beautiful tE^fjougfitsf 
 
 FROM 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne 
 
 James Pott & Company 
 
 MCMVII 
 

 USRARYofOONQRESS 
 
 Two Gooies Recetvod 
 
 JUL 18 »yu7 
 
 JLASS-'O. XXc,Mo. 
 COPY 0. 
 
 Copyright, 1907, by 
 JAMES POTT & CO, 
 
/ ^^ ^ 
 
 Y 
 
 JANUARY 
 
January 1st, 
 
 "A happy New Year!" cried a 
 watchman, eying her figure very ques- 
 tionably, but without the least sus- 
 picion that he was addressing the 
 New Year in person. 
 
 '' Thank you kindly," said the New 
 Year; and she gave the watchman 
 one of the roses of hope from her 
 basket. " May this flow^er keep a 
 sweet smell long after I have bidden 
 you good-by! " 
 
 Then she stepped on more briskly 
 through the silent streets, and such 
 as were awake at the moment heard 
 her footfall, and said: "The New 
 Year is come ! " 
 
 — The Sister-Years. 
 
6 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 January 2d. 
 
 As regards Its Interior life, a large, 
 dim looking-glass used to hang in one 
 of the rooms, and was fabled to con- 
 tain within its depths all the shapes 
 that had ever been reflected there — 
 the old colonel himself, and his many 
 descendants, some In the garb of 
 antique babyhood, and others In the 
 bloom of feminine beauty or manly 
 prime, or saddened with the wrinkles 
 of frosty age. Had we the secret of 
 that mirror, we would gladly sit down 
 before It, and transfer its revelations 
 to our page. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 January ^d. 
 
 There are so many unsubstantial 
 sorrows, which the necessity of our 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 7 
 
 mortal state begets on Idleness, that 
 an observer, casting aside sentiment, 
 Is sometimes led to question whether 
 there be any real woe, except absolute 
 physical suffering, and the loss of 
 closest friends. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 January 4th, 
 
 " But I," cried the fresh-hearted 
 New Year — " I shall try to leave men 
 wiser than I find them. I will offer 
 them freely whatever good gifts 
 Providence permits me to distribute, 
 and win tell them to be thankful for 
 what they have and humbly hopeful 
 for more; and surely, If they are not 
 absolute fools, they will condescend 
 to be happy, and will allow me to be 
 
8 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 a happy year. For my happiness 
 must depend on them." 
 
 — The Sister-Years. 
 
 January ^th. 
 
 And with all its dangerous influ- 
 ences, we have reason to thank God, 
 that there is such a place of refuge 
 from the gloom and chillness of 
 actual life. Hither may come the 
 prisoner, escaping from his dark and 
 narrow cell, and cankerous chain, to 
 breathe free air In this enchanted at- 
 mosphere. The sick man leaves his 
 weary pillow, and finds strength to 
 wander hither, though his wasted 
 limbs might not support him even to 
 the threshold of his chamber. The 
 exile passes through the Hall of Fan- 
 
WATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 9 
 
 tasy, to revisit his native soil. The 
 burthen of years rolls down from the 
 old man's shoulders the moment that 
 the door uncloses. Mourners leave 
 their heavy sorrows at the entrance, 
 and here rejoin the lost ones, whose 
 faces would else be seen no more, 
 until thought shall have become the 
 only fact. It may be said, in truth, 
 that there is but half a life — the 
 meaner and earthlier half — for those 
 who never find their way into the 
 hall. Nor must I fail to mention, 
 that, in the observatory of the edifice, 
 is kept that wonderful perspective 
 glass, through which the shepherds 
 of the Delectable Mountains showed 
 Christian the far-off gleam of the 
 Celestial City. The eye of Faith 
 still loves to gaze through it. 
 
 — Young Goodman B?'ozun. 
 
10 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 January 6th. 
 
 The children had seen Grandfather 
 sitting in this chair ever since they 
 could remember anything. Perhaps 
 the younger of them supposed that he 
 and the chair had come into the 
 world together, and that both had 
 always been as old as they were now. 
 — Grandfathei''s Chair. 
 
 January Jth. 
 
 There is something extremely 
 pleasant, and even touching — at 
 least, of very sweet, soft, and win- 
 ning effect — in this peculiarity of 
 needle-work, distinguishing women 
 from men. Our own sex is incapable 
 of any such by-play aside from the 
 main business of life; but women — be 
 they of what earthly rank they may. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 11 
 
 however gifted with intellect or 
 genius, or endowed with awful beauty 
 — have always some little handiwork 
 ready to fill the tiny gap of every 
 vacant moment. 
 
 —The Marble Faun. 
 
 January 8th. 
 
 It Is greatly to be feared that the 
 Three Gray Women were very much 
 In the habit of disturbing their mutual 
 harmony by bickerings of this sort, 
 which was the more pity, as they 
 could not conveniently do without one 
 another, and were evidently Intended 
 to be Inseparable companions. As a 
 general rule, I would advise all peo- 
 ple, whether sisters or brothers, old 
 or young, who chance to have but one 
 eye among them to cultivate forbear- 
 
12 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 ance, and not all Insist upon peeping 
 through It at once. 
 
 — J Wonder Book. 
 
 January gth. 
 
 The better life ! Possibly, It would 
 hardly look so now; It Is enough If 
 It looked so then. The greatest ob- 
 stacle to being heroic Is the doubt 
 whether one may not be going to 
 prove one's self a fool; the truest 
 heroism Is, to resist the doubt; and 
 the profoundest wisdom, to know 
 when it ought to be resisted, and 
 when to be obeyed. 
 
 Yet, after all, let us acknowledge 
 It wiser, 'If not more sagacious, to 
 follow out one's day-dream to Its 
 natural consummation, although, If 
 the vision have been worth the hav- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 13 
 
 ing, it is certain never to be consum- 
 mated otherwise than by a failure. 
 — The Blithedale Romance. 
 
 January loth. 
 
 Grandfather loved a wood-fire far 
 better than a grate of glowing anthra- 
 cite, or than the dull heat of an invisi- 
 ble furnace, which seems to think that 
 it has done its duty in merely warm- 
 ing the house. But the wood-fire is 
 a kindly, cheerful, sociable spirit, sym- 
 pathizing with mankind, and knowing 
 that to create warmth is but one of 
 the good oflices which are expected 
 from it. Therefore it dances on the 
 hearth, and laughs broadly through 
 the room, and plays a thousand antics, 
 and throws a joyous glow over all the 
 faces that encircle it. 
 
 — Famous Old People. 
 
14 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 January nth. 
 
 But still she was a wonderfully 
 pleasant-looking figure, and had so 
 much promise and such an indescriba- 
 ble hopefulness in her aspect that 
 hardly anybody could meet her with- 
 out anticipating some very desirable 
 thing — the consummation of some 
 long-sought good — from her kind 
 offices. A few dismal characters 
 there may be here and there about 
 the world who have so often been 
 trifled with by young maidens as 
 promising as she, that they have now 
 ceased to pin any faith upon the skirts 
 of the New Year. But, for my own 
 part, I have great faith in her, and, 
 should I live to see fifty more such, 
 still from each of those successive sis- 
 ters I shall reckon upon receiving 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 15 
 
 something that will be worth living 
 for. 
 
 — The Sister-Years. 
 
 January I2th. 
 
 It is singular how very few there 
 are, who do not occasionally gain ad- 
 mittance on such a score, either in 
 abstracted musings, or momentary 
 thoughts, or bright anticipations, or 
 vivid remembrances; for even the 
 actual becomes ideal, whether in hope 
 or memory, and beguiles the dreamer 
 into the Hall of Fantasy. Some un- 
 fortunates make their whole abode 
 and business here, and contract habits 
 which unfit them for all the real em- 
 ployments of life. Others — but these 
 are few — possess the faculty, in their 
 occasional visits, of discovering a 
 
16 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 purer truth than the world can Im- 
 part, among the lights and shadows 
 of these pictured windows. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown, 
 
 January i^th. 
 
 It Is the voice of Winter; and when 
 parents and children hear It, they 
 shudder, and exclaim: "Winter Is 
 come. Cold Winter has begun his 
 reign already." Now, throughout 
 New England each hearth becomes 
 an altar sending up the smoke of a 
 continued sacrifice to the Immitigable 
 deity who tyrannizes over forest, 
 country-side, and town. Yet not un- 
 grateful be his New England children 
 (for Winter Is our sire, though a 
 stern and rough one) — not ungrate- 
 ful even for the severities which have 
 nourished our unyielding strength of 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 17 
 
 character. And let us thank him, 
 too, for the sleigh rides cheered by the 
 music of merry bells; for the crack- 
 ling and rustling hearth when the 
 ruddy firelight gleams on hardy man- 
 hood and the blooming cheek of 
 woman; for all the home enjoyments 
 and the kindred virtues which flourish 
 in a frozen soil. 
 
 — Snowflakes, 
 
 January 14th. 
 
 The aspect of the venerable man- 
 sion has always affected me like a 
 human countenance, bearing the traces 
 not merely of outward storm and sun- 
 shine, but expressive, also, of the long 
 lapse of mortal life, and accompany- 
 ing vicissitudes that have passed 
 within. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
18 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 January i^th. 
 
 Side by side with the massiveness 
 
 of the Roman Past, all matters that 
 
 we handle or dream of now-a-days 
 
 look evanescent and visionary alike. 
 
 — The Marble Faun, 
 
 January i6th. 
 
 There is certainly no method by 
 which the shadowy outlines of de- 
 parted men and women can be made 
 to assume the hues of life more ef- 
 fectually than by connecting their 
 images with the substantial and 
 homely reality of a fireside chair. 
 It causes us to feel at once that these 
 characters of history had a private 
 and familiar existence, and were not 
 wholly contained within that cold ar- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 19 
 
 ray of outward action which we are 
 compelled to receive as the adequate 
 representation of their lives. 
 
 — Grandfather s Chair. 
 
 January lyth. 
 
 Time — where man lives not — what 
 is it but eternity? And in the church, 
 we might suppose, are garnered up, 
 throughout the week, all thoughts 
 and feelings that have reference to 
 eternity, until the holy day comes 
 round again, to let them forth. 
 Might not, then, its more appropri- 
 ate site be in the outskirts of the 
 town, with space for old trees to 
 wave around it and throw their sol- 
 emn shadows over a quiet green? 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
20 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 January i8th. 
 
 Onward, onward, Into that dimness 
 where the lights of Time, which have 
 blazed along the procession, are flick- 
 ering In their sockets ! And whither ! 
 We know not, and Death, hitherto 
 our leader, deserts us by the wayside, 
 as the tramp of our Innumerable foot- 
 steps pass beyond his sphere. He 
 knows not, more than we, our des- 
 tined goal. But God, who made us, 
 knows, and will not leave us on our 
 toilsome and doubtful march, either 
 to wander In Infinite uncertainty, or 
 perish by the way. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 January igth. 
 
 The founders of a new colony, 
 whatever Utopia of human virtue 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 21 
 
 and happiness they might originally 
 project, have invariably recognized 
 it among their earliest practical neces- 
 sities to allot a portion of the vir- 
 gin soil as a cemetery, and another 
 portion as the site of a prison. In 
 accordance with this rule, it may 
 safely be assumed that the forefathers 
 of Boston had built the first prison- 
 house somewhere in the vicinity of 
 Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they 
 marked out the first burial-ground, on 
 Isaac Johnson's lot, and round about 
 his grave, which subsequently became 
 the nucleus of all the congregated 
 sepulchers in the old churchyard of 
 King's Chapel. —The Scarlet Letter. 
 
 January 20th. 
 
 When we find ourselves fading 
 into shadows and unrealities, it seems 
 
22 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 hardly worth while to be sad, but 
 rather to laugh as gayly as we may, 
 and ask little reason wherefore. 
 
 — The Marble Faun, 
 
 January 2ist. 
 
 At last the children grew weary of 
 their sports; because a summer after- 
 noon Is like a long lifetime to the 
 young. So they came into the room 
 together, and clustered round Grand- 
 father's great chair. Little Alice, 
 who was hardly five years old, took 
 the privilege of the youngest and 
 climbed his knee. It was a pleasant 
 thing to behold that fair and golden- 
 haired child in the lap of the old man, 
 and to think that, different as they 
 were, the hearts of both could be 
 gladdened with the same joys. 
 
 — Grandfather s Chair. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 23 
 
 January 2 2d, 
 
 What a pity that the kitchen, and 
 the housework generally, cannot be 
 left out of our system altogether I It 
 Is odd enough that the kind of labor 
 which falls to the lot of women Is just 
 that which chiefly distinguishes arti- 
 ficial life — the life of degenerated 
 mortals — from the life of Paradise. 
 Eve had no dinner pot, and no clothes 
 to mend, and no washing day. 
 
 — The Blithedale Romance, 
 
 January 2^d. 
 
 But, if the spectator broods long 
 over the statue, he will be conscious 
 of Its spell; all the pleasantness of 
 sylvan life, all the genial and happy 
 characteristics of creatures that dwell 
 
24 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 In the woods and fields, will seem to 
 be mingled and kneaded into one sub- 
 stance, along with the kindred quali- 
 ties in the human soul. Trees, grass, 
 flowers, woodland streamlets, cattle, 
 deer, and unsophisticated man ! The 
 essence of all these was compressed 
 long ago, and still exists within that 
 discolored marble surface of the Faun 
 of Praxiteles. 
 
 — The Marble Faun, 
 
 January 24th. 
 
 This rose bush, by a strange chance, 
 has been kept alive in history; but 
 whether it had merely survived out 
 of the stern old wilderness, so long 
 after the fall of the gigantic pines 
 and oaks that originally overshad- 
 owed it — or whether, as there is a 
 
NATHAXIEL HAWTHORNE 25 
 
 fair authority for believing, it had 
 sprung up under the footsteps of the 
 sainted Ann Hutchinson, as she en- 
 tered the prison-door — we shall not 
 take upon us to determine. Finding 
 it so directly on the threshold of our 
 narrative, which is now about to issue 
 from that inauspicious portal, we 
 could hardly do otherwise than pluck 
 one of its flowers, and present it to the 
 reader. It may serve, let us hope, to 
 symbolize some sweet moral blossom, 
 that may be found along the track, or 
 relieve the darkening close of a tale 
 of human frailty and sorrow. 
 
 — The Scarlet Letter. 
 
 January 25th. 
 
 Oh, Judgment Seat, not by the pure 
 in heart wast thou established, nor in 
 
26 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 the simplicity of nature; but by hard 
 and wrinkled men, and upon the ac- 
 cumulated heap of earthly wrong! 
 Thou art the very symbol of man's 
 perverted state. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse, 
 
 January 26th, 
 
 In the depths of every heart there 
 is a tomb and a dungeon, though the 
 lights, the music, and revelry above 
 may cause us to forget their exist- 
 ence and the buried ones or prisoners 
 whom they hide. But sometimes, 
 and oftenest at midnight, those dark 
 receptacles are flung wide open. In 
 an hour like this, when the mind has 
 a passive sensibility, but no active 
 strength — when the Imagination Is a 
 mirror Imparting vividness to all 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 27 
 
 Ideas without the power of selecting 
 or controlling them — then pray that 
 your griefs may slumber and the 
 brotherhood of remorse not break 
 their chain. 
 
 — The Haunted Mind. 
 
 January 2'jth, 
 
 Man's intellect, moderated by 
 Woman's tenderness and moral sense ! 
 Were such the legislation of the 
 world, there would be no need of 
 State-houses, Capitols, Halls of Par- 
 liament, nor even of those little as- 
 semblages of patriarchs beneath the 
 shadowy trees, by whom freedom was 
 first Interpreted to mankind on our 
 native shores. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse, 
 
28 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 January 28th. 
 
 Happy the man that has such a 
 friend beside him when he comes to 
 die ! and unless a friend Hke Hollings- 
 worth be at hand — as most probably 
 there will not — he had better make 
 up his mind to die alone. How many 
 men, I wonder, does one meet with, 
 in a lifetime, whom he would choose 
 for his death-bed companions! 
 
 — The Blithedale Ro?nance. 
 
 January 2gth. 
 
 His heart yearned within him; for 
 he was eager to tell his wife of the 
 new home which he had chosen. But 
 when he beheld her pale and hollow 
 cheek, and found how her strength 
 was wasted, he must have known that 
 her appointed home was in a better 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 29 
 
 land. Happy for him, then — happy 
 both for him and her — if they re- 
 membered that there was a path to 
 Heaven, as well from this heathen 
 wilderness as from the Christian land 
 whence they had come. 
 
 — Grandfather's Chair. 
 
 January ^oth. 
 
 I am apt to be fearful in old, 
 gloomy houses, and in the dark. I 
 love no dark or dusky corners, except 
 it be in a grotto, or among the thick 
 green leaves of an arbor, or in some 
 nook of the woods, such as I know 
 many In the neighborhood of my 
 home. Even there, if a stray sun- 
 beam steal in, the shadow is all the 
 better for its cheerful glimmer. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
30 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 January Sist. 
 
 This Is no strange thing In human 
 experience. Men who attempt to do 
 the world more good than the world 
 Is able entlrly to comprehend are al- 
 most Invariably held In bad odor. 
 But yet, If the wise and good man 
 can wait a while, either the present 
 generation or posterity will do him 
 justice. 
 
 — Famous Old People. 
 
FEBRUARY 
 
February ist. 
 
 It is perilous to make a chasm in 
 human affections; not that they gape 
 so long and wide — but so quickly 
 close again ! 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 February 2d. 
 
 But, as thoughts are frozen and ut- 
 terance benumbed, unless the speaker 
 stand in some true relation with his 
 audience, it may be pardonable to 
 imagine that friend, a kind and ap- 
 prehensive, though not the closest 
 friend, is listening to our talk; and 
 then a native reserve being thawed 
 by this genial consciousness, we may 
 
34 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 prate of the circumstances that He 
 around us, and even of ourself, but 
 still keep the Inmost Me behind Its 
 veil. To this extent, and within 
 these limits, an author, methlnks, may 
 be autobiographical, without violating 
 either the reader's rights or his own. 
 — The Custom House. 
 
 February ^d. 
 
 These wooded and flowery lawns 
 are more beautiful than the finest 
 of English park-scenery, more touch- 
 ing, more Impressive, through the 
 neglect that leaves Nature so much to 
 her own ways and methods. Since 
 man seldom Interferes with her, she 
 sets to work In her quiet way and 
 makes herself at home. There is 
 enough of human care, It Is true, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 35 
 
 bestowed long ago and still bestowed, 
 to prevent wildness from growing 
 into deformity; and the result is an 
 ideal landscape, a woodland scene 
 that seems to have been projected 
 out of the poet's mind. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 February ph. 
 
 It often happens that the outcasts 
 of one generation are those who are 
 reverenced as the wisest and best of 
 men by the next. The securest fame 
 is that which comes after a man's 
 death. 
 
 — Grandfather s Chair. 
 
 February ^th. 
 
 We were of all creeds and opinions, 
 and generally tolerant of all, on every 
 imaginable subject. Our bond, It 
 
36 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 seems to me, was not affirmative, but 
 negative. We had Individually found 
 one thing or another to quarrel with 
 In our past life, and were pretty well 
 agreed as to the Inexpediency of lum- 
 bering along with the old system any 
 further. As to what should be sub- 
 stituted, there was much less unanim- 
 ity. We did not greatly care — at 
 least, I never did — for the written 
 constitution under which our mlllen- 
 lum had commenced. My hope was, 
 that, between theory and practice, a 
 true and available mode of life might 
 be struck out, and that, even should 
 we ultimately fall, the months or 
 years spent In the trial would not have 
 been wasted, either as regarded pass- 
 ing enjoyment, or the experience 
 which makes men wise. 
 
 — The Blithedale Romance. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 37 
 
 February 6th. 
 
 Only by watching the efforts of the 
 most skillful copyists — men who 
 spend a lifetime, as some of them do, 
 In multiplying copies of a single pic- 
 ture — and observing how Invariably 
 they leave out just the Indefinable 
 charm that Involves the last. Inesti- 
 mable value, can we understand the 
 difficulties of the task which they 
 undertake. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 February yth. 
 
 On the whole. It was a society such 
 as has seldom met together; nor, per- 
 haps, could It reasonably be expected 
 to hold together long. Persons of 
 marked Individuality — crooked sticks, 
 
38 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 as some of us might be called — are 
 not exactly the easiest to bind up into 
 a fagot. But, so long as our union 
 should subsist, a man of intellect and 
 feeling, with a free nature in him, 
 might have sought far and near with- 
 out finding so many points of attrac- 
 tion as would allure him hitherward. 
 — The Blithedale Romance, 
 
 February 8th, 
 
 It is a little remarkable, that — 
 though disinclined to talk overmuch 
 of myself and my affairs at the fire- 
 side, and to my personal friends — an 
 autobiographical impulse should twice 
 in my life have taken possession of 
 me, in addressing the public. The 
 first time was three or four years since, 
 when I favored the reader — inex- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 39 
 
 ciisably, and for no earthly reason, 
 that either the Indulgent reader or 
 the Intrusive author could Imagine — 
 with a description of my way of life 
 In the deep quietude of an Old Manse. 
 And now — because, beyond my de- 
 serts, I was happy enough to find a 
 listener or two on the former occa- 
 sion — I again seize the public by the 
 button, and talk of my three years' 
 experience in a Custom House. 
 
 — The Custom House. 
 
 February gth. 
 
 The little brook ran along over Its 
 pathway of gold, here pausing to form 
 a pool In which minnows were dart- 
 ing to and fro, and then it hurried 
 onward at a swifter pace, as if in 
 haste to reach the lake, and, forget- 
 
40 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 ting to look whither It went, it tum- 
 bled over the root of a tree which 
 stretched quite across its current. 
 You would have laughed to hear how 
 noisily It babbled about this accident. 
 And even after It had run onward the 
 brook still kept talking to itself, as if 
 It were In a maze. It was wonder- 
 smitten, I suppose, at finding Its dark 
 dell so illuminated and at hearing the 
 prattle and merriment of so many 
 children. So It stole away as quickly 
 as It could and hid Itself In the lake. 
 — J Wonder Book, 
 
 February loth. 
 
 Often, In a young child's Ideas and 
 fancies, there is something which It 
 requires the thought of a lifetime to 
 comprehend. 
 
 — Grandfather's Chair. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 41 
 
 February nth. 
 
 In truth, It is desperately hard 
 work when we attempt to throw the 
 spell of hoary antiquity over localities 
 with which the living world and the 
 day that is passing over us have aught 
 to do. Yet, as I glanced at the 
 stately staircase down which the pro- 
 cession of the old governors had 
 descended, and as I emerged through 
 the venerable portal whence their fig- 
 ures had preceded me, it gladdened 
 me to be conscious of a thrill of awe. 
 — Howe's Masquerade, 
 
 February I2th. 
 
 It will be seen, likewise, that this 
 Custom-House sketch has a certain 
 propriety, of a kind always recognized 
 
42 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 In literature, as explaining how a large 
 portion of the following pages came 
 into my possession, and as offering 
 proofs of the authenticity of a narra- 
 tive therein contained. This, in fact 
 — a desire to put myself in my true 
 position as editor, or very little more, 
 of the most prolix among the tales 
 that make up my volume — this, and 
 no other, is my true reason for as- 
 suming a personal relation with the 
 public. 
 
 — The Cust07n House, 
 
 February i^th. 
 
 Would Time but await the close of 
 our favorite follies, we should be 
 young men, all of us, and till Dooms- 
 day. 
 
 —Twice Told Tales, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 43 
 
 February 14th. 
 
