COPYRIGHT, 1907 
 BY SHERWIN CODY 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Hawthorne, Life 7 
 
 The Great Stone Face 25 
 
 Howe's Masquerade 53 
 
 Drowne’s Wooden Image 73 
 
 The Gray Champion 91 
 
 The Great Carbuncle 
 
 103 
 
HAWTHORNE 
 
 We usually think of Hawthorne as a small, awk- 
 ward, painfully shy young man, fond of mooning 
 about alone, and making up for his lack of sociability 
 by the brilliancy of his genius. The fact is, he was 
 tall, with a strikingly fine figure, black hair, even 
 features, and a fascinating personality. A gypsy 
 woman who once met him in the woods stopped 
 short and exclaimed, “Do I see a man or an angel?” 
 He was a daring skater on Lake Sebago, in the 
 woods of Maine, beside which he lived for several 
 years of his boyhood, with his mother and sisters; 
 and once he followed a black bear far into the woods 
 with a gun, though he failed to get a shot at the 
 creature. His letters to his sisters are bubbling 
 over with fun and boyishness, and his love-letters 
 to his wife are entrancingly ardent and human, 
 though, unlike those of many great men, never for 
 a moment silly. Hawthorne did not like strangers, 
 and had a peculiar trait, characteristic of the whole 
 family, of affecting secluded habits. But for those 
 who succeeded in getting behind the curtain that 
 he was forever holding up to shut out the public 
 gaze, he was a splendid specimen of a man, both as 
 a warm friend, a genial companion, and a stanch, 
 honest defender of truth. He had an eerie fancy, 
 and a strange, wild imagination, which give an al- 
 7 
 
8 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 most supernatural tinge to all his writings; but he, 
 of all men, was not morbid, and his genius has not 
 the least kinship to insanity. We must learn to 
 think of the handsome, healthy, kind-hearted, hon- 
 est Hawthorne, the real Hawthorne, before we can 
 comprehend the meaning of his imaginative flights, 
 which have quite a different significance when we 
 are assured of the clear-headed purpose behind them. 
 
 From Old New England Stock. 
 
 Like Longfellow, Bryant, Lowell, Whittier, and 
 Holmes, Hawthorne came of the very best New 
 England Puritan stock. “His forefathers, ” says his 
 son Julian, “whatever their less obvious qualities 
 may have been, were at all events enterprising, 
 active, practical men, stern and courageous, accus- 
 tomed to deal with and control lawless and rugged 
 characters. They were sea-captains, farmers, sol- 
 diers, and magistrates ; and in whatever capacity, 
 they were used to see their own will prevail, and to 
 be answerable to no man.” The first American 
 Hawthorne landed at Boston in 1630, and was for 
 fifty years member of the legislature, or “General 
 Court,” as it v/as called, and for not a few of those 
 years he was Speaker. Eloquent he must have been, 
 and in more ways than one he was a truly great 
 man. His son John became the “witch- judge,” and 
 was cursed by a so-called witch, but apparently with 
 no ill effects. Hawthorne’s father was a sea- 
 captain, and died of yellow fever in 1808 while 
 with his ship in a foreign port. 
 
 Miss Elizabeth Peabody, Mrs. Hawthorne’s sister, 
 
LIFE 
 
 9 
 
 says the Hawthorne family degenerated in two hun- 
 dred years, and was very reserved and unsociable; 
 but the father of our novelist and some other mem- 
 bers of the family did not cease to be true gentle- 
 men. 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, July 4 , 
 1804 . His mother had been a gifted and beautiful 
 young woman; but after the death of her husband, 
 she shut herself up and scarcely appeared in public, 
 though she lived many years. There is no doubt 
 in the world that this seclusion on her part had its 
 effect on the children. 
 
 Boyhood in the Woods of Maine. 
 
 After the death of his father, Nathaniel went to 
 live with his Grandfather Manning (his mother’s 
 father), and was much indulged by uncles and aunts 
 and cousins, who thought him a very pretty child. 
 “One of the peculiarities of my boyhood,” says he, 
 “was a grievous disinclination to go to school, and 
 (Providence favoring me in this natural repug- 
 nance) I never did go half as much as other boys, 
 partly owing to delicate health (which I made the 
 most of for the purpose), and partly because, much 
 of the time, there were no schools within reach. 
 
 “When I was eight or nine years old,” he goes 
 on, “my mother, with her three children, took up 
 her residence on the banks of Sebago Lake, in 
 Maine, where the family owned a large tract of 
 land, and here I ran quite wild, and would, I doubt 
 not, have willingly run wild till this time, fishing 
 all day long, or shooting with an old fowling-piece; 
 
10 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 but reading a good deal, too, on rainy days, es- 
 pecially in Shakespeare and ‘The Pilgrim’s Prog- 
 ress,’ and any poetry or light books within my 
 reach. Those were delightful days; for that part 
 of the country was wild then, with only scattered 
 clearings, and nine-tenths of it primeval woods. 
 
 “But by and by my good mother began to think 
 it was necessary for her boy to do something else; 
 so I was sent back to Salem, where a private in- 
 structor fitted me for college. I was educated (as 
 the phrase is) at Bowdoin College. I was an idle 
 student, negligent of college rules and the Pro- 
 crustean details of academic life, rather choosing 
 to nurse my own fancies than to dig into Greek 
 roots and be numbered among the learned Thebans.”* 
 
 Hawthorne’s sister, Elizabeth, soon after her 
 brother’s death, wrote some interesting letters about 
 him to a niece, in which she gives many trivial but 
 fascinating details of his early life. He was very 
 fond of animals, especially kittens ; yet like all boys 
 he would sometimes tease them. Once when he 
 had tossed a kitten over the fence, and was told 
 she would never like him again, he said, “Oh, she'll 
 think it was William !” — William was one of his 
 playmates. 
 
 Dislike of Money. 
 
 A very curious trait of his was a seeming dislike 
 for money. Once when some was offered him in 
 
 *This and the following quotation, including the letters, 
 are from Julian Hawthorne’s “Nathaniel Hawthorne and 
 His Wife,” Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston. 
 
LIFE 
 
 11 
 
 the country, where there was no opportunity to 
 spend it, he refused it. On another occasion an old 
 gentleman who was a friend of the family offered 
 him a five-dollar bill, and he refused it; which his 
 sister says was very uncivil to the old gentleman. 
 
 His uncle on his mother’s side took charge of his 
 education, and sent him to the best schools. When 
 in Maine the Hawthorne family lived part of the 
 time with this uncle. While here Nathaniel injured 
 his foot in playing ball, so that for a long time he 
 could only lie on the floor and read, or hobble about 
 on two crutches. The foot became much smaller 
 than the one that was uninjured, and many doctors 
 were consulted; yet it was Dr. Time that cured him 
 at last. But the long confinement due to this lame- 
 ness, no doubt, laid the foundation of his habit of 
 reading, which was the school in which he learned 
 his wonderful literary skill. 
 
 His son Julian says his father used often to tell 
 him stories of the winters in Maine. He loved to 
 hunt and fish, but more for the fun of the thing 
 than for the -game; for he often forebore to pull 
 the trigger because he hated to kill the bird, and 
 when he had caught a fish he would throw it back 
 into the lake from pity. He and his sisters enjoyed 
 this half-wild country life so much that they hoped 
 never to go back to civilization; but after a time 
 they found themselves once more in Salem. 
 
 A Boy’s Letter. 
 
 As a boy, Hawthorne was full of fun and good 
 humor, as may easily be gathered from a few ex- 
 
12 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 tracts from letters written about the time he went 
 to Bowdoin College. Here is one entire that is 
 full of an airy drollery quite enchanting: ^ 
 
 Salem, Tuesday, Sept. 28, 1819. 
 
 “Dear Sister: — We are all well and hope you are 
 the same. I do not know what to do with myself 
 here. I shall never be contented here, I am sure. 
 I now go to a five-dollar school — I, that have been 
 to a ten-dollar one. ‘O Lucifer, son of the morning, 
 how art thou fallen !’ I wish I were but in Ray- 
 mond,* and I should be happy. But ‘ ’twas light that 
 ne’er shall shine again on life’s dull stream.’ I have 
 read ‘Waverley,’ ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho/ ‘The 
 Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom,’ ‘Roderick 
 Random,’ and the first volume of ‘The Arabian 
 Nights.’ 
 
 Oh, earthly pomp is but a dream, 
 
 And like a meteor’s short-lived gleam; 
 
 And all the sons of glory soon 
 
 Will rest beneath the mouldering stone. 
 
 And genius is a star whose light 
 Is soon to sink in endless night, 
 
 And heavenly beauty’s angel form 
 Will bend like flower in winter’s storm. 
 
 “Though these are my rhymes, yet they are not 
 exactly my thoughts. I am full of scraps of poetry; 
 can’t keep it out of my brain. 
 
 I saw where in the lowly grave 
 Departed Genius lay; 
 
 *Their home in Maine on Lake Sebaga, 
 
LIFE 
 
 IS 
 
 And mournful yew-trees o'er it wave. 
 
 To hide it from the day. 
 
 "I could vomit up a dozen pages more if I were 
 a mind to turn over. 
 
 Oh, do not bid me part from thee, 
 
 For I will leave thee never. 
 
 Although thou throw’st thy scorn on me, 
 
 Yet I will love forever. 
 
 There is no heart within my breast, 
 
 For it is flown away, 
 
 And till I knew it was thy guest, 
 
 I sought it night and day. 
 
 “Tell Ebe* she’s not the only one of the family 
 whose works have appeared in the papers. The 
 knowledge I have of your honor and good sense, 
 Louisa, gives me full confidence that you will not 
 show this letter to anybody. You may to mother, 
 though. My respects to Mr. and Mrs. Howe. I 
 remain 
 
 “Your humble servant and affectionate brother, 
 
 “N. H.” 
 
 A few months later he writes to his mother: 
 
 “I dreamed the other night that I was walking 
 by the Sebago; and when I awoke was so angry 
 at finding it all a delusion, that I gave Uncle Robert 
 (who sleeps with me) a most horrible kick. 
 
 “I don’t read so much now as I did, because I am 
 more taken up in studying. I am quite reconciled 
 to going to college, since I am to spend the vacations 
 
 r His sister Elizabeth. 
 
14 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 with you. Yet four years of the best part of my 
 life is a great deal to throw away. I have not yet 
 concluded what profession I shall have. The being 
 a minister is of course out of the question. I should 
 not think that even you could desire me to choose 
 so dull a way of life. Oh, no, mother, I was not 
 born to vegetate forever in one place, and to live 
 and die as calm and tranquil as — a puddle of water. 
 As to lawyers, there are so many of them already 
 that one half of them (upon a moderate calculation) 
 are in a state of actual starvation. A physician, 
 then, seems to be ‘Hobson’s choice’ ; but yet I should 
 not like to live by the diseases and infirmities of my 
 fellow-creatures. And it would weigh very heavily 
 on my conscience, in the course of my practice, if I 
 should chance to send any unlucky patient ‘ad in- 
 ferum/ which being interpreted is, ‘to the realms 
 below.’ Oh, that I was rich enough to live without 
 a profession! What do you think of my becoming 
 an author, and relying for support upon my pen? 
 Indeed, I think the illegibility of my hand-writing 
 is very author-like. How proud you would feel to 
 see my works praised by the reviewers, as equal to 
 the proudest productions of the scribbling sons of 
 John Bull.” 
 
 Another very amusing letter, for which we have 
 not room here, is one to his aunt, telling of the 
 missionary society to which he does not belong 
 and the prayer-meetings he does not attend. 
 
 A Handsome Man. 
 
 Hawthorne’s son and biographer describes him at 
 
t^FE 
 
 15 
 
 this time as “the handsomest man of his day in that 
 part of the world.” He was five feet ten and a half 
 inches in height, broad-shouldered, but of a light, 
 athletic build, not weighing more than one hundred 
 and fifty pounds. His limbs were beautifully formed, 
 and his neck and throat were molded like a piece 
 of antique sculpture. His hair was long and wavy 
 and nearly black ; his eyebrows were heavy and finely 
 arched. His nose was straight, but he had a Roman 
 chin. He never wore a beard, and was without a 
 mustache \mtil he was fifty-five. He had large, 
 dark, brilliant eyes, wdiich Bayard Taylor said were 
 the only eyes he had ever known that could flash 
 fire. Charles Reade, too, says he never saw such 
 an eye in any other human head. His complexion 
 was rather dark, his cheeks ruddy, and his skin 
 very sensitive. He carried himself erect, with a 
 springing gait, and until he was forty could clear 
 five feet at a standing jump. His voice was low, 
 deep, and full, but had an astonishing strength 
 when he chose to let it out, and then it came, says 
 his son, with “the searching and electrifying quality 
 of the blast of a trumpet,” which might have quelled 
 a crew of mutinous privateersmen as the voice of 
 Bold Daniel, his grandfather. 
 
 Hawthorne was three years older than Longfel- 
 low, who graduated with him in 1826 , and instead of 
 taking an honorable position as professor at Bow- 
 doin, or some other college, like his poet classmate, 
 he shut himself up at the ancestral home in Salem, 
 and for several years lived a most secluded life. He 
 seldom left the house except for an hour in the 
 
16 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 evening, when he went for a walk along country 
 roads, where no one would see him. After his 
 return he would eat a bowl of thick chocolate 
 crumbed full of bread for winter diet, in summer 
 substituting fruit to some extent. He read a great 
 many books during those lonely days he passed in 
 the “haunted chamber,” “the ante-chamber of his 
 fame.” He had already made up his mind to become 
 an author, and here he studied and wrote with that 
 ambition in view. “Sometimes, ” he says, “it seemed 
 as if I were already in the grave, wittt only life 
 enough to be chilled and benumbed. But oftener I 
 was happy — at least as happy as I then knew how 
 to be, or was aware of the possibility of being.” 
 
 In a Shadowy World. 
 
 For eight long years he lived “as a shadow, walk- 
 ing in a shadowy world.” He was healthy and 
 happy, but the loneliness of this period left its im- 
 press on all his literary work. He wrote some short 
 stories, which were published anonymously in vari- 
 ous periodicals and were afterward collected into 
 two volumes of “Twice-Told Tales.” He also wrote 
 a short novel, called “Fanshawe,” which he pub- 
 lished at his own expense, carefully concealing his 
 name in connection with it, and which he suppressed 
 and destroyed almost immediately on its publication. 
 
 At last he fell in love, and was forced to give 
 up his solitude. 
 
 Mrs. Hawthorne, who was Sophia Peabody be- 
 fore her marriage, was a very sweet, intelligent, urn 
 selfish, beautiful woman. During all her girlhood 
 
LIFE 
 
 17 
 
 she was a continual invalid, and had a constant 
 headache from her twelfth to her thirtieth year. 
 She thought she would never marry; but love cured 
 her headaches, and when she was married she was 
 in almost perfect health. 
 
 Love Letters. 
 
 Hawthorne's love-letters have an ideal beauty 
 about them that is as fine as anything in his pub- 
 lished writings, as the reader may judge for him- 
 self from the following extract: 
 
 “Six or seven hours of cheerful solitude ! But I 
 will not be alone. I invite your spirit to be with 
 me, — at any hour and as many hours as you please,— 
 but especially at the twilight hour, before I light 
 my lamp. I bid you at that particular time, because 
 I can see visions more vividly in the dusky glow of 
 firelight than 'either by daylight or lamplight. Come, 
 and let me renew my spell against headache and 
 
 other direful effects of the east wind I 
 
 never till now had a friend who could give me re- 
 pose; all have disturbed me, and, whether for pleas- 
 ure or pain, it was still disturbance. But peace over- 
 flows from your soul into mine. Then I feel that 
 there is a Now, and that Now must be always calm 
 and happy, and that sorrow and evil are but phan- 
 toms that seem to flit across it.” 
 
 He was married July 9, 1842. He was thirty-eight 
 and his wife was thirty; yet the best of the lives of 
 both was still before them. They went to live at 
 “the Old Manse” in Concord, made famous by 
 Emerson (whose home was here at one time), and 
 
18 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 still more famous by Hawthorne’s volume of stories, 
 “Mosses from an Old Manse,” one of the best of 
 which is “Drowne’s Wooden Image.” 
 
 The Rising Author. 
 
 Hawthorne was now gradually becoming known 
 among literary men as a skillful writer of short 
 stories, and there came to his house in Concord 
 such genial friends as Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret 
 Fuller, Ellery Channing, and Alcott. But still the 
 first novelist of America was unknown to fame, and 
 was wretchedly poor. He had already been weigher 
 and gauger in the custom-house at Boston on a 
 salary of a few hundred a year, but he was able 
 to hold the office for only two years, at the end 
 of which time the Democratic party, under which he 
 held the appointment, went out of power. After 
 four years in Concord, in which he struggled to pay 
 his debts by the meager returns from his literary 
 work, he was appointed surveyor of customs at 
 Salem, with a salary of twelve hundred dollars a 
 year. He had children now, and the duties of his 
 office occupied him so closely that he wrote but 
 little, though of that little “The Snow Image” will 
 always be remembered. Hawthorne’s mother died 
 in 1849 ; and even before that he had lost his office 
 by some sharp manceuvering of politicians. Money 
 must be had to support his growing family. His 
 wife had saved enough to keep them for a few 
 months. He therefore decided to write a novel, 
 and The Scarlet Letter was begun. It was finished 
 in about six months, and immediately on its pub- 
 
LIFE 
 
 19 
 
 lication it brought Hawthorne into fame as one of 
 the foremost of American writers. He was forty- 
 six years old. How long he had waited for fame, 
 even for the little money his literary work so richly 
 deserved! “The mills of the Gods grind slowly, but 
 they grind exceeding fine.” Hawthorne was almost 
 an old man before Fame touched his arm and bade 
 him follow her; but so long as the United States 
 remains a nation the name of Hawthorne will be 
 adored by her people. 
 
 “The Great Stone Face” was written soon after 
 the completion of The Scarlet Letter . Hawthorne 
 was dissatisfied with it as a work of art; but his 
 wife caught the secret of its greatness, for she said, 
 “Ernest is a divine creation — so grand, so compre- 
 hensive, so simple.” 
 
 His Principal Books. 
 
 The Hawthornes removed to the Berkshire Hills, 
 where The House of the Seven Gables was written. 
 It was published in 1851, and proved almost as 
 successful as The Scarlet Letter. After a short va- 
 cation he began the Wonder Book , that most delight- 
 ful of all story-books for boys and girls. In No- 
 vember, 1851, he removed to Boston, and began at 
 once The Blithedale Romance. This story, describ- 
 ing the life at Brook Farm (where all the authors 
 went, Hawthorne among the number, and milked 
 cows and hoed potatoes and weeded carrots), was 
 published in 1852, and brought to Hawthorne more 
 friends than ever. He now bought a house in Con- 
 cord; but he was soon to leave it for a stay of some 
 
20 
 
 HAWTHORNE" 
 
 years in Europe. In the summer of 1852 he wrote 
 a campaign life of his college friend, Franklin 
 Pierce, who had been nominated for the Presidency 
 of the United States. When Pierce was elected he 
 appointed Hawthorne consul at Liverpool, an office 
 supposed to be worth $20,000 a year. So at last he 
 was wealthy as well as famous — at least he could 
 live comfortably, and travel about on the continent 
 of Europe, and enjoy the many friends his literary 
 work had made for him. While in Rome he wrote 
 The Marble Faun , and to this period we owe the 
 delightful Note Books. 
 
 He returned to his home in Concord in 1861, just 
 as the Civil War was breaking out. His work was 
 now nearly accomplished. He still wrote articles 
 from time to time, and attempted more stories, but 
 his health was failing. In 1864 he started for a 
 journey south with his friend and publisher, Mr. 
 Ticknor; but Mr. Ticknor suddenly died, and, al- 
 most prostrated by the shock, Hawthorne returned 
 home, and soon after started on a journey into New 
 Hampshire with his old friend, Franklin Pierce. 
 They reached Plymouth, and put up at the Pemige- 
 wassett House. During the night of the 18th of 
 May, Mr. Pierce went into his friend’s room to see 
 how he was resting, and found that he was dead. 
 
 America’s Greatest Novelist. 
 
 No one will dispute the statement that Haw- 
 thorne is America’s greatest novelist, as Longfel- 
 low, his classmate and friend, is America’s greatest 
 poet. As a short story writer Poe is in some ways 
 
LIFE 
 
 21 
 
 quite above Hawthorne, and his three poems, “The 
 Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” and “The Bells,” have a 
 striking originality which Longfellow wholly lacked. 
 He had the elements of a great writer of fiction 
 and a great poet; yet he missed of being both. He 
 never even attempted a novel, so it is only indirectly 
 that he may dispute Hawthorne’s title to being our 
 greatest novelist. 
 
 But why is Hawthorne so great? 
 
 1. His artistic management of language has sel- 
 dom been surpassed by any writer of the English 
 language. His sentences are musical, imaginative, 
 expressive, delicate, and masterful. He never uses 
 a word without bringing out its meaning in full 
 force, and his arrangement of sentences and images 
 is never abrupt or anything but logical and graceful. 
 Even the ordinary reader will find in his language 
 a wonderful charm. 
 
 2. But beauty of language alone will not make 
 a great writer. The true secret of greatness in 
 writing fiction lies in mastery of human emotion. In 
 The Scarlet Letter, for instance, Hawthorne has 
 brought together three intense and powerful char- 
 acters, Hester, the minister, and Roger Chilling- 
 worth, and has set them off, so to speak, by other 
 clearly drawn human beings, notably the child Pearl 
 and Mistress Hibbins the so-called witch. Hester, 
 sinner though she be, rises above her weakness and 
 her ignominy; the minister, with all his gifts, sinks 
 a victim to his own weakness; Roger Chillingworth 
 
22 HAWTHORNE 
 
 is the incarnation of the must subtle revenge and 
 malice. 
 
