o that he did not fall behind in his studies. [There is a
tradition in the Manning family that Mr. Worcester was very much
interested in Maria Manning (a sister of Mrs. Hawthorne), who died in
1814, and that this was one reason of his attention to Nathaniel.] The
boy used to lie flat upon the carpet, and read and study the long days
through. Some time after he had recovered from this lameness he had an
illness causing him to lose the use of his limbs, and he was obliged to
seek again the aid of his old crutches, which were then pieced out at
the ends to make them longer. While a little child, and as soon almost
as he began to read, the authors he most delighted in were Shakespeare,
Milton, Pope, and Thomson. The "Castle of Indolence" was an especial
favorite with him during boyhood. The first book he bought with his own
money was a copy of Spenser's "Faery Queen."

One who watched him during his childhood tells me, that "when he was six
years old his favorite book was Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress': and that
whenever he went to visit his Grandmother Hawthorne, he used to take the
old family copy to a large chair in a corner of the room near a window,
and read it by the hour, without once speaking. No one ever thought of
asking how much of it he understood. I think it one of the happiest
circumstances of his training, that nothing was ever explained to him,
and that there was no professedly intellectual person in the family to
usurp the place of Providence and supplement its shortcomings, in order
to make him what he was never intended to be. His mind developed itself;
intentional cultivation might have spoiled it.... He used to invent long
stories, wild and fanciful, and tell where he was going when he grew up,
and of the wonderful adventures he was to meet with, always ending with,
'And I'm never coming back again,' in quite a solemn tone, that enjoined
upon us the advice to value him the more while he stayed with us."

When he could scarcely speak plain, it is recalled by members of the
family that the little fellow would go about the house, repeating with
vehement emphasis and gestures certain stagy lines from Shakespeare's
Richard III., which he had overheard from older persons about him. One
line, in particular, made a great impression upon him, and he would
start up on the most unexpected occasions and fire off in his loudest
tone,

"Stand back, my Lord, and let the coffin pass."

On the 21st of August, 1820