 But It is an awful thing, indeed, 
 this endless endurance, this almost 
 Indestructibility, of a marble bust! 
 Whether In our own case, or that of 
 other men, it bids us sadly measure 
 the little, little time, during which our 
 lineaments are likely to be of Interest 
 to any human being. It Is especially 
 singular that Americans should care 
 about perpetuating themselves In this 
 mode. The brief duration of our 
 families, as a hereditary household, 
 renders it next to a certainty that the 
 great-grandchildren will not know 
 their father's grandfather, and that 
 half a century hence, at farthest, the 
 hammer of the auctioneer will thump 
 Its knock-down blow against his block- 
 head, sold at so much for the pound 
 
44 BEAUTIFUL THOU GET 8 FROM 
 
 of Stone! And It ought to make us 
 shiver, the Idea of leaving our fea- 
 tures to be a dusty-white ghost 
 among strangers of another genera- 
 tion, who will take our nose between 
 their thumb and fingers (as we have 
 seen men do by Caesar's), and Infalli- 
 bly break it off, if they can do so with- 
 out detection! 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 February i§th. 
 
 Her simple, careless, childish flow 
 of spirits often made me sad. She 
 seemed to me like a butterfly at play 
 In a flickering bit of sunshine, and 
 mistaking It for a broad and eternal 
 summer. We sometimes hold mirth 
 to a stricter accountability than sor- 
 row — It must show good cause, or 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 45 
 
 the echo of Its laughter comes back 
 drearily. 
 
 — The BUthedale Romance. 
 
 February i6th. 
 
 And, to tell you the truth, I can- 
 not help being glad that our foolish 
 Pandora peeped Into the box. No 
 doubt — no doubt — the Troubles are 
 still flying about the world, and have 
 increased In multitude rather than 
 lessened, and are a very ugly set of 
 imps, and carry most venomous stings 
 In their tails. I have felt them al- 
 ready, and expect to feel them more 
 as I grow older. But then that 
 lovely and lightsome little figure of 
 Hope ! What In the world could we 
 do without her? Hope spiritualizes 
 the earth; Hope makes it always 
 
46 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 new; and even In the earth's best and 
 brightest aspect Hope shows It to be 
 only the shadow of an Infinite bhss 
 hereafter. 
 
 — A Wonder Book. 
 
 February lyth. 
 
 Amid the seeming confusion of our 
 mysterious world, Individuals are so 
 nicely adjusted to a system, and sys- 
 tems to one another, and to a whole, 
 that, by stepping aside for a moment, 
 a man exposes himself to a fearful 
 risk of losing his place forever. 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 February i8th. 
 
 And yet, though invariably happi- 
 est elsewhere, there Is within me a 
 feeling for old Salem, which. In lack 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 47 
 
 of a better phrase, I must be content 
 to call affection. The sentiment Is 
 probably assignable to the deep and 
 aged roots which my family has struck 
 Into the soil. It Is now nearly two 
 centuries and a quarter since the orig- 
 inal Briton, the earliest emigrant of 
 my name, made his appearance In the 
 wild and forest-bordered settlement, 
 which has since become a city. And 
 here his descendants have been born 
 and died, and have mingled their 
 earthy substance with the soil; until 
 no small portion of It must necessarily 
 be akin to the mortal frame where- 
 with, for a little while, I walk the 
 streets. In part, therefore, the at- 
 tachment which I speak of Is the mere 
 sensuous sympathy of dust for dust. 
 Few of my countrymen can know what 
 It Is; nor, as frequent transplantation 
 
48 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 is perhaps better for the stock, need 
 they consider it desirable to know. 
 — The Custofn House. 
 
 February igth. 
 
 Men are wonderfully soon satisfied, 
 in this day of shameful bodily enerva- 
 tion, when, from one end of life to 
 the other, such multitudes never taste 
 the sweet weariness that follows ac- 
 customed toil. I seldom saw the new 
 enthusiasm that did not grow as flimsy 
 and flaccid as the proselyte's moist- 
 ened shirt-collar, with a quarter of an 
 hour's active labor under a July sun. 
 — The Blithedale Ro?nance. 
 
 February 20th. 
 
 It is a good state of mind for mor- 
 tal man, when he is content to leave 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 49 
 
 no more definite memorial than the 
 grass, which will sprout kindly and 
 speedily over his grave, if we do 
 not make the spot barren with mar- 
 ble. Methinks, too, It will be a 
 fresher and better world, when It 
 flings off this great burden of stony 
 memories, which the ages have deemed 
 It a piety to heap upon Its back. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 February 2ist, 
 
 Purity and simplicity hold con- 
 verse, at every moment, with their 
 Creator. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
 February 2 2d. 
 
 I know not whether these ancestors 
 of mine bethought themselves to re- 
 
50 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 pent, and ask pardon of Heaven for 
 their cruelties; or whether they are 
 now groaning under the heavy conse- 
 quences of them, in another state of 
 being. At all events, I, the present 
 writer, as their representative, hereby 
 take shame upon myself for their 
 sakes, and pray that any curse in- 
 curred by them — as I have heard, and 
 as the dreary and unprosperous con- 
 dition of the race, for many a long 
 year back, would argue to exist — may 
 be now and henceforth removed. 
 
 — The Custom House. 
 
 February 2^d. 
 
 Some illusions, and this among 
 them, are the shadows of great truths. 
 Doubts may flit around me, or seem 
 to close their evil wings, and settle 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 51 
 
 down; but, so long as I imagine that 
 the earth is hallowed, and the light 
 of Heaven retains its sanctity, on the 
 Sabbath — while that blessed sunshine 
 lives within me — never can my soul 
 have lost the instinct of its faith. If 
 it has gone astray, it will return 
 again. 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 February 24th, 
 
 It is a mistaken idea, which men 
 generally entertain, that nature has 
 made women especially prone to 
 throw their whole being into what is 
 technically called love. We have, 
 to say the least, no more necessity for 
 it than yourselves ; only we have noth- 
 ing else to do with our hearts. When 
 women have other objects in life, they 
 
52 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 are not apt to fall In love. I can 
 think of many women distinguished 
 in art, literature, and science — and 
 multitudes whose hearts and minds 
 find good employment in less osten- 
 tatious ways — who lead high, lonely 
 lives, and are conscious of no sacri- 
 fice so far as your sex is concerned. 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 February 2^th, 
 
 And, finally, unless there be real 
 affection in his heart, a man cannot — 
 such is the bad state to which the 
 world has brought itself — cannot 
 more effectually show his contempt 
 for a brother mortal, nor more gall- 
 ingly assume a position of superiority, 
 than by addressing him as *' friend." 
 Especially does the misapplication of 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 53 
 
 this phrase bring out that latent hos- 
 tility which is sure to animate peculiar 
 sects, and those who, with however 
 generous a purpose, have sequestered 
 themselves from the crowd ; a feeling, 
 it is true, which may be hidden in 
 some dog-kennel of the heart, grum- 
 bling there in the darkness, but is 
 never quite extinct, until the dissent- 
 ing party have gained power and 
 scope enough to treat the world gen- 
 erously. 
 
 — The Blithedale Romance. 
 
 February 26th, 
 
 We all of us, as we grow older, 
 lose somewhat of our proximity to 
 nature. It is the price we pay for 
 experience. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
54 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 February 2ph. 
 
 He had faith enough to believe, 
 and wisdom enough to know, that the 
 bloom of the flower would be even 
 holler and happier than Its bud. Even 
 within himself — though Grandfather 
 was now at that period of life when 
 the veil of mortality Is apt to hang 
 heavily over the soul — still. In his 
 Inmost being he was conscious of 
 something that he would not have ex- 
 changed for the best happiness of 
 childhood. It was a bliss to which 
 every sort of earthly experience — all 
 that he had enjoyed, or suffered, or 
 seen, or heard, or acted, with the 
 broodlngs of his soul upon the whole 
 — had contributed somewhat. In the 
 same manner must a bliss, of which 
 now they could have no conception^ 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 55 
 
 grow up within these children, and 
 form a part of their sustenance for 
 immortality. 
 
 — Grandfather s Chair. 
 
 February 28th. 
 
 It is very singular how the fact of 
 a man's- death often seems to give 
 people a truer idea of his character, 
 whether for good or evil, than they 
 have ever possessed while he was liv- 
 ing and acting among them. Death 
 is so genuine a fact that it excludes 
 falsehood, or betrays its emptiness; it 
 is a touchstone that proves the gold 
 and dishonors the baser metal. Could 
 the departed, whoever he may be, re- 
 turn in a week after his decease, he 
 would almost invariably find himself 
 at a higher or lower point than he had 
 
56 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 formerly occupied on the scale of pub- 
 lic appreciation. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 February 2gth. 
 
 Yonder sun has left us, and the 
 whole world is fading from our 
 sight. Let us sleep, as thi's lovely 
 little figure Is sleeping. Our Father 
 only knows, whether what outward 
 things we have possessed to-day are 
 to be snatched from us forever. But 
 should our earthly life be leaving us 
 with the departing light, we need not 
 doubt that another morn will find us 
 somewhere beneath the smile of God. 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
MARCH 
 
March ist. 
 
 We can be but partially acquainted 
 even with the events which actually 
 Influence our course through life, and 
 our final destiny. There are Innu- 
 merable other events, If such they may 
 be called, which come close upon us, 
 yet pass away without actual results, 
 or even betraying their near ap- 
 proach, by the reflection of any light 
 or shadow across our minds. 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 March 2d, 
 
 There are some Individuals, of 
 whom we cannot conceive It proper 
 that they should apply their hands to 
 
60 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 any earthly Instrument, or work out 
 any definite act; and others, perhaps 
 not less high, to whom it Is an essen- 
 tial attribute to labor. In body as well 
 as spirit, for the welfare of their 
 brethren. Thus, If we find a spiritual 
 sage, whose unseen, Inestimable Influ- 
 ence has exalted the moral standard 
 of mankind, we will choose for his 
 companion some poor laborer, who 
 has wrought for love In the potato 
 field of a neighbor poorer than him- 
 self. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 March sd. 
 
 The sick In mind, and, perhaps, in 
 body, are rendered more darkly and 
 hopelessly so by the manifold reflec- 
 tion of their disease, mirrored back 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 61 
 
 from all quarters, in the deportment 
 of those about them; they are com- 
 pelled to inhale the poison of their 
 own breath, in infinite repetition. 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 March ph. 
 
 Wealth is the golden essence of the 
 outward . world, em.bodying almost 
 everything that exists beyond the 
 limits of the soul; and therefore it is 
 the natural yearning for the life in 
 the midst of which we find ourselves, 
 and of which gold is the condition of 
 enjoyment, that men abridge into this 
 general wish. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
 March ^th. 
 
 From generation to generation, a 
 'chair sits familiarly in the midst of 
 
62 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 human Interests, and is witness to the 
 most secret and confidential inter- 
 course that mortal man can hold with 
 his fellow. The human heart may 
 best be read In the fireside chair. 
 And as to external events, Grief 
 and Joy keep a continual vicissitude 
 around it and within It. Now we 
 see the glad face and glowing form of 
 Joy, sitting merrily In the old chair, 
 and throwing a warm firelight radi- 
 ance over all the household. Now, 
 while we thought not of it, the dark 
 clad mourner. Grief, has stolen Into 
 the place of Joy, but not to retain it 
 long. The imagination can hardly 
 grasp so wide a subject as Is em- 
 braced In the experience of a family 
 chair. 
 
 — Grandfather s Chair. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 63 
 
 March 6th, 
 
 Christian faith Is a grand cathe- 
 dral, with divinely pictured windows. 
 Standing without, you see no glory, 
 nor can possibly imagine any; stand- 
 ing within, every ray of light reveals 
 a harmony of unspeakable splendors. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 Rest, rest, thou weary world! for 
 to-morrow's round of toil and pleas- 
 ure will be as wearisome as to-day's 
 has been; yet both shall bear thee 
 onward a day's march of eternity. 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 March yth. 
 
 It Is to the credit of human nature, 
 that, except where Its selfishness Is 
 brought Into play. It loves more read- 
 
64 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 ily than It hates. Hatred, by a grad- 
 ual and quiet process, will even be 
 transformed to love, unless the change 
 be Impeded by a continually new irri- 
 tation of the original feeling of hos- 
 tility. 
 
 — The Scarlet Letter. 
 
 March 8th. 
 
 It is a very miserable epoch when 
 the evil necessities of life in our tortu- 
 ous world first get the better of us so 
 far as to compel us to attempt throw- 
 ing a cloud over our transparency. 
 Simplicity Increases In value the longer 
 we can keep It, and the farther we 
 carry It onward Into life; the loss of 
 a child's simplicity. In the Inevitable 
 lapse of years, causes but a natural 
 sigh or two, because even his mother 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 65 
 
 feared that he could not keep It al- 
 ways. But after a young man has 
 brought It through his childhood, and 
 has still worn It In his bosom, not as 
 an early dew drop, but as a diamond 
 of pure, white luster — It Is a pity to 
 lose it, then. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 March gth. 
 
 Could we know all the vicissitudes 
 of our fortunes, life would be too full 
 of hope and fear, exultation or disap- 
 pointment, to afford us a single hour 
 of true serenity. 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 March loth. 
 
 If you could choose an hour of 
 wakefulness out of the whole night, 
 
66 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 it would be this: Since your sober 
 bed-time, at eleven, you have had rest 
 enough to take off the pressure of yes- 
 terday's fatigue, while before you, till 
 the sun comes from " Far Cathay " to 
 brighten your window, there Is almost 
 the space of a summer night — one 
 hour to be spent In thought with the 
 mind's eye half shut, and two In pleas- 
 ant dreams, and two In that strangest 
 of enjoyments, the forgetfulness alike 
 of joy and woe. The moment of ris- 
 ing belongs to another period of time, 
 and appears so distant that the plunge 
 out of a warm bed Into the frosty 
 air cannot yet be anticipated with 
 dismay. Yesterday has already van- 
 ished among the shadows of the past; 
 to-morrow has not yet emerged from 
 the future. You have found an In- 
 termediate space where the business 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 67 
 
 of life does not intrude, where the 
 passing moment lingers and becomes 
 truly the present ; a spot where Father 
 Time, when he thinks nobody is 
 watching him, sits down by the way- 
 side to take breath. Oh, that he 
 would fall asleep and let mortals live 
 on without growing older ! 
 
 — The Haunted Mind. 
 
 March nth. 
 
 The past is but a coarse and sen- 
 sual prophecy of the present and the 
 future. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 March I2th. 
 
 The root of human nature strikes 
 down deep into this earthly soil; and 
 it is but reluctantly that we submit to 
 
68 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 be transplanted, even for a higher cul- 
 tivation in Heaven. I query whether 
 the destruction of the earth would 
 gratify any one individual; except, 
 perhaps, some embarrassed man of 
 business, whose notes fall due a day 
 after the day of doom. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 March ijth. 
 
 What IS Guilt? A stain upon the 
 soul. And it is a point of vast in- 
 terest, whether the soul may contract 
 such stains, in all their depth and 
 flagrancy, from deeds which may have 
 been plotted and resolved upon, but 
 which, physically, have never had ex- 
 istence. Must the fleshly hand and 
 visible frame of man set its seal to the 
 evil designs of the soul, in order to 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 69 
 
 give them their entire validity against 
 the sinner? 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 March 14th, 
 
 Nobody, I think, ought to read 
 poetry, or look at pictures or statues, 
 who cannot find a great deal more in 
 them than the poet or artist has actu- 
 ally expressed. Their highest merit 
 is suggestiveness. 
 
 — The Marble Faun, 
 
 March 15th, 
 
 Why are poets so apt to choose 
 their mates, not for any similiarity of 
 poetic endowment, but for qualities 
 which might make the happiness of 
 the rudest handicraftsman as well as 
 that of the ideal craftsman of the 
 
70 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 spirit? Because, probably, at his 
 highest elevation, the poet needs no 
 human intercourse; but he finds it 
 dreary to descend, and be a stranger. 
 — The House of the Seven Gables, 
 
 March i6th. 
 
 The strangest wishes — yet most in- 
 cident to men who had gone deep 
 into scientific pursuits, and attained a 
 high intellectual stage, though not 
 the loftiest — were, to contend with 
 Nature, and wrest from her some 
 secret, or some power, which she had 
 seen fit to withhold from mortal 
 grasp. She loves to delude her aspir- 
 ing students, and mock them with 
 mysteries that seem but just beyond 
 their utmost reach. To concoct new 
 minerals — to produce new forms of 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 71 
 
 vegetable life — to create an insect, if 
 nothing higher in the living scale — 
 is a sort of wish that has often revelled 
 in the breast of a man of science. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
 March lyth. 
 
 Hast thou exhausted possibility in 
 the failure of this one trial ? Not so ! 
 The future is yet full of trial and 
 success. There is happiness to be en- 
 joyed ! There is good to be done ! 
 — The Scarlet Letter, 
 
 March i8th. 
 
 How wonderful that this our nar- 
 row foothold of the Present should 
 hold its own so constantly, and, while 
 every moment changing, should still 
 be like a rock betwixt the encounter- 
 
72 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 ing tides of the long Past, and the 
 infinite To-come ! 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 March igth. 
 
 Oh! who, in the enthusiasm of a 
 day-dream, has not wished that he 
 were a wanderer in a world of sum- 
 mer wilderness, with one fair and 
 gentle being hanging lightly on his 
 arm? In youth, his free and exult- 
 ing step would know no barrier but 
 the rolling ocean or the snow-topt 
 mountains; calmer manhood would 
 choose a home, where Nature had 
 strewn a double wealth, in the vale 
 of some transparent stream ; and when 
 hoary age, after long, long years of 
 that pure life, stole on and found him 
 there, it would find him the father of 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 73 
 
 a race, the patriarch of a people, the 
 founder of a mighty nation yet to be. 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
 March 20th. 
 
 All at once, as with a sudden smile 
 of Heaven, forth burst the sunshine, 
 pouring a very flood into the obscure 
 forest, gladdening each green leaf, 
 transmuting the yellow fallen ones to 
 gold, and gleaming adown the gray 
 trunks of the solemn trees. The 
 objects that had made a shadow 
 hitherto, embodied the brightness 
 now. The course of the little brook 
 might be traced by its merry gleam 
 afar into the wood's heart of mystery, 
 which had become a mystery of joy. 
 
 Such was the sympathy of Nature 
 — that wild, heathen Nature of the 
 
74 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 forest, never subjugated by human 
 law, nor Illumined by higher truth — 
 with the bliss of these two spirits! 
 Love, whether newly born, or aroused 
 from a death-like slumber, must al- 
 ways create a sunshine, filling the 
 heart so full of radiance, that It over- 
 flows upon the outward world. 
 
 — The Scarlet Letter. 
 
 March 2ist. 
 
 In truth, there is no such thing In 
 man's nature as a settled and full re- 
 solve, either for good or evil, except 
 at the very moment of execution. 
 Let us hope, therefore, that all the 
 dreadful consequences of sin will not 
 be incurred unless the act have set its 
 seal upon the thought. 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 75 
 
 March 22d, 
 
 Be cheerful ; whatever may happen, 
 be nothing but cheerful. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 March 23d. 
 
 Unless people are more than com- 
 monly disagreeable, it is my foolish 
 habit to contract a kindness for them. 
 The better part of my companion's 
 character, if it have a better part, is 
 that which usually comes uppermost 
 in my regard, and forms the type 
 whereby I recognize the man. As 
 most of these old Custom-House offi- 
 cers had good traits, and as my 
 position in reference to them, being 
 paternal and protective, was favor- 
 
76 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 able to the growth of friendly senti- 
 ments, I soon grew to like them all. 
 — The Custom House, 
 
 March 24th, 
 
 It must be a spirit much unlike my 
 own which can keep itself in health 
 and vigor without sometimes stealing 
 from the sultry sunshine of the world 
 to plunge into the cool bath of soli- 
 tude. At intervals, and not infre- 
 quent ones, the forest and the ocean 
 summon me — one with the roar of its 
 waves, the other with the murmur of 
 its boughs — forth from the haunts of 
 men. But I must wander many a 
 mile ere I could stand beneath the 
 shadow of even one primeval tree, 
 much less be lost among the multitude 
 of hoary trunks and hidden from the 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 77 
 
 earth and sky by the mystery of dark- 
 some foliage. Nothing Is within 
 my dally reach more like a forest than 
 the acre or two of woodland near 
 some suburban farmhouse. When, 
 therefore, the yearning for seclusion 
 becomes a necessity within me, I am 
 drawn to the seashore which extends 
 its line of rude rocks and seldom-trod- 
 den sands for leagues around our bay. 
 — Footprints on the Seashore. 
 
 March 25th, 
 
 There Is sad confusion, Indeed, 
 when the spirit thus flits away Into the 
 past, or Into the more awful future, 
 or, In any manner, steps across the 
 spaceless boundary betwixt Its own 
 region and the actual world; where 
 the body remains to guide Itself, as 
 
78 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 best It may, with little more than the 
 mechanism of animal life. It is like 
 death, without death's quiet privilege 
 — its freedom from mortal care. 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 March 26th, 
 
 According to these highly respect- 
 able witnesses, the minister, conscious 
 that he was dying — conscious, also, 
 that the reverence of the multitude 
 placed him already among saints and 
 angels — had desired, by yielding up 
 his breath in the arms of that fallen 
 woman, to express to the world how 
 utterly nugatory Is the choicest of 
 man's own righteousness. After ex- 
 hausting life In his efforts for man- 
 kind's spiritual good, he had made 
 the manner of his death a parable, In 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 79 
 
 order to impress on his admirers the 
 mighty and mournful lesson, that, In 
 the view of Infinite Purity, we are sin- 
 ners all alike. It was to teach them, 
 that the holiest among us has but at- 
 tained so far above his fellows as to 
 discern more clearly the Mercy which 
 looks down, and repudiate more ut- 
 terly the phantom of human merit, 
 which would look asplrlngly upward. 
 — The Scarlet Letter. 
 
 March 2yth. 
 
 Thus It Is, that Ideas which grow 
 up within the Imagination, and ap- 
 pear so lovely to it, and of a value 
 beyond whatever men call valuable, 
 are exposed to be shattered and anni- 
 hilated by contact with the Practical. 
 It Is requisite for the ideal artist to 
 
80 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 possess a force of character that seems 
 hardly compatible with its delicacy; 
 he must keep his faith in himself, 
 while the Incredulous world assails 
 him with Its utter disbelief; he must 
 stand up against mankind and be his 
 own sole disciple, both as respects his 
 genius, and the objects to which It Is 
 directed. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
 March 28th. 
 
 Yes, the wild dreamer was awake 
 at last. To find the mysterious treas- 
 ure he was to till the earth around his 
 mother's dwelling and reap Its prod- 
 ucts; Instead of warlike command or 
 regal or religious sway, he was to 
 rule over the village children, and 
 now the visionary maid had faded 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 81 
 
 from his fancy, and In her place he 
 saw the playmate of his childhood. 
 
 Would all who cherish such wild 
 wishes but look around them, they 
 would oftenest find their sphere of 
 duty, of prosperity, and happiness 
 within those precincts and In that sta- 
 tion where Providence Itself has cast 
 their lot. Happy they who read the 
 riddle without a weary world-search 
 or a lifetime spent in vain! 
 
 — The Threefold Destiny. 
 
 March 2gth, 
 
 Dispositions more boldly specula- 
 tive may derive a stern enjoyment 
 from the discovery since there must 
 be evil In the world, that a high man 
 is as likely to grasp his share of It as 
 a low one. A wider scope of view, 
 
82 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 and a deeper insight, may see rank, 
 dignity, and station, all proved il- 
 lusory, so far as regards their claim 
 to human reverence, and yet not feel 
 as if the universe were thereby tum- 
 bled headlong into chaos. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 March joth. 
 
 Who more need the tender succor 
 of the innocent, than wretches stained 
 with guilt? And must a selfish care 
 for the spotlessness of our own gar- 
 ments keep us from pressing the 
 guilty ones close to our hearts, 
 wherein, for the very reason that we 
 are innocent, lies their securest refuge 
 from further ill? 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
WATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 83 
 
 March ^ist. 
 
 It Is not until the crime is accom- 
 plished that guilt clenches its gripe 
 upon the guilty heart and claims It 
 for Its own. Then, and not before, 
 sin Is actually felt and acknowledged, 
 and, If unaccompanied by repentance, 
 grows a thousandfold more virulent 
 by its self-consciousness. 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
APRIL 
 
April 1st. 
 
