“Oh, no, ma’am,” he assured her. “I like the scent extremely. It’sexciting.” He smiled at her, but it was true. He had very early memories of a portrait-painter coming to Helwater to do portraits of his grandparents and Mama Isobel, the fuss of canvas and wood and cloths and the mysterious fumes that floated out of the morning room.
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< Mosses from an Old Manse
Mosses from an Old Manse/The Old Manse
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Between two tall gate-posts of rough-hewn stone (the gate itselfhaving fallen from its hinges at some unknown epoch) we beheld thegray front of the old parsonage, terminating the vista of an avenue ofblack-ash trees. It was now a twelvemonth since the funeralprocession of the venerable clergyman, its last inhabitant, had turnedfrom that gateway towards the village burying-ground. The wheel-trackleading to the door, as well as the whole breadth of the avenue, wasalmost overgrown with grass, affording dainty mouthfuls to two orthree vagrant cows and an old white horse who had his own living topick up along the roadside. The glimmering shadows that lay halfasleep between the door of the house and the public highway were akind of spiritual medium, seen through which the edifice had not quitethe aspect of belonging to the material world. Certainly it hadlittle in common with those ordinary abodes which stand so imminentupon the road that every passer-by can thrust his head, as it were,into the domestic circle. From these quiet windows the figures ofpassing travellers looked too remote and dim to disturb the sense ofprivacy. In its near retirement and accessible seclusion, it was thevery spot for the residence of a clergyman,—a man not estranged fromhuman life, yet enveloped, in the midst of it, with a veil woven ofintermingled gloom and brightness. It was worthy to have been one ofthe time-honored parsonages of England, in which, through manygenerations, a succession of holy occupants pass from youth to age,and bequeath each an inheritance of sanctity to pervade the house andhover over it as with an atmosphere.
Nor, in truth, had the Old Manse ever been profaned by a lay occupantuntil that memorable summer afternoon when I entered it as my home. Apriest had built it; a priest had succeeded to it; other priestly menfrom time to time had dwelt in it; and children born in its chambershad grown up to assume the priestly character. It was awful toreflect how many sermons must have been written there. The latestinhabitant alone—he by whose translation to paradise the dwelling wasleft vacant—had penned nearly three thousand discourses, besides thebetter, if not the greater, number that gushed living from his lips.How often, no doubt, had he paced to and fro along the avenue,attuning his meditations to the sighs and gentle murmurs and deep andsolemn peals of the wind among the lofty tops of the trees! In thatvariety of natural utterances he could find something accordant withevery passage of his sermon, were it of tenderness or reverentialfear. The boughs over my head seemed shadowy with solemn thoughts, aswell as with rustling leaves. I took shame to myself for having been so long a writer of idle stories, and ventured to hope that wisdomwould descend upon me with the falling leaves of the avenue, and thatI should light upon an intellectual treasure in the Old Manse wellworth those hoards of long-hidden gold which people seek for in moss-grown houses. Profound treatises of morality; a layman'sunprofessional, and therefore unprejudiced, views of religion;histories (such as Bancroft might have written had he taken up hisabode here, as he once purposed) bright with picture, gleaming over adepth of philosophic thought,—these were the works that might fitlyhave flowed from such a retirement. In the humblest event, I resolvedat least to achieve a novel that should evolve some deep lesson, andshould possess physical substance enough to stand alone.
In furtherance of my design, and as if to leave me no pretext for notfulfilling it, there was in the rear of the house the most delightfullittle nook of a study that ever afforded its snug seclusion to ascholar. It was here that Emerson wrote Nature; for he was then aninhabitant of the Manse, and used to watch the Assyrian dawn andPaphian sunset and moonrise from the summit of our eastern hill. WhenI first saw the room, its walls were blackened with the smoke ofunnumbered years, and made still blacker by the grim prints of Puritanministers that hung around. These worthies looked strangely like badangels, or at least like men who had wrestled so continually and sosternly with the Devil that somewhat of his sooty fierceness had beenimparted to their own visages. They had all vanished now; a cheerfulcoat of paint and golden-tinted paper-hangings lighted up the smallapartment; while the shadow of a willow-tree that swept against theoverhanging eaves atempered the cheery western sunshine. In place ofthe grim prints there was the sweet and lovely head of one ofRaphael's Madonnas, and two pleasant little pictures of the Lake ofComo. The only other decorations were a purple vase of flowers,always fresh, and a bronze one containing graceful ferns. My books(few, and by no means choice; for they were chiefly such waifs aschance had thrown in my way) stood in order about the room, seldom tobe disturbed.
The study had three windows, set with little, old-fashioned panes ofglass, each with a crack across it. The two on the western sidelooked, or rather peeped, between the willow branches, down into theorchard, with glimpses of the river through the trees. The third,facing northward, commanded a broader view of the river, at a spotwhere its hitherto obscure waters gleam forth into the light ofhistory. It was at this window that the clergyman who then dwelt inthe Manse stood watching the outbreak of a long and deadly strugglebetween two nations; he saw the irregular array of his parishioners onthe farther side of the river, and the glittering line of the Britishon the hither bank. He awaited, in an agony of suspense, the rattle ofthe musketry. It came; and there needed but a gentle wind to sweep thebattle-smoke around this quiet house.
Perhaps the reader, whom I cannot help considering as my guest in theOld Manse, and entitled to all courtesy in the way of sight-showing,—perhaps he will choose to take a nearer view of the memorable spot.We stand now on the river's brink. It may well be called theConcord,—the river of peace and quietness; for it is certainly themost unexcitable and sluggish stream that ever loitered imperceptiblytowards its eternity,—the sea. Positively I had lived three weeksbeside it before it grew quite clear to my perception which way thecurrent flowed. It never has a vivacious aspect, except when anorthwestern breeze is vexing its surface on a sunshiny day. From theincurable indolence of its nature, the stream is happily incapable ofbecoming the slave of human ingenuity, as is the fate of so many awild, free mountain torrent. While all things else are compelled tosubserve some useful purpose, it idles its sluggish life away in lazyliberty, without turning a solitary spindle or affording even water-power enough to grind the corn that grows upon its banks. The torporof its movement allows it nowhere a bright, pebbly shore, nor so muchas a narrow strip of glistening sand, in any part of its course. Itslumbers between broad prairies, kissing the long meadow grass, andbathes the overhanging boughs of elder-bushes and willows, or theroots of elms and ash-trees and clumps of maples. Flags and rushesgrow along its plashy shore; the yellow water-lily spreads its broad,flat leaves on the margin; and the fragrant white pond-lily abounds,generally selecting a position just so far from the river's brink thatit cannot be grasped save at the hazard of plunging in.
