unintelligible prophecies. And wise Uncle Venner, passing slowly from the ruinous porch, seemed to hear a strain of music, and fancied that sweet Alice Pyncheon after witnessing these deeds, this bygone woe and this present happiness, of her kindred mortals had given one farewell touch of a spirit's joy upon her harpsichord, as she floated heavenward from the HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES ! INTRODUCTORY NOTE. THE SNOW-IMAGE. THE summer of 1851, spent at Lenox, was a busy one for Hawthorne; and he closed it by bringing out "The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales,” in the autumn. The tale which gave this volume its name most probably sprang from some simple episode in the life of his two elder children, then at the ages of about six and eight; and there plays over its pages a soft light of domesticity, transient as the flicker of an open wood-fire, like all the irradiations of actu ality upon Hawthorne's fiction, - but characteristic of its origin. One little coincidence I observe which, though trifling, it is perhaps worth while to mention. When the supposed child playmate, whom Violet and Peony have brought into the house, melts away before the fire by which the matter-of-fact Mr. Lindsey has placed her, he exclaims: "Look what a quantity of snow the children have brought in on their feet! It has made quite a puddle here before the stove. Pray tell Dora to bring some towels and sop it up!" Dora was the name of a woman of rather remarkable character, who had been the attendant of Hawthorne's children in Salem. Far back in 1836, too, the "American Note-Books" show that he entertained the scheme of writing a story about boys battling with snowballs, and the victorious leader being honored with a statue of himself in snow; the purpose, to satirize fame. This interesting key also gives approximately the date when Hawthorne formed his design for "The Great Stone Face," which comes second in the present volume. Between January 4, 1839, and the year 1840, there occurs this paragraph: : "The semblance of a human face to be formed on the side of a mountain, or in the fracture of a small stone, by a lusus naturæ. The face is an object of curiosity for years or for centuries, and by and by a boy is born, whose features gradually assume the aspect of that portrait. At some critical juncture, the resemblance is found to be perfect. A prophecy might be connected." A curious incident in the later history of "The Great Stone Face" is that, a few years ago, it was found by some one in a German translation, re-translated into English of an inferior sort, and published in an American periodical of good standing before the mistake or imposition, whichever it may have been, was detected. This spurious version served as indirect testimony to the extreme importance of style, and in especial the subtlety with which Hawthorne's peculiar genius penetrated and impressed itself upon his language; for here the story was the same, yet, by the use of a commonplace style, the beauty of the original was destroyed, and its force lost. "The Canterbury Pilgrims" was derived from Hawthorne's impressions of the Shaker community at Canterbury, N. H., which he visited in 1830; writing thence to one of his sisters: "I spoke to them about becoming a member of their community, but have come to no decision on that point." Later, in 1838, |