 This venerable figure explained 
 that he was In search of To-morrow. 
 
 " I have spent all my life In pursuit 
 of It," added the sage old gentleman, 
 " being assured that To-morrow has 
 some vast benefit or other In store for 
 me. But I am now getting on a little 
 In years, and must make haste; for un- 
 less I overtake To-morrow soon, I 
 begin to be afraid It will finally escape 
 me." 
 
 " This fugitive To-morrow, my 
 venerable friend," said the Man of 
 Intelligence, " Is a stray child of Time, 
 and Is flying from his father Into the 
 region of the Infinite. Continue your 
 pursuit, and you will doubtless come 
 
88 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 up with him; but as to the earthly 
 gifts which you expect, he has scat- 
 tered them all among a throng of 
 Yesterdays." 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
 April 2d. 
 
 It is the special excellence of pic- 
 tured glass, that the light, which falls 
 merely on the outside of other pic- 
 tures, is here interfused throughout 
 the work; it illuminates the design, 
 and Invests it with a living radiance; 
 and in requital the unfading colors 
 transmute the common daylight Into 
 a miracle of richness and glory in its 
 passage through the heavenly sub- 
 stance of the blessed and angelic 
 shapes which throng the high-arched 
 window. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 89 
 
 It is a sad necessity that any Chris- 
 tian soul should pass from earth with- 
 out once seeing an antique painted 
 window, with the bright Italian sun- 
 shine glowing through it ! There is 
 no other such true symbol of the glor- 
 ies of the better world, where a 
 celestial radiance will be inherent in 
 all things and persons, and render 
 each continually transparent to the 
 sight of all. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 April sd. 
 
 In youth, perhaps, it is good for 
 the observer to run about the earth 
 — to leave the track of his footsteps 
 far and wide — to mingle himself with 
 the action of numberless vicissitudes — 
 and, finally in some calm solitude, to 
 
90 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 feed a musing spirit on all that he has 
 seen and felt. 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 April 4th. 
 
 What other dungeon is so dark as 
 one's own heart? What jailer so in- 
 exorable as one's self? 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 April ^th. 
 
 Giovanni's first movement on start- 
 ing from sleep, was to throw open the 
 window, and gaze down into the gar- 
 den which his dreams had made so 
 fertile of mysteries. He was sur- 
 prised, and a little ashamed, to find 
 how real and matter-of-fact an affair 
 it proved to be, in the first rays of the 
 sun, which gilded the dew drops that 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 91 
 
 while giving a brighter beauty to each 
 rare flower, brought everything within 
 the limits of ordinary experience. 
 The young man rejoiced, that, in the 
 heart of the barren city, he had the 
 privilege of overlooking this spot of 
 lovely and luxuriant vegetation. It 
 would serve, he said to himself, as a 
 symbolic language, to keep him in 
 communion with nature. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 April 6th. 
 
 Is there no reality in the penitence 
 thus sealed and witnessed by good 
 works? And wherefore should It 
 not bring you peace? 
 
 — The Scarlet Letter, 
 
 But we may safely leave brethren 
 and sisterhood to settle their own 
 
92 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 congenialities. Our ordinary distinc- 
 tions become so trifling, so impalpa- 
 ble, so ridiculously visionary, in com- 
 parison with a classification founded 
 on truth, that all talk about the mat- 
 ter IS Immediately a common-place. 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 April yth. 
 
 The great folio. In which the Man 
 of Intelligence recorded all these 
 freaks of idle hearts, and aspirations 
 of deep hearts, and desperate long- 
 ings of miserable hearts, and evil 
 prayers of perverted hearts, would be 
 curious reading, were it possible to 
 obtain It for publication. Human 
 character In Its Individual develop- 
 ments — human nature in the mass — 
 may best be studied in Its wishes : and 
 this was the record of them all. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 93 
 
 There was an endless diversity of 
 mode and circumstance, yet withal 
 such a similarity in the real ground- 
 work, that any one page of the vol- 
 ume — whether written in the days be- 
 fore the Flood, or the yesterday that 
 is just gone by, or to be written on the 
 morrow that Is close at hand, or a 
 thousand ages hence — might serve as 
 a specimen of the whole. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
 April 8th, 
 
 There Is an Influence In the light of 
 morning that tends to rectify what- 
 ever errors of fancy, or even of judg- 
 ment, we may have incurred during 
 the sun's decline, or among the shad- 
 ows of the night, or in the less whole- 
 some glow of moonshine. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
94 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 April gth. 
 
 Persons who have wandered, or 
 been expelled, out of the common 
 track of things, even were It for a 
 better system, desire nothing so much 
 as to be led back. They shiver In 
 their loneliness, be It on a mountain- 
 top or In a dungeon. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 April 1 0th. 
 
 A picture, however admirable the 
 painter's art, and wonderful his 
 power, requires of the spectator a 
 surrender of himself. In due propor- 
 tion with the miracle which has been 
 wrought. Let the canvas glow as It 
 may, you must look with the eye of 
 faith, or Its highest excellence es- 
 
NATHAyiEL HAWTHORNE 95 
 
 capes you. There Is always the neces- 
 sity of helping out the painter's art 
 with your own resources of sensibility 
 and imagination. Not that these 
 qualities shall really add anything to 
 what the master has effected; but they 
 must be put so entirely under his con- 
 trol, and work along with him to such 
 an extent, that, in a different mood, 
 when you are cold and critical, instead 
 of sympathetic, you will be apt to 
 fancy that the loftier merits of the 
 picture were of your own dreaming, 
 not of his creating. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 April nth. 
 
 The afternoon being far declined, 
 the sunshine was almost pensive, and 
 the shade almost cheerful, glory and 
 
96 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 gloom were mingled In the placid 
 light; as If the spirits of the Day and 
 Evening had met In friendship under 
 those trees, and found themselves 
 akin. 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 April 1 2 th. 
 
 How often Is It the case, that, when 
 Impossibilities have come to pass, and 
 dreams have condensed their misty 
 substance Into tangible realities, we 
 find ourselves calm, and even coldly 
 self-possessed, amid circumstances 
 which It would have been a delirium 
 of joy or agony to anticipate ! Fate 
 delights to thwart us thus. Passion 
 will choose his own time to rush upon 
 the scene, and lingers sluggishly be- 
 hind, when an appropriate adjust- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 97 
 
 ment of events would seem to summon 
 his appearance. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 April Ijth, 
 
 Man's own youth Is the world's 
 youth; at least, he feels as if It were, 
 and Imagines that the earth's granite 
 substance Is something not yet hard- 
 ened, and which he can mold into 
 whatever shape he likes. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 April I ph. 
 
 If you look closely Into the matter 
 It will be seen that whatever appears 
 most vagrant, and utterly purpose- 
 less, turns out. In the end, to have 
 been Impelled the most surely on a 
 preordained and unswerving track. 
 
98 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 Chance and change love to deal with 
 men's settled plans, not with their 
 Idle vagaries. If we desire unex- 
 pected and unimaginable events, we 
 should contrive an iron framework, 
 such as we fancy may compel the 
 future to take one inevitable shape; 
 then comes in the unexpected, and 
 shatters our design in fragments. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 April l^th. 
 
 These nearer heaps of fleecy vapor 
 — methinks I could roll and toss upon 
 them the whole day long! — seem 
 scattered here and there for the re- 
 pose of tired pilgrims through the 
 sky. Perhaps — for who can tell? — 
 beautiful spirits are disporting them- 
 selves there, and will bless my mortal 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 99 
 
 eye with the brief appearance of their 
 curly locks of golden light, and laugh- 
 ing faces, fair and faint as the people 
 of a rosy dream. 
 
 — Twice Told Tales, 
 
 April 1 6th, 
 
 Strange, that the finer and deeper 
 nature, whether in man or woman, 
 while possessed of every other delicate 
 instinct, should so often lack that most 
 invaluable one, of preserving itself 
 from contamination with what is of a 
 baser kind! 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
 April lyth. 
 
 Grief is such a leveller, with its own 
 dignity and its own humility, that the 
 noble and the peasant, the beggar and 
 
 LOfC. 
 
100 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 the monarch, will waive their preten- 
 sions to external rank, without the 
 officiousness of Interference on our 
 part. If pride — the Influence of the 
 world's false distinctions — remain In 
 the heart, then sorrow lacks the 
 earnestness which makes It holy and 
 reverend. It loses its reality, and 
 becomes a miserable shadow. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 April i8th. 
 
 It is a great mistake to try to put 
 our best thoughts into human lan- 
 guage. When we ascend Into the 
 higher regions of emotion and spirit- 
 ual enjoyment, they are only express- 
 ible by such grand hieroglyphics as 
 these around us. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 101 
 
 April igth. 
 
 It makes me melancholy to see how 
 like fools some very sensible people 
 act, In the matter of choosing wives. 
 They perplex their judgments by a 
 most undue attention to little niceties 
 of personal appearance, habits, dis- 
 position, and other trifles, which con- 
 cern nobody but the lady herself. An 
 unhappy gentleman, resolving to wed 
 nothing short of perfection, keeps his 
 heart and hand till both get so old 
 and withered, that no tolerable woman 
 will accept them. Now, this Is the 
 very height of absurdity. A kind 
 Providence has so skillfully adapted 
 sex to sex, and the mass of Individuals 
 to each other, that, with certain obvi- 
 ous exceptions, any male and female 
 may be moderately happy In the mar- 
 
102 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 ried state. The true rule Is, to ascer- 
 tain that the match is fundamentally 
 a good one, and then to take it for 
 granted that all minor objections, 
 should there be such, will vanish, if 
 you let them alone. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 April 20th. 
 
 Moonlight, and the sentiment in 
 man's heart responsive to it, are the 
 greatest renovators and reformers. 
 And all other reform and renovation, 
 I suppose, will prove to be no better 
 than moonshine. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 April 2 1st. 
 
 It is remarkable, that persons who 
 speculate the most boldly often con- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 103 
 
 form with the most perfect quietude 
 to the external regulations of society. 
 The thought suffices them, without In- 
 vesting Itself In the flesh and blood 
 of action. 
 
 — The Scarlet Letter. 
 
 April 22d. 
 
 The step of time stole onward, and 
 soon brought merry Christmas round 
 again, with glad and solemn worship 
 In the churches, and sports, games, fes- 
 tivals, and everywhere the bright face 
 of Joy beside the household fire. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
 April 23d. 
 
 There Is something truer and more 
 real, than what we can see with the 
 eyes, and touch with the finger. 
 
 — Young Goodrnan Brown. 
 
104 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 April 24th. 
 
 Come ! another log upon the 
 hearth. True, our little parlor is 
 comfortable, especially here where 
 the old man sits in his old armchair; 
 but on Thanksgiving night the blaze 
 should dance higher up the chimney 
 and send a shower of sparks Into the 
 outer darkness. Toss on an armful 
 of those dry oak chips, the last relics 
 of the " Mermaid's " knee-timbers — 
 the bones of your namesake, Susan. 
 Higher yet, and clearer, be the blaze, 
 till our cottage windows glow the rud- 
 diest In the village, and the light of 
 our household mirth flash far across 
 the bay to Nahant. 
 
 — The Village Uncle, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 105 
 
 Jpril 25th. 
 
 How it Strengthens the poor human 
 spirit in its reliance on His provi- 
 dence, to ascend but this little way 
 above the common level, and so at- 
 tain a somewhat wider glimpse of His 
 dealings with mankind! He doeth 
 all things right! His will be done! 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 April 26th, 
 
 Our first youth is of no value; for 
 we are never conscious of it, until 
 after it is gone. But sometimes — al- 
 ways, I suspect, unless one is exceed- 
 ingly unfortunate — there comes a 
 sense of second youth, gushing out 
 of the heart's joy at being in love; 
 or, possibly, it may come to crown 
 
106 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 some Other grand festival in life, if 
 any other such there be. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 April 2yth. 
 
 All persons, chronically diseased, 
 are egotists, whether the disease be of 
 the mind or body; whether sin, sor- 
 row, or merely the more tolerable 
 calamity of some endless pain, or mis- 
 chief among the cords of mortal life. 
 Such individuals are made acutely 
 conscious of a self, by the torture in 
 which it dwells. Self, therefore, 
 grows to be so prominent an object 
 with them, that they cannot but pre- 
 sent it to the face of every casual 
 passer-by. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 107 
 
 April 28th. 
 
 Only put yourself beyond hazard, 
 as to the real basis of matrimonial 
 bliss, and it is scarcely to be imagined 
 what miracles, in the way of reconcil- 
 ing smaller Incongruities, connubial 
 love will effect. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 April 2gth. 
 
 After all, what a good world we 
 live In! How good and beautiful! 
 How young It is, too, with nothing 
 really rotten or age-worn in It. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 April ^Oth. 
 
 To choose another figure. It Is sad 
 that hearts which have their well- 
 
108 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 spring In the Infinite, and contain in- 
 exhaustible sympathies, should ever be 
 doomed to pour themselves into shal- 
 low vessels, and thus lavish their rich 
 affections on the ground. 
 
 — Mosses frojji an Old Manse. 
 
MAY 
 
May 1st. 
 
 The sculptor, habitually drawing 
 many of the images and illustrations 
 of his thoughts from the plastic art, 
 fancied that the scene represented the 
 process of the Creator, when He held 
 the new. Imperfect earth in His hand, 
 and modeled It. 
 
 '' What a magic Is In mist and 
 vapor among the mountains! " he ex- 
 claimed. " With their help, one sin- 
 gle scene becomes a thousand. The 
 cloud scenery gives such variety to a 
 hilly landscape that It would be worth 
 while to journalize Its aspect from 
 hour to hour. A cloud, however — 
 as I have myself experienced — is apt 
 to grow solid and as heavy as a stone 
 
112 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 the Instant that you take In hand to 
 describe It. But, In my own heart, I 
 have found great use In clouds. Such 
 silvery ones as those to the northward, 
 for example, have often suggested 
 sculpturesque groups, figures, and at- 
 titudes; they are especially rich in 
 attitudes of living repose, which a 
 sculptor only hits upon by the rarest 
 good fortune." 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 May 2d, 
 
 Oh, that I could soar up Into 
 the very zenith, where man never 
 breathed nor eagle ever flew, and 
 where the ethereal azure melts away 
 from the eye and appears only a deep- 
 ened shade of nothingness ! 
 
 — Twice Told Tales, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 113 
 
 May 3d. 
 
 There is at least this good In a life 
 of toll, that It takes the nonsense and 
 fancy work out of a man, and leaves 
 nothing but what truly belongs to him. 
 If a farmer can make poetry at the 
 plow-tail. It must be because his 
 nature insists on it; and if that be the 
 case, let him make it, in Heaven's 
 name! 
 
 — The Blithedale Romance. 
 
 May 4th, 
 
 For it Is thus, that with only an 
 inconsiderable change, the gladdest 
 objects and existences become the 
 saddest; hope fading Into disap- 
 pointment; joy darkening into grief, 
 and festal splendor Into funereal dusk- 
 
114 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 Iness ; and all evolving, as their moral, 
 a grim identity between gay things 
 and sorrowful ones. Only give them 
 a little time, and they turn out to be 
 just alike! 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 May ^th. 
 
 But the black, lowering sky, as I 
 turned my eyes upward, wore, doubt- 
 less, the same visage as when it 
 frowned upon the ante-Revolutionary 
 New Englanders. The wintry blast 
 had the same shriek that was fa- 
 miliar to their ears. The Old South 
 church, too, still pointed its antique 
 spire into the darkness and was lost 
 between earth and Heaven, and as I 
 passed, its clock, which had warned 
 so many generations how transitory 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 115 
 
 was their lifetime, spoke heavily and 
 slowly the same unregarded moral to 
 myself. 
 
 — Edward Randolph's Portrait. 
 
 May 6th. 
 
 Sweet has been the charm of child- 
 hood on my spirit throughout my 
 ramble with little Annie ! Say not 
 that it has been a waste of precious 
 moments, an idle matter, a babble of 
 childish talk, and a reverie of childish 
 Imaginations, about topics unworthy 
 of a grown man's notice. 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 May yth. 
 
 The trees were not yet In full leaf, 
 but had budded forth sufficiently to 
 throw an airy shadow, while the sun- 
 
116 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 shine filled them with green light. 
 There were moss-grown rocks half- 
 hidden among the old brown fallen 
 leaves; there were rotten tree trunks 
 lying at full length where they had 
 long ago fallen; there were decayed 
 boughs that had been shaken down by 
 the wintry gales and were scattered 
 everywhere about. But still, though 
 these things looked so aged, the aspect 
 of the wood was that of the newest 
 life, for, whichever way you turned 
 your eyes, something fresh and green 
 was springing forth, so as to be ready 
 for the summer. 
 
 — A Wonder Book. 
 
 May 8th. 
 
 Nothing can be more picturesque 
 than an old grapevine, with almost a 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 117 
 
 trunk of its own, clinging fast around 
 its supporting tree. Nor does the 
 picture lack Its moral. You might 
 twist It to more than one grave pur- 
 pose, as you saw how the knotted ser- 
 pentine growth Imprisoned within Its 
 strong embrace the friend that had 
 supported Its tender Infancy ; and how 
 (as seemingly flexible natures are 
 prone to do) It converted the sturdier 
 tree entirely to Its own selfish ends, 
 extending Its Innumerable arms on 
 every bough, and permitting hardly 
 a leaf to sprout except Its own. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 May gth. 
 
 Oh, how stubbornly does love — or 
 even that cunning semblance of love 
 which flourishes In the Imagination, 
 
118 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 but Strikes no depth of root into the 
 heart — how stubbornly does it hold 
 its faith, until the moment come, when 
 it is doomed to vanish into thin mist! 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 May loth. 
 
 Giovanni knew not what to dread; 
 still less did he know what to hope; 
 yet hope and dread kept a continual 
 warfare in his breast, alternately van- 
 quishing one another and starting up 
 afresh to renew the contest. Blessed 
 are all simple emotions, be they dark 
 or bright! It is the lurid intermix- 
 ture of the two that produces the 
 illuminating blaze of the infernal 
 regions. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 119 
 
 May nth. 
 
 Only this Is such an odd and Incom- 
 prehensible world. The more I look 
 at It, the more It puzzles me, and I 
 begin to suspect that a man's bewilder- 
 ment Is the measure of his wisdom. 
 Men and women, and children, too, 
 are such strange creatures, that one 
 never can be certain that he really 
 knows them ; nor ever guess what they 
 have been, from what he sees them to 
 be now. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 May J2th, 
 
 But stay! A little speck of azure 
 has widened In the western heavens; 
 the sunbeams find a passage, and go 
 rejoicing through the tempest; and on 
 
120 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 yonder darkest cloud, born, like hal- 
 lowed hopes, of the glory of another 
 world, and the trouble and tears of 
 this, brightens forth the Rainbow ! 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 May 13th. 
 
 And, after all, the idea may have 
 been no dream, but rather a poet's 
 reminiscence of a period when man's 
 affinity with nature was more strict, 
 and his fellowship with every living 
 thing more intimate and dear. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 May 14th, 
 
 So far as my experience goes, men 
 of genius are fairly gifted with the 
 social qualities; and in this age, there 
 appears to be a fellovz-feeling among 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 121 
 
 them, which had not heretofore been 
 developed. As men, they ask nothing 
 better than to be on equal terms with 
 their fellow men ; and as authors, they 
 have thrown aside their proverbial 
 jealousy, and acknowledge a generous 
 brotherhood. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown, 
 
 May 15th. 
 
 Most men — and certainly I could 
 not always claim to be one of the ex- 
 ceptions — have a natural indifference. 
 If not an absolutely hostile feeling, 
 toward those whom disease, or weak- 
 ness, or calamity of any kind, causes 
 to falter and faint amid the rude 
 jostle of our selfish existence. The 
 education of Christianity, It Is true, 
 the sympathy of a like experience, and 
 
122 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 the example of women, m.ay soften, 
 and, possibly, subvert, this ugly char- 
 acteristic of our sex; but it is orig- 
 inally there, and has likewise its 
 analogy in the practice of our brute 
 brethren, who hunt the sick or dis- 
 abled member of the herd from 
 among them, as an enemy. It Is for 
 this reason that the stricken deer goes 
 apart, and the sick lion grimly with- 
 draws himself into his den. Except 
 in love, or the attachments of kindred, 
 or other very long and habitual affec- 
 tion, we really have no tenderness. 
 — The Blithedale Romance, 
 
 May 1 6th. 
 
 Morally, as well as materially, 
 there was a coarser fiber In those wives 
 and maidens of old English birth and 
 
XATHAXIEL HAWTHORXE 123 
 
 breeding, than in their fair descend- 
 ants, separated from them by a series 
 of six or seven generations; for, 
 throughout that chain of ancestry, 
 every successive mother has trans- 
 mitted to her child a fainter bloom, a 
 more delicate and briefer beauty, and 
 a slighter physical frame, if not a 
 character of less force and solidity, 
 then her own. 
 
 — The Scarlet Letter. 
 
 May I ph. 
 
 Now, the chair in which Grand- 
 father sat was made of oak, which 
 had grown dark with age, but had 
 been rubbed and polished till it shone 
 as bright as mahogany. It was very 
 large and heavy, and had a back that 
 rose high above Grandfather's white 
 
124 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 head. This back was curiously carved 
 in open work, so as to represent flow- 
 ers, and foliage, and other devices, 
 which the children had often gazed 
 at, but could never understand what 
 they meant. On the very tip-top of 
 the chair, over the head of Grand- 
 father himself, was a likeness of a 
 lion's head, which had such a savage 
 grin that you would almost expect to 
 hear it growl and snarl. 
 
 — Grandfathers Chair. 
 
 May 1 8th. 
 
 Methinks it is a token of healthy 
 and gentle characteristics, when wom- 
 en of high thoughts and accomplish- 
 ments love to sew; especially as they 
 are never more at home with their 
 own hearts than while so occupied. 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 125 
 
 May igth. 
 
 Nature would measure time by the 
 succession of thoughts and acts which 
 constitute real life, and not by hours 
 of emptiness. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
 May 20th, 
 
 Life figures itself to me as a festal 
 or funereal procession. All of us 
 have our places, and are to move on- 
 ward under the direction of the Chief 
 Marshal. The grand difficulty re- 
 sults from the invariably mistaken 
 principles on which the deputy mar- 
 shals seek to arrange this immense 
 concourse of people, so much more 
 numerous than those that train their 
 
126 BEAUTIFUL THOU GET B FROM 
 
 interminable length through streets 
 and highways in times of political ex- 
 citement. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown, 
 
 May 2 1st. 
 
 Every morning and evening the 
 Lady Arbella gave up her great chair 
 to one of the ministers, who took his 
 place In it and read passages from the 
 Bible to his companions. And thus, 
 with prayers, and pious conversation, 
 and frequent singing of hymns, which 
 the breezes caur;ht from their lips and 
 scattered far over the desolate waves, 
 they prosecuted their voyage, and 
 sailed into the harbor of Salem in the 
 month of June. 
 
 — Grandfathe/s Chair. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 127 
 
 May 2 2d. 
 
 It was no great distance, In those 
 days, from the prison-door to the 
 market-place. Measured by the pris- 
 oner's experience, however. It might 
 be reckoned a journey of some length; 
 for, haughty as her demeanor was, 
 she perchance underwent an agony 
 from every footstep of those that 
 thronged to see her, as If her heart 
 had been flung Into the street for 
 them all to spurn and trample upon. 
 In our nature, however, there is a pro- 
 vision, alike marvelous and merciful 
 that the sufferer should never know 
 the intensity of what he endures by Its 
 present torture, but chiefly by the pang 
 that rankles after It. 
 
 — The Scarlet Letter. 
 
128 BEAUTIFUL THOU GET ti FROM 
 
 May 23d. 
 