It is a marvel whence this perfect flower derives its loveliness andperfume, springing as it does from the black mud over which the riversleeps, and where lurk the slimy eel, and speckled frog, and the mud-turtle, whom continual washing cannot cleanse. It is the very sameblack mud out of which the yellow lily sucks its obscene life andnoisome odor. Thus we see, too, in the world that some personsassimilate only what is ugly and evil from the same moralcircumstances which supply good and beautiful results—the fragranceof celestial flowers—to the daily life of others.
The reader must not, from any testimony of mine, contract a disliketowards our slumberous stream. In the light of a calm and goldensunset it becomes lovely beyond expression; the more lovely for thequietude that so well accords with the hour, when even the wind, afterblustering all day long, usually hushes itself to rest. Each tree androck and every blade of grass is distinctly imaged, and, howeverunsightly in reality, assumes ideal beauty in the reflection. Theminutest things of earth and the broad aspect of the firmament arepictured equally without effort and with the same felicity of success.All the sky glows downward at our feet; the rich clouds float throughthe unruffled bosom of the stream like heavenly thoughts through apeaceful heart. We will not, then, malign our river as gross andimpure while it can glorify itself with so adequate a picture of theheaven that broods above it; or, if we remember its tawny hue and themuddiness of its bed, let it be a symbol that the earthiest human soulhas an infinite spiritual capacity and may contain the better worldwithin its depths. But, indeed, the same lesson might be drawn out ofany mud-puddle in the streets of a city; and, being taught useverywhere, it must be true.
Come, we have pursued a somewhat devious track in our walk to thebattle-ground. Here we are, at the point where the river was crossedby the old bridge, the possession of which was the immediate object ofthe contest. On the hither side grow two or three elms, throwing awide circumference of shade, but which must have been planted at someperiod within the threescore years and ten that have passed since thebattle-day. On the farther shore, overhung by a clump of elder-bushes, we discern the stone abutment of the bridge. Looking downinto the river, I once discovered some heavy fragments of the timbers,all green with half a century's growth of water-moss; for during thatlength of time the tramp of horses and human footsteps have ceasedalong this ancient highway. The stream has here about the breadth oftwenty strokes of a swimmer's arm,—a space not too wide when thebullets were whistling across. Old people who dwell hereabouts willpoint out, the very spots on the western bank where our countrymenfell down and died; and on this side of the river an obelisk ofgranite has grown up from the soil that was fertilized with Britishblood. The monument, not more than twenty feet in height, is such asit befitted the inhabitants of a village to erect in illustration of amatter of local interest rather than what was suitable to commemoratean epoch of national history. Still, by the fathers of the villagethis famous deed was done; and their descendants might rightfullyclaim the privilege of building a memorial.
A humbler token of the fight, yet a more interesting one than thegranite obelisk, may be seen close under the stone wall whichseparates the battle-ground from the precincts of the parsonage. It isthe grave,—marked by a small, mossgrown fragment of stone at the headand another at the foot,—the grave of two British soldiers who wereslain in the skirmish, and have ever since slept peacefully whereZechariah Brown and Thomas Davis buried them. Soon was their warfareended; a weary night-march from Boston, a rattling volley of musketryacross the river, and then these many years of rest. In the longprocession of slain invaders who passed into eternity from the battle-fields of the Revolution, these two nameless soldiers led the way.
Lowell, the poet, as we were once standing over this grave, told me atradition in reference to one of the inhabitants below. The story hassomething deeply impressive, though its circumstances cannotaltogether be reconciled with probability. A youth in the service ofthe clergyman happened to be chopping wood, that April morning, at theback door of the Manse; and when the noise of battle rang from side toside of the bridge, he hastened across the intervening field to seewhat might be going forward. It is rather strange, by the way, thatthis lad should have been so diligently at work when the wholepopulation of town and country were startled out of their customarybusiness by the advance of the British troops. Be that as it might,the tradition, says that the lad now left his task and hurried to thebattle-field with the axe still in his hand. The British had by thistime retreated; the Americans were in pursuit; and the late scene ofstrife was thus deserted by both parties. Two soldiers lay on theground,—one was a corpse; but, as the young New-Englander drew nigh,the other Briton raised himself painfully upon his hands and knees andgave a ghastly stare into his face. The boy,—it must have been anervous impulse, without purpose, without thought, and betokening asensitive and impressible nature rather than a hardened one,—the boyuplifted his axe and dealt the wounded soldier a fierce and fatal blowupon the head.
I could wish that the grave might be opened; for I would fain knowwhether either of the skeleton soldiers has the mark of an axe in hisskull. The story comes home to me like truth. Oftentimes, as anintellectual and moral exercise, I have sought to follow that pooryouth through his subsequent career and observe how his soul wastortured by the blood-stain, contracted as it had been before the longcustom of war had robbed human life of its sanctity and while it stillseemed murderous to slay a brother man. This one circumstance hasborne more fruit for me than all that history tells us of the fight.
Many strangers come in the summer-time to view the battle-ground. Formy own part, I have never found my imagination much excited by this orany other scene of historic celebrity; nor would the placid margin ofthe river have lost any of its charm for me, had men never fought anddied there. There is a wilder interest in the tract of land—perhaps ahundred yards in breadth—which extends between the battle-field andthe northern face of our Old Manse, with its contiguous avenue andorchard. Here, in some unknown age, before the white man came, stoodan Indian village, convenient to the river, whence its inhabitantsmust have drawn so large a part of their substance. The site isidentified by the spear and arrow-heads, the chisels, and otherimplements of war, labor, and the chase, which the plough turns upfrom the soil. You see a splinter of stone, half hidden beneath asod; it looks like nothing worthy of note; but, if you have faithenough to pick it up, behold a relic! Thoreau, who has a strangefaculty of finding what the Indians have left behind them, first setme on the search; and I afterwards enriched myself with some veryperfect specimens, so rudely wrought that it seemed almost as ifchance had fashioned them. Their great charm consists in thisrudeness and in the individuality of each article, so different fromthe productions of civilized machinery, which shapes everything on onepattern. There is exquisite delight, too, in picking up for one'sself an arrow-head that was dropped centuries ago and has never beenhandled since, and which we thus receive directly from the hand of thered hunter, who purposed to shoot it at his game or at an enemy. Suchan incident builds up again the Indian village and its encirclingforest, and recalls to life the painted chiefs and warriors, thesquaws at their household toil, and the children sporting among thewigwams, while the little wind-rocked pappose swings from the branchof a tree. It can hardly be told whether it is a joy or a pain, aftersuch a momentary vision, to gaze around in the broad daylight ofreality and see stone fences, white houses, potato-fields, and mendoggedly hoeing in their shirt-sleeves and homespun pantaloons. Butthis is nonsense. The Old Manse is better than a thousand wigwams.
