M, MASSACHUSETTS

HERMAN MELVILLE

JAMES T. FIELDS

THE WAYSIDE (Showing Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife)

EDWIN P. WHIPPLE

JAMES T. FIELDS, NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, AND WILLIAM D. TICKNOR

RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES

ROBERT BROWNING

FRANCIS BANNOCH

REV. WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING, 1855

MARIA MITCHELL

WILLIAM WETMORE STORY

PENCIL SKETCHES IN ITALY, BY MRS. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

THE MARBLE FAUN

HIRAM POWERS

INTRODUCTION

Inheritance of friendships--Gracious giants--My own good
fortune--My father the central figure--What did his gift to
me cost him?--A revelation in Colorado--Privileges make
difficulties--Lights and shadows of memory--An informal
narrative--Contrast between my father's life and mine.

The best use we can make of good fortune is to share it with our
fellows. Those to whom good things come by way of inheritance, however,
are often among the latest to comprehend their own advantage; they
suppose it to be the common condition. And no doubt I had nearly arrived
at man's estate before it occurred to me that the lines of few fishers
of men were cast in places so pleasant as mine. I was the son of a
man of high desert, who had such friends as he deserved; and these
companions and admirers of his gave to me in the beginning of my days
a kindly welcome and encouragement generated from their affection and
reverence for him. Without doing a stroke of work for it, I found myself
early in the enjoyment of a principality of good will and fellowship--a
species of freemasonry, I might call it, though the secret was patent
enough--for the rights in which, unaided, I might have contended my
lifetime long in vain. Men and women whose names are consecrated apart
in the dearest thoughts of thousands were familiars and playmates of my
childhood; they supported my youth and bade my manhood godspeed. But
to me, for a long while, the favor of these gracious giants of mind and
character seemed agreeable indeed, but nothing out of the ordinary; my
tacit presumption was that other children as well as I could if they
would walk hand in hand with Emerson along the village street, seek in
the meadows for arrow-heads with Thoreau, watch Powers thump the brown
clay of the "Greek Slave," or listen to the voice of Charlotte Cushman,
which could sway assembled thousands, modulate itself to tell stories to
the urchin who leaned, rapt, against her knees. Were human felicity so
omnipresent