 It Is not at all times that one can 
 gain admittance Into this edifice; al- 
 though most persons enter It at some 
 period or other of their lives — If not 
 In their waking moments, then by the 
 universal passport of a dream. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 May 24th. 
 
 Of all the events which constitute 
 a person's biography, there Is scarcely 
 one — none, certainly of anything like 
 a similar Importance — to which the 
 world so easily reconciles Itself as to 
 his death. In most other cases and 
 contingencies, the Individual Is present 
 am.ong us, mixed up with the dally 
 revolution of affairs, and affording a 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 129 
 
 definite point for observation. At 
 his decease there is only a vacancy 
 and a momentary eddy — very small, 
 as compared with the apparent mag- 
 nitude of the Ingurgitated object — 
 and a bubble or two, ascending out 
 of the black depth and bursting at the 
 surface. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 May 2^th. 
 
 Nature, in beast, fowl, and tree, 
 and earth, flood, and sky, is what it 
 was of old; but sin, care, and self- 
 consciousness have set the human por- 
 tion of the world askew ; and thus the 
 simplest character is ever the soonest 
 to go astray. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
130 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 May 26th, 
 
 Oh, friend, canst thou not hear 
 and answer me? Break down the 
 barrier between us ! Grasp my hand ! 
 Speak! Listen! A few words, per- 
 haps, might satisfy the feverish 
 yearning of my soul for some mas- 
 ter thought, that should guide me 
 through this labyrinth of life, teach- 
 ing wherefore I was born, and how to 
 do my task on earth, and what Is 
 death. Alas! Even that unreal 
 image should forget to ape me, and 
 smile at these vain questions. Thus 
 do mortals deify, as it were, a mere 
 shadow of themselves, a specter of 
 human reason, and ask of that to 
 unveil the mysteries, which Divine 
 Intelligence has revealed so far as 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 131 
 
 needful to our guidance, and hid the 
 rest. 
 
 Farewell, Monsieur du MIroir. 
 Of you, perhaps, as of many men. It 
 may be doubted whether you are the 
 wiser, though your whole business is 
 Reflection. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 May 2yth. 
 
 Is there not a deep moral in the 
 tale? Could the result of one or all 
 our deeds be shadowed forth and set 
 before us — some would call it Fate, 
 and hurry onward — others be swept 
 along by their passionate desires — 
 and none be turned aside by the 
 Prophetic Pictures. 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
132 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 May 28th, 
 
 It takes down the solitary pride of 
 man, beyond most other things, to 
 find the Impracticability of flinging 
 aside affections that have grown Irk- 
 some. The bands that were silken 
 once are apt to become Iron fetters 
 when we desire to shake them off. 
 Our souls, after all, are not our own. 
 We convey a property in them to 
 those with whom we associate; but to 
 what extent can never be known, un- 
 til we feel the tug, the agony, of our 
 abortive effort to resume an exclusive 
 sway over ourselves. 
 
 — The Bltthedale Romance. 
 
 May 2gth. 
 
 The fields and wood-paths have as 
 yet few charms to entice the wanderer. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 133 
 
 In a walk, the other day, I found no 
 violets, nor anemones, nor anything 
 in the likeness of a flower. It was 
 worth while, however, to ascend our 
 opposite hill, for the sake of gaining 
 a general idea of the advance of 
 spring, which I had hitherto been 
 studying in its minute developments. 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 May joth. 
 
 We do ourselves wrong, and too 
 meanly estimate the Holiness above 
 us, when we deem that any act or 
 enjoyment, good in itself, is not good 
 to do religiously. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
134 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 May ^ist. 
 
 Strength Is incomprehensible by 
 weakness, and, therefore, the more 
 terrible. There Is no greater bug- 
 bear than a strong-willed relative In 
 the circle of his own connections. 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
JUNE 
 
t 
 
 June 1st. 
 
 Sometimes, it is true, the spiritual 
 fountain is kept pure by a wisdom 
 within itself, and sparkles into the 
 light of Heaven, without a stain from 
 the earthly strata through which it had 
 gushed upward. And sometimes, 
 even here on earth, the pure mingles 
 with pure, and the inexhaustible is 
 recompensed with the infinite. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
 June 2d. 
 
 Methinks, for a person whose in- 
 stinct bids him rather to pore over the 
 current of life than to plunge into its 
 tumultuous waves, no undesirable re- 
 
138 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 treat were a toll-house beside some 
 thronged thoroughfare of the land. 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 June ^d. 
 
 There Is hardly a more difficult ex- 
 ercise of fancy than, while gazing at 
 a figure of melancholy age, to recreate 
 its youth, and, without entirly oblit- 
 erating the identity of form and fea- 
 tures, to restore those graces which 
 Time has snatched away. Some old 
 people — especially women — so age- 
 worn and woeful are they, seem never 
 to have been young and gay. It is 
 easier to conceive that such gloomy 
 phantoms were sent into the world 
 as withered and decrepit as we behold 
 them now, with sympathies only for 
 pain and grief, to watch at death- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 139 
 
 beds and weep at funerals. Even 
 the sable garments of their widow- 
 hood appear essential to their exist- 
 ence; all their attributes combine to 
 render them darksome shadows creep- 
 ing strangely amid the sunshine of 
 human life. Yet It Is no unprofitable 
 task to take one of these doleful 
 creatures and set Fancy resolutely at 
 work to brighten the dim eye, and 
 darken the silvery locks, and paint 
 the ashen cheek with rose-color, and 
 repair the shrunken and crazy form, 
 till a dewy maiden shall be seen In the 
 old matron's elbow-chair. The mira- 
 cle being wrought, then let the years 
 roll back again, each sadder than the 
 last, and the whole weight of age 
 and sorrow settle down upon the 
 youthful figure. Wrinkles and fur- 
 rows, the handwriting of Time, may 
 
140 BEAUTIFUL TH OUGHTS FROM 
 
 thus be deciphered and found to con- 
 tain deep lessons of thought and feel- 
 ing. 
 
 — Edward Fane's Rosebud, 
 
 June ^th. 
 
 Life, within doors, has few pleas- 
 anter prospects than a neatly arranged 
 and well-provisioned breakfast-table. 
 We come to it freshly, in the dewy 
 youth of the day, and when our spir- 
 itual and sensual elements are in bet- 
 ter accord than at a later period; so 
 that the material delights of the morn- 
 ing meal are capable of being fully 
 enjoyed, without any very grievous 
 reproaches, whether gastric or con- 
 scientious, for yielding even a trifle 
 overmuch to the animal department 
 of our nature. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 141 
 
 June ^th. 
 
 Old associations cling to the mind 
 with astonishing tenacity. Daily cus- 
 tom grows up about us like a stone 
 wall, and consolidates itself into al- 
 most as material an entity as man- 
 kind's strongest architecture. It is 
 sometimes a serious question with me, 
 whether ideas be not really visible 
 and tangible, and endowed with all 
 the other qualities of matter. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
 June 6th, 
 
 But there Is a wisdom that looks 
 grave, and sneers at merriment; and 
 again a deeper wisdom, that stoops to 
 be gay as often as occasion serves, 
 and oftenest avails itself of shallow 
 
142 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 and trifling grounds of mirth; be- 
 cause, if we wait for more substantial 
 ones, we seldom can be gay at all. 
 —The Marble Faun, 
 
 June yth. 
 
 Of all bird-voices, none are more 
 sweet and cheerful to my ear than 
 those of swallows, in the dim, sun- 
 streaked interior of a lofty barn; 
 they address the heart with even a 
 closer sympathy than Robin Red- 
 breast. But, indeed, all these winged 
 people, that dwell in the vicinity 
 of homesteads, seem to partake of 
 human nature, and possess the germ, 
 if not the development, of immortal 
 souls. We hear them saying their 
 melodious prayers, at morning's blush 
 and eventide. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 143 
 
 June 8th. 
 
 There Is, I believe, only one right 
 and one wrong; and I do not under- 
 stand, and may God keep me from 
 ever understanding, how two things 
 so totally unlike can be mistaken for 
 one another; nor how two mortal 
 foes, as Right and Wrong surely are, 
 can work together In the same deed. 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 June gth. 
 
 Through the dim length of the 
 apartment, where crimson curtains 
 muffled the glare of sunshine and 
 created a rich obscurity, the three 
 guests drew near the silver-haired old 
 man. Memory, with a finger between 
 the leaves of her huge volume, placed 
 
144 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 herself at his right hand. Conscience, 
 with her face still hidden In the dusky 
 mantle, took her station on the left, 
 so as to be next his heart ; while Fancy 
 set down her picture-box upon the 
 table, with the magnifying glass con- 
 venient to his eye. 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 June loth. 
 
 Thank Providence for Spring! 
 The earth — and man himself, by 
 sympathy with his birthplace — would 
 be far other than we find them. If life 
 tolled wearily onward, without this 
 periodical infusion of the primal 
 spirit. Will the world ever be so de- 
 cayed, that Spring may not renew its 
 greenness? Can man be so dismally 
 age-stricken, that no faintest sunshine 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 145 
 
 of his youth may revisit him once a 
 year? It Is Impossible. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 June iith. 
 
 Phoebe, It Is probable, had but a 
 very imperfect comprehension of the 
 character over which she had thrown 
 so beneficent a spell. Nor was It 
 necessary. The fire upon the hearth 
 can gladden a whole semi-circle of 
 faces around about it, but need not 
 know the individuality of one among 
 them all. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 June I2th. 
 
 Decency, and external conscience, 
 often produce a far fairer outside, 
 than Is warranted by the stains within. 
 
146 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 And be It owned, on the other hand, 
 that a man seldom repeats to his near- 
 est friend, any more than he reahzes 
 in act, the purest wishes, which, at 
 some blessed time or other, have 
 arisen from the depths of his nature. 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
 June i^th. 
 
 Man must not disclaim his brother- 
 hood, even with the guiltiest, since, 
 though his hand be clean, his heart 
 has surely been polluted by the flitting 
 phantoms of iniquity. He must feel 
 that when he shall knock at the gate 
 of Heaven, no semblance of an un- 
 spotted life can entitle him to entrance 
 there. Penitence must kneel, and 
 Mercy come from the footstool of 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 147 
 
 the throne, or that golden gate will 
 never open! 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 June 14th. 
 
 You look through a vista of cen- 
 tury beyond century — through much 
 shadow, and a little sunshine — 
 through barbarism and civilization, 
 alternating with one another, like 
 actors that have pre-arranged their 
 parts — through a broad pathway of 
 progressive generations bordered by 
 palaces and temples, and bestridden 
 by old, triumphal arches, until, In the 
 distance, you behold the obelisks, with 
 their unintelligible inscriptions, hint- 
 ing at a past Infinitely more remote 
 than history can define. Your own 
 life is as nothing, when compared 
 
148 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 with that Immeasurable distance; but 
 still you demand, none the less ear- 
 nestly, a gleam of sunshine, Instead of 
 a speck of shadow, on the step or two 
 that will bring you to your quiet rest. 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 June i^th. 
 
 Alas, for the worn and heavy soul. 
 If, whether In youth or age. It has 
 outlived Its privilege of spring-time 
 sprlghtllness ! From such a soul, the 
 world must hope no reformation of 
 Its evil — no sympathy with the lofty 
 faith and gallant struggles of those 
 who contend In Its behalf. Summer 
 works In the present, and thinks not 
 of the future; Autumn Is a rich con- 
 servative; Winter has utterly lost Its 
 faith, and clings tremulously to the 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 149 
 
 remembrance of what has been; but 
 Spring, with Its outgushing life, Is the 
 true type of the Movement ! 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 June i6th. 
 
 It is often Instructive to take the 
 woman's, the private and domestic 
 view of a public man; nor can any- 
 thing be more curious than the vast 
 discrepancy between portraits In- 
 tended for engraving, and the pencil- 
 sketches that pass from hand to hand 
 behind the original's back. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables, 
 
 June ijth. 
 
 And be the stern and sad truth 
 spoken, that the breach which guilt 
 has once made Into the human soul Is 
 
150 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 never, in this mortal state, repaired. 
 It may be watched and guarded; so 
 that the enemy shall not force his way 
 again into the citadel, and might even, 
 in his subsequent assaults, select some 
 other avenue, in preference to that 
 where he had formerly succeeded. 
 But there is still the ruined wall, and, 
 near it, the stealthy tread of the foe 
 that would win over again his unfor- 
 gotten triumph. 
 
 — The Scarlet Letter. 
 
 June i8th. 
 
 There is a kind of ludicrous unfit- 
 ness in the idea of a time-stricken and 
 grandfatherly lilac-bush. The anal- 
 ogy holds good in human life. Per- 
 sons who can only be graceful and 
 ornamental — who can give the world 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 151 
 
 nothing but flowers — should die 
 young, and never be seen with gray 
 hair and wrinkles, any more than the 
 flower shrubs with mossy bark and 
 blighted foliage, like the lilacs under 
 my window. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 June igth. 
 
 What an instrument is the human 
 voice ! How wonderfully responsive 
 to every emotion of the human soul ! 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 June 20th. 
 
 The years, after all, have a kind of 
 emptiness, when we spend too many 
 of them on a foreign shore. We 
 defer the reality of life, in such cases. 
 
152 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 until a future moment, when we shall 
 again breathe our native air; but, 
 by and by, there are no future mo- 
 ments; or. If we do return, we find 
 that the native air has lost Its Invig- 
 orating quality, and that life has 
 shifted Its reality to the spot where 
 we have deemed ourselves only tem- 
 porary residents. Thus, between two 
 countries, we have none at all, or only 
 that little space of either. In which 
 we finally lay down our discontented 
 bones. It Is wise, therefore, to come 
 back betimes, or never. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 June 2 1 St. 
 
 She had flung It Into Infinite space I 
 — she had drawn an hour's free 
 breath! — and here again was the 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 153 
 
 scarlet misery, glittering on the old 
 spot! So it ever Is, whether thus 
 typified or no, that an evil deed In- 
 vests Itself with the character of 
 doom. 
 
 — The Scarlet Letter. 
 
 June 22d, 
 
 Is not Nature better than a book? 
 — Is not the human heart deeper than 
 any system of philosophy? — Is not 
 life replete with more Instruction than 
 past observers have found It possible 
 to write down In maxims? Be of 
 good cheer! The great book of 
 Time is still spread wide open before 
 us; and. If we read It aright, It will 
 be to us a volume of eternal Truth. 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
154 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 June 2jd, 
 
 Old age is not venerable, when it 
 embodies Itself In lilacs, rose bushes, 
 or any other ornamental shrubs; it 
 seems as If such plants, as they grow 
 only for beauty, ought to flourish 
 only In Immortal youth, or, at least, 
 to die before their sad decrepitude. 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 June 2ph, 
 
 My spirit wanders forth afar, but 
 finds no resting place and comes shiv- 
 ering back. It Is time that I were 
 hence. But grudge me not the day 
 that has been spent In seclusion which 
 yet was not solitude, since the great 
 sea has been my companion, and the 
 little sea birds my friends, and the 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 155 
 
 wind has told me his secrets, and 
 airy shapes have flitted around me in 
 my hermitage. Such companionship 
 works an effect upon a man's charac- 
 ter as if he had been admitted to the 
 society of creatures that are not mor- 
 tal. And when at noontide I tread 
 the crowded streets, the influence of 
 this day will still be felt; so that I 
 shall walk among men kindly and as 
 a brother, with affection and sympa- 
 thy, but yet shall not melt into the 
 indistinguishable mass of humankind. 
 I shall think my own thoughts and 
 feel my own emotions and possess my 
 individuality unviolated. 
 
 — Footprints on the Seashore. 
 
 June 2^th. 
 
 Sweet must have been the spring- 
 time of Eden, when no earlier year 
 
156 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 had Strewn Its decay upon the virgin 
 turf, and no former experience had 
 ripened into summer, and faded into 
 autumn, in the hearts of its inhabit- 
 ants! That was a world worth hv- 
 ing in! Oh, thou murmurer, it is 
 out of the very wantonness of such a 
 life, that thou feignest these idle 
 lamentations ! There is no decay. 
 Each human soul is the first created 
 inhabitant of its own Eden. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown, 
 
 June 26th. 
 
 There is a wonderful insight In 
 Heaven's broad and simple sunshine. 
 While we give It credit only for 
 depicting the merest surface, it actu- 
 ally brings out the secret character 
 withv a truth that no painter would 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 157 
 
 ever venture upon, even could he 
 detect it. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 June 2yth. 
 
 It may be, however — O, transport- 
 ing and triumphant thought! — that 
 the great-grandchildren of the pres- 
 ent race may sometimes think kindly 
 of the scribbler of bygone days, when 
 the antiquary of days to come, among 
 the sites memorable In the town's his- 
 tory, shall point out the locality of 
 The Town Pump ! 
 
 — The Custom House, 
 
 June 28th. 
 
 No author, without a trial, can 
 conceive of the difficulty of writing 
 a romance about a country where 
 
158 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHT}^ FROM 
 
 there is no shadow, no antiquity, no 
 mystery, no picturesque and gloomy 
 wrong, nor anything but a common- 
 place prosperity, in broad and simple 
 daylight, as is happily the case with 
 my dear native land. It will be very 
 long, I trust, before romance writers 
 may find congenial and easily handled 
 themes, either In the annals of our 
 stalwart republic, or In any character- 
 istic and probable events of our in- 
 dividual lives. Romance and poetry, 
 Ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers need 
 ruin to make them grow. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 June 2gth. 
 
 No man, for any considerable pe- 
 riod, can wear one face to himself, 
 and another to the multitude, without 
 
 k 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 159 
 
 finally getting bewildered as to which 
 may be the true. 
 
 — The Scarlet Letter. 
 
 June joth. 
 
 What needs an earthly roof be- 
 tween the Deity and his worshipers? 
 Our faith can well afford to lose all 
 the drapery that even the holiest men 
 have thrown around it, and be only 
 the more sublime in its simplicity. 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
JULY 
 
July 1st, 
 
 It being her first day of complete 
 estrangement from rural objects, 
 Phoebe found an unexpected charm 
 In this little nook of grass, and foli- 
 age, and aristocratic flowers, and 
 plebeian vegetables. The eye of 
 Heaven seemed to look down into it 
 pleasantly, and with a peculiar smile, 
 as if glad to perceive that nature, else- 
 where overwhelmed, and driven out 
 of the dusty town, had here been able 
 to retain a breathing place. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 July 2d. 
 
 At this autumnal season the preci- 
 pice is decked with variegated splen- 
 
164 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 dor. Trailing wreaths of scarlet 
 flaunt from the summit downward; 
 tufts of yellow-flowering shrubs and 
 rose bushes, with their reddened 
 leaves and glossy seedberries, sprout 
 from each crevice; at every glance I 
 detect some new light or shade of 
 beauty, all contrasting with the stern 
 gray rock. A rill of water trickles 
 down the cliffs and fills a little cistern 
 near the base. I drain it at a draught, 
 and find it fresh and pure. This 
 recess shall be my dining-hall. And 
 what the feast? A few biscuits made 
 savory by soaking them in sea-water, 
 a tuft of samphire gathered from the 
 beach, and an apple for the dessert. 
 By this time the little rill has filled its 
 reservoir again, and as I quaff it I 
 thank God more heartily than for a 
 civic banquet that He gives me the 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 165 
 
 healthful appetite to make a feast of 
 bread and water. 
 
 — Footprints on the Seashore. 
 
 July jd. 
 
 Apple trees, on the other hand, 
 grow old without reproach. Let them 
 live as long as they may, and contort 
 themselves into whatever perversity 
 of shape they please, and deck their 
 withered limbs with a springtime 
 gaudiness of pink-blossoms, still they 
 are respectable, even if they afford 
 us only an apple or two in a season. 
 Those few apples — or, at all events, 
 the remembrance of apples in by-gone 
 years — are the atonement which utili- 
 tarianism inexorably demands, for the 
 privilege of lengthened life. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown, 
 
166 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 July ^th. 
 
 But, after all, the most fascinating 
 employment is simply to write your 
 name in the sand. Draw the letters 
 gigantic, so that two strides may 
 barely measure them, and three for 
 the long strokes; cut deep, that the 
 record may be permanent. States- 
 men and warriors and poets have 
 spent their strength in no better 
 cause than this. Is it accomplished? 
 Return, then, in an hour or two, and 
 seek for this mighty record of a name. 
 The sea will have swept over it, even 
 as time rolls its effacing waves over 
 the names of statesmen and warriors 
 and poets. Hark! the surf-waves 
 laugh at you. 
 
 — Footprints on the Seashore, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 167 
 
 July ^th. 
 
 Among the delights of Spring, how 
 is it possible to forget the birds! 
 Even the crows were welcome, as the 
 sable harbingers of a brighter and 
 livelier race. They visited us before 
 the snow was off, but seem mostly to 
 have betaken themselves to remote 
 depths of the woods, which they 
 haunt all summer long. Many a time 
 shall I disturb them there, and feel as 
 if I had intruded among a company 
 of silent worshipers, as they sit in 
 Sabbath-stillness among the tree tops. 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 July 6th. 
 
 There was a spiritual quality In 
 Phoebe's activity. The life of the 
 
168 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 long and busy day — spent In occu- 
 pations that might so easily have 
 taken a squalid and ugly aspect — had 
 been made pleasant, and even lovely, 
 by the spontaneous grace with which 
 these homely duties seemed to bloom 
 out of her character; so that labor, 
 while she dealt with it, had the easy 
 and flexible charm of play. Angels 
 do not toil, but let their good works 
 grow out of them ; and so did Phoebe. 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 July yth. 
 
 One of the first things that strikes 
 the attention, when the white sheet 
 of winter Is withdrawn, Is the neglect 
 and disarray that lay hidden beneath 
 it. Nature Is not cleanly, according 
 to our prejudices. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 169 
 
 July 8th, 
 
 How sad a truth — if true It were 
 — that Man's age-long endeavor for 
 perfection had served only to render 
 him the mockery of the Evil Princi- 
 ple, from the fatal circumstance of an 
 error at the very root of the matter ! 
 The heart — the heart — there was the 
 little yet boundless sphere, wherein 
 existed the original wrong, of which 
 the crime and misery of this outward 
 world were merely types. Purify 
 that inward sphere; and the many 
 shapes of evil that haunt the outward, 
 and which now seem almost our only 
 realities, will turn to shadowy phan- 
 toms, and vanish of their own accord. 
 But if we go no deeper than the In- 
 tellect, and strive, with merely that 
 feeble instrument, to discern and rec- 
 
170 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 tify what is wrong, our whole accom- 
 plishment will be a dream. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
 July gth. 
 
 Standing in this Hall of Fantasy, 
 we perceive what even the earth- 
 clogged intellect of man can do, in 
 creating circumstances which, though 
 we call them shadowy and visionary, 
 are scarcely more so than those that 
 surround us in actual life. Doubt 
 not, then, that man's disembodied 
 spirit may recreate Time and the 
 World for itself, with all their pecu- 
 liar enjoyments, should there still be 
 human yearnings amid life eternal 
 and infinite. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 171 
 
 July 1 0th, 
 
 A crow, however, has no real pre- 
 tensions to religion, in spite of his 
 gravity of mien and black attire; he 
 Is certainly a thief, and probably an 
 Infidel. The gulls are far more re- 
 spectable, in a moral point of view. 
 These denizens of sea-beaten rocks, 
 and haunters of the lonely beach, 
 come up our inland river, at this sea- 
 son, and soar high overhead, flapping 
 their broad wings in the upper sun- 
 shine. They are among the most 
 picturesque of birds, because they so 
 float and rest upon the air, as to be- 
 come almost stationary parts of the 
 landscape. The Imagination has time 
 to grow acquainted with them; they 
 have not flitted away in a moment. 
 — Young Goodman Brown, 
 
172 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 July nth. 
 
