in a quaint old house called the Manse, which had belonged to Emerson. While living in this house Hawthorne wrote "Mosses from an Old Manse," a collection of stories, among which you will find the famous "Great Stone Face." This was a happy life, here in Concord. Hawthorne saw a good deal of the naturalist Henry Thoreau,° who lived at a camp which he named Walden. With him he spent many pleasant days boating on the Concord River and fishing in its silent pools.

14 While living in Concord, he published a second volume of "Twice-Told Tales." This has in it two stories which you will like, "Snow Image" and "The Great Carbuncle." Thus you see that Hawthorne was making a success of writing stories. What would he want to

write next?

15 It was hard to make ends meet with the money that he got from his writings; so again he secured a position, this time as surveyor of the port of Salem. Four years later when a new President was elected, he lost the position through politics. Sad and discouraged he came home, but was met at the door by a cheery wife. "Oh, then you can write your book!" she said, and showed him money she had saved. Like a good manager, she had been laying aside money from the household expenses for a long time, just waiting for a chance like this.

16 The next three years are the most important in Hawthorne's life, for they made him a great novelist. The family moved to a little red cottage in Lenox, and Hawthorne wrote steadily day after day. In less than a year "The Scarlet Letter," his first and greatest novel, was published; then, in the next year, "The House of the Seven Gables." During these years he also wrote books for boys and girls. In the "Wonder Book" you will fin

tales of the Gorgon's head, the three golden apples, and the chimera; in "Tanglewood Tales," stories about the Golden Fleece, the minotaur, and the dragon's teeth. If you have not read these, you will enjoy them.

17 Then such a splendid thing happened. Through Frank Pierce, his old college chum, Hawthorne got a position that sent him abroad for seven years. What kind of position demanded residence in a foreign country? 18 When Franklin Pierce became President of the United States he had the power to appoint persons as consuls to foreign countries. He remembered his boyhood friend and asked Hawthorne to serve as consul at Liverpool, England. So, for seven years Hawthorne and his family were in Europe. While there he wrote a novel about Roman life, entitled "The Marble Faun."

19 Just before the Civil War broke out, the Hawthornes returned to Concord and made their home in The Wayside, the house in which Louisa May Alcott had lived as a girl. Here, behind the house, Hawthorne had a study built in a big pine tree, with steps leading up to it and a floor large enough to hold his writingtable and a chair. He was not in the best of health, and it was hoped that this outdoor life would make him strong. But in spite of this his health failed. Then again one of his good boyhood friends stepped in and tried to help him. Who do you think it was?

20 Thinking that the pure mountain air would prove beneficial, ex-President Pierce took his old friend up to the hills in the hope of making him better. But, here in the hills Hawthorne passed away, in 1864. At his funeral in Concord one of the most famous groups of poets ever assembled stood about his grave, for with bowed heads Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell, and Whit tier paid honor to their dead friend.

21 Nathaniel Hawthorne is remembered as our first and greatest novelist. He had a wonderful imagination. He seemed to be able to look right into the hearts of men and women and to write what he saw. A born story-teller he was, too-one that you will want to know better when you begin reading him. Like a magician he has raised up before our eyes pictures of days that have long been in the past.

carbuncle 14 (kär' bŭŋ k'l), a precious stone

chimera 16 (kĩ mẽ ra), a monster consul 18 (kon' sul), an official who resides in a foreign country and looks after commercial interests of his own country

custom house, 12 a building where

duties on imports are paid mere pittance 10 (pit' ăns), a very small sum

minotaur 16 (min' ô tôr), a monster surveyor 15 (sur vā' er), an officer who measures the merchandise brought into a port

Thoreau 13 (thō' rō), an author

(b) Education;

1. Outline: (a) The date and place of birth; (c) Employment and life work; (d) Books and stories; (e) Why he is best remembered; and (f) Date of death. 2. Read the story of Hawthorne's life (Riverside Reader V). 3. Read "The Pine Tree Shilling" or "Benjamin West" (Riverside Reader V).

A READING CLUB

1. Find out which story and book in the Reading Club list for Southern authors (Manual) the class like best. 2. Copy on the board the names of the twelve pupils who have read the most this month. 3. Read "The Middle West in Poetry and Fiction" in

the Fourth Reader.

THE STORY OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

Here is the story of a great man who found out how all the stars and planets and the moon and the earth are held together around the sun. He lived over two hun

dred years ago.

While you read silently about his life, think of questions that you would like to ask the boy Isaac.

1 N Christmas Day, in the year 1642, Isaac Newton was born at the small village of Woolsthorpe, in England. Little did his mother think, when she beheld her new-born babe, that he was destined to explain many matters which had been a mystery ever since the creation of the world.

2 Isaac's father being dead, Mrs. Newton was married again to a clergyman, and went to reside at North Witham. Her son was left to the care of his good old grandmother, who was very kind to him and sent him to school. In his early years Isaac did not appear to be a very bright scholar, but was chiefly remarkable for his ingenuity° in all mechanical occupations. He had a set of little tools and saws of various sizes manufactured by himself. With the aid of these Isaac contrived to make many curious articles, at which he worked with so much skill that he seemed to have been born with a saw or a chisel in hand.

3 The neighbors looked with vast admiration at the things which Isaac manufactured. And his old grandmother, I suppose, was never weary of talking about him.

"He'll make a capital workman one of these days," she would probably say. "No fear but what Isaac will do well in the world and be a rich man before he dies."

4 It is amusing to conjecture what were the anticipations of his grandmother and the neighbors about Isaac's future life. Some of them, perhaps, fancied that he would make beautiful furniture of mahogany, rosewood, or polished oak, inlaid with ivory and ebony, and magnificently gilded. And then, doubtless, all the rich people would purchase these fine things to adorn their drawing-rooms. Others probably thought that

little Isaac was destined to be an architect, and would build splendid mansions for the nobility and gentry, and churches too, with the tallest steeples that had ever been seen in England.

5 Some of his friends, no doubt, advised Isaac's grandmother to apprentice him to a clock-maker; for, besides his mechanical skill, the boy seemed to have a taste for mathematics, which would be very useful to him in that profession. And then, in due time, Isaac would set up for himself, and would manufacture curious clocks, like those that contain sets of dancing figures, which issue from the dial-plate when the hour is struck; or like those where a ship sails across the face of the clock, and is seen tossing up and down on the waves as often as the pendulum vibrates.

❝ Indeed, there was some ground for supposing that Isaac would devote himself to the manufacture of clocks; since he had already made one of a kind which nobody had ever heard of before. It was set a-going, not by wheels and weights like other clocks, but by the dropping of water. This was an object of great wonderment to all the people round about; and it must be confessed that there are few boys, or men either, who could contrive to tell what o'clock it is by means of a bowl of water.

7 Besides the water-clock, Isaac made a sundial. Thus his grandmother was never at a loss to know the hour; for the water-clock would tell it in the shade, and the dial in the sunshine. The sundial is said to be still in existence at Woolsthorpe, on the corner of the house where Isaac dwelt. If so, it must have marked the passage of every sunny hour that has elapsed since Isaac Newton was a boy. It marked all the famous moments of his life; it marked the hour of his death;