tried to combine agriculture and education. In the Custom House and at Brook Farm he worked so hard as to have little energy for literature, publishing only some children's books. On July 9, 1842, occurred his marriage.

For the next three years Hawthorne resided in Concord at the Old Manse. In this retired town, where such eminent people as Emerson and Thoreau were to be met, he lived a very happy, quiet life, given to musing and observation. But he had lost a considerable sum of money in the Brook Farm experiment, the failure of The Democratic Review prevented payment for his contributions, and he began to feel the pinch of poverty. At this juncture his college mates, Bridge and Pierce, came to the rescue, and on March 23, 1846, he was appointed surveyor of the port of Salem, that spot in which the Hawthorne family was so firmly rooted, whither he had previously returned with his wife and daughter, Una, born in Concord in 1844.

Though happy for a short time at getting into the stir of actual life, the routine and sordidness soon palled and he began to fret in the harness. This mood kept him from composition till he forced from himself, in 1848, the last of his short stories, including "The Great Stone Face" and "Ethan Brand." Despite the effort, the stories rank well. In 1849 he was dismissed from office by a change of political administration, not because of inefficiency. He took this dismissal hard because some of his townspeople had been opposed to him. Again he was in money difficulties from which he was released by a donation from his loyal friends. The leisure thus made possible was devoted to the production of his greatest work, a novel, "The Scarlet Letter," which is a study in the darker side of Puritanism. Its publication in April, 1850, brought him fame. In the same year he moved to the Berkshire Hills.

The year and a half in the hills was thoroughly happy. He had the incentive of success, the tranquillity of mind due to sufficient means, physical comfort, and a loving household now enlarged by the birth of a second daughter, Rose. During this time he wrote and published (1851) his novel, "The House of the Seven Gables," the study of an inherited curse, made pleasing as a story by means of its realistic portrayal of ordinary life. He also put many of the stories of classical mythology into a form understandable by chil

dren, publishing the results in "A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys" (1852) and "Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys" (1853). In 1852 appeared "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales," containing hitherto uncollected contributions to various magazines.

Believing the Berkshire air rather enervating, Hawthorne moved in November, 1851, to a temporary residence in West Newton, where he wrote "The Blithedale Romance," which was published in 1852. This novel, founded on his Brook Farm experience, is a study of the failure of the typical reformer. In June, 1852, the family moved to a place of their own, called "The Wayside" in Concord. Here the ideal family life continued. In the summer he brought out “The Life of Franklin Pierce," the biography of his old college mate, who was shortly after elected to the presidency of the United States, and made Hawthorne United States Consul at Liverpool in 1853.

The holding of office was never a congenial occupation to Hawthorne, though he was a good official. It always became irksome and dried up his creative power. The consulship was no exception, and when he resigned in 1857 he felt much relief. By this time he had obtained a competence which afforded him the gratification of paying back the money once raised for him by his friends. When in England he had seen much of the country; now he determined to see more of Europe. The family travelled through France to Italy, which they greatly enjoyed, staying there till 1859. For some months they had occupied the old villa of Montauto, where Hawthorne composed most of "The Marble Faun." The illness of Una compelling them to seek a different climate, they returned to England, where he finished the book, which was published the next year. "The Marble Faun" is "an analytical study of evil"; but despite the subject, the artistic effects and the interpretation of Italy lend it charm.

In 1860 the family returned to Concord. Hawthorne's health had been failing for some time, and now he became incapable of sustained work. However, in 1863 was published "Our Old Home," the theme of which is well expressed by the sub-title "A Series of English Sketches," which had been composed previously. He continued to do some work, and even promised a new novel to the

press, but he came to realize that he would never finish it. In 1864 he went on a carriage trip with his old friend Pierce, during which he peacefully died in his sleep.

REFERENCES

Biography

WOODBERRY: Nathaniel Hawthorne.

JAMES: Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Criticism

HUTTON Literary Essays.

STEPHEN Hours in a Library.

NOTES ON "HOWE'S MASQUERADE ”

This story was first published in The Democratic Review for May, 1838, and was republished in 1842 in an enlarged edition of "TwiceTold Tales." It exemplifies the work in which Hawthorne was the pioneer that of building a story about a situation. The idea of this particular one is found in the following entry in "American NoteBooks":"A phantom of the old royal governors, or some such showy shadowy pageant, on the night of the evacuation of Boston by the British." Hawthorne was accustomed to jot down in his notebooks hints for stories which often can be traced in his developed writings.