The Old Manse! We had almost forgotten it, but will return thitherthrough the orchard. This was set out by the last clergyman, in thedecline of his life, when the neighbors laughed at the hoary-headedman for planting trees from which he could have no prospect ofgathering fruit. Even had that been the case, there was only so muchthe better motive for planting them, in the pure and unselfish hope ofbenefiting his successors,—an end so seldom achieved by moreambitious efforts. But the old minister, before reaching hispatriarchal age of ninety, ate the apples from this orchard duringmany years, and added silver and gold to his annual stipend bydisposing of the superfluity. It is pleasant to think of him walkingamong the trees in the quiet afternoons of early autumn and picking uphere and there a windfall, while he observes how heavily the branchesare weighed down, and computes the number of empty flour-barrels thatwill be filled by their burden. He loved each tree, doubtless, as ifit had been his own child. An orchard has a relation to mankind, andreadily connects itself with matters of the heart. The trees possessa domestic character; they have lost the wild nature of their forestkindred, and have grown humanized by receiving the care of man as wellas by contributing to his wants. There, is so much individuality ofcharacter, too, among apple trees, that it gives them all additionalclaim to be the objects of human interest. One is harsh and crabbedin its manifestations; another gives us fruit as mild as charity. Oneis churlish and illiberal, evidently grudging the few apples that itbears; another exhausts itself in free-hearted benevolence. Thevariety of grotesque shapes into which apple, trees contort themselveshas its effect on those who get acquainted with them: they stretch outtheir crooked branches, and take such hold of the imagination, that weremember them as humorists and odd fellows. And what is moremelancholy than the old apple-trees that linger about the spot whereonce stood a homestead, but where there is now only a ruined chimneyrising out of a grassy and weed-grown cellar? They offer their fruitto every wayfarer,--apples that are bitter sweet with the moral ofTime's vicissitude.
I have met with no other such pleasant trouble in the world as that offinding myself, with only the two or three mouths which it was myprivilege to feed, the sole inheritor of the old clergyman's wealth offruits. Throughout the summer there were cherries and currants; andthen came Autumn, with his immense burden of apples, dropping themcontinually from his over-laden shoulders as he trudged along. In thestillest afternoon, if I listened, the thump of a great apple wasaudible, falling without a breath of wind, from the mere necessity ofperfect ripeness. And, besides, there were pear-trees, that flung downbushels upon bushels of heavy pears; and peach-trees, which, in a good year, tormented me with peaches, neither to be eaten nor kept, nor,without labor and perplexity, to be given away. The idea of aninfinite generosity and exhaustless bounty on the part of our MotherNature was well worth obtaining through such cares as these. Thatfeeling can be enjoyed in perfection only by the natives of summerislands, where the bread-fruit, the cocoa, the palm, and the orangegrow spontaneously and hold forth the ever-ready meal; but likewisealmost as well by a man long habituated to city life, who plunges intosuch a solitude as that of the Old Manse, where he plucks the fruit oftrees that he did not plant, and which therefore, to my heterodoxtaste, bear the closest resemblance to those that grew in Eden. Ithas been an apothegm these five thousand years, that toil sweetens thebread it earns. For my part (speaking from hard experience, acquiredwhile belaboring the rugged furrows of Brook Farm), I relish best thefree gifts of Providence.
Not that it can be disputed that the light toil requisite to cultivatea moderately sized garden imparts such zest to kitchen vegetables asis never found in those of the market-gardener. Childless men, if theywould know something of the bliss of paternity, should plant a seed,--be it squash, bean, Indian corn, or perhaps a mere flower or worthlessweed,--should plant it with their own hands, and nurse it from infancyto maturity altogether by their own care. If there be not too many ofthem, each individual plant becomes an object of separate interest.My garden, that skirted the avenue of the Manse, was of precisely theright extent. An hour or two of morning labor was all that itrequired. But I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, andstand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love thatnobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in theprocess of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in theworld to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a row ofearly peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicategreen. Later in the season the humming-birds were attracted by theblossoms of a peculiar variety of bean; and they were a joy to me,those little spiritual visitants, for deigning to sip airy food out ofmy nectar-cups. Multitudes of bees used to bury themselves in theyellow blossoms of the summer-squashes. This, too, was a deepsatisfaction; although, when they had laden themselves with sweets,they flew away to some unknown hive, which would give back nothing inrequital of what my garden had contributed. But I was glad thus tofling a benefaction upon the passing breeze with the certainty thatsomebody must profit by it and that there would be a little more honeyin the world to allay the sourness and bitterness which mankind isalways complaining of. Yes, indeed; my life was the sweeter for thathoney.
Speaking of summer-squashes, I must say a word of their beautiful andvaried forms. They presented an endless diversity of urns and vases,shallow or deep, scalloped or plain, moulded in patterns which asculptor would do well to copy, since Art has never invented anythingmore graceful. A hundred squashes in the garden were worth, in myeyes at least, of being rendered indestructible in marble. If everProvidence (but I know it never will) should assign me a superfluityof gold, part of it shall be expended for a service of plate, or mostdelicate porcelain, to be wrought into the shapes of summer-squashesgathered from vines which I will plant with my own hands. As dishes for containing vegetables, they would be peculiarly appropriate.
But not merely the squeamish love of the beautiful was gratified by mytoil in the kitchen-garden. There was a hearty enjoyment, likewise,in observing the growth of the crook-necked winter-squashes from thefirst little bulb, with the withered blossom adhering to it, untilthey lay strewn upon the soil, big, round fellows, hiding their headsbeneath the leaves, but turning up their great yellow rotundities tothe noontide sun. Gazing at them, I felt that by my agency somethingworth living for had been done. A new substance was born into theworld. They were real and tangible existences, which the mind couldseize hold of and rejoice in. A cabbage, too,--especially the earlyDutch cabbage, which swells to a monstrous circumference, until itsambitious heart often bursts asunder,--is a matter to be proud of whenwe can claim a share with the earth and sky in producing it. But,after all, the hugest pleasure is reserved until these vegetablechildren of ours are smoking on the table, and we, like Saturn, make ameal of them.
