VAN D O R E N

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OXFORD UNIVERSIT

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RESS

LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW COPENHAGEN NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS SHANGHAI PEKING

1921

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INTRODUCTION THE WIVES OF THE DEAD (1832 ) . MY KINSMAN , MAJOR MOLINEUX (1832 ) ROGER MALVIN S BURIAL (1832 ) . THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS (1833) THE SEVEN VAGABONDS (1833) MR. HIGGINBOTHAM S CATASTROPHE (1834 ) THE GREY CHAMPION (1835 ) XOUNG GOODMAN BROWN (1835) . . . . . WAKEFIELD (1835 ) THE AMBITIOUS GUEST (1835 ) THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT (1836 ) *THE MINISTER S BLACK VEIL (1836) THE GREAT CARBUNCLE (1837 ) . , DR. HEIDEGGER S EXPERIMENT ( 1837 ) ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS (1837 ) . LEGENDS OF THE PROVINCE HOUSE HOWE S MASQUERADE (1838 ) EDWARD RANDOLPH S PORTRAIT (1838) LADY ELEANORE S MANTLE (1838 ) OLD EsTHER )Û Diîfe?*(1839 J "THE BIRTHMÀK (1843 ) THE CELESTIATMIAILROAD (4843) . . .. . BANQUET (1844) . THE CHRISTMAS EARTH S HOLOCAUST (1844 ) . THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL (1844 ) DROWNE S WOODEN IMAGE (1844 ) . RAPPACCINI S DAUGHTER (1844 ) < . THE GREAT STONE FACE (1850)

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THE SNOW IMAGE (1850 ) ˆÄ·±½ BRAND (1851) · . FEATHERTOP (1852 )

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These thirty tales , now for the first time arranged in chronological order , have been selected as follows from the books in which Hawthorne originally assembled them :

Twice -Told Tales : The Seven Vagabonds, Mr , Higginbotham’s Catastrophe, The Grey Champion , Wakefield , The Ambitious Guest , The Maypole of Merry Mount , The Minister ’s Black Veil, The Great Carbuncle, Dr . Heidegger’s Experiment , Endicott and the Red Cross, Legends of the Province House. Mosses from an Old Manse : Roger Malvin’s Burial, Young Goodman Brown , The Birthmark , The Celestial Railroad , The Christmas Banquet , Earth ’s Holqcaust , The Artist of the Beautiful , Drowne’s Wooden Image, Rappaccini’s Daughter , Feathertop . The Snow Image , and Other Twice Told Tales : The Wives of the Dead , My Kinsman , Major Molineux , The Canterbury Pilgrims, The Great Stone Face, The Snow Image , Ethan Brand .

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INTRODUCTION NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE devoted twenty -five studious and scrupulous years to the practice of his art before he wrote The Scarlet Letter . During the entire period he produced but one novel, the abortive , undistinguished Fanshawe ; and his shorter tales, though in a sense experiments preliminary to his supreme masterpiece, have an interest quite apart from that which may be taken in them as trial flights by one of the purest and finest spirits that ever followed the craft of fiction . Hardly another novelist of high rank has been trained in seclusion as Hawthorne was. His family, one of the earliest in Salem , Massachusetts , and long among its most substantial stocks, had faded by the time its greatest member was born there , in 1804, into a vaguer status. Hawthorne’s father died young and left a widow who henceforth made her house almost a convent . Nathaniel, the first of his line to bo sedentary , without so much as a clergyman among his ancestors, fell easily into this habit of life , to which he was helped by air accident which hindered him with a slight illness between the ages of nine and twelve. Not remarkably a student , he nevertheless read widely in Irooks as ^ romantic its The Faerie Queene , ytcen aird as realistic as The Newgate Calendar by| , , , Milton | acquainted with Shakespeare Jj nyan , Thomson | Clarendon , Froissart , Rousseau , and then and later addicted to novels and romances of all sorts. At fourteen he went with his family to Maine, where he spent a year in the deep seclusion of the woods around Sebago Lake . Subsequently he declared that his ‘ cursed habits ’ of solitude had been formed in that wilderness. However this may

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be, it is certain that as a boy he delighted in the forest , which in the long run touched his imagination more deeply than the sea which had enticed his fathers and to which he himself had for a time threatened to run away. His four years of higher studies he passed at Bowdoin College, then scarcely more than an outpost of learning in the backwoods, though during Hawthorne’s residence there it had among its students a future president Franklin Pierce and a future poet Longfellow. It had as well a mildly convivial sporting set, to which Hawthorne belonged . He gambled a little, drank rather more, and skylarked a good deal in a robust, athletic, innocent way. But after his interval of society he went back to Salem at twenty-one to spend there a dozen years of solitude devoted to the task of becoming a man of letters a solitude only accen tuated by his recollections of Bowdoin and by his con sciousness of the tides of life swirling about him even in Salem and still more resonantly elsewhere in the « larger America of those expanding decades. ‘ Sometimes,’ he later wrote of his Salem years, ‘ it seemed as if I were already in the grave, with only life enough to be chilled and benumbed . But oftener I was happy at least , as happy as I then knew how to be, or was aware of the possibility of being .’ Though solitary, however, Hawthorne was not by nature morbid , and after certain early exercises in deliberate gloom he developed a quiet sunniness of temper which marked both his life and work . In the end he did not regret his long retre&i. ‘ If I had sooner made my es pe 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 fullness of time was come, I still kept the dew of my youth with the freshness of my heart.’ Hawthorne’s aloofness must not be charged to‘ any notion on his part that he was too line for the world , or even to his excessive shyness, but in part

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to his belief in the sufficing power of his imagination . ‘ I used to think I could imagine all passions, all feelings, and states of the heart and mind .’ And until he reached his full maturity at about thirty three , his imagination does seem to have been competent to sustain and interest him. It must , however , be noted that he did not confine his imagination to an exclusive diet of itself . At least once a year , ordinarily in the summer , he was likely to shake off his literary lethargy , leave Salem behind , and strike out on a gentle vagabondage through other districts of New England. His American Note - Books show him to have been an acute, observant traveller ; so do certain of his finished tales and sketches. Among the White Mountains, which during his boyhood year at Sebago Lake had filled his western horizon , he laid the scenes of The Ambitious Guest and The Great Carbuncle and The Great Stone Face . With some crossroads north of Boston he connects the meeting genially described in The Seven Vagabonds. On the island of Martha’s Vineyard he talked to the village sculptor of Chirpings with a Chisel . The Canterbury Pil grims and The Shaker Bridal resulted from a visit which he made to the Shaker community at Canterbury , New Hampshire, in 1831, though in writing the Bridal he transferred the action to another community of that sect. Greylock in the Bcrkshires, which he saw in 1838, and probably earlier, furnishes a sombre background for Ethan Brand . If the Sketches from Memory and Old Ticonderoga and My Visit to Niagara are to be taken as autobiographical, Hawthorne visited Lake Champlain and the site ef Fort Ticonderoga , travelled on the Erie Canal between Utica and Syracuse, stopped in Rochester on his way west, saw Niagara Falls, and may even have gone as far as Detroit. Without indulging in the passion for local colour which characterized a later generation, he nevertheless was genuinely attentive to the manners and costumes that fell under his eye. Merely as historian he has a larger value

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than has ordinarily been recognized . In especial he had a decided taste for low life , for toll -gatherers, pedlars, cattle -drovers, tawdry hawkers of amusement , stage-agents, tavern haunters. Nowhere else in all his short stories does he write with more warmth and sweetness than in The Seven Vagabonds when the narrator makes his plans to go off with six other chance -met nomads, leaving the tighter frame of society behind and becoming the story teller of the amiable crew. At the same time, Hawthorne employed the past of New England precisely as he did its picturesque present, looking in it for colour and drama to enrich the life of his imagina tion . ‘ The knowledge communicated by the historian and biographer,’ he wrote in one of the earliest pieces of prose known to be his, ‘ is analogous to that which wc acquire of a country by the map minute, perhaps, and accurate, but cold and naked .’ Hawthorne preferred to neglect historical narrative or analysis for the sake of reconstructing typical episodes. As late as 1849 he produced in Main Street ‘ a certain pictoiial exhibition , somewhat in the nature of a puppet -show , by means of which I propose to call up the multiform and many -coloured Past before the spectator, and show him the ghosts of his forefathers, amid a succession of historic incidents , with no greater trouble than the turning of a crank ’. Then whimsically and gaily , almost as if he were a poetical Artemus Ward , Hawthorne plays showman and comments upon successive incidents in the Main Street of Salem , revealing a genuine erudition as well as a delightfully pictorial imagination . He was not satisfied , however, to act merely the whimsical showman , but was always also dramatist and moralist, choosing from the innumerable books which he brought home from the Salem Athenaeum certain ‘ moments of drama, little episodes of controversy , clashes between the parties and ideas which divided the old New England ’. In his first story to attract attention , The Oentle Boy , he invented

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a lachrymose chronicle of the Quaker persecutions in Massachusetts ; in My Kinsman , Major Molineux , pub lished at the same time, he shows a clash between the Boston populace and an unpopular official which culminates in the quaint colonial rite of tar -and -feathcrs for the offender ; in The Grey Champion the spirit of the first days flashes up when the mysterious figure of one of the regicides, ghost or fugitive, mysteriously appears to resist the aggressions of Governor Andros. Hawthorne’s tech nique with regard to history is perhaps most clearly exhibited in The Maypole of Merry Mount , which reports the warfare between the Puritans and those merry rioters who set up a Maypole within reach and jurisdiction of the hard hands of Miles Standish and John Endicott . In Hawthorne 's treatment the affair becomes symbolical. ‘ The future complexion of New England was involved in this important quarrel . Should the grizzly saints establish their jurisdiction over the gay sinners, then would their spirits darken all the clime and make it a land of clouded visages, of hard toil , of sermon and psalm for ever. But should the banner staff of Merry Mount be fortunate, sunshine would break upon the hills, and flowers would beautify the forest, and late posterity do homage to the Maypole.’ Here, as always in these stories, lightly ironical as he might be in his treatment , Hawthorne’s sympathy lay with humane and expansive rebels against an astringent orthodox order. And that the same sympathy impelled him when it came to judging more recent events appears from The Canterbury Pilgrims , which , though merely a simple narrative of the meeting of certain persons going to enter a Shaker community and certain others just departing from it , is a lucid epigraph upon asceticism . Whether he dealt with past or present , Hawthorne returned again and again to the theme which of all themes occupied him most : the relation of the egoist, in some form or other , to his society. Sin and solitude in

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Hawthorne's stories appear as aspects of egoism. He had largely lost the Puritan conception of sin as disobedience to God , but he still retained the Puritan’s sense of the immense importance of sin . It is important, however, according to Hawthorne ’s representations of it, because it shuts a soul away from its fellows and so exposes it to the dreadful fangs of remorse and pride and selfishness and self loathing. There is Reuben Bourne in Roger Malvin’ s Burial , who, having left behind his wounded comrade and then later having been too ill to go back to his relief , cannot bring himself to tell the truth about this conduct but marries Malvin’s daughter and for years cherishes in his heart a devastating secret . Theie is Wakefield , who leaves house and wife in London to live for twenty years in the next street , not out of hatred but out of selfishness and vanity and craft. With what experience of solitariness does Hawthorne examine the possible motives of such a man as Wakefield , and with what calm insight exhibit their behaviour ! And there is the graver case of Young Goodman Brown, who during the witch - believing days of Salem also leaves house and wife, to prowl by night in the forest , to come upon a witches’ sabbath in which the most honoured citizens of Salem have a share , and to form suspicions which never again leave him but for ever blacken for him all the surfaces of life. Goodman Brown for his sins of suspicion and unholy curiosity incurs the severest fate of the egoist ; he lives desperately and dies in gloom . The Reverend Mr . Hooper in The Minister’ s Black Veil does no more , out of some whim of conscience, than to insist upon wearing an actual veil as a symbol of the veil which hides the secret soul of every individual from the lest of mankind ; yet irWWlfes terror into all who see it and in the end tinges hi3 existence with a gloom nearly as dreadful as that of Goodman Brown . Pride is the principal sin set forth in Rappaccini’ s Daughter , most splendid of Hawthorne’s short stories ; the story of a girl