In "Howe's Masquerade can be clearly seen the fact that he had not mastered the method of writing the short-story as we have it to-day. There is too much introduction and too much conclusion. He takes too long to get the story into motion, and he spoils the effect by tacking to the end a moral. These mistakes or crudities Poe did not make; however, each writer contributed to the development of the short-story some element of value, as has been pointed out in the Introduction.

This story is one of "The Legends of the Province House," stories joined together by the scheme of having an old inhabitant tell them to some visitor. Such machinery with its prologues and end-links, more or less elaborate, has been often used, as is seen in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" and in Longfellow's "Tales of a Wayside Inn." The taste for this method has largely passed,

though it has been recently revived by Alfred Noyes in "The Tales of the Mermaid Tavern."

PAGE 93. Washington Street: the scene is laid in Boston. Old Province House: the term Province House is used somewhat in the same sense as State House. The building was erected when Massachusetts was a province and served as the headquarters and dwelling of the royal governor. Hawthorne represents it as having descended to the condition of an inn or inferior hotel, the most important part of which was the bar for the sale of liquor.

94. lady of Pownall: the wife of Thomas Pownall, a royal governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. Bernard: Sir Thomas Bernard, another royal governor.

98. Steeled knights of the Conquest: persons dressed as cavalrymen in steel armor of 1066, when William the Conqueror became King of England. party-colored Merry Andrew an

old term for a clown dressed in garments having several colors. Falstaff an important character in several of Shakespeare's plays. He is always represented as fat and ridiculous. Don Quixote :

:

the chief character of the celebrated Spanish satire "Don Quixote' (1605) by Cervantes. Don Quixote is a simple-minded man, whose head has been turned by reading the extravagant romances of chivalry then current, in which knights ride forth to redress wrongs. He feels himself called to such a mission and, armed with various ridiculous makeshifts and accompanied by a humorous squire, Sancho Panza, whose sayings have achieved an immortality nearly equal to his master's doings, he sallies out upon a course of adventures, which caused the world to laugh the dying remnants of false chivalry into its grave. Colonel Joliffe: an imaginary character. whig principles: the people belonging to the patriotic party in the colonies were called Whigs.

99. Rev. Mather Byles: an actual person (1706-1788). He was imprisoned in 1777 as a Tory; that is, as an adherent of the king. wig and band: Protestant clergymen of that day wore wigs and a strip of linen, called a band, placed about the neck with the ends hanging down in front.

102. regicide judges: in the first part of the seventeenth century the people of England became dissatisfied with their king, Charles I,

because of his illegal acts. They revolted, captured the king, put him on trial, and executed him, January 30, 1649. The judges are called regicide, because they tried and condemned a king. The royal party spoke of him as a martyr to the cause.

110. When the truth-telling accents, etc.: Hawthorne has tried in this last paragraph to emphasize the contrast between the rather sordid real and the imaginary. He is entirely too successful, because he spoils the effect of the story — something for which Poe strove with such singleness of purpose as to permit of no such ending.

NOTES TO "THE BIRTHMARK ”

This story was first published in the March, 1843, number of The Pioneer, a magazine edited by James Russell Lowell, and was republished in "Mosses from an Old Manse" in 1846. It belongs to the "moral philosophic" group of Hawthorne's writings (see Introduction).

PAGE 112. natural philosophy : an old term for physics. spiritual affinity in chemistry certain elements show a tendency to combine with others, so an attraction of one human spirit for another, leading generally to marriage, is often called a spiritual affinity.

114. Eve of Powers: Hiram Powers (1805-1873). An American sculptor whose statue of Eve is one of his noted works.

118. Pygmalion: in Greek mythology a sculptor who made such a beautiful statue of a woman that he fell in love with it, whereupon in answer to his prayer the goddess Aphrodite gave it life.

121. optical phenomena: sights which cheat the eye into believing them real.

122. corrosive acid: a powerful chemical which eats away substance. dynasty of the alchemists: the succession of the early investigators of chemistry who spent most of their energy in seeking what was called the "universal solvent" which would turn every substance into gold. These men were sometimes legitimate investigators, but often cheats who made money out of foolish people. At one time they became so numerous in London that laws