Ch. 3 - Early Writings - Page 2

hard and rough, and been covered with
earthly dust, and my heart might have become callous by rude
encounters with the multitude.... But living in solitude
till the fulness of time was come, I still kept the dew of
my youth and the freshness of my heart.... I used to think
that I could imagine all passions, all feelings, and states
of the heart and mind; but how little did I know!... Indeed,
we are but shadows; we are not endowed with real life, and
all that seems most real about us is but the thinnest
substance of a dream--till the heart be touched. That touch
creates us--then we begin to be--thereby we are beings of
reality and inheritors of eternity."

There is something exquisite in the soft philosophy of this little
retrospect, and it helps us to appreciate it to know that the writer
had at this time just become engaged to be married to a charming and
accomplished person, with whom his union, which took place two years
later, was complete and full of happiness. But I quote it more
particularly for the evidence it affords that, already in 1840,
Hawthorne could speak of the world finding him out and calling him
forth, as of an event tolerably well in the past. He had sent the
first of the _Twice-Told_ series to his old college friend,
Longfellow, who had already laid, solidly, the foundation of his great
poetic reputation, and at the time of his sending it had written him a
letter from which it will be to our purpose to quote a few lines:--

"You tell me you have met with troubles and changes. I know
not what these may have been; but I can assure you that
trouble is the next best thing to enjoyment, and that there
is no fate in the world so horrible as to have no share in
either its joys or sorrows. For the last ten years I have
not lived, but only dreamed of living. It may be true that
there may have been some unsubstantial pleasures here in the
shade, which I might have missed in the sunshine, but you
cannot conceive how utterly devoid of satisfaction all my
retrospects are. I have laid up no treasure of pleasant
remembrances against old age; but there is some comfort in
thinking that future years may be more varied, and therefore
more tolerable, than the past. You give me more credit than
I deserve in supposing that I have led a studious life. I
have indeed turned over a good many books, but in so
desultory a way that it cannot be called study, nor has it
left me the fruits of study.... I have another great
difficulty in the lack of materials; for I have seen so
little of the world that I have nothing but thin air to
concoct my stories of, and it is not easy to give a
life-like semblance to such shadowy stuff. Sometimes,
through a peephole, I have caught a