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who, like Mithridates, has been fed with poisons so long that no poison can hurt her. Her father , the experimenter , imagines that he has endowed her with a supreme attribute . But instead of this she turns out to have become herself a poison and to have been made utterly wretched by a quality which shuts her out from the simple , friendly, common , natural world . To undo the damage , so that her lover may approach her, she drinks an antidote , which to her is fatal, and dies the innocent sacrifice of a prideful attempt to transcend nature . Beatrice herself is guiltless ; in Ethan Brand the victim of pride has only himself to blame himself and the notion of an unpardonable sin which was a fetish among the older Calvinists. Ethan , certain that he is a sinner, comes gradually to hug the delusion that he is a sinner without equal. He grows desperate to the point of suicide , yet still feeds upon the pride of supremacy in sin . The man so long boasts in his heart over a sin as legendary as witchcraft that in the end he has committed a really unpardonable sin . In sharpest contrast to this story Hawthorne set that of The Great Stone Face , written at almost the same time , just before ho gave up the short story for the novel . Ernest is a pure nature without pride . He has grown up in a valley remote from all human craft , dominated by the Great Stone Face which speaks to him nothing but grandeur and sweetness and magnanimity and simplicity . Like the other inhabi tants of the valley he constantly expects that some day the Face will have a human counterpart , and though he finally himself fulfils the expectation , he is so free from pride that he cannot credit the simple miracle . Without question the deep interest which Hawthorne took in pride and the effects of solitary introspection came from his own manner of life. He looked in his heart in solitude and wrote. But as he sided always against egoism, he kept himself , by the outlet which his stories furnished as well as by his reasoned principles, purged of the muddy

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dregs which might otherwise have accumulated in him. Nor was it only pride in its most evil aspects that interested him ; he studied also the folly and irony of that weakness . In The Ambitious Guest his young hero, for all his impassioned confidence in a great career, is winked out by an ironical avalanche. The searchers for the Great Carbuncle in their various fashions are unable to make any use of the jewel when at last they have discovered it . So in Dr . Heidegger’ s Experiment , though certain vain old people drink the elixir which restores their youth to them , they misuse it as if they had never learned wisdom with age and so promptly grow old again. After Hawthorne’s marriage in 1842 he came to see the folly of pride in new aspects. One of them appears in The Birthmark , wherein Aylmer, crazed by a lust for perfection, cannot endure the mark upon the cheek of his otherwise flawless wife , and experiments with schemes for removing it until he brings her to her death when , indeed , the birthmark disappears. This is the same blind folly as Rappaccini’s, imagined by Hawthorne the next year after he imagined Aylmer ’s. A similar madness lies behind The Artist of the Beautiful , written about the same time and narrating the career of a man who gives all his youth and surrenders all sub ordinate felicities to the making of a mechanical butterfly . Owen Warland , however, has an easier fate than Aylmer and Rappaccini ; he has experimented with machinery , not women ; and when at last he sees his dainty masterpiece destroyed it is with a calm spirit , for he has actually achieved , the beautiful and now need not worry about the symbol so long as he has the vision intact . This same year, 1844, saw Hawthorne writing another little allegory of the artistic temper, Drowne’ s Wooden Image , wherein a colonial wood -carver is by the spectacle of marvellous beauty for once lifted up and rapt out of his humdrum self to a mood in which he accomplishes what he had never accomplished before and could never repeat thereafter . To

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that same year likewise belongs The Christmas Banquet , with its presentation of what had now come to seem to Hawthorne the most pitiful of all beings an individual made immedicably wretched by reason of an inner coldness and emptiness : ‘ a feeling Gervayse Hastings says , ‘ as if what should be my heart were a thing of vapour a haunting perception of unreality ! Thus seeming to possess all that other men have all that men aim at I have really possessed nothing, neither joy nor griefs. All things, all persons . . have been like shadows flickering on the wall.’ Compare with this a passage Hawthorne wrote in his diary after he had fallen in love with the woman whom he subsequently married : ‘ 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.’ These words form Hawthorne’s commentary upon the transforming elements which came into his mind and imagination about the year 1837, when, having published the first series of Twice -Told Tales, he was led to renew a childhood acquaintance with Sophia Peabody which now speedily grew into a profound and tender passion . The too stiff mould of his melancholy was breaking up. Indeed , the year before he had left Salem for Boston for a few months spent at hack journalism , and he had shortly after so far compromised with society as to write the first of his numerous books for children. Love and the modest fame which Twice Told Tales brought him marked the close of his first period . His journal during 1838, when he made an expedition into western Massachusetts, shows him more sharp-eyed than ever before in his observation of external matters. The necessity of earning money if he were to change his state of lover for that of husband also urged him into wider contact with

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the world which he had neglected in Salem . He thought of going as historian on a South Sea Exploring Expedition then being planned ; he actually became weigher and gauger in the Boston Custom House, where he served over two years ; this uncongenial post he left to go to Brook Farm , not because he was particularly a transcendentalist but because he hoped , somewhat dimly , that there he might find a solution of his economic problems ; a year, not entirely passed in the community, sufficed him, and in 1842 he risked a marriage which turned out an exquisite, permanent felicity. The same year he published a second series of Twice -Told Tales and went to live at Concord , where Emerson and Thoreau then lived and where, besides some further hack work, Hawthorne wrote Mosses from an Old Manse , published in 1846, when he went back to Salem as surveyor of the Custom House. During his three years at this dusty, musty post he lost practically all his interest in short stories and sketches ; the volume called The Snow Image and Other Twice Told Tales and issued in 1852 was largely old matter dug up. And it was dug up in considerable measure because of the demand for more books by the man who, dismissed from the Salem Custom House two years before, had proceeded to write The Scarlet Letter and had become a world figure henceforth devotfed to the larger dimensions of romance. Poe, writing in 1842, declared that A Bill from the Town Pump had ‘ attracted more of public notice than any other of Mr. Hawthorne’s compositions ’. He praised his rival’s essays for their happy union of originality and repose , but, passing promptly over them , he proceeded to the tales, thus anticipating the judgement of posterity, which requires to be reminded that Hawthorne during his forma tive years wrote sketches and essays as often as fiction. Irving was then still the reigning fashion among American writers of a fastidious inclination , and his followers Hawthorne one of them wrote engaging essays on all

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manner of topics, topographical, moral, sentimental , with a particular bent toward whimsical characterization and gently luscious description . To this fashion belong the numerous informal studies which Hawthorne issued side by side with his tales : Sights from, a Steeple , The Haunted Mind , A Rill from the Town Pump , Sketches from Memory , Sunday at Home , The Toll -Gatherer’ s Day , Chippings with a Chisel , The Procession of Life , Buds and Bird Voices , Fire Worship , Main Street a series really culminating in the superb essay introductory to Mosses from an Old Manse , almost incomparably rich with its atmosphere of country reverie, and that introductory to The Scarlet Letter , almost incomparably rich with its chuckling mirth and its comic presentation of Hawthorne’s colleagues at the Salem Custom House . Such sketches Hawthorne wrote most frequently before he collected the second volume of Twice -Told Tales , though he had a temporary revival of interest in the form during his happy days in Concord. Thereafter he tended more and more to confine description and disquisition to his diary and to appear in public only when he had a story to tell . The truth is, description and disquisition were only the raw materials of Hawthorne’s art , and when his faculty roused itself out of its hours of brooding to a point of creative excitement it was as narratives that his con ceptions came. Scattered throughout his Note - Books are hints for stories that he jotted down as they occurred to him . Many of them seem unpromising enough, and it must have been some consciousness of this which so often led him to suggest to himself the need of finding a moral to fit the original image or incident. For instance in 1836 : ‘ A snake taken into a man’s stomach and nourished there from fifteen years to thirty-five, tormenting him most horribly. A type of envy or some other evil passion ’ the germ of the story Egotism ; or , The Bosom Serpent , published seven years later. Hawthorne had , however,

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what was decidedly better than this disposition to find a moral for his matter : he had a taste which assisted him to disregard the more trifling suggestions that his books or his moods occasionally made to his imagination . His taste resided where it could do most good in his imagination itself . If that was rather fitful during his long experimental years, and if it left him for intervals of depression or positive flatness, it still had an instinctive feeling with regard to its own powers and did not flutter hither and thither after every false light . The anecdote of Hawthorne’s declining to use the Evangeline story, which he heard before Longfellow and gave up to the poet , is perhaps a case in point. Longfellow might be content with a plot which was mere pathos, mere innocence harmed by malicious accident ; but Hawthorne’s imagination needed elements more complex before it could be greatly stirred. It needed clash or contrast ; it needed the shock of true tragedy or the touch of essential irony ; it cared less for even the most vivid historical or psychological drama as drama than for the sparks of revelation which might be thrown off when doctrine met doctrine or will smote will. It is of course a vulgar error to lay too much stress upon the mere ‘ morals ’ of Hawthorne’s plots. He himself told his wife that he was rather ashamed of the * mechanical structure ’ of The Great Stone Face , ‘ the moral being so plain and manifest ’. In enough instances, however, his allegories are hardly less obvious than here. Only a genius could have succeeded with plots so capable as his of being reduced with a touch of analysis to moral maxims. While hi's better stories have broader bases than some of the more negligible remainder, even they seem merely to have translated bald formula into lovely form. Goodman Brown’s wife Faith, Mr. Hooper’s veil, Lady Eleanore’s mantle, Georgiana Aylmer’s birthmark , Owen Warland’s butterfly, the snow image, the scarecrow Feathertop all

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these are symbols as easy to make out as a child’s riddle. And yet so completely, so ripely and roundly have they been involved in the organic unity of their stories that they show hardly more than a skeleton shows underneath the flesh which it supports in a beautiful body. Faith Brown ’s pink ribbons and her wifely perturbations are as real and vivid as if allegory had never been invented. This homeliness, indeed , convinces more readily than does the historical hauteur of Lady Eleanore , but , for a wonder, hardly more than the proud , devoted, Griselda like patience of Aylmer’s wife. By some almost incredible alchemy the story of Mr . Hooper transmutes his veil into an appurten ance of a drama of credible passion ; the story of Owen Warland fits his mechanical masterpiece into a human setting ; and the story of the snow image so realizes the domestic circle which admits the image that its icy and temporary unreality becomes by contrast an unimportant matter . By nothing does Hawthorne’s true nature better reveal itself than by the curves and colours with which he enriched his visions of human life . Living as he" did in a Puritan village , he might have gone no farther than his moralisms had he not been an incorrigible artist ; living as he did in solitude he might have fancied that his bare visions would be as important to others as they were to him and might have omitted to adorn them. But he was an artist, and his methods did not allow him to separate the body from the soul of his visions. His ideas for stories once having occurred to , him , they sank deep into his consciousness and there lay for months, for years, growing as a pearl grows in its living bed. The contours and the hues of one of Hawthorne’s stories are consequently the very stuff of Hawthorne himself . However simple might be the first hint , the original irritant, the ultimate object is a thing of complex and subtle beauty . His style is naturally a large element of the mystery. With Irving among the older American classics Hawthorne

