ew England life; it still flourishes in
perfection in the great stock of the people, especially in rural
communities; but it is probable that at the present hour a writer of
Hawthorne's general fastidiousness would not express it quite so
artlessly. "A shrewd gentlewoman, who kept a tavern in the town," he
says, in _Chippings with a Chisel_, "was anxious to obtain two or
three gravestones for the deceased members of her family, and to pay
for these solemn commodities by taking the sculptor to board." This
image of a gentlewoman keeping a tavern and looking out for boarders,
seems, from the point of view to which I allude, not at all
incongruous. It will be observed that the lady in question was shrewd;
it was probable that she was substantially educated, and of reputable
life, and it is certain that she was energetic. These qualities would
make it natural to Hawthorne to speak of her as a gentlewoman; the
natural tendency in societies where the sense of equality prevails,
being to take for granted the high level rather than the low. Perhaps
the most striking example of the democratic sentiment in all our
author's tales, however, is the figure of Uncle Venner, in _The House
of the Seven Gables_. Uncle Venner is a poor old man in a brimless hat
and patched trousers, who picks up a precarious subsistence by
rendering, for a compensation, in the houses and gardens of the good
people of Salem, those services that are know in New England as
"chores." He carries parcels, splits firewood, digs potatoes, collects
refuse for the maintenance of his pigs, and looks forward with
philosophic equanimity to the time when he shall end his days in the
almshouse. But in spite of the very modest place that he occupies in
the social scale, he is received on a footing of familiarity in the
household of the far-descended Miss Pyncheon; and when this ancient
lady and her companions take the air in the garden of a summer
evening, he steps into the estimable circle and mingles the smoke of
his pipe with their refined conversation. This obviously is rather
imaginative--Uncle Venner is a creation with a purpose. He is an
original, a natural moralist, a philosopher; and Hawthorne, who knew
perfectly what he was about in introducing him--Hawthorne always knew
perfectly what he was about--wished to give in his person an example
of humorous resignation and of a life reduced to the simplest and
homeliest elements, as opposed to the fantastic pretensions