is period, after his return from Europe, I saw him frequently
at the Wayside, in Concord. He now seemed happy in the dwelling he had
put in order for the calm and comfort of his middle and later life. He
had added a tower to his house, in which he could be safe from
intrusion, and where he could muse and write. Never was poet or romancer
more fitly shrined. Drummond at Hawthornden, Scott at Abbotsford,
Dickens at Gad's Hill, Irving at Sunnyside, were not more appropriately
sheltered. Shut up in his tower, he could escape from the tumult of
life, and be alone with only the birds and the bees in concert outside
his casement. The view from this apartment, on every side, was lovely,
and Hawthorne enjoyed the charming prospect as I have known, few men to
enjoy nature.

His favorite walk lay near his house,--indeed it was part of his own
grounds,--a little hillside, where he had worn a foot-path, and where he
might be found in good weather, when not employed in the tower. While
walking to and fro on this bit of rising ground he meditated and
composed innumerable romances that were never written, as well as some
that were. Here he, first announced to me his plan of "The Dolliver
Romance," and, from what he told me of his design of the story as it
existed in his mind, I thought it would have been the greatest of his
books. An enchanting memory is left of that morning when he laid out the
whole story before me as he intended to write it. The plot was a grand
one, and I tried to tell him how much I was impressed by it. Very soon
after our interview, he wrote to me:--

"In compliance with your exhortations, I have begun to think
seriously of that story, not, as yet, with a pen in my hand, but
trudging to and fro on my hilltop.... I don't mean to let you see
the first chapters till I have written the final sentence of the
story. Indeed, the first chapters of a story ought always to be the
last written.... If you want me to write a good book, send me a good
pen; not a gold one, for they seldom suit me; but a pen flexible and
capacious of ink, and that will not grow stiff and rheumatic the
moment I get attached to it. I never met with a good pen in my
life."

Time went on, the war broke out, and he had not the heart to go on with
his new Romance. During the month of April, 1862, he made a visit to
Washington with his friend Ticknor, to whom he was greatly attached.
While on this visit to the