 3. Unlike the great English writers, such as Scott, 
 Dickens and Thackeray Hawthorne wastes no words, 
 but offers his story as a complete, sufficiently brief, 
 dramatic whole. In this he displays a superior art 
 which may be regarded as characteristically Ameri- 
 can. 
 
 Hawthorne's Faults. 
 
 But Hawthorne also has faults, which we must 
 bear in mind or we will not rightly understand and 
 appreciate his work. We must not expect to find 
 in him what is not there, or we shall run the risk 
 of throwing his books aside in disgust. 
 
 First, he is cold. We do not find in his characters 
 warmth of affection or even passion. He knows 
 that they have passions, and he makes intellectual 
 allowance for them, and perhaps analyzes them 
 with keenness and intelligence, but through all his 
 pages we never feel them. It is hard to imagine 
 how Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale came 
 to commit their fault, or how Roger Chillingworth 
 married Flester or cared for her in such a way 
 that he would have any motive for revenge. Haw- 
 thorne takes all these things for granted, and de- 
 votes his thought to working out the colder emo- 
 tions of remorse, revenge, and defiance of the world. 
 
 Moreover, Hawthorne has an inveterate tendency 
 to introduce some fanciful miracle just at the crit- 
 ical moment. He never commits himself sufficiently 
 to say he believes it to be anything more than the 
 
LIFE 
 
 23 
 
 work of somebody's imagination ; but he never 
 fails to suggest it. For instance, in “Drowne’s 
 Wooden Image” we are given to suppose that the 
 wooden image may have come to life and walked 
 down the street arm in arm with the shipmaster. 
 Of course we are told of the Portuguese girl who 
 was no doubt the model for the image, but the 
 impression of the miracle still remains and gives 
 a supernatural tinge to the story. There is not one 
 of Hawthorne’s tales that is not colored with this 
 rosy light of the supernatural. 
 
 We have spoken of these characteristics as faults. 
 They are such only when we are not on our guard 
 against them, or when we expect something else in 
 their place. If we comprehend them they become 
 the legitimate expression of a delicate, bold, and 
 penetrating imagination, as wierd and wonderful in 
 its way as the dreams of the alchemists Hawthorne 
 is so fond of portraying. They give the character 
 of escaping beauty to all his writing, making us 
 feel the magic of genius. In truth, there is hardly 
 another writer in the history of literature who has 
 the quality in such perfection. There are few read- 
 ers who can rightly understand and appreciate it, 
 but to those few it has a rare charm. 
 
 Sherwin Cody. 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE 
 
 One afternoon, when the sun was going down, 
 a mother and her little boy sat at the door of their 
 cottage, talking about the Great Stone Face. They 
 had but to lift their eyes, and there it was plainly 
 to be seen, though miles away, with the sunshine 
 brightening all its features. 
 
 And what was the Great Stone Face? 
 
 Embosomed amongst a family of lofty mountains, 
 there was a valley so spacious that it contained 
 many thousand inhabitants. Some of these good 
 people dwelt in log huts, with the black forest all 
 around them, on the steep and difficult hillsides. 
 Others had their homes in comfortable farmhouses, 
 and cultivated the rich soil on the gentle slopes or 
 level surfaces of the valley. Others, again, were 
 congregated into populous villages, where some wild 
 highland rivulet, tumbling down from its birthplace 
 in the upper mountain region, had been caught and 
 tamed by human cunning, and compelled to turn 
 the machinery of cotton factories. The inhabitants 
 of this valley, in short, were numerous, and of 
 many modes of life. But all of them, grown people 
 and children, had a kind of familiarity with the 
 Great Stone Face, although some possessed the gift 
 of distinguishing this grand natural phenomenon 
 more perfectly than many of their neighbors, 
 
 25 
 
26 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 The Great Stone Face, then, was a work of Nature 
 in her mood of majestic playfulness, formed on the 
 perpendicular side of a mountain by some immense 
 rocks, which had been thrown together in such a 
 position as, when viewed at a proper distance, pre- 
 cisely to resemble the features of the human coun- 
 tenance. It seemed as if an enormous giant, or a 
 Titan, had sculptured his own likeness on the preci- 
 pice. There was the broad arch of the forehead, 
 a hundred feet in height; the nose, with its long 
 bridge; and the vast lips, which, if they could have 
 spoken, would have rolled their thunder accents 
 from one end of the valley to the other. True it is, 
 that if the spectator approached too near, he lost the 
 outline of the gigantic visage, and could discern 
 only a heap of ponderous and gigantic rocks, piled 
 in chaotic ruin one upon another. Retracing his 
 steps, however, the wondrous features would again 
 be seen; and the farther he withdrew from them, 
 the more like a human face, with all its original 
 divinity intact, did they appear, until, as it grew 
 dim in the distance, with the clouds and glorified 
 ‘*apor of the mountains clustering about it, the 
 Great Stone Face seemed positively to be alive. 
 
 It was a happy lot for children to grow up to man- 
 hood or womanhood with the Great Stone Face 
 before their eyes, for all the features were noble, 
 and the expression was at once grand and sweet, 
 as if it were the glow of a vast, warm heart that 
 embraced all mankind in its affections and had room 
 for more. It was an education only to look at it. 
 According to the belief of many people, the valley 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE 
 
 2 ? 
 
 owed much of its fertility to this benign aspect that 
 was continually beaming over it, illuminating the 
 clouds and infusing its tenderness into the sunshine. 
 
 As we began with saying, a mother and her little 
 boy sat at their cottage door, gazing at the Great 
 Stone Face, and talking about it. The child's name 
 was Ernest. 
 
 “Mother,” said he, while the Titanic visage smiled 
 on him, “I wish that it could speak, for it looks so 
 very kindly that its voice must needs be pleasant. 
 If I were to see a man with such a face, I should 
 love him dearly.” 
 
 “If an old prophecy should come to pass,” an- 
 swered his mother, “we may see a man, some time 
 or other, with exactly such a face as that.” 
 
 “What prophecy do you mean, dear mother?” 
 eagerly inquired Ernest. “Pray tell me all about it !” 
 
 So his mother told him a story that her own 
 mother had told to her when she herself was younger 
 than little Ernest; a story, not of things that were 
 past, but of what was yet to come; a story, never- 
 theless, so very old, that even the Indians, who 
 formerly inhabited this valley, had heard it from 
 their forefathers, to whom, as they affirmed, it had 
 been murmured by the mountain streams and whis- 
 pered by the wind among the treetops. The pur- 
 port was that at some future day a child should be 
 born hereabouts who was destined to become the 
 greatest and noblest personage of his time, and 
 whose countenance in manhood should bear an 
 exact resemblance to the Great Stone Face. Not 
 a few old-fashioned people, and young ones likewise, 
 in the ardor of their hopes, still cherished an en- 
 
28 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 during faith in this old prophecy. But others, who 
 had seen more of the world, had watched and 
 waited till they were weary, and had beheld no man 
 with such a face, nor any man that proved to be 
 much greater or nobler than his neighbors, con- 
 cluded it to be nothing but an idle tale. At all 
 events, the great man of the prophecy had not yet 
 appeared. 
 
 “O mother, dear mother !” cried Ernest, clapping 
 his hands above his head, “I do hope that I shall 
 live to see him!” 
 
 His mother was an affectionate and thoughtful 
 woman, and felt that it was wisest not to discourage 
 the generous hopes of her little boy. So she only 
 said to him, “Perhaps you may.” 
 
 And Ernest never forgot the story that his mother 
 told him. It was always in his mind, whenever he 
 looked upon the Great Stone Face. He spent his 
 childhood in the log cottage where he was born, 
 and was dutiful to his mother, and helpful to her in 
 many things, assisting her much with his little 
 hands, and more with his loving heart. In this 
 manner, from a happy yet often pensive child, he 
 grew up to be a mild, quiet, unobtrusive boy, and 
 sun-browned with labor in the fields, but with more 
 intelligence brightening his aspect than is seen in 
 many lads who have been taught at famous schools. 
 Yet Ernest had had no teacher, save only that the 
 Great Stone Face became one to him. When the 
 toil of the day was over, he would gaze at it for 
 hours, until he began to imagine that those vast 
 features recognized him, and gave him a smile of 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE 
 
 29 
 
 kindness and encouragement, responsive to his own 
 look of veneration. We must not take upon us to 
 affirm that this was a mistake, although the Face 
 may have looked no more kindly at Ernest than at 
 all the world besides. But the secret was that the 
 boy's tender and confiding simplicity discerned what 
 other people could not see; and thus the love which 
 was meant for all became his peculiar portion. 
 
 About this time there went a rumor throughout 
 the valley that the great man, foretold from ages 
 long ago, who was to bear a resemblance to the 
 Great Stone Face, had appeared at last. It seems 
 that many years before a young man had migrated 
 from the valley and settled at a distant seaport, 
 where, after getting together a little money, he had 
 set up as a shopkeeper. His name — but I could 
 never learn whether it was his real one or a nick- 
 name that had grown out of his habits and success 
 in life — was Gathergold. Being shrewd and active, 
 and endowed by Providence with that inscrutable 
 faculty which develops itself in what the world 
 calls luck, he became an exceedingly rich merchant, 
 and owner of a whole fleet of bulky-bottomed ships. 
 All the countries of the globe appeared to join hands 
 for the mere purpose of adding heap after heap to 
 the mountainous accumulation of this one man's 
 wealth. The cold regions of the North, almost 
 within the gloom and shadow of the Arctic Circle, 
 sent him their tribute in the shape of furs; hot 
 Africa sifted for him the golden sands of her rivers, 
 and gathered up the ivory tusks of her great ele- 
 phants out of the forests; the East came bringing 
 
30 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 him the rich shawls and spices and teas, and the 
 effulgence of diamonds, and the gleaming purity 
 of large pearls. The ocean, not to be behindhand 
 with the earth, yielded up her mighty whales, that 
 Mr. Gathergold might sell their oil and make a 
 profit on it. Be the original commodity what it 
 might, it was gold within his grasp. It might be 
 said of him, as of Midas in the fable, that whatever 
 he touched with his finger immediately glistened and 
 grew yellow, and was changed at once into sterling 
 metal, or, which suited him still better, into piles 
 of coin. And when Mr. Gathergold had become so 
 very rich that it would have taken him a hundred 
 years only to count his wealth, he bethought him- 
 self of his native valley, and resolved to go back 
 thither and end his days where he was born. With 
 this purpose in view, he sent a skillful architect to 
 build him such a palace as should be fit for a man 
 of his vast wealth to live in. 
 
 As I have said above, it had already been rumored 
 in the valley that Mr. Gathergold had turned out to 
 be the prophetic personage so long and vainly looked 
 for, and that his visage was the perfect and un- 
 deniable similitude of the Great Stone Face. Peo- 
 ple were the more ready to believe that this must 
 needs be the fact when they beheld the splendid 
 edifice that arose, as if by enchantment, on the site 
 of his father’s old weather-beaten farmhouse. The 
 exterior was of marble, so dazzlingly white that it 
 seemed as though the whole structure might melt 
 away in the sunshine, like those humbler ones which 
 Mr. Gathergold, in his young play-days, before his 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE 31 
 
 fingers were gifted with the touch of transmutation, 
 had been accustomed to build of snow. It had a 
 richly ornamented portico, supported by tall pillars, 
 beneath which was a lofty door, studded with silver 
 knobs, and made of a kind of variegated wood that 
 had been brought from beyond the sea. The win- 
 dows, from the floor to the ceiling of each stately 
 apartment, were composed, respectively, of but one 
 enormous pane of glass, so transparently pure that 
 it was said to be a finer medium than even the vacant 
 atmosphere. Hardly anybody had been permitted to 
 see the interior of this palace; but it was reported, 
 and with good semblance of truth, to be far more 
 gorgeous than the outside, insomuch that whatever 
 was iron or brass in other houses was silver or 
 gold in this ; and Mr. Gathergold’s bedchamber, es- 
 pecially, made such a glittering appearance that no 
 ordinary man would have been able to close his 
 eyes there. But, on the other hand, Mr. Gathergold 
 was now so inured to wealth that perhaps he could 
 not have closed his eyes unless where the gleam o. 
 it was certain to find its way beneath his eyelids. 
 
 In due time the mansion was finished; next came 
 the upholsterers, with magnificent furniture; then a 
 whole troop of black and white servants, the har- 
 bingers of Mr. Gathergold, who, in his own majestic 
 person, was expected to arrive at sunset. Our friend 
 Ernest, meanwhile, had been deeply stirred by the 
 idea that the great man, the noble man, the man of 
 prophecy, after so many ages of delay, was at length 
 to be made manifest to his native valley. He knew, 
 boy as he was, that there were a thousand ways in 
 
32 HAWTHORNE 
 
 which Mr. Gathergold, with his vast wealth, might 
 transform himself into an angel of beneficence, and 
 assume a control over human affairs as wide and 
 benignant as the smile of the Great Stone Face. 
 Full of faith and hope, Ernest doubted not that 
 what the people said was true, and that now he was 
 to behold the living likeness of those wondrous fea- 
 tures on the mountain-side. While the boy was 
 still gazing up the valley, and fancying, as he always 
 did, that the Great Stone Face returned his gaze 
 and looked kindly at him, the rumbling of wheels 
 was heard approaching swiftly along the winding 
 road. 
 
 “Here he comes !” cried a group of people who 
 were assembled to witness the arrival. Here comes 
 the great Mr. Gathergold!” 
 
 A carriage, drawn by four horses, dashed round 
 the turn of the road. Within it, thrust partly out 
 of the window, appeared the physiognomy of the 
 old man, with a skin as yellow as if his own Midas- 
 hand had transmuted it. He had a low forehead, 
 small, sharp eyes, puckered about with innumerable 
 wrinkles, and very thin lips, which he made still 
 thinner by pressing them forcibly together. 
 
 “The very image of the Great Stone Face! 
 shouted the people. “Sure enough, the old prophecy 
 is true, and here we have the great man come at 
 last.” 
 
 And, what greatly perplexed Ernest, they seemed 
 actually to believe that here was the likeness which 
 they spoke of. By the roadside there chanced to be 
 •in old beggar-woman and two little beggar-children, 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE 
 
 33 
 
 itragglers from some far-off region, who, as the 
 :arriage rolled onward, held out their hands and 
 ifted up their doleful voices, most piteously beseech- 
 ng charity. A yellow claw — the very same that had 
 :lawed together so much wealth — poked itself out 
 )f the coach-window and dropped some copper 
 :oins upon the ground; so that, though the great 
 nan’s name seems to have been Gathergold, he 
 night just as suitably have been nicknamed Scatter- 
 :opper. Still, nevertheless, with an earnest shout, 
 md evidently with as much good faith as ever, the 
 >eople bellowed: 
 
 “He is the very image of the Great Stone Facer* 
 
 But Ernest turned sadly from the wrinkled 
 shrewdness of that sordid visage, and gazed up the 
 valley, where, amid a gathering mist, gilded by the 
 iast sunbeams, he could still distinguish those glori- 
 ous features which had impressed themselves into his 
 soul. Their aspect cheered him. What did the 
 benign lips seem to say? 
 
 “He will come! Fear not, Ernest; the man will 
 :ome !” 
 
 The years went on, and Ernest ceased to be a 
 boy. He had grown to be a young man now. He 
 attracted little notice from the other inhabitants of 
 the valley; for they saw nothing remarkable in his 
 way of life, save that, when the labor of the day 
 was over, he still loved to go apart and gaze and 
 meditate upon the Great Stone Face. According to 
 their idea of the matter, it was folly, indeed, but 
 pardonable, inasmuch as Ernest was industrious, 
 kind, and neighborly, and neglected no duty for the 
 
34 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 sake of indulging this idle habit. They knew not 
 that the Great Stone Face had become a teacher to 
 him, and that the sentiment which was expressed 
 in it would enlarge the young man’s heart, and fill 
 it with wider and deeper sympathies than other 
 hearts. They knew not that thence would come a 
 better wisdom than could be learned from books, 
 and a better life than could be molded on the de- 
 faced example of other human lives. Neither did 
 Ernest know that the thoughts and affections which 
 came to him so naturally, in the fields and at the 
 fireside, and wherever he communed with himself, 
 were of a higher tone than those which all men 
 shared with him. A simple soul — simple as when 
 his mother first taught him the old prophecy — he 
 beheld the marvelous features beaming adown the 
 valley, and still wondered that their human counter- 
 part was so long in making his appearance. 
 
 By this time poor Mr. Gathergold was dead and 
 buried; and the oddest part of the matter was, that 
 his wealth, which was the body and spirit of his 
 existence, had disappeared before his death, leaving 
 nothing of him but a living skeleton, covered over 
 with a wrinkled yellow skin. Since the melting away 
 of his gold, it had been very generally conceded that 
 there was no such striking resemblance, after all, 
 betwixt the ignoble features of the ruined merchant 
 and that majestic face upon the mountain-side. So 
 the people ceased to honor him during his lifetime, 
 "jid quietly consigned him to forgetfulness after his 
 decease. Once in a while, it is true, his memory 
 was brought up in connection with the magnificent 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE 85 
 
 palace which he had built, and which had long ago 
 been turned into a hotel for the accommodation of 
 strangers, multitudes of whom came every summer 
 to visit that famous natural curiosity, the Great 
 Stone Face. Thus, Mr. Gathergold, being discred- 
 ited and thrown into the shade, the man of prophecy 
 was yet to come. 
 
 It so happened that a native-born son of the val- 
 ley, many years before, had enlisted as a soldier, 
 and after a great deal of hard fighting had now 
 become an illustrious commander. Whatever he 
 may be called in history, he was known in camps 
 and on the battlefield under the nickname of Old 
 Blood-and-Thunder. This war-worn veteran, being 
 now infirm with age and wounds, and weary of the 
 turmoil of a military life, and of the roll of the 
 drum and the clangor of the trumpet that had so 
 long been ringing in his ears, had lately signified 
 a purpose of returning to his native valley, hoping 
 to find repose where he remembered to have left it. 
 The inhabitants, his old neighbors and their grown- 
 up children, were resolved to welcome the renowned 
 warrior with a salute of cannon and a public dinner; 
 and all the more enthusiastically, it being affirmed 
 that now, at last, the likeness of the Great Stone 
 Face had actually appeared. An aid-de-camp of 
 Old Blood-and-Thunder, traveling through the val- 
 ley, was said to have been struck with the resem- 
 blance. Moreover, the schoolmates and early ac- 
 quaintances of the general were ready to testify, on 
 oath, that, to the best of their recollection, the afore- 
 said general had been exceedingly like the majestic 
 
HAWTHORNE 
 
 image, even when a boy, only that the idea had never 
 occurred to them at that period. Great, therefore, 
 was the excitement throughout the valley; and many 
 people who had never once thought of glancing at 
 the Great Stone Face for years before, now spent 
 their time in gazing at it, for the sake of knowing 
 exactly how General Blood-and-Thunder looked. 
 
 On the day of the great festival, Ernest with all 
 the other people of the valley left their work and 
 proceeded to the spot where the sylvan banquet was 
 prepared. As he approached, the loud voice of the 
 Rev. Dr. Battleblast was heard, beseeching a bless- 
 ing on the good things set before them, and on the 
 distinguished friend of peace in whose honor they 
 were assembled. The tables were arranged in a 
 cleared space of the woods, shut in by the surround- 
 ing trees, except where a vista opened eastward, and 
 afforded a distant view of the Great Stone Face. 
 Over the general’s chair, which was a relic from the 
 home of Washington, there was an arch of verdant 
 boughs, with the laurel profusely intermixed, and 
 surmounted by his country’s banner, beneath which 
 he had won his victories. Our friend Ernest raised 
 himself on his tiptoes, in hopes to get a glimpse of 
 the celebrated guest; but there was a mighty crowd 
 about the tables anxious to hear the toasts and 
 speeches, and to catch any word that might fall 
 from the general in reply; and a volunteer company, 
 doing duty as a guard, pricked ruthlessly with their 
 bayonets at any particularly quiet person among the 
 throng. So Ernest, being of an unobtrusive charac- 
 ter, was thrust quite into the background, where he 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE 
 
 37 
 
 could see no more of Old Blood-and-Thunder's 
 physiognomy than if it had been still blazing on the 
 battlefield. To console himself he turned toward 
 the Great Stone Face, which, like a faithful and 
 long-remembered friend, looked back and smiled 
 upon him through the vista of the forest. Meantime, 
 however, he could overhear the remarks of various 
 individuals who were comparing the features of the 
 hero with the face on the distant mountain-side. 
 
 “Tis the same face, to a hair!” cried one man, 
 cutting a caper for joy. 
 
 “Wonderfully like, that's a fact!” responded an- 
 other. 
 
 “Like ! why, I call it Old Blood-and-Thunder him- 
 self, in a monstrous looking-glass !” cried a third. 
 “And why not? He's the greatest man of this or 
 any other age, beyond a doubt.” 
 
 And then all three of the speakers gave a great 
 shout, which communicated electricity to the crowd, 
 and called forth a roar from a thousand voices, that 
 went reverberating for miles among the mountains, 
 until you might have supposed that the Great Stone 
 Face had poured its thunder-breath into the cry. 
 All these comments, and this vast enthusiasm, served 
 the more to interest our friend; nor did he think of 
 questioning that now, at length, the mountain-visage 
 had found its human counterpart. It is true, Ernest 
 had imagined that this long-loo ked-for personage 
 would appear in the character of a man of peace, 
 uttering wisdom, and doing good, and making peo- 
 ple happy. But, taking an habitual breadth of view, 
 with all his simplicity, he contended that Providence 
 
38 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 should choose its own method of blessing mankind, 
 and could conceive that this great end might be ef- 
 fected even by a warrior and a bloody sword, should 
 inscrutable wisdom see fit to order matters so. 
 