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shares almost alone the honour of having been able to write a perfect page of prose. His style is the firm , steady utterance of a large, masculine spirit ; it has at times an unearthly magic, but never those bursts of purple which imply drab before and after ; rich in texture, it still fits its themes without one wrinkle of stiffness ; never nimbly colloquial, it is nevertheless quite flexible enough to catch the accents of impassioned as well as of reflective human speech . It has a larger range than is commonly recognized : it can adapt itself to the racy ingenuities of Mr . Higgin botham’ s Catastrophe , to the encrusted traditions of Endicott and the Red Cross and the Legends of the Province House , to the satirical allegory of The Celestial Railroad ( that quaint modernization of The Pilgrim’ s Progress ) and Earth’ s Holocaust , to the cloying atmosphere of Rappaccini’ s Daughter and the pellucid mountain air of The Great Stone Face , to the tragedy and despair of Young Goodman Brown or Ethan Brand , to the light, gay, allusive fancifulness of The Snow Image and Feathertop . Although it gained some deeper notes as Hawthorne grew in power , or rather, although it latterly struck those deeper notes more frequently, it was a mature and competent style before ho was thirty . His earlier stories needed hardly any revision from him when he issued them in the volumes which rescued them from the magazines and annuals of their nativity. So far as evidence serves, he seems to have written rapidly and with little hesitation once he set pen to paper ; but as he had always waited until he was thoroughly ready to write, he moved .with the most un hurried pace. ‘ The absence of effort ’, as Poe said , ‘ is too obvious to be mistaken.’ Effort is absent, however , because Hawthorne’s mind and imagination are strong ; as if to use a somewhat fanciful image he were a runner who carried thought in one hand and beauty in the other and yet never stumbled or panted in his course. It is evidence, too, of Hawthorne’s strength , as of the singleness of his

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personality, that he makes relatively little of the presence just ‘ beneath the upper stream of the tranquil thesis as Poe called it , of the moral or intellectual suggestion . Hawthorne does not shrink from an occasional comment upon the bearings of a tale, but in the main he keeps silence in the apparent strong, quiet confidence that the tale will reveal its own import . His essential qualities as a stylist are the beauty and strength which are both born of quietness. Henry James in his study of Hawthorne could never leave off talking about the man’s provincialism , which to that travelled critic seemed an indelible blot. As a matter of fact , the perfect flavour of Hawthorne derives from just the touch of provincial angularity in him, an angularity somewhat more marked in his earlier work than in his later. Much as his ultimate accomplishment depends upon the passion and experience which came to Hawthorne with love and marriage and official duties, he still lost in these greater days a little of the keener, wilder tang of his unmodified temperament. Readers who know Hawthorne best find themselves occasionally disposed to return, even from The Scarlet Letter , to such stories as The Wives of the Dead , with its singularly affecting plain action and its imaginative close ; or as the always exquisite Seven Vaga bonds , with its teasing hint of autobiography, and that felicitous exordium : ‘ Wandering alone in the spring of my youth and the summer of the year, I came one after noon to a point which gave me the choice of three directions ’ ; or as Young Goodman Brown , with its profound tragedy set with such wizardry of dark enchantment in that dim, encroaching forest which was a part of what Cotton Mather had in mind when he said : ‘ The New Englanders are a people of God settled in those, which were once the Devil’ s Territories ’ ; or as The Maypole of Merry Mount , with its little colonial squabble seen through a temperament which has raised it to universal significance

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and has rounded it with rich , bright beauty. Such stories have in them at once the naï ve coolness and the sharp sting of youth ; they exhibit their world under a more brilliant sun than do the novels ; the edges of their irony are not so deeply concealed as Hawthorne eventually learned to keep his irony. He became, of course, greater in the end , as he became, for that matter, gayer in one set of moods and graver in another ; but his genius never flashed out in more natural moments than in certain of these provincial tales. CARL VAN DOREN. NEW YORK , 1 April 1921

TALES THE WIVES OF THE DEAD THE following story, the simple and domestic incidents of which may be deemed scarcely worth relating, after such a lapse of time, awakened some degree of interest , a hundred years ago, in a principal seaport of the Bay Province. The rainy twilight of an autumn day, a parlour on the second floor of a small house, plainly furnished , as beseemed the middling circumstances of its inhabitants, yet decorated with little curiosities from beyond the sea , and a few delicate specimens of Indian manufacture , these are the only particulars to be premised in regard to scene and season . Two young and comely women sat together by the fireside, nursing their mutual and peculiar sorrows. They were the recent brides of two brothers, a sailor and a landsman, and two successive days had brought tidings of the death of each, by the chances of Canadian warfare and the tempestuous Atlantic. The universal sympathy excited by this bereavement drew numerous condoling guests to the habitation of the widowed sisters. Several, among whom was the minister , had remained till the verge of evening ; when , one by one , whispering many comfortable passages of Scripture, that were answered by more abundant tears, they took their leave, and departed to their own happier homes. The mourners, though not insensible to the kindness of their friends, had yearned to be left alone . United, as they had been, by the relationship of the living, and now more closely so by that of the «dead , each felt as if whatever consolation her grief admitted were to be found in the bosom of the other . They joined their hearts, and wept together silently. But after an hour of such indulgence, one of the sisters, all of whose emotions were influenced by her mild , quiet , yet not feeble character , began to recol lect the precepts of resignation and endurance which piety had taught her , when she did not think to need them . Her misfortune, besides, as earliest known , should earliest cease to interfere with her regular course of duties ; accordingly.

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having placed the table before the fire, and arranged a frugal meal, she took the hand of her companion. ‘ Come, dearest sister ; you have eaten not a morsel to-day,’ she said. ‘ Arise, I pray you , and let us ask a blessing on that which is provided for us.’ Her sister -in -law was of a lively and irritable temperament , and the first pangs of her sorrow had been expressed by shrieks and passionate lamentation . She now shrunk from Mary’s words , like a wounded sufferer from a hand that revives the throb. ‘ There is no blessing left for me, neither will I ask it ! ’ cried Margaret, with a fresh burst of tears. Would it were His will that I might never taste food more ! ’ Yet she trembled at these rebellious expressions, almost as soon as they were uttered , and , by degrees, Mary succeeded in bringing her sister’s mind nearer to the situation of her own . Time went on , and their usual hour of repose arrived . The brothers and their brides , entering the married state with no more than the slender means which then sanctioned such a step, had confederated themselves in one household , with equal rights to the parlour, and claiming exclusive privileges in two sleeping-rooms con tiguous to it . Thither the widowed ones retired , after heaping ashes upon the dying embers of their fire , and placing a lighted lamp upon the hearth . The doors of both chambers were left open , so that a part of the interior of each, and the beds with their unclosed curtains, were reciprocally visible. Sleep did not steal upon the sisters at one and the same time. Mary experienced the effect often consequent upon grief quietly borne , and soon sunk into temporary forgetfulness, while Margaret became more disturbed and feverish , in proportion as the night advanced with its deepest and stillest hours. She lay listening to the drops of rain , that came dowii in monotonous succession , unswayed by a breath of wind ; and a nervous impulse continually caused her to lift her head from the pillow , and gaze into Mary’s chamber and the intermediate apartment. The cold light of the lamp threw the shadows of the furniture up against the wall , stamping them immovably there , except when they were shaken by a sudden flicker of the flame. Two vacant arm -chairs were in their old positions on opposite sides of the hearth , where the brothers had been wont to sit in young and laughing dignity, as heads 1

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of families ; two humbler seats were near them, the true thrones of that little empire, where Mary and herself had exercised in love a power that love had won. The cheerful radiance of the fire had shone upon the happy circle, and the dead glimmer of the lamp might have befitted their reunion now . While Margaret groaned in bitterness, she heard a knock at the street -door. ‘ How would my heart have leapt at that sound but yesterday ! ’ thought she, remembering the anxiety with which she had long awaited tidings from her husband . ‘ I care not for it now ; let them begone, for I will not arise.’ But even while a sort of childish frotfulness made her thus resolve, she was breathing hurriedly, and straining her ears to catch a repetition of the summons. It is difficult to be convinced of the death of one whom we have deemed another self . The knocking was now renewed in slow and regular strokes, apparently given with the soft end of a doubled fist , and was accompanied by words, faintly heard through several thicknesses of wall. Margaret looked to her sister’s chamber, and beheld her still lying in the depths of sleep. She arose, placed her foot upon the floor, and slightly arrayed herself , trembling between fear and eagerness as she did so. ‘ Heaven help me ! ’ sighed she. ‘ I have nothing loft to fear , and methinks I am ten times more a coward than ever.’ Seizing the lamp from the hearth, she hastened to the window that overlooked the street door. It was a lattice, turning upon hinges ; and having thrown it back , she stretched her head a little way into the moist atmosphere. A lantern was reddening the front of the house, and melting its light in the neighbouring puddles, while a deluge of darkness overwhelmed every other object . As the window grated on its hinges, a man in a broad - brimmed hat and blanket -coat stepped fronî under the shelter of the pro jecting story , and looked upward to discover whom his application had aroused. Margaret knew him as a friendly innkeeper of the town. ‘ What would you have, Goodman Parker ? ’ cried the widow. ‘ Lackaday, is it you , Mistress Margaret ? ’ replied the innkeeper. ‘ I was afraid it might be your sister Mary ; for I hate to see a young woman in trouble, when I haven’t a word of comfort to whisper her.’

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‘ For Heaven’s sake, what news do you bring ? ’ screamed Margaret. ‘ Why , there has been an express through the town within this half - hour,’ said Goodman Parker , ‘ travelling from the eastern jurisdiction with letters from the governor and council. He tarried at my house to refresh himself with a drop and a morsel, and I asked him what tidings on the frontiers. He tells me we had the better in the skirmish you wot of , and that thirteen men reported slain are well and sound, and your husband among them. Besides, he is appointed of the escort to bring the captivated Frenchers and Indians homo to the province jail. I judged you wouldn’t mind being broke of your rest , and so I stepped over to tell you . Good -night.’ So saying, the honest man departed ; and his lantern gleamed along the street, bringing to view indistinct shapes of things, and the fragments of a world , like order glimmering through chaos, or memory roaming over the past. But Margaret stayed not to watch these picturesque effects. Joy flashed into her heart, and lighted it up at once ; and breathless, and with winged steps, she flew to the bedside of her sister. She paused , however, at the door of the chamber, while a thought of pain broke in upon her. ‘ Poor Mary ! ’ said she to herself . ‘ Shall I waken her , to feel her sorrow sharpened by my happiness ? No ; I will keep it within my own bosom till the morrow.’ She approached the bed , to discover if Mary’s sleep were peaceful. Her face was turned partly inward to the pillow, and had been hidden there to weep ; but a look of motionless contentment was now visible upon it, as if her heart, like a deep lake, had grown calm because its dead had sunk down so far within . Happy is it , and strange, that the lighter sorrows are those from which dreams are chiefly fabricated i Margaret shrunk from disturbing her sister -in -law, and felt as if her own better fortune had rendered her involuntarily unfaithful, and as if altered and diminished affection must be the consequence of the disclosure she had to make. With a sudden step she turned away. But joy could not long be repressed , even by circumstances that would have excited heavy grief at another moment. Her mind was thronged with delightful thoughts, till sleep stole on , and transformed them to visions, more delightful and more wild , like the

