irl! She danced like a fairy, she sang
exquisitely, so that every one who knew her seemed amazed at her perfect
way of doing everything she attempted. Who was it that thus summoned all
this witchery, making such a tumult in young Hawthorne's bosom? She was
"daughter to Leontes and Hermione," king and queen of Sicilia, and her
name was Perdita! It was Shakespeare who introduced Hawthorne to his
first real love, and the lover never forgot his mistress. He was
constant ever, and worshipped her through life. Beauty always captivated
him. Where there was beauty he fancied other good gifts must naturally
be in possession. During his childhood homeliness was always repulsive
to him. When a little boy he is remembered to have said to a woman who
wished to be kind to him, "Take her away! She is ugly and fat, and has a
loud voice."

When quite a young man he applied for a situation under Commodore Wilkes
on the Exploring Expedition, but did not succeed in obtaining an
appointment. He thought this a great misfortune, as he was fond of
travel, and he promised to do all sorts of wonderful things, should he
be allowed to join the voyagers.

One very odd but characteristic notion of his, when a youth, was, that
he should like a competent income which should neither increase nor
diminish, for then, he said, it would not engross too much of his
attention. Surrey's little poem, "The Means to obtain a Happy Life,"
expressed exactly what his idea of happiness was when a lad. When a
school-boy he wrote verses for the newspapers, but he ignored their
existence in after years with a smile of droll disgust. One of his
quatrains lives in the memory of a friend, who repeated it to me
recently:--

"The ocean hath its silent caves,
Deep, quiet, and alone;
Above them there are troubled waves,
Beneath them there are none."

When the Atlantic Cable was first laid, somebody, not knowing the author
of the lines, quoted them to Hawthorne as applicable to the calmness
said to exist in the depths of the ocean. He listened to the verse, and
then laughingly observed, "I know something of the deep sea myself."

In 1836 he went to Boston, I am told, to edit the "American Magazine of
Useful Knowledge," for which he was to be paid a salary of six hundred
dollars a year. The proprietors soon became insolvent, so that he
received nothing, but he kept on just the same as if he had been paid
regularly. The plan of the work proposed