hed the ear like a melody.

Here is a golden curl which adorned the head of Nathaniel Hawthorne when
he lay a little child in his cradle. It was given to me many years ago
by one near and dear to him. I have two other similar "blossoms," which
I keep pressed in the same book of remembrance. One is from the head of
John Keats, and was given to me by Charles Cowden Clarke, and the other
graced the head of Mary Mitford, and was sent to me after her death by
her friendly physician, who watched over her last hours. Leigh Hunt says
with a fine poetic emphasis,

"There seems a love in hair, though it be dead.
It is the gentlest, yet the strongest thread
Of our frail plant,--a blossom from the tree
Surviving the proud trunk;--as though it said,
Patience and Gentleness is Power. In me
Behold affectionate eternity."

There is a charming old lady, now living two doors from me, who dwelt in
Salem when Hawthorne was born, and, being his mother's neighbor at that
time (Mrs. Hawthorne then lived in Union Street), there came a message
to her intimating that the baby could be seen by calling. So my friend
tells me she went in, and saw the little winking thing in its mother's
arms. She is very clear as to the beauty of the infant, even when only a
week old, and remembers that "he was a pleasant child, quite handsome,
with golden curls." She also tells me that Hawthorne's mother was a
beautiful woman, with remarkable eyes, full of sensibility and
expression, and that she was a person of singular purity of mind.
Hawthorne's father, whom my friend knew well, she describes as a
warm-hearted and kindly man, very fond of children. He was somewhat
inclined to melancholy, and of a reticent disposition. He was a great
reader, employing all his leisure time at sea over books.

Hawthorne's father died when Nathaniel was four years old, and from that
time his uncle Robert Manning took charge of his education, sending him
to the best schools and afterwards to college. When the lad was about
nine years old, while playing bat and ball at school, he lamed his foot
so badly that he used two crutches for more than a year. His foot ceased
to grow like the other, and the doctors of the town were called in to
examine the little lame boy. He was not perfectly restored till he was
twelve years old. His kind-hearted schoolmaster, Joseph Worcester, the
author of the Dictionary, came every day to the house to hear the boy's
lessons, s