has described shall attract the attention of men."

And as long as American literature is read, we shall honor the brave and noble man, who could triumph over almost insurmountable difficulties, and win the love and admiration of the world.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE AND

HIS FAMILY.

HEN Washington Irving had finished the "Scarlet Letter," he exclaimed, "Masterly!

Masterly!"

Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the author, "I think we have no romancer but yourself, nor have had any for this long time. . . . There is rich blood in Hester, and the flavor of the sweet fern and the bayberry are not truer to the soil than the native sweetness of our little Phoebe! The Yankee mind has, for the most part, budded and flowered in pots of English earth, but you have fairly raised yours as a seedling in the natural soil. My criticism has to stop here; the moment a fresh mind takes in the elements of the common life about us, and transfigures them, I am contented to enjoy and admire, and let others analyze. Otherwise I should be tempted to display my appreciating sagacity in pointing out a hundred touches, transcriptions of nature, of character, of sentiment, true as the daguerreotype, free as crayon sketching, which arrested me even in the midst of the palpitating story."

And yet, with all this praise, Richard Henry Stoddard well says: "I can recall no other American author who ever wrote under such persistent and continuous discouragement." But he became superior to circumstances, and has won the admiration and affection of posterity.

The only son of a sea-captain, one of a family of true-hearted New England Puritans, Nathaniel Hawthorne came into the world at Salem, Mass., July 4, 1804. The father died when his boy was but four years old, leaving a young wife, who, crushed by this early sorrow, shut herself out from society, and lived for forty years, till her death, a lonely and secluded life.

Mrs. Hawthorne, with her three children, Elizabeth, Nathaniel, and Maria Louisa, went to the home of her father, after her husband's death, and while there, her brother, Robert Manning, decided to educate her handsome and winsome boy. He was a lover of books, reading "Pilgrim's Progress" when he was six years old, and as soon as he could passably understand them, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, and Thomson. The "Castle of Indolence"

was his especial delight.

When he was nine, he was struck on the foot by a ball, and, being lame for some time, he would lie on the floor and read from morning till night. With the first money he ever earned, he purchased Spenser's "Faerie Queene," and was entirely happy when absorbed in its pages