 Whatever she did, too, was done 
 without conscious effort, and with fre- 
 quent outbreaks of song, which were 
 exceedingly pleasant to the ear. This 
 natural tunefulness made Phoebe seem 
 like a bird In a shadowy tree, or con- 
 veyed the Idea that the stream of life 
 warbled through her heart as a brook 
 sometimes warbles through a pleasant 
 little dell. It betokened the cheerl- 
 ness of an active temperament, finding 
 joy In Its activity, and therefore, ren- 
 dering It beautiful. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 July 1 2th. 
 
 The moment when a man's head 
 drops off Is seldom or never, I am In- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 173 
 
 clined to think, precisely the most 
 agreeable of his life. Nevertheless, 
 like the greater part of our misfor- 
 tunes, even so serious a contingency 
 brings its remedy and consolation with 
 it, if the sufferers will but make the 
 best, rather than the worst, of the 
 accident which has befallen him. In 
 my particular case, the consolatory 
 topics were close at hand, and indeed, 
 had suggested themselves to my medi- 
 tations a considerable time before it 
 was requisite to use them. In view 
 of my previous weariness of office, and 
 vague thoughts of resignation, my 
 fortune somewhat resembled that of 
 a person who should entertain an idea 
 of committing suicide, and, although 
 beyond his hopes, meet with the good 
 hap to be murdered. 
 
 — The Custom House. 
 
174 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 July i^th. 
 
 Among many morals which press 
 upon us from the poor minister's mis- 
 erable experience, we put only this 
 into a sentence : "Be true ! Be true ! 
 Be true ! Show freely to the world, 
 if not your worst, yet some trait 
 whereby the worst may be Inferred!" 
 — The Scarlet Letter. 
 
 July i^th. 
 
 Not that beauty Is worthy of less 
 than Immortality — no, the beautiful 
 should live forever — and thence, per- 
 haps, the sense of Impropriety, when 
 we see it triumphed over by time. 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 July l^th. 
 
 But still the good old sculptor mur- 
 mured, and stumbled, as it were, over 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 175 
 
 the gravestones amid which he had 
 walked through life. Whether he 
 were right or wrong, I had grown the 
 wiser from our companionship and 
 from my observations of nature and 
 character as displayed by those who 
 came, with their old griefs or their 
 new ones, to get them recorded upon 
 his slabs of marble. And yet with 
 my gain of wisdom I had likewise 
 gained perplexity; for there was a 
 strange doubt in my mind whether 
 the dark shadowing of this life, the 
 sorrows and regrets, have not as much 
 real comfort in them — leaving relig- 
 ious influences out of the question — 
 as what we term life's joys. 
 
 — Chippings With a Chisel. 
 
176 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 July 1 6th. 
 
 The smaller birds — the little song- 
 sters of the woods, and those that 
 haunt man's dwellings, and claim 
 human friendship by building their 
 nests under the sheltering eaves, or 
 among the orchard trees — these re- 
 quire a touch more delicate, and a 
 gentler heart than mine, to do them 
 justice. Their outburst of melody Is 
 like a brook let loose from wintry 
 chains. We need not deem it a too 
 high and solemn word, to call It a 
 hymn of praise to the Creator; since 
 Nature, who pictures the reviving 
 year In so many sights of beauty, has 
 expressed the sentiment of renewed 
 life In no other sound, save the notes 
 of these blessed birds. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 177 
 
 July lyth. 
 
 It Is a curious subject of observa- 
 tion and Inquiry, whether hatred and 
 love be not the same thing at bottom. 
 Each, In Its utmost development, sup- 
 poses a high degree of Intimacy and 
 heart-knowledge; each renders one 
 Individual dependent for the food of 
 his affections and spiritual life upon 
 another; each leaves the passionate 
 lover, or the no less passionate hater, 
 forlorn and desolate by the with- 
 drawal of his subject. Philosophi- 
 cally considered, therefore, the two 
 passions seem essentially the same, 
 except that one happens to be seen In 
 a celestial radiance, and the other In 
 a dusky and lurid glow. 
 
 — The Scarlet Letter. 
 
178 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 July 1 8th, 
 
 Little Phoebe was one of those per- 
 sons who possess, as their exclusive 
 patrimony, the gift of practical ar- 
 rangement. It is a kind of natural 
 magic that enables these favored ones 
 to bring out the hidden capabilities of 
 things around them; and particularly 
 to give a look of comfort and hab- 
 Itableness to any place which, for 
 however brief a period, may happen 
 to be their home. A wild hut of 
 underbrush, tossed together by way- 
 farers through the primitive forest, 
 would acquire the home aspect by 
 one night's lodging of such a woman, 
 and would retain it long after her 
 quiet figure had disappeared into the 
 surrounding shade. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 179 
 
 July igth. 
 
 The truth seems to be, however, 
 that, when he casts his leaves forth 
 upon the wind, the author addresses, 
 not the many who will fling aside his 
 volume, or never take it up, but the 
 few who will understand him, better 
 than most of his schoolmates or life- 
 mates. Some authors, indeed, do far 
 more than this, and indulge them- 
 selves in such confidential depths of 
 revelation as could fittingly be ad- 
 dressed, only and exclusively, to the 
 one heart and mind, of perfect sym- 
 pathy, as if the printed book, thrown 
 at large on the wide world, were cer- 
 tain to find out the divided segment 
 of the writer's own nature, and 
 complete his circle of existence by 
 
180 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 bringing him into communion with 
 it. 
 
 — The Custom House. 
 
 July 20th. 
 
 How gladly does the spirit leap 
 forth and suddenly enlarge its sense 
 of being to the full extent of the 
 broad blue, sunny deep ! A greeting 
 and a homage to the sea ! I descend 
 over its margin and dip my hand into 
 the wave that meets me, and bathe 
 my brow. That far-resounding roar 
 is Ocean's voice of welcome. His 
 salt breath brings a blessing along 
 with it. 
 
 — Footprints on the Seashore. 
 
 July 2 1st. 
 
 The blackbirds, three species of 
 w^hich consort together, are the noisi- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 181 
 
 est of all our feathered citizens. 
 Great companies of them — more than 
 the famous " four-and-twenty " whom 
 Mother Goose has immortalized — 
 congregate in contiguous tree tops, 
 and vociferate with all the clamor and 
 confusion of a turbulent political 
 meeting. Politics, certainly, must be 
 the occasion of such tumultuous de- 
 bates; but still — unlike all other poli- 
 ticians — they instill melody into their 
 individual utterances, and produce 
 harmony as a general effect. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 July 2 2d. 
 
 The morning light, however, soon 
 stole into the aperture at the foot of 
 the bed, betwixt those faded curtains. 
 Finding the new guest there — with a 
 
182 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 bloom on her cheeks like the morn- 
 ing's own, and a gentle stir of depart- 
 ing slumber in her limbs, as when an 
 early breeze moves the foliage — the 
 dawn kissed her brow. It was the 
 caress which a dewy maiden — such 
 as the Dawn is, immortally — gives to 
 her sleeping sister partly from the 
 impulse of irresistible fondness and 
 partly as a pretty hint that It Is time 
 now to unclose her eyes. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 July 2^d. 
 
 And now farewell, old friend! 
 Little do you suspect that a student 
 of human life has made your char- 
 acter the theme of more than one sol- 
 itary and thoughtful hour. Many 
 would say, that you have hardly In- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 183 
 
 divlduality enough to be the object 
 of your own self-love. How, then, 
 can a stranger's eye detect anything 
 In your mind and heart, to study 
 and to wonder at? Yet could I read 
 but a tithe of what is written there, 
 It would be a volume of deeper and 
 more comprehensive Import than all 
 that the wisest mortals have given to 
 the world; for the soundless depths 
 of the human soul, and of eternity, 
 have an opening through your breast. 
 God be praised, were it only for your 
 sake, that the present shapes of human 
 existence are not cast in Iron, nor hewn 
 In everlasting adamant, but molded 
 of the vapors that vanish away while 
 the essence flits upward to the infinite. 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
184 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 July 2/J.th. 
 
 How Invariably, throughout all the 
 forms of life, do we find these inter- 
 mingled memorials of death! On 
 the soil of thought, and in the garden 
 of the heart, as well as in the sensual 
 world, lie withered leaves; the ideas 
 and feelings that we have done with. 
 There is no wind strong enough to 
 sweep them away; infinite space will 
 not garner them from our sight. 
 What mean they? Why may we not 
 be permitted to live and enjoy, as if 
 this were the first life, and our own 
 the primal enjoyment, instead of 
 treading always on these dry bones 
 and moldering relics, from the aged 
 accumulation of which springs all that 
 now appears so young and new? 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 185 
 
 July 2^th. 
 
 Put on a bright face for your cus- 
 tomers, and smile pleasantly as you 
 hand them what they ask for. A 
 stale article, if you dip it in a good, 
 warm, sunny smile, will go off better 
 than a fresh one that you've scowled 
 upon. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 July 26th. 
 
 It is dawn. The east puts on its 
 immemorial blush, although no human 
 eye is gazing at it; for all the phe- 
 nomena of the natural world renew 
 themselves, in spite of the solitude 
 that now broods around the globe. 
 There is still beauty of earth, sea, and 
 sky, for beauty's sake. But soon 
 
186 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 there are to be spectators. Just when 
 the earliest sunshine gilds earth's 
 mountain tops, two beings have come 
 into life, not in such an Eden as 
 bloomed to welcome our first parents, 
 but in the heart of a modern city. 
 They find themselves in existence, 
 and gazing into one another's eyes. 
 Their emotion is not astonishment; 
 nor do they perplex themselves with 
 efforts to discover what, and whence, 
 and why they are. Each is satisfied 
 to be, because the other exists likewise; 
 and their first consciousness is of calm 
 and mutual enjoyment, which seems 
 not to have been the birth of that 
 very moment, but prolonged from a 
 past eternity. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 187 
 
 July 2yth. 
 
 Externally, the jollity of aged men 
 has much In common with the mirth 
 of children; the intellect, any more 
 than a deep sense of humor, has little 
 to do with the matter; it is, with both, 
 a gleam that plays upon the surface, 
 and imparts a sunny and cheery as- 
 pect alike to the green branch, and 
 gray, moldering trunk. In one case, 
 however, it is real sunshine; in the 
 other, it more resembles the phos- 
 phorescent glow of decaying wood. 
 — The Custom House, 
 
 July 28th, 
 
 Let not the reader argue from any 
 of these evidences of Iniquity that the 
 times of the Puritans were more vie- 
 
188 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 ious than our own, when as we pass 
 along the very street of this sketch 
 we discern no badge of Infamy on 
 man or woman. It was the policy of 
 our ancestors to search out even the 
 most secret sins and expose them to 
 shame, without fear or favor. In the 
 broadest light of the noonday sun. 
 Were such the custom now, perchance 
 we might find materials for a no less 
 piquant sketch than the above. 
 
 — Endicott arid the Red Cross. 
 
 July 2gth. 
 
 We dwell In an old moss-covered 
 mansion, and tread In the worn foot- 
 prints of the past, and have a gray 
 clergyman's ghost for our dally and 
 nightly Inmate; yet all these outward 
 circumstances are made less than vis- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 189 
 
 lonary, by the renewing power of the 
 spirit. Should the spirit ever lose 
 this power — should the withered 
 leaves, and the rotten branches, and 
 the moss-covered house, and the ghost 
 of the gray past, ever become its reali- 
 ties, and the verdure and the fresh- 
 ness merely its faint dream — then let 
 it pray to be released from earth. It 
 will need the air of Heaven to revive 
 its pristine energies. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 July ^oth. 
 
 I took it in good part, at the hands 
 of Providence, that I was thrown into 
 a position so little akin to my past 
 habits; and set myself seriously to 
 gather from It whatever profit was to 
 be had. After my fellowship of toil 
 
190 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 and impracticable schemes with the 
 dreamy brethren of Brook Farm; af- 
 ter Hving for three years within the 
 subtle Influence of an intellect like 
 Emerson's; after those wild, free days 
 on the Assabeth, indulging fantastic 
 speculations, beside our fire of fallen 
 boughs, with Ellery Channing; after 
 talking with Thoreau about pine trees 
 and Indian relics, in his hermitage at 
 Walden; after growing fastidious by 
 sympathy with the classic refinement 
 of Hilliard's culture; after becoming 
 imbued with poetic sentiment at Long- 
 fellow's hearthstone; it was time, at 
 length, that I should exercise other 
 faculties of my nature, and nourish 
 myself with food for which I had 
 hitherto had little appetite. 
 
 - — The Custom House. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 191 
 
 July 31 St. 
 
 Each moment wins some portion of 
 the earth from death to life; a sudden 
 gleam of verdure brightens along the 
 sunny slope of a bank, which, an in- 
 stant ago, was brown and bare. You 
 look again, and behold an apparition 
 of green grass ! 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
AUGUST 
 
August 1st. 
 
 It Is an old theme of satire, the 
 falsehood and vanity of monumental 
 eulogies; but when affection and sor- 
 row grave the letters with their own 
 painful labor, then we may be sure 
 that they copy from the record on 
 their hearts. 
 
 — Chippings With a Chisel. 
 
 August 2d, 
 
 As a general rule, Providence sel- 
 dom vouchsafes to mortals any more 
 than just that degree of encourage- 
 ment which suffices to keep them at 
 a reasonably full exertion of their 
 powers. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables, 
 
196 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 August jd. 
 
 So long as we love life for itself, 
 we seldom dread the losing It. When 
 we desire life for the attainment of 
 an object, we recognize the frailty of 
 Its texture. But, side by side with 
 this sense of Insecurity, there Is a vital 
 faith In our Invulnerability to the 
 shaft of death, while engaged In any 
 task that seems assigned by Provi- 
 dence as our proper thing to do, and 
 which the world would have cause to 
 mourn for, should we leave It unac- 
 complished. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse, 
 
 August 4th. 
 
 Oh, how heavily passes the time 
 while an adventurous youth Is yearn- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 197 
 
 Ing to do his part in life and to gather 
 in the harvest of his renown 1 How 
 hard a lesson it is to wait! Our life 
 is brief, and how much of it is spent 
 in teaching us only this ! 
 
 — A ffonder Book. 
 
 August ^th. 
 
 Nothing is more unaccountable 
 than the spell that often lurks in a 
 spoken word. A thought may be 
 present to the mind, so distinctly that 
 no utterance could make it more so; 
 and two minds may be conscious of the 
 same thought, in which one or both 
 take the profoundest interest; but as 
 long as it remains unspoken, their 
 familiar talk flows quietly over the 
 hidden idea, as a rivulet may sparkle 
 and dimple over, something sunken in 
 
198 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 its bed. But, speak the word, and it 
 is like bringing up a drowned body out 
 of the deepest pool in the rivulet, 
 which has been aware of the horrible 
 secret all along, in spite of its smiling 
 surface. 
 
 —The Marble Faun. 
 
 August 6th 
 
 I doubt greatly- — or, rather I do 
 not doubt at all — whether any public 
 functionary of the United States, 
 either in the civil or military line, has 
 ever had such a patriarchal body of 
 veterans under his orders as myself. 
 The whereabouts of the Oldest In- 
 habitant was at once settled when I 
 looked at them. For upwards of 
 twenty years before this epoch, the in- 
 dependent position of the collector 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 199 
 
 had kept the Salem Custom House 
 out of the whirlpool of political vicis- 
 situde, which makes the tenure of 
 office generally so fragile. A soldier 
 — New England's most distinguished 
 soldier — he stood firmly on the pedes- 
 tal of his gallant services. 
 
 — The Custom House. 
 
 August yth. 
 
 O glorious Art! Thou art the 
 Image of the Creator's own. The In- 
 numerable forms that wander In noth- 
 ingness start Into being at thy beck. 
 The dead live again. Thou recallest 
 them to their old scenes, and givest 
 their gray shadows the luster of a bet- 
 ter life, at once earthly and Immortal. 
 Thou snatchest back the fleeting mo- 
 ments of History. With thee there 
 
200 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FRO 31 
 
 is no Past; for, at thy touch, all that 
 Is great becomes forever present; and 
 illustrious men live through long ages, 
 in the visible performance of the very 
 deeds which made them what they are. 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 August 8th. 
 
 That cold tendency, between in- 
 stinct and Intellect, which made me 
 pry with a speculative Interest Into 
 people's passions and impulses, ap- 
 peared to have gone far toward un- 
 humanizing my heart. 
 
 But a man cannot always decide for 
 himself whether his own heart is cold 
 or warm. 
 
 — The Blithedale Romance. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 201 
 
 August gth. 
 
 The trees, In our orchard and else- 
 where, are as yet naked, but already 
 appear full of life and vegetable 
 blood. It seems as If, by one magic 
 touch, they might Instantaneously 
 burst Into full foliage, and that the 
 wind, which now sighs through their 
 naked branches, might make sudden 
 music amid Innumerable leaves. 
 
 — Young Good?nan Brown, 
 
 August 1 0th. 
 
 If there be a faculty which I pos- 
 sess more perfectly than most men. It 
 Is that of throwing myself mentally 
 Into situations foreign to my own and 
 detecting with a cheerful eye the de- 
 sirable circumstances of each. 
 
 — The Seven Vagabonds. 
 
202 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 August Ilth. 
 
 These names of gentleman and lady 
 had a meaning In the past history of 
 the world, and conferred privileges, 
 desirable or otherwise, on those en- 
 titled to bear them. In the present 
 — and still more in the future condi- 
 tion of society — they imply, not privi- 
 lege, but restriction. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 August I2th. 
 
 We, who are born into the world's 
 artificial system, can never adequately 
 know how little in our present state 
 and circumstances Is natural, and how 
 much is merely the Interpolation of 
 the perverted mind and heart of man. 
 Art has become a second and stronger 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 203 
 
 Nature; she is a stepmother, whose 
 crafty tenderness has taught us to 
 despise the bountiful and wholesome 
 ministrations of our true parent. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
 August I^th. 
 
 It contributes greatly toward a 
 man's moral and intellectual health, 
 to be brought into habits of com- 
 panionship with individuals unlike 
 himself, who care little for his pur- 
 suits, and whose sphere and abilities 
 he must go out of himself to appre- 
 ciate. The accidents of my life have 
 often afforded me this advantage, but 
 never with more fullness and variety 
 than during my continuance in office. 
 — The Custom House. 
 
204 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 August 14th. 
 
 Some tracts, In a happy exposure — 
 as, for instance, yonder southwestern 
 slope of an orchard, in front of that 
 old red farm house, beyond the river 
 — such patches of land already wear 
 a beautiful and tender green, to which 
 no future luxuriance can add a 
 charm. It looks unreal — a prophecy 
 — a hope — a transitory effect of some 
 peculiar light, which will vanish with 
 the slightest motion of the eye. But 
 beauty Is never a delusion; not these 
 verdant tracts, but the dark and bar- 
 ren landscape, all around them, Is a 
 shadow and a dream. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown, 
 
 August l^th. 
 
 If ever you should doubt that man 
 is capable of disinterested zeal for 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 205 
 
 his brother's good, then remember 
 how the apostle Eliot toiled. And if 
 you should feel your own self-interest 
 pressing upon your heart too closely, 
 then think of Eliot's Indian Bible. It 
 is good for the world that such a man 
 has lived and left this emblem of his 
 life. 
 
 — Grandfather s Chair, 
 
 August 1 6th. 
 
 A simple and joyous character can 
 find no place for itself among the 
 sage and somber figures that would 
 put his unsophisticated cheerfulness 
 to shame. The entire system of 
 man's affairs, as at present estab- 
 lished, is built up purposely to ex- 
 clude the careless and happy soul. 
 The very children would upbraid the 
 
206 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 wretched individual who should en- 
 deavor to take life and the world as — 
 what we might naturally suppose 
 them meant for — a place and oppor- 
 tunity for enjoyment. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 August lyth. 
 
 It is really impossible to hide any- 
 thing in this world, to say nothing of 
 the next. All that we ought to ask, 
 therefore, is, that the witnesses of our 
 conduct, and the speculators on our 
 motives, should be capable of taking 
 the highest view which the circum- 
 stances of the case may admit. So 
 much being secured, I, for one, would 
 be most happy in feeling myself fol- 
 lowed everywhere by an indefatig- 
 able human sympathy. 
 
 — The Blithedale Romance. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 207 
 
 August l8th. 
 
 O potent Art ! as thou bringest the 
 faintly revealed Past to stand In that 
 narrow strip of sunlight, which we 
 call Now, canst thou summon the 
 shrouded Future to meet her there ? 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 August igth. 
 
 It Is a truth (and It would be a 
 very sad one but for the higher hopes 
 which It suggests) that no great mis- 
 take, whether acted or endured. In our 
 mortal sphere. Is ever really set right. 
 Time, the continual vicissitude of 
 circumstances, and the Invariable In- 
 opportunity of death, render It Im- 
 possible. If, after long lapse of 
 
208 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 years, the right seems to be In our 
 power, we find no niche to set It In. 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 August 20th. 
 
 *' Oh, you are ungrateful to our 
 Mother Earth! " rejoined I. " Come 
 what may, I never will forget her! 
 Neither will It satisfy me to have her 
 exist merely In Idea. I want her 
 great, round, solid self to endure In- 
 terminably, and still to be peopled 
 with the kindly race of man, whom I 
 uphold to be much better than he 
 thinks himself. Nevertheless, I con- 
 fide the whole matter to Providence 
 and shall endeavor so to live, that the 
 world may come to an end at any 
 moment, without leaving me at a loss 
 to find foothold somewhere else." 
 — Young Goodman Brown, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 209 
 
 August 2 1st. 
 
 While we live on earth, 'tis true, 
 we must needs carry our skeletons 
 about with us; but, for Heaven's sake, 
 do not let us burden our spirits with 
 them, in our feeble efforts to soar 
 upward! Believe me, it will change 
 the whole aspect of death, if you can 
 once disconnect it, in your idea, with 
 that corruption from which it disen- 
 gages our higher part. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 August 22d. 
 
 The idea of Death is in them, or 
 not far off. But were they to choose 
 a symbol for him, it would be a But- 
 terfly soaring upward, or the bright 
 Angel beckoning them aloft, or the 
 
210 BEAUTIFUL THOU&HTS FROM 
 
 Child asleep with soft dreams visible 
 through her transparent purity. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
 August 2^d. 
 
 Sleeping or waking, we hear not the 
 fairy footsteps of the strange things 
 that almost happen. Does It not 
 argue a superintending Providence, 
 that, while viewless and unexpected 
 events thrust themselves continually 
 athwart our path, there should still 
 be regularity enough, in mortal life, 
 to render foresight even partially 
 available ? 
 
 — Twice Told Tales, 
 
 August 2/j.th. 
 
 Next to the lightest heart, the 
 heaviest is apt to be most playful. 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 211 
 
 August 2^th. 
 
 The public is despotic in its tem- 
 per; it is capable of cienying com- 
 mon justice, when too strenuously 
 demanded as a right; but quite as 
 frequently it awards more than jus- 
 tice, when the appeal is made, as 
 despots love to have it made, en- 
 tirely to its generosity. 
 
 — The Scarlet Letter, 
 
 August 26th. 
 
 Fixing our attention on such out- 
 side shows of similiarity or difference, 
 we lose sight of those realities by 
 which nature, fortune, fate, or Provi- 
 dence, has constituted for every man 
 a brotherhood, wherein it is one great 
 office of human wisdom to classify 
 
212 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 him. When the mind has once ac- 
 customed itself to a proper arrange- 
 ment of the Procession of Life, or a 
 true classification of society, even 
 though merely speculative, there is 
 thenceforth a satisfaction which 
 pretty well suffices for itself, without 
 the aid of any actual reformation in 
 the order of march. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 August 2'jth. 
 
 There was one thing that much 
 aided me in renewing and recreating 
 the stalwart soldier of the Niagara 
 frontier — the man of true and simple 
 energy. It was the recollection of 
 those memorable words of his, " I'll 
 try. Sir! " spoken on the very verge 
 of a desperate and heroic enterprise, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 213 
 
 and breathing the soul and spirit of 
 New England hardihood, compre- 
 hending all perils, and encountering 
 all. If, in our country, valor were 
 rewarded by heraldic honor, this 
 phrase — which it seems so easy to 
 speak, but which only he, with such a 
 task of danger and glory before him, 
 has ever spoken — would be the best 
 and fittest of all mottoes for the Gen- 
 eral's shield of arms. 
 