 “The general ! the general !” was now the cry. 
 “Hush ! silence ! Old Blood-and-Thunder’s going to 
 make a speech.” 
 
 Even so; for, the cloth being removed, the gen- 
 eral’s health had been drunk, amid shouts of ap- 
 plause, and he now stood upon his feet to thank the 
 company. Ernest saw him. There he was, over 
 the shoulders of the crowd, from the two glittering 
 epaulets and embroidered collar upward, beneath the 
 arch of green boughs with intertwined laurel, and 
 the banner drooping as if to shade his brow ! And 
 there, too, visible in the same glance, through the 
 vista of the forest, appeared the Great Stone Face! 
 And was there, indeed, such a resemblance as the 
 crowd had testified? Ala.s ? Ernest could not recog- 
 nize it! He beheld a war-worn and weather-beaten 
 countenance, full of energy, and expressive of an 
 iron will; but the gentle wisdom, the deep, broad, 
 tender sympathies, were altogether wanting in Old 
 Blood-and-Thunder’s visage ; and even if the Great 
 Stone Face had assumed his look of stern command* 
 the milder traits would still have tempered it. 
 
 *This is not the man of prophecy,” sighed Ernest 
 to nimself, as he made his way out of the throng 
 “And must the world wait longer yet?” 
 
 The mists had congregated about the distant 
 mountain-side, and there were seen the grand and 
 awful features of the Great Stone Face, awful but 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE 
 
 39 
 
 benignant, as if a mighty angel were sitting among 
 the hills, and enrobing himself in a cloud-vesture of 
 gold and purple. As he looked, Ernest could hardly 
 believe ,but that a smile beamed over the whole 
 visage, with a radiance still brightening, although 
 without motion of the lips. It was probably the effect 
 of the western sunshine melting through the thinly 
 diffused vapors that had swept between him and the 
 object that he gazed at. But — as it always did — the 
 aspect of his marvelous friend made Ernest as hope- 
 ful as if he had never hoped in vain. 
 
 “Fear not, Ernest,” said his heart, even as if the 
 Great Stone Face were whispering him — “fear not, 
 Ernest, he will come." 
 
 More years sped swiftly and tranquilly away. Er- 
 nest still dwelt in his native valley, and was now a 
 man of middle age. By imperceptible degrees, he 
 had become known among the people. Now, as 
 heretofore, he labored for his bread, and was the 
 same simple-hearted man that he had always been. 
 But he had thought and felt so much, he had given 
 so many of the best hours of his life to unworldly 
 hopes for some great good to mankind, that it seemed 
 as though he had been talking with the angels, and 
 had imbibed a portion of their wisdom unawares. 
 It was visible in the calm and well-considered benefi- 
 cence of his daily life, the quiet stream of which 
 had made a wide margin all along its course. 
 Not a day passed by that the world was not the 
 better because this man, humble as he was, had lived. 
 Fie never stepped aside from his own path, yet would 
 always reach a blessing to his neighbor. Almost in- 
 
40 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 voluntarily, too, he had become a preacher. The 
 pure and high simplicity of his thought, which, as 
 one of its manifestations, took shape in the good 
 deeds that dropped silently from his hand, flowed 
 also forth in speech. He uttered truths that wrought 
 upon and molded the lives of those who heard him. 
 His auditors, it may be, never suspected that Ernest, 
 their own neighbor and familiar friend, was more 
 than an ordinary man; least of all did Ernest him- 
 self suspect it; but inevitably as the murmur of a 
 rivulet, came thoughts out of his mouth that no 
 other human lips had spoken. 
 
 When the people's minds had had a little time to 
 cool, they were ready enough to acknowledge their 
 mistake in imagining a similarity between General 
 Blood-and-Thunder’s truculent physiognomy and the 
 benign visage on the mountain-side. But now, again, 
 there were reports and many paragraphs in the news- 
 papers, affirming that the likeness of the Great Stone 
 Face had appeared upon the broad shoulders of a 
 certain eminent statesman. He, like Mr. Gathergold 
 and Old Blood-and-Thunder, was a native of the 
 valley, but had left it in his early days, and taken 
 up the trades of law and politics. Instead of the rich 
 man’s wealth and the warrior’s sword, he had but a 
 tongue, and it was mightier than both together. So 
 wonderfully eloquent was he, that whatever he might 
 choose to say, his auditors had no choice but to be- 
 lieve him; wrong looked like right, and right like 
 wrong; for when it pleased him he could make a 
 kind of illuminated fog with his mere breath, and 
 obscure the natural daylight with it. His tongue, 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE 
 
 41 
 
 indeed, was a magic instrument ; sometimes it 
 rumbled like the thunder ; sometimes it warbled like 
 the sweetest music. It was the blast of war— -the 
 song of peace; and it seemed to have a heart in 
 it when there was no such matter. In good truth, 
 he was a wondrous man; and when his tongue had 
 acquired him all other imaginable success — when it 
 had been heard in halls of state, and in the courts 
 of princes and potentates — after it had made him 
 known all over the world, even as a voice crying 
 from shore to shore — it finally persuaded his coun- 
 trymen to select him for the Presidency. Before this 
 time — indeed, as soon as he began to grow cele- 
 brated — his admirers had found out the resemblance 
 between him and the Great Stone Face ; and so much 
 were they struck by it, that throughout the country 
 this distinguished gentleman was known by the 
 name of Old Stony Phiz. The phrase was consid- 
 ered as giving a highly favorable aspect to his po- 
 litical prospects; for, as is likewise the case with 
 the Popedom, nobody ever becomes President with- 
 out taking a name other than his own. 
 
 While his friends were doing their best to make 
 him President, Old Stony Phiz, as he was called, 
 set out on a visit to the valley where he was born. 
 Of course, he had no other object than to shake 
 hands with his fellow-citizens, and neither thought 
 nor cared about any effect which his progress 
 through the country might have upon the election. 
 Magnificent preparations were made to receive the 
 illustrious statesman; a cavalcade of horsemen set 
 forth to meet him at the boundary-line of the State, 
 
42 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 and all the people left their business and gathered 
 along the wayside to see him pass. Among these 
 was Ernest. Though more than once disappointed, 
 as we have seen, he had such a hopeful and con- 
 fiding nature that he was always ready to believe 
 in whatever seemed beautiful and good. He kept 
 his heart continually open, and thus was sure to 
 catch the blessing from on high when it should 
 came. So now again, as buoyantly as ever, he went 
 forth to behold the likeness of the Great Stone Face. 
 
 The cavalcade came prancing along the road, with 
 a great clattering of hoofs and a mighty cloud of 
 dust, which rose up so dense and high that the 
 visage of the mountain-side was completely hidden 
 from Ernest’s eyes. All the great men of the 
 neighborhood were there on horseback; militia offi- 
 cers, in uniform; the member of Congress; the 
 sheriff of the county ; the editors of newspapers ; and 
 many a farmer, too, had mounted his patient steed, 
 with his Sunday coat upon his back. It really was 
 a very brilliant spectacle, especially as there were 
 numerous banners haunting over the cavalcade, on 
 some of which were gorgeous portraits of the illus- 
 trious statesman and the Great Stone Face, smiling 
 familiarly at one another, like two brothers. If 
 the pictures were to be trusted, the mutual re- 
 semblance, it must be confessed, was marvelous. We 
 must not forget to mention that there was a band 
 of music, which made the echoes of the mountains 
 ring and reverberate with the loud triumph of its 
 strains ; so that airy and soul-thrilling melodies 
 broke out among all the heights and hollows, as if 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE 
 
 43 
 
 every nook of his native valley had found a voice 
 to welcome the distinguished guest. But the grand- 
 est effect was when the far-off mountain precipice 
 flung back the music; for then the Great Stone Face 
 itself seemed to be swelling the triumphant chorus, 
 in acknowledgment that, at length, the man of 
 prophecy was come. 
 
 All this while the people were throwing up their 
 hats and shouting, with enthusiasm so contagious 
 that the heart of Ernest kindled up, and he likewise 
 threw up his hat and shouted as loudly as the 
 loudest, “Huzza for the great man! Huzza for Old 
 Stony Phiz!” But as yet he had not seen him. 
 
 “Here he is now !” cried those who stood near 
 Ernest. “There! There! Look at Old Stony Phiz 
 and then at the Old Man of the Mountain, and see 
 if they are not as like as two twin brothers !” 
 
 In the midst of all this gallant array came an 
 open barouche, drawn by four white horses; and 
 in the barouche, with his massive head uncovered, 
 sat the illustrious statesman, Old Stony Phiz him- 
 self. 
 
 “Confess it,” said one of Ernest’s neighbors to 
 him, “the Great Stone Face has met its match at 
 last !” 
 
 Now, it must be owned that at his first glimpse of 
 the countenance which was bowing and smiling 
 from the barouche, Ernest did fancy that there was 
 a resemblance between it and the old familiar face 
 upon the mountain-side. The brow, with its massive 
 depth and loftiness, and all the other features, in- 
 deed, were boldly and strongly hewn, as if in emula- 
 
HAWTHORNE 
 
 44 
 
 tion of a more than heroic, of a Titanic model. But 
 the sublimity and stateliness, the grand expression of 
 a divine sympathy, that illuminated the mountain 
 visage and etherealized its ponderous granite sub- 
 stance into spirit, might here be sought in vain. 
 Something had been originally left out, or had de- 
 parted And therefore the marvelously gifted states- 
 man had always a weary gloom in the deep caverns 
 of his eyes, as of a child that has outgrown its play- 
 things, or a man of mighty faculties and little aims, 
 whose life, with all its high performances, was vague 
 and empty, because no high purpose had endowed it 
 with reality. 
 
 Still, Ernest's neighbor was thrusting his elbow 
 into his side, and pressing him for an answer. 
 
 “Confess! confess! Is not he the very picture of 
 your Old Man of the Mountain?" 
 
 “No!" said Ernest, bluntly; “I see little or no 
 likeness." 
 
 “Then so much the worse for the Great Stone 
 Face!" answered his neighbor; and again he set up 
 a shout for Old Stony Phiz. 
 
 But Ernest turned away, melancholy, and almost 
 despondent; for this was the saddest of his disap- 
 pointments, to behold a man who might have ful- 
 filled the prophecy, and had not willed to do so. 
 Meantime, the cavalcade, the banners, the music, and 
 the barouches swept past him, with the vociferous 
 crowd in the rear, leaving the dust to settle down, 
 and the Great Stone Face to be revealed again, with 
 the grandeur that it had worn for untold centuries. 
 
 “Lo, here I am, Ernest!" the benign lips seemed 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE 45 
 
 to say. “I have waited longer than thou, and am 
 not yet weary. Fear not; the man will come/’ 
 
 The years hurried onward, treading in their haste 
 on one another’s heels. And now they began to bring 
 white hairs and scatter them over the head of Er- 
 nest; they made reverend wrinkles across his fore- 
 head, and furrows in his cheeks. He was an aged 
 man. But not in vain had he grown old; more than 
 the white hairs on his head were the sage thoughts 
 in his mind; his wrinkles and furrows were inscrip- 
 tions that Time had graved, and in which he had 
 written legends of wisdom that had been tested 
 by the tenor of a life. And Ernest had ceased to 
 be obscure. Unsought for, undesired, had come the 
 fame which so many seek, and made him known in 
 the great world beyond the limits of the valley in 
 which he had dwelt so quietly. College professors, 
 and even the active men of cities, came from far to 
 see and converse with Ernest; for the report had 
 gone abroad that this simple husbandman had ideas 
 unlike those of other men, not gained from books, 
 but of a higher tone — a tranquil and familiar majesty, 
 as if he had been talking with the angels as his daily 
 friends. Whether it were sage, statesman, or phil- 
 anthropist, Ernest received these visitors with the 
 gentle sincerity that had characterized him from boy- 
 hood, and spoke freely with them of whatever came 
 uppermost or lay deepest in his heart or their own. 
 While they talked together, his face would kindle, 
 unawares, and shine upon them as with a mild 
 evening light. Pensive with the fullness of such 
 discourse, his guests took leave and went their way; 
 
46 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 and passing up the valley, paused to look at the 
 Great Stone Face, imagining that they had seen its 
 likeness in a human countenance, but could not re- 
 member where. 
 
 While Ernest had been growing up and growing 
 old, a bountiful Providence had granted a new poet 
 to this earth. He likewise was a native of the valley, 
 but had spent the greater part of his life at a dis- 
 tance from that romantic region, pouring out his 
 sweet music amid the bustle and din of cities. Often, 
 however, did the mountains which had been familiar 
 to him in his childhood lift their snowy peaks into 
 the clear atmosphere of his poetry. Neither was the 
 Great Stone Face forgotten, for the poet had cele- 
 brated it in an ode which was grand enough to have 
 been uttered by its own majestic lips. This man of 
 genius, we may say, had come down from heaven 
 with wonderful endowments. If he sang of a moun- 
 tain, the eyes of all mankind beheld a mightier 
 grandeur reposing on its breast, or soaring to its 
 summit, than had before been seen there. If his 
 theme were a lovely lake, a celestial smile had now 
 been thrown over it, to gleam forever on its surface. 
 If it were the vast old sea, even the deep immensity 
 of its dread bosom seemed to swell the higher, as if 
 moved by the emotions of the song. Thus the world 
 assumed another and a better aspect from the hour 
 that the poet blessed it with his happy eyes. The 
 Creator had bestowed him, as the last best touch to 
 his own handiwork. Creation was not finished till 
 the poet came to interpret, and so complete it. 
 
 The effect was no less high and beautiful when his 
 
47 
 
 THE GREAT^STONE FACE 
 
 human brethren were the subject of his verse. The 
 man or woman, sordid with the common dust of 
 life, who crossed his daily path, and the little child 
 who played in it, were glorified if he beheld them in 
 his mood of poetic faith. He showed the golden 
 links of the great chain that intertwined them with 
 an angelic kindred; he brought out the hidden traits 
 of celestial birth that made them worthy of such 
 kin. Some, indeed, there were so thought to show 
 the soundness of their judgment by affirming that all 
 the beauty and dignity of the natural world existed 
 only in the poet’s fancy. Let such men speak for 
 themselves, who undoubtedly appear to have been 
 spawned forth by Nature with a contemptuous bit- 
 terness; she having plastered them up out of her 
 refuse stuff, after all the swine were made. As 
 respects all things else, the poet’s ideal was the truest 
 truth. 
 
 The songs of this poet found their way to Ernest. 
 He read them, after his customary toil, seated on the 
 bench before his cottage door, where for such a 
 length of time he had filled his repose with thought 
 by gazing at the Great Stone Face. And now, as he 
 read stanzas that caused the soul to thrill within 
 him, he lifted his eyes to the vast countenance beam- 
 ing on him so benignantly. 
 
 “O majestic friend,” he murmured, addressing the 
 Great Stone Face, “is not this man worthy to 
 resemble thee?” 
 
 The face seemed to smile, but answered not a 
 word. 
 
 Now it happened that the poet, though he dwelt 
 
48 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 so far away, had not only heard of Ernest, but had 
 meditated much upon his character, until he deemed 
 nothing so desirable as to meet this man whose 
 untaught wisdom walked hand in hand with the 
 noble simplicity of his life. One summer morning, 
 therefore, he took passage by the railroad, and in 
 the decline of the afternoon alighted from the cars 
 at no great distance from Ernest’s cottage. The 
 great hotel, which had formerly been the palace of 
 Mr. Gathergold, was close at hand, but the poet, 
 with his carpetbag on his arm, inquired at once 
 where Ernest dwelt, and was resolved to be ac- 
 cepted as his guest. 
 
 Approaching the door, he there found the good 
 old man, holding a volume in his hand, which al- 
 ternately he read, and then, with a finger between 
 the leaves, looked lovingly at the Great Stone Face. 
 
 “Good evening,” said the poet. “Can you give 
 a traveler a night’s lodging?” 
 
 “Willingly,” answered Ernest; and then he added, 
 smiling, “Methinks I never saw the Great Stone 
 Face look so hospitably at a stranger.” 
 
 The poet sat down on the bench beside him, and 
 he and Ernest talked together. Often had the poet 
 held intercourse with the wittiest and the wisest, 
 but never before with a man like Ernest, whose 
 thoughts and feelings gushed up with such a natural 
 freedom, and who made great truths so familiar by 
 his simple utterance of them. Angels, as had been 
 so often said, seemed to have wrought with him 
 at his labor in the fields; and, dwelling with angels 
 as friend with friends, he had imbibed the sublimity 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE 
 
 49 
 
 of their ideas, and imbued it with the sweet and 
 lowly charm of household words. So thought the 
 poet. And Ernest, on the other hand, was moved 
 and agitated by the living images which the poet 
 flung out of his mind, and which peopled all the air 
 about the cottage door with shapes of beauty, both 
 gay and pensive. The sympathies of these two men 
 instructed them with a profounder sense than either 
 could have attained alone. Their minds accorded 
 into one strain, and made delightful music which 
 neither of them could have claimed as all his own, 
 nor distinguished his own share from the other’s. 
 They led one another, as it were, into a high pa- 
 vilion of their thoughts, so remote, and hitherto so 
 dim, that they had never entered it before, and so 
 beautiful that they desired to be there always. 
 
 As Ernest listened to the poet, he imagined that 
 the Great Stone Face was bending forward to 
 listen too. He gazed earnestly into the poet’s glow- 
 ing eyes. 
 
 “Who are you, my strangely gifted guest?” he 
 said. 
 
 The poet laid his finger on the volume that Er- 
 nest had been reading. 
 
 “You have read these poems,” said he. “You 
 know me, then — for I wrote them.” 
 
 Again, and still more earnestly than before, Er- 
 nest examined the poet’s features ; then turned 
 toward the Great Stone Face; then back, with an 
 uncertain aspect, to his guest. But his countenance 
 fell; he shook his head, and sighed. 
 
 “Wherefore are you sad?” inquired the poet. 
 
50 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 “Because,” replied Ernest, “all through life I have 
 awaited the fulfillment of a prophecy; and when I 
 read these poems I hoped that it might be fulfilled 
 in you.” 
 
 “You hoped,” answered the poet, faintly smiling, 
 “to find in me the likeness of the Great Stone 
 Face. And you are disappointed, as formerly with 
 Mr. Gathergold, and Old Blood-and-Thunder, and 
 Old Stony Phiz. Yes, Ernest, it is my doom. Yi , . . 
 must add my name to the illustrious three, and 
 record another failure of your hopes. For — in shame 
 and sadness do I speak it, Ernest — I am not worthy 
 to be typified by yonder benign and majestic image.” 
 
 “And why?” asked Ernest. He pointed to the 
 volume. “Are not those thoughts divine?” 
 
 “They have a strain of the Divinity,” replied the 
 poet. “You can hear in them the far-off echo of 
 a heavenly song. But my life, dear Ernest, has not 
 corresponded with my thought. I have had grand 
 dreams, but they have been only dreams, because I 
 have lived — and that, too, by my own choice — among 
 poor and mean realities. Sometimes even — shall I 
 dare to say it? — I lack faith in the grandeur, the 
 beauty, and the goodness which my own works are 
 said to have made more evident in nature and in 
 human life. Why, then, pure seeker of the good 
 and true, shouldst thou hope to find me in yonder 
 image of the divine?” The poet spoke sadly, and 
 his eyes were dim with tears. So, likewise, were 
 those of Ernest. 
 
 At the hour of sunset, as had long been his fre- 
 quent custom, Ernest was to discourse to an as- 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE 
 
 51 
 
 semblage of the neighboring inhabitants in the open 
 air. He and the poet, arm in arm, still talking 
 together as they went along, proceeded to the spot. 
 It was a small nook among the hills, with a gray 
 precipice behind, the stern front of which was re- 
 lieved by the pleasant foliage of many creeping 
 plants that made a tapestry for the naked rock by 
 hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles. At 
 a small elevation above the ground, set in a rich 
 framework of verdure, there appeared a niche, spa- 
 cious enough to admit a human figure, with freedom 
 for such gestures as spontaneously accompany ear- 
 nest thought and genuine emotion. Into this natural 
 pulpit Ernest ascended, and threw a look of familiar 
 kindness around upon his audience. They stood or 
 sat, or reclined upon the grass, as seemed good to 
 each, with the departing sunshine falling obliquely 
 over them, and mingling its subdued cheerfulness 
 with the solemnity of a grove of ancient trees, be- 
 neath and amid the boughs of which the golden rays 
 were constrained to pass. In another direction was 
 seen the Great Stone Face, with the same cheer, 
 combined with the same solemnity, in its benignant 
 aspect. 
 
 Ernest began to speak, giving to the people of 
 what was in his heart and mind. His words had 
 power, because they accorded with his thoughts ; 
 and his thoughts had reality and depth, because they 
 harmonized with the life which he had always lived. 
 It was not mere breath that this preacher uttered; 
 they were the words of life, because a life of good 
 deeds and holy love was melted into them. Pearls, 
 
HAWTHORNE 
 
 pure and rich, had been dissolved into this precious 
 draught. The poet, as he listened, felt that the 
 being and character of Ernest were a nobler strain 
 of poetry than he had ever written. His eyes 
 glistening with tears, he gazed reverentially at the 
 venerable man, and said within himself that never 
 was there an aspect so worthy of a prophet and a 
 sage as that mild, sweet, thoughtful countenance, 
 with the glory of white hair diffused about it. At 
 a distance, but distinctly to be seen, high up in the 
 golden light of the setting sun, appeared the Great 
 Stone Face, with hoary mists around it, like the 
 white hairs around the brow of Ernest. Its look of 
 grand beneficence seemed to embrace the world. 
 