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breath of winter ( but what a cold comparison !) working fantastic tracery upon a window. When the night was far advanced, Mary awoke with a sudden start . A vivid dream had latterly involved her in its unreal life, of which , however , she could only remember that it had been broken in upon at the most interesting point. For a little time , slumber hung about her like a morning mist , hindering her from perceiving the distinct outline of her situation . She listened with imperfect consciousness to two or three volleys of a rapid and eager knocking ; and first she deemed the noise a matter of course, like the breath she drew ; next, it appeared a thing in which she had no concern ; and lastly, she became aware that it was a summons necessary to be obeyed . At the same moment , the pang of recollection darted into her mind ; the pall of sleep was thrown back from the face of grief ; the dim light of the chamber, and the objects therein revealed , had retained all her suspended ideas, and restored them as soon as she unclosed her eyes. Again there was a quick peal upon the street -door. Fearing that her sister would also be disturbed , Mary wrapped herself in a cloak and hood , took the lamp from the hearth , and hastened to the window. By some accident, it had been left unhasped , and yielded easily to her hand . ‘ Who ’s there ? ’ asked Mary, trembling as she looked forth. The storm was over , and the moon was up ; it shone upon broken clouds above , and below upon houses black with moisture, and upon little lakes of the fallen rain, curling into silver beneath the quick enchantment of a breeze. A young man in a sailor’s dress, wet as if he had come out of the depths of the sea , stood alone under the window . Mary recognized him as one whose livelihood was gained by short voyages along the coast ; nor did she forget that, previous to ner marriage, he had been an unsuccessful wooer of her own . ‘ What do you seek here, Stephen ? ’ said she. ‘ Cheer up, Mary, for I seek to comfort you,’ answered the rejected lover. ‘ You must know I got home not ten minutes ago, and the first thing my good mother told me was the news about your husband. So, without saying a word to the old woman , I clapped on my hat , and Tan out of the house . I couldn ’t have slept a wink before speaking to you , Mary , for the sake of old times.’

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‘ Stephen , I thought better of you ! ’ exclaimed the widow, with gushing tears and preparing to close the lattice ; for she was no whit inclined to imitate the first wife of Zadig. ‘ But stop, and hear my story out,’ cried the young sailor. I tell you we spoke a brig yesterday afternoon , bound in from Old England. And who do you think I saw standing on deck , well and hearty , only a bit thinner than he was five months ago ? ’ Mary leaned from the window, but could not speak . ‘ Why , it was your husband himself ,’ continued the generous seaman . ‘ He and three others saved themselves on a spar, when the Blessing turned bottom upwards. The brig will beat into the bay by daylight, with this wind, and you’ll see him here to-morrow. There ’s the comfort I bring you , Mary , and so good -night .’ He hurried away , while Mary watched him with a doubt of waking reality, that seemed stronger or weaker as he alternately entered the shade of the houses, or emerged into the broad streaks of moonlight . Gradually, however, a blessed flood of conviction swelled into her heart , in strength enough to overwhelm her , had its increase been more abrupt . Her first impulse was to rouse her sister in law, and communicate the new - born gladness. She opened the chamber door, which had been closed in the course of the night , though pot latched , advanced to the bedside , and was about to lay her hand upon the slumberer’s shoulder . But then she remembered that Margaret would awake to thoughts of death and woe, rendered not the less bitter by their contrast with her own felicity. She suffered the rays of the lamp to fall upon the unconscious form of the be reaved one. Margaret lay in unquiet sleep , and the drapery was displaced around her ; her young cheek was rosy tinted, and her lips half opened in a vivid smile ; an expression of joy , debarredi ts passage by her sealed eyelids, struggled forth like incense from the whole countenance. ‘ My poor sister ! you will waken too soon from that happy dream ,’ thought Mary. Before retiring , she set down the lamp, and endeavoured to arrange the bedclothes so that the chill air might not do harm to the feverish slumberer. But her hand trembled against Margaret’s neck, a tear also fell upon her cheek , and she suddenly awoke.

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MY KINSMAN , MAJOR MOLINEUX 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 general 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 Hutchin son 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 favoured 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 . It was near nine o’clock of a moonlight evening, when a boat crossed the ferry with a single passenger , who had obtained his conveyance at that unusual hour by the promise of an extra fare . While he stood on the landing place , searching in either pocket for the means of fulfilling his agreement , the ferryman lifted a lantern, by the aid of which , and the newly risen moon , he took a very accurate survey of the stranger’s figure. He was a youth of barely (

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eighteen years, evidently country bred, and now, as it should seem , upon his first visit to town . He was clad in a coarse grey coat, well worn , but in excellent repair ; his under garments were durably constructed of leather, and fitted tight to a pair of serviceable and well shaped limbs ; his stockings of blue yarn were the incontrovertible work of a mother or a sister ; and on his head was a three cornered hat , which in its better days had perhaps sheltered the graver brow of the lad ’s father. Under his left arm was a heavy cudgel, formed of an oak sapling, and retaining a part of the hardened root ; and his equipment was completed by a wallet, not so abundantly stocked as to incommode the vigorous shoulders on which it liung. Brown , curly hair, well-shaped features, and bright , cheer ful eyes were nature’s gifts, and worth all that art could have done for his adornment. The youth , one of whose names was Robin , finally drew from his pocket the half of a little province bill of five shillings, which , in the depreciation of that sort of currency, did but satisfy the ferryman’s demand , with the surplus of a sexangular piece of parchment, valued at three pence. He then walked forward into the town , with as light a step as if his day’s journey had not already exceeded thirty miles, and with as eager an eye as if he were entering London city, instead of the little metropolis of a New England colony. Before Robin had proceeded far, however, it occurred to him that he knew not whither to direct his steps ; so he paused , and looked up and down the narrow street, scrutinizing the small and mean wooden buildings that were scattered on cither side . ‘ This low hovel cannot be my kinsman’s dwelling,’ thought he, ‘ nor yonder old house, where the moonlight enters at the broken casement ; and truly I see none hereabouts that might be worthy of him . It would have been wise to inquire my way of the ferryman, and doubtless ho would have gone with me, and earned a shilling from the Major for his pains. But the next man I meet will do as well.’ He resumed his walk , and was glad to perceive that the street now became wider , and the houses more respectable in their appearance. He soon discerned a figure moving on moderately in advance , and hastened his steps to over take it. As Robin drew nigh , he saw that the passenger

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was a man in years, with a full periwig of grey hair , a wide skirted coat of dark cloth , and silk stockings rolled above his knees. He carried a long and polished cane, which he struck down perpendicularly before him , at every step ; and at regular intervals he uttered two successive hems, of a peculiarly solemn and sepulchral intonation . Having made these observations, Robin laid hold of the skirt of the old man’s coat , just when the light from the open door and windows of a barber’s shop fell upon both their figures. ‘ Good evening to you, honoured sir ,’ said he, making a low bow, and still retaining his hold of the skirt. ‘ I pray you tell me whereabouts is the dwelling of my kinsman, Major Molineux.’ The youth’s question was uttered very loudly ; and one of the barbers, whose razor was descending on a well soaped chin , and another who was dressing a Ramillies wig, left their occupations, and came to the door . The citizen , in the meantime, turned a long-favoured counten ance upon Robin , and answered him in a tone of excessive anger and annoyance. His two sepulchral hems, however, broke into the very centre of his rebuke, with most singular effect , like a thought of the cold grave obtruding among wrathful passions. ‘ Let go my garment , fellow ! I tell you , I know not the man you speak of . What ! I have authority, I have hem , hem authority ; and if this be the respect you show for your betters, your feet shall be brought acquainted with the stocks by daylight, to morrow morning ! ’ Robin released the old man’s skirt, and hastened away, pursued by an ill - mannered roar of laughter from the barber’s shop. He was at first considerably surprised by the result of his question , but , being a shrewd youth , soon thought himself able to account for the mystery . ‘ This is some country representative,’ was his conclusion , ‘ who has never seen the inside of my kinsman’s door , and lacks the breeding to answer a stranger civilly. The man is old , or verily I might be tempted to turn back and smite him on the nose . Ah, Robin, Robin ! even the barber ’s boys laugh at you for choosing such a guide ! You will be wiser in time, friend Robin .’ He now became entangled in a succession of crooked and narrow streets, which crossed each other, and mean dered at no great distance from the water side. The smell

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of tar was obvious to his nostrils, the masts of vessels pierced the moonlight above the tops of the buildings, and the numerous signs, which Robin paused to read, informed him that he was near the centre of business. But the streets were empty, the shops were closed , and lights were visible only in the second stories of a few dwelling- houses. At length , on the corner of a narrow lane, through which he was passing, he beheld the broad countenance of a British hero swinging before the door of an inn , whence proceeded the voices of many guests. The casement of one of the lower windows was thrown back, and a very thin curtain permitted Robin to distinguish a party at supper, round a well -furnished table. The fragrance of the good cheer steamed forth into the outer air , and the youth could not fail to recollect that the last remnant of his travelling stock of provision had yielded to his morning appetite, and that noon had found and left him dinnerless. ‘ 0, that a parchment three - penny might give me a right to sit at yonder table ! ’ said Robin, with a sigh . But the Major will make me welcome to the best of his victuals ; so I will even step boldly in , and inquire my way to his dwelling.’ He entered the tavern , and was guided by the murmur of voices and the fumes of tobacco to the public-room . It was a long and low apartment , with oaken walls, grown dark in the continual smoke, and a floor which was thickly sanded , but of no immaculate purity. A number of persons the larger part of whom appeared to be mariners, or in some way connected with the sea occupied the wooden benches, or leather - bottomed chairs, conversing on various matters, and occasionally lending their attention to some topic of general interest . Three or four little groups were draining as many bowls of punch , which the West India trade had long since made a familiar drink in the colony. Others , who had the appearance of men who lived by regular 'and laborious handicraft, preferred the insulated bliss of an unshared potation, and became more taciturn under its influence . Nearly all, in short , evinced a predilection for the Good Creature in some of its various shapes, for this is a vice to which, as Fast -day sermons of a hundred years ago will testify, we have a long hereditary claim . The only guests to whom Robin’s sympathies inclined him were two or three sheepish countrymen, who were using the 1

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inn somewhat after the fashion of a Turkish caravansary ; they had gotten themselves into the darkest comer of the room , and, heedless of the Nicotian atmosphere, were supping on the bread of their own ovens, and the bacon cured in their own chimney-smoke. But though Robin felt a sort of brotherhood with these strangers, his eyes were attracted from them to a person who stood near the door , holding whispered conversation with a group of ill dressed associates. His features were separately striking almost to grotesqueness, and the whole face left a deep impression on the memory. The forehead bulged out into a double prominence, with a vale between ; the nose came boldly forth in an irregular curve, and its bridge was of more than a finger’s breadth ; the eyebrows were deep and shaggy, and the eyes glowed beneath them like fire in a cave. While Robin deliberated of whom to inquire respecting his kinsman’s dwelling , he was accosted by the innkeeper , a little man in a stained white apron , who had come to pay his professional welcome to the stranger. Being in the second generation from a French Protestant , he seemed to have inherited the courtesy of his parent nation ; but no variety of circumstances was ever known to change his voice from the one shrill note in which he now addressed Robin . ‘ From the country, I presume, sir ? ’ said he, with a profound bow. ‘ Beg leave to congratulate you on your arrival, and trust you intend a long stay with us. Fine town here, sir , beautiful buildings, and much that may interest a stranger . May I hope for the honour of your commands in respect to supper ? ’ ‘ The man sees a family likeness ! the rogue has guessed that I am related to the Major ! ’ thought Robin , who had hitherto experienced little superfluous civility . All eyes were now turned on the country lad, standing at the door, in his worn three-cornered hat, grey coat , leather breeches, and blue yarn stockings, leaning on an oaken cudgel , and bearing a wallet on his back . Robin replied to the courteous innkeeper , with such an assumption of confidence as befitted the Major’s relative. ‘ My honest friend ,’ he said , ‘ I shall make it a point to patronize your hpu e on some occasion , when ’ here he could not help lowering his voice ‘ when I may have more