![Torrent Torrent](http://t03.deviantart.net/oL_ElbaxBPGLMR9D1a6x1b7qxf4=/300x200/filters:fixed_height(100,100):origin()/pre15/2221/th/pre/i/2013/345/6/0/fruit_bat_by_morgh_us-d6ipep2.jpg)
What with the river, the battle-field, the orchard, and the garden,the reader begins to despair of finding his way back into the OldManse. But, in agreeable weather, it is the truest hospitality to keephim out of doors. I never grew quite acquainted with my habitationtill a long spell of sulky rain had confined me beneath its roof.There could not be a more sombre aspect of external nature than asthen seen from the windows of my study. The great willow-tree hadcaught and retained among its leaves a whole cataract of water, to beshaken down at intervals by the frequent gusts of wind. All day long,and for a week together, the rain was drip-drip-dripping and splash-splash-splashing from the eaves and bubbling and foaming into the tubsbeneath the spouts. The old, unpainted shingles of the house andoutbuildings were black with moisture; and the mosses of ancientgrowth upon the walls looked green and fresh, as if they were thenewest things and afterthought of Time. The usually mirrored surfaceof the river was blurred by an infinity of raindrops; the wholelandscape had a completely water-soaked appearance, conveying theimpression that the earth was wet through like a sponge; while thesummit of a wooded hill, about a mile distant, was enveloped in adense mist, where the demon of the tempest seemed to have his abiding-place and to be plotting still direr inclemencies.
Nature has no kindness, no hospitality, during a rain. In thefiercest beat of sunny days she retains a secret mercy, and welcomesthe wayfarer to shady nooks of the woods whither the sun cannotpenetrate; but she provides no shelter against her storms. It makes usshiver to think of those deep, umbrageous recesses, thoseovershadowing banks, where we found such enjoyment during the sultryafternoons. Not a twig of foliage there but would dash a littleshower into our faces. Looking reproachfully towards the impenetrablesky,--if sky there be above that dismal uniformity of cloud,--we areapt to murmur against the whole system of the universe, since itinvolves the extinction of so many summer days in so short a life bythe hissing and spluttering rain. In such spells of weather,--and itis to be supposed such weather came,--Eve's bower in paradise musthave been but a cheerless and aguish kind of shelter, nowisecomparable to the old parsonage, which had resources of its own tobeguile the week's imprisonment. The idea of sleeping on a couch ofwet roses!
Happy the man who in a rainy day can betake himself to a huge garret,stored, like that of the Manse, with lumber that each generation hasleft behind it from a period before the Revolution. Our garret was anarched hall, dimly illuminated through small and dusty windows; it wasbut a twilight at the best; and there were nooks, or rather caverns,of deep obscurity, the secrets of which I never learned, being tooreverent of their dust and cobwebs. The beams and rafters, roughlyhewn and with strips of bark still on them, and the rude masonry ofthe chimneys, made the garret look wild and uncivilized, an aspectunlike what was seen elsewhere in the quiet and decorous old house.But on one side there was a little whitewashed apartment, which borethe traditionary title of the Saint's Chamber, because holy men intheir youth had slept, and studied, and prayed there. With itselevated retirement, its one window, its small fireplace, and itscloset convenient for an oratory, it was the very spot where a youngman might inspire himself with solemn enthusiasm and cherish saintlydreams. The occupants, at various epochs, had left brief records andejaculations inscribed upon the walls. There, too, hung a tatteredand shrivelled roll of canvas, which on inspection proved to be theforcibly wrought picture of a clergyman, in wig, band, and gown,holding a Bible in his hand. As I turned his face towards the light,he eyed me with an air of authority such as men of his professionseldom assume in our days. The original had been pastor of the parishmore than a century ago, a friend of Whitefield, and almost his equalin fervid eloquence. I bowed before the effigy of the dignifieddivine, and felt as if I had now met face to face with the ghost bywhom, as there was reason to apprehend, the Manse was haunted.
Houses of any antiquity in New England are so invariably possessedwith spirits that the matter seems hardly worth alluding to. Ourghost used to heave deep sighs in a particular corner of the parlor,and sometimes rustled paper, as if he were turning over a sermon inthe long upper entry,--where nevertheless he was invisible, in spiteof the bright moonshine that fell through the eastern window. Notimprobably he wished me to edit and publish a selection from a chestfull of manuscript discourses that stood in the garret. Once, whileHillard and other friends sat talking with us in the twilight, therecame a rustling noise as of a minister's silk gown, sweeping throughthe very midst of the company, so closely as almost to brush againstthe chairs. Still there was nothing visible. A yet stranger businesswas that of a ghostly servant-maid, who used to be heard in thekitchen at deepest midnight, grinding coffee, cooking, ironing,--performing, in short, all kinds of domestic labor,--although no tracesof anything accomplished could be detected the next morning. Someneglected duty of her servitude, some ill-starched ministerial band,disturbed the poor damsel in her grave and kept her at work withoutany wages.
But to return from this digression. A part of my predecessor'slibrary was stored in the garret,--no unfit receptacle indeed for suchdreary trash as comprised the greater number of volumes. The old bookswould have been worth nothing at an auction. In this venerablegarret, however, they possessed an interest, quite apart from theirliterary value, as heirlooms, many of which had been transmitted downthrough a series of consecrated hands from the days of the mightyPuritan divines. Autographs of famous names were to be seen in fadedink on some of their fly-leaves; and there were marginal observationsor interpolated pages closely covered with manuscript in illegibleshorthand, perhaps concealing matter of profound truth and wisdom.The world will never be the better for it. A few of the books wereLatin folios, written by Catholic authors; others demolished Papistry,as with a sledge-hammer, in plain English. A dissertation on the Bookof Job--which only Job himself could have had patience to read--filledat least a score of small, thick-set quartos, at the rate of two orthree volumes to a chapter. Then there was a vast folio body ofdivinity,--too corpulent a body, it might be feared, to comprehend thespiritual element of religion. Volumes of this form dated back twohundred years or more, and were generally bound in black leather,exhibiting precisely such an appearance as we should attribute tobooks of enchantment. Others equally antique were of a size proper tobe carried in the large waistcoat pockets of old times,--diminutive,but as black as their bulkier brethren, and abundantly interfused withGreek and Latin quotations. These little old volumes impressed me asif they had been intended for very large ones, but had beenunfortunately blighted at an early stage of their growth.
