Again he was a bird of the night, and after dusk he unmoored his boat at the foot of the garden and paddled alone about the winding stream, in a glimmering realm that seemed this native fairy-land. Sometimes he took a whole holiday with the poet Ellery Channing, almost the only neighbor whom he saw, and sometimes also Emerson or Henry Thoreau came to the manse. But their visits were few, for Hawthorne's reserve was invincible to both of them. Margaret Fuller, whose sister Ellery Channing had married, also came; but the sympathy of the visitor and the host was not complete. There is no doubt of the happiness of these days, in which Hawthorne's eldest child was born and “Rappaccini's Daughter” was written. His income was drawn mainly from payments for the stories in the “Democratic Review” — payment indeed which was not large and not always prompt. But housekeeping at the manse was very simple and frugal, and in the occasional absences of his wife, Hawthorne often remained entirely alone or with some friend as a guest, and then housekeeping became a picnic, and they cooked the dinner and washed the dishes together with an ease and glee that were natural to Brook-Farmers. Among the mosses gathered in 1843 were the “Celestial Railroad,” “The Procession of Life,” “Fire Worship,” “Buds and Bird Voices,” and “Roger Malvin's Burial,” all of which appeared in the “Democratic Review.” “Rappaccini's Daughter” was published in the “Review” in 1844, and in 1845 the second series of “Twice-told Tales” was issued in Boston. This series begins with the four “Legends of the Province House.” tales specially characteristic of Hawthorne's genius, and they instantly added another romantic glamour to the famous Revolutionary town of Boston. In the same year Hawthorne edited the “African Journal” of his friend Bridge, of the navy, for publication as a book, and the “Papers of an Old Dartmoor Prisoner” for the “Democratic Review.” The accompanying illustration represents the old manse occupied by the Hawthornes.
He was now forty years old, and was recognized as one of the most original of American authors. He had made his way noiselessly by sheer force of genius. There had been no sudden and brilliant “sensation,” but the public had become gradually aware of the presence of a new literary force, the full scope and character of which were not as yet apprehended. He was still compelled, as he wrote in 1844, “to work hard for small gains.” But the publishers were on the scent. In October, 1845, he was urged by Wiley and Putnam, of New York, to give them a volume of tales for their “Library of American Books,” and also a history of witchcraft, which had been suggested to him as a promising subject. This work, however, he did not attempt. But in 1846 Wiley and Putnam published, in two volumes, as the seventeenth number of their pretty paper-covered series, “Mosses from an Old Manse.” Besides the tales already mentioned as written in 1843, there were included in the volumes “The Birthmark,” “Young Goodman Brown,” “The New Adam and Eve,” “The Christmas Banquet.” “Drowne's Wooden Image,” “The Artist of the Beautiful,” and other tales no less striking and imaginative. They are of the same general character as the “Twice-told Tales,” but they have the air of larger experience, although Hawthorne's work is of singularly uniform excellence. His genius was early matured, and his sinewy, simple, lucid style was never youthful in the sense of crudity, rhetorical excess, or restlessness. But his imagination was richer and his insight deeper. In a letter to Longfellow in 1837, after the publication of the “Twice-told Tales,” he says that he lies under the disadvantage of lack of material from the narrow conditions of his life and want of experience. But the custom-house, Brook Farm, Concord, and marriage had brought him out of the old Salem routine, and he was in the ripeness of his power when the “Mosses” were published. In comparison with his larger works, they now seem like the rosy blossoms in his apple-orchard in May, compared with the rounded fruit on the trees in October — “another, yet the same.”
Hawthorne's income, however, was now so diminished — for he had lost his venture at Brook Farm, and the “Democratic Review” had failed, largely in debt to him — that he left the old manse, after occupying it for nearly four years, and, returning to Salem, was appointed surveyor in the custom-house in 1840. Here he remained for three years, of which he has told the story in the introduction to “The Scarlet Letter.” In this introduction he speaks of himself and others with a freedom that might seem to be remarkable in a man so shy. But happily, in writing, his genius had full play without the constraint arising from a sense of the personal presence of others. This introduction is a delightful fragment of autobiography, but the candor with which he spoke of Salem and of his official associates was warmly resented. It was evidently thought to be a little parricidal in a son of Salem to speak so plainly of the town and the townspeople. But Hawthorne replied that he owed nothing to a town that had permitted its son — and he might have said one of its most illustrious children — “to be deliberately lied down,” which he felt to have been his fate at the time of his official removal. The three years of his Salem surveyorship have no record in the “American Note-Books.” But during this time he wrote the first draft of “The Scarlet Letter,” a longer tale than any of the earlier works, which proved to be so sombre that he thought it wiser to publish with it some sketches afterward issued with the “Snow Image.” But his friend, James T. Fields, the publisher, on reading the manuscript, was so profoundly impressed by it that Hawthorne took heart, completed the work, and in the spring of 1850 the romance was published. The first edition of 5,000 copies was sold in two weeks. But great as was the publisher's admiration of the work, he distrusted its popular success, and the type was distributed. It was, however, immediately reset and stereotyped. The book was at once reprinted in England, and its reception in both countries was enthusiastic. The author had made the “ten-strike” of which, in speaking of the enthusiasm of his wife and his publisher, he had humorously written to his friend Bridge, and from being the obscurest of American authors he had sud-
