st of his shorter stories, The Scarlet Letter finds its scene and
time with the earlier Puritans. Its argument involves the analysis and
action of remorse in the heart of a person who, himself unsuspected, is
compelled to assist in the punishment of the partner of his guilt. This
peculiar and powerful fiction at once arrested attention, and claimed
for its author the eminence as a novelist which his previous
performances had secured for him as a writer of tales. Its whole
atmosphere and the qualities of its characters demanded for a creditable
success very unusual capacities. The frivolous costume and brisk action
of the story of fashionable life are easily depicted by the practised
sketcher, but a work like The Scarlet Letter comes slowly upon the
canvas, where passions are commingled and overlaid with the deliberate
and masterly elaboration with which the grandest effects are produced in
pictorial composition and coloring. It is a distinction of such works
that while they are acceptable to the many, they also surprise and
delight the few who appreciate the nicest arrangement and the most high
and careful finish. The Scarlet Letter will challenge consideration in
the name of Art, in the best audience which in any age receives
Cervantes, Le Sage, or Scott.

Following this romance came new editions of _True Stories from History
and Biography_, a volume for youthful readers, and of the _Twice-Told
Tales_. In the preface to the latter, underrating much the reputation he
has acquired by them, he says:

"The author of _Twice-Told Tales_ has a claim to one
distinction, which, as none of his literary brethren will care
about disputing it with him, he need not be afraid to mention.
He was for a good many years the obscurest man of letters in
America. These stories were published in magazines and annuals,
extending over a period of ten or twelve years, and comprising
the whole of the writer's young manhood, without making (so far
as he has ever been aware) the slightest impression on the
public. One or two among them, the _Rill from the Town Pump_,
in perhaps a greater degree than any other, had a pretty wide
newspaper circulation; as for the rest, he has no grounds for
supposing that on their first appearance they met with the good
or evil fortune to be read by any body. Throughout the time
above specified he had no incitement to literary effort in a
r