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than a parchment three - pence in my pocket . My present business,’ continued he, speaking with lofty confidence, ‘ is merely to inquire my way to the dwelling of my kins man, Major Molineux.’ There was a sudden and general movement in the room , which Robin interpreted as expressing the eagerness of each individual to become his guide. Rut the innkeeper turned his eyes to a written paper on the wall , which he read , or seemed to read , with occasional recurrences to the young man’s figure. ‘ What have we here ? ’ said he, breaking his speech into little dry fragments. “ Left the house of the subscriber , bounden servant , Hezekiah Mudge, had on , when he went away , grey coat , leather breeches, master’s third - best hat . One pound currency reward to whosoever shall lodge him in any jail of the province.” Better trudge, boy, better trudge ! ’ Robin had begun to draw his hand towards the lighter end of the oak cudgel, but a strange hostility in every countenance induced him to relinquish his purpose of breaking the courteous innkeeper ’s head . As he turned to leave the room , he encountered a sneering glance from the bold -featured personage whom he had before noticed ; and no sooner was he beyond the door, than he heard a general laugh , in which the innkeeper ’s voice might be distinguished , like the dropping of small stones into a

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kettle. ‘ Now, is it not strange,’ thought Robin, with his usual shrewdness, ‘ is it not strange that the confession of an empty pocket should outweigh the name of my kinsman , Major Molineux ? Oh , if I had one of those grinning rascals in the woods, where I and my oak sapling grew up together, I would teach him that my arm is heavy, though my purse be light ! ’ * On turning the corner of the narrow lane , Robin found himself in a spacious street , with an unbroken line of lofty houses on each side, and a steepled building at the upper end , whence the ringing of a bell announced the hour of nine. The light of the moon , and the lamps from the numerous shop- windows, discovered people promenading on the pavement, and amongst them Robin hoped to recognize his hitherto inscrutable relative . The result of his former inquiries made him unwilling to hazard another,

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in a scene of such publicity, and he determined to walk slowly and silently up the street, thrusting his face close to that of every elderly gentleman , in search of the Major’s lineaments. In his progress, Robin encountered many gay and gallant figures. Embroidered garments of showy colours, enormous periwigs , gold laced hats, and silver hilted swords glided past him and dazzled his optics. Travelled youths, imitators of the European fine gentlemen of the period , trod jauntily along, half dancing to the fashionable tunes which they hummed , and making poor Robin ashamed of his quiet and natural gait. At length , after many pauses to examine the gorgeous display of goods in the shop windows, and after suffering some rebukes for the impertinence of his scrutiny into people’s faces, the Major ’s kinsman found himself near the steepled building, still unsuccessful in his search . As yet , however , he had seen only one side of the thronged street ; so Robin crossed , and continued the same sort of inquisition down the opposite pavement , with stronger hopes than the philosopher seeking an honest man, but with no better fortune. He had arrived about midway towards the lower end , from which his course began , when he overheard the approach of some one who struck down a cane on the flag-stones at every step, uttering, at regular intervals, two sepulchral hems. ‘ Mercy on us ! ’ quoth Robin, recognizing the sound . Turning a corner, which chanced to be close at his right hand , he hastened to pursue his researches in some other part of the town . His patience now was wearing low, and he seemed to feel more fatigue from his rambles since he crossed the ferry , than from his journey of several days on the other side. Hunger also pleaded loudly within him , and Robin began to balance the propriety of demanding violently , and with lifted cudgel, the necessary guidance from the first solitary passenger whom he should meet . While a resolution to this effect was gaining strength , he entered a street of mean appearance , on either side of which a row of ill built houses was straggling towards the harbour. The moonlight fell upon no passenger along the whole extent , but in the third domicile which Robin passed there was a half opened door , and his keen glance detected a woman’s garment within . ‘ My luck may be better here,’ said he to himself .

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Accordingly , he approached the door, and beheld it shut closer as he did so ; yet an open space remained , sufficing for the fair occupant to observe the stranger, without a corresponding display on her part. All that Robin could discern was a strip of scarlet petticoat, and the occasional sparkle of an eye , as if the moonbeams were trembling on some bright thing. ‘ Pretty mistress,’ for I may call her so with a good conscience, thought the shrewd youth , since I know nothing to the contrary , ‘ my sweet pretty mistress, will you be kind enough to tell me whereabouts I must seek the dwelling of my kinsman , Major Molineux ? ’ Robin’s voice was plaintive and winning, and the female , seeing nothing to be shunned in the handsome country youth , thrust open the door , and came forth into the moon light . She was a dainty little figure, with a white neck , round arms, and a slender waist , at the extremity of which her scarlet petticoat jutted out over a hoop, as if she were standing in a balloon . Moreover , her face was oval and pretty, her hair dark beneath the little cap, and her bright eyes possessed a sly freedom , which triumphed over those of Robin. ‘ Major Molineux dwells here ,’ said this fair woman . Now, her voice was the sweetest Robin had heard that night , the airy counterpart of a stream of melted silver ; yet he could not help doubting whether that sweet voice spoke Gospel truth . He looked up and down the mean street, and then surveyed the house before which they stood. It was a small, dark edifice of two stories , the second of which projected over the lower floor ; and the front apartment had the aspect of a shop for petty com modities. ‘ Now, truly , I am in luck ,’ replied Robin, cunningly , ‘ and so indeed is my kinsma i , the Major, in having so pretty a housekeeper. But I prithee trouble him to step to the door ; I will deliver him a message from his friends in the country, and then go back to my lodgings at the inn.’ ‘ Nay, the Major has been abed this hour or more,’ said the lady of the scarlet petticoat ; ‘ and it would be to little purpose to disturb him to night , seeing his evening draught was of the strongest . But he is a kind hearted man , and it would be as much as my life’s worth to let a kinsman of his turn away from the door. You are the good old gentle -

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man’s very picture, and I could swear that was his rainy weather hat . Also he has garments very much resembling those leather small clothes. But come in , I pray, for I bid you hearty welcome in his name.’ So saying, the fair and hospitable dame took our hero by the hand ; and the touch was light , and the force was gentleness, and though Robin read in her eyes what he did not hear in her words, yet the slender - waisted woman in the scarlet petticoat proved stronger than the athletic country youth . She had drawn his half - willing footsteps nearly to the threshold , when the opening of a door in the neighbourhood startled the Major’s housekeeper, and , leaving the Major ’s kinsman, she vanished speedily into her own domicile . A heavy yawn preceded the appearance of a man , who, like the Moonshine of Pyramus and Thisbe , carried a lantern , needlessly aiding his sister luminary in the heavens. As he walked sleepily up the street , he turned his broad , dull face on Robin , and displayed a long staff , spiked at the end . ‘ Home , vagabond , home ! ’ said the watchman , in accents that seemed to fall asleep as soon as they were uttered . ‘ Home, or we’ll set you in the stocks, by peep of day ! ’ ‘ This is the second hint of the kind ,’ thought Robin . ‘ I wish they would end my difficulties, by setting me there to- night .’ Nevertheless, the youth felt an instinctive antipathy towards the guardian of midnight order , which at first prevented him from asking his usual question . But just when the man was about to vanish behind the corner , Robin resolved not to lose the opportunity, and shouted lustily after him , ‘ I say , friend ! will you guide me to the house of my kinsman , Major Molineux ? ’ The watchman made no ^ reply , but turned the corner and was gone ; yet Robin seemed to hear the sound of drowsy laughter stealing along the solitary street . At that moment , also, a pleasant titter saluted him from the open window above his head ; he looked up, and caught the sparkle of a saucy eye ; a round arm beckoned to him , and next he heard light footsteps descending the staircase within . But Robin , being of the household of a New England clergyman , was a good youth , as well as a shrewd one ; so he resisted temptation , and fled away.

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He now roamed desperately, and at random, through the town, almost ready to believe that a spell was on him, like that by which a wizard of his country had once kept three pursuers wandering, a whole winter night , within twenty paces of the cottage which they sought . The streets lay before him , strange and desolate , and the lights were extinguished in almost every house. Twice, however, little parties of men , among whom Robin distinguished individuals in outlandish attire, came hurrying along ; but though on both occasions they paused to address him , such intercourse did not at all enlighten his perplexity. They did but utter a few words in some language of which Robin knew nothing, and perceiving his inability to answer, bestowed a curse upon him in plain English , and hastened away. Finally, the lad determined to knock at the door of every mansion that might appear worthy to be occupied by his kinsman , trusting that perseverance would overcome the fatality that had hitherto thwarted him . Firm in this resolve, he was passing beneath the walls of a church , which formed the corner of two streets, when , as he turned into the shade of its steeple, he encountered a bulky stranger, muffled in a cloak . The man was proceeding with the speed of earnest business, but Robin planted himself full before him , holding the oak cudgel with both hands across his body as a bar to further passage. ‘ Halt , honest man , and answer me a question,’ said he, very resolutely. ‘ Tell me, this instant, whereabouts is the dwelling of my kinsman , Major Molineux ! ’ ‘ Keep your tongue between your teeth , fool , and let me pass ! ’ said a deep, gruff voice, which Robin partly remem bered. ‘ Let me pass, I say, or I’ll strike you to the earth ! ’ ‘ No, no, neighbour ! ’ cried Robin , flourishing his cudgel, and then thrusting its larger end close to the man’s muffled face . ‘ No, no, I’m not the fSol you take me for, nor do you pass till I have an answer to my question. Whereabouts is the dwelling of my kinsman , Major Molineux ? ’ The stranger, instead of attempting to force his passage, stepped back into the moonlight, unmuffled his face, and stared full into that of Robin . ‘ Watch here an hour, and Major Molineux will pass by,’ said he. Robin gazed with dismay and astonishment on the unprecedented physiognomy of the speaker. The fore-

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head with its double prominence, the broad hooked nose, the shaggy eyebrows, and fiery eyes were those which he had noticed at the inn , but the man ’s complexion had undergone a singular, or , more properly, a twofold change. One side of the face blazed an intense red , while the other was black as midnight , the division line being in the broad bridge of the nose ; and a mouth which seemed to extend from ear to ear was black or red , in contrast to the colour of the cheek . The effect was as if two individual devils, a fiend of fire and a fiend of darkness, had united themselves to form this infernal visage . The stranger grinned in Robin’s face, muffled his party coloured features, and was out of sight in a moment. ‘ Strange things we travellers see ! ’ ejaculated Robin . He seated himself , however, upon the steps of the church door, resolving to wait the appointed time for his kinsman . A few moments were consumed in philosophical speculations upon the species of man who had just left him ; but having settled this point shrewdly, rationally, and satisfactorily , he was compelled to look elsewhere for his amusement. And first he threw his eyes along the street. It was of more respectable appearance than most of those into which he had wandered , and the moon , creating, like the imaginative power , a beautiful strangeness in familiar objects, gave something of romance to a scene that might not have possessed it in the light of day. The irregular and often quaint architecture of the houses, some of whose roofs were broken into numerous little peaks, while others ascended , steep and narrow, into a single point , and others again were square ; the pure snow white of some of their complexions, the aged darkness of others, and the thousand sparklings, reflected from bright substances in the walls of many ; these matters engaged Robin’s attention for a while, and then began to grow wearisome. Next he endeavoured to define the forms of distant objects, starting away , with almost ghostly indistinctness , just as his eye appeared to grasp them ; and finally he took a minute survey of an edifice which stood on the opposite side of the street, directly in front of the church door, where he was stationed . It was a large , square mansion , distinguished from its neighbours by a balcony , which rested on tall pillars, and by an elaborate Gothic window, communicating therewith

