Indian
fights, village pillories, town-meetings, witch-burnings, and
church-councils was already a memory. With his steeple-crowned hat and
his matchlock at his side he had left the pleasant New-England farm
lands and was found only in the court-houses, where his deeds were
recorded. Hawthorne brought him back from the past, set him in the
midst of his fellow-elders in the church, and showed him a sufferer
for conscience' sake.

This first romance, published under the title _The Scarlet Letter_,
revealed to Hawthorne himself, as well as to the world outside, the
transcendent power of his genius. Hawthorne, who was despondent of the
little popularity of his other books, told the publisher who saw the
first sketch of _The Scarlet Letter_, that he did not know whether
the story was very good or very bad. The publisher, however, at once
perceived its worth and brought it out one year from that time,
and the public saw that it had been entertaining a genius unawares.
Hawthorne's next book, _The House of the Seven Gables_, is a story
of the New England of his own day. A clever critic has called it an
impression of a summer afternoon in an elm-shadowed New-England town.
Through its pages flit quaint contrasting figures that one might find
in New England and nowhere else. The old spinster of ancient family,
obliged to open a toy and gingerbread shop, but never forgetting
the time when the house with seven gables was a mansion of limitless
hospitality, is a pathetic picture of disappointed hope and
broken-down fortune. So is her brother, who was falsely imprisoned
for twenty years, and who in his old age must lean upon his sister for
support; and the other characters are equally true to the life that
has almost disappeared in the changes of the half-century since its
scenes were made the inspiration of Hawthorne's romance.

_The House of the Seven Gables_ was followed by two beautiful volumes
for children, _The Wonder Book_ and _Tanglewood Tales_. In _The Wonder
Book_ Hawthorne writes as if he were a child himself, so simple is the
charm that he weaves around these old, old tales. Not content with
the Greek myths, he created little incidents and impossible characters
that glance in and out with elfin grace. One feels that these were
the very stories that were told by the centaurs, fauns, and satyrs
themselves in the shadows of the old Attic forests. Here we learn that
King Midas not only had his palace turned to gold, but that