The rain pattered upon the roof and the sky gloomed through the dustygarret-windows while I burrowed among these venerable books in searchof any living thought which should burn like a coal of fire or glowlike an inextinguishable gem beneath the dead trumpery that had longhidden it. But I found no such treasure; all was dead alike; and Icould not but muse deeply and wonderingly upon the humiliating factthat the works of man's intellect decay like those of his hands.Thought grows mouldy. What was good and nourishing food for thespirits of one generation affords no sustenance for the next. Booksof religion, however, cannot be considered a fair test of the enduringand vivacious properties of human thought, because such books soseldom really touch upon their ostensible subject, and have,therefore, so little business to be written at all. So long as anunlettered soul can attain to saving grace there would seem to be nodeadly error in holding theological libraries to be accumulations of,for the most part, stupendous impertinence.
Many of the books had accrued in the latter years of the lastclergyman's lifetime. These threatened to be of even less interestthan the elder works a century hence to any curious inquirer whoshould then rummage then as I was doing now. Volumes of the LiberalPreacher and Christian Examiner, occasional sermons, controversialpamphlets, tracts, and other productions of a like fugitive nature,took the place of the thick and heavy volumes of past time. In aphysical point of view, there was much the same difference as betweena feather and a lump of lead; but, intellectually regarded, thespecific gravity of old and new was about upon a par. Both also werealike frigid. The elder books nevertheless seemed to have beenearnestly written, and might be conceived to have possessed warmth atsome former period; although, with the lapse of time, the heatedmasses had cooled down even to the freezing-point. The frigidity ofthe modern productions, on the other hand, was characteristic andinherent, and evidently had little to do with the writer's qualitiesof mind and heart. In fine, of this whole dusty heap of literature Itossed aside all the sacred part, and felt myself none the less aChristian for eschewing it. There appeared no hope of either mountingto the better world on a Gothic staircase of ancient folios or offlying thither on the wings of a modern tract.
Nothing, strange to say, retained any sap except what had been writtenfor the passing day and year, without the remotest pretension or ideaof permanence. There were a few old newspapers, and still olderalmanacs, which reproduced to my mental eye the epochs when they hadissued from the press with a distinctness that was altogetherunaccountable. It was as if I had found bits of magic looking-glassamong the books with the images of a vanished century in them. Iturned my eyes towards the tattered picture above mentioned, and askedof the austere divine wherefore it was that he and his brethren, afterthe most painful rummaging and groping into their minds, had been ableto produce nothing half so real as these newspaper scribblers andalmanac-makers had thrown off in the effervescence of a moment. Theportrait responded not; so I sought an answer for myself. It is theage itself that writes newspapers and almanacs, which therefore have adistinct purpose and meaning at the time, and a kind of intelligibletruth for all times; whereas most other works--being written by menwho, in the very act, set themselves apart from their age--are likelyto possess little significance when new, and none at all when old.Genius, indeed, melts many ages into one, and thus effects somethingpermanent, yet still with a similarity of office to that of the moreephemeral writer. A work of genius is but the newspaper of a century,or perchance of a hundred centuries.
Lightly as I have spoken of these old books, there yet lingers with mea superstitious reverence for literature of all kinds. A bound volumehas a charm in my eyes similar to what scraps of manuscript possessfor the good Mussulman. He imagines that those wind-wafted recordsare perhaps hallowed by some sacred verse; and I, that every new bookor antique one may contain the 'open sesame,'--the spell to disclosetreasures hidden in some unsuspected cave of Truth. Thus it was notwithout sadness that I turned away from the library of the Old Manse.
Blessed was the sunshine when it came again at the close of anotherstormy day, beaming from the edge of the western horizon; while themassive firmament of clouds threw down all the gloom it could, butserved only to kindle the golden light into a more brilliant glow bythe strongly contrasted shadows. Heaven smiled at the earth, so longunseen, from beneath its heavy eyelid. To-morrow for the hill-topsand the woodpaths.
Or it might be that Ellery Charming came up the avenue to join me in afishing excursion on the river. Strange and happy times were thosewhen we cast aside all irksome forms and strait-laced habitudes anddelivered ourselves up to the free air, to live like the Indians orany less conventional race during one bright semicircle of the sun.Rowing our boat against the current, between wide meadows, we turnedaside into the Assabeth. A more lovely stream than this, for a mileabove its junction with the Concord, has never flowed on earth,nowhere, indeed, except to lave the interior regions of a poet'simagination. It is sheltered from the breeze by woods and a hillside;so that elsewhere there might be a hurricane, and here scarcely aripple across the shaded water. The current lingers along so gentlythat the mere force of the boatman's will seems sufficient to propelhis craft against it. It comes flowing softly through the midmostprivacy and deepest heart of a wood which whispers it to be quiet;while the stream whispers back again from its sedgy borders, as ifriver and wood were hushing one another to sleep. Yes; the river sleeps along its course and dreams of the sky and of the clusteringfoliage, amid which fall showers of broken sunlight, imparting specksof vivid cheerfulness, in contrast with the quiet depth of theprevailing tint. Of all this scene, the slumbering river has a dream-picture in its bosom. Which, after all, was the most real,--thepicture, or the original?--the objects palpable to our grosser senses,or their apotheosis in the stream beneath? Surely the disembodiedimages stand in closer relation to the soul. But both the originaland the reflection had here an ideal charm; and, had it been a thoughtmore wild, I could have fancied that this river had strayed forth outof the rich scenery of my companion's inner world; only the vegetationalong its banks should then have had an Oriental character.