 At that moment, in sympathy with a thought 
 which he was about to utter, the face of Ernest as- 
 sumed a grandeur of expression, so imbued with 
 benevolence, that the poet, by an irresistible impulse, 
 threw his arms aloft, and shouted: 
 
 “Behold! Behold! Ernest is himself the likeness 
 of the Great Stone Face! ,, 
 
 Then all the people looked, and saw that what 
 the deep-sighted poet said was true. The prophecy 
 was fufilled. But Ernest, having finished what he 
 had to say, took the poet's arm, and walked slowly 
 homeward, still hoping that some wiser and better 
 man than himself would by and by appear bearing 
 a resemblance to the Great Stone Face. 
 
HOWE’S MASQUERADE 
 
 ft* 
 
 HOWE'S MASQUERADE 
 
 One afternoon last summer, while walking along 
 Washington Street, my eye was attraeted by a sign- 
 board protruding over a narrow archway, nearly 
 opposite the Old South Church. The sign repre- 
 sented the front of a stately edifice, which was desig- 
 nated as the “Old Province House, kept by Thomas 
 Waite.” I was glad to be#thus reminded of a pur- 
 pose, long entertained, of visiting and rambling over 
 the mansion of the old royal governors of Massa- 
 chusetts; and entering the arched passage, which 
 penetrated through the middle of a brick row of 
 shops, a few steps transported me from the busy 
 heart of modern Boston into a small and secluded 
 courtyard. One side of this space was occupied by 
 the square front of the Province House, three stories 
 high, and surmounted by a cupola, on the top of 
 which a gilded Indian was discernible, with his bow 
 bent and his arrow on the string, as if aiming at the 
 weather-cock on the spire of the Old South. The 
 figure has kept this attitude for seventy years or 
 more, ever since good Deacon Drowne, a cunning 
 carver of wood, first stationed him on his long sen- 
 tinel’s watch over the city. 
 
 The Province House is constructed of brick, which 
 seems recently to have been overlaid with a coat of 
 light-colored paint. A flight of red freestone steps, 
 fenced in by a balustrade of curiously wrought iron, 
 ascends from the courtyard to the spacious porch. 
 
54 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 over which is a balcony, with an iron balustrade 
 of similar pattern and workmanship to that beneath. 
 These letters and figures — 16 P. S. 79 — are wrought 
 into the ironwork of the balcony, and probably ex- 
 press the date of the edifice, with the initials of its 
 founder’s name. A wide door with double leaves 
 admitted me into the hall or entry, on the right of 
 which is the entrance to the barroom. 
 
 It was in this apartment, I presume, that the 
 ancient governors held their levees, with vice-regal 
 pomp, surrounded by the military men, the council- 
 ors, the judges, and other officers of the crown, 
 while all the loyalty of the province thronged to do 
 them honor. But the room, in its present condition, 
 cannot boast even of faded magnificence. The pan- 
 eled wainscot is covered with dingy paint, and ac- 
 quires a duskier hue from the deep shadow into 
 which the Province House is thrown by the brick 
 block that shuts it in from Washington Street. A 
 ray of sunshine never visits this apartment any more 
 than the glare of the festal torches which have been 
 extinguished from the era of the Revolution. The 
 most venerable and ornamental object is a chimney- 
 piece set round with Dutch tiles of blue-figured 
 china, representing scenes from Scripture; and, for 
 aught I know, the lady of Pownall or Bernard may 
 have sat beside the fireplace, and told her children 
 the story of each blue tile. A bar in modern style, 
 well replenished with decanters, bottles, cigar-boxes, 
 and network bags of lemons, and provided with a 
 beer-pump and a soda-fount, extends along one side 
 of the room. At my entrance, an elderly person 
 
HOWE’S MASQUERADE 
 
 55 
 
 was smacking his lips with a zest which satisfied 
 me that the cellars of the Province House still hold 
 good liquor, though doubtless of other vintages than 
 were quaffed by the old governors. After sipping a 
 glass of port sangaree, prepared by the skillful hands 
 of Mr. Thomas Waite, I besought that worthy suc- 
 cessor and representative of so many historic per- 
 sonages to conduct me over their time-honored man- 
 sion. 
 
 He readily complied; but, to confess the truth, I 
 was forced to draw strenuously upon my imagina- 
 tion, in order to find aught that was interesting in 
 a house which, without its historic associations, would 
 have seemed merely such a tavern as is usually 
 favored by the custom of decent city boarders and 
 old-fashioned country gentlemen. The chambers, 
 which were probably spacious in former times, are 
 now cut up by partitions, and subdivided into little 
 nooks, each affording scanty room for the narrow 
 bed and chair and dressing-table of a single lodger. 
 The great staircase, however, may be termed, without 
 much hyperbole, a feature of grandeur and magnifi- 
 cence. It winds through the midst of the house by 
 flights of broad steps, each flight terminating in a 
 square landing-place, whence the ascent is continued 
 toward the cupola. A carved balustrade, freshly 
 painted in the lower stories, but growing dingier as 
 we ascend, borders the staircase with its quaintly 
 twisted and intertwined pillars, from top to bottom. 
 Up these stairs the military boots, or perchance the 
 gouty shoes, of many a governor have trodden, as 
 the wearers mounted to the cupola, which afforded 
 
56 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 them so wide a view over their metropolis and the 
 surrounding country. The cupola is an octagon, with 
 several windows, and a door opening upon the roof. 
 From this station, as I pleased myself with imagining, 
 Gage may have beheld his disastrous victory on 
 Bunker Hill (unless one of the tri-mountains inter- 
 vened), and Howe have marked the approaches of 
 Washington’s besieging army; although the buildings, 
 since erected in the vicinity, have shut out almost 
 every object, save the steeple of the Old South, 
 which seems almost within arm’s length. Descending 
 from the cupola, I paused in the garret to observe 
 the ponderous white-oak framework, so much more 
 massive than the frames of modern houses, and 
 thereby resembling an antique skeleton. The brick 
 walls, the materials of which were imported from 
 Holland, and the timbers of the mansion, are still 
 as sound as ever; but the floors and other interior 
 parts being greatly decayed, it is contemplated to gut 
 the whole, and build a new house within the ancient 
 frame and brickwork. Among other inconveniences 
 of the present edifice, mine host mentioned that any 
 jar or motion was apt to shake down the dust of 
 ages out of the ceiling of one chamber upon the 
 floor of that beneath it. 
 
 We stepped forth from the great front window 
 into the balcony, where, in old times, it was doubtless 
 the custom of the king’s representative to show him- 
 self to a loyal populace, requiting their huzzas and 
 tossed-up hats with stately bendings of his dignified 
 person In those days, the front of the Province 
 House looked upon the street; and the whole site 
 
HOWE’S MASQUERADE 
 
 57 
 
 now occupied by the brick range of stores, as well 
 as the present courtyard, was laid out in grass-plats, 
 overshadowed by trees and bordered by a wrought- 
 iron fence. Now, the old aristocratic edifice hides its 
 time-worn visage behind an upstart modern building; 
 at one of the back windows I observed some pretty 
 tailoresses, sewing and chatting and laughing, with 
 now and then a careless glance toward the balcony. 
 Descending thence, we again entered the barroom, 
 where the elderly gentleman above mentioned, the 
 smack of whose lips had spoken so favorably for 
 Mr. Waite’s good liquor, was still lounging in his 
 chair. He seemed to be, if not a lodger, at least a 
 familiar visitor of the house, who might be supposed 
 to have his regular score at the bar, his summer seat 
 at the open window, and his prescriptive corner at 
 the winter’s fireside. Being of a sociable aspect, I 
 ventured to address him with a remark, calculated 
 to draw forth his historical reminiscences, if any 
 such were in his mind; and it gratified me to dis- 
 cover that, between memory and tradition, the old 
 gentleman was really possessed of some very pleasant 
 gossip about the Province House. The portion of 
 his talk which chiefly interested me was the outline 
 of the following legend. He professed to have re- 
 ceived it at one or two removes from an eye-wit- 
 ness; but this derivation, together with the lapse of 
 time, must have afforded opportunities for many va- 
 riations of the narrative; so that despairing of literal 
 and absolute truth, I have not scrupled to make such 
 further changes as seemed conducive to the reader’s 
 profit and delight. 
 
58 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 At one of the entertainments given at the Prov- 
 ince House during the latter part of the siege of 
 Boston, there passed a scene which has never yet 
 been satisfactorily explained. The officers of the 
 British army, and the loyal gentry of the province, 
 most of whom were collected within the beleaguered 
 town, had been invited to a masked ball; for it was 
 the policy of Sir William Howe to hide the distress 
 and danger of the period, and the desperate aspect of 
 the siege, under an ostentation of festivity. The 
 spectacle of this evening, if the oldest members of 
 the provincial court circle might be believed, was 
 the most gay and gorgeous affair that had occurred 
 in the annals of the government. The brilliantly 
 lighted apartments were thronged with figures that 
 seemed to have stepped from the dark canvas of 
 historic portraits, or to have flitted forth from the 
 magic pages of romance, or at least to have flown 
 hither from one of the London theaters, without a 
 change of garments. Steeled knights of the Con- 
 quest, bearded statesmen of Queen Elizabeth, and 
 high-ruffled ladies of her court were mingled with 
 characters of comedy, such as a party-colored Merry 
 Andrew, jingling his cap and bells; a Falstaff, almost 
 as provocative of laughter as his prototype, and a 
 Don Quixote, with a bean-pole for a lance and a 
 potlid for a shield. 
 
 But the broadest merriment was excited by a group 
 of figures ridiculously dressed in old regimentals, 
 which seemed to have been purchased at a military 
 rag-fair, or pilfered from some receptacle of the 
 cast-off clothes of both the French and British armies. 
 
HOWE’S MASQUERADE 
 
 59 
 
 Portions of their attire had probably been worn at 
 the siege of Louisburg, and the coats of most recent 
 cut might have been rent and tattered by sword, ball, 
 or bayonet, as long ago as Wolfe’s victory. One of 
 these worthies — a tall, lank figure, brandishing a 
 rusty sword of immense longitude — purported to be 
 no less a personage than General George Washing- 
 ton; and the other principal officers of the American 
 army, such as Gates, Lee, Putnam, Schuyler, Ward, 
 and Heath, were represented by similar scarecrows. 
 An interview in the mock-heroic style between the 
 rebel warriors and the British commander-in-chief 
 was received with immense applause, which came 
 loudest of all from the loyalists of the colony. There 
 was one of the guests, however, who stood apart, 
 eyeing these antics sternly and scornfully, at once 
 with a frown and a bitter smile. 
 
 It was an old man, formerly of high station and 
 great repute in the province, and who had been a 
 very famous soldier in his day. Some surprise had 
 been expressed that a person of Colonel Joliffe’s 
 known whig principles, though now too old to take 
 an active part in the contest, should have remained 
 in Boston during the siege, and especially that he 
 should consent to show himself in the mansion of 
 Sir William Howe. But thither he had come, with 
 a fair granddaughter under his arm ; and there, amid 
 all the mirth and buffoonery, stood this stern old 
 figure, the best sustained character in the mas- 
 querade, because so well representing the antique 
 spirit of his native land. The other guests affirmed 
 that Colonel Joliffe’s black puritanical scowl threw 
 
60 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 a shadow round about him; although in spite of his 
 somber influence their gayety continued to blaze 
 higher, like (an ominous comparison) the flickering 
 brilliancy of a lamp which has but a little while to 
 burn. Eleven strokes, full half an hour ago, had 
 pealed from the clock of the Old South, when a 
 rumor was circulated among the company that some 
 new spectacle or pageant was about to be exhibited, 
 which should put a fitting close to the splendid fes- 
 tivities of the night. 
 
 “What new jest has your Excellency in hand?” 
 asked the Rev. Mather Byles, whose Presbyterian 
 scruples had not kept him from the entertainment. 
 “Trust me, sir, I have already laughed more than 
 beseems my cloth, at your Homeric confabulation 
 with yonder ragamuffin general of the rebels. One 
 other such fit of merriment and I must throw off my 
 clerical wig and band.” 
 
 “Not so, good Dr. Byles,” answered Sir William 
 Howe ; “if mirth were a crime, you had never gained 
 your doctorate in divinity. As to this new foolery, 
 I know no more about it than yourself; perhaps not 
 so much. Honestly now, Doctor, have you not 
 stirred up the sober brains of some of your country- 
 men to enact a scene in our masquerade?” 
 
 “Perhaps,” slyly remarked the granddaughter of 
 Colonel Joliffe, whose high spirit had been stung by 
 many taunts against New England — “perhaps we are 
 to have a mask of allegorical figures. Victory, with 
 trophies from Lexington and Bunker Hill; Plenty, 
 with her overflowing horn, to typify the present 
 
HOWE’S MASQUERADE 61 
 
 abundance in this good town; and Glory, with a 
 wreath for his Excellency’s brow.” 
 
 Sir William Howe smiled at words which he 
 would have answered with one of his darkest frowns 
 had they been uttered by lips that wore a beard. He 
 was spared the necessity of a retort by a singular 
 interruption. A sound of music was heard without 
 the house, as if proceeding from a full band of 
 military instruments stationed in the street, play- 
 ing, not such a festal strain as was suited to the 
 occasion, but a slow funeral march. The drums ap- 
 peared to be muffled, and the trumpets poured forth 
 a wailing breath, which at once hushed the merriment 
 of the auditors, filling all with wonder and some with 
 apprehension. The idea occurred to many that either 
 the funeral procession of some great personage had 
 halted in front of the Province House, or that a 
 corpse, in a velvet-covered and gorgeously decorated 
 coffin, was about to be borne from the portal. After 
 listening a moment, Sir William Howe called, in a 
 stern voice, to the leader of the musicians, who had 
 hitherto enlivened the entertainment with gay and 
 lightsome melodies. The man was drum-major to 
 one of the British regiments. 
 
 “Dighton,” demanded the general, “what means 
 this foolery? Bid your band silence that dead 
 march, or, by my word, they shall have sufficient 
 cause for their lugubrious strains ! Silence it, sirrah !” 
 
 “Please, your Honor,” answered the drum-major, 
 whose rubicund visage had lost all its color, “the 
 fault is none of mine. I and my band are all here 
 together, and I question whether there be a man 
 
62 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 of us that could play that march without book. I 
 never heard it but once before, and that was at the 
 funeral of his late Majesty, King George the Sec- 
 ond/’ 
 
 “Well, well!” said Sir William Howe, recovering 
 his composure ; “it is the prelude to some mas- 
 querading antic. Let it pass.” 
 
 A figure now presented itself, but among the many 
 fantastic masks that were uispersed through the 
 apartments none could tell precisely from whence it 
 came. It was a man in an old-fashioned dress of 
 black serge, and having the aspect of a steward or 
 principal domestic in the household of a nobleman 
 or great English landholder. This figure advanced 
 to the outer door of the mansion, and throwing both 
 its leaves wide open, withdrew a little to one side 
 and looked back toward the grand staircase, as if 
 expecting some person to descend. At the same time, 
 the music in the street sounded a loud and doleful 
 summons. The eyes of Sir William Howe and his 
 guests being directed to the staircase, there appeared, 
 on the uppermost landing-place that was discernible 
 from the bottom, several personages descending 
 toward the door. The foremost was a man of stern 
 visage, wearing a steeple-crowned hat and a skull- 
 cap beneath it ; a dark cloak, and huge wrinkled boots 
 that came half-way up his legs. Under his arm was 
 a rolled-up banner, which seemed to be the banner 
 of England, but strangely rent and torn; he had a 
 sword in his right hand, and grasped a Bible in his 
 left. The next figure was of milder aspect, yet full 
 of dignity, wearing a broad ruff, over which descend- 
 
HOWE’S MASQUERADE 
 
 63 
 
 ed a beard, a gown of wrought velvet, and a doublet 
 and hose of black satin. He carried a roll of manu- 
 script in his hand. Close behind these two came a 
 young man of very striking countenance and de- 
 meanor, with deep thought and contemplation on his 
 brow, and perhaps a flash of enthusiasm in his eye. 
 His garb, like that of his predecessors, was of an 
 antique fashion, and there was a stain of blood upon 
 his ruff. In the same group with these were three 
 or four others, all men of dignity and evident com- 
 mand, and bearing themselves like personages who 
 were accustomed to the gaze of the multitude. It 
 was the idea of the beholders that these figures went 
 to join the mysterious funeral that had halted in 
 front of the Province House; yet that supposition 
 seemed to be contradicted by the air of triumph 
 with which they waved their hands as they crossed 
 the threshold and vanished through the portal. 
 
 “In the Devil’s name, what is this?” muttered Sir 
 William Howe to a gentleman beside him; “a pro- 
 cession of the regicide judges of King Charles the 
 martyr ?” 
 
 “These,” said Colonel Joliffe, breaking silence al- 
 most for the first time that evening — “these, if I 
 interpret them aright, are the Puritan governors — 
 the rulers of the old, original democracy of Massa- 
 chusetts. Endicott, with the banner from which he 
 had torn the S3unbol of subjection, and Winthrop, 
 and Sir Henry Vane, and Dudley, Haynes, Belling- 
 ham, and Leverett.” 
 
 “Why had that young man a stain of blood upon 
 his ruff?” asked Miss Joliffe. 
 
84 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 “Because in after years/’ answered her grandfather, 
 “he laid down the wisest head in England upon the 
 block for the principles of liberty.” 
 
 “Will not your Excellency order out the guard?” 
 whispered Lord Percy, who, with other British offi- 
 cers, had now assembled round the general. “There 
 may be a plot under this mummery.” 
 
 “Tush ! we have nothing to fear,” carelessly replied 
 Sir William Howe. “There can be no worse treason 
 in the matter than a jest, and that somewhat of the 
 dullest. Even were it a sharp and bitter one, our 
 best policy would be to laugh it off. See, here come 
 more of these gentry.” 
 
 Another group of characters had now partly de- 
 scended the staircase. The first was a venerable and 
 white-bearded patriarch, who cautiously felt his way 
 downward with a staff. Treading hastily behind 
 him, and stretching forth his gauntleted hand as if to 
 grasp the old man’s shoulder, came a tall, soldier- 
 like figure, equipped with a plumed cap of steel, a 
 bright breastplate, and a long sword, which rattled 
 against the stairs. Next was seen a stout man, 
 dressed in rich and courtly attire, but not of courtly 
 demeanor; his gait had the swinging motion of a 
 seaman’s walk; and chancing to stumble on the stair- 
 case, he suddenly grew wrathful, and was heard to 
 mutter an oath. He was followed by a noble-looking 
 personage in a curled wig, such as are represented 
 in the portraits of Queen Anne’s time and earlier; 
 and the breast of his coa/ was decorated with an 
 embroidered star. While advancing to the door he 
 bowed to the right hand and to the left, in a very 
 
65 
 
 HOWE’S MASQUERADE 
 
 gracious and insinuating style; but as he crossed 
 the threshold, unlike the early Puritan governors, he 
 seemed to wring his hands with sorrow, 
 
 “Prithee, play the part of a chorus, good Dr. 
 Byles,” said Sir William Howe. “What worthies are 
 these ?” 
 
 “If it please your Excellency, they lived somewhat 
 before my day,” answered the Doctor ; “but doubtless 
 our friend, the Colonel, has been hand in glove with 
 them.” 
 
 “Their living faces I never looked upon,” said 
 Colonel Joliffe, gravely; “although I have spoken 
 face to face with many rulers of this land, and shall 
 greet yet another with an old man’s blessing ere I 
 die. But we talk of these figures. I take the ven- 
 erable patriarch to be Bradstreet, the last of the 
 Puritans, who was governor at ninety, or there- 
 abouts. The next is Sir Edmund Andros, a tyrant, 
 as any New England schoolboy will tell you; and 
 therefore the people cast him down from his high 
 seat into a dungeon. Then comes Sir William 
 Phipps, shepherd, cooper, sea-captain, and governor; 
 may many of his countrymen rise as high from as 
 low an origin! Lastly, you saw the gracious Ekrl 
 of Bellamont, who ruled us under King William.” 
 
 “But what is the meaning of it all?” asked Lord 
 Percy. 
 
 “Now, were I a rebel,” said Miss Joliffe, half 
 aloud, “I might fancy that the ghosts of these an- 
 cient governors had been summoned to form the 
 funeral procession of royal authority in New Eng- 
 
66 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 Several other figures were now seen at the turn 
 of the staircase. The one in advance had a thought- 
 ful, anxious, and somewhat crafty expression of 
 face; and in spite of his loftiness of manner, which 
 was evidently the result both of an ambitious spirit 
 and of long continuance in high stations, he seemed 
 not incapable of cringing to a greater than himself. 
 A few steps behind came an officer in a scarlet and 
 embroidered uniform, cut in a fashion old enough 
 to have been worn by the Duke of Marlborough. His 
 nose had a rubicund tinge, which, together with the 
 twinkle of his eye, might have marked him as a lover 
 of the wine-cup and good fellowship; notwithstand- 
 ing which tokens, he appeared ill at ease, and often 
 glanced around him, as if apprehensive of some 
 secret mischief. Next came a portly gentleman, 
 wearing a coat of shaggy cloth, lined with silken 
 velvet; he had sense, shrewdness, and humor in his 
 face, and a folio volume under his arm; but his 
 aspect was that of a man vexed and tormented be- 
 yond all patience and harassed almost to death. He 
 went hastily down, and was followed by a dignified 
 person, dressed in a purple velvet suit, with very 
 rich embroidery; his demeanor would have possessed 
 much stateliness, only that a grievous fit of the gout 
 compelled him to hobble from stair to stair, with 
 contortions of face and body. When Dr. Byles be- 
 held this figure on the staircase, he shivered as with 
 an ague, but continued to watch him steadfastly, 
 until the gouty gentleman had reached the threshold, 
 made a gesture of anguish and despair, and vanished 
 
HOWE’S MASQUERADE 67 
 
 into the outer gloom, whither the funeral music 
 summoned him. 
 