 — The Custom House. 
 
 August 28th, 
 
 Still, there will be a connection 
 with the long past — a reference to 
 forgotten events and personages, and 
 to manners, feelings, and opinions, al- 
 most or wholly obsolete — which, if 
 adequately translated to the reader. 
 
214 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 would serve to Illustrate how much 
 of old material goes to make up the 
 freshest novelty of human life. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 August 2gth, 
 
 What a pretty satire on war and 
 military glory might be written In the 
 form of a child's story by describing 
 the snowball fights of two rival 
 schools, the alternate defeats and vic- 
 tories of each, and the final triumph 
 of one party, or perhaps of neither! 
 What pitched battles worthy to be 
 chanted In Homeric strains! What 
 storming of fortresses built all of 
 massive snow blocks! What feats 
 of Individual prowess and embodied 
 on sets of martial enthusiasm ! And 
 when some well-contested and decisive 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 215 
 
 victory had put a period to the war, 
 both armies should unite to build a 
 lofty monument of snow upon the 
 battlefield and crown It with the vic- 
 tor's statue hewn of the same frozen 
 marble. In a few days or weeks 
 thereafter the passer-by would- ob- 
 serve a shapeless mound upon the 
 level common, and, unmindful of the 
 famous victory, would ask: "How 
 came It there? Who reared It? 
 And what means It?" The shat- 
 tered pedestal of many a battle monu- 
 ment has provoked these questions 
 when none could answer. 
 
 —Snowflakes, 
 
 August ^oth. 
 
 The moss-grown wUlow-tree, which 
 for forty years past has overshad- 
 owed these western windows, will be 
 
216 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 among the first to put on Its green 
 attire. There are some objections to 
 the willow ; it is not a dry and cleanly 
 tree, and Impresses the beholder with 
 an association of slimlness. No trees, 
 I think, are perfectly agreeable as 
 companions, unless they have glossy 
 leaves, dry bark, and a firm and hard 
 texture of trunk and branches. But 
 the willow is almost the earliest to 
 gladden us with the promise and 
 reality of beauty, in its graceful and 
 delicate foliage, and the last to scat- 
 ter Its yellow yet scarcely withered 
 leaves upon the ground. All through 
 the winter, too. Its yellow twigs give 
 it a sunny aspect, which Is not without 
 a cheering Influence, even in the gray- 
 est and gloomiest day. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 217 
 
 August 31st, 
 
 Nature thrusts some of us Into the 
 world miserably incomplete on the 
 emotional side, with hardly any sen- 
 sibilities except what pertain to us as 
 animals. No passion, save of the 
 senses; no holy tenderness, nor the 
 delicacy that results from this. Ex- 
 ternally they bear a close resemblance 
 to other men, and have perhaps all 
 save the finest grace; but when a 
 woman wrecks herself on such a be- 
 ing, she ultimately finds that the real 
 womanhood within her has no cor- 
 responding part in him. Her deep- 
 est voice lacks a response; the deeper 
 her cry, the more dead his silence. 
 The fault may be none of his; he can- 
 not give her what never lived within 
 his soul. But the wretchedness on 
 
218 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 her side, and the moral deterioration 
 attendant on a false and shallow life, 
 without strength enough to keep it- 
 self sweet, are among the most piti- 
 able wrongs that mortals suffer. 
 
 — The Blithedale Romance. 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 
September ist. 
 
 Doubtless, however, either of these 
 stern and black-browed Puritans 
 would have thought It quite a suffi- 
 cient retribution for his sins, that, af- 
 ter so long a lapse of years, the old 
 trunk of the family tree, with so 
 much venerable moss upon It, should 
 have borne as Its topmost bough, an 
 idler hke myself. No aim, that I 
 have ever cherished, would they rec- 
 ognize as laudable; no success of mine 
 — If my life, beyond Its domestic 
 scope, had ever been brightened by 
 success — would they deem otherwise 
 than worthless. If not positively dis- 
 graceful. "What Is he?" murmurs 
 one gray shadow of my forefathers to 
 
222 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 the Other. *' A writer of story books ! 
 What kind of a business In life — 
 what mode of glorifying God, or be- 
 ing serviceable to mankind In his day 
 and generation — may that be ? Why, 
 the degenerate fellow might as well 
 have been a fiddler! " Such are the 
 compliments bandied between my 
 great-grandslres and myself, across 
 the gulf of time! And yet, let them 
 scorn me as they will, strong traits of 
 their nature have intertwined them- 
 selves with mine. 
 
 — The Custom House. 
 
 September 2d. 
 
 Two hundred years ago, and more, 
 the old world and its inhabitants be- 
 came mutually weary of each other. 
 Men voyaged by thousands to the 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 223 
 
 West; some to barter glass beadsv 
 and such like jewels, for the furs of 
 the Indian hunter; some to conquer 
 virgin empires, and one stern band to 
 pray. 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 September ^d. 
 
 If people have but life enough in 
 them to bear it, there is nothing that 
 so raises the spirits and makes the 
 blood ripple and dance so nimbly, 
 like a brook down the slope of a hill, 
 as a bright, hard frost. 
 
 —A IVonder Book. 
 
 September ^th. 
 
 If anywise interested in art, a man 
 must be difficult to please who can- 
 not find fit companionship among a 
 
224 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 crowd of persons, whose ideas and 
 pursuits all tend toward the general 
 purpose of enlarging the world's 
 stock of beautiful productions. 
 
 One of the chief causes that make 
 Rome the favorite residence of 
 artists — their ideal home which they 
 sigh for in advance, and are so loath 
 to migrate from, after once breath- 
 ing its enchanted air — is, doubtless, 
 that they there find themselves in 
 force, and are numerous enough to 
 create a congenial atmosphere. In 
 every other clime they are isolated 
 strangers; in this land of art, they are 
 free citizens. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 September ^th. 
 Happier my lot, who will straight- 
 way hie me to my familiar room and 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 225 
 
 toast myself comfortably before the 
 fire, musing and fitfully dozing and 
 fancying a strangeness In such sights 
 as all may see. But first let me gaze 
 at this solitary figure who comes 
 hitherward with a tin lantern which 
 throws the circular pattern of Its 
 punched holes on the ground about 
 hlm~. He passes fearlessly Into the 
 unknown gloom, whither I will not 
 follow him. 
 
 This figure shall supply me with a 
 moral wherewith, for lack of a more 
 appropriate one, I may wind up my 
 sketch. He fears not to tread the 
 dreary path before him, because his 
 lantern, which was kindled at the fire- 
 side of his home, will light him back 
 to that same fireside again. And 
 thus we, night-wanderers through a 
 stormy and dismal world. If we bear 
 
226 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 the lamp of Faith enkindled at a 
 celestial fire, It will surely lead us 
 home to that Heaven whence Its radi- 
 ance was borrowed. 
 
 — Night Sketches. 
 
 September 6th, 
 
 The present Spring comes onward 
 with fleeter footsteps, because Win- 
 ter lingered so unconscionably long, 
 that with her best diligence she can 
 hardly retrieve half the allotted pe- 
 riod of her reign. It is but a fort- 
 night since I stood on the brink of 
 our swollen river, and beheld the ac- 
 cumulated Ice of four frozen months 
 go down the stream. Except in 
 streaks here and there upon the hill- 
 sides, the whole visible universe was 
 then covered with deep snow, the 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 227 
 
 nethermost layer of which had been 
 deposited by an early December 
 storm. It was a sight to make the 
 beholder torpid, in the impossibility 
 of imagining how this vast white nap- 
 kin was to be removed from the face 
 of the corpse-like world, in less time 
 than had been required to spread it 
 there. But who can estimate the 
 power of gentle influences, whether 
 amid material desolation, or the 
 moral winter of man's heart? 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 September yth. 
 
 Hence, too, might be drawn a 
 weighty lesson from the little-re- 
 garded truth, that the act of the pass- 
 ing generation is the germ which may 
 and must produce good or evil fruit 
 
228 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 in a far-distant time; that, together 
 with the seed of the merely temporary 
 crop, which mortals term expediency, 
 they inevitably sow the acorns of a 
 more enduring growth, which may 
 darkly overshadow their posterity. 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 September 8th. 
 
 The snow has vanished as if by 
 magic; whatever heaps may be hid- 
 den in the woods and deep gorges of 
 the hills, only two solitary specks re- 
 main in the landscape; and those I 
 shall almost regret to miss, when, to- 
 morrow, I look for them in vain. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 September gth. 
 
 Literature, its exertions and ob- 
 jects, were now of little moment in 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 229 
 
 my regard. I cared not, at this pe- 
 riod, for books; they were apart from 
 me. Nature — except It were human 
 nature — the nature that Is developed 
 In earth and sky, was. In one sense, 
 hidden from me; and all the Imagina- 
 tive delight, wherewith It had been 
 spiritualized, passed away out of my 
 mind. A gift, a faculty. If It had 
 not departed, was suspended and In- 
 animate within me. There would 
 have been something sad, unutter- 
 ably dreary, In all this, had I not 
 been conscious that It lay at my own 
 option to recall whatever was valu- 
 able In the past. It might be true, 
 Indeed, that this was a life that 
 could not with Impunity be lived too 
 long; else. It might have made me per- 
 manently other than I had been, with- 
 out transforming me into any shape 
 
230 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 which It would be worth my while to 
 take. But I never considered it as 
 other than a transitory life. There 
 was always a prophetic instinct, a low 
 whisper in my ear, that, within no 
 long period, and whenever a new 
 change of custom should be essential 
 to my good, a change would come. 
 — The Custom House. 
 
 September loth. 
 
 Bewitching to my fancy are all 
 those nooks and crannies, where 
 Nature, like a stray partridge, hides 
 her head among the long-established 
 haunts of men ! It is likewise to be 
 remarked, as a general rule, that there 
 Is far more of the picturesque, more 
 truth to native and characteristic tend- 
 encies, and vastly greater suggestive- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 231 
 
 ness, in the back view of a residence, 
 whether In town or country, than In 
 its front. The latter Is always arti- 
 ficial; It Is meant for the world's eye, 
 and is therefore a veil and a conceal- 
 ment. Realities keep In the rear, 
 and put forward an advance guard 
 of show and humbug. The posterior 
 aspect of any old farm house, behind 
 which a railroad has unexpectedly 
 been opened, is so different from that 
 looking upon the immemorial high- 
 way, that the spectator gets new ideas 
 of, rural life and individuality In the 
 puff or two of steam-breath which 
 shoots him past the premises. In a 
 city, the distinction between what Is 
 offered to the public and what Is kept 
 for the family is certainly not less 
 striking. 
 
 — The Blithedale Romance, 
 
232 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 September nth. 
 
 This long connection of a family 
 with one spot, as its place of birth 
 and burial, creates a kindred between 
 the human being and the locality, 
 quite independent of any charm in the 
 scenery or moral circumstances that 
 surround him. It is not love, but 
 instinct. The new inhabitant — who 
 came himself from a foreign land, or 
 whose father or grandfather came — 
 has little claim to be called a Salemite; 
 he has no conception of the oyster- 
 like tenacity with which an old settler, 
 over whom his third century is creep- 
 ing, clings to the spot where his 
 successive generations have been im- 
 bedded. 
 
 — The Custom Home, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 233 
 
 September I2th. 
 
 A sculptor, Indeed, to meet the 
 demands which our preconceptions 
 make upon him, should be even more 
 indispensably a poet than those who 
 deal in measured verse and rhyme. 
 His material, or instrument, which 
 serves him in the stead of shifting 
 and transitory language, is a pure, 
 white, undecaying substance. It in- 
 sures immortality to whatever is 
 wrought in it, and therefore makes 
 it a religious obligation to commit no 
 idea to its mighty guardianship, save 
 such as may repay the marble for its 
 faithful care, its incorruptible fidelity, 
 by warming it with an ethereal life. 
 —The Marble Faun. 
 
234 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 September i^th. 
 
 There is no Impiety in believing 
 that, when his long life was over, the 
 apostle of the Indians was welcomed 
 to the celestial abodes by the prophets 
 of ancient days and by those earliest 
 apostles and evangelists who had 
 drawn their inspiration from the im- 
 mediate presence of the Saviour. 
 They first had preached truth and 
 salvation to the world. And Eliot, 
 separated from them by many cen- 
 turies, yet full of the same spirit, had 
 borne the like message to the New 
 World of the West. Since the first 
 days of Christianity there has been 
 no man more worthy to be numbered 
 in the brotherhood of the apostles 
 than Eliot. 
 
 — Grandfather s Chair. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 235 
 
 September 14th. 
 
 Do we not all spring from an evil 
 root ? Are we not all in darkness till 
 the light doth shine upon us? 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 September i^th. 
 
 Yet, the longer I reflect, the less 
 am I satisfied with the idea of form- 
 ing a separate class of mankind on the 
 basis of high Intellectual power. At 
 best, it is but a higher development 
 of Innate gifts common to all. Per- 
 haps, moreover, he, whose genius 
 appears deepest and truest, excels his 
 fellows In nothing save the knack of 
 expression; he throws out, occasion- 
 ally, a lucky hint at truths of which 
 every human soul is profoundly, 
 
236 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 though unutterably conscious. There- 
 fore, though we suffer the brother- 
 hood of intellect to march onward 
 together, it may be doubted whether 
 their peculiar relation will not begin 
 to vanish as soon as the procession 
 shall have passed beyond the circle of 
 this present world. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 September i6th. 
 
 Never before, methinks, has Spring 
 pressed so closely on the footsteps of 
 retreating Winter. Along the road- 
 side, the green blades of grass have 
 sprouted on the very edge of the 
 snowdrifts. The pastures and mow- 
 ing fields have not yet assumed a gen- 
 eral aspect of verdure; but neither 
 have they the cheerless brown tint 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 237 
 
 which they wear In latter autumn, 
 when vegetation has entirely ceased; 
 there Is now a faint shadow of life, 
 gradually brightening Into the warm 
 reality. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 September ijth. 
 
 Thus gradually, by silent and 
 stealthy Influences, are great changes 
 wrought. These little snow particles 
 which the storm-spirit flings by hand- 
 fuls through the air will bury the 
 great Earth under their accumulated 
 mass, nor permit her to behold her 
 sister Sky again for dreary months. 
 We likewise shall lose sight of 
 our mother's familiar visage, and 
 must content ourselves with looking 
 Heavenward the oftener. 
 
 — Snow flakes. 
 
238 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 September i8th. 
 
 When a writer calls his work a 
 romance, it need hardly be observed 
 that he wishes to claim a certain lati- 
 tude, both as to Its fashion and ma- 
 terial, which he would not have felt 
 himself entitled to assume, had he 
 professed to be writing a novel. The 
 latter form of composition is pre- 
 sumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, 
 not merely to the possible, but to the 
 probable and ordinary course of man's 
 experience. The former — while, as 
 a work of art, it must rigidly subject 
 itself to laws, and while it sins un- 
 pardonably so far as It may swerve 
 aside from the truth of the human 
 heart — has fairly a right to present 
 that truth under circumstances, to a 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 239 
 
 great extent, of the writer's own 
 choosing or creation. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 September igth. 
 
 But It must be otherwise with our 
 successors. On the most favorable 
 supposition, they will be acquainted 
 with the fireside In no better shape 
 than that of the sullen stove ; and more 
 probably, they will have grown up 
 amid furnace heat. In houses which 
 might be fancied to have their foun- 
 dation over the Infernal pit, whence 
 sulphurous streams and unbreathable 
 exhalations ascend through the aper- 
 tures of the floor. There will be 
 nothing to attract these poor children 
 to one center. They will never be- 
 hold one another through that pecu- 
 
240 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 liar medium of vision — the ruddy 
 gleam of blazing wood or bituminous 
 coal — which gives the human spirit 
 so deep an insight into its fellows, and 
 melts all humanity Into one cordial 
 heart of hearts. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 September 20th. 
 
 This sunny, shadowy, breezy, wan- 
 dering life, in which he seeks for 
 beauty as his treasure, and gathers 
 for his winter's honey what Is but a 
 passing fragrance to all other men. Is 
 worth living for, come afterwards 
 what may. Even If he die unrecog- 
 nized, the artist has had his share of 
 enjoyment and success. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 241 
 
 September 2ist. 
 
 It was a countenance terrible from 
 Its enormity of size, but disconsolate 
 and weary, even as you may see the 
 faces of many people nowadays who 
 are compelled to sustain burdens 
 above their strength. What the sky 
 was to the giant, such are the cares 
 of earth to those who let themselves 
 be weighed down by them. And 
 whenever men undertake what is be- 
 yond the just measure of their abili- 
 ties they encounter precisely such a 
 doom as had befallen this poor giant. 
 — A Wonder Book. 
 
 September 22d. 
 
 Not one woman In a thousand 
 could move so admirably as Zenobia. 
 Many women can sit gracefully; 
 
242 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 some can stand gracefully; and a 
 few, perhaps, can assume a series 
 of graceful positions. But natural 
 movement is the result and expres- 
 sion of the whole being, and cannot 
 be well and nobly performed, unless 
 responsive to something in the char- 
 acter. I often used to think that 
 music — light and airy, wild and pas- 
 sionate, or the full harmony of stately 
 marches, in accordance with her vary- 
 ing mood — should have attended 
 Zenobia's footsteps. 
 
 — The BUthedale Romance. 
 
 September 2^d. 
 
 Nothing in the whole circle of 
 human vanities takes stronger hold 
 of the imagination than this affair of 
 having a portrait painted. Yet why 
 should it be so? The looking glass, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 243 
 
 the polished globes of the andirons, 
 the mirror-like water, and all other 
 reflecting surfaces continually present 
 us with portraits, or rather ghosts, of 
 ourselves, which we glance at and 
 straightway forget them. But we 
 forget them only because they vanish. 
 It is the Idea of duration — of earthly 
 immortality — that gives such a mys- 
 terious interest to our own portraits. 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 September 2^th. 
 
 I felt It almost as a destiny to make 
 Salem my home; so that the mold of 
 features and cast of character which 
 had all along been familiar here — 
 ever, as one representative of the race 
 lay down In his grave, another assum- 
 ing, as It were, his sentry-march along 
 
244 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 the main street — might still In my 
 little day be seen and recognized In 
 the old town. Nevertheless, this very 
 sentiment Is an evidence that the 
 connection, which has become an un- 
 healthy one, should at least be sev- 
 ered. Human nature will not flour- 
 ish, any more than a potato. If It be 
 planted and replanted, for too long 
 a series of generations, In the same 
 worn-out soil. 
 
 — The Custom House. 
 
 September 2jth. 
 
 The sacred trust of the household- 
 fire has been transmitted In unbroken 
 succession from the earliest ages, and 
 faithfully cherished, In spite of every 
 discouragement, such as the Curfew 
 law of the Norman conquerors; until. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 245 
 
 in these evil days, physical science has 
 nearly succeeded in extinguishing it. 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 September 26th. 
 
 There is something so massive, 
 stable, and almost irresistibly "impos- 
 ing in the exterior presentment of 
 established rank and great posses- 
 sions, that their very existence seems 
 to give them a right to exist; at least, 
 so excellent a counterfeit of right, 
 that few poor and humble men have 
 moral force enough to question it, 
 even in their secret minds. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 September lyth. 
 
 The secret of the young man's 
 character was a high and abstracted 
 ambition. He could have borne to 
 
246 BEAUTIFUL TEOUQETS FROM 
 
 live an undistinguished life, but not 
 to be forgotten in the grave. Yearn- 
 ing desire had been transformed to 
 hope, and hope, long cherished, had 
 become like certainty that, obscurely 
 as he journeyed now, a glory was to 
 beam on all his pathway, though not, 
 perhaps, while he was treading it. 
 But when posterity should gaze back 
 into the gloom of what was now the 
 present, they would trace the bright- 
 ness of his footsteps, brightening as 
 meaner glories faded, and confess 
 that a gifted one had passed from his 
 cradle to his tomb with none to recog- 
 nize him. — The Ambitious Guest, 
 
 September 28th. 
 
 But, let good men push and elbow 
 one another as they may, during their 
 earthly march, all will be peace among 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 247 
 
 them when the honorable array of 
 their procession shall tread on heav- 
 enly ground. There they will doubt- 
 less find, that they have been working 
 each for the other's cause, and that 
 every well-delivered stroke, which, 
 with an honest purpose, any mortal 
 struck, even for a narrow object, was 
 indeed stricken for the universal cause 
 of good. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 September 2gth. 
 
 Balmy Spring — weeks later than 
 we expected, and months later than 
 we longed for her — comes at last, to 
 revive the moss on the roof and walls 
 of our old mansion. She peeps 
 brightly into my study-window, in- 
 viting me to throw it open, and create 
 a summer atmosphere by the intermix- 
 
248 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 tiire of her genial breath with the 
 black and cheerless comfort of the 
 stove. As the casement ascends, forth 
 into infinite space fly the innumerable 
 forms of thought or fancy that have 
 kept me company in the retirement of 
 this little chamber, during the slug- 
 gish lapse of wintry weather — visions, 
 gay, grotesque, and sad: pictures of 
 real life, tinted with Nature's homely 
 gray and russet; scenes in dreamland, 
 bedizened with rainbow hues, which 
 faded before they were well laid on — 
 all these may vanish now, and leave 
 me to mold a fresh existence out of 
 sunshine. 
 
 — Youn^ Goodman Brown. 
 
 September 30th. 
 
 It is the iron rule in our day to re- 
 quire an object and a purpose in life. 
 
XATHAXIEL HAWTHORNE 249 
 
 It makes us all parts of a complicated 
 scheme of progress, which can only 
 result In our arrival at a colder and 
 drearier region than we were born 
 In. It Insists upon everybody's add- 
 ing somewhat — a mite, perhaps, but 
 earned by Incessant effort — to an ac- 
 cumulated pile of usefulness, of which 
 the only use will be to burden our 
 posterity with even heavier thoughts 
 and more Inordinate labor than our 
 own. No life now wanders like an 
 unfettered stream; there Is a mill- 
 wheel for the tiniest rivulet to turn. 
 We go all wrong, by too strenuous a 
 resolution to go all right. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
OCTOBER 
 
October 1st. 
 
 I should think it a poor and meager 
 nature, that is capable of but one set 
 of forms, and must convert all the 
 past Into a dream merely because the 
 present happens to be unlike It. Why 
 should we be content with our homely 
 life of a few months past, to the ex- 
 clusion of all other modes? It was 
 good; but there are other lives as 
 good, or better. 
 
 — The Blithedale Romance. 
 
 October 2d. 
 
 A wretched change, Indeed, must 
 be wrought In their own hearts, ere 
 they can conceive the primal decree of 
 
254 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 Love to have been so completely abro- 
 gated, that a brother should ever want 
 what his brother had. When their 
 Intelligence shall have reached so far, 
 Earth's new progeny will have little 
 reason to exult over her old rejected 
 one. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse, 
 
 October ^d. 
 
 It Is the unspeakable misery of a 
 life so false as his, that It steals the 
 pith and substance out of whatever 
 realities there are around us, and 
 which were meant by Heaven to be 
 the spirit's joy and nutriment. To 
 the untrue man, the whole universe 
 Is false — It Is Impalpable — It shrinks 
 to nothing within his grasp. And he 
 himself, In so far as he shows himself 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 255 
 
 in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, 
 indeed, ceases to exist. 
 
 — The Scarlet Letter. 
 
 October ^fth. 
 
 It is not good for man to cherish a 
 solitary ambition. Unless there be 
 those around him by whose example 
 he may regulate himself, his thoughts, 
 desires, and hopes will become extrav- 
 agant, and he the semblance, perhaps 
 the reality of a madman. 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 October 5th. 
 