Gentle and unobtrusive as the river is, yet the tranquil woods seemhardly satisfied to allow it passage. The trees are rooted on thevery verge of the water, and dip their pendent branches into it. Atone spot there is a lofty bank, on the slope of which grow somehemlocks, declining across the stream with outstretched arms, as ifresolute to take the plunge. In other places the banks are almost ona level with the water; so that the quiet congregation of trees settheir feet in the flood, and are Fringed with foliage down to thesurface. Cardinal-flowers kindle their spiral flames and illuminatethe dark nooks among the shrubbery. The pond-lily grows abundantlyalong the margin,--that delicious flower which, as Thoreau tells me,opens its virgin bosom to the first sunlight and perfects its beingthrough the magic of that genial kiss. He has beheld beds of themunfolding in due succession as the sunrise stole gradually from flowerto flower,--a sight not to be hoped for unless when a poet adjusts hisinward eye to a proper focus with the outward organ. Grapevines hereand there twine themselves around shrub and tree and hang theirclusters over the water within reach of the boatman's hand.Oftentimes they unite two trees of alien race in an inextricabletwine, marrying the hemlock and the maple against their will andenriching them with a purple offspring of which neither is the parent.One of these ambitious parasites has climbed into the upper branchesof a tall white-pine, and is still ascending from bough to bough,unsatisfied till it shall crown the tree's airy summit with a wreathof its broad foliage and a cluster of its grapes.
The winding course of the stream continually shut out the scene behindus and revealed as calm and lovely a one before. We glided from depthto depth, and breathed new seclusion at every turn. The shykingfisher flew from the withered branch close at hand to another at adistance, uttering a shrill cry of anger or alarm. Ducks that hadbeen floating there since the preceding eve were startled at ourapproach and skimmed along the glassy river, breaking its dark surfacewith a bright streak. The pickerel leaped from among the lilypads.The turtle, sunning itself upon a rock or at the root of a tree, slidsuddenly into the water with a plunge. The painted Indian who paddledhis canoe along the Assabeth three hundred years ago could hardly haveseen a wilder gentleness displayed upon its banks and reflected in itsbosom than we did. Nor could the same Indian have prepared hisnoontide meal with more simplicity. We drew up our skiff at somepoint where the overarching shade formed a natural bower, and therekindled a fire with the pine cones and decayed branches that laystrewn plentifully around. Soon the smoke ascended among the trees,impregnated with a savory incense, not heavy, dull, and surfeiting,like the steam of cookery within doors, but sprightly and piquant.The smell of our feast was akin to the woodland odors with which itmingled: there was no sacrilege committed by our intrusion there: thesacred solitude was hospitable, and granted us free leave to cook andeat in the recess that was at once our kitchen and banqueting-hall.It is strange what humble offices may be performed in a beautifulscene without destroying its poetry. Our fire, red gleaming among thetrees, and we beside it, busied with culinary rites and spreading outour meal on a mossgrown log, all seemed in unison with the rivergliding by and the foliage rustling over us. And, what was strangest,neither did our mirth seem to disturb the propriety of the solemnwoods; although the hobgoblins of the old wilderness and the will-of-the-wisps that glimmered in the marshy places might have come troopingto share our table-talk and have added their shrill laughter to ourmerriment. It was the very spot in which to utter the extremestnonsense or the profoundest wisdom, or that ethereal product of themind which partakes of both, and may become one or the other, incorrespondence with the faith and insight of the auditor.
So, amid sunshine and shadow, rustling leaves and sighing waters, upgushed our talk like the babble of a fountain. The evanescent spraywas Ellery's; and his, too, the lumps of golden thought that layglimmering in the fountain's bed and brightened both our faces by thereflection. Could he have drawn out that virgin gold, and stamped itwith the mint-mark that alone gives currency, the world might have hadthe profit, and he the fame. My mind was the richer merely by theknowledge that it was there. But the chief profit of those wild days,to him and me, lay not in any definite idea, not in any angular orrounded truth, which we dug out of the shapeless mass of problematicalstuff, but in the freedom which we thereby won from all custom andconventionalism and fettering influences of man on man. We were sofree to-day that it was impossible to be slaves again to-morrow. Whenwe crossed the threshold of the house or trod the thronged pavementsof a city, still the leaves of the trees that overhang the Assabethwere whispering to us, 'Be free! be free!' Therefore along that shadyriver-bank there are spots, marked with a heap of ashes and half-consumed brands, only less sacred in my remembrance than the hearth ofa household fire.
And yet how sweet, as we floated homeward adown the golden river atsunset,--how sweet was it to return within the system of humansociety, not as to a dungeon and a chain, but as to a stately edifice,whence we could go forth at will into state--her simplicity! Howgently, too, did the sight of the Old Manse, best seen from the river,overshadowed with its willow and all environed about with the foliageof its orchard and avenue,--how gently did its gray, homely aspectrebuke the speculative extravagances of the day! It had grown sacredin connection with the artificial life against which we inveighed; ithad been a home for many years, in spite of all; it was my home too;and, with these thoughts, it seemed to me that all the artifice andconventionalism of life was but an impalpable thinness upon itssurface, and that the depth below was none the worse for it. Once, aswe turned our boat to the bank, there was a cloud, in the shape of animmensely gigantic figure of a hound, couched above the house, as ifkeeping guard over it. Gazing at this symbol, I prayed that the upperinfluences might long protect the institutions that had grown out ofthe heart of mankind.
If ever my readers should decide to give up civilized life, cities,houses, and whatever moral or material enormities in addition to thesethe perverted ingenuity of our race has contrived, let it be in theearly autumn. Then Nature will love him better than at any otherseason, and will take him to her bosom with a more motherlytenderness. I could scarcely endure the roof of the old house above mein those first autumnal days. How early in the summer, too, theprophecy of autumn comes! Earlier in some years than in others;sometimes even in the first weeks of July. There is no other feelinglike what is caused by this faint, doubtful, yet real perception--ifit be not rather a foreboding--of the year's decay, so blessedly sweetand sad in the same breath.
Did I say that there was no feeling like it? Ah, but there is a half-acknowledged melancholy like to this when we stand in the perfectedvigor of our life and feel that Time has now given us all his flowers,and that the next work of his never-idle fingers must be to steal themone by one away.
I have forgotten whether the song of the cricket be not as early atoken of autumn's approach as any other,--that song which may becalled an audible stillness; for though very loud and heard afar, yetthe mind does not take note of it as a sound, so completely is itsindividual existence merged among the accompanying characteristics ofthe season. Alas for the pleasant summertime! In August the grass isstill verdant on the hills and in the valleys; the foliage of thetrees is as dense as ever and as green; the flowers gleam forth inricher abundance along the margin of the river and by the stone wallsand deep among the woods; the days, too, are as fervid now as theywere a month ago; and yet in every breath of wind and in every beam ofsunshine we hear the whispered farewell and behold the parting smileof a dear friend. There is a coolness amid all the heat, a mildnessin the blazing noon. Not a breeze can stir but it thrills us with thebreath of autumn. A pensive glory is seen in the far, golden gleams,among the shadows of the trees. The flowers--even the brightest ofthem, and they are the most gorgeous of the year--have this gentlesadness wedded to their pomp, and typify the character of thedelicious time each within itself. The brilliant cardinal-flower hasnever seemed gay to me.