 “Governor Belcher! — my old patron! — in his very 
 shape and dress !” gasped Dr. Byles. “This is an 
 awful mockery!” 
 
 “A tedious foolery, rather,” said Sir William 
 Howe, with an air of indifference. “But who were 
 the three that preceded him?” 
 
 “Governor Dudley, a cunning politician — yet his 
 craft once brought him to a prison,” replied Colonel 
 Joliffe; “Governor Shute, formerly a colonel under 
 Marlborough, and whom the people frightened out 
 of the province ; and learned Governor Burnet, 
 whom the Legislature tormented into a mortal 
 fever. 5 
 
 “Methinks they were miserable men, these royal 
 governors of Massachusetts,” observed Miss Joliffe. 
 “Heavens, how dim the light grows !” 
 
 It was certainly a fact that the large lamp which 
 illuminated the staircase now burned dim and 
 duskily; so that several figures, which passed hastily 
 down the stairs and went forth from the porch,, ap- 
 peared rather like shadows than persons of fleshly 
 substance. Sir William Howe and his guests stood 
 at the doors of the contiguous apartments, watching 
 the progress of this singular pageant, with various 
 emotions of anger, contempt, or half-acknowledged 
 fear, but still with an anxious curiosity. The shapes 
 which now seemed hastening to join the mysterious 
 procession were recognized rather by striking pecu- 
 liarities of dress or broad characteristics of manner 
 than by any perceptible resemblance of features to 
 
68 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 their prototypes. Their faces, indeed, were inva- 
 riably kept in deep shadow. But Dr. Byles, and 
 other gentlemen who had long been familiar with 
 the successive rulers of the province, were heard to 
 whisper the names of Shirley, of Pownall, of Sir 
 Francis Bernard, and of the well-remembered Hutch- 
 inson, thereby confessing that the actors, whoever 
 they might be, in this spectral march of governors, 
 had succeeded in putting on some distant portraiture 
 of the real personages. As they vanished from the 
 door, still did these shadows toss their arms into 
 the gloom of night, with a dread expression of woe. 
 Following the mimic representation of Hutchinson 
 came a military figure, holding before his face the 
 cocked hat which he had taken from his powdered 
 head; but his epaulets and other insignia of rank 
 were those of a general officer; and something in 
 his mien reminded the beholders of one who had 
 recently been master of the Province House, and 
 chief or all the land. 
 
 “The shape of Gage, as true as in a looking- 
 glass l ” exclaimed Lord Percy, turning pale. 
 
 “No, surely,” cried Miss Joliffe, laughing hys- 
 terically; “it could not be Gage, or Sir William 
 would have greeted his old comrade in arms! Per- 
 haps he will not suffer the next to pass unchal- 
 lenged.” 
 
 “Of that be assured, young lady,” answered Sir 
 William Howe, fixing his eyes, with a very marked 
 expression, upon the immovable visage of her grand- 
 father. “I have long enough delayed to pay the 
 ceremonies of a host to these departing guests. The 
 
HOWE'S MASQUERADE 69 
 
 next that takes his leave shall receive due cour- 
 tesy” 
 
 A wild and dreary burst of music came through 
 the open door. It seemed as if the procession, which 
 had been gradually filling up its ranks, were now 
 about to move, and that this loud peal of the wailing 
 trumpets and roll of the muffled drums were a call 
 to some loiterer to make haste. Many eyes, by an 
 irresistible impulse, were turned upon Sir William 
 Howe, as if it were he whom the dreary music sum- 
 moned to the funeral of departed power. 
 
 “See! — here comes the last!” whispered Miss Jol- 
 iffe, pointing her tremulous finger to the stai^ase. 
 
 A figure had come into view as if descending the 
 stairs, although so dusky was the region whence it 
 emerged some of the spectators fancied that they had 
 seen this human shape suddenly molding itself amid 
 the gloom. Downward the figure came, with a stately 
 and martial tread, and reaching the lowest stair 
 was observed to be a tall man, booted and wrapped 
 in a military cloak, which was drawn up around the 
 face so as to meet the flapped brim of a laced hat. 
 The features, therefore, were completely hidden. 
 But the British officers deemed that they had seen 
 that military cloak before, and even recognized the 
 frayed embroidery on the collar, as well as the gilded 
 scabbard of a sword which protruded from the folds 
 of the cloak, and glittered in a vivid gleam of light. 
 Apart from these trifling particulars there were char- 
 acteristics of gait and bearing which impelled the 
 wondering guests to glance from the shrouded fig- 
 ure to Sir William Howe, as if tC* satisfy themselves 
 
70 HAWTHuKNE 
 
 that their host had not suddenly vanished from the 
 midst of them. 
 
 With a dark flush of wrath upon his brow, they 
 saw the general draw his sword and advance to meet 
 the figure in the cloak before the latter had stepped 
 one pace upon the floor. 
 
 “Villain, unmuffle yourself!” cried he. “You pass 
 no farther!” 
 
 The figure, without blenching a hair’s-breadth 
 from the sword which was pointed at his breast, 
 made a solemn pause and lowered the cape of the 
 cloak from about his face, yet not sufficiently for 
 the spectators to catch a glimpse of it. But Sir 
 William Howe had evidently seen enough. The 
 sternness of his countenance gave place to a look 
 of wild amazement, if not horror, while he recoiled 
 several steps from the figure and let fall his sword 
 upon the floor. The martial shape again drew the 
 cloak about his features and passed on; but reach- 
 ing the threshold, with his back toward the spec- 
 tators, he was seen to stamp his foot and shake 
 his clinched hands in the air. It was afterward 
 affirmed that Sir William Howe had repeated that 
 self-same gesture of rage and sorrow when, for the 
 last time, and as the last royal governor, he passed 
 through the portal of the Province House. 
 
 “Hark! — the procession moves,” said Miss Joliffe. 
 
 The music was dying away along the street, and its 
 dismal strains were mingled with the knell of mid- 
 night from the steeple of the Old South, and with 
 the roar of artillery, which announced that the be- 
 leaguering army of Washington had intrenched itself 
 
HOWE’S MASQUERADE 71 
 
 upon a nearer height than before. As the deep 
 boom of the cannon smote upon his ear, Colonel 
 Joliffe raised himself to the full height of his aged 
 form and smiled sternly on the British general. 
 
 “Would your Excellency inquire further into the 
 mystery of the pageant?” said he. 
 
 “Take care of your gray head!” cried Sir Wil- 
 liam Howe, fiercely, though with a quivering lip. 
 “It has stood too long on a traitor’s shoulders!” 
 
 “You must make haste to chop it off, then,” calmly 
 replied the Colonel ; “for a few hours longer, and not 
 all the power of Sir William Howe, nor of his mas- 
 ter, shall cause one of these gray hairs to fall. The 
 empire of Britain in this ancient province is at its last 
 gasp to-night ; almost while I speak it is a dead 
 corpse, and methinks the shadows of the old gover- 
 nors are fit mourners at its funeral!” 
 
 With these words Colonel Joliffe threw on his 
 cloak, and drawing his granddaughter’s arm within 
 his own, retired from the last festival that a British 
 ruler ever held in the old province of Massachusetts 
 Bay. It was supposed that the Colonel and the 
 young lady possessed some secret intelligence in re- 
 gard to the mysterious pageant of that night. How- 
 ever this might be, such knowledge has never be- 
 come general. The actors in the scene have vanished 
 into deeper obscurity than even that wild Indian 
 band who scattered the cargoes of the tea-ships on 
 the waves and gained a place in history, yet left no 
 names. But superstition, among other legends of 
 this mansion, repeats the wondrous tale that on the 
 anniversary night of Britain’s discomfiture the ghosts 
 
72 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 of the ancient governors of Massachusetts still glide 
 through the portal of the Province House. And last 
 of all, comes a figure shrouded in a military cloak, 
 tossing his clinched hands into the air, and stamping 
 his iron-shod boots upon the broad freestone steps 
 with a semblance of feverish despair, but without 
 the sound of a foot-tramp. 
 
 When the truth-telling accents of the elderly gen- 
 tleman were hushed, I drew a long breath and looked 
 round the room, striving, with the best energy of 
 my imagination, to throw a tinge of romance and 
 historic grandeur over the realities of the scene. But 
 my nostrils snuffed up a scent of cigar-smoke, clouds 
 of which the narrator had emitted by way of visible 
 emblem, I suppose, of the nebulous obscurity of his 
 tale. Moreover, my gorgeous fantasies were wofully 
 disturbed by the rattling of the spoon in a tumbler 
 of whisky punch, which Mr. Thomas Waite was 
 mingling for a customer. Nor did it add to the 
 picturesque appearance of the paneled walls that the 
 slate of the Brookline stage was suspended against 
 them, instead of the armorial escutcheon of some 
 far-descended governor. A stage-driver sat at one 
 of the windows, reading a penny paper of the day — 
 the Boston Times — and presenting a figure which 
 could nowise be brought into any picture of “times 
 in Boston” seventy or a hundred years ago. On the 
 window-seat lay a bundle, neatly done up in brown 
 paper, the direction of which I had the idle curi- 
 osity to read, “Miss Susan Huggins, at the Prov- 
 ince House/* A pretty chambermaid, no doubt. 
 
DROWNE’S WOODEN IMAGE 73 
 
 In truth, it is desperately hard work when we at- 
 tempt to throw the spell of hoar antiquity over locali- 
 ties with which the living world, and the day that 
 ir 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 
 figures had preceded me, if gladdened me to be con- 
 scious of a thrill of awe. Then diving through the 
 narrow archway, a few strides transported me into 
 tb? densest throng of Washington Street 
 
 DROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE 
 
 One sunshiny morning in the good old times 
 of the town of Boston, a young carver in wood, 
 well known by the name of Drowne, stood con- 
 templating a large oaken log, which it was his pur- 
 pose to convert into the figurehead of a vessel. And 
 while he discussed within his own mind what sort 
 of shape or similitude it were well to bestow upon 
 this excellent piece of timber, there came into 
 Drowne’s workshop a certain Captain Kunnewell, 
 owner and commander of the good brig called the 
 Cynosure, which had just returned from her first 
 voyage to Fayal. 
 
 “Ah! that will do, Drowne, that will do!” cried 
 the jolly captain, tapping the log with his rattan. 
 “I bespeak this very piece of oak for the figurehead 
 of the Cynosure. She has shown herself the sweet- 
 
74 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 est craft that ever floated, and I mean to decorate her 
 prow with the handsomest image that the skill of 
 man can cut out of timber. And, Drowne, you are 
 the fellow to execute it.” 
 
 “You give me more credit than I deserve, Cap- 
 tain Hunnewell,” said the carver, modestly, yet as 
 one conscious of eminence in his art. “But for the 
 sake of the good brig, I stand ready to do my best. 
 And which of these designs do you prefer? Here,” 
 — pointing to a staring, half-length figure, in a white 
 wig and scarlet coat — “here is an excellent model, 
 the likeness of our gracious king. Here is the va- 
 liant Admiral Vernon. Or, if you prefer a female 
 figure, what say you to Britannia with the trident?” 
 
 “All very fine, Drowne ; all very fine,” answered 
 the mariner. “But as nothing like the brig ever 
 swam the ocean, so I am determined she shall have 
 such a figurehead as old Neptune never saw in his 
 life. And what is more, as there is a secret in the 
 matter, you must pledge your credit not to be- 
 tray it.” 
 
 “Certainly,” said Drowne, marvelling, however, 
 what possible mystery there could be in reference 
 to an affair so open, of necessity, to the inspection 
 of all the world as the figurehead of a vessel. “You 
 may depend, captain, on my being as secret as the 
 nature of the case will permit.” 
 
 Captain Hunnewell then took Drowne by the 
 button, and communicated his wishes in so low a 
 tone that it would be unmannerly to repeat what 
 was evidently intended for the carver’s private ear. 
 We shall, therefore, take the opportunity to give the 
 
BROWNE’S WOODEN IMAGE 75 
 
 reader a few desirable particulars about Drowne 
 himself. 
 
 He was the first American who is known to have 
 attempted — in a very humble line, it is true — that art 
 in which we can now reckon so many names already 
 distinguished or rising to distinction. From his 
 earliest boyhood he had exhibited a knack — for it 
 would be too proud a word to call it genius — a 
 knack, therefore, for the imitation of the human fig- 
 ure in whatever material came most readily to hand. 
 The snows of a New England winter had often sup- 
 plied him with a species of marble as dazzlingly 
 white, at least, as the Parian or the Carrara, and if 
 less durable, yet sufficiently so to correspond with 
 any claims to permanent existence possessed by the 
 boys’ frozen statues. Yet they won admiration from 
 maturer judges than his schoolfellows, and were 
 indeed remarkably clever, though destitute of the 
 native warmth that might have made the snow 
 melt beneath his hand. As he advanced in life, the 
 young man adopted pine and oak as eligible materials 
 for the display of his skill, which now began to 
 bring him a return of solid silver as well as the 
 empty praise that had been an apt reward enough 
 for his productions of evanescent snow. He be- 
 came noted for carving ornamental pump-heads, and 
 wooden-urns for gate-posts, and decorations more 
 grotesque than fanciful for mantel-pieces. No apothe- 
 cary would have deemed himself in the way of 
 obtaining custom without setting up a gilded mortar, 
 if not a head of Galen or Hippocrates, from the 
 skillful hand of Drowne. 
 
76 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 But the great scope of his business lay in the 
 manufacture of figureheads for vessels. Whether it 
 were the monarch himself, or some famous British 
 admiral or general, or the governor of the prov- 
 ince, or perchance the favorite daughter of the ship- 
 owner, there the image stood above the prow, decked 
 out in gorgeous colors, magnificently gilded, and 
 staring the whole world out of countenance, as if 
 from an innnate consciousness of its own superior- 
 ity. These specimens of native sculpture had crossed 
 the sea in all directions, and been not ignobly no- 
 ticed among the crowded shipping of the Thames 
 and wherever else the hardy mariners of New Eng- 
 land had pushed their adventures. It must be con- 
 fessed that a family likeness pervaded these re- 
 spectable progeny of Drowne’s skill; that the benign 
 countenance of the king resembled those of his sub- 
 jects, and that Miss Peggy Hobart, the merchant’s 
 daughter, bore a remarkable similitude to Britannia, 
 Victory, and other ladies of the allegoric sister- 
 hood ; and finally, that they all had a kind of wooden 
 aspect which proved an intimate relationship with the 
 unshaped blocks of timber in the carver’s workshop. 
 But at least there was no inconsiderable skill of hand, 
 nor a deficiency of any attribute to render them 
 really works of art, except that deep quality, be it of 
 soul or intellect, which bestows life upon the life- 
 less and warmth upon the cold, and which, had it 
 been present, would have made Drowne’s wooden 
 image instinct with spirit. 
 
 The captain of the Cynosure had now finished 
 his instructions. 
 
BROWNE’S WOODEN IMAGE 
 
 77 
 
 “And Browne,” said he, impressively, “you must 
 lay aside all other business and set about this forth- 
 with. And as to the price, only do the job in first- 
 rate style, and you shall settle that point yourself.” 
 
 “Very well, captain,” answered the carver, who 
 looked grave and somewhat perplexed, yet had a 
 sort of smile upon his visage ; “depend upon it. 
 I’ll do my utmost to satisfy you.” 
 
 From that moment the men of taste about Long 
 Wharf and the Town Dock who were wont to show 
 their love for the arts by frequent visits to Drowne’s 
 workshop, and admiration of his wooden images,, 
 began to be sensible of a mystery in the carver’s 
 conduct. Often he was absent in the daytime. 
 Sometimes, as might be judged by gleams of light 
 from the shop windows, he was at work until a late 
 hour in the evening, although neither knock nor 
 voice, on such occasions, could gain admittance for 
 a visitor or elicit any word of response. Nothing 
 remarkable, however, was observed in the shop at 
 those hours when it was thrown open. A fine piece 
 of timber, indeed, which Drowne was known to have 
 reserved for some work of especial dignity, was seen 
 to be gradually assuming shape. What shape it 
 was destined ultimately to take was a problem to 
 his friends and a point on which the carver him- 
 self preserved a rigid silence. But day after day, 
 though Drowne was seldom noticed in the act of 
 working upon it, this rude form began to be de- 
 veloped until it became evident to all observers 
 that a female figure was growing into mimic fife. 
 At each new visit they beheld a larger pile of wqspriep* 
 
78 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 chips and nearer proximation to something beautiful. 
 It seemed as if the hamadryad of the oak had shel- 
 tered herself from the unimaginative world within 
 the heart of her native tree, and that it was only 
 necessary to remove the strange shapelessness that 
 had incrusted her, and reveal the grace and loveli- 
 ness of a divinity. Imperfect as the design, the atti- 
 tude, the costume,, and especially the face of the 
 image, still remained, there was already an effect 
 that drew the eye from the wooden cleverness of 
 Drowne’s earlier productions and fixed it upon the 
 tantalizing mystery of this new project. 
 
 Copley, the celebrated painter, then a young man 
 and a resident of Boston, came one day to visit 
 Drowne; for he had recognized so much of mod- 
 erate ability in the carver as to induce him, in the 
 dearth of professional sympathy, to cultivate his 
 acquaintance. On entering the shop, the artist 
 glanced at the inflexible image of king, commander, 
 dame, and allegory that stood around on the best 
 of which might have been bestowed the question- 
 able praise that it looked as if a living man had 
 here been changed to wood, and that not only the 
 physical, but the intellectual and spiritual, part par- 
 took of the stolid transformation. But in not a 
 single instance did it seem as if the wood were 
 imbibing the ethereal essence of humanity. What a 
 wide distinction is here! and how far would the 
 slightest portion of the latter merit have outvalued 
 the utmost degree of the former! 
 
 “My friend Drowne,” said Copley, smiling to 
 himself, but alluding to the mechanical and wooden 
 
DROWNE’S WOODEN IMAGE 79 
 
 cleverness that so invariably distinguished the 
 images, “you are really a remarkable person ! I 
 have seldom met with a man in your line of busi- 
 ness that could do so much; for one other touch 
 might make this figure of General Wolfe, for in- 
 stance, a breathing and intelligent human creature.” 
 
 “You would have me think you were praising 
 me highly, Mr. Copley,” answered Drowne, turning 
 his back upon Wolfe’s image in apparent disgust. 
 “But there has come a light into my mind. I know, 
 what you know as well, that the one touch which 
 you speak of as deficient is the only one that would 
 be truly valuable, and that without it these works 
 of mine are no better than worthless abortions. 
 There is the same difference between them and the 
 works of an inspired artist as between a sign-post 
 daub and one of your best pictures.” 
 
 “This is strange,” cried Copley, looking him in 
 the face, which now, as the painter fancied, had a 
 singular depth of intelligence, though hitherto it 
 had not given him greatly the advantages over 
 his own family of wooden images. “What has come 
 over you ? How is it that, possessing the idea which 
 you have now uttered, you should produce only 
 such works as these?” 
 
 The carver smiled, but made no reply. Copley 
 turned again to the images, conceiving that the 
 sense of deficiency which Drowne had just ex- 
 pressed, and which is so rare in a merely mechanical 
 character, must surely imply a genius, the tokens of 
 which had heretofore been overlooked. But no ; 
 there was not a trace of it. He was about to with- 
 
80 
 
 I-IAWTHORNE 
 
 draw, when his eyes chanced to fall upon a half- 
 developed figure which lay in a corner of the work- 
 shop, surrounded by scattered chips of oak. It ar- 
 rested him at once. 
 
 “What is here? Who has done this?” he broke 
 out, after contemplating it in speechless astonish- 
 ment for an instant. “Here is the divine, the life- 
 giving touch. What inspired hand is beckoning this 
 wood to arise and live? Whose work is this?” 
 
 “No man’s work,” replied Drowne. ‘The figure 
 lies within that block of oak, and it is my business 
 to find it.” 
 
 “Drowne,” said the true artist, grasping the carver 
 fervently by the hand, “you are a man of genius !” 
 
 As Copley departed, happening to glance backward 
 from the threshold, he beheld Drowne bending over 
 the half-created shape, and stretching forth his arms 
 as if he would have embraced and drawn it to his 
 heart, while, had such a miracle been possible, his 
 countenance expressed passion enough to communi- 
 cate warmth and sensibility to the lifeless oak. 
 
 “Strange enough !” said the artist to himself. 
 “Who would have looked for a modern Pygmalion 
 in the person of a Yankee mechanic!” 
 
 As yet the image was but vague in its outward 
 presentment; so that as in the cloud shapes around 
 the western sun the observer rather felt, or was led 
 to imagine, than really saw what was intended by 
 it. Day by day, however, the work assumed greater 
 precision, and settled its irregular and misty outline 
 into distincter grace and beauty. The general de- 
 sign was now obviou? *he common eye. It was 
 
DROWNE’S WOODEN IMAGE «1 
 
 a female figure, in what appeared to be a foreign 
 dress, the gown being laced over the bosom, and 
 opening in front so as to disclose a skirt or petti- 
 coat, the folds and inequalities of which were ad- 
 mirably represented in the oaken substance. She 
 wore a hat of singular gracefulness, and abundantly 
 laden with flowers, such as never grew in the rude 
 soil of New England, but which, with all their fanci- 
 ful luxuriance, had a natural truth that it seemed 
 impossible for the most fertile imagination to have 
 attained without copying from real prototypes. There 
 were several little appendages to this dress, such as 
 a fan, a pair of earrings, a chain about the neck, a 
 watch in the bosom, and a ring upon the finger, all 
 of which would have been deemed beneath the dig- 
 nity of sculpture. They were put on, however, with 
 as much taste as a lovely woman might have shown 
 in her attire, and could therefore have shocked none 
 but a judgment spoiled by artistic rules. 
 