 For, little as w^e know of our life 
 to come, we may be very sure, for one 
 thing, that the good we aim at will 
 not be attained. People never do get 
 just the good they seek. If it come at 
 
256 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 all, It is something else, which they 
 never dreamed of, and did not partic- 
 ularly want. Then, again, we may 
 rest certain that our friends of to-day 
 will not be our friends of a few years 
 hence; but, if we keep one of them, it 
 will be at the expense of the others; 
 and, most probably, we shall keep 
 none. To be sure, there are more to 
 be had; but who cares about m.aking 
 a new set of friends, even should they 
 be better than those around us? 
 
 — The Blithedale Romance. 
 
 October 6th. 
 
 As these busts In the block of mar- 
 ble, so does our Individual fate exist 
 In the limestone of time. We fancy 
 that we carve It out; but Its ultimate 
 shape is prior to all our action. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 257 
 
 October yth. 
 
 When an unlnstructed multitude 
 attempts to see with Its eyes, It Is ex- 
 ceedingly apt to be deceived. When, 
 however. It forms Its judgment, as It 
 usually does, on the Intuitions of Its 
 great and warm heart, the conclu- 
 sions thus attained are often so pro- 
 found and so unerring, as to possess 
 the character of truths supernaturally 
 revealed. 
 
 — The Scarlet Letter. 
 
 October 8th, 
 
 When our infancy is almost forgot- 
 ten, and our boyhood long departed, 
 though it seems but as yesterday; 
 when life settles darkly down upon 
 us, and we doubt whether to call our- 
 
258 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 selves young any more, then It is good 
 to steal away from the society of 
 bearded men, and even of gentler 
 woman, and spend an hour or two 
 with children. 
 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 October gth. 
 
 The sun was now an hour or two 
 beyond its noontide mark, and filled 
 the great hollow of the valley with Its 
 western radiance, so that it seemed to 
 be brimming with mellow light, and 
 to spill it over the surrounding hill- 
 sides like golden wine out of a bowl. 
 It was such a day that you could not 
 help saying of it, " There never was 
 such a day before ! " although yester- 
 day was just such a day, and to-mor- 
 row will be just such another. Ah, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 259 
 
 but there are very few of them In a 
 twelvemonth's circle ! It Is a re- 
 markable peculiarity of these Octo- 
 ber days that each of them seems to 
 occupy a great deal of space, although 
 the sun rises rather tardily at that 
 season of the year, and goes to bed, 
 as little children ought, at sober six 
 o'clock, or even earlier. We cannot 
 therefore call the days long, but they 
 appear, somehow or other, to make up 
 for their shortness by their breadth, 
 and when the cool night comes we are 
 conscious of having enjoyed a big 
 armful of life since morning. 
 
 — A Wonder Book. 
 
 October loth. 
 
 In the Spring and Summer time, all 
 somber thoughts should follow the 
 
260 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 winter northward, with the somber 
 and thoughtful crows. The old par- 
 adisiacal economy of life is again in 
 force; we live, not to think, nor to 
 labor, but for the simple end of be- 
 ing happy; nothing, for the present 
 hour, is worthy of man's infinite 
 capacity, save to imbibe the warm 
 smile of Heaven, and sympathize 
 with the reviving earth. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 October nth. 
 
 Gloomy as it may seem, there is 
 an influence productive of cheerful- 
 ness and favorable to imaginative 
 thought in the atmosphere of a snowy 
 day. My hour of inspiration — if 
 that hour ever comes — is when the 
 green log hisses upon the hearth, and 
 
NATHAXIEL HAWTHORXE 261 
 
 the bright flame, brighter for the 
 gloom of the chamber, rustles high 
 up the chimney, and the coals drop 
 tinkling down among the growing 
 heaps of ashes. When the casement 
 rattles in the gust of the snowflakes, 
 or the sleety raindrops pelt hard 
 against the window panes, then I 
 spread out my sheet of paper with a 
 certainty that thoughts and fancies 
 will gleam forth upon it like stars at 
 twilight or like violets in May, per- 
 haps to fade as soon. 
 
 — Snowflakes. 
 
 October I2th. 
 
 A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, 
 and skillfully wrought out, brighten- 
 ing at every step, and crowning the 
 final development of a work of fie- 
 
262 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 tion, may add an artistic glory, but is 
 never any truer, and seldom any more 
 evident, at the last page than at the 
 first. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 October i^th. 
 
 It is very true that, sometimes gaz- 
 ing casually around me, out of the 
 midst of my toil, I used to discern 
 a richer picturesqueness in the visible 
 scene of earth and sky. There was, 
 at such moments, a novelty, an un- 
 wonted aspect, on the face of Nature, 
 as if she had been taken by surprise 
 and seen at unawares, with no oppor- 
 tunity to put off her real look, and 
 assume the mask with which she mys- 
 teriously hides herself from mortals. 
 — The Blithedale Romance. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 263 
 
 October 14th. 
 
 What a strange Idea — what a need- 
 less labor — to construct artificial 
 ruins in Rome, the native soil of ruin ! 
 But even these sportive Imitations, 
 wrought by man in emulation of what 
 time has done to temples and palaces, 
 are perhaps centuries old, and, begin- 
 ning as Illusions, have grown to be 
 venerable In sober earnest. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 October i^th. 
 
 Had our Adam and Eve become 
 mortal In some European city, and 
 strayed into the vastness and sub- 
 limity of an old cathedral, they might 
 have recognized the purpose for 
 which the deep-souled founders reared 
 
264 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 it. Like the dim awfulness of an 
 ancient forest, its very atmosphere 
 would have incited them to prayer. 
 Within the snug walls of a metropoli- 
 tan church there can be no such in- 
 fluence. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse, 
 
 October i6th. 
 
 His mind was in a free and happy 
 state and took delight in its own 
 activity, and scarcely required any 
 external impulse to set it at work. 
 
 How different is this spontaneous 
 play of the intellect 'from the trained 
 diligence of maturer years, when toil 
 has perhaps grown easy by long 
 habit, and the day's work may have 
 become essential to the day's com- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 265 
 
 fort, although the rest of the matter 
 has bubbled away ! 
 
 — A Wonder Book. 
 
 October lyth. 
 
 The enemies of a great and good 
 man can In no other way make him so 
 glorious as by giving him the crown 
 of martyrdom. 
 
 — Grandfather s Chair. 
 
 October i8th. 
 
 All of us, after long abode In cities, 
 have felt the blood gush more joy- 
 ously through our veins with the first 
 breath of rural air. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
 October igth. 
 
 It has been our task to uproot the 
 hearth. What further reform Is left 
 
266 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 for our children to achieve, unless 
 they overthrow the altar too? And 
 by what appeal, hereafter, when the 
 breath of hostile armies may mingle 
 with the pure, cold breezes of our 
 country, shall we attempt to rouse up 
 native valor? Fight for your hearths ! 
 There will be none throughout the 
 land. Fight for your stoves! Not 
 I, in faith. If, in such a cause, I 
 strike a blow, it shall be on the In- 
 vader's part; and Heaven grant that 
 it may shatter the abomination all to 
 pieces! 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 October 20th. 
 
 For I am a patriarch. Here I sit 
 among my descendants, in my old 
 armchair and immemorial corner, 
 while the firelight throws an appro- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 267 
 
 priate glory round my venerable 
 frame. Susan! My children! Some- 
 thing whispers me that this happiest 
 hour must be the final one, and that 
 nothing remains but to bless you all 
 and depart with a treasure of recol- 
 lected joys to Heaven. Will you 
 meet me there? Alas! your figures 
 grow Indistinct, fading into pictures 
 on the air, and now to fainter outlines, 
 while the fire is glimmering on the 
 walls of a familiar room, and shows 
 the book that I flung down and the 
 sheet that I left half written some 
 fifty years ago. I lift my eyes to the 
 looking glass, and perceive myself 
 alone, unless those be the mermaid's 
 features retiring into the depths of 
 the mirror with a tender and melan- 
 choly smile. 
 
 —The Village Uncle. 
 
268 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 October 2ist. 
 
 In this republican country, amid the 
 fluctuating waves of our social life, 
 somebody Is always at the drownlng- 
 polnt. The tragedy Is enacted with 
 as continual a repetition as that of a 
 popular drama on a holiday; and, 
 nevertheless. Is felt as deeply, per- 
 haps, as when an hereditary noble 
 sinks below his order. More deeply; 
 since, with us, rank Is the grosser 
 substance of wealth and a splendid 
 establishment, and has no spiritual 
 existence after death of these, but 
 dies hopelessly along with them. 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 October 22d. 
 
 Religion sat down beside it, not in 
 the priestly robes which decorated, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 269 
 
 and perhaps disguised, her at the 
 altar, but arrayed In a simple matron's 
 garb, and uttering her lessons with 
 the tenderness of a mother's voice and 
 heart. The holy Hearth! If any 
 earthly and material thing — or 
 rather, a divine Idea, embodied In 
 brick and mortar — might be sup- 
 posed to possess the permanence of 
 moral truth, It was this. All re- 
 vered It. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown, 
 
 October 2^d, 
 
 Few secrets can escape an Investi- 
 gator, who has opportunity and license 
 to undertake such a quest, and skill to 
 follow It up. A man burdened with 
 a secret should especially avoid the 
 Intimacy of his physician. If the 
 
270 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 latter possess native sagacity, and a 
 nameless something more — let us call 
 It Intuition; If he show no Intrusive 
 egotism, nor disagreeably prominent 
 characteristics of his own; If he have 
 the power, which must be born with 
 him, to bring his mind Into such 
 affinity with his patient's, that this 
 last shall unawares have spoken what 
 he Imagines himself only to have 
 thought; If such revelations be re- 
 ceived without tumult, and acknowl- 
 edged not so often by an uttered 
 sympathy as by silence, an Inarticu- 
 late breath, and here and there a 
 word, to Indicate that all Is under- 
 stood; if to these qualifications of a 
 confidant be joined the advantages 
 afforded by his recognized character 
 as a physician — then, at some Inevita- 
 ble moment, will the soul of the suf- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 271 
 
 ferer be dissolved, and flow forth in 
 a dark, but transparent stream, bring- 
 ing all Its mysteries into the daylight. 
 — The Scarlet Letter, 
 
 October 2^th. 
 
 Thought has always its efficacy, 
 and every striking Incident Its moral. 
 — Twice Told Tales. 
 
 A forced smile is uglier than a 
 frown. 
 
 — The Marble Faun, 
 
 October 2^th. 
 
 But there Is a species of Intuition — 
 either a spiritual He, or the subtle 
 recognition of a fact — which comes 
 to us In a reduced state of the cor- 
 poreal system. The soul gets the 
 better of the body, after wasting ill- 
 
272 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 ness, or when a vegetable diet may 
 have mingled too much either in the 
 blood. Vapors then rise up to the 
 brain, and take shapes that often 
 image falsehoods, but sometimes 
 truth. The spheres of our compan- 
 ions have, at such periods, a vastly 
 greater influence upon our own than 
 when robust health gives us a repel- 
 lent and self-defensive energy. 
 
 — The Blithedale Romance, 
 
 October 26th, 
 
 What a singular moment is the 
 first one, when you have hardly be- 
 gun to recollect yourself, after start- 
 ing from midnight slumber ! By un- 
 closing your eyes so suddenly you 
 seem to have surprised the personages 
 of your dream in full convocation 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 273 
 
 round your bed, and catch one broad 
 glance at them before they can flit 
 into obscurity. Or, to vary the meta- 
 phor, you find yourself for a single 
 instant wide awake in that realm of 
 illusions whither sleep has been the 
 passport, and behold its ghostly in- 
 habitants and wondrous scenery with 
 a perception of their strangeness such 
 as you never attain while the dream is 
 undisturbed. 
 
 — The Haunted Mind. 
 
 October zjth. 
 
 How sad is the thought that one 
 of the first things which the settlers 
 had to do, when they came to the 
 New World, was to set apart a burial 
 ground ! 
 
 — Grandfather s Chair. 
 
274 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 Octgber 28th. 
 
 The sun, meanwhile, If not already 
 above the horizon, was ascending 
 nearer and nearer to Its verge. A few 
 clouds, floating high upward, caught 
 some of the earliest light, and threw 
 down Its golden gleam on the win- 
 dows of all the houses In the street, 
 not forgetting the House of the Seven 
 Gables, which — many such sunrises 
 as It had witnessed — looked cheer- 
 fully at the present one. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables, 
 
 October 2Qth. 
 
 And now for a moral to my reverie. 
 Shall It be that, since fancy can create 
 so bright a dream of happiness. It 
 were better to dream on from youth 
 
-NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 275 
 
 to age than to awake and strive doubt- 
 fully for something real? Oh, the 
 slight tissue of a dream can no more 
 preserve us from the stern reality of 
 misfortune than a robe of cobweb 
 could repel the wintry blast. Be this 
 the moral, then: In chaste and warm 
 affections, humble wishes, and honest 
 toil for some useful end, there is 
 health for the mind and quiet for the 
 heart, the prospect of a happy life, 
 and the fairest hope of Heaven. 
 
 — The Village Uncle. 
 
 October ^oth. 
 
 Men who have spent their lives in 
 generous and holy contemplation for 
 the human race; those who, by a cer- 
 tain heavenliness of spirit, have puri- 
 fied the atmosphere around them, and 
 
276 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 thus supplied a medium In which good 
 and high things may be projected and 
 performed — give to these a lofty 
 place among the benefactors of man- 
 kind, although no deed, such as the 
 world calls deeds, may be recorded 
 of them. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 October 31st. 
 
 It could not be that the world 
 should continue forever what It has 
 been; a soil where Happiness Is so 
 rare a flower, and Virtue so often a 
 blighted fruit; a battlefield where the 
 good principle, with Its shield flung 
 above Its head, can hardly save itself 
 amid the rush of adverse Influences. 
 In the enthusiasm of such thoughts, 
 I gazed through one of the pictured 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 277 
 
 windows; and, behold! the whole ex- 
 ternal world was tinged with the 
 dimly glorious aspect that is peculiar 
 to the Hall of Fantasy; insomuch 
 that it seemed practicable, at that very 
 instant, to realize some plan for the 
 perfection of mankind. But, alas! 
 if reformers would understand the 
 sphere in which their lot is cast, they 
 must cease to look through pictured 
 windows. Yet they not only use this 
 medium, but mistake it for the whitest 
 sunshine. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
NOVEMBER 
 
November ist. 
 
 Intellectual activity is incompatible 
 with any large amount of bodily ex- 
 ercise. The yeoman and the scholar 
 — the yeoman and the man of finest 
 moral culture, though not the man of 
 sturdiest sense and integrity — are two 
 distinct individuals, and can never be 
 melted or welded into one substance. 
 — The Bltthedale Romance. 
 
 November 2d. 
 
 And now, again, the clock of the 
 Old South threw its voice of ages on 
 the breeze, knolling the hourly knell 
 of the past, crying out far and wide 
 through the multitudinous city, and 
 
282 BEAUTIFUL TH0U0HT8 FROM 
 
 filling our ears, as we sat In the dusky 
 chamber, with Its reverberating depth 
 of tone. In that same mansion — In 
 that very chamber — what a volume 
 of history had been told off Into 
 hours by the same voice that was now 
 trembling In the air! Many a gov- 
 ernor had heard those midnight ac- 
 cents and longed to exchange his 
 stately cares for slumber. 
 
 —Old Esther Dudley, 
 
 November 5^. 
 
 In a forest, solitude would be life; 
 In the city. It Is death. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 His joy was like that of a child 
 that had gone astray from home, and 
 finds him suddenly In his mother's 
 arms again. 
 
 — The Marble Faun. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 283 
 
 November ph, 
 
 I have sometimes doubted whether 
 there was more than a single man 
 among our forefathers, who realized 
 that an Indian possesses a mind, and 
 a heart, and an immortal soul. That 
 single man was John Eliot. All the 
 rest of the early settlers seemed to 
 think that the Indians were an inferior 
 race of beings, whom the Creator had 
 merely allowed to keep possession of 
 this beautiful country till the white 
 men should be in want of it. 
 
 — Grandfather's Chair, 
 
 November §th. 
 
 Now, I need hardly remind such 
 wise little people as you are that in 
 the old, old times, when King Midas 
 
284 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 was alive, a great many things came 
 to pass which we should consider 
 wonderful If they were to happen in 
 our own day and country. And, on 
 the other hand, a great many things 
 take place nowadays which seem not 
 only wonderful to us, but at which the 
 people of old times would have stared 
 their eyes out. On the whole, I re- 
 gard our own times as the stranger 
 of the two. 
 
 — A Wonder Book. 
 
 November 6th. 
 
 Thus early had that one guest — the 
 only guest who is certain, at one time 
 or another, to find his way Into every 
 human dwelling — thus early had 
 Death stepped across the threshold 
 of the House of the Seven Gables. 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 285 
 
 November yth. 
 
 It Is a good lesson — though it may 
 often be a hard one — for a man who 
 has dreamed of Hterary fame, and of 
 making for himself a rank among the 
 world's dignitaries by such means, to 
 step aside out of the narrow circle In 
 which his claims are recognized, and 
 to find how utterly devoid of signifi- 
 cance, beyond that circle, Is all that 
 he achieves, and all he alms at. I 
 know not that I especially needed the 
 lesson, either In the way of warning 
 or rebuke; but, at any rate, I learned 
 it thoroughly; nor it gives me pleas- 
 ure to reflect, did the truth, as It came 
 hom.e to my perception, ever cost me 
 a pang or require to be thrown off in a 
 sigh. 
 
 — The Custom House. 
 
286 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 November 8th. 
 
 It Is my belief that social Inter- 
 course cannot long continue what It 
 has been, now that we have subtracted 
 from It so Important and vivifying an 
 element as fire-light. The effects will 
 be more perceptible on our children, 
 and the generations that shall succeed 
 them, than on ourselves, the mechan- 
 ism of whose life may remain un- 
 changed, though Its spirit be far other 
 than It was. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown, 
 
 November gth. 
 
 We have called the Evil; now let 
 us call the Good. The trumpet's 
 brazen throat should pour Heavenly 
 music over the earth, and the her- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 287 
 
 aid's voice go forth with the sweet- 
 ness of an angel's accents, as If to 
 summon each upright man to his re- 
 ward. But how Is this? Does none 
 answer to the call? Not one: for 
 the just, the pure, the true, and all 
 who might most worthily obey It, 
 shrink sadly back, as most conscious 
 of error and Imperfection. Then let 
 the summons be to those whose per- 
 vading principle Is Love. This classi- 
 fication will embrace all the truly 
 good, and none In whose souls there 
 exists not something that may expand 
 Itself Into a heaven, both of well- 
 doing and felicity. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 November loth. 
 
 Nothing so much depresses me In 
 my view of mortal affairs as to see 
 
288 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 high energies wasted and human life 
 and happiness thrown away for ends 
 that appear oftentimes unwise, and 
 still oftener remain unaccomplished. 
 But the wisest people and the best 
 keep a steadfast faith that the prog- 
 ress of mankind is onward and up- 
 ward, and that the toil and anguish 
 of the path serve to wear away the 
 imperfections of the immortal pil- 
 grim, and will be felt no more when 
 they have done their office. 
 
 — The Sister-Years. 
 
 November nth. 
 
 In classic times, the exhortation to 
 fight " pro aris et focis " — for the 
 altars and the hearths— was consid- 
 ered the strongest appeal that could 
 be made to patriotism. And it 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 289 
 
 seemed an immortal utterance ; for all 
 subsequent ages and people have ac- 
 knowledged Its force, and responded 
 to It with the full portion of manhood 
 that Nature had assigned to each. 
 Wisely were the Altar and the Hearth 
 conjoined in one mighty sentence! 
 For the hearth, too, had its kindred 
 sanctity. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 November I2th. 
 
 " Alas for you, then, my poor sis- 
 ter ! *' said the Old Year, sighing, 
 as she uplifted her burden. " We 
 grandchildren of Time are born to 
 trouble. Happiness, they say, dwells 
 in the mansions of eternity, but we 
 can only lead mortals thither step by 
 step with reluctant murmurlngs, and 
 
290 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 ourselves must perish on the thresh- 
 old." 
 
 — The Sister Years. 
 
 November ijth. 
 
 It Is our nature to desire a monu- 
 ment, be It slate or marble, or a pillar 
 of granite, or a glorious memory In 
 the universal heart of man. 
 
 — The Ambitious Guest. 
 
 November 14th. 
 
 Moonlight, In a familiar room, 
 falling so white upon the carpet, and 
 showing all Its figures so distinctly — 
 making every object so minutely vis- 
 ible, yet so unlike a morning of noon- 
 tide visibility — Is a medium the most 
 suitable for a romance writer to get 
 acquainted with his Illusive guests. 
 
XATHAyiEL HAWTHORXE 291 
 
 There Is the httle domestic scenery of 
 the well-known apartment; the chairs, 
 with each Its separate Individuality; 
 the center-table, sustaining a work- 
 basket, a volume or two, and an ex- 
 tinguished lamp; the sofa; the book- 
 case; the picture on the wall — all 
 these details, so completely seen, are 
 so spiritualized by the unusual light, 
 that they seem to lose their actual 
 substance, and become things of In- 
 tellect. 
 
 — The Custom House. 
 
 November i^th. 
 
 But there Is no one thing which men 
 so rarely do, whatever the provoca- 
 tion or Inducement, as to bequeath 
 patrimonial property away from their 
 own blood. They may love other 
 
292 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 Individuals far better than their rela- 
 tives — they may even cherish dislike, 
 or positive hatred, to the latter; but 
 yet, in view of death, the strong preju- 
 dice of propinquity revives, and im- 
 pels the testator to send down his 
 estate in the line marked out by cus- 
 tom so immemorial that it looks like 
 nature. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 November i6th. 
 
 These barren and tedious eccen- 
 tricities are all that the air-tight stove 
 can bestow, in exchange for the inval- 
 uable moral influences which we have 
 lost by our desertion of the open fire- 
 place. Alas! is this world so very 
 bright, that we can afford to choke 
 up such a domestic fountain of glad- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 293 
 
 someness, and sit down by Its dark- 
 ened source, without being conscious 
 of a gloom? 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 November lyth. 
 
 The somewhat dim coal-fire has an 
 essential Influence In producing the 
 effect which I would describe. It 
 throws Its unobtrusive tinge through- 
 out the room, with a faint ruddiness 
 upon the walls and celling, and a re- 
 flected gleam from the polish of the 
 furniture. This warmer light min- 
 gles Itself with the cold spirituality of 
 the moonbeams, and communicates, 
 as It were, a heart and sensibilities of 
 human tenderness to the forms which 
 fancy summons up. It converts them 
 from snow Images Into men and 
 
294 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 women. Glancing at the looking 
 glass we behold — deep within Its 
 haunted verge — the smoldering glow 
 of the half-extinguished anthracite, 
 the white moonbeams on the floor, 
 and a repetition of all the gleam and 
 shadow of the picture, with one re- 
 move further from the actual, and 
 nearer to the Imaginative. Then, at 
 such an hour, and with this scene be- 
 fore him. If a man, sitting all alone, 
 cannot dream strange things, and 
 make them look like truth, he need 
 never try to write romances. 
 
 — The Custom House, 
 
 November i8th. 
 
 But as for the old structure of our 
 story. Its white-oak frame, and Its 
 boards, shingles, and crumbling plas- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 295 
 
 ter, and even the huge, clustered 
 chimney In the midst, seemed to con- 
 stitute only the least and meanest 
 part of Its reality. So much of man- 
 kind's varied experience had passed 
 there — so much had been suffered, 
 and something, too, enjoyed — that 
 the very timbers were oozy, as with 
 the moisture of a heart. It was it- 
 self like a great human heart, with a 
 life of Its own, and full of rich and 
 somber reminiscences. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 November igth. 
 