Still later in the season Nature's tenderness waxes stronger. It isimpossible not to be fond of our mother now; for she is so fond of us!At other periods she does not make this impression on me, or only atrare intervals; but in those genial days of autumn, when she hasperfected her harvests and accomplished every needful thing that wasgiven her to do, then she overflows with a blessed superfluity oflove. She has leisure to caress her children now. It is good to bealive and at such times. Thank Heaven for breath--yes, for merebreath--when it is made up of a heavenly breeze like this! It comeswith a real kiss upon our cheeks; it would linger fondly around us ifit might; but, since it must be gone, it embraces us with its wholekindly heart and passes onward to embrace likewise the next thing thatit meets. A blessing is flung abroad and scattered far and wide overthe earth, to be gathered up by all who choose. I recline upon thestill unwithered grass and whisper to myself, 'O perfect day! Obeautiful world! O beneficent God!' And it is the promise of ablessed eternity; for our Creator would never have made such lovelydays and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyondall thought, unless we were meant to be immortal. This sunshine isthe golden pledge thereof. It beams through the gates of paradise andshows us glimpses far inward.
By and by, in a little time, the outward world puts on a drearausterity. On some October morning there is a heavy hoarfrost on thegrass and along the tops of the fences; and at sunrise the leaves fallfrom the trees of our avenue, without a breath of wind, quietlydescending by their own weight. All summer long they have murmuredlike the noise of waters; they have roared loudly while the brancheswere wrestling with the thunder-gust; they have made music both gladand solemn; they have attuned my thoughts by their quiet sound as Ipaced to and fro beneath the arch of intermingling boughs. Now theycan only rustle under my feet. Henceforth the gray parsonage beginsto assume a larger importance, and draws to its fireside,--for theabomination of the air-tight stove is reserved till wintry weather,--draws closer and closer to its fireside the vagrant impulses that hadgone wandering about through the summer.
When summer was dead and buried the Old Manse became as lonely as ahermitage. Not that ever--in my time at least--it had been throngedwith company; but, at no rare intervals, we welcomed some friend outof the dusty glare and tumult of the world, and rejoiced to share withhim the transparent obscurity that was floating over us. In onerespect our precincts were like the Enchanted Ground through which thepilgrim travelled on his way to the Celestial City. The guests, eachand all, felt a slumberous influence upon them; they fell asleep inchairs, or took a more deliberate siesta on the sofa, or were seenstretched among the shadows of the orchard, looking up dreamilythrough the boughs. They could not have paid a more acceptablecompliment to my abode nor to my own qualities as a host. I held itas a proof that they left their cares behind them as they passedbetween the stone gate-posts at the entrance of our avenue, and thatthe so powerful opiate was the abundance of peace and quiet within andall around us. Others could give them pleasure and amusement orinstruction,--these could be picked up anywhere; but it was for me togive them rest,--rest in a life of trouble. What better could bedone for those weary and world-worn spirits?--for him whose career ofperpetual action was impeded and harassed by the rarest of his powersand the richest of his acquirements?--for another who had thrown hisardent heart from earliest youth into the strife of politics, and now,perchance, began to suspect that one lifetime is too brief for theaccomplishment of any lofty aim?--for her oil whose feminine naturehad been imposed the heavy gift of intellectual power, such as astrong man might have staggered under, and with it the necessity toact upon the world?--in a word, not to multiply instances, whatbetter could be done for anybody who came within our magic circle thanto throw the spell of a tranquil spirit over him? And when it hadwrought its full effect, then we dismissed him, with but mistyreminiscences, as if he had been dreaming of us.
Were I to adopt a pet idea as so many people do, and fondle it in myembraces to the exclusion of all others, it would be, that the greatwant which mankind labors under at this present period is sleep. Theworld should recline its vast head on the first convenient pillow andtake an age-long nap. It has gone distracted through a morbidactivity, and, while preternaturally wide awake, is neverthelesstormented by visions that seem real to it now, but would assume theirtrue aspect and character were all things once set right by aninterval of sound repose. This is the only method of getting rid ofold delusions and avoiding new ones; of regenerating our race, so thatit might in due time awake as an infant out of dewy slumber; ofrestoring to us the simple perception of what is right and the single-hearted desire to achieve it, both of which have long been lost inconsequence of this weary activity of brain and torpor or passion ofthe heart that now afflict the universe. Stimulants, the only mode oftreatment hitherto attempted, cannot quell the disease; they do butheighten the delirium.
Let not the above paragraph ever be quoted against the author; for,though tinctured with its modicum of truth, it is the result andexpression of what he knew, while he was writing, to be but adistorted survey of the state and prospects of mankind. There werecircumstances around me which made it difficult to view the worldprecisely as it exists; for, severe and sober as was the Old Manse, itwas necessary to go but a little way beyond its threshold beforemeeting with stranger moral shapes of men than might have beenencountered elsewhere in a circuit of a thousand miles.
These hobgoblins of flesh and blood were attracted thither by thewidespreading influence of a great original thinker, who had hisearthly abode at the opposite extremity of our village. His mindacted upon other minds of a certain constitution with wonderfulmagnetism, and drew many men upon long pilgrimages to speak with himface to face. Young visionaries--to whom just so much of insight hadbeen imparted as to make life all a labyrinth around them--came toseek the clew that should guide them out of their self-involvedbewilderment. Gray-headed theorists--whose systems, at first air, hadfinally imprisoned them in an iron framework--travelled painfully tohis door, not to ask deliverance, but to invite the free spirit intotheir own thraldom. People that had lighted on a new thought or athought that they fancied new, came to Emerson, as the finder of aglittering gem hastens to a lapidary, to ascertain its quality andvalue. Uncertain, troubled, earnest wanderers through the midnight ofthe moral world beheld his intellectual fire as a beacon burning on ahill-top, and, climbing the difficult ascent, looked forth into thesurrounding obscurity more hopefully than hitherto. The lightrevealed objects unseen before,--mountains, gleaming lakes, glimpsesof a creation among the chaos; but also, as was unavoidable, itattracted bats and owls and the whole host of night birds, whichflapped their dusky wings against the gazer's eyes, and sometimes weremistaken for fowls of angelic feather. Such delusions always hovernigh whenever a beacon-fire of truth is kindled.