 The face was still imperfect; but gradually, by a 
 magic touch, intelligence and sensibility brightened 
 through the features, with all the effect of light 
 gleaming forth from within the solid oak. The face 
 became alive. It was a beautiful, though not pre- 
 cisely regular and somewhat haughty aspect, but 
 with a certain piquancy about the eyes and mouth, 
 which, of all expressions, would have seemed the 
 most impossible to throw over a wooden counte- 
 nance. And now, so far as carving went, this won- 
 derful production was complete. 
 
 “Drowne,” said Copley, who had hardly missed a 
 single day in his visits to the carver's workshop. 
 
82 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 “if this work were in marble it would make you fa- 
 mous at once; nay, I would almost affirm that it 
 would make an era in the art. It is as ideal as an 
 antique statue, and yet as real as any lovely woman 
 whom one meets at fireside or in the street. But I 
 trust you do not mean to desecrate this exquisite 
 creature with paint, like those staring kings and 
 admirals yonder ?” 
 
 “Not paint her!” exclaimed Captain Hunnewell, 
 who stood by ; “not paint the figurehead of the Cyno- 
 sure! And what sort of a figure should I cut in a 
 foreign port with such an unpainted oaken stick as 
 this over my prowi She must and she shall be 
 painted to the life, from the topmost flower in her 
 hat down to the silver spangles on her slippers.” 
 
 “Mr. Copley,” said Drowne, quietly, “I know 
 nothing of marble statuary, and nothing of the 
 sculptor’s rules of art; but of this wooden image, 
 this work of my hands, this creature of my heart” 
 — and here his voice faltered and choked in a very 
 singular manner — “of this — of her — I may say that 
 I know something. A wellspring of inward wis- 
 dom gushed within me as I wrought upon the oak 
 with my whole strength and soul and faith. Let 
 others do what they may with marble, and adopt 
 what rules they choose. If I can produce my desired 
 effect by painted wood, those rules are not for me, 
 and I have a right to disregard them.” 
 
 “The very spirit of genius,” muttered Copley to 
 himself. “How otherwise should this carver feel 
 himself entitled to transcend all rules, and make 
 me ashamed of quoting them?” 
 
DROWNE’S WOODEN IMAGE 83 
 
 He looked earnestly at Drowne, and again saw 
 that expression of human love which, in a spirit- 
 ual sense, as the artist could not help imagining, 
 was the secret of the life that had been breathed 
 into this block of wood. 
 
 The carver, still in the same secrecy that marked 
 all his operations upon this mysterious image, pro- 
 ceeded to paint the habiliments in their proper col- 
 ors, and the countenance with Nature’s red and 
 white. When all was finished he threw open his 
 workshop and admitted the townspeople to behold 
 what he had done. Most persons, at their first 
 entrance, felt impelled to remove their hats, and 
 pay such reverence as was due to the richly dressed 
 and beautiful young lady who seemed to stand in a 
 corner of the room, with oaken chips and shavings 
 scattered at her feet. Then came a sensation of fear, 
 as if, not being actually human, yet so like humanity, 
 she must therefore be something preternatural. There 
 was, in truth, an indefinable air and expression that 
 might reasonably induce the query, Who and from 
 what sphere this daughter of the oak should be? 
 The strange, rich flowers of Eden on her head ; 
 the complexion, so much deeper and more brilliant 
 than those of our native beauties; the foreign, as it 
 seemed, and fantastic garb, yet not too fantastic 
 to be worn decorously in the street; the delicately 
 wrought embroidery of the skirt; the broad gold 
 chain about her neck; the curious ring upon her 
 finger ; the fan, so exquisitely sculptured in open 
 work and painted to resemble pearl and ebony — 
 where could Drowne, in his sober walk of life, have 
 
84 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 beheld the vision here so matchlessly embodied! 
 And then her face! In the dark eyes and around 
 the voluptuous mouth there played a look, made up 
 of pride, coquetr}'-, and a gleam of mirthfulness, 
 which impressed Copley with the idea that the image 
 was secretly enjoying the perplexing admiration of 
 himself and other beholders. 
 
 '‘And will you,” said he to the carver, “permit 
 this masterpiece to become the figurehead of a ves- 
 sel? Give the honest captain yonder figure of Brit- 
 annia — it will answer his purpose far better— -and 
 send this fairy queen to England, where, for aught 
 I know, it may bring you a thousand pounds/" 
 
 “I have not wrought it for monej',” said Drowne. 
 
 “What sort of a fellow is this?” thought Copley. 
 “A Yankee, and throw away the chance of making his 
 fortune! He has gone mad; and thence has come 
 this gleam of genius.” 
 
 There was still further proof of Browne's lunacy, 
 if credit were due to the rumor that he had been 
 seen kneeling at the feet of the oaken lady and gazing 
 with a lover's passionate ardor into the face that 
 his own hands had created. The bigots of the day 
 hinted that it would be no matter of surprise if 
 an evil spirit were allowed to enter this beautiful 
 form and seduce the carver to destruction. 
 
 The fame of the image spread far and wide. The 
 inhabitants visited it so universally that after a few 
 days of exhibition there was hardly an old man or 
 a child who had not become minutely familiar with 
 its aspect. Even had the story of Browne's wooden 
 image ended here, its celebrity might have been pro- 
 
DROWNE S Vv r OODGN IMAGE 8J 
 
 longed for many years by the reminiscences of those 
 who looked upon it in their childhood, and saw 
 nothing else so beautiful in after life. But the town 
 was now astounded by an event, the narrative of 
 which has formed itself into one of the most singu- 
 lar legends that are yet to be met with in the tra- 
 ditionary chimney-corners of the New England 
 metropolis, where old men and women sit dreaming 
 of the past, and wag their heads at the dreamers of 
 the present and the future. 
 
 One fine morning, just before the departure of 
 the Cynosure on her second voyage to Fayal, the 
 commander of that gallant vessel was seen to issue 
 from his residence in Hanover Street. He was styl- 
 ishly dressed in a blue broadcloth coat, with gold 
 lace at the seams and buttonholes, an embroidered 
 scarlet waistcoat, a triangular hat, with a loop and 
 broad binding of gold, and wore a silver-hilted 
 hanger at his side. But the good captain might have 
 been arrayed in the robes of a prince or the rags of a 
 beggar, without in either case attracting notice, while 
 obscured by such a companion as now leaned on his 
 arm. The people in the street started, rubbed their 
 eyes, and either leaped aside from their path or 
 stood as if transfixed to wood or marble in aston- 
 ishment. 
 
 “Do you see it? — do you see it?” cried on$, with 
 tremulous eagerness. “It is the very same!” 
 
 “The same?” answered another, who had ai rived 
 in town only the night before. “Who do you mean? 
 I see only a sea-captain in his shore-going clothes, 
 and a young lady in a foreign habit, with a bunch 
 
80 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 of beautiful flowers in her hat. On my word, she is 
 as fair and bright a damsel as my eyes have looked 
 on this many a day!” 
 
 “Yes; the same! — the very same!” repeated the 
 other. “Drowne’s wooden image has come to life!” 
 
 Here was a miracle indeed! Yet, illuminated by 
 the sunshine, or darkened by the alternate shade 
 of the houses, and with its garments fluttering 
 lightly in the morning breeze, there passed the image 
 along the street. It was exactly and minutely the 
 shape, the garb, and the face which the townspeople 
 had so recently thronged to see and admire. Not 
 a rich flower upon her head, not a single leaf, but 
 had had its prototype in Drowne’s wooden workman- 
 ship, although now their fragile grace had become 
 flexible, and was shaken by every footstep that the 
 wearer made. The broad gold chain upon the neck 
 was identical with the one represented on the image, 
 and glistened with the motion imparted by the rise 
 and fall of the bosom which it decorated. A real 
 diamond sparkled o^ her finger. In her right hand 
 she bore a pearl and ebony fan, which she flour- 
 ished with a fantastic and bewitching coquetry that 
 was likewise expressed in all her movements, as well 
 as in the style of her beauty and the attire that so 
 well harmonized with it. The face with its brilliant 
 depth of complexion had the same piquancy of mirth- 
 ful mischief that was fixed upon the countenance of 
 the image, but which was here varied and continually 
 shifting, yet always essentially the same, like the 
 sunny gleam upon a bubbling fountain. On the 
 whole, there was something so airy and yet so real 
 
DROWNE’S WOODEN IMAGE 87 
 
 in the figure, and withal so perfectly did it repre- 
 sent Drowne’s image, that people knew not whether 
 to suppose the magic wood etherea.lized into a spirit 
 or warmed and softened into an actual woman. 
 
 “One thing is certain,” muttered a Puritan of 
 the old stamp, “Drowne has sold himself to the 
 devil; and doubtless this gay Captain Hunnewell is 
 a party to the bargain.” 
 
 “And I,” said a young man who overheard him, 
 “would almost consent to be the third victim for the 
 liberty of saluting those lovely lips.” 
 
 “And so would I,” said Copley, the painter, “for 
 the privilege of taking her picture.” 
 
 The image, or the apparition, whichever it might 
 be, still escorted by the bold captain, proceeded 
 from Hanover Street, through some of the cross- 
 lanes that make this portion of the town so intri- 
 cate, to Ann Street, thence into Dock Square, and 
 so downward to Drowne’s shop, which stood just 
 on the water’s edge. The crowd still followed, 
 gathering volume as it rolled along. Never had a 
 modern miracle occurred in such broad daylight, nor 
 in the presence of such a multitude of witnesses. 
 The airy image, as if conscious that she was the 
 object of the murmurs and disturbance mat swelled 
 behind her, appeared slightly vexed and flustered, yet 
 still in a manner consistent with the light vivacity 
 and sportive mischief that were written in her coun- 
 tenance. 
 
 She was observed to flutter her fan with stlch 
 vehement rapidity that the elaborate delicacy of its 
 
88 HAWTHORNE 
 
 workmanship gave way, and it remained broken in 
 her hand. 
 
 Arriving at Drowne’s door, while the captain 
 threw it open, the marvelous apparition paused an 
 instant on the threshold, assuming the very attitude 
 of the image, and casting over the crowd that glance 
 of sunny coquetry which all remembered on the 
 face of the oaken lady. She and her cavalier then 
 disappeared. 
 
 “Ah !” murmured the crowd, drawing a deep 
 breath, as if with one vast pair of lungs. 
 
 “The world looks darker now that she has van- 
 ished,” said some of the young men. 
 
 But the aged, whose recollections dated as far 
 back as witch times, shook their heads, and hinted 
 that our forefathers would have thought it a pious 
 deed to burn the daughter of the oak with fire. 
 
 “If she be other than a bubble of the elements,” 
 exclaimed Copley, “I must look upon her face 
 again.” 
 
 He accordingly entered the shop ; and there, in 
 her usual corner, stood the image, gazing at him, 
 as it might seem, with the very same expression 
 of mirthful mischief that had been the farewell 
 look of the apparition when, but a moment before, 
 she turned her face toward the crowd. The carver 
 stood beside his creation mending the beautiful fan, 
 which by some accident was broken in her hand. 
 But there was no longer any motion in the lifelike 
 image, nor any real woman in the workshop, nor 
 even the wtichcraft of a sunny shadow, that might 
 have deluded people’s eyes as it flitted along the 
 
DROWNE’S WOODEN IMAGE 89 
 
 street. Captain Hunnewell, too, had vanished. 
 His hoarse, sea-breezy tones, however, were audi- 
 ble on the other side of a door that opened upon 
 the water. 
 
 “Sit down in the stern-sheets, my lady,” said 
 the gallant captain. “Come, bear a hand, you lub- 
 bers, and set us aboard in the turning of a minute- 
 glass.” 
 
 And then was heard the stroke of oars. 
 
 “Drowne,” said Copley, with a smile of intelli- 
 gence, “you have been a truly fortunate man. 
 What painter of statuary ever had such a sub- 
 ject! No wonder that she inspired a genius into 
 you, and first created the artist who afterward cre- 
 ated her image.” 
 
 Drowne looked at him with a visage that bore 
 the traces of tears, but from which the light of 
 imagination and sensibility, so recently illuminating 
 it, had departed. He was again the mechanical 
 carver that he had been known to be all his life- 
 time. 
 
 “I hardly understand what you mean, Mr. Cop- 
 ley,” said he, putting his hand to his brow. “This 
 image! Can it have been my work? Well, I have 
 wrought it in a kind of dream; and now that I am 
 broad awake I must set about finishing yonder figure 
 of Admiral Vernon.” 
 
 And forthwith he employed himself on the stolid 
 countenance of one of his wooden progeny, and 
 completed it in his own mechanical style, from 
 which he was never known afterward to deviate. 
 He followed his business industriously for many 
 
9H 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 years, acquired a competence, and in the latter 
 part of his life attained to a dignified station in the 
 church, being remembered in records and tradi- 
 tions as Deacon Drowne, the carver. One of his 
 productions, an Indian chief, gilded all over, stood 
 during the better part of a century on the cupola 
 of the Province House, bedazzling the eyes of 
 those who looked upward, like an angel of the sun. 
 Another work of the good deacon’s hand — a re- 
 duced likeness of his friend Captain Hunnewell, 
 holding a telescope and quadrant — may be seen to 
 this day at the corner of Broad and State Streets, 
 serving in the useful capacity of sign to the shop 
 of a nautical instrument-maker. We know not how 
 to account for the inferiority of this quaint old 
 figure as compared with the recorded excellence 
 of the Oaken Lady, unless on the supposition that 
 in every human spirit there is imagination, sensi- 
 bility, creative power, genius, which, according to 
 circumstances, may either be developed in this 
 world, or shrouded in a mask of dullness until 
 another state of being. To our friend Drowne 
 there came a brief season of excitement, kindled 
 by love. It rendered him a genius for that one 
 occasion, but, quenched in disappointment, left him 
 again the mechanical carver in wood, without the 
 power even of appreciating the work that his own 
 hands had wrought. Yet who can doubt that the 
 very highest state to which a human spirit can 
 attain, in its loftiest aspirations, is its truest and most 
 natural state, and that Drowne was more consistent 
 with himself when he wrought the admirable figure 
 
THE GRAY CHAMPION 91 
 
 of the mysterious lady than when he perpetrated 
 a whole progeny of blockheads? 
 
 There was a rumor in Boston, about this period, 
 that a young Portuguese lady of rank, on some 
 occasion of political or domestic disquietude, had 
 fled from her home in Fayal and put herself under 
 the protection of Captain Hunnewell, on board of 
 whose vessel, and at whose residence, she was 
 sheltered until a change of affairs. This fair 
 stranger must have been the original of Drowne's 
 Wooden Image. 
 
 THE GRAY CHAMPION 
 
 There was once a time when New England 
 groaned under the actual pressure of heavier 
 wrongs than those threatened ones which brought 
 on the Revolution. James II., the bigoted successor 
 of Charles the Voluptuous, had annulled the char- 
 ters of all the colonies and sent a harsh and un- 
 principled soldier to take away our liberties and 
 endanger our religion. The administration of Sir 
 Edmund Andros lacked scarcely a single charac- 
 teristic of tyranny — a governor and council hold- 
 ing office from the king and wholly independent 
 of the country; laws made and taxes levied with- 
 out concurrence of the people, immediate or by their 
 representatives; the rights of private citizens vio- 
 lated and the titles of all landed property declared 
 void; the voice of complaint stifled by restrictions 
 on the press; and finally, disaffection overawed by 
 
92 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 the first band of mercenary troops that ever marched 
 on our free soil. For two years our ancestors were 
 kept in sullen submission by that filial love which 
 had invariably secured their allegiance to the 
 mother-country, whether its head chanced to be a 
 Parliament, Protector or popish monarch. Till these 
 evil times, however, such allegiance had been merely 
 nominal, and the colonists had ruled themselves, 
 enjoying far more freedom than is even yet the 
 privilege of the native subjects of Great Britain. 
 
 At length a rumor reached our shores that the 
 prince of Orange had ventured on an enterprise 
 the success of which would be the triumph of civi! 
 and religious rights and the salvation of New 
 England. It was but a doubtful whisper; it might 
 be false or the attempt might fail, and in either 
 case the man that stirred against King James would 
 lose his head. Still, the intelligence produced a 
 marked effect. The people smiled mysteriously in 
 the streets and threw bold glances at their oppres- 
 sors, while far and wide there was a subdued and 
 silent agitation, as if the slightest signal would 
 rouse the whole land from its sluggish despondency. 
 Aware of their danger, the rulers resolved to avert 
 it by an imposing display of strength, and perhaps 
 to confirm their despotism by yet harsher measures. 
 
 One afternoon in April, 1689, Sir Edmond Andros 
 and his favorite councillors, being warm with wine, 
 assembled the red-coats of the governor's guard and 
 made their appearance in the streets of Boston. 
 The sun was near setting when the march com- 
 menced. The roll of the drum at that unquiet 
 
THE GRAY CHAMPION 
 
 93 
 
 crisis seemed to go through the streets less as the 
 martial music of the soldiers than as a muster-call 
 to the inhabitants themselves. A multitude by va- 
 rious avenues assembled in King street, which was 
 destined to be the scene, nearly a century afterward, 
 of another encounter between the troops of Brit- 
 ain and a people struggling against her tyranny. 
 
 Though more than sixty years had elapsed since 
 the Pilgrims came, this crowd of their descendants 
 still showed the strong and somber features of their 
 character perhaps more strikingly in such a stern 
 emergency than on happier occasions. There was 
 the sober garb, the general severity of mien, the 
 gloomy but undismayed expression, the scriptural 
 forms of speech and the confidence in Heaven’s 
 blessing on a righteous cause which would have 
 marked a band of the original Puritans when 
 threatened by some peril of the wilderness. Indeed, 
 it was not yet time for the old spirit to be extinct, 
 since there were men in the street that day who 
 had worshipped there beneath the trees before a 
 house was reared to the God for whom they had 
 become exiles. Old soldiers of the Parliament were 
 here, too, smiling grimly at the thought that their 
 aged arms might strike another blow against the 
 house of Stuart. Here, also, were the veterans 
 of King Philip’s war, who had burned villages and 
 slaughtered young and old with pious fierceness 
 while the godly souls throughout the land were 
 helping them with prayer. Several ministers were 
 scattered among the crowd, which, unlike all other 
 mobs, regarded them with such reverence as if 
 
94 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 there were sanctity in their very garments. These 
 holy men exerted their influence to quiet the people, 
 but not to disperse them. 
 
 Meantime, the purpose of the governor in dis- 
 turbing the peace of the town at a period when the 
 slightest commotion might throw the country into 
 a ferment was almost the universal subject ©f in- 
 quiry, and variously explained. 
 
 “Satan will strike his master stroke presently/’ 
 cried some, “because he knoweth that his time is 
 short. All our godly pastors are to be dragged to 
 prison. We shall see them at a Smithfield fire in 
 King street.” 
 
 Hereupon the people of each parish gathered 
 closer round their minister, who looked calmly up- 
 ward and assumed a more apostolic dignity, as 
 well befitted a candidate for the highest honor of 
 his profession — a crown of martyrdom. It was actu- 
 ally fancied at that period that New England might 
 have a John Rogers of her own to take the place 
 of that worthy in the Primer. 
 
 “The pope of Rome has given orders for a new 
 St. Bartholomew,” cried the others. “We are to be 
 massacred, man and male-child.” 
 
 Neither was this rumor wholly discredited, al- 
 though the wiser class believed the governor’s ob- 
 ject somewhat less atrocious. His predecessor under 
 the old charter, Bradstreet, a venerable companion 
 of the first settlers, was known to be in town. There 
 were grounds for conjecturing that Sir Edmund 
 Andros intended at once to strike terror by a parade 
 
THE GRAY CHAMPION 95 
 
 of military force and to comfound the opposite fac- 
 tion by possessing himself of their chief. 
 
 “Stand firm for the old charter-governor!” 
 shouted the crowd, seizing upon the idea — “the 
 good old Governor Bradstreet !” 
 
 While this cry was at its loudest the people were 
 surprised by the well-known figure of Governor 
 Bradstreet himself, a patriarch of nearly ninety, who 
 appeared on the elevated steps of a door and with 
 characteristic mildness besought them to submit to 
 the constituted authorities. 
 
 “My children,” concluded this venerable person, 
 “do nothing rashly. Cry not aloud, but pray for the 
 welfare of New England and expect patiently what 
 the Lord will do in this matter.” 
 
 The event was soon to be decided. All this time 
 the roll of the drum had been approaching through 
 Cornhill, louder and deeper, till with reverbera- 
 tions from house to house and the regular tramp of 
 martial footsteps it burst into the street. A double 
 rank of soldiers made their appearance, occupying 
 the whole breadth of the passage, with shouldered 
 matchlocks and matches burning, so as to present 
 a row of fires in the dusk. Their steady march was 
 like the progress of a machine that would roll irre- 
 sistibly over everything in its way. Next, moving 
 slowly, with a confused clatter of hoofs on the pave- 
 ment, rode a party of mounted gentlemen, the cen- 
 tral figure being Sir Edmund Andros, elderly, but 
 erect and soldier-like. Those around him were his 
 favorite councillors and the bitterest foes of New 
 England. At his right hand rode Edward Randolph, 
 
96 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 our arch-enemy, that “blasted wretch,” as Cotton 
 Mather calls him, who achieved the downfall of our 
 ancient government and was followed with a sen- 
 sible curse through life and to his grave. On the 
 other side was Bullivant, scattering jests and mock- 
 ery as he rode along. Dudley came behind with a 
 downcast look, dreading, as well he might, to meet 
 the indignant gaze of the people, who beheld him, 
 their only countryman by birth, among the op- 
 pressors of his native land. The captain of a frigate 
 in the harbor and two or three civil officers under 
 the Crown were also there. But the figure which 
 most attracted the public eye and stirred up the 
 deepest feeling was the Episcopal clergyman of 
 King’s Chapel riding haughtily among the magis- 
 trates in his priestly vestments, the fitting repre- 
 sentative of prelacy and persecution, the union of 
 Church and State, and all those abominations which 
 had driven the Puritans to the wilderness. Another 
 guard of soldiers, in double rank, brought up the 
 rear. 
 