 And will Death and Sorrow ever 
 enter that proud mansion ? As surely 
 as the dancers will be gay within Its 
 halls to-night. Such thoughts sadden 
 yet satisfy my heart, for they teach 
 
296 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 me that the poor man In his mean, 
 weather-beaten hovel, without a fire 
 to cheer him, may call the rich his 
 brother — brethren by Sorrow, who 
 must be an Inmate of both their 
 households; brethren by Death, who 
 will lead them both to other homes. 
 — Night Sketches, 
 
 November 20th. 
 
 At any nearer view the grandeur 
 of St. Peter's hides itself behind the 
 immensity of Its separate parts, so 
 that we see only the front, only the 
 sides, only the pillared length and 
 loftiness of the portico, and not the 
 mighty whole. But at this distance 
 the entire outline of the world's 
 cathedral, as well as that of the pal- 
 ace of the world's chief priest. Is 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 297 
 
 taken In at once. In such remote- 
 ness, moreover, the Imagination Is not 
 debarred from lending Its assistance, 
 even while we have the reality before 
 our eyes, and helping the weakness of 
 human sense to do justice to so grand 
 an object. It requires both faith and 
 fancy to enable us to feel, what Is 
 nevertheless so true, that yonder. In 
 front of the purple outline of hills, Is 
 the grandest edifice ever built by man, 
 painted against God's loveliest sky. 
 —The Marble Faun, 
 
 November 2ist. 
 
 It Is not, I apprehend, a healthy 
 kind of mental occupation, to devote 
 ourselves too exclusively to the study 
 of Individual men and women. If 
 the person under examination be one's 
 
298 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 self, the result Is pretty certain to be 
 diseased action of the heart, almost 
 before we can snatch a second glance. 
 Or, If we take the freedom to put 
 a friend under our microscope, we 
 thereby Insulate him from many of 
 his true relations, magnify his pecu- 
 liarities, Inevitably tear him Into 
 parts, and, of course, patch him very 
 clumsily together again. 
 
 — The Blithedale Romance. 
 
 November 22d, 
 
 In the course of generations, when 
 many people have lived and died In 
 an ancient house, the whistling of the 
 wind through Its crannies and the 
 creaking of Its beams and rafters be- 
 come strangely like the tones of the 
 human voice, or thundering laugh- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 299 
 
 ter, or heavy footsteps treading the 
 deserted chambers. It Is as if the 
 echoes of half a century were revived. 
 — Edward Randolph's Portrait. 
 
 November z^d. 
 
 After drinking from those foun- 
 tains of still fresh existence, we shall 
 return Into the crowd, as I do now, to 
 struggle onward and do our part in 
 life, perhaps as fervently as ever, but 
 for a time with a kinder and purer 
 heart, and a spirit more lightly wise. 
 All this by thy sweet magic, dear lit- 
 tle Annie! 
 
 —Twice Told Tales. 
 
 November 2^th. 
 
 Grandfather, too, had been happy 
 though not mirthful. He felt that 
 
300 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 this was to be set down as one of the 
 good Thanksgivings of his life. In 
 truth, all his former Thanksgivings 
 had borne their part in the present 
 one; for his years of infancy, and 
 youth, and manhood, with their bless- 
 ings and their griefs, had flitted be- 
 fore him while he sat silently in the 
 great chair. Vanished scenes had 
 been pictured in the air. The forms 
 of departed friends had visited him. 
 Voices to be heard no more on earth 
 had sent an echo from the infinite and 
 the eternal. These shadows, if such 
 they were, seemed almost as real to 
 him as what was actually present — as 
 the merry shouts and laughter of the 
 children — as their figures, dancing 
 like sunshine before his eyes. 
 
 He felt that the past was not taken 
 from him. The happiness of former 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 301 
 
 days was a possession forever. And 
 there was something In the mingled 
 sorrow of his hfetlme that became 
 akin to happiness, after being long 
 treasured In the depths of his heart. 
 There It underwent a change, and 
 grew more precious than pure gold. 
 — Famous Old People, 
 
 November 25th. 
 
 A parishioner comes In. With 
 what warmth of benevolence — how 
 should he be otherwise than warm, 
 In any of his attributes? — does the 
 minister bid him welcome, and set a 
 chair for him in so close proximity to 
 the hearth, that soon the guest finds It 
 needful to rub his scorched shins with 
 his great red hands. The melted 
 snow drips from his steaming boots, 
 
302 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 and bubbles upon the hearth. His 
 puckered forehead unravels Its en- 
 tanglement of criss-cross wrinkles. 
 We lose much of the enjoyment of 
 fireside heat, without such an oppor- 
 tunity of marking Its genial effect 
 upon those who have been looking 
 the inclement weather In the face. 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 November 26th. 
 
 My life glided on, the past appear- 
 ing to mingle with the present and 
 absorb the future, till the whole lies 
 before me at a glance. My manhood 
 has long been waning with a stanch 
 decay; my earlier contemporaries, af- 
 ter lives of unbroken health, are all 
 at rest without having known the 
 weariness of later age; and now with 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 303 
 
 a wrinkled forehead and thin white 
 hair as badges of my dignity, I have 
 become the patriarch — the uncle — of 
 the village. I love that name; It 
 widens the circle of my sympathies; 
 It joins all the youthful to my house- 
 hold In the kindred of affection. 
 
 — The Village Uncle. 
 
 November 2'jth. 
 
 Nevertheless, If we look through 
 all the heroic fortunes of mankind, 
 we shall find this same entanglement 
 of something mean and trivial with 
 whatever Is noblest In joy or sorrow. 
 Life Is made up of marble and mud. 
 And, without all the deeper trust In 
 a comprehensive sympathy above us, 
 we might hence be led to suspect the 
 Insult of a sneer, as well as an Im- 
 
304 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 mitigable frown, on the Iron coun- 
 tenance of fate. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 November 28th. 
 
 It Is sadly curious to observe how 
 slight a taste of office suffices to In- 
 fect a poor fellow with this singular 
 disease. Uncle Sam's gold — mean- 
 ing no disrespect to the worthy old 
 gentleman — has, In this respect a 
 quality of enchantment like that of 
 the Devil's wages. Whoever touches 
 It should look well to himself, or he 
 may find the bargain to go hard 
 against him. Involving, If not his soul, 
 yet many of Its better attributes; Its 
 sturdy force. Its courage and con- 
 stancy, its truth. Its self-reliance, In 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTMORNE 305 
 
 all that gives the emphasis to manly 
 character. 
 
 — The Custom House. 
 
 November 2gth. 
 
 And then, at twilight, when laborer 
 or scholar, or mortal of whatever age, 
 sex, or degree, drew a chair beside 
 him, and looked into his glowing face, 
 how acute, how profound, how com- 
 prehensive was his sympathy with the 
 mood of each and all ! He pictured 
 forth their very thoughts. To the 
 youthful he showed the scenes of the 
 adventurous life before them; to 
 the aged, the shadows of departed 
 love and hope; and, If all earthly 
 things had grown distasteful, he could 
 gladden the fireside muser with golden 
 glimpses of a better world. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
306 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 November joth. 
 
 An effect — which I believe to be 
 observable, more or less, in every in- 
 dividual who has occupied the posi- 
 tion — is, that, while he leans on the 
 mighty arm of the Republic, his own 
 proper strength departs from him. 
 He loses, in an extent proportioned 
 to the weakness or force of his origi- 
 nal nature, the capability of self- 
 support. If he possesses an unusual 
 share of native energy, or the ener- 
 vating magic of place do not operate 
 too long upon him, his forfeited pow- 
 ers may be redeemable. The ejected 
 officer — fortunate in the unkindly 
 shove that sends him forth betimes, to 
 struggle amid a struggling world — 
 may return to himself, and become all 
 that he has ever been. But this sel- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 307 
 
 dom happens. He usually keeps his 
 ground just long enough for his own 
 ruin, and Is then thrust out, with 
 sinews all unstrung, to totter along the 
 difficult footpath of life as he best 
 may. 
 
 — The Custom House, 
 
DECEMBER 
 
December ist. 
 
 It Is a heavy annoyance to a writer 
 who endeavors to represent nature, 
 Its various attitudes and circum- 
 stances, In a reasonably correct out- 
 line and true coloring, that so much 
 of the mean and ludicrous should be 
 hopelessly mixed up with the purest 
 pathos which life anywhere supplies 
 to him. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables, 
 
 December 2d. 
 
 Afar, the wayfarer discerns the 
 flickering flame, as It dances upon the 
 windows, and halls It as a beacon 
 light of humanity, reminding him, In 
 
312 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 his cold and lonely path, that the 
 world Is not all snow, and solitude, 
 and desolation. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 December ^d. 
 
 I recollect no happier portion of 
 my life than this my calm old age. 
 It Is like the sunny and sheltered slope 
 of a valley where late In the autumn 
 the grass Is greener than In August, 
 and Intermixed with golden dande- 
 lions that had not been seen till now 
 since the first warmth of the year. 
 — The Village Uncle. 
 
 December 4th. 
 
 With how sweet humility did this 
 elemental spirit perform all needful 
 offices for the household In which he 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 313 
 
 was domesticated! He was equal to 
 the concoction of a grand dinner, yet 
 scorned not to roast a potato, or toast 
 a bit of cheese. How humanely did 
 he cherish the schoolboy's Icy fingers, 
 and thaw the old man's joints with a 
 genial warmth, which almost equaled 
 the glow of youth! And how care- 
 fully did he dry the cowhide boots 
 that had trudged through mud and 
 snow, and the shaggy outside gar- 
 ment, stiff with frozen sleet; taking 
 heed, likewise, to the comfort of the 
 faithful dog who had followed his 
 master through the storm ! 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 December 5th. 
 
 The domestic fire was a type of all 
 these attributes, and seemed to bring 
 
314 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 might and majesty, and wild Nature 
 and a spiritual essence, into our in- 
 most home, and yet to dwell with us 
 in such friendliness, that its mysteries 
 and marvels excited no dismay. The 
 same mild companion, that smiled so 
 placidly in our faces, was he that 
 comes roaring out of iEtna, and 
 rushes madly up the sky, like a fiend 
 breaking loose from torment, and 
 fighting for a place among the upper 
 angels. And it was he — this crea- 
 ture of terrible might, and so many- 
 sided utility, and all-comprehensive 
 destructiveness — that used to be the 
 cheerful, homely friend of our wintry 
 days, and whom we have made the 
 prisoner of this iron cage! 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 315 
 
 December 6th, 
 
 There are few uglier traits of 
 human nature than this tendency — 
 which I now witnessed in men no 
 worse than their neighbors — to grow 
 cruel, merely because they possessed 
 the power of inflicting harm. If the 
 guillotine, as applied to officeholders, 
 were a literal fact, instead of one of 
 the most apt of metaphors, It Is my 
 sincere belief, that the active mem- 
 bers of the victorious party were suf- 
 ficiently excited to have chopped off 
 all our heads, and have thanked 
 Heaven for the opportunity. 
 
 — The Custom House. 
 
 December yth. 
 
 What Is called poetic insight is 
 the gift of discerning, in this sphere 
 
316 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FRO 31 
 
 of Strangely mingled elements, the 
 beauty and the majesty which are 
 compelled to assume a garb so sordid. 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 December 8th, 
 
 Oh, I should be loath to lose my 
 treasure of past happiness and become 
 once more what I was then — a hermit 
 In the depths of my own mind, some- 
 times yawning over drowsy volumes, 
 and anon a scribbler of wearier trash 
 than what I read; a man who had 
 wandered out of the real world 
 and got Into Its shadow, where his 
 troubles, joys, and vicissitudes were 
 of such slight stuff that he hardly 
 knew whether he lived or only 
 dreamed of living. Thank Heaven 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 317 
 
 I am an old man now and have done 
 with all such vanities ! 
 
 — The Village Uncle. 
 
 December gth. 
 
 There is something peculiar In the 
 aspect of the morning fireside; a 
 fresher, brisker glare; the absence of 
 that mellowness, which can be pro- 
 duced only by half-consumed logs, 
 and shapeless brands with the white 
 ashes on them, and mighty coals, the 
 remnant of tree trunks that the hun- 
 gry elements have gnawed for hours. 
 The morning hearth, too. Is newly 
 swept, and the brazen andirons well 
 brightened, so that the cheerful fire 
 may see its face In them. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
318 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 December loth. 
 
 As the pure breath of children re- 
 vives the Hfe of aged men, so is our 
 moral nature revived by their free 
 and simple thoughts, their native feel- 
 ing, their airy mirth, for little cause 
 or none, their grief, soon roused and 
 soon allayed. Their influence on us 
 Is at least reciprocal with ours on 
 them. 
 
 — Twice Told Tales, 
 
 December nth. 
 
 In the course of world's lifetime, 
 every remedy was tried for its cure 
 and extirpation, except the single one, 
 the flower that grew in Heaven, and 
 was sovereign for all the miseries of 
 earth. Man never had attempted to 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 319 
 
 cure sin by Love ! Had he but once 
 made the effort, it might well have 
 happened, that there would have 
 been no more need of the dark lazar- 
 house into which Adam and Eve have 
 wandered. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse. 
 
 December I2th. 
 
 You must not think that there was 
 no integrity and honor except among 
 those who stood up for the freedom 
 of America. For aught I know, there 
 was quite as much of these qualities 
 on one side as on the other. Do you 
 see nothing admirable in a faithful 
 adherence to an unpopular cause? 
 Can you not respect that principle of 
 loyalty which made the royalists give 
 up country, friends, fortune, every- 
 
320 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 thing, rather than be false to their 
 king? It was a mistaken principle; 
 but many of them cherished it hon- 
 orably, and were martyrs to it. 
 
 — Liberty Tree. 
 
 December ijth. 
 
 This perception of an infinite, shiv- 
 ering solitude, amid which we cannot 
 come close enough to human beings 
 to be warmed by them, and where 
 they turn to cold, chilly shapes of 
 mist. Is one of the most forlorn re- 
 sults of any accident, misfortune, 
 crime, or peculiarity of character, 
 that puts an Individual ajar with the 
 world. Very often there Is an In- 
 satiable Instinct that demands friend- 
 ship, love, and Intimate communion, 
 but Is forced to pine in empty forms; 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 321 
 
 a hunger of the heart, which finds 
 only shadows to feed upon. 
 
 —The Marble Faun. 
 
 December 14th, 
 
 Girls are Incomparably wilder and 
 more effervescent than boys, more un- 
 tamable, and regardless of rule and 
 limit, with an ever-shifting variety, 
 breaking continually into new modes 
 of fun, yet with a harmonious pro- 
 priety through all. Their steps, 
 their voices, appear free as the wind, 
 but keep consonance with a strain of 
 music Inaudible to us. Young men 
 and boys, on the other hand, play, 
 according to recognized law, old, tra- 
 ditionary games, permitting no capri- 
 oles of fancy, but with scope enough 
 for the outbreak of savage instincts. 
 
322 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 For, young or old, In play or In ear- 
 nest, man Is prone to be a brute. 
 
 — The Blithedale Romance. 
 
 December i^th. 
 
 How does Winter herald his ap- 
 proach? By the shrieking blast of 
 latter Autumn, which Is Nature's cry 
 of lamentation as the destroyer rushes 
 among the shivering groves where she 
 has lingered and scatters the sear 
 leaves upon the tempest. When that 
 cry Is heard, the people wrap them- 
 selves In cloaks, and shake their heads 
 disconsolately, saying: "Winter Is at 
 hand." 
 
 — Snowflakes. 
 
 December idth. 
 
 During the short afternoon, the 
 western sunshine comes Into the study, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 323 
 
 and strives to stare the ruddy blaze 
 out of countenance, but with only a 
 brief triumph, soon to be succeeded by 
 brighter glories of Its rival. Beauti- 
 ful It Is to see the strengthening 
 gleam — the deepening light — that 
 gradually casts distinct shadows of 
 the human figure, the table, and the 
 high-backed chairs, upon the oppo- 
 site wall, and at length, as twilight 
 comes on, replenishes the room with 
 living radiance, and makes life all 
 rose-color. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 December lyth. 
 
 And I, likewise — who have found 
 a home In this ancient owl's nest, since 
 its former occupant took his Heaven- 
 ward flight — I, to my shame, have put 
 
324 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 up Stoves In kitchen, and parlor, and 
 chamber. Wander where you will 
 about the house, not a glimpse of the 
 earth-born, Heaven-aspiring fiend of 
 ^tna — him that sports In the thunder 
 storm — the idol of the Ghebers — the 
 devourer of cities, the forest-rioter, 
 and pralrle-sweeper — the future de- 
 stroyer of our earth — the old chim- 
 ney-corner companion, who mingled 
 himself so sociably with household 
 joys and sorrows — not a glimpse of 
 this mighty and kindly one will greet 
 your eyes. He Is now an invisible 
 presence. There Is his Iron cage. 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 December i8th. 
 
 Many writers lay very great stress 
 upon some definite moral purpose, at 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 325 
 
 which they profess to aim their works. 
 Not to be deficient in this particular, 
 the author has provided himself with 
 a moral — the truth, namely, that the 
 wrong-doing of one generation lives 
 into the successive ones, and, divesting 
 itself of every temporary advantage, 
 becomes a pure and uncontrollable 
 mischief — and he would feel it a 
 singular gratification, if this romance 
 might effectually convince mankind — 
 or, indeed, any one man — of the folly 
 of tumbling down an avalanche of 
 ill-gotten gold, or real estate, on the 
 heads of an unfortunate posterity, 
 thereby to maim and crush them, un- 
 til the accumulated mass shall be scat- 
 tered abroad in its original atoms. 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
326 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 December igth. 
 
 People in difficulty or in distress, 
 or in any manner at odds with the 
 world, can endure a vast amount of 
 harsh treatment, and perhaps be only 
 the stronger for it ; whereas, they give 
 way at once before the simplest ex- 
 pression of what they perceive to be 
 genuine sympathy. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 December 20th, 
 
 The good old clergyman, my pred- 
 ecessor in this mansion, was well ac- 
 quainted with the comforts of the 
 fireside. His yearly allowance of 
 wood, according to the terms of his 
 settlement, was no less than sixty 
 cords. Almost an annual forest was 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 327 
 
 converted from sound oak logs into 
 ashes, In the kitchen, the parlor, and 
 this little study, where now an un- 
 worthy successor — not in the pastoral 
 office, but merely in his earthly abode 
 — sits scribbling beside an air-tight 
 stove. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 December 21st. 
 
 Evening — the early eve of Decem- 
 ber — begins to spread its deepening 
 veil over the comfortless scene. The 
 firelight gradually brightens and 
 throws my flickering shadow upon 
 the walls and ceiling of the chamber, 
 but still the storm rages and rattles 
 against the windows. Alas ! I shiver 
 and think It time to be disconsolate, 
 but, taking a farewell glance at dead 
 
328 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 Nature In her shroud, I perceive a 
 flock of snow birds skimming light- 
 somely through the tempest and flit- 
 ting from drift to drift as sportively 
 as swallows in the delightful prime 
 of summer. Whence come they? 
 Where do they build their nests and 
 seek their food? Why, having airy 
 wings do they not follow Summer 
 around the earth, instead of making 
 themselves the playmates of the 
 storm and fluttering on the dreary 
 verge of the winter's eve? I know 
 not whence they come, nor why; yet 
 my spirit has been cheered by that 
 wandering flock of snow birds. 
 
 — Snowflakes. 
 
 December 22a. 
 
 It is only through the medium of 
 the imagination that we can lessen 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 329 
 
 those iron fetters, which we call truth 
 and reality, and make ourselves even 
 partially sensible what prisoners we 
 are. 
 
 — Mosses from an Old Manse, 
 
 December 2^d. 
 
 In one way or another, here and 
 there, and all around us, the inven- 
 tions of mankind are fast blotting 
 the picturesque, the poetic, and the 
 beautiful, out of human life. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 December 24th. 
 
 Pleasant is a rainy winter's day 
 within doors. The best study for 
 such a day — or the best amusement, 
 call It what you will — is a book of 
 
330 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 travels describing scenes the most un- 
 like that somber one which is mistily 
 presented through the windows. I 
 have experienced that Fancy is then 
 most successful in imparting distinct 
 shapes and vivid colors to the ob- 
 jects which the author has spread 
 upon his page, and that his words 
 become magic spells to summon up a 
 thousand varied pictures. Strange 
 landscapes glimmer through the fa- 
 miliar walls of the room, and outland- 
 ish figures thrust themselves almost 
 within the sacred precincts of the 
 hearth. Small as my chamber is, it 
 has space enough to contain the ocean- 
 like circumference of an Arabian des- 
 ert, its parched sands tracked by the 
 long line of a caravan with the 
 camels patiently journeying through 
 the heavy sunshine. Though my 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 331 
 
 celling be not lofty, yet I can pile up 
 the mountains of Central Asia be- 
 neath It till their summits shine far 
 above the clouds of the middle at- 
 mosphere. 
 
 — Night Sketches. 
 
 December 25th. 
 
 When romances do really teach 
 anything, or produce any effective 
 operation. It Is usually through a far 
 more subtile process than the osten- 
 sible one. 
 
 — The House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 December 26th. 
 
 Blessed, therefore, and reverently 
 welcomed by me, her true-born son, 
 be New England's Winter, which 
 makes us one and all the nurslings of 
 
332 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 the storm, and sings a familiar lullaby 
 even in the wildest shriek of the De- 
 cember blast. 
 
 — Snoivflakes, 
 
 December 2yth. 
 
 How kindly he was, and, though 
 the tremendous agent of change, yet 
 bearing himself with such gentleness, 
 so rendering himself a part of all life- 
 long and age-coeval associations, that 
 it seemed as If he were the great con- 
 servative of Nature ! While a man 
 was true to the fireside, so long would 
 he be true to country and law — to the 
 God whom his fathers worshiped — 
 to the wife of his youth — and to all 
 things else which Instinct or religion 
 have taught us to consider sacred. 
 — Young Goodman Brown, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 333 
 
 December 28th. 
 
 Where is that brilliant guest — that 
 quick and subtle spirit whom Prome- 
 theus lured from Heaven to civilize 
 mankind, and cheer them in their 
 Wintry desolation — that comfortable 
 inmate, whose smile, during eight 
 months of the year, was our sufficient 
 consolation for Summer's lingering 
 advance and early flight? Alas! 
 blindly inhospitable, grudging the 
 food that kept him cheery and mer- 
 curial, we have thrust him into an iron 
 prison, and compel him to smolder 
 away his life on a daily pittance which 
 once would have been too scanty for 
 his breakfast ! Without a metaphor, 
 we now make our fire in an air-tight 
 stove, and supply it with some half-a- 
 
334 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS FROM 
 
 dozen sticks of wood between dawn 
 and nightfall. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown, 
 
 December 2gth, 
 
 Thus the great house was built. 
 Familiar as it stands in the writer's 
 recollection — for it has been an ob- 
 ject of curiosity with him from boy- 
 hood, both as a specimen of the best 
 and stateliest architecture of a long- 
 past epoch, and as the one of events 
 more full of human interest, perhaps, 
 than that of a gray feudal castle — 
 familiar as it stands, in its rusty old 
 age, it is therefore only the more diffi- 
 cult to imagine the bright novelty 
 with which it first caught the sunshine. 
 — The House of the Seven Gables, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 335 
 
 December ^oth. 
 
 It is a great revolution in social 
 and domestic life — and no less so in 
 the life of the secluded student — this 
 almost universal exchange of the 
 open fire-place for the cheerless and 
 ungenial stove. 
 
 — Young Goodman Brown. 
 
 December 31st. 
 
 The clock in the tall steeple of 
 Doctor Emerson's church struck 
 twelve; there was a response from 
 Doctor Flint's, in the opposite quar- 
 ter of the city; and while the strokes 
 were yet dropping into the air, the 
 Old Year either flitted or faded away, 
 and not the wisdom and might of 
 angels, to say nothing of the remorse- 
 
336 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 ful yearnings of the millions who had 
 used her 111, could have prevailed with 
 that departed year to return one step. 
 But she, in the company of Time and 
 all her kindred, must hereafter hold 
 a reckoning with mankind. 
 
 — The Sister-Years. 
 
 4 134