HAWTHORNE 



2725 



HAWTHORNE 



James Thomson, in his poem Spring, gives a 

 pretty description of a forest when the haw- 

 thorn is putting forth its blossoms: 



The hawthorn whitens ; and the juicy groves 

 Put forth their buds, unfolding by degrees, 

 Till the whole leafy forest stands displayed 

 In full luxuriance, to the sighing gales. 



FOR A BOOKLET 



The illustration shows parts of a cover border, 

 initial letters and ornamentation for pages. 



HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL (1804-1864), the 

 greatest fiction writer that America has pro- 

 duced. Few authors have been able to read 

 more clearly the true inner meaning of men's 

 lives, and the Puritan New England of his day 

 is vividly por- 

 trayed in his ro- 

 mances. He was 

 not, in the mod- 

 ern sense of the 

 word, a "realist" 

 that is, he did 

 not picture de- 

 tailed happenings 

 and everyday 

 surr o u ndings 

 merely for the 



purpose of pro- NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 

 ducing an accurate mental photograph. Close 

 observer as he was, he saw that there was 



something back of the things which could be 

 seen and felt, and that this was the only part 

 of life that really counted. His romances, 

 therefore, are of a spiritual character, and his 

 adventures are the adventures of men's souls. 



Early Life. Hawthorne was born on July 4, 

 1804, at Salem, Mass., of a family which had 

 numbered among its members soldiers and sail- 

 ors, but never, until the coming of Nathaniel, 

 a dreamer and a writer of tales. His father 

 died when the boy was but four years old, and 

 his mother's grief was so great that he seems to 

 have felt its shadow, even in his early years. 

 Little attempt was made to give him formal 

 schooling, but he read widely and with keen 

 appreciation, delighting especially in Pilgrim's 

 Progress, the Faerie Queene, Shakespeare's 

 dramas and Milton's poems. Better even than 

 his books, however, he loved his long, solitary 

 rambles, and after he removed with his mother 

 to Lake Sebago, Me., his love for solitude in- 

 creased. In his later life he much regretted 

 this tendency, but at this time he knew no joy 

 so great as roaming the unbroken forests with 

 his gun, or skating upon the lake in the moon- 

 light. 



In 1821 he went to Bowdoin College, where 

 he had as fellow students Longfellow and 



"WAYSIDE" 



Franklin Pierce. His college work showed no 

 special genius, nor does it seem to have awak- 

 ened in him the desire for any specific occupa- 

 tion. Returning, in 1825, to Salem, he settled 

 into the seclusion which he loved, and for 

 twelve years the world heard nothing of him. 

 He wrote much, but little passed the severe 

 critic to whom he subjected it himself. Oc- 

 casionally articles from his pen appeared in 

 periodicals, and in 1837 these were reprinted in 

 a little volume called Twice-Told Tales. This 

 was not eagerly greeted as the first work of a. 



