the tone of Mr.
Lathrop's _Study_ is in itself sufficient evidence of the manner in
which an American story-teller may in some cases look to have his
eulogy pronounced.

Hawthorne's early attempt to support himself by his pen appears to
have been deliberate; we hear nothing of those experiments in
counting-houses or lawyers' offices, of which a permanent invocation
to the Muse is often the inconsequent sequel. He began to write, and
to try and dispose of his writings; and he remained at Salem
apparently only because his family, his mother and his two sisters,
lived there. His mother had a house, of which during the twelve years
that elapsed until 1838, he appears to have been an inmate. Mr.
Lathrop learned from his surviving sister that after publishing
_Fanshawe_ he produced a group of short stories entitled _Seven Tales
of my Native Land_, and that this lady retained a very favourable
recollection of the work, which her brother had given her to read. But
it never saw the light; his attempts to get it published were
unsuccessful, and at last, in a fit of irritation and despair, the
young author burned the manuscript.

There is probably something autobiographic in the striking little tale
of _The Devil in Manuscript_. "They have been offered to seventeen
publishers," says the hero of that sketch in regard to a pile of his
own lucubrations.

"It would make you stare to read their answers.... One man
publishes nothing but school-books; another has five novels
already under examination;... another gentleman is just
giving up business, on purpose, I verily believe, to avoid
publishing my book. In short, of all the seventeen
booksellers, only one has vouchsafed even to read my tales;
and he--a literary dabbler himself, I should judge--has the
impertinence to criticise them, proposing what he calls vast
improvements, and concluding, after a general sentence of
condemnation, with the definitive assurance that he will not
be concerned on any terms.... But there does seem to be one
righteous man among these seventeen unrighteous ones, and he
tells me, fairly, that no American publisher will meddle
with an American work--seldom if by a known writer, and
never if by a new one--unless at the writer's risk."

But though the _Seven Tales_ were not printed, Hawthorne, proceeded to
write others that were; the two collections of the _Twice-Told Tales_,
an