For myself, there bad been epochs of my life when I, too, might haveasked of this prophet the master word that should solve me the riddleof the universe; but now, being happy, I felt as if there were noquestion to be put, and therefore admired Emerson as a poet, of deepbeauty and austere tenderness, but sought nothing from him as aphilosopher. It was good, nevertheless, to meet him in the woodpaths,or sometimes in our avenue, with that pure, intellectual gleamdiffused about his presence like the garment of a shining one; and be,so quiet, so simple, so without pretension, encountering each manalive as if expecting to receive more than he could impart. And, intruth, the heart of many an ordinary man had, perchance, inscriptionswhich he could not read. But it was impossible to dwell in his vicinity without inhaling more or less the mountain atmosphere of hislofty thought, which, in the brains of some people, wrought a singulargiddiness,--new truth being as heady as new wine. Never was a poorlittle country village infested with such a variety of queer,strangely dressed, oddly behaved mortals, most of whom took uponthemselves to be important agents of the world's destiny, yet weresimply bores of a very intense water. Such, I imagine, is theinvariable character of persons who crowd so closely about an originalthinker as to draw in his unuttered breath and thus become imbued witha false originality. This triteness of novelty is enough to make anyman of common-sense blaspheme at all ideas of less than a century'sstanding, and pray that the world may be petrified and renderedimmovable in precisely the worst moral and physical state that it everyet arrived at, rather than be benefited by such schemes of suchphilosophers.
And now I begin to feel--and perhaps should have sooner felt--that wehave talked enough of the Old Manse. Mine honored reader, it may be,will vilify the poor author as an egotist for babbling through so manypages about a mossgrown country parsonage, and his life within itswalls, and on the river, and in the woods, and the influences thatwrought upon him from all these sources. My conscience, however, doesnot reproach me with betraying anything too sacredly individual to berevealed by a human spirit to its brother or sister spirit. Hownarrow-how shallow and scanty too--is the stream of thought that hasbeen flowing from my pen, compared with the broad tide of dimemotions, ideas, and associations which swell around me from thatportion of my existence! How little have I told! and of that little,how almost n othing is even tinctured with any quality that makes itexclusively my own! Has the reader gone wandering, hand in hand withme, through the inner passages of my being? and have we gropedtogether into all its chambers and examined their treasures or theirrubbish? Not so. We have been standing on the greensward, but justwithin the cavern's mouth, where the common sunshine is free topenetrate, and where every footstep is therefore free to come. I haveappealed to no sentiment or sensibilities save such as are diffusedamong us all. So far as I am a man of really individual attributes Iveil my face; nor am I, nor have I ever been, one of those supremelyhospitable people who serve up their own hearts, delicately fried,with brain sauce, as a tidbit for their beloved public.
Glancing back over what I have written, it seems but the scatteredreminiscences of a single summer. In fairyland there is nomeasurement of time; and, in a spot so sheltered from the turmoil oflife's ocean, three years hastened away with a noiseless flight, asthe breezy sunshine chases the cloud-shadows across the depths of astill valley. Now came hints, growing more and more distinct, that theowner of the old house was pining for his native air. Carpentersnext, appeared, making a tremendous racket among the outbuildings,strewing the green grass with pine shavings and chips of chestnutjoists, and vexing the whole antiquity of the place with theirdiscordant renovations. Soon, moreover, they divested our abode ofthe veil of woodbine which had crept over a large portion of itssouthern face. All the aged mosses were cleared unsparingly away; andthere were horrible whispers about brushing up the external walls witha coat of paint,--a purpose as little to my taste as might be that ofrouging the venerable cheeks of one's grandmother. But the hand thatrenovates is always more sacrilegious than that which destroys. Infine, we gathered up our household goods, drank a farewell cup of teain our pleasant little breakfast-room,--delicately fragrant tea, anunpurchasable luxury, one of the many angel gifts that had fallen likedew upon us,--and passed forth between the tall stone gate-posts asuncertain as the wandering Arabs where our tent might next be pitched.Providence took me by the hand, and--an oddity of dispensation which,I trust, there is no irreverence in smiling at--has led me, as thenewspapers announce while I am writing, from the Old Manse into acustom-house. As a story-teller, I have often contrived strangevicissitudes for my imaginary personages, but none like this.
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The treasure of intellectual gold which I hoped to find in oursecluded dwelling had never come to light. No profound treatise ofethics, no philosophic history, no novel even, that could standunsupported on its edges. All that I had to show, as a man ofletters, were these, few tales and essays, which had blossomed outlike flowers in the calm summer of my heart and mind. Save editing(an easy task) the journal of my friend of many years, the AfricanCruiser, I had done nothing else. With these idle weeds and witheringblossoms I have intermixed some that were produced long ago,--old,faded things, reminding me of flowers pressed between the leaves of abook,--and now offer the bouquet, such as it is, to any whom it mayplease. These fitful sketches, with so little of external life aboutthem, yet claiming no profundity of purpose,--so reserved, even whilethey sometimes seem so frank,--often but half in earnest, and never,even when most so, expressing satisfactorily the thoughts which theyprofess to image,--such trifles, I truly feel, afford no solid basisfor a literary reputation. Nevertheless, the public--if my limitednumber of readers, whom I venture to regard rather as a circle offriends, may be termed a public--will receive them the more kindly,as the last offering, the last collection of this nature which it ismy purpose ever to put forth. Unless I could do better, I have doneenough in this kind. For myself the book will always retain onecharm,--as reminding me of the river, with its delightful solitudes,and of the avenue, the garden, and the orchard, and especially thedear Old Manse, with the little study on its western side, and thesunshine glimmering through the willow branches while I wrote.
Let the reader, if he will do me so much honor, imagine himself myguest, and that, having seen whatever may be worthy of notice withinand about the Old Manse, he has finally been ushered into my study.There, after seating him in an antique elbow-chair, an heirloom of thehouse, I take forth a roll of manuscript and entreat his attention tothe following tales,--an act of personal inhospitality, however, whichI never was guilty of, nor ever will be, even to my worst enemy.
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