 The whole scene was a picture of the condition of 
 New England, and its moral, the deformity of any 
 government that does not grow out of the nature 
 of things and the character of the people — on one 
 side the religious multitude with their sad visages 
 and dark attire, and on the other the group of des- 
 potic rulers with the high churchman in the midst 
 and here and there a crucifix at their bosoms, all 
 magnificently clad, flushed with wine, proud of un- 
 just authority and scoffing at the universal groan. 
 And the mercenary soldiers waiting but the word 
 
THE GRAY CHAMPION 
 
 97 
 
 to deluge the street with blood, showed the only 
 means by which obedience could be secured. 
 
 “O Lord of hosts,” cried a voice among the crowd; 
 “provide a champion for thy people!” 
 
 This ejaculation was loudly uttered, and served 
 as a herald’s cry to introduce a remarkable personage. 
 The crowd had rolled back, and were now huddled 
 together nearly at the extremity of the street, while 
 the soldiers had advanced no more than a third of 
 its length. The intervening space was empty — a 
 paved solitude between lofty edifices which threw 
 almost a twilight shadow over it. Suddenly there 
 was seen the figure of an ancient man who seemed 
 to have emerged from among the people and was 
 walking by himself along the centre of the street 
 to confront the armed band. Pie wore the old Puri- 
 tan dress — a dark cloak and a steeple-crowned hat 
 in the fashion of at least fifty years before, with a 
 heavy sword upon his thigh, but a staff in his hand 
 to assist the tremulous gait of age. 
 
 When at some distance from the multitude, the 
 old man turned slowly round, displaying a face of 
 antique majesty rendered doubly venerable by the 
 hoary beard that descended on his breast He made 
 a gesture at once of encouragement and warning, 
 then turned again and resumed his way. 
 
 “Who is this gray patriarch?” asked the young 
 men of their sires. 
 
 “Who is this venerable brother?” asked the old 
 men among themselves. 
 
 But none could make reply. The fathers of the 
 people, those of fourscore years and upward, were 
 
HAWTHORNE 
 
 disturbed, deeming it strange that they should forget 
 one of such evident authority whom they must have 
 known in their early days, the associates of Winthrop 
 and all the old councillors, giving laws and mak- 
 ing prayers and leading them against the savage. 
 The elderly men ought to have remembered him, 
 too, with locks as gray in their youth as their own 
 were now. And the young! How could he have 
 passed so utterly from their memories — that hoary 
 sire, the relic of long-departed times, whose awful 
 benediction had surely been bestowed on their un- 
 covered heads in childhood? 
 
 “Whence did he come? What is his purpose? 
 Who can this old man be?” whispered the wondering 
 crowd. 
 
 Meanwhile, the venerable stranger, staff in hand, 
 was pursuing his solitary walk along the centre of 
 the street. As he drew near the advancing soldiers, 
 and as the roll of their drum came full upon his ear, 
 the old man raised himself to a loftier mien, while 
 the decrepitude of age seemed to fall from his shoul- 
 ders, leaving him in gray but unbroken dignity. Now 
 he marched onward with a warrior’s step, keeping 
 time to the military music. Thus the aged form 
 advanced on one side and the whole parade of sol- 
 diers and magistrates on the other, till, when scarcely 
 twenty yards remained between them, the old man 
 grasped his staff by the middle and held it before 
 him like a leader’s truncheon. 
 
 “Stand!” cried he. 
 
 The eye, the face and attitude of command, the 
 solemn yet warlike peal of that voice — fit either to 
 
THE GRAY CHAMPION 
 
 99 
 
 *ule a host in the battle-field or to be raised to God 
 n prayer — were irresistible. At the old man’s word 
 md outstretched arm the roll of the drum was 
 lushed at once and the advancing line stood still. 
 \ tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the multitude, 
 rhat stately form, combining the leader and the saint, 
 >0 gray, so dimly seen, in such an ancient garb, could 
 mly belong to some old champion of the righteous 
 :ause whom the oppressor’s drum had summoned 
 from his grave. They raised a shout of awe and 
 exultation, and looked for the deliverance of New 
 England. 
 
 The governor and the gentlemen of his party, per- 
 eeiving themselves brought to an unexpected stand, 
 ■ode hastily forward, as if they would have pressed 
 :heir snorting and affrighted horses right against the 
 loary apparition. He, however, blenched not a step, 
 nit, glancing his severe eye round the group, which 
 lalf-encompassed him, at last bent it sternly on Sir 
 Edmund Andros. One would have thought that the 
 lark old man was chief ruler there, and that the 
 governor and council with soldiers at their back, 
 ■epresenting the whole power and authority of the 
 Erown, had no alternative but obedience. 
 
 “What does this old fellow here?” cried Edward 
 Randolph, fiercely. — “On, Sir Edmund! Bid the 
 soldiers forward, and give the dotard the same 
 :hoice that you gave all his countrymen — to stand 
 iside or be trampled on.” 
 
 “Nay, na#’, let us show respect to the good 
 jrandsire,” said Bullivant, laughing. “See you not 
 le is some old round-headed dignitary who hath 
 
ICO 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 lain asleep these thirty years and knows nothin 
 of the change of times? Doubtless he thinks to pi 
 us down with a proclamation in Old Noll’s name. 
 
 “Are you mad, old man?” demanded Sir Ec 
 mund Andros in loud and harsh tones. “How dai 
 you stay the march of King James' governor?" 
 
 “I have stayed the march of a king himself er 
 now," replied the gray figure, with stern compos 
 ure. “I am here, Sir Governor, because the cry c 
 an oppressed people hath disturbed me in my seen 
 place, and, beseeching this favor earnestly of th 
 Lord, it was vouchsafed me to appear once agai 
 on earth in the good old cause of his saints. An 
 what speak ye of James? There is no longer 
 popish tyrant on the throne of England, and by tc 
 morrow noon his name shall be a by-word in thi 
 very street, where ye would make it a word of ter 
 ror. Back, thou that wast a governor, back! Wit 
 this night thy power is ended. To-morrow, th 
 prison ! Back, lest I foretell the scaffold !” 
 
 The people had been drawing nearer and neare 
 and drinking in the words of their champion, wh 
 spoke in accents long disused, like one unaccus 
 tomed to converse except with the dead of man. 
 years ago. But his voice stirred their souls. The; 
 confronted the soldiers, not wholly without arm 
 and ready to convert the very stones of the stree 
 into deadly weapons. Sir Edmund Andros looke< 
 at the old man; then he cast his hard and cruel ey 
 over the multitude and beheld them burning witl 
 that lurid wrath so difficult to kindle or to quench 
 and again he fixed his gaze on the aged forn 
 
THE GRAY CHAMPION 
 
 101 
 
 which stood obscurely in an open space where neither 
 friend nor foe had thrust himself. What were his 
 thoughts he uttered no word which might discover, 
 but, whether the oppressor were overawed by the 
 Gray Champion’s look or perceived his peril in 
 the threatening attitude of the people, it is certain 
 that he gave back and ordered his soldiers to com- 
 mence a slow and guarded retreat. Before another 
 sunset the governor and all that rode so proudly 
 with him were prisoners, and long ere it was known 
 that James had abdicated King William was pro- 
 claimed throughout New England. 
 
 But where was the Gray Champion? Some re- 
 ported that when the troops had gone from King 
 street and the people were thronging tumultuously 
 in their rear, Bradstreet, the aged governor, was 
 seen to embrace a form more aged than his own. 
 Dthers soberly affirmed that while they marveled at 
 :he venerable grandeur of his aspect the old man 
 lad faded from their eyes, melting slowly into the 
 lues of twilight, till where he stood there was an 
 mipty space. But all agreed that the hoary shape 
 was gone. The men of that generation watched 
 r or his reappearance in sunshine and in twilight, but 
 lever saw him more, nor knew when his funeral 
 massed nor where his gravestone was. 
 
 And who was the Gray Champion? Perhaps his 
 lame might be found in the records of that stern 
 :ourt of justice which passed a sentence too mighty 
 or the age, but glorious in all after-times for its 
 lumbling lesson to the monarch and its high ex- 
 ample to the subject. I have heard that whenever 
 
102 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 the descendants of the Puritans are to show the 
 spirit of their sires the old man appears again. 
 When eighty years had passed, he walked once more 
 in King street. Five years later, in the twilight 
 of an April morning, he stood on the green beside 
 the meeting-house at Lexington where now the 
 obelisk of granite with a slab of slate inlaid com- 
 memorates the first-fallen of the Revolution. And 
 when our fathers were toiling at the breastworks 
 on Bunker’s Hill, all through that night the old 
 warrior walked his rounds. Long, long may it be 
 ere he comes again! His hour is one of darkness 
 and adversity and peril. But should domestic 
 tyranny oppress us or the invader’s step pollute 
 our soil, still may the Gray Champion come! for 
 he is the type of New England’s hereditary spirit, 
 and his shadowy march on the eve of danger must 
 ever be the pledge that New England’s sons will 
 vindicate their ancestry. 
 
THE GREAT CARBUNCLE 
 
 103 
 
 THE GREAT CARBUNCLE* 
 
 A MYSTERY OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 
 
 At nightfall once in the olden time, on the rugged 
 side of one of the Crystal Hills, a party of ad- 
 venturers were refreshing themselves after a toil- 
 some and fruitless quest for the Great Carbuncle. 
 They had come thither, not as friends nor partners 
 in the enterprise, but each, save one youthful pair, 
 impelled by his own splfish and solitary longing for 
 this wondrous gem. Their feeling of brotherhood, 
 however, was strong enough to induce them to con- 
 tribute a mutual aid in building a rude hut of 
 branches and kindling a great fire of shattered 
 pines that had drifted down the headlong current 
 of the Amonoosuck, on the lower bank of which they 
 were to pass the night. There was but one of their 
 number, perhaps, who had become so estranged 
 from natural sympathies by the absorbing spell 
 of the pursuit as to acknowledge no satisfaction 
 at the sight of human faces in the remote and soli- 
 tary region whither they had ascended. A vast 
 extent of wilderness lay between them and the 
 nearest settlement, while scant a mile above their 
 
 *The Indian tradition on which this somewhat extravagant 
 tale is founded is both too wild and too beautiful to be 
 adequately wrought up in prose. Sullivan, in his history 
 of Maine, written since the Revolution, remarks that even 
 then the existence of the Great Carbuncle was not entirely 
 discredited. 
 
HAWTHORNE 
 
 104 
 
 heads was that bleak verge where the hills throw 
 off their shaggy mantle of forest-trees and either 
 robe themselves in clouds or tower naked into the 
 sky. The roar of the Amonoosuck would have been 
 to awful for endurance if only a solitary man had 
 listened while the mountain-stream talked with the 
 wind. 
 
 The adventurers, therefore, exchanged hospitable 
 greetings and welcomed one another to the hut 
 where each man was the host and all were the 
 guests of the whole company. They spread their 
 individual supplies of food on the flat surface of 
 a rock and partook of a general repast; at the close 
 of which a sentiment of good-fellowship was per- 
 ceptible among the party, though repressed by the 
 idea that the renewed search for the Great Car- 
 buncle must make them strangers again in the 
 morning. Seven men and one young woman, they 
 warmed themselves together at the fire, which ex- 
 tended its bright wall along the whole front of their 
 wigwam. As they observed the various and con- 
 trasted figures that made up the assemblage, each 
 man looking like a caricature of himself in the un- 
 steady light that flickered over him, they came 
 mutually to the conclusion that an odder society 
 had never met in city or wilderness, on mountain 
 or plain. 
 
 The eldest of the group — a tall, lean, weather- 
 beaten man some sixty years of age — was clad in 
 the skins of wild animals whose fashion of dress 
 he did well to imitate, since the deer, the wolf and 
 the bear had long been his most intimate compan- 
 
THE GREAT CARBUNCLE 
 
 105 
 
 ions. He was one of those ill-fated mortals, such 
 as the Indians told of, whom in their early youth 
 the Great Carbuncle smote with a peculiar mad- 
 ness and became the passionate dream of their ex- 
 istence. All who visited that region knew him as 
 “the Seeker, ,, and by no other name. As none could 
 remember when he first took up the search, there 
 went a fable in the valley of the Saco that for his 
 inordinate lust after the Great Carbuncle he had 
 been condemned to wander among the mountains 
 till the end of time, still with the same feverish 
 hopes at sunrise, the same despair at eve. Near 
 this miserable Seeker sat a little elderly personage 
 wearing a high-crowned hat shaped somewhat like 
 a crucible. He was from beyond the sea — a Doc- 
 tor Cacaphodel, who had wilted and dried himself 
 into a mummy by continually stooping over char- 
 coal furnaces and inhaling unwholesome fumes dur- 
 ing his researches in chemistry and alchemy. It 
 was told of him — whether truly or not — that at the 
 commencement of his studies he had drained his 
 body of all its richest blood and wasted it, with 
 other inestimable ingredients, in an unsuccessful 
 experiment, and had never been a well man since. 
 Another of the adventurers was Master Ichabod 
 Pigsnort, a weighty merchant and selectman of Bos- 
 ton, and an elder of the famous Mr. Norton’s 
 church. His enemies had a ridiculous story that 
 Master Pigsnort was accustomed to spend a whole 
 hour after prayer-time every morning and evening 
 in wallowing naked among an immense quantity of 
 pine-tree shillings, which were the earliest silver 
 
106 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 coinage of Massachusetts. Tne fourth whom we 
 shall notice had no name that his companions knew 
 of, and was chiefly distinguished by a sneer that 
 always contorted his thin visage, and by a prodigious 
 pair of spectacles which were supposed to deform 
 and discolor the whole face of nature to this gen- 
 tleman’s perception. The fifth adventurer like- 
 wise lacked a name, which was the greater pity, 
 as he appeared to be a poet. He was a bright-eyed 
 man, but woefully pined away, which was no more 
 than natural if, as some people affirmed, his or- 
 dinary diet was fog, morning mist and a slice of 
 the densest cloud within his reach, sauced with 
 moonshine whenever he could get it. Certain it is 
 that the poetry which flowed from him had a smack 
 of all these dainties. The sixth of the party was 
 a young man of haughty mien and sat somewhat 
 apart from the rest, wearing his plumed hat loftily 
 among his elders, while the fire glittered on the 
 rich embroidery of his dress and gleamed intensely 
 on the jewelled pommel of his sword. This was 
 the lord De Vere, who when at home was said to 
 spend much of his time in the burial-vault of his 
 dead progenitors rummaging their mouldy coffins 
 in search of all the earthly pride and vainglory that 
 was hidden among bones and dust; so that, besides 
 his own share, he had the collected haughtiness of 
 his whole line of ancestry. Lastly, there was a 
 handsome youth in rustic garb, and by his side a 
 blooming little person in whom a delicate shade 
 of maiden reserve was just melting into the rich 
 glow of a young wife’s affection. Her name was 
 
THE GREAT CARBUNCLE 
 
 107 
 
 Hannah, and her husband’s Matthew — two homely 
 names, yet well enough adapted to the simple pair 
 who seemed strangely out of place among the whim- 
 sical fraternity whose wits had been set agog by 
 the great Carbuncle. 
 
 Beneath the shelter of one hut, in the bright 
 blaze of the same fire, sat this varied group of ad- 
 venturers, all so intent upon a single object that 
 of whatever else they began to speak their closing 
 words were sure to be illuminated with the Great 
 Carbuncle. Several related the circumstances that 
 brought them thither. One had listened to a trav- 
 eller’s tale of this marvelous stone in his own dis- 
 tant country, and had immediately been seized with 
 such a thirst for beholding it as could only be 
 quenched in its intensest lustre. Another, so long 
 ago as when the famous Captain Smith visited 
 these coasts, had seen it blazing far at sea, and had 
 felt no rest in all the intervening years till now that 
 he took up the search. A third, being encamped 
 on a hunting-expedition full forty miles south of 
 the White Mountains, awoke at midnight and beheld 
 the Great Carbuncle gleaming like a meteor, so that 
 the shadows of the trees fell backward from it. 
 They spoke of the innumerable attempts which had 
 been made to reach the spot, and of the singular 
 fatality which had hitherto withheld success from 
 all adventurers, though it might seem so easy to 
 follow to its source a light that overpowered the 
 moon and almost matched the sun. It was observ- 
 able that each smiled scornfully at the madness of 
 every other in anticipating better fortune than the 
 
108 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 past, yet nourished a scarcely-hidden conviction that 
 he would himself be the favored one. As if to allay 
 their too sanguine hopes, they recurred to the Indian 
 traditions that a spirit kept watch about the gem 
 and bewildered those who sought it either by re- 
 moving it from peak to peak of the higher hills or 
 by calling up a mist from the enchanted lake over 
 which it hung. But these tales were deemed un- 
 worthy of credit, all professing to believe that the 
 search had been baffled by want of sagacity or per- 
 severance in the adventurers, or such other causes 
 as might naturally obstruct the passage to any given 
 point among the intricacies of forest, valley and 
 mountain. 
 
 In a pause of the conversation the wearer of the 
 prodigious spectacles looked round upon the party, 
 making each individual in turn the object of the 
 sneer which invariably dwelt upon his countenance. 
 
 “So, fellow-pilgrims,” said he, “here we are, 
 seven wise men and one fair damsel, who doubtless 
 is as wise as any graybeard of the company. Here 
 we are, I say, all bound on the same goodly enter- 
 prise. Methinks, now, it were not amiss that each 
 of us declare what he proposes to do with the 
 Great Carbuncle, provided he have the good hap to 
 clutch it. — What says our friend in the bearskin? 
 How mean you, good sir, to enjoy the prize which 
 you have been seeking the Lord knows how long 
 among the Crystal Hills?” 
 
 “How enjoy it!” exclaimed the aged Seeker, bit- 
 terly. “I hope for no enjoyment from it: that folly 
 has past long ago. I keep up the search for this 
 
THE GREAT CARBUNCLE 
 
 109 
 
 accursed stone because the vain ambition of my 
 youth has become a fate upon me in old age. The 
 pursuit alone is my strength, the energy of my soul, 
 the warmth of my blood and the pith and marrow 
 of my bones. Were I to turn my back upon it, 
 I should fall down dead on the hither side of the 
 notch which is the gateway of this mountain- region. 
 Yet not to have my wasted lifetime back again 
 would I give up my hopes of the Great Carbuncle. 
 Having found it, I shall bear it to a certain cavern 
 that I wot of, and there, grasping it in my arms, 
 lie down and die and keep it buried with me for 
 ever.” 
 
 “O wretch regardless of the interests of science,'* 
 cried Doctor Cacaphodel, with philosophic indigna- 
 tion, “thou art not worthy to behold even from 
 afar off the lustre of this most precious gem that 
 ever was concocted in the laboratory of Nature. 
 Mine is the sole purpose for which a wise man may 
 desire the possession of the Great Carbuncle. Im- 
 mediately on obtaining it— for I have a presenti- 
 ment, good people, that the prize is reserved to 
 crown my scientific reputation — I shall return to 
 Europe and employ my remaining years in reducing 
 it to its first elements. A portion of the stone will 
 1 grind to impalpable powder, other parts shall 
 be dissolved in acids or whatever solvents will act 
 upon so admirable a composition, and the remainder 
 I design to melt in the crucible or set on fire with 
 the blow-pipe. By these various methods I shall 
 gain an accurate analysis, and finally bestow the 
 
IIO HAWTHORNE 
 
 result of my labors upon the world in a folio 
 volume.” 
 
 “Excellent !” quoth the man with tne spectacles. 
 “Nor need you hesitate, learned sir, on account of 
 the necessary destruction of the gem, since the 
 perusal of your folio may teach every mother's son 
 of us to concoct a Great Carbuncle of his own.” 
 
 “But verily,” said Master Ichabod Pigsnort, “for 
 mine own part, I object to the making of these 
 counterfeits, as being calculated to reduce the mar- 
 ketable value of the true gem. I tell ye frankly, 
 sirs, I have an interest in keeping up the price. 
 Here have I quitted my regular traffic, leaving my 
 warehouse in the care of my clerks and putting my 
 credit to great hazard, and, furthermore, have put 
 myself in peril of death or captivity by the accursed 
 heathen savages, and all this without daring to ask 
 the prayers of the congregation, because the quest 
 for the Great Carbuncle is deemed little better than 
 a traffic with the evil one. Now, think ye that I 
 would have done this grievous wrong to my soul, 
 body, reputation and estate without a reasonable 
 chance of profit?” 
 
 “Not I, pious Mr. Pigsnort,” said the man with 
 the spectacles. “I never laid such a great folly to 
 thy charge.” 
 
 “Truly, I hope not,” said the merchant. “Now, 
 as touching this Great Carbuncle, I am free to own 
 that I have never had a glimpse of it, but, be it only 
 the hundredth part so bright as people tell, it will 
 surely outvalue the Great Mogul's best diamond, 
 which he holds at an incalculable sum; wherefore 
 
THE GREAT CARBUNCLE 
 
 111 
 
 I am minded to put the Great Carbuncle on ship- 
 board and voyage with it to England, France, Spain, 
 Italy, or into the heathendom if Providence should 
 send me thither, and, in a word, dispose of the gem 
 to the best bidder among the potentates of the 
 earth, that he may place it among his crown-jewels. 
 If any of ye have a wiser plan, let him expound it." 
 
