Salem itself withered in comparison with Boston, turned to the sea for their livelihood. One commanded a privateer during the Revolution; his son became a shipmaster, and married a woman descended from the well-known Manning family of early days. To them was born, on July 4, 1804, a son whom they named Nathaniel. Four years later when Captain Hawthorne died his widow mourned her loss by withdrawing completely from association with those about her. She dwelt apart in her own room and did not even take her meals with her children. In that strange household Nathaniel grew up, a serious-minded, studious boy, steeped in all the ghostly traditions of early Puritan days, and developing a great fondness for books and solitude. During his fifteenth year the family lived for a time on the shores of Sebago Lake, in Maine, where he enjoyed wild outdoor life and took solitary rambles in the woods.

At seventeen he entered Bowdoin College, but proved a rather listless student. He was not interested in preparing for any of the recognized professions, but had vague notions of becoming a man of letters. Among his fellow students at Bowdoin were Longfellow and Franklin Pierce. After graduating he returned to his home at Salem, where he found that his two sisters had become quite as unsociable as his mother. The four members of this eccentric family saw little of each other. Hawthorne was hardly known to the townspeople of Salem, because he invariably avoided them and went out after nightfall for his solitary rambles along dark, unfrequented streets. In 1828 he published at his own expense a novel entitled Fanshawe, but it was an utter failure, and he afterward sought to destroy every copy of the book.

3. The Master of Short Stories.-During the following eight years he had better success with a series of about thirty-five admirable short stories which appeared in various annuals and magazines. Some of these tales dealt with the early legendary history of New England, as "The Gray Champion," "The Maypole of Merry Mount," "Endicott and the Red Cross," and the four "Legends of the Province House.' Others were tales of moral import, teaching an obvious lesson, such as "The Ambitious Guest," "David Swan," and "The Threefold Destiny." Still others were characterized by more or less deliberate symbolism, as “The Minister's Black Veil," "The Great Carbuncle," and "The Prophetic Pictures." All of these are now part of that fine collection known as Twice-Told Tales (1837; second series, 1842), of which innumerable copies have been printed for the delight of several generations of readers, yet Hawthorne was glad enough to get thirty-five dollars for each of these classic stories when they were first told through the pages of the New England magazines.

4. Politics and Literature. When Hawthorne became engaged to Sophia Peabody he felt the need for a more regular source of income, so through friendly influence he secured a political appointment in the Boston Custom-house. This position he lost in 1841, shortly before he joined the Brook Farm Community. His residence at Brook Farm was of short duration, and he afterward regretted that he had "spent five golden months in providing food for cows and horses." Upon his marriage a year later he settled at Concord, where, at the Old Manse, he lived as idyllic a life as was possible with his uncertain means of income. He

secured another political appointment in 1845, this time as head of the Salem Custom-house, and he held that position as long as his party remained in power. During the years of his political activity he had written relatively little, but in 1846 he brought together another excellent collection of short stories as Mosses from an Old Manse. Some of his finest work is to be found in that entertaining volume-ghostly legend, satire, allegory, fanciful humor, and a keen appreciation for the charm of nature. Such titles as "The Birthmark,” “Rappaccini's Daughter," "The Celestial Railroad," and "Feathertop" give but a suggestion of the variety of admirable fiction to be found in that popular volume.

5. "The Scarlet Letter."-The loss of his position at Salem in 1849 impelled Hawthorne to turn once more to literature for the support of his family. Within a short time he produced The Scarlet Letter (1850), the most notable of all his novels, and the only work of fiction that has received any wide-spread acclaim as "the great American novel." This intimate study of the psychology of sin and retribution fitted the genius of the writer most admirably. The story develops with little plot and less action, but in the grim narrative there lives once more the stern, unrelenting spirit of early New England. Symbolism and direct narration are skilfully interwoven in depicting the struggles of the unhappy, conscience-stricken persons caught in the web of circumstance. Rarely in literature are we so conscious of the overwhelming power of outraged moral law. In spite of its bareness of plot, the story grows in dramatic intensity as it approaches the tragic conclusion. Hawthorne himself suffered the torments that he caused his characters to pass through:

Speaking of Thackeray, I cannot but wonder at his coolness in respect to his own pathos, and compare it with my own emotions when I read the last scene of The Scarlet Letter to my wife just after writing it,—tried to read it, rather, for my voice swelled and heaved, as if I were tossed up and down on an ocean as it subsides after a storm. But I was in a very nervous state then, having gone through a great diversity of emotion, while writing it, for many months. I think I have never overcome my own adamant in any other instance.

Every reader of the tragic story of Hester Prynne, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and the curious elf-child Pearl, will understand Hawthorne's inability to control his emotions. The Scarlet Letter is, thus far, America's supreme contribution to literature.

6. The Aftermath.-In the first flush of the literary fame that immediately followed the publication of his masterpiece, Hawthorne produced in rapid succession two juvenile classics, The Wonder Book (1851) and Tanglewood Tales (1853), that still hold young readers spellbound, as well as two novels, The House of the Seven Gables (1851) and The Blithedale Romance (1852). A background somewhat similar to that of The Scarlet Letter is found in The House of the Seven Gables, but the story is less sombre. The theme is heredity and an ancestral curse resting on a decaying household. Passages of great power and memorable pictures of early New England life pervade the book, but nothing is more vivid than the ironic picture of Judge Pyncheon sitting motionless in his chair during that last ghastly night in the seven-gabled house of unhallowed memories, his watch ticking regularly in his rigid left hand. The Blithedale Romance depicts with a thin veil of fiction, and not without a sarcasm born of bitter experience, the bucolic life