re talent. He went back to Salem, and from
this tranquil standpoint, in the spring of 1837, he watched the first
volume of his _Twice-Told Tales_ come into the world. He had by this
time been living some ten years of his manhood in Salem, and an
American commentator may be excused for feeling the desire to
construct, from the very scanty material that offers itself, a slight
picture of his life there. I have quoted his own allusions to its
dulness and blankness, but I confess that these observations serve
rather to quicken than to depress my curiosity. A biographer has of
necessity a relish for detail; his business is to multiply points of
characterisation. Mr. Lathrop tells us that our author "had little
communication with even the members of his family. Frequently his
meals were brought and left at his locked door, and it was not often
that the four inmates of the old Herbert Street mansion met in family
circle. He never read his stories aloud to his mother and sisters....
It was the custom in this household for the several members to remain
very much by themselves; the three ladies were perhaps nearly as
rigorous recluses as himself, and, speaking of the isolation which
reigned among them, Hawthorne once said, 'We do not even _live_ at our
house!'" It is added that he was not in the habit of going to church.
This is not a lively picture, nor is that other sketch of his daily
habits much more exhilarating, in which Mr. Lathrop affirms that
though the statement that for several years "he never saw the sun" is
entirely an error, yet it is true that he stirred little abroad all
day and "seldom chose to walk in the town except at night." In the
dusky hours he took walks of many miles along the coast, or else
wandered about the sleeping streets of Salem. These were his pastimes,
and these were apparently his most intimate occasions of contact with
life. Life, on such occasions, was not very exuberant, as any one will
reflect who has been acquainted with the physiognomy of a small New
England town after nine o'clock in the evening. Hawthorne, however,
was an inveterate observer of small things, and he found a field for
fancy among the most trivial accidents. There could be no better
example of this happy faculty than the little paper entitled "Night
Sketches," included among the _Twice-Told Tales_. This small
dissertation is about nothing at all, and to call attention to it is
almost to overrate its importance. This fact is