 “That have I, thou sordid man!” exclaimed the 
 poet. “Dost thou desire nothing brighter than gold, 
 that thou wouldst transmute all this ethereal lustre 
 into such dross as thou wallowest in already? For 
 myself, hiding the jewel under my cloak, I shall 
 hie me back to my attic-chamber in one of the 
 darksome alleys of London. There night and day 
 will I gaze upon it. My soul shall drink its radi- 
 ance; it shall be diffused throughout my intellectual 
 powers and gleam brightly in every line of poesy 
 that I indite. Thus long ages after I am gone the 
 splendor of the Great Carbuncle will blaze around 
 my name.” 
 
 “Well said, Master Poet!” cried he of the spec- 
 tacles. “Hide it under thy cloak, sayest thou? Why, 
 it will gleam through the holes and make thee look 
 like a jack-o'-lantern!” 
 
 “To think,” ejaculated the lord De Vere, rather 
 to himself than his companions, the best of whom 
 he held utterly unworthy of his intercourse — “to 
 think that a fellow in a tattered cloak should talk 
 of conveying the Great Carbuncle to a garret in 
 Grubb street! Have not I resolved within myself 
 that the whole earth contains no fitter ornament 
 for the great hall of my ancestral castle? There 
 
112 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 shall it flame for ages, making a noonday of mid- 
 night, glittering on the suits of armor, the banners 
 and escutcheons, that hang around the wall, and 
 keeping bright the memory of heroes. Wherefore 
 have all other adventurers sought the prize in vain 
 but that I might win it and make it a symbol of 
 the glories of our lofty line? And never on the 
 diadem of the White Mountains did the Great 
 Carbuncle hold a place half so honored as is re- 
 served for it in the hall of the De Veres. ,, 
 
 “It is a noble thought,” said the cynic, with an 
 obsequious sneer. “Yet, might I presume to say so, 
 the gem would make a rare sepulchral lamp, and 
 would display the glories of Your Lordship’s pro- 
 genitors more truly in the ancestral vault than in 
 the castle-hall.” 
 
 “Nay, forsooth,” observed Matthew, the young 
 rustic, who sat hand in hand with his bride, “the 
 gentleman has bethought himself of a profitable 
 use for this bright stone. Hannah here and I are 
 seeking it for a like purpose.” 
 
 “How, fellow?” exclaimed His Lordship, in sur- 
 prise. “What castle-hall hast thou to hang it in?” 
 
 “No castle,” replied Matthew, “but as neat a 
 Cottage as any within sight of the Crystal Hills. 
 Ye must know, friends, that Hannah and I, being 
 wedded the last week, have taken up the search of 
 the Great Carbuncle because we shall need its light 
 in the long winter evenings and it will be such 
 a pretty thing to show the neighbors when they 
 visit us! It will shine through the house, so that 
 we may pick up a pin in any corner, and will set 
 
THE GREAT CARBUNCLE 
 
 113 
 
 all the windows a-glowing as if there were a great 
 fire of pine-knots in the chimney. And then how 
 pleasant, when we awake in the night, to be able to 
 see one another’s faces !” 
 
 There was a general smile among the adventurers 
 at the simplicity of the young couple’s project in 
 regard to this wondrous and invaluable stone, with 
 which the greatest monarch on earth might have 
 been proud to adorn his palace. Especially the 
 man with spectacles, who had sneered at all the 
 company in turn, now twisted his visage into such 
 an expression of ill-natured mirth that Matthew 
 asked him rather peevishly what he himself meant 
 to do with the Great Carbuncle. 
 
 “The Great Carbuncle!” answered the cynic, with 
 ineffable scorn. “Why, you blockhead, there is no 
 such thing in rerum naturd. I have come three 
 thousand miles, and am resolved to set my foot 
 on every peak of these mountains and poke my head 
 into every chasm for the sole purpose of demon- 
 strating to the satisfaction of any man one whit 
 less an ass than thyself that the Great Carbuncle 
 is all a humbug.” 
 
 Vain and foolish were the motives that had 
 brought most of the adventurers to the Crystal 
 Hills, but none so vain, so foolish, and so impious 
 too, as that of the scoffer with the prodigious spec- 
 tacles. He was one of those wretched and evil 
 men whose yearnings are downward to the dark- 
 ness instead of heavenward, and who, could they but 
 extinguish the lights which God hath kindled for 
 
114 HAWTHORNE 
 
 us, would count the midnight gloom their chiefest 
 glory. 
 
 As the cynic spoke several of the party were 
 startled by a gleam of red splendor that showed 
 the huge shapes of the surrounding mountains and 
 the rock-bestrewn bed of the turbulent river, with 
 an illumination unlike that of their fire, on the 
 trunks and black boughs of the forest-trees. They 
 listened for the roll of thunder, but heard nothing, 
 and were glad that the tempest came not near them 
 The stars — those dial-points of heaven — now warnec 
 the adventurers to close their eyes on the blazing 
 logs and open them in dreams to the glow of the 
 Great Carbuncle. 
 
 The young married couple had taken their lodg- 
 ings in the farthest corner of the wigwam, and 
 were separated from the rest of the party by a cur- 
 tain of curiously-woven twigs such as might have 
 hung in deep festoons around the bridal-bower of 
 Eve. The modest little wife had wrought this piece 
 of tapestry while the other guests were talking. She 
 and her husband fell asleep with hands tenderly 
 clasped, and awoke from visions of unearthly radi- 
 ance to meet the more blessed light of one another's 
 eyes. They awoke at the same instant and with one 
 happy smile beaming over their two faces, which 
 grew brighter with their consciousness of the reality 
 of life and love. But no sooner did she recollect 
 where they were than the bride peeped through the 
 interstices of the leafy curtain and saw that the outer 
 room of the hut was deserted. 
 
 “Up, dear Matthew!” cried she, in haste. “The 
 
THE GREAT CARBUNCLE Hu 
 
 strange folk are all gone. Up this very minute, or 
 we shall lose the Great Carbuncle !” 
 
 In truth, so little did these poor young people 
 deserve the mighty prize which had lured them 
 thither that they had slept peacefully all night and 
 till the summits of the hills were glittering with 
 sunshine, while the other adventurers had tossed 
 their limbs in feverish wakefulness or dreamed of 
 climbing precipices, and set off to realize their 
 dreams with the earliest peep of dawn. Byt Matthew 
 and Hannah after their calm rest were as light as 
 two young deer, and merely stopped to say their 
 prayers and wash themselves in a cold pool of the 
 Amonoosuck, and then to taste a morsel of food 
 ere they turned their faces to the mountain-side. 
 It was a sweet emblem of conjugal affection as they 
 toiled up the difficult ascent gathering strength from 
 the mutual aid which they afforded. 
 
 After several little accidents, such as a torn robe, 
 a lost shoe and the entanglement of Hannah’s hair 
 sn a bough, they reached the upper verge of the 
 forest and were now to pursue a more adventurous 
 course. The innumerable trunks and heavy foliage 
 of the trees had hitherto shut in their thoughts, 
 which now shrank affrighted from the region of 
 wind and cloud and naked rocks and desolate sun- 
 shine that rose immeasurably above them. They 
 gazed back at the obscure wilderness which they 
 had traversed, and longed to be buried again in its 
 depths rather than trust themselves to so vast and 
 visible a solitude. 
 
 Shall we go on ? ’ said Matthew, throwing his 
 
116 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 arm round Hannah’s waist both to protect her and 
 to comfort his heart by drawing her close to it. 
 
 But the little bride, simple as she was, had a 
 woman’s love of jewels, and could not forego the 
 hope of possessing the very brightest in the world, 
 in spite of the perils with which it must be won. 
 
 “Let us climb a little higher,” whispered she, yet 
 tremulously, as she turned her face upward to the 
 lonely sky. 
 
 “Come, then,” said Matthew, mustering his manly 
 courage and drawing her along with him ; for she 
 became timid again the moment that he grew bold. 
 
 And upward, accordingly, went the pilgrims of 
 the Great Carbuncle, now treading upon the tops 
 and thickly-interwoven branches of dwarf pines 
 which by the growth of centuries, though mossy 
 with age, had barely reached three feet in altitude. 
 Next they came to masses and fragments of naked 
 rock heaped confusedly together like a cairn reared 
 by giants in memory of a giant chief. In this bleak 
 realm of upper air nothing breathed, nothing grew; 
 there was no life but what was concentred in their 
 two hearts; they had climbed so high that Nature 
 herself seemed no longer to keep them company. 
 She lingered beneath them within the verge of the 
 forest-trees, and sent a farewell glance after her 
 children as they strayed where her own green 
 footprints had never been. But soon they were to 
 be hidden from her eye. Densely and dark the mists 
 began to gather below, casting black spots of shadow 
 on the vast landscape and sailing heavily to one 
 centre, as if the loftiest mountain-peak had sum- 
 
THE GREAT CARBUNCLE 111 
 
 moned a council of its kindred clouds. Finally the 
 vapors welded themselves, as it were, into a mass, 
 presenting the appearance of a pavement over which 
 the wanderers might have trodden, but where they 
 would vainly have sought an avenue to the blessed 
 earth which they had lost. And the lovers yearned 
 to behold that green earth again — more intensely, 
 alas ! than beneath a clouded sky they had ever de- 
 sired a glimpse of heaven. They even felt it a relief 
 to their desolation when the mists, creeping grad- 
 ually up the mountain, concealed its lonely peak, 
 and thus annihilated — at least, for them — the whole 
 region of visible space. But they drew closer to- 
 gether with a fond and melancholy gaze, dreading 
 ? est the universal cloud should snatch them from 
 each other's sight. Still, perhaps, they would have 
 been resolute to climb as far and as high between 
 earth and heaven as they could find foothold if 
 Hannah’s strength had not begun to fail, and with 
 that her courage also. Her breath grew short. 
 She refused to burden her husband with her weight, 
 but often tottered against his side, and recovered 
 herself each time by a feebler effort. At last she 
 sank down on one of the rocky steps of the acclivity. 
 
 “We are lost, dear Matthew, 1 ” said she, mourn- 
 fully; “we shall never find our way to the earth 
 again. And oh how happy we might have been In 
 our cottage !” 
 
 “Dear heart, we will yet be happy there," an- 
 swered Matthew. “Look ! In this direction the 
 sunshine penetrates the dismal mist; by its aid I 
 can direct our course to the passage of the Notch. 
 
118 HAWTHORNE 
 
 Let us go back, love, and dream no more of the 
 Great Carbuncle.” 
 
 “The sun cannot be yonder,” said Hannah, with 
 despondence. “By this time it must be noon ; if 
 there could ever be any sunshine here, it would 
 come from above our heads.” 
 
 “But look !” repeated Matthew, in a somewhat 
 altered tone. “It is brightening every moment. If 
 not sunshine, what can it be?” 
 
 Nor could fche young bride any longer deny that 
 a radiance was breaking through the mist and chang- 
 ing its dim hue to a dusky red, which continually 
 grew more vivid, as if brilliant particles were inter- 
 fused with the gloom. Now, also, the cloud began 
 to roll away from the mountain, while, as it heavily 
 withdrew, one object after another started out of its 
 impenetrable obscurity into sight with precisely the 
 effect of a new creation before the indistinctness of 
 the old chaos had been completely swallowed up. 
 As the process went on they saw the gleaming of 
 water close at their feet, and found themselves on 
 the very border of a mountain-lake, deep, bright, 
 clear and calmly beautiful, spreading from brim to 
 brim of a basin that had been scooped out of the 
 solid rock. A ray of glory flashed across its sur- 
 face. The pilgrims looked whence it should pro- 
 ceed, but closed their eyes, with a thrill of awful 
 admiration, to exclude the fervid splendor that 
 glowed from the brow of a cliff impending over the 
 enchanted lake. 
 
 For the simple pair had reached that lake of mys- 
 tery and found the long-sought shrine of the Great 
 
THE GREAT CARBUNCLE 
 
 119 
 
 Carbuncle. They threw their arms around each 
 other and trembled at their own success, for as the 
 legends of this wondrous gem rushed thick upon 
 their memory they felt themselves marked out by 
 fate, and the consciousness was fearful. Often from 
 childhood upward they had seen it shining like a 
 distant star, and now that star was throwing its 
 intensest lustre on their hearts. They seemed 
 changed to one another’s eyes in the red brilliancy 
 that flamed upon their cheeks, while it lent the same 
 fire to the lake, the rocks and sky, and to the mists 
 which had rolled back before its power. But with 
 their next glance they beheld an object that drew 
 their attention even from the mighty stone. At the 
 base of the cliff, directly beneath the Great Car- 
 buncle, appeared the figure of a man with his arms 
 extended in the act of climbing and his face turned 
 upward as if to drink the full gush of splendor. But 
 he stirred not, no more than if changed to marble. 
 
 “It is the Seeker,” whispered Hannah, convul- 
 sively grasping her husband’s arm. “Matthew, he is 
 dead.” 
 
 “The joy of success has killed him,” replied 
 Matthew, trembling violently. “Or perhaps the very 
 light of the Great Carbuncle was death.” 
 
 “ The Great Carbuncle’ !” cried a peevish voice 
 behind them. “The great humbug! If you have 
 found it, prithee point it out to me.” 
 
 They turned their heads, and there was the cynic 
 with his prodigious spectacles set carefully on his 
 nose, staring now at the lake, now at the rocks, 
 now at the distant masses of vapor, now right at 
 
120 
 
 HAWTHORN k 
 
 the Great Carbuncle itself, yet seemingly as uncon- 
 scious of its light as if all the scattered clouds were 
 condensed about his person. Though its radiance 
 actually threw the shadow of the unbeliever at his 
 own feet as he turned his back upon the glorious 
 jewel, he would not be convinced that there was 
 the least glimmer there. 
 
 “ Where is your great humbug ?” he repeated. “I 
 challenge you to make me see it.” 
 
 'There!” said Matthew, incensed at such perverse 
 blindness, and turning the cynic round toward the 
 illuminated cliff. “Take off those abominable spec- 
 tacles, and you cannot help seeing it.” 
 
 Now, these colored spectacles probably darkened 
 the cynic’s sight in at least as great a degree as the 
 smoked glasses through which people gaze at an 
 eclipse. With resolute bravado, however, he snatched 
 them from his nose and fixed a bold stare full upon 
 the ruddy blaze of the Great Carbuncle. But scarce- 
 ly had he encountered it when, with a deep, shud- 
 dering groan, he dropped his head and pressed both 
 hands across his miserable eyes. Thenceforth there 
 was in very truth no light of the Great Carbuncle, 
 nor any other light on earth, nor light of heaven 
 itself, for the poor cynic. So long accustomed to 
 view all objects through a medium that deprived 
 them of every glimpse of brightness, a single flash 
 of so glorious a phenomenon, striking upon his 
 naked vision, had blinded him for ever. 
 
 “Matthew,” said Hannah, clinging to him, “let us 
 go hence.” 
 
 Matthew saw that she was faint, and, kneeling 
 
THE GREAT CARBUNCLE 121 
 
 down, supported her in his arms while he threw 
 some of the thrillingly-cold water of the enchanted 
 lake upon her face and bosom. It revived her, but 
 could not renovate her courage. 
 
 “Yes, dearest/' cried Matthew, pressing her trem- 
 ulous form to his breast; “we will go hence and 
 return to our humble cottage. The blessed sunshine 
 and the quiet moonlight shall come through our 
 window. We will kindle the cheerful glow of our 
 hearth at eventide and be happy in its light. But 
 'ever again will we desire more light than all the 
 /orld may share with us." 
 
 “No," said his bride, “for how could we live by 
 day or sleep by night in this awful blaze of the 
 Great Carbuncle?" 
 
 Out of the hollow of their hands they drank each 
 a draught from the lake, which presented them its 
 waters uncontaminated by an earthly lip. Then, 
 lending their guidance to the blinded cynic, who 
 uttered not a word, and even stifled his groans in 
 his own most wretched heart, they began to descend 
 the mountain. Yet as they left the shore, till then 
 untrodden, of the spirit’s lake, they threw a farewell 
 glance toward the cliff and beheld the vapors gath- 
 ering in dense volumes, through which the gem 
 burned duskily. 
 
 As touching the other pilgrims of the Great 
 Carbuncle, the legend goes on to tell that the wor- 
 shipful Master Ichabod Pigsnort soon gave up the 
 quest as a desperate speculation, and wisely re- 
 solved to betake himself again to his warehouse, 
 near the town-dock, in Boston. But as he passed 
 
122 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 through the Notch of the mountains a war-party 
 of Indians captured our unlucky merchant and car- 
 ried him to Montreal, there holding him in bondage 
 till by the payment of a heavy ransom he had woe- 
 fully subtracted from his hoard of pine-tree shil- 
 lings. By his long absence, moreover, his affairs 
 had become so disordered that for the rest of his 
 life, instead of wallowing in silver, he had seldom 
 a sixpence- worth of copper. Doctor Cacaphodel, the 
 alchemist, returned to his laboratory with a pro- 
 digious fragment of granite, which he ground to 
 powder, dissolved in acids, melted in the crucible 
 and burnt with the blowpipe, and published the result 
 of his experiments in one of the heaviest folios of 
 the day. And for all these purposes the gem itself 
 could not have answered better than the granite. 
 The poet, by a somewhat similar mistake, made prize 
 of a great piece of ice which he found in a sunless 
 chasm of the mountains, and swore that it corre- 
 sponded in all points with his idea of the Great 
 Carbuncle. The critics say that, if his poetry lacked 
 the splendor of the gem, it retained all the coldness 
 of the ice. Lord De Vere went back to his ancestral 
 hall, where he contented himself with a wax-lighted 
 chandelier, and filled in due course of time another 
 coffin in the ancestral vault. As the funeral torches 
 gleamed within that dark receptacle, there was no 
 need of the Great Carbuncle to show the vanity of 
 earthly pomp. 
 
 The cynic, having cast aside his spectacles, wan- 
 dered about the world a miserable object, and was 
 punished with an agonizing desire of light for the 
 
THE GREAT CARBUNCLE 
 
 123 
 
 wilful blindness of his former life. The whole night 
 long he would lift his splendor-blasted orbs to the 
 moon and stars; he turned his face eastward at 
 sunrise as duly as a Persian idolator; he made a 
 pilgrimage to Rome to witness the magnificent il- 
 lumination of Saint Peter’s church, and finally per- 
 ished in the Great Fire of London, into the midst of 
 which he had thrust himself with the desperate idea 
 of catching one feeble ray from the blaze that was 
 kindling earth and heaven. 
 
 Matthew and his bride spent many peaceful years 
 and were fond of telling the legend of the Great 
 Carbuncle. The tale, however, toward the close of 
 their lengthened lives, did not meet with the full 
 credence that had been accorded to it by those who 
 remembered the ancient lustre of the gem. For it 
 is affirmed that from the hour when two mortals 
 had shown themselves so simply wise as to reject 
 a jewel which would have dimmed all earthly things 
 its splendor waned. When our pilgrims reached the 
 cliff, they found only an .opaque stone with particles 
 of mica glittering on its surface. There is also a 
 tradition that as the youthful pair departed the 
 gem was loosened from the forehead of the cliff and 
 fell into the enchanted lake, and that at noontide 
 the Seeker’s form may still be seen to bend over its 
 quenchless gleam. 
 
 Some few believe that this inestimable stone is 
 blazing as of old, and say that they have caught its 
 radiance, like a flash of summer lightning, far down 
 the valley of the Saco. And be it owned that many 
 a mile from the Crystal Hills I saw a wondrous 
 
HAWTHORMli 
 
 m 
 
 light around their summits, and was lured by the 
 faith of poesy to be the latest pilgrim of the Great 
 Carbuncle. 
 
EDITED BY SHERWIN CODY 
 
 A SELECTION FROM THE WORLD'S GREAT- 
 EST SHORT STORIES. Cloth, 18mo., 400 
 pages, $1.50 net. 
 
 A SELECTION FROM THE BEST ENGLISH 
 ESSAYS. Cloth, 18mo., 415 pages, $1.50 net. 
 
 A SELECTION FROM THE WORLD’S GREAT 
 ORATIONS. Cloth, 18mo., 518 pages, $1.50 net. 
 THE BEST POEMS AND ESSAYS OF EDGAR 
 ALLAN POE. Cloth, 18mo., 485 pages, $1.50 net. 
 THE BEST TALES OF EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 Cloth, 18mo., 500 pages, $1.50 net. 
 
 A SELECTION FROM THE GREAT ENGLISH 
 POETS. Cloth, 18mo., 613 pages, $1.50 net. 
 These books are printed on thin bible paper, with 
 large clear type, and are beautifully bound in semi- 
 limp dark green cloth. They contain nearly double 
 the amount of matter found in similar books. The 
 Short Stories are all complete, and with the series of 
 introductions form the leading textbook for classes 
 in story-writing in the principal universities. The 
 introductions in the volume of Essays offer an in- 
 tensely practical study of English prose style. The 
 two Poe volumes are in reality a complete edition of 
 all of Poe's writings worth preserving, and at the 
 same time furnish an analytic study of the man and 
 his work. The Selection from the Poets contains 
 more than twice the number of poems found in Pal- 
 grave’s Golden Treasury, besides such complete 
 longer works as Fitzgerald’s Omar Khayyam. The 
 volumes together make a magnificent library at small 
 cost. Mr. Cody has a national reputation as a wise 
 chooser of the best that is also interesting to the 
 average reader. 
 

u Of I Library Champalgn-Urbana 
 
 Manufactured by 
 
 LITTLE LEATHER LIBRARY CORPORATION 
 New York