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‘ Perhaps this is the very house I have been seeking,’ thought Robin . Then he strove to speed away the time, by listening to a murmur which swept continually along the street, yet was scarcely audible, except to an unaccustomed ear like his ; it was a low, dull, dreamy sound , compounded of many noises, each of which was at too great a distance to be separately heard. Robin marvelled at this snore of a sleeping town, and marvelled more whenever its continuity was broken by now and then a distant shout , apparently loud where it originated. But altogether it was a sleep inspiring sound , and , to shake off its drowsy influence, Robin arose, and climbed a window-frame, that he might view the interior of the church . There the moonbeams came trembling in , and fell down upon the deserted pews, and extended along the quiet aisles. A fainter yet more awful radiance was hovering around the pulpit , and one solitary ray had dared to. rest upon the open page of the great Bible. Had nature, in that deep hour, become a worshipper in the house which man had built ? Or was that heavenly light the visible sanctity of the place visible because no earthly and impure feet were within the walls ? The scene made Robin’s heart shiver with a sensa tion of loneliness stronger than he had ever felt in the remotest depths of his native woods ; so he turned away and sat down again before the door. There were graves around the church, and now an uneasy thought obtruded into Robin’s breast. What if the object of his search , which had been so often and so strangely thwarted , were all the time mouldering in his shroud ? What if his kinsman should glide through yonder gate, and nod and smile to him in dimly passing by ? ‘ Oh , that any breathing thing were here with me ! ’ said Robin. Recalling his thoughts from this uncomfortable track , he sent them over forest, hill, and stream, and attempted to imagine how that evening of ambiguity and weariness had been spent by his father’s household. He pictured them assembled at the door , beneath the tree , the great old tree, which had been spared for its huge twisted trunk , and venerable shade, when a thousand leafy brethren fell. There, at the going down of the summer sun , it was his father’s custom to perform domestic worship, that the

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neighbours might come and join with him like brothers of the family, and that the wayfaring man might pause to drink at that fountain, and keep his heart pure by freshening the memory of home. Robin distinguished the seat of every individual of the little audience ; he saw the good man in the midst , holding the Scriptures in the golden light that fell from the western clouds ; he beheld him close the book and all rise up to pray. He heard the old thanks givings for daily mercies, the old supplications for their continuance , to which he had so often listened in weariness, but which were now among his dear remembrances. He perceived the slight inequality of his father ’s voice when he came to speak of the absent one ; he noted how his mother turned her face to the broad and knotted trunk ; how his elder brother scorned , because the beard was rough upon his upper lip, to permit his features to be moved ; how the younger sister drew down a low hanging branch before her eyes ; and how the little one of all, whose sports had hitherto broken the decorum of the scene, understood the prayer for her playmate, and burst into clamorous grief . Then he saw them go in at the door ; and when Robin would have entered also, the latch tinkled into its place, and he was excluded from his home. ‘ Am I here, or there ? ’ cried Robin , starting ; for all at once, when his thoughts had become visible and audible in a dream, the long, wide, solitary street shone out before him . He aroused himself , and endeavoured to fix his attention steadily upon the large edifice which he had surveyed before . But still his mind kept vibrating between fancy and reality ; by turns, the pillars of the balcony lengthened into the tall , bare stems of pines, dwindled down to human figures, settled again into their true shape and size, and then commenced a new succession of changes. For a single moment , when he deemed himself awake , he could have sworn that a visage one which he seemed to remember yet could not absolutely name as his kinsman’s was looking towards him from the Gothic window. A’ deeper sleep wrestled with and nearly overcame him, but fled at the sound of footsteps along the opposite pavement. Robin rubbed his eyes, discerned a man passing at the foot of the balcony, and addressed him in a loud , peevish, and lament able cry.

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‘ Hallo, friend ! must I wait here all night for my kinsman , Major Molineux ? ’ The sleeping echoes awoke , and answered the voice ; and the passenger , barely able to discern a figure sitting in the oblique shade of the steeple, traversed the street to obtain a nearer view. He was himself a gentleman in his prime, of open , intelligent , cheerful, and altogether pre possessing countenance. Perceiving a country youth , apparently homeless and without friends, he accosted him in a tone of real kindness, which had become strange to Robin’s ears. ‘ Well, my good lad , why are you sitting here ? ’ inquired he. ‘ Can I be of service to you in any way ? ’ ‘ I am afraid not , sir ,’ replied Robin, despondingly ; ‘ yet I shall take it kindly, if you ’ll answer me a single question . I’ve been searching, half the night , for one Major Molineux ; now , sir , is there really such a person in these parts, or am I dreaming ? ’ ‘ Major Molineux ! The name is not altogether strange to me,’ said the gentleman , smiling. ‘ Have you any objection to telling me the nature of your business with him ? ’ Then Robin briefly related that his father was a clergy man , settled on a small salary, at a long distance back in the country, and that he and Major Molineux were brothers’ children . The Major , having inherited riches , and acquired civil and military rank , had visited his cousin, in great pomp, a year or two before ; had manifested much interest in Robin and an elder brother , and , being childless himself , had thrown out hints respecting the future establishment of one of them in life. The elder brother was destined to succeed to the farm which his father cultivated in the interval of sacred duties ; it was therefore determined that Robin should profit by his kinsman’s generous intentions, especially as he seemed to be rather the favourite, and was thought to possess other necessary endowments. ‘ For I have the name of being a shrewd youth,’ observed Robin , in this part of his story. ‘ I doubt not you deserve it ,’ replied his new friend , good - naturedly ; ‘ but pray proceed.’ ‘ Well , sir , being nearly eighteen years old , and well grown, as you see,’ continued Robin , drawing himself up to his full height, ‘ I thought it high time to begin the

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world . So my mother and sister put me in handsome trim , and my father gave me half the remnant of his last year ’s salary , and five days ago I started for this place , to pay the Major a visit. But , would you believe it , sir ! I crossed the ferry a little after dark , and have yet found nobody that would show me the way to his dwelling ; only , an hour or two since , I was told to wait here, and Major Molineux would pass by .’ ‘ Can you describe the man who told you this ? ’ inquired the gentleman . ‘ Oh , he was a very ill-favoured fellow, sir ,’ replied Robin , ‘ with two great bumps on his forehead , a hook nose, fiery eyes ; and , what struck me as the strangest , his face was of two different colours. Do you happen to know such a man , sir ? ’ ‘ Not intimately , ’ answered the stranger, ‘ but I chanced to meet him a little time previous to your stopping me. I believe you may trust his word , and that the Major will very shortly pass through this street . In the meantime , as I have a singular curiosity to witness your meeting I will sit down here upon the steps, and bear you company He seated himself accordingly, and soon engaged his companion in animated discourse. It was but of brief continuance, however , for a noise of shouting, which had long been remotely audible, drew so much nearer that Robin inquired its cause. ‘ What may be the meaning of this uproar ? ’ asked he. ‘ Truly, if your town be always as noisy, I shall find little sleep , while I am an inhabitant .’ ‘ Why, indeed , friend Robin, there do appear to be three or four riotous fellows abroad to- night ,’ replied the gentleman . ‘ You must not expect all the stillness of your native woods, here in our streets. But the watch will shortly be at the heels of these lads, aifd ’ 1 Aye , and set them in the stocks by peep of day ,’ inter rupted Robin , recollecting his own encounter with the drowsy lantern - bearer. ‘ But , dear sir, if I may trust my ears , an army of watchmen would never make head against such a multitude of rioters. There were at least a thousand voices went up to make that one shout .’ ‘ May not a man have several voices, Robin , as well as two complexions ? ’ said his friend. ‘ Perhaps a man may ; but Heaven forbid that a woman

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should ! ’ responded the shrewd youth , thinking of the seductive tones of the Major’s housekeeper. The sounds of a trumpet in some neighbouring street now became so evident and continual, that Robin’s curiosity was strongly excited. In addition to the shouts, he heard frequent bursts from many instruments of discord , and a wild and confused laughter filled up the intervals. Robin rose from the steps, and looked wistfully towards a point whither several people seemed to be hastening. ‘ Surely some prodigious merry- making is going on ,’ exclaimed he. ‘ I have laughed very little since I left home, sir , and should be sorry to lose an opportunity. Shall we step round the corner by that darkish house, and take our share of the fun ? ’ ‘ Sit down again , sit down , good Robin ,’ replied the gentleman , laying his hand on the skirt of the grey coat . ‘ You forget that we must wait here for your kinsman ; and there is reason to believe that he will pass by , in the course of a very few moments.’ The near approach of the uproar had now disturbed the neighbourhood ; windows flew open on all sides ; and many heads, in the attire of the pillow , and confused by sleep suddenly broken , were protruded to the gaze of whoever had leisure to observe them. Eager voices hailed each other from house to house , all demanding the explana tion , which not a soul could give. Half dressed men hurried towards the unknown commotion , stumbling as they went over the stone steps that thrust themselves into the narrow foot -walk . The shouts, the laughter, and the tuneless bray, the antipodes of music , came onwards with increasing din, till scattered individuals, and then denser bodies, began to appear round a corner at the distance of a hundred yards. ‘ Will you recognize your Kinsman , if he passes in this crowd ? ’ inquired the gentleman. ‘ Indeed, I can’t warrant it , sir ; but I’ll take my stand here, and keep a bright lookout ,’ answered Rotin, descend ing to the outer edge of the pavement. A mighty stream of people now emptied into the street , and came rolling slowly towards the church . A single horseman wheeled the corner in the midst of them , and close behind him came a band of fearful wind instruments, sending forth a fresher discord , now that no intervening

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buildings kept it from the ear. Then a redder light disturbed the moonbeams, and a dense multitude of torches shone along the street , concealing , by their glare, whatever object they illuminated . The single horseman , clad in a military dress, and bearing a drawn sword , rode onward as the leader, and , by his fierce and variegated countenance, appeared like war personified ; the red of one cheek was an emblem of fire and sword ; the blackness of the other betokened the mourning that attends them . In his train were wild figures in the Indian dress, and many fantastic shapes without a model, giving the whole march a visionary air, as if a dream had broken forth from some feverish brain , and were sweeping visibly through Hhe midnight streets. A mass of people, inactive, except as applauding spectators, hemmed the procession in ; and several women ran along the sidewalk , piercing the confusion of heavier sounds with their shrill voices of mirth or terror. ‘ The double faced fellow has his eye upon me,’ muttered Robin, with an indefinite but an uncomfortable idea that he was himself to bear a part in the pageantry. The leader turned himself in the saddle , and fixed his glance full upon the country youth , as the steed went slowly by. When Robin had freed his eyes from those fiery ones, the musicians were passing before him, and the torches were close at hand ; but the unsteady brightness of the latter formed a veil which he could not penetrate. The rattling of wheels over the stones sometimes found its way to his ears, and confused traces of a human form appeared at intervals, and then melted into the vivid light A moment more , and the leader thundered a command to halt : the trumpets vomited a horrid breath , and then held their peace ; the shouts and laughter of the people died away, and there remained only a universal hum , allied to silence. Right before RobirWs eyes was an uncovered cart. There the torches blazed the brightest , there the moon shone out like day , and there, in tar and feathery dignity, sat his kinsman , Major Molineux ! He was an elderly man , of large and majestic person , and strong, square features, betokening a steady soul ; but steady as it was, his enemies had found means to shake it. His face was pale as death , and far more ghastly ; the broad forehead was contracted in his agony, so that his eyebrows formed one grizzled line ; his eyes were red and

