way. At last, April 27, 1882, surrounded by those he loved, he was beckoned "to his vaster home." Shall we not say that his life was beautiful? Men testified of him that he was radiant with goodness, that his presence was like a benediction, that he exhibited the meekness and gentleness of Christ. To have been such a man is better than to have been a great writer.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

It is not difficult to portray the lives of ordinary men. Their outward circumstances present nothing unusual, and their inward experiences admit of ready comprehension and description. All that is needed in such cases is diligent research. But it is different with the man upon whom Providence has lavished such a wealth of gifts as raises him high above his fellows. The outward incidents of his life may indeed be easily narrated. But when these have been presented in the fullest measure, how inadequate and unsatisfactory the portrait still remains! That which distinguishes him from other men, and exalts him above them, is felt to be untouched. And when we essay to penetrate the secret of his genius, we are puzzled and baffled at every step. Only unsatisfactory glimpses reward our most patient observation. Strange and beautiful flowers may burst forth under our very gaze; but the marvellous energy that produces them remains invisible and mysterious. These reflections force themselves upon us as we study the life of the most original and most gifted of all our American writers.

The interesting historic town of Salem, Mass., has the distinction of being the birthplace of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Here he first saw the light, July 4, 1804. He sprang from Puritan stock almost as old as the Plymouth colony. The strong traits of his ancestry, as he himself recognized, intertwined themselves with his personality. His ancestors occupied a position of social and official prominence, and won an unenviable distinction in persecuting Quakers and killing witches. For a hundred years before his birth they followed the sea; "a gray-headed shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from

the quarterdeck to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale, which had blustered against his sire and grandsire." His father was a reserved, thoughtful man of strong will; his mother, a gifted, sensitive woman, who led the life of a recluse after her husband's death. These traits, as will be seen, were transmitted to their son in an intensified degree.

Only glimpses of his boyhood - brief, but very distinct — are afforded us. "One of the peculiarities of my boyhood," he tells us, "was a grievous disinclination to go to school, and (Providence favoring me in this natural repugnance) I never did go half as much as other boys, partly owing to delicate health (which I made the most of for the purpose), and partly because, much of the time, there were no schools within reach." One of his early teachers was Worcester of dictionary fame. He spent a year at Raymond on the banks of Sebago Lake in Maine, where he ran wild, hunting, fishing, skating, and reading at pleasure, a period that subsequently remained with him as a happy memory. Returning to Salem, he was tutored for college, and entered Bowdoin in the autumn of 1821.

His college career cannot be cited as a model. "I was an idle student," he confesses, "negligent of college rules and the Procrustean details of academic life, rather choosing to nurse my own fancies than to dig into Greek roots and be numbered among the learned Thebans." He played cards on the sly; he drank (a student never drinks anything stronger) "wine" and "hard cider;" he went fishing and hunting when the faculty thought he was at his books. But in spite of his easy-going habits he maintained a respectable standing in his classes, and his Latin composition and his rendering of the classics were favorably spoken of. He was an exceedingly handsome young man; and it is said that an old gypsy woman, suddenly meeting him in a lonely forest path, was startled into the question, "Are you a man or an angel?" Among his college associates, who afterwards achieved distinction, were Henry W. Longfellow and Franklin Pierce.