singularly haunting and
impressive:

"The golden skirts of day were yet lingering upon the
hills, but deep shades obscured the hollow and the
pool, as if sombre night were rising thence to
overspread the world. Again that evil woman began to
weave her spell. Long did it proceed unanswered, till
the knolling of a bell stole in among the intervals of
her words, like a clang that had travelled far over
valley and rising ground and was just ready to die in
the air... Stronger it grew, and sadder, and deepened
into the tone of a death-bell, knolling dolefully from
some ivy-mantled tower, and bearing tidings of
mortality and woe to the cottage, to the hall and to
the solitary wayfarer that all might weep for the doom
appointed in turn to them. Then came a measured tread,
passing slowly, slowly on as of mourners with a coffin,
their garments trailing the ground so that the ear
could measure the length of their melancholy array.
Before them went the priest reading the burial-service,
while the leaves of his book were rustling in the
breeze. And though no voice but his was heard to speak
aloud, still here were revilings and anathemas
whispered, but distinct, from women and from men... The
sweeping sound of the funeral train faded away like a
thin vapour and the wind that just before had seemed to
shake the coffin-pall moaned sadly round the verge of
the hollow between three hills."

In a later collection of Hawthorne's short stories, _Mosses from
an Old Manse_, the grave and the gay, the terrific and the
sportive, are once more intermingled. Side by side with a forlorn
attempt at humorous allegory, Mrs. _Bullfrog_, we find the
serious moral allegories of _The Birthmark_ and _The
Bosom-Serpent_, the wild, mysterious forest-revels in _Goodman
Brown_, and the evil, sinister beauty of _Dr. Rappacini's
Daughter_, a modern rehandling of the ancient legend of the
poison-maiden, who was perhaps the prototype of Oliver Wendell
Holmes' heroine in _Elsie Venner_ (1861). The quiet grace and
natural ease of Hawthorne's style lend even to his least
ambitious tales a distinctive charm. If he chooses a slight and
simple theme, his touch is deft and sure. _Dr. Heidegger's
Experiment_, in which Hawthorne's delicate, whimsical fancy plays
round the idea of the elixir of life, is almost like a series of
miniatur