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MY KINSMAN, MAJOR MOLINEUX

wild , and the foam hung white upon his quivering lip'. His whole frame was agitated by a quick and continual tremor, which his pride strove to quell, even in those circumstances of overwhelming humiliation . But perhaps the bitterest pang of all was when his eyes met those of Robin ; for he evidently knew him on the instant , as the youth stood witnessing the foul disgrace of a head grown grey in honour . They stared at each other in silence , and Robin’s knees shook , and his hair bristled , with a mixture of pity and terror. Soon , however , a bewildering excitement began to seize upon his mind ; the preceding adventures of the night, the unexpected appearance of the crowd , the torches, the cenfused din and the hush that followed , the spectre of his kinsman reviled by that great multitude, all this, and , more than all, a perception of tremendous ridicule in the whole scene, affected him with a sort of mental inebriety . At that moment a voice of sluggish merriment saluted Robin’s ears ; he turned instinctively, and just behind the corner of the church stood the lanternbearer, rubbing his eyes, and drowsily enjoying the lad’s amazement . Then he heard a peal of laughter like the ringing of silvery bells ; a woman twitched his arm , a saucy eye met his, and he saw the lady of the scarlet petticoat. A sharp, dry cachinnation appealed to his memory , and , standing on tiptoe in the crowd , with his white apron over his head , he beheld the courteous little innkeeper. And lastly, there sailed over the heads of the multitude a great, broad laugh , broken in the midst by two sepulchral hems ; thus, ‘ Haw , haw, haw , hem , hem , haw , haw , haw , haw ! ’ The sound proceeded from the balcony of the opposite edifice, and thither Robin turned his eyes. In front of the Gothic window stood the old citizen , wrapped in a wide gown, his grey periwig exchanged for a nightcap, which was thrust back from his forehead , and his silk stockings hanging about his legs. He supported himself on his polished cane in a fit of convulsive merriment , which manifested itself on his solemn old features like a funny inscription on a tombstone. Then Robin seemed to hear the voices of the barbers, of the guests of the inn , and of all who had made sport of him that night . The contagion was spreading among the multitude, when , all at once, it seized upon Robin, and he sent forth a shout of laughter

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that echoed through the street every man shook his sides, every man emptied his lungs, but Robin ’s shout was the loudest there. The cloud -spirits peeped from their silvery islands, as the congregated mirth went roaring up the sky ! The Man in the Moon heard the far bellow. ‘ Oho,’ quoth he, ‘ the old earth is frolicsome to night ! ’ When there was a momentary calm in that tempestuous sea of sound , the leader gave the sign , the procession resumed its march . On they went , like fiends that throng in mockery around some dead potentate, mighty no more, but majestic still in his agony. On they went , in counter feited pomp, in senseless uproar , in frenzied merriment, trampling all on an old man’s heart. On swept the tumult and left a silent street behind.

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* Well , Robin , are you dreaming ? ’ inquired the gentle man , laying his hand on the youth ’s shoulder . Robin started , and withdrew his arm from the stone post to which he had instinctively clung , as the living stream rolled by him . His cheek was somewhat pale , and his eye not quite as lively as in the earlier part of the '" evening. ‘ Will you be kind enough to show me the way to the ferry ? ’ said he, after a moment’s pause. ‘ You have, then, adopted a new subject of inquiry ? ’ observed his companion , with a smile . ‘ Why , yes, sir ,’ replied Robin, rather dryly. ‘ Thanks to you , and to my other friends, I have at last met my kinsman , and he will scarce desire to see my face again . I begin to grow weary of a town life, sir. Will you show me the way to the ferry ? ’ ‘ No, my good friend Robin , not to - night , at least ,’ said the gentleman. ‘ Some few days hence , if you wish it , I will speed you on youn journey. Or , if you prefer to remain with us, perhaps, as you are a shrewd youth , you may rise in the world without the help of your kinsman, Major Molineux.’

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ROGER MALVIN’S BURIAL 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 valour ; 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 un fortunate 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 this affair ; and the captain of a scouting party of frontier men has acquired as actual a military renown as many a vic torious leader of thousands. Some of the incidents contained in the following pages will be recognized , notwith standing the substitution of fictitious names, by such as have heard , from old men’s lips, the fate of the few com batants who were in a condition to retreat after ‘ Lovell’s

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The early sunbeams hovered cheerfully upon the tree tops, beneath which two weary and wounded men had stretched their limbs the njght before . Their bed of withered oak leaves was strewn upon the small level space, at the foot of a rock , situated near the summit of one of the gentle swells by which the face of the country is there diversified . The mass of granite, rearing its smooth flat surface fifteen or twenty feet above their heads, was not unlike a gigantic gravestone , upon which the veins seemed to form an inscription in forgotten characters'. On a tract of several acres around this rock , oaks and other hard wood trees had supplied the place of the pines, which were the

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usual growth of the land ; and a young and vigorous sapling stood close beside the travellers. The severe wound of the elder man had probably deprived him of sleep ; for , as soon as the first ray of sunshine rested on the top of the highest tree , he reared himself painfully from his recumbent posture and sat erect . The deep lines of his countenance and the scattered grey of his hair marked him as past the middle age ; but his muscular frame would , but for the effects of his wound , have been as capable of sustaining fatigue as in the early vigour of life. Languor and exhaustion now sat upon his haggard features ; and the despairing glance which he sent forward through the depths of the forest proved his own conviction that his pilgrimage was at an end . He next turned his eyes to the companion who reclined by his side. The youth for he had scarcely attained the years of manhood lay, with his head upon his arm , in the embrace of an unquiet sleep, which a thrill of pain from his wounds seemed each moment on the point of breaking. His right hand grasped a musket ; and , to judge from the violent action of his features, his slumbers were bringing back a vision of the conflict of which he was one of the few survivors. A shout deep and loud in his dreaming fancy found its way in an imperfect murmur to his lips ; and , starting even at the slight sound of his own voice, he suddenly awoke . The first act of re viving recollection was to make anxious inquiries respecting the condition of his wounded fellow traveller. The latter shook his head. ‘ Reuben, my boy,’ said he, ‘ this rock beneath which we sit will serve for an old hunter’s gravestone. There is many and many a long mile of howling wilderness before us yet ; nor would it avail me anything if the smoke of my own chimney were but on the other side of that swell of land. The Indian bullet was deadlier than I thought.’ ‘ You are weary with our three days’ travel,’ replied the youth, ‘ and a little longer rest will recruit you. Sit you here while I search the woods for the herbs and roots that must be our sustenance ; and , having eaten , you shall lean on me, and we will turn our faces homeward. I doubt not that , with my help, you can attain to some one of the frontier garrisons.’ ‘ There is not two days’ life in me , Reuben ,’ said the other, calmly, ‘ and I will no longer burden you with my

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useless body , when you can scarcely support your own . Your wounds are deep and your strength is failing fast ; yet , if you hasten onward alone , you may be preserved . For me there is no hope , and I will await death here.’ ‘ If it must be so, I will remain and watch by you ,’ said Reuben , resolutely. ‘ No, my son , no , ’ rejoined his companion . ‘ Let the

wish of a dying man have weight with you ; give me one grasp of your hand , and get you hence. Think you that my last moments will be eased by the thought that I leave you to die a more lingering death ? I have loved you like a father, Reuben ; and at a time like this I should have something of a father ’s authority. I charge you to be gone , that I may die in peace .’ ‘ And because you have been a father to me , should I therefore leave you to perish and to lie unburied in the wilderness ? ’ exclaimed the youth . ‘ No ; if your end be in truth approaching, I will watch by you and receive your parting words. I will dig a grave here by the rock , in which , if my weakness overcome me, we will rest together or , if Heaven gives me strength, I xvill seek my way home.’ ‘ In the cities and wherever men dwell,’ replied the other, ‘ they bury their dead in the earth ; they hide them from the sight of the living ; but here, where no step may pass perhaps for a hundred years, wherefore should I not rest beneath the open sky, covered only by the oak-leaves when the autumn winds shall strew them ? And for a monument , here is this grey rock , on which my dying hand shall carve the name of Roger Malvin ; and the traveller in days to come will know that here sleeps a hunter and a warrior . Tarry not, then, for a folly like this, but hasten away, if not for your own sake, for hers who will else be desolate.’ Malvin spoke the last few w

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‘ It is true , friends,’ replied the young man , summoning up his courage. ‘ Miriam and I have a gift to love each other , and we are going among the world ’s people , to live after their fashion . And ye know that we do not transgress the law of the land ; and neither ye, nor the elders themselves, have a right to hinder us .’ ‘ Yet you think it expedient to depart without leavetaking,’ remarked one of the travellers. ‘ Yea, ye -a ,’ said Josiah , reluctantly, ‘ because father Job is a very awful man to speak with ; and being aged himself , he has but little charity for what he calls the iniquities of the flesh .’ ‘ Well,’ said the stranger, ‘ we will neither use force to bring you back to the village , nor will we betray you to the elders. But sit you here awhile, and when you have heard what we shall tell you of the world which we have left , and into which you are going , perhaps you will turn back with us of your own accord . What say you ? ’ added he, turning to his companions. ‘ We have travelled thus far without becoming known to each other. Shall we tell our stories, here by this pleasant spring, for our own pastime, and the benefit of these misguided young lovers ? ’ In accordance with this proposal, the whole party stationed themselves round the stone cistern ; the two children , being very weary, fell asleep upon the damp earth , and the pretty Shaker girl , whose feelings were those of a nun or a Turkish lady , crept as close as possible to the female traveller, and as far as she well could from the unknown men . The same person who had hitherto been the chief spokesman now stood up, waving his hat in his hand , and suffered the moonlight to fall full upon his front. ‘ In me,’ said he, with a certain majesty of utterance, ‘ in me; you behold a poet .’ Though a lithographic prifit of this gentleman is extant, it may be well to notice that he was now nearly forty, a thin and stooping figure, in a black coat, out at elbows ; not withstanding the ill condition of his attire, there were about him several tokens of a peculiar sort of foppery , unworthy of a mature man , particularly in the arrangement of his hair, which was so disposed as to give all possible loftiness and breadth to his forehead . However , he had an intelligent eye , and, on the whole , a marked countenance . ‘ A poet ! ’ repeated the young Shaker, a little puzzled

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how to understand such a designation, seldom heard in the utilitarian community where he had spent his life. ‘ O , ay, Miriam , he means a varse -maker, thee must know.’ This remark jarred upon the susceptible nerves of the poet ; nor could he help wondering what strange fatality had put into this young man’s mouth an epithet which ill - natured people had affirmed to be more proper to his merit than the one assumed by himself . ‘ True, I am a verse maker,’ ho resumed , ‘ but my verse is no more than the material body into which I breathe the celestial soul of thought . Alas ! how many a pang has it cost me, this same insensibility to the ethereal essence of poetry, with which you have here tortured me again , at the moment when I am to relinquish my profession forever ! Ü Fate ! why hast thou warred with Nature, turning all her higher and more perfect gifts to the ruin of me , their possessor ? What is the voice of song, when the world lacks the ear of taste ? How can I rejoice in my strength and delicacy of feeling , when they have but made great sorrows out of little ones ? Have I dreaded scorn like death , and yearned for fame as others pant for vital air , only to find myself in a middle state between obscurity and infamy ? But I have my revenge ! I could have given existence to a thousand bright creations. I crush them into my heart , and there lot them putrefy ! I shake off the dust of my feet against my countrymen ! But posterity, tracing my foot steps up this weary hill, will cry shame upon the unworthy age that drove one of the fathers of American song to end his days in a Shaker village ! ’ During this harangue , the speaker gesticulated with great energy ; and , as poetry is the natural language of passion, there appeared reason to apprehend his final explosion into an ode extempore. The reader must under stand that , for all these bittei* words, he was a kind , gentle, harmless, poor fellow enough , whom Nature, tossing her ingredients together without looking at her recipe, had sent into the world with too much of one sort of brain , and hardly any of another . ‘ Friend ,’ said the young Shaker , in some perplexity , ‘ thee seemest to have met with groat troubles ; and doubt less, I should pity them , if if I could but understand what they were.’ ‘ Happy in your ignorance ! ’ replied the poet, with an

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air of sublime superiority. ‘ To your coarser mind , perhaps, I may seem to speak of more important griefs, when I add , what I had wellnigh forgotten , that I am out at elbows, and almost starved to death . At any rate, you have the advice and example of one individual to warn you back ; for I am come hither, a disappointed man , flinging aside the frag ments of my hopes, and seeking shelter in the calm retreat which you are so anxious to leave.’ ‘ I thank thee , friend ,’ rejoined the youth , ‘ but I do not mean to be a poet , nor, Heaven be praised ! do I think Miriam ever made a varse in her life. So we need not fear thy disappointments. But , Miriam ,’ he added, with real concern, ‘ thee knowest that the elders admit nobody that has not a gift to be useful. Now, what under the sun can they do with this poor varse - maker ? ’ ‘ Nay, Josiah , do not thee discourage the poor man ,’ said the girl, in all simplicity and kindness. ‘ Our hymns arc very rough, and perhaps they may trust him to smooth them .’ Without noticing this hint of professional employment , the poet turned away , and gave himself up to a sort of vague revery , which he called thought. Sometimes he watched the moon , pouring a silvery liquid on the clouds, through which it slowly melted till they became all bright ; then he saw the same sweet radiance dancing on the leafy trees which rustled as if to shake it off , or sleeping on the high tops of hills, or hovering down in distant valleys , like the material of unshaped dreams ; lastly , he looked into the spring, and there the light was mingling with the water. In its crystal bosom , too, beholding all heaven reflected there , he found an emblem of a pure and tranquil breast. He listened to that most ethereal of all sounds, the song of crickets, coming in full choir upon the wind , and fancied that , if moonlight could be Keard , it would sound just like that . Finally , he took a draught at the Shaker spring , and as if it were the true Castalia , was forthwith moved to com pose a lyric, a Farewell to his Harp, which he swore should be its closing strain , the last verse that an ungrateful world should have from him . This effusion, with two or three other little pieces, subsequently written, he took the first opportunity to send , by one of the Shaker brethren , to Concord , where they were published in the New Hampshire Patriot.

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Meantime, another of the Canterbury pilgrims , one so different from the poet that the delicate fancy of the latter could hardly have conceived of him, began to relate his sad experience . He was a small man, of quick and unquiet gestures, about fifty years old , with a narrow forehead , all wrinkled and drawn together . He held in his hand a pencil, and a card of some commission -merchant in foreign parts, on the back of which , for there was light enough to read or write by , he seemed ready to figure out a calculation . ‘ Young man ,’ said he , abruptly , ‘ what quantity of land do the Shakers own here, in Canterbury ? ’ ‘ That is more than 1 can tell thee, friend ,’ answered Josiah , ‘ but it is a very rich establishment , and for a long way by the roadside thee may guess the land to be ours, by the neatness of the fences.’ ‘ And what may be the value of the whole,’ continued the stranger , ‘ with all the buildings and improvements, pretty nearly, in round numbers V ’ ‘ Oh , a monstrous sum,- more than I can reckon ,’ replied the young Shaker. ‘ Well , sir ,’ said the pilgrim , ‘ there was a day, and not very long ago, neither , when I stood at my counting - room window, and watched the signal flags of three of my own ships entering the harbour , from the East Indies, from Liverpool, and from up the Straits, and I would not have given the invoice of the least of them for the title -deeds of this whole Shaker settlement. You stare. Perhaps , now, you won’t believe that I could have put more value on a little slip of paper, no bigger than the palm of your hand, than all these solid acres of grain , grass, and pasture -land would sell for ? ’ ‘ I won’t dispute it , friend ,’ answered Josiah, ‘ but I know I had rather have fifty acres of this good land than a whole sheet of thy paper.’ ‘ You may say so now,’ said the ruined merchant , bitterly , ‘ for my name would not be worth the paper I should write it on . Of course, you must have heard of my failure ? ’ And the stranger mentioned his name, which, however mighty it might have been in the commercial world, the young Shaker had never heard of among the Canterbury hills . ‘ Not heard of my failure ! ’ exclaimed the merchant , considerably piqued . "Why, it was spoken of on ’Change

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in London, and from Boston to New Orleans men trembled in their shoes. At all events, I did fail, and you see me here on my road to the Shaker village, where, doubtless ( for the Shakers are a shrewd sect ), they will have a due respect for my experience, and give me the management of the trading part of the concern , in which case I think I can pledge my self to double their capital in four or five years. Turn back with me, young man ; for though you will never meet with my good luck , you can hardly escape my bad .’ ‘ I will not turn back for this,’ replied Josiali , calmly, ‘ any more than for the advice of the varse - maker , between whom and thee, friend , I see a sort of likeness , though I can’t justly say where it lies. But Miriam and I can earn our daily bread among the world’s people , as well as in the Shaker village. And do we want anything more, Miriam ? ’ ‘ Nothing more, Josiah,’ said the girl , quietly . ‘ Yea, Miriam , and daily bread for some other little mouths, if God send them ,’ observed the simple Shaker lad . Miriam did not reply, but looked down into the spring, where she encountered the image of her own pretty face , blushing within the prim little bonnet . The third pilgrim now took up the conversation. He was a sunburnt country man , of tall frame and bony strength , on whose rude and manly face there appeared a darker , more sullen and obstin ate despondency , than on those of either the poet or the merchant . ‘ Well, now, youngster,’ ho began, ‘ these folks have had their say, so I’ll take my turn . My story will cut but a poor figure by the side of theirs ; for I never supposed that I could have a right to meat and drink , and great praise besides, only for tagging rhymes together, as it seems this man does ; nor ever tried to get the substance of hundreds into my own hands, like th*e trader there. When I was about your years, I married me a wife,· just such a neat and pretty young woman as Miriam , if that ’s her name, and all I asked of Providence was an ordinary blessing on the sweat of my brow, so that we might be decent and com fortable, and have daily bread for ourselves, and for some other little mouths that we soon had to feed . We had no very great prospects before us ; but I never wanted to be idle ; and I thought it a matter of course that the Lord jyvould help me, because I was viUÉçrçfto help myself .’

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‘ And didn’t he help thee, friend ? ’ demanded Josiah , with some eagerness. ‘ No,’ said the yeoman, sullenly ; * for then you would not have seen me here. I have laboured hard for years and my means have been growing narrower, and my living poorer , and my heart colder and heavier , all the time ; till at last I could bear it no longer. I set myself down to calcu late whether I had best go on the Oregon expedition , or come here to the Shaker village ; but I had not hope enough left in me to begin the world over again ; and , to make my story short, here I am . And now, youngster, take my advice, and turn back ; or else, some few years hence , you ’ll have to climb this hill, with as heavy a heart as mine .’ This simple story had a strong effect on the young fugi tives. The misfortunes of the poet and merchant had won little sympathy from their plain good sense and unworldly feelings, qualities which made them such unprejudiced and inflexible judges, that few men would have chosen to take the opinion of this youth and maiden as to the wisdom or folly of their pursuits. But here was one whose simple wishes had resembled their own , and who, after efforts which almost gave him a right to claim success from fate, had failed in accomplishing them . ‘ But thy wife , friend ? ’ exclaimed the young man . ‘ What became of the pretty girl, like Miriam ? Oh , I am afraid she is dead ! ’ ‘ Yea , poor man , she must be dead , she and the children, too,’ sobbed Miriam. The female pilgrim had been leaning over the spring, wherein latterly a tear or two might have been seen to fall, and form its little circle on the surface of the water. She now looked up, disclosing features still comely, but which had acquired an expression of fretfulness, in the same long course of evil fortune that had thrown a sullen gloom over the temper of the unprosperous yeoman . ‘ I am his wife,’ said she, a shade of irritability just per ceptible in the sadness of her tone. ‘ These poor little things, asleep on the ground , are two of our children . We

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had two more, but God has provided better for them than we could, by taking them to himself .’ ‘ And what woult tfeee a*hdse Jofial» find mrtA do asked Miriam , this the firgLquestion which she had a put to either of theB Bhaers. *

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‘ ’Tis a thing almost against nature for a woman to try to part true lovers,’ answered the yeoman ’s wife , after a pause ; ‘ hut I’ll speak as truly to you as if these were my dying words. Though my husband told you some of our troubles, he didn’t mention the greatest , and that which makes all the rest so hard to bear. If you and your sweet heart marry, you ’ll be kind and pleasant to each other for a year or two, and while that ’s the case, you never will repent ; but, by and by, he’ll grow gloomy , rough , and hard to please , and you ’ll be peevish , and full of little angry fits, and apt to be complaining by the fireside, when he comes to rest himself from his troubles out of floors ; so your love will w'ear away by little and little , and leave you miserable at last. It has been so with us ; and yet my husband and I were true lovers once, if ever two young folks were .’ As she ceased , the yeoman and his wife exchanged a glance, in which there was more and warmer affection than they had supposed to have escaped the frost of a wintry fate, in either of their breasts. At that moment, when they stood on the utmost verge of married life , one word fitly spoken , or perhaps one peculiar look , had they had mutual confidence enough to reciprocate it , might have renewed all their old feelings, and sent them back , resolved to sustain each other amid the struggles of the world . But the crisis passed , and never came again . Just then , also, the children , roused by their mother’s voice, looked up, anti added their wailing accents to the testimony borne by all the Canterbury pilgrims against the world from which they fled . ‘ We are tired and hungry ! ’ cried they . ‘ Is it far to the Shaker village ? ’ The Shaker youth and maiden looked mournfully into each other’s eyes. They had but stepped across the threshold of their homes, when lo ! the dark array of cares and sorrow's that rose up to‘warn them back . The varied narratives of the strangers had arranged themselves into a parable ; they seemed not merely instances of woful fate that had befallen others, but shadowy omens of disappointed hope and unavailing toil, domestic grief and estranged affection , that would cloud the onward path of these poor fugitives. But after one instant’s hesitation